Whitney's Church

The spot under the car is a helium-filled balloon that got away from the cluster on the fence (below).

I mentioned yesterday that I thought I should try to get to Whitney Houston's childhood church (and her mother, Cissy Houston's, present church), New Hope Baptist on Sussex Avenue at Dey Street. So today I traveled to take pix for a special "Church Sunday" feature.

I didn't try to get up early enuf to see congregants attending services (news reports afterward said the service that was devoted to celebrating Whitney's life started before 7am, and I am often not even asleep until after 7am, given 30 years of working evening and graveyard shifts).

Besides, I certainly would not have wanted to intrude upon any service, nor upon people emerging from services. And it was horribly cold. But I did want to see if anyone would be outside the church late in the day, and if balloons and things were left there.

This is the small group outside the church late in the day. In the distance, the white building at the visual end of the street is one of two large residential buildings under construction.

As I arrived, shortly before 5pm, I saw this satellite-uplink video truck from Fox News.

There were various tripods standing unattended, as indicated that media took some footage earlier in the day and were ready to cover anything else that might develop at the site. I don't think that anything did develop later, but I was there for less than 15 minutes. The weather was penetratingly cold, and my hands, which I had kept out of my gloves to take pix, got severely chilled. I might have been able to take pix with my knitted gloves on. They're quite flexible.

Think about that expensive equipment being left unguarded on the streets of Newark. That says good things about Newark's present condition, and reputation, doesn't it?

After I'd taken some fotos of nothing much happening, I headed to NJPAC to see if anyone left anything by Whitney's plaque on the Walk of Fame. Along the way there, I had a serious traffic problem that produced the towing of my car at Sussex Avenue and Summit Street, which I will discuss here another time.

In any case, I had to walk, in the cold, from that location, one block west of MLK and Central Avenue, to NJPAC, then on to Newark Penn Station, to take the bus home. When I got to the Walk of Fame, I discovered that no one had left anything at Whitney's plaque. Not one balloon or anything, so I thought at first that I had suffered an expensive traffic incident pretty much for nothing.

But I'll arrange to get to Dente Bros. to redeem my car during the day, so I can take pix of the soaring Pulaski Skyway bridge over the Passaic from Dente's impound lot. I was there once before, but at nite, so couldn't take fotos then.

The foto of Whitney's plaque in context, with the setting sun beyond, turned out well after all. It might not be worth what it will have cost me, but it strikes me as pretty good, considering the liting conditions. And the sun setting beyond her plaque seems calmly fitting for the occasion.