Peace Education Summit, "Time 100" — Has Newark Finally 'Arrived'?

Newark, New Jersey is not exactly unknown to the world. After all, we have a major international airport, so over a billion sophisticated travelers know that Newark is a city near Manhattan. Other travelers, however, may think that "Newark" is just one of New York City's three major commercial-aviation airports, like "LaGuardia" and "JFK".

Slitely fuzzy nitetime view of NJPAC during a "Sounds of the City" outdoor concert in summer 2009.

In recent years, Newark has started to emerge from the shadow of its big brother across the Hudson. That emergence started with NJPAC, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center that former Mayor Sharpe James brought to the city and which quickly became a major venue for big-name performers in classical music, and some pop acts, comics, dance troupes, etc.

Over the years since its 1997 opening, NJPAC has served as home to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and hosted performances by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (saw it), Bill Cosby, Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater, Bowfire (saw it with Gaetano, who treated), Smokey Robinson, Yo-Yo Ma, Johnny Mathis, Sarah Brightman, Sting, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; hosted a fundraiser for then-candidate Barack Obama; and, last year, served as home base for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the largest poetry event in North America — to name just a few of the things that NJPAC has brought to Newark. A more complete list appears in Wikipedia, which says that NJPAC is the sixth-largest performing arts center in the United States and has had 6 million visitors, including more than a million children. And every one of them got home safe.

Momentum picked up with the opening of what began, also under Mayor James, as the "Newark Arena" and got a slitely classier and more prestigious name when one of the world's most important financial-services companies, Prudential Financial (whose world HQ is in Newark), paid to put its name on the "Prudential Center". (It also put its name on the larger of the two theaters in NJPAC, Prudential Hall. The other is the Victoria Theater, the portal to which this next foto shows.)

PruCenter quickly became "The Rock", after Prudential Financial's logo, the Rock of Gibraltar. I guess that was an act of public-relations legerdemain by Prudential Financial's p.r. wizards. Or was it PruCenter's p.r. wizards? Or sportswriters' doing? However it happened, the manly, powerful nickname "The Rock" (since abandoned by former pro wrestler and now actor Dwayne Johnson) now applies to Newark's sports and entertainment arena, and the "solid as a rock" connotation that the Prudential corporation wanted to attach to itself when it chose the Rock of Gibraltar as its symbol, now attaches in some measure not just to the arena that bears Prudential's name but also to the city in which both reside, Newark, NJ — or, as I put it, "Newark USA", since I want people to think of only one of the world's many Newarks when they hear "Newark".

I have mentioned that the inspiration for the Prudential logo came from Laurel Hill, a rock outcrop in the Meadows that has also been called, less attractively, "Snake Hill". Wikipedia says:

Snake Hill has had a modest, if largely anonymous, impact on the popular consciousness. A New York advertising executive, passing the hill on a train, is said to have drawn from it the inspiration for the Prudential "Rock of Gibraltar" logo in the 1890s.

Model of the Rock of Gibraltar alongside Championship Plaza outside the Prudential Center. Foto below shows the text on the plaque you can see partially embedded in the model.

(By the way, I had assumed that the name "Laurel Hill" derived from (mountain or other) laurel shrubs growing on it somewhere, but Wikipedia provides a different explanation:

The name changed from Snake Hill to Laurel Hill in 1926, when Hudson County freeholder Katherine Whelan Brown said that it was the "crowning Laurel of Hudson County" because of its prominence in the low lying meadowlands.

So it's a classical reference, to a wreath of laurel leaves awarded to the winner of an honor. In any case, The Rock has become a "crown"ing glory for Newark. But we mustn't rest on our laurels.)

Two minutes spent at the home page of prucenter.com shows how major a venue The Rock has become. McDonald's Gospelfest, Katy Perry, the NBA Draft, Josh Groban, Keith Urban with guest Jake Owen, American Idols Live (2d year in a row), Taylor Swift (also 2d year in a row, with two extra dates this year), Andre Rieu, Cirque du Soleil, and Sade with guest John Legend are just some of the events upcoming. Ricky Martin and Lady GaGa were here this month. Every major tour, from Britney Spears to Justin Bieber, to the Blue Collar Comedy team and Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, has either already been here, or is keenly aware of the advantages of coming to Newark, so might appear in the future. About the only major act that has not appeared and seems to have no plans to appear in the Prudential Center is New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen, who seems unwilling to deign to appear in an indoor arena — at least not in Newark, the great city of his own state. No, for "The Boss", only gigantic outdoor stadiums appear to suffice. I can wait. Tho Springsteen and I were both raised in Monmouth County, he's never been a great favorite of mine. And who needs Springsteen when Newark has had Bon Jovi (who is much better looking) in PruCenter and Pope John Paul II in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (which JPII created into a Basilica, while here), and next month gets a visit from the Dalai Lama to NJPAC!

The blue-bordered flag just this side of the U.S. flag is the little-known and little-seen Newark city flag. I don't much care for it, and would like to see a design competition to give us something better.

That's right, the Dalai Lama is scheduled to appear at a Peace Education Summit in NJPAC, May 13th to 15th. The Dalai Lama has already been to the Newark Museum three times, and consecrated its Tibetan art area in 1990. I'm not clear whether he will stop by a fourth time this visit.

This and the next foto are courtesy of Outdoor Interstate Advertising.

The Summit is subtitled "The Power of Nonviolence".

The Newark Peace Education Summit is a three day conference focusing on peacemaking practices from around the world. It features panels and workshops with His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Somaly Mam, Nobel Laureates and peace advocates from a wide cross section of cultures, disciplines and perspectives. The summit will explore the programs, policies, and methods used by communities to establish peace, why and how they work, and how to replicate them in America and around the world.

The 3 Nobel Peace Prize laureates (a reference to "laurel" again) are (Ms.) Shirin Ebadi, (Ms.) Jody Williams, and the Dalai Lama himself. There are 71 other speakers scheduled, over three days of panels. Let's see what kind of world-press coverage the Summit gets, and if the coverage speaks to the host city or only the proceedings within the Summit.

Time 100. I was standing in line for the cash register at the East Orange ShopRite Thursday evening when I glanced over the magazine racks. What should I see but a foto-montage on the cover of the May 2d issue of TIME Magazine, in which appears none other than Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, among the "Time 100 Most Influential People in the World". World. Not Nation. World.

Meet the most influential people in the world. They are artists and activists, reformers and researchers, heads of state and captains of industry. Their ideas spark dialogue and dissent and sometimes even revolution. Welcome to this year's TIME 100[.]

The squib about Mayor Booker was written by Oprah Winfrey (who is also on the cover; the item about her is by Ted Turner).

The increased attention to Newark of late is most welcome, but only if it produces balanced mentions, not the same old "poor Newark" crap of which we have seen far too much. Some of us already knew that Newark was a fine city with a lot going for it and a lot going on in it that deserved more attention. But it's nice to see that outsiders are finally catching wise. "Newark" isn't a joke anymore, even tho it does have a K-sound and is in New Jersey, a favorite target of sneering comics. As Newark's prestige grows, so will New Jersey's. Win-win.

Part of Downtown Newark seen past steelwork outside Aljira ("A Center for Contemporary Art"). The cloth banners speak of Aljira itself and NJSO, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. The steeple belongs to Trinity & St. Philip's Episcopal Cathedral, a church George Washington's troops marched past on their way to Morristown, after encamping four days in what is now Military Park, alongside the Cathedral. Thomas Paine started to write The Crisis ("These are the times that try men's soulds ...") there. Beyond the park you can see the mirror-sided PSE&G Building, HQ of NJ's largest electric and gas utility. The skyscraper only partially visible at the far right is Newark's (presently) tallest building, 744 Broad Street, a distinguished older office tower renovated for the most modern uses. And the skyscraper to the left of 744 is 1180 (Raymond Bouulevard), a former Art Deco office building that has been redeveloped into a luxury apartment tower with great amenities, from pool table to half-basketball court, to 4 bowling alleys free to tenants, to views of Manhattan in the distance. Art, music, history, commerce, luxury apartments — this is the essence of the New Newark in one picture.

Last April Project at Solo(s), Friday

Fotos today are from Solo(s) Project House during last week's show, LNY's "Adoration". I am unclear whose abstract, textured paintings were in the lobby and hallway back to the main exhibition space, nor whether they will be there this week too.

Solo(s) Project House (972 Broad Street, 1st floor) hosts an opening reception Friday from 7-10pm.

4 WEEKS - 4 PROJECTS presents:
Project #4: CHARU VYAS "CHARU DESIGNS"
Opening Reception:
Friday, April 29th 7 -10pm
Performances at 8:30 & 9:30pm
Refreshments Served

In my journey of the creation of my designs ... I gain inspiration from everything I see. A color, a hand movement, a curve of the body. I observe and absorb the details and put them together as a new entity in my garments." — Charu Vyas

How, exactly, is her name pronounced? The spelling suggests the English words "char","rue", and "vie" plus a schwa and either a Z- or an S-sound. In my spelling system (pronunciation-key version), that would be written chór.ue víe.yaz or ~.yas. But the woman is from Israel, so perhaps the CH represents the sound in Scottish "loch" or the harsh version of "Chanukkah" (which is also spelled Hanukkah, Chanukah, Channukkah, and Chanukkah). And maybe the Y is said not as a long-I but as a long-E, or a consonantal-Y, so the last name is like "views" (vyuez) but with a broad-A sound, and maybe an S-sound at the end. This is another example of why I am a spelling reformer.

Note that if the name is Hebrew, but it is spelled ambiguously in English, there is no conceivable intellectual justification for a misleading spelling, since Hebrew is not written with the Roman alphabet, so any rendering into English should be clear in English spelling conventions. You can't make any case whatsoever for a transliteration, character for character, that misleads the reader of English, in part because Hebrew generally does not show vowels, so a character-for-character transliteration would at best be CH-R V-(Y- [if the Y represents a consonant rather than vowel])S – or, to be strictly literal, since Hebrew is written right-to-left, S-Y-V R-CH. That wouldn't make any sense whatsoever in English, but neither does any other spelling of an Israeli name that leaves the reader wondering how the heck to say it. Transliteration is dopy — just plain stupid, in many cases — be it forwards, backwards, with or without vowels. We need to know how to say the name, not how the original language may treat that name. I hadn't thought about this before but now wonder how my brother's offspring in Israel transliterate "Schoonmaker".

Charu Vyas, a fashion designer from Israel, is the 4th and final artist of 4 WEEKS - 4 PROJECTS. Vyas will introduce us to a body of work that is inspired by movement. She will exhibit her line of clothing, and showcase the clothing during several performances conducted by dancers Ezra Ezzard and India Bolds. All designs are for sale.

This will be the last of four shows in one month.

4 WEEKS - 4 PROJECTS
During the month of April the Solo(s) Project House presents to you four weeks of back to back solo projects. The four solo artists are given TWO days to install, an opening reception, followed by a day of viewing and TWO days to uninstall. Join Solo(s) Project House each Friday, for the unveiling of a new project.

NEXT MONTH [Solo(s) resumes a more normal schedule:]
Nyugen E. Smith "To the Kapitol" (Everybody Come)
May 7, 2011 -- June 24, 2011
Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 7th
7 - 11pm * * *

t: 973.688.8979
www.solosprojecthouse.com
info@solosprojecthouse.com

I stopped in briefly at the very end of last week's project and took a few pictures before I had to get back to other things. This wide view shows two of the three major panels in the main room, dominantly red, white, and blue, the only other color being black, adding another connotative color to the palate. So the bulk of the mural is black and white on a background of red, white, and blue. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the colors.

This closer view of the leftmost panel shows the railroad lift bridge from Newark to Harrison over the Passaic River. The bridge is in blue and red. The actual bridge is a grungy dark gray (with rust/decay?). I would like to see it (and the Pulaski Skyway) painted britely, and not necessarily all in one color. The person portrayed multiply at first struck me as female, but now I think is probably supposed to be male.

This next foto focuses on the major feature of the central panel, a grouping that seems to me strongly reminiscent of Mount Rushmore. The leftmost figure seems very like President Obama, and the rightmost, like another view of the same person. The second-rightmost is the somewhat androgenous person by the bridge, and the remaining person is even more androgenous. Decades of experience with people who try desperately to camouflage their actual gender have left me able, usually, to determine male as against female from cues that desperately unhappy people were unable to obliterate. But that's in reality. In an artistic rendering, the artist can include or exclude whatever cues he wishes.

The third panel of the LNY project shows this Oriental woman. Now if the second-from-left figure in the Mount Rushmorian group above is supposed to be white, we have all the traditional Races of Mankind in one room's wraparound view. The larger Newark is very weak in the Oriental Department, in demographic terms. (The Newark Museum has a pretty fair collection of Oriental art, and its Tibetan collection is supposed to be outstanding.) We've got lots of blacks, lots of whites, lots of Amerinds, if mainly in the form of mestizos from various countries of Latin America. But Newark's Chinatown disappeared decades ago, and despite historically high levels of immigration to the United States from China, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, and other nations of East Asia, Newark has only a piddling resident Oriental population. Mind you, we've got lots of Chinese takeout restaurants, staffed by people born in China, but the great preponderance of these restaurant owners and employees do not live in Newark. Where do they live? And why not in Newark? I should ask the girl who works the counter at my local takeout, China House, on South Orange Avenue in Vailsburg. I know she was born in southern China, because after one of our 11 (12?) snowstorms this past winter, I asked if she had been raised in snow, and she said no, she never saw snow until she moved to America. I must ask where she lives, and if not Newark, WHY not Newark? She could walk to work!

In the side room/alcove (which I always initially type as "alcover"), there were three monochrome drawings on the walls, apparently by a different artist. My camera had great difficulty capturing those subtle works and not-so-subtle figures in the liting of that area. I think that area may still have been part of (Solo(s) overall) Project #8: Jennifer Grimyser's "Visually Speaking", but do not know that for certain.

The people in this indistinct foto (bad camera! bad!) are participating in an interactive artwork in which people write or draw upon flat cardboard-box forms that are then folded to create actual boxes.

The completed boxes, or a selection from among them, are then displayed on the floor, spilling out from a corner.

In the hallway between the lobby and Solo(s)' main space lies this decorated area around the restroom/s. I don't know the artist, but if some areas represent broken plaster with the lath exposed, I've seen things like that by Daniel Brophy.

In the lobby and the portion of the hallway closer to the lobby were a number of deeply textured paintings in different color combinations.

I asked the security guard at the front desk if he liked the paintings he had to see from his workplace, and he said yes, he specially liked this one, on the order of 5 or 6 feet wide, which he found very springlike and cheery.

I have to agree. I also liked at least most of the others, but the springy one is a standout.

I didn't see any label showing the artist's name, so asked if he knew who the artist was. He did not, but said that Rebecca Jampol [head honcha of Solo(s) Project House] would. I had not, however, seen her in the main exhibition area. If she, or Shar(r?)on, sees this and supplies the artist's name (and, optionally, the titles of specific paintings), I'll add that info here later. This dominantly blue painting is about the same size as the springy one, and faces it across the little lobby.

In any case, if you see this post as you are ending your workweek in Downtown Newark, you might do well to stay in the city rather than rushing home, and check out the last of April's one-nite art shows at Solo(s) Project House, one of Newark's worthiest art institutions, despite its peculiar name.

Solo(s)' April Project #3; Robeson Senior Show; Filmideo

Friday (the 22nd) the third of four weekly events this month opens at Solo(s) Project House.

4 WEEKS - 4 PROJECTS presents:
Project #3:
LNY "ADORATION"
Opening Reception:
Tomorrow[,] Friday, April 22nd, 7-10pm
LNY's work revolves around his interest in the relationship and influence that urban areas have on an individual's identity. This is a topic LNY has explored internationally and is for the first time working in Newark, New Jersey. "Adoration" is a juxtaposition of Newark citizens and architecture translated through a series of site-specific wall drawings. www.lnylnylny.com * * *

Solo(s) Project House
972 Broad St. Newark NJ 07102
t: 973.688.8979
www.solosprojecthouse.com
info@solosprojecthouse.com

I don't know what this show is to be, but it seems not to be video, so I might attend. Index Art Center has another Filmideo on Saturday from 6-10pm for those who like/can stand video art. I won't be there, however. "To each his own." (I just made that up. Catchy, huh?)

Fotos today are from the Fine Arts Senior Thesis show in the Robeson Galleries' Main Gallery and Rumble Room on the campus of Rutgers-Newark, Downtown.

As for LNY, that is plainly not a name. Is it an initialism (not acronym, a series of initials that forms a word), in which the formative letters are pronounced separately (el en wie)? Is it to be said "el New York"? "él.nee? él.nie? perhaps la.níe (like "lanai")? I don't know. What I do know is that it is an annoying affectation, like the singer Prince's adopting a wordless symbol for a name. Prince came to his senses after a while, and dropped that ridiculously pretentious affectation. Perhaps LNY will drop his pretentious affectation too someday. As to whether I am so annoyed by that foolishness that I won't go to the show, I do not yet know. I'll see how I feel around 5pm Friday.

I missed last week's Project #2, because I didn't get an email notice and hadn't put it on my AOL calendar with a reminder from AOL's automated system. This week I did get an email notice, which at the end says my address was added on April 20th, so perhaps Solo(s) changed its email service, because I had been receiving notices with fair regularity until last week.
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I also had not received advance notice from the Robeson Galleries of the opening on Wednesday, April 13th of the Rutgers-Newark Fine Arts Senior Thesis show this year. (The exhibit will be up thru the 27th.) One of the participating artists, Sophia Sobers, however, sent me an email invitation, so I heard of it in time to attend.
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I mentioned to Caren King, who assists Anonda Bell in running the Galleries, that I hadn't received an email announcement from the Galleries, and she said they were rushed in getting the current show up because they had to work with painters who had to repaint the walls because the last show — of which I had also not received email notice — had had a wide purple stripe around the room that had to be painted over. If I were a suspicious type of person, I might wonder if these arts organizations are trying to tell me something, by deliberately not sending me notices of their art events.
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I told Caren, "You need a serf" to tend to email announcements. She smiled and said she is the Robeson Galleries' serf. I clarified that she needed a student serf (as, for instance, one who works for the Galleries for extra credit in an art course).
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This week I did receive an emailed 'new newsletter' from the Robeson Galleries with info about the Senior Thesis show. Would I have received such a notice if I hadn't asked Caren about not getting an email notice/invitation? Let's say I would have.

In any relatively small community, people perceive slites, intended or not, and react to them. I'm not an art critic, so don't mount a soap box to influence attitudes toward any artist or show. Still, anybody with a personality will clash with other personalities. Even people with almost no personality will annoy people who can't stand people who don't have a distinctive personality.
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Or the people in charge of a program or venue will decide they'd just rather not have someone attend their events.
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In any case, Sophia Sobers invited me to the Senior Show, where "Senior" means not "old folks", like me, but students about to graduate, like Sophia. Hers was thus a senior-to-senior invite.

This large display is by the little girl on the left, Sophia Sobers. I asked her how long it took to do, and she said the entire semester.

I'm thinking of taking courses at Essex County College, which old folks can do for free. But I can do so only if there is also free student parking, because ECC is right Downtown, and parking in Downtown Newark is a bear (not to be confused with the Newark Bears, our splendid minor-league baseball team in its beautiful stadium close in to Newark's skyscrapers — or what pass for skyscrapers in this medium-sized American city). I need to know more about digital fotografy and videografy, website design, and some other things (hey, buddy, there's a lot you need to know). I don't need credit for it, since at 66 I am not about to embark on a new career, and I already have a bachelor's degree in the ever-so-useful Political Science. My grand-nephew, Joshua Bristol, is graduating from San Jose State in California next month, with a degree in philosophy. We sure do know how to choose majors in my family.

My PoliSci degree did, marvel of marvels, actually do me some good when I was being interviewed by hostile Canadian journalists in regard to my political organization, the Expansionist Party of the United States. XP advocates that various parts of the world join the Union as States of the United States, and Canada is one such area, which we'd like to see enter the Union as seven States. When challenged as to my qualifications to speak to Canadian issues and offer such a suggestion, I was able to respond that I have a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the City College of the City University of New York. (So there.) I did not mention that after my first semester on Dean's List at City College, I qualified for "independent study" and wanted to do something about Canada, but City College, only about 300 miles from the Canadian border, had no one who could serve as my advisor in such a study, so I wasn't able to do that. At that point, I turned off to City College. I later discovered that City had a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa that I might have worked to qualify for, except that I had completely turned off to City College when I couldn't do independent study on Canada, a mere 300 miles away. NY is a border state but City College, a major institution, did not have anyone to serve as advisor? Absurd.

Later, a consortium of U.S. colleges formed to promote Canadian Studies. I was, alas — as so often has happened in my life — ahead of my time, so could not take advantage of that consortium's pressure on American academia to study Canada, one of our two (only two!) bordering neighbors. If you are not ahead of your time, be glad, because it is REALLY frustrating.

I have also been to all ten provinces of Canada, which relatively few Canadians have done, and knew, when I was following events there fairly closely, more about Canada than do the bulk of Canadians. I know that because I took a test in the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's and scored significantly better than the great majority of Canadians.

There was an animation running in the Rumble Room, which turned out to be by Sophia also.

In any case, I am now much more interested in Newark than in Canada, tho I did take my last vacation, as such (a long weekend, in July 2009), in Montreal, Québec with my "ex" (from about 1966, whom I had not seen since about 1967). Québec is pronounced, in French, kae.bék) . In English, without the written accent, Quebec is pronounced kwi.bék or kwee.bék. Its license plates proclaim it "La Belle Province" — tho I would much prefer it be "Le bel état" (state) — and it really is "bel/le" (beautiful) in many parts, but so are most places on this threatened planet.

Of course, different places require different esthetics, such as an appreciation for the sere landscapes of deserts and arid plains, or the chill, white glare of the Arctic or Antarctic. (Please say a K-sound before the T in both those terms, órk.tik and aant.órk.tik, not ór.tik and aan.tór.tik.) NJ has no extreme natural landscapes, but it does have the Turnpike-area "lunar landscape" that some people think representative of NJ overall, as against the lush greenery of the Pine Barrens, the pristine beachscapes of southern Ocean County, the Great Falls of the Passaic at Paterson, or the historic millraces of historic, rural New Jersey.

Sophia introduced me to Krystle G. Cortez, who consented to pose by her part of the show, the entire near wall of the Gallery as you enter.

I have several major interests, to which I have devoted considerable attention and writing for years of my life. When I get really tired of one, I switch to another. Sometimes I art myself out in Newark (Gaetano has complained that I show too much art as a proportion of this blog, and sometimes I have to agree). So sometimes I switch not just to other topics in regard to Newark but to others of my major interests altogether, such as politics and spelling reform. There are some political issues regarding Newark that I want to address, such as the criminal mismanagement of the City's finances — we still can't pay our water bills online; why the heck not? — and the City sold major City assets, such as buildings, for $40 million, but will have to pay back $125 million! A lot of people should go to PRISON for that. But such matters are so unpleasant, and do not lend themselves to easy illustration by fotos I have taken, that I have not been able to bring myself to address them.

Bill Chappel, a James Street activist, is very concerned that Mayor Booker may try to put over on the people of Newark, again, the Municipal Water and Sewer Authority we roundly defeated last year. We need to let everyone in City Government know that there is no way they can get away with such a crime, but they ALL face recall (if that's legal in NJ, something I need to investigate, when I have time (ha!) if they try it. Bill Chappel is probably about my age, 60s. Where is the indignation among younger Newarkers? The 1960s generation changed this country, in most regards for the better. But I don't see young Newarkers, or Americans more generally, as having anything like the passion for social justice that we had. Am I mistaken? If I am not mistaken, I have two questions to ask: (a) what is wrong with younger people? and (b) how can this Republic survive the presently one-sided war by the rich upon the rest of us?

As regards Newark arts, I am more a tourist than connoisseur, dilettante than expert. I like pretty or striking visual things. I don't spend a lot of time looking at any given artwork to try to understand it. It either makes a connection with my intellect or my emotions immediately, or I let it go. By far most people who visit a gallery or museum do the same. Artists might want people to think more about what they are trying to say, but it really isn't up to the viewer to figure out what an artist is saying. If an artist wants to reach viewers, the onus is on the artist to make plain what s/he means, or at least create an image that makes so great an impression on the viewer that s/he thinks about it hours or days later, until s/he finally realizes what the artist was trying to say. If no one "gets" what the artist was trying to say, even days later, the fault is not likely to be among all the people who saw it, is it?

I am an expository writer, not a literary artist. I rarely write poetry; never fiction; and I do not push off onto readers the responsibility to understand what I am trying to say. Rather, I try to say it, myself, clearly. That's what writers do. It is not, however, what a lot of artists do. They want to be puzzles, enigmas. They think the more inscrutable they are, the more important an artist they are. I beg to differ. If your art has a message, it will rarely be the viewer who is to blame if they don't "get" that message.

I initially misspelled "dilettante" as "dilletante", because "dilettante" is just plain wrong in English, suggesting that the word's stress falls on the -ETT-. This craziness is why I am a spelling reformer. I'm gradually writing a book on the subject, but it needs very extensive appendixes, and I don't have the time to generate them. I need, for instance, intelligent college or high-school students with perfect American English (educated New Jerseyans have the best "English" in the world) to help generate the comprehensive lexicon of respelled words that people will need once my reform is adopted. I can't do it all, esp. when my computer has slowed to a crawl and I don't know of a quality repair shop in Newark.

I can't even update this blog every day, but have an actual, written list of dozens of topics that I have not been able to get to, and I have as well hundreds of fotos with which to illustrate those discussions. Nor can I update my political blog every day, nor my gay blog. I'd like to have a spelling-reform blog too — but I also would not be able to update that every day. I need help, a lot of help, to do everything I should do before my time runs out (remember, I'm 66, in a country where the life expectancy for a white man born when I was, mere days before the start of 1945, was 65.9 years). (You're right about that, buddy. You need help. Professional help.)

Earth Day. Friday the 22nd is also Earth Day, which was, for three years, also "Beautiful Newark Day". Unfortunately, the people who created Beautiful Newark Day conceived of it as a limited-duration project, and discontinued it last year (or was it the year before?). Can somebody else take it up? We need to do the kinds of cleaning up and planting of flowers (preferably perennials), shrubs, and trees that the "Beautiful Newark" project got us to thinking about. Perhaps the people who participate in Green Drinks Newark at Rio Rodizio restaurant the 4th Monday of every month, can discuss this and come up with a plan of action. (See the trilingual English/Spanish/Portuguese Green Drinks Events webpage.)

Feelings About Newark: Four Polls

Fotos today are a few lesser pix from my trip to Branch Brook Park Sunday. I have a lot of fotos that are better, which I will present later this week with descriptive text.

Internet polls are not reliable as indicators of the views of society generally, in that, for instance, there is no random sampling, but anyone who sees the poll can answer it, and the people who see a poll may not be remotely representative of people who do not see it. Nonetheless, an online poll might produce some useful information, esp. if the pollster makes reasonable efforts to block repeat voting and delete uncivilized comments. Sometimes just thinking about something can clarify things that people have not theretofore troubled to sort out. Thus do I present, below, four opinion polls I devised and now post via Freepolls.com.

I have not heretofore put up any opinion polls in this blog, in part because it's hard to prevent malicious people from falsifying results. But Freepolls does permit me to block multiple votes from the same IP address. Let me apologize now to different people from the same household, who share a single computer, if they are blocked from voting. But I think that people who care about Newark, in a favorable way, will be happy if I can prevent malicious Newark-haters from spewing their bile against Newark more powerfully by voting repeatedly.

I also chose not to allow an open-ended-answer option, by means of which people might give their own response to the questions I ask, since that would not permit Freepolls to present a tidy statistical summary of replies. However, I do permit voters to express points of view not offered among the stated options, as comments. Newark-haters beware: I can delete malicious comments. I cannot edit comments to eliminate repulsive remarks while leaving inoffensive observations, but I can delete the entire comment.

Let us see if we can learn something useful about how people feel about Newark. Note that the various polls are directed to different categories of people. Please vote, if at all, only in the poll directed to the category into which you fit. Here's the first poll, for people who have never resided in Newark.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

This second poll is directed to people who used to reside in Newark but no longer do.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

This third poll asks different things about people who are not currently residents of Newark, and who might never have resided in Newark, nor anywhere near Newark.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

This last, and perhaps most important poll asks current residents for their views.

Free Web poll for your Web site - freepolls.com

I hope this polling, non-random tho it be, generates information of value. If I, on my own initiative or in response to reader feedback, decide that these polls do not provide useful information, I will delete them, and replace this post with a discussion of what went wrong.

Bloomfest and Architecture Tour, Both Sunday

Bloomfest. This year's Cherry Blossom Festival should be at its height this weekend, with the annual Bloomfest entertainment and vendors show near the Branch Brook Park Welcome Center this Sunday from 11am to 5pm. Alas, my friend Joe from Belleville emailed me today to say that today's 45mph winds and heavy rains have stripped the trees of this year's blossoms. There should in any case still be vendors and entertainment near the Cherry Blossom (Welcome) Center.

Today's fotos are of Branch Brook Park and its Cherry Blossom Center (from prior years). This is a wide view of that Center, from the parking lot where, I think, entertainment and vendors will be.

I wouldn't try to drive to Bloomfest and expect to find a parking space within 3/4 of a mile of the Welcome Center. Of course, if you are willing to walk, and can park long before the event ends, you can find a space somewhere on the park drives, well away from the Welcome Center, and walk past hundreds of cherry trees along the way. How many of the blossoms will have survived Saturday's rain, wind, and thunder I do not know.

In the alternative, you can park near one of the stations of what used to be called the Newark City Subway — a term that should have been retained — but is now called "Newark Lite Rail" (spelled funny, with an insane silent-GH), then take a two-car train to the Branch Brook Park station, then walk north and east a few hundred yards to the Bloomfest grounds. Or if you know what buses stop at the edge of the Park, you can take a bus to the vicinity and walk. NJTransit used to offer a Newark transit map that showed all the bus lines and subway lines, but, for unforgivable reasons beyond my ken, stopped publishing it. The City of Newark should get NJT to transfér rights to that map, and publish updated versions for tourists and people thinking about moving to this wonderful city.

On Friday, NJN closed its New Jersey News broadcast with videos from various parts of what it termed "Newark's Branch Brook Park". I hasten to add, for the sake of my friend Joe from Belleville and other Bellevillians (? — not, I assume, Bellevillains. Bellevillers?), that some of the areas NJN showed are in the Belleville portion of the Park.

Fallen blossoms, of which there may be all too many Sunday, are like pink snow on the grass.

I took fotos many years ago on a trip in which my father took me to BBPk, and have never since been able to find the exact location shown in one of them. Here's the one foto (scanned from a hardcopy picture) that I am most concerned about. I think perhaps it shows Park Avenue passing over the area near the lions, but I'm really not sure. Anyone?

Architecture Tour. This week's Newark Pulse events newsletter alerted me to a new tour from Newarkology.

As the nation's third oldest city, Downtown Newark tells the history of American architecture better than almost any other city. From Federal style to Postmodernism, Downtown Newark has buildings that represent almost every chapter in American architectural history. * * *

The tour will begin at NJPAC, a new building, but one that in its own way encapsulates Newark's whole history. From there we'll visit buildings that show Newark's rise as a Puritan theocracy, industrial powerhouse, city of services, shopping mecca, as a 9-5 central business district, and hopeful rebirth as a city of the arts. As we learn about Newark, so will we learn about the ideologies behind 200 years of American architecture.

The tour will begin at 2:00 PM on Sunday, April 17th on the Park Place side of NJPAC and end at the intersection of Broad and Market Streets. The length of the tour will be two hours and the total distance walked will be about 1 mile. The cost is $10 for adults, $5 for anyone age 13-18, and free for anyone younger.

I was surprised to read about this from Newark Pulse, in that I have participated in various of the tours run by Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster and tourguide of the Newarkology website. But he didn't tell me about this tour. Once I wrote him, he said this ("Downtown Masterpieces") was a new tour for him, and he'd be happy to have me participate. So now I have two events opposite each other.

We really do need a master events calendar that everyone who thinks of holding a public event in Newark can consult to avoid conflicts between events designed to appeal to the same audience. The City of Newark should establish and maintain such a calendar; or the Newark Regional Business Partnership's tourism arm; or somebody. I can't do it; Tamara of Newark Pulse can't. The Newark Arts Council could maintain an art-specific calendar, but a history walking tour wouldn't fit into an arts calendar (tho an architecture walking tour might well fit into an arts calendar).

This is Newark, not NYC. We have so many events that listing them all would astonish almost all outsiders, and a very large proportion of Newark residents as well. But there are so many days without events that if we all worked together, we could spread events out, as would rarely require us to stage one event in conflict with another of the same sort.

That is plainly not always going to be the case. Newark is now so energized and active in a number of areas — fine art, performing arts, and sports most especially, but also some history and other things that do not presently come to mind — that it is already pretty much impossible to attend everything, at least without some kind of deliberate planning to avoid conflicts. Things are only snowballing, such that one success leads to thoughts of another attempt to do something wonderful, and that attempt's success leads to other people's thinking of still other things to try.

Newark seems to me to have recently arrived in a new era, in which ambitious people attach their ambitions to this particular piece of geography. We aren't running off to Manhattan or L.A. or Europe to make our mark. We're Newarkers, and we don't want to go anywhere, except on vacation. We want other people to come here.

Newark's artists and other enthusiasts say, thru their work, "Every bad thing you've heard is wrong. Come to Newark and experience the truth. Newark is the great American city nextdoor to the great international city, New York. We're not parochial. We're American. We're black. We're white. We speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian French. But we never for an instant forget that we live here, in the United States, for a reason. We're still the melting pot. We want to belong, to fit, to join with our neighbors and be greater together than we could be apart. We're American, always creating something "new and improved". We're creating the new American city from one of the oldest of American cities, established by Puritans! Really." (Newark is the third-oldest major American city, after only Boston and New York.)

This is New-Work, one of the conceptions of the name "Newark" in the minds of its founders, and we are New-Workers. You may not yet "get" what we are doing. But you will. There's a Newark School of art, already. Someday there may even be a Newark Sound, perhaps a meld of jazz and more modern music.

We do not compete, nor do we feel the need to put down other people's, other cities' efforts. The better other cities do, the better the planet does, and we live on this planet, so are very glad when other cities thrive. We just think that this particular city, in this particular part of this planet, is best for us. We've got the strengths that matter. We are near, but apart from Manhattan. We are ourselves, not a pale carbon copy. What we do is important. You may not know that yet. We do.

Quiet confidence is great. But Newark needs more than that. It needs a glory-hog, a person or group that demands people pay attention to Newark, and concede that Newark is terrific. Is Cory Booker glory-hog enuf for us? Or is too much of his glory-hogging going to himself alone? You know, I am really tired of Newark being self-effacing. Newark is wonderful. Why aren't we saying that? What do you think Newark needs: self-effacing, in-your-face-ing, or something in-between?