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The Queen of All She Sees Rock and Roll Priestess Patti Smith Returns to SummerStage by Kurt Gottschalk I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Patti Smith. On the street in the West Village one momentarily thrilling winter afternoon, but besides that, in concert, more than a half dozen times, and most of them outdoors. She gives to New York. The first was at Central Park Summerstage in 1995, in a then-rare appearance. She’d spent much of the previous 15 years away from the spotlight and had returned to performing only after losing her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, and her brother. It was, no doubt, a difficult show for her, and she appeared vulnerable and unsteady. I chalked it up to checking one off the list and didn’t think much more about it. I don’t know
when the next one was, but I know it was great because every other time I’ve seen her has been impassioned, enthusiastic and exciting.
As great as each concert was (after the first, at least), it’s the covers that make them memorable. It’s in her performances of other artists’ songs that she reveals herself as the adoring fan, as one of us. When she’s singing, she’s the fierce shaman of her albums. Between songs, she’s all smiles and gray braids, spitting on the stage, waving to the audience and nearly giggling with delight as if, after all the decades, she’s still blissed to be the one on stage.
I saw her sing Hank Williams’s “Six More Miles to the Graveyard” during a sound check before a show outside the World Trade Center and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with bluegrass legends Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas sitting in at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. I took my girlfriend to another appearance at Damrosch Park, advertised as a read-
ing, and smiled when we walked up and saw a drum set on the stage. She played a full set, including the Stones’ “This Could Be the Last Time” (just after Mick Jagger announcing he was going to be a father again at age 74) and tore through a version of the Who’s “My Generation,” turning it into a sneering AARP anthem. My girlfriend (now my wife) later declared that Patti Smith should be president, not just because of her Abraham Lincoln bone structure. And on September 19, I saw her again, at SummerStage in Central Park. She sang Stevie Wonder’s “Blame it on the Sun” sweet enough to melt the autumn moon and Bob Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings,” bringing her love of music and poetry together once again. Waiting in the long line to get in, I read her boldly transparent and endearingly unpretentious Devotion, a book that contains a short story preceded by her thoughts and the events in her life leading up to
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Talking to our City Council candidates Yes, Carlos is done... either Erik or Alexa will be your next representative Interviews by Brian Abate In 2012, Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc in our community. Basements were flooded, cars destroyed and power was out for almost a month - mostly at the Red Hook Houses,NYC's second largest public housing project. That's when Carlos Menchaca came to the neighborhood, dispatched by Kathleen Quinn, at the time Speaker of the City Council. He made himself familiar at the Houses, connecting local needs with government help. A few months after the hurricane, he announced a run for the seat against Democratic incumbent Sara Gonzalez. He won a surprising victory, and has served the maximum two terms the law allows. He chose not to make any endorsement for his successor, instead he ran for Mayor and then, as his campaign faltered, he started working for Andrew Yang. In the meantime, Alexa Aviles, a program director for Scherman Foundation, a Manhattan non- profit, (currently on leave) dominated a large field of Democratic contendors, including the Chairperson of Sunset Park's community board (the District 38 Councilmanic District includes not only Red Hook but Sunset Park as well). She will face Erik Frankel, a Sunset Park business owner, in the general election next month. Q&A With Erik Frankel, Conservative Candidate For District 38
BA: How has your campaign been going and how have you balanced your campaign with being a father during the pandemic?
Erik Frankel (r), with his father Marty (Facebook photo)
EF: Raising my son without his mother, running a small local business (Frankel’s) and international social enterprises while campaigning for office during the pandemic has turned my days into long nights. People who say kids grow up so fast have not been doing all this with a toddler. I have personally hung up almost all of my posters, managed
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Q&A With Alexa Aviles, Democratic Candidate For District 38
BA: What are your thoughts and plans to address all the last-mile warehouses coming into Red Hook... Partially from a traffic safety standpoint with the kids in the schools and then also from a health and environmental standpoint. AA: I think I think the first place to start is that I’m really in opposition to the fact that these lastmile warehouses were granted as of right permission to build right off clusters in Red Hook. I
(continued on page 9)
Alexa Aviles (courtesy of her Facebook page)
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t’s no secret that people are continuing to process their emotions after enduring more than 18 months of uncertainty, separation, stress, and yearning for “normalcy.”
With that in mind, Mil’s Trills, a Brooklyn-based children’s music project released its fourth album, Let It Out! on September 29. It was made and mastered within eight months, in an urgent effort to combat stress and anxiety among youth suffering from the long-term mental health effects of the pandemic. “Kids are going back to school after being at home for a year,” Mils' major domo Amelia Robinson says. “These transitions can be really difficult.” Robinson confessed that this is her “most personal and vulnerable album yet,” which is why she hopes its disco-inspired grooves, mantras, and affirmations resonate with families, adults, and children everywhere. “I think [Robinson] put a lot of thought, effort, love, and attention to detail into this project,” said Divinity Roxx, former bass player and assistant musical director for Beyoncé, who was part of the “Let It Out!” track line-up. “I’m really excited that she decided to go ahead and release it because the world needs to hear this.” The record not only features 15 original songs that include coping mecha-
nisms to help identify, accept, and process difficult emotions like anger, sadness, and fear, but also engages children in creative activities. Each song from “Let It Out!” is paired up with a lesson plan that is part of a larger, interactive social emotional learning curriculum (dubbed “Messy Music”), which will be launched later this fall for educators, music therapists, and school counselors. “It’s focusing on process over product, giving teachers tools to use this music as short, little helpful moments in the course of their day,” Robinson explained, “whether it’s a way to start off and do check-ins, a way to kind of transition back into a learning space and a learning mindset, or to reflect.” The song “Punch a Pillow,” for example, focuses on charged emotions like anger. “You Matter” celebrates identity, and “How Does Your Body Feel?” acknowledges body awareness. “It really works to help people validate and normalize emotions, and it’s a way to open up that conversation,” Robinson said. “In turn, my hope is that anyone who listens to these songs knows that they’re not alone and that it’s OK to feel this way.” Robinson collaborated with GRAMMY winner Dean Jones and family musician peers primarily from the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, including Lindz Amer of Queer Kid Stuff, Uncle Devin of WEE Nation Radio, Pierce Freelon, Uncle Jumbo, and Kymberly Stewart. Let It Out! was recorded at the artists’ homes and in person at No Parking Studios in Rosendale NY. “It was one of the first studio sessions I was in out of quarantine,” said Divinity, explaining that she collaborated with Robinson on the record’s first track, “Got a Feeling.” “What I love about it is that it’s not about a specific feeling—it’s just about the fact that we
Amelia Robinson, the brains behind Mil's Trills
have feelings and acknowledging the fact that everybody has feelings.” Uncle Jumbo, a Houston-based musical artist for children, noted how the creative process, as well as the listening experience of the album itself, felt “so seamless” from afar. “It’s really cool that [the album] starts off with ‘Got a Feeling’ and ends with ‘It’s OK to Feel This Way,’” Uncle Jumbo said, noting that his favorite track on the track is “Disco Rain.” “Songs like ‘Punch a Pillow’ and ‘I Wanna Know’ [which he is featured on] are all just human things.” Uncle Jumbo also expressed the great sense of hope he feels from “Let It Out!” “Anything that helps build kids’ self-love and confidence and being able to navigate this world, I love,” he said. “That’s why I’m here as a children’s music artist. An all-ages album release event for “Let It Out!” will be held on Saturday, October 9, at 1 p.m. at the Central Library (main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library located at 10 Grand Army Plaza). For more information, visit bklynlibrary.org/ calendar/events-for-youth-familiescentral-library-plaza-20211009.
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October 2021
Opinion: Words by George
Is this our future? not quite yet by George Fiala
I had said that in a process deemed inevitable by the one person who has the power to make it not happen, Lander and the City Council will, by the rezoning make good the speculative bets of real estate developers made over the past decade and a half. I was complaining because, as I saw it, as usual, business as usual in NYC favored the buck over the neighborhood. However, every once in a while communities win. Once was when an application to build an outsized nursing home in Red Hook was rejected. Another was when our ferry terminal was placed where we wanted it, in the Atlantic Teminal, not at the end of Van Brunt Street where the EDC, for whatever reason, wanted to put it. Back in January, there was a buzz in some fancy magazines about a "Model Block" that a Van Brunt St. architect was going to build. That architect was also a city planner, lecturer and professor, and made a name for himself locally after Sandy in work on resiliency. Nobody really knew he was also a real estate developer. Alexandros Washburn was the architect/developer. His plan included a 15 story residential building with river views, as we printed on the cover of our February issue which I've reprint-
A real Red Hook hero - Margery Perlmutter
What I and others have tried to stymie is for Red Hook to become Williamsburg, whose transformation from grit into stylish skyscrapers defines the sterilization of a neighorhood. The Washburn plan was to build a 15 story residential skyscraper in the middle of his 'model block' which was in the middle of an industrial zone (IBZ), a few blocks from PioneerWorks. I really thought that he would get the permission he needed to do this from the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA). My mistake was that I didn't really know anything about the BSA - I just assumed that in a NYC that so often enables real estate, the fix would be in. Turns out I was wrong. The BSA is five professional architects and lawyers and engineers and public servants appointed by the mayor to make educated and common sense decisions about building requests based upon existing law.
So I don’t understand why you need residential in this IBZ. There are so many other ways to create work… create create create. I know residential makes more money, but that’s not really the issue here. At this point Washburn invites her to come to Red Hook and see his idea in person. She cuts him off saying:
The Chairperson, Margery Perlmutter, turns out to be a pretty cool person, and as I watched the hearing I saw that she was not afraid to speak truth to power, as they say. Washburn's application was heard on October 5. In the morning session, the Commissioners spoke of the many shortcomings of the Model Block. Things got only worse during that evening's public session, where Washburn himself made his presentation. Perlmutter's response says all that the rest of this column needs to say: "I am not understanding your encouragement to residential there, because it was specifically stated by both the Bloomberg Administration and the current EDC that the purpose of the IBZ is to retain industrial uses, and to promise NOT to rezone these areas to allow residential use. So I am very confused by this kind of touchy-feely discussion about how nice it is to have residential in a manufacturing district, and especially in an IBZ, because since you were at City Planning for so long you know very well that the MX districts were a complete failure because the arrival of residential uses into manufacturing districts have the effect of pushing
I’ve been to PioneerWorks many times, I’m a regular in Red Hook, so I really know this area, this is where I play.. I play because it has so much that’s NOT residential to offer. It has so much that’s gritty to offer, and there’s hardly any place left in New York that has that grit—that allows a PioneerWorks actually to exist, and at the same time have restaurants to feed the people that enjoy participating in those kinds of activities. This BSA is not ready to basically destroy the IBZ. That’s a job for some other administration if they decide that for whatever reason the IBZ’s are no longer relevant somehow, and that it was a nice idea back in 2004 up until 2021 and now it’s the end of the IBZ and we’re going to take that away, and we’re just going to whittle away at the manufacturing districts on a major scale… that’s a City Planning job, really. There are contaminated sites in every IBZ area, and if we were to say that this site is entitled to residential use, that opens the door to residential units in every manufacturing area in the city. The idea of children living in these residences running around on the streets of an IBZ, thereby preventing any type of real industrial use—I think all the Board members here have made it clear—it’s not going to happen.
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IS THIS RED HOOK'S FUTURE? A permanent change to the Red Hook skyline may be on the horizon. This is a rendering of a proposed Red Hook high-rise. The plans have just been submitted for approval to the Board of Standards and Appeals, bypassing the City Council. The Community Board is also part of the decision process. Local input is still important. The Star-Revue encourages every Red Hook resident to let the BSA and the Community Board know what you think about this. DETAILS ON PAGE 7
GOWANUS NEIGHBORS TRY TO SLOW DOWN INEVITABLE CONSTRUCTION ONSLAUGHT by Jorge Bello
wagon, and look at a different solution.
W
hen the city unleashes a rezoning and its accompanying host of contentious public review meetings on a neighborhood, seldom does anything stop it. A coalition of local grassroot organizations led by Voice of Gowanus managed to do so temporarily by suing the city and preventing it from triggering the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), a seven month path leading to approval in the City Council.
Judge Levine tabled the hearing, announcing she would think it over and probably come to a decision the second week of February.
This Board is not open to residential use, so you all need to go home and have a drink or whatever it is that calms you down, because we’re not doing residential on this site. On January 15, they were able to get a temporary restraining order stopping the clock, pending a final decision.
At a subsequent hearing on February 4, Judge Katherine Levine unsuccessfuly tried to get the City to modify their virtual meeting format to include an in-person aspect to the virtual format made necessary by the pandemic. The City refused, claiming that a telephone option satisfied any inequities caused the need for a good computer connection.
In the claims Voice of Gowanus is bringing in, it argues that the city lacks transparency and did not abide by ULURP protocols set out in the City Charter, such as providing proper notice before certifying the rezoning. The lawsuit also addresses a lack of public participation as a result of the city holding ULURP meetings only virtually, which it has been doing since September. Even when there isn’t a global pandemic, community activism is something not everyone has the time or resources to do, and organizers think that a virtual ULURP would exclude even more Gowanus residents from a process specifically designed to give them a say in the rezoning of their neighborhood.
Fool me once
Then again, even when people in a community targeted for rezoning are able to expend the time and energy
The Voices of Gowanus held an in-person press conference by the Canal last month announcing the filing of their lawsuit. (photo by George Fiala)
to attend ULURP meetings, their efforts are unlikely to be reflected in the version of the rezoning that gets implemented. In Gowanus, this has been true of the city’s past attempts at community planning, said Katia Kelly, who signed her name on the Voice of Gowanus lawsuit and has lived in the neighborhood for 36 years. From
2013 to 2015, Councilman Brad Lander presided over Bridging Gowanus, a series of public meetings he created with the goal of assuaging residents’ misgivings about the rezoning by giving them a chance to shape the agenda. Yet, when Lander presented the neighborhood plan at the final meet-
(continued on page 5)
And with respect to affordability— we’ve already talked about that. This affordable housing is more expensive than your market rate—so if you’re truly looking to house people from Red Hook, you can’t have just 20 units in your whole building be very low income units. They all need to be. Otherwise, don’t go there about housing local residents. It’s not true. What you are doing is as Commissioner Otley said so aptly – you are pulling Manhattanites. I’m not even sure that I can afford these rents, but it means my friends might move to Red Hook now because there is such a cool building in this location—and by the way, it’s around the corner from PioneerWorks."
"I’m a regular in Red Hook, so I really know this area, this is where I play.. I play because it has so much that’s NOT residential to offer. It has so much that’s gritty to offer, and there’s hardly any place left in New York that has that grit."
WHAT A FRAUD. HE’S TOTALLY
PH0NeD-IT-iN!
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DO
YOU THiNK, MUSTARD? NEWS
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GOTTSCHALK ON NEW MELVINS, PAGE 17
mj
This is the month when the City Council, led by local Councilmember Brad Lander, will most likely allow the transformation of Gowanus from a gritty, funky, artsy/industrial neighborhood, into a modern, affluent community dominated by high rise luxury apartments. It will end up resembling countless high-rise affluent neighborhoods throughout the world.
ALL the manufacturing or any other kind of disagreeable use OUT of the districts because people didn’t want to live next door to them, or above them, or below them or anything. It sounds so sweet—that maker business—that everybody just makes cupcakes, but actually, industrial users are not cupcake makers only… they’re welders, they’re clanky, noisy—even recording studios, they are all kinds of things that people hate to live next to.
ed over to the right.
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actually had my column written before now.
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Valentino Pier District “I took the path less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
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October 2021
Velazquez and Simon convey concerns over Gowanus rezoning report by Brian Abate
C
ongresswoman Nydia Velazquez and Assembly member Jo Anne Simon spoke to a frustrated crowd of people in the Whole Foods parking lot next to the Gowanus Canal.
of community organizations that oppose the Gowanus rezoning plan. “This is leaning towards fraud. The way to combat this is by continuing to bring attention to these issues and to write about them until we see results.”
They both voiced their concerns about the city’s Gowanus rezoning plan which was approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Other people in attendance criticized Council Member Brad Lander and Borough President Eric Adams for supporting the rezoning without calling for better studies and improved infrastructure to protect the people living in Gowanus.
The rezoning plan would allow real estate developers to build new condos in the neighborhood, which is home to a Superfund site and just experienced horrendous flooding during Hurricane Ida, with many homeowners reporting raw sewage in their basements. One of the issues with the rezoning plan is that the city’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), which is used to justify rezonings, uses questionable data. “The city claims that the rezoning will not increase CSO [combined sewer overflow] loading, however, the EPA points out that the city relies on 2008 rainfall data when more recent data is available,” Velazquez said. “When it comes to the Gowanus rezoning, the City’s environmental impact statement is wrought with inconsistencies and contradictions, as pointed out by the EPA and many groups. And most importantly, it does not properly take into consideration the impacts of climate change on the Gowanus community and on the ongoing cleanup of the Gowanus Canal.” This is not a new situation for Velazquez. It was largely due to her influence that the federal EPA committed to the canal cleanup. At the time, she had to fight the Bloomberg administration, who thought the cleanup unnecessary, for much of the same reason as the city is a thornin the side of the Superfund today— that it will delay Gowanus real estate development, who couldn't wait to put skyscrapers in the working class community between newly rich Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. “The de Blasio administration has known for a long time about more recent data and has ignored it,” said Maureen Koetz, an environmental lawyer who has worked with members of Voice of Gowanus, a coalition
Adams is a favorite to win the NYC mayoral Election in November but when asked about him, Velazquez said that she is focused on working with the de Blasio administration for now. She also praised locals and activists for bringing attention to the issues with the City’s DEIS and for standing up for Gowanus. Both Velazquez and Simon called for changes in sewage infrastructure to help protect the the community. Heavy rains cause sewage to overflow into the canal, with hurricanes bringing sewage into basements. “These storms overwhelm our systems,” Simon said. “We have a sewer system that is working as it was designed to work a hundred years ago when we did not have nearly as many people here. We have to make changes to our infrastructure. It’s not sexy. It’s not fun. It doesn’t look pretty in pictures, but we are going to all drown and our health and safety is going to be irreparably compromised if we don’t do that work now.”
Martin Bisi (on the left) has been fighting the rezoning for many years. He has owned a Gowanus recording studio since 1980. (photos by Brian Abate)
community will have to deal with in coming years. “Putting air, land, and water as an asset is where we must start because once they’re recognized as assets, people will stop exploiting them,” Koetz said. While groups like Voice of Gowanus have been trying for years to bring attention to problems the Gowanus rezoning could cause, the devastation
“There’s still a long way to go but this was a very positive day,” said Brad Vogel of Voice of Gowanus. “I’m glad there are politicians and not just community members calling out the issues with the city’s DEIS and rezoning plan.”
If the words of local politicians and residents of Gowanus did not bring attention to the issue, Hurricane Ida has. There were floods all over the neighborhood including sewage overflows. The new residents following a rezoning will mean more sewage, and climate change makes it likely that rainfall will continue to increase. Given what was seen following Ida, these are real issues. “This is an issue of environmental justice,” Velazquez said. “It’s about protecting human life and for me, this is personal.” Leaders also spoke about some of the broader environmental issues the
Lincoln Restler stands with JoAnne Simon and Nydia Velazquez as they dispute the ethics of the NYC Department of City Planning.
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Donors help 676 offer free school supplies by Nathan Weiser
P
S 676, one of two Red Hook public grade schools, with an enrollment of about 100, held had a back-to-school supply giveaway in the schoolyard on Friday, September 10. About 40 students came to pick up new supplies, and those who didn't make it could get them on the first day of school, which was the following Monday. About 200 backpacks and other supplies including pencils, supply cases, notebooks, glue and math books, which meant there was more than enough for every student. Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield donated many of the new supplies. IKEA, Redemption Church and Donors Choose were also donors`. Carina Vizhnay, Community Relations at Empire Blue Cross, brought the Department of Housing Preservation and the NYC Sanitation Organic Compost branch to the event to talk to parents. Vizhnay began partnering with PS 676 last year when Pastor Pacheco from Redemption Church connected her to the school and parent coordinator Marie Hueston. Vizhnay’s first event was an autism event last spring. She also did a workshop on nutrition for kids and parents “I am the type of person that gives out resources,” Vizhnay said. “That is what I do.”
She will continue working with PS 676 and there is a lot more she wants to bring to the table. “When I have been on the street involved in community relations, people say to me do you know anything about housing,” Vizhnay said. “I say, I have a contact and maybe they can help you out. I said, let me bring them out and it can help the community.” The representative from the compost division of NYC Sanitation was at his third school event in three days. The compost campaign, which was taken away at the start of the pandemic, has been going on for a month. When anyone signs up for the program at makecompost.nyc, the organization will then deliver the brown bins to them. The NYC Department of Sanitation encourages New Yorkers to turn food scraps and yard waste into compost since this is a way to keep these items out of landfills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The program is eligible to residential buildings of all sizes in selected Community Districts. Pam Glaser, represented HPD. They help people apply for affordable housing, as well as advise about tenant rights. HPD also provides assistance if a landlord does not provide repairs. “We come out when you call 311 and you say my landlord refuses to repair
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my apartment. We will send an inspector and issue a violation, if required. We only make the repair ourselves if it is considered very dangerous.” “If it is an extreme situation, we will do it,” Glaser said. “We have a litigation department and we get involved if a group of tenants go to housing court on your landlord.” There are rules and responsibilities for landlords and tenants in NYC and on their website there is a section that provides information for tenants who feel they are being harassed. On NYC. Gov, there is a tenant housing portal that has every housing related agency on one page. Various resources include NYC Housing Connect, NYS Emergency Rental Assistance PS 676 get their pick of school supplies. (photo by Weiser) Program, NYC Tenant Resource Portal, HPD significantly fixed NYCHA buildings Housing Ambassadors and Tenants’ and developments in Rockaway and Rights and Responsibilities. in The Bronx. However, HPD does not Glaser also said that the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) has
get involved with NYCHA repairs.
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October 2021
Domestic Workers demonstrate in Park Slope
O
n Sunday, September 26, at Washington Park in Park Slope, employers and domestic workers joined hands in an effort to improve jobs and conditions in the domestic care economy by urging the passage of Care Forward. Care Forward is a local initiative that aims to raise, enforce and improve domestic worker rights. This event at Washington Park was organized by the Carroll Gardens Association (CGA) and Hand in Hand, who are working towards the enactments of these new rules. The goal is to have this model of neighborhood based domestic worker enforcement where employers and caregivers come together spread across NYC and the country as a whole. Kids had an opportunity to write messages and words to express their dreams for a world where domestic workers and everyone else can receive care that they deserve. Domestic worker Meches RosalesMaupin talked about the importance of Care Forward: “I am here today and part of this Care Forward because I believe that we can have a better relationship between employers and employees, between parents and nannies and house cleaners.” Later on, kids ran through a barriers of care sign. It was added that barriers stand in the way of creating a more
PATTI SMITH (continued from page 1)
writing the story—films she watched, books she read, artworks she looked at, historical figures who were on her mind, all the things that rolled up and influenced her fiction, as art is all one thing. Or maybe everything is art. Either way, it’s not wrong to want to believe she’s right.
She opened her SummerStage return with “Grateful” from 2000’s Gung Ho, an unusual choice but a reminder that life is fragile and life is ours, and there’s nothing like a waltz to get an audience moving as one. She dedicated “Redondo Beach” to Lee “Scratch” Perry and “Beneath the Southern Cross” to
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by Nathan Weiser caring world. Some words on the sign and that people added included ignorance, bad healthcare policies and misunderstanding. This was their vision on how everyone can be treated with respect, which can lead to rights being improved. A key element of Care Forward is conflict resolution, and the NY Peace Institute is a partner to help with this issue. There was a role playing exercise with a domestic worker and an employer where the employer came home late and they had to resolve the conflict. A woman from the NYC Commission of Human Rights said that domestic workers are protected in the workplace under a new law: Intro 339B and can’t be discriminated against based on age, race or gender. Care Forward is looking to improve upon that, which in itself was a big step forward. At this event during a beautiful late September day, there was a Peruvian dance group, an art station for kids, a nutrition area, a yoga station, a massage area where people were taught how to be more caring to their body and a piñata for kids. Tatiana Bejar, lead organizer with Hand in Hand, explained that Intro 339 was introduced in 2018 and was just passed a month ago. Previous human rights law only protected four or more employees but since it applies to workplaces with four or fewer, domestic workers are now protected.
Charlie Watts, the second song floating between Television and the Allman Brothers with an interpolation of the Beatles’ “Within You, Without You” before a snap into acoustic guitar punk drive. She led the audience in a “we shall live again” sing-a-long during “Ghost Dance” (from 2001’s Seeds in the Wind) and told us to value and to take responsibility for what we have, instructing us to take care of one another. “We are still alive,” she announced. “Where there is life, there is possibility for change! […] We have a pandemic, we have environmental crisis, but we are living beings and we are fucking free! We can fucking change the world! We can do it!” And we believed it, some for longer than others, but we believed it because she believes
“It provided overtime pay, two days of vacation (paid time off ) and three days of paid sick leave, but that is not enough,” Bejar said. “A few years ago, paid sick leave was extended so domestic workers have five days of sick leave for the whole year. I think domestic workers should have access to paid sick leave like any other workers.”
ously that they are taking guidance from, but that was not as grassroots and specific to the community as what they are doing.
She talked about how it is important to respect the domestic workers and give them needed benefits.
It is about creating a greater understanding and culture around what is fair to domestic workers. Quintana said that benefits that could be added include improved paid time off, retirement benefits, standardized hours, best practices around overtime and healthcare.
“At my job, we have two weeks of paid sick leave,” Bejar said. “If the person gets sick for more days, employers should consider paying them. It is important to value the work of domestic workers. Domestic work has been historically excluded from labor protections and most of the sector is composed of immigrant women of color.”
“When you hire a nanny you don’t think about what goes beyond their salary,” Quintana said. “A domestic worker can work for decades and not have savings because they did not have a retirement account. That is crazy. As a domestic worker employer, I think we need to have greater responsibility for the people who care for our children.”
Mariela Quintana is a member of Hand in Hand and a domestic worker employer. She thinks Care Forward will be the start of real change.
Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon attended in support of the Care Forward initiative.
“This will set the framework and context for changes on a local and community level, which is what we are trying to do here,” Quintana said. “Change neighborhood standards to help educate employers and employees about raising the standards of care in the community and create a culture of care between workers and domestic worker employers.”
Simon talked about how universal child care is important. “Right now the laws for domestic workers are hopelessly bound up in policies from 1940,” she said “The need for universal childcare, if it is not apparent now, it never will be. I am looking forward to working with all of you going forward so we can create a caring economy, and our laws will help support that.”
There was a similar model of community based standards in Seattle previ-
it enough for all of us.
With a band of longtime associates and her two children, she laid out fervent versions of favorites from decades past, “Free Money,” “Because the Night,” “Dancing Barefoot.” At 74, she’s still got the scream and the growl, she’s got the hiccup inflections and all of the energy. She’s a fan but she’s also a star, rock and roll’s institutional memory, embodiment of ’60s activism and ’70s anger, our poet-guardian. Patti Smith is the rightful steward of the property. She announces “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” with all the bold defiance it had when she released her reworking of Them’s hit “Gloria” 46 years ago. It’s one of the all-time great rock-and-roll lines. The fact that she
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grafted it onto a ’60s garage hit about pining for a girl on the street only magnifies its brilliance.
She saved “People Have the Power” for the encore. I’m all but certain that every time I’ve seen her, she’s done that song, one I didn’t like when it came out in 1988 and I don’t like today. It’s too optimistic, too anthemic, too obvious, and every time I hear her sing it, I’m swept up. I don’t much like it except for every time I’ve heard her play it. House lights on, Smith and her band had the crowd (many her children’s age) pumping their fists and flashing peace signs like it was a political rally. Which it was. It was also a church meeting, a spiritual revival and a zen retreat. But most of all, it was a rock and roll show.
October 2021, Page 7
Changes are happening at PS 676 by Nathan Weiser
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here are a number of new additions and upgrades at PS 676 for this school year.
The school is transforming into a maritime themed middle school. As was written last May in Chalkbeat, "P.S. 676 Principal Priscilla Figueroa admits it was a hard decision. “But I, like everyone else in the community who is advocating for 676, have to be realistic,” she said. “Figuring out, ‘Does it make sense? Is it what the community needs?’ In the process of asking these questions, the community itself said, ‘No. What we really need is a middle school.’” The plan calls for the school to phase out its elementary grades, with the last class of kindergarteners accepted this year. After that, any elementary school students in the area are expected to have enrollment priority at nearby P.S. 15, which is also in Red Hook and has room to grow." This year there is a librarian and you can have lunch clubs and expose students to more literature. “We are going to incorporate a lot of harbor reading,” Figueroa said. “We can have dialogue and explore different types of books, we can have author studies, we can have lunch clubs and do book clubs, we can celebrate reading, we can have readathons and we
can give students prizes for reading.” The book selection in the library has also changed from before. “We pulled out some books that were dated, we gave some books to community members and families and we are ordering new books.” Figueroa said. “We are doing inventory so we have enough with a wide variety of books for the students. They will not only have hard copies but will be able to read on the new technology.” Teachers will have laptops/iPads that they will be able to use with the students in the classrooms. There is a new media center room this year. Funding for this as well as other additions are the result of grants from the borough president and the city council. There is surround sound in the media room to improve the experience. There are laptop stations in the new media room that students will be able to use with their classes. “We have already started showing documentaries related to the harbor,” Figueroa said. “Kids can experience being out in the field through the use of technology.” Another technology upgrade this school year is a brand new PA system for making announcements. It is a little studio near the main office.
Also, this year PS 676 has a full-time speech therapist for the first time. She started over the summer. She will be doing one-on-one interaction with the students, and she will be concentrating on the goals of the students. The floors in the school were repainted for this school year and the classrooms have improved ventilation. There is a new marine science teacher at the school who previously taught at MS 88 in Park Slope. He has been involved with the Billion Oyster Project since it started and will continue be-
A conversation with Erik Frankel, candidate for District 38 City Council (continued from page 1) my own campaign, gotten my own signatures, and have spoken to thousands of people. I do this because I want a better community, not only for my family but for the people who have been used as talking points by politicians and activists. I can not accept disingenuous politicians lying and cheating the people for personal gain. BA: What are your thoughts on all of the last-mile warehouses that are moving into Red Hook? EF: The Amazon warehouses are an unfortunate example of how politicians have turned against marginalized communities; the same communities they claim to represent. What’s worse is the community activists showed their true colors by not opposing the project. The millions of dollars that are given to activists every month mostly end up wasted. Instead of trying to stop the construction, the politicians and activists made excuses about the definition of last-mile warehouses by calling them “as of right.” The politicians wanted the warehouses and because most of the community activists rely on the politicians for funding, the activists speak for the politicians and lobbyists and would never actually oppose them. It will create more pollution, traffic, accidents, crime and would contribute to the devastation of small family-owned businesses. It
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does not address the community’s main issue: lack of homeownership.
BA: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
BA: What is one short-term and longterm goal you have for District 38?
EF: They can’t buy all of us, we have a chance.
EF: My short-term goals and longterm goals would be the same. I want to increase transparency and accountability for elected representatives. I want to stop the Equinor/ Statoil assembly plant and use the land for our community’s benefit. I want to close the homeless shelters and increase home-ownership for people in our communities. Without homeownership you will always be at the mercy of your landlord and the state. We can help the community by housing people in their own apartments and building affordable apartments in our community for people to own. It is nearly impossible these days to have equity without home-ownership. BA: What do you want voters to know about you? EF: I always say “If people knew what politicians were doing, they wouldn’t be doing it.” I will work for the community. I do not have the heads of wealthy foundations, nonprofits, lobbyists, or political groups supporting my campaign who demand something in return. If the people who vote knew who was behind the candidates I would win. Our community will only improve when the politicians work for the community, not the community working for the politicians.
Instead of trying to stop the construction, the politicians and activists made excuses about the definition of last-mile warehouses by calling them “as of right.”
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ing involved with it. He is a licensed captain, so his real dream is to get the kids out on boats. He has a lot of maps, so the kids will be able to practice navigation. He thinks there is so much information that can be learned from maps and cartography. They will try to schedule for this school year taking kids on an 80-foot long schooner made of steel that has a great history. It is docked at the South Street Seaport and can take 20 or 30 kids.
Amazonia:
A climate crisis pop-up
Grey Area Collective’s first pop-up exhibit “Amazonia,” inspired by the shopping experience of an Amazon Go store, will exhibit fictional products that New Yorkers would need to survive in a dystopian climate-ravaged future, where basic needs such as water, food, power, and communication systems are on the verge of collapse. Opening night event is October 30, 2021, from 6- 9 pm, at Peninsula Art Space, 352 Van Brunt Street . It’s 2030, and like many places around the world the New York air is hot and heavy, and depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. Fresh air is a distant memory, and you yearn for the days before water was rationed. With air quality declining daily it’s become dangerous to leave your group shelter without a specially-designed face mask. Welcome to Amazonia: a worst-case scenario store The exhibit will illustrate our future if we don’t take immediate collective action to limit the 1.5 degree celsius tipping point—the threshold for what scientists call “multiple system collapse.” For more information, contact Nicole Okumu: nicole@greyareacollective The Amazonia pop-up shop will be open: October 30: 6 -9pm; October 31: 11 am - 7pm
October 2021
A conversation with Alexa Aviles, candidate for District 38 City Council (continued from page 1) share the real concern and frustration about the negative impacts that these facilities are going to have on the community. I think from a short-term perspective there are a lot of meetings and I would like to follow the lead of the community voices here where we can, you know, mitigate some of the harm because it doesn’t look like we can certainly stop the ones that are already being built, right? So there have been demands to the Department of Transportation for a traffic study. From my perspective, also, both the current and future council members should really work and demand that they use the waterways to reduce the number of trucks that will be in the neighborhood and also the possibility of demanding green trucks. We could try to mitigate some of the pollution coming from trucks given the incredibly high asthma rates that Red Hook already has. I think we’re going to have to figure out and work on some collective mitigation efforts with the neighborhood when we really have a clearer sense of what is going on. Hopefully, there will be a moratorium and there will be no more siting of these facilities in the neighborhood. BA: Can you talk about your shortterm and long-term goals? AA: In terms of our short-term goals, we want to build an office that meets the needs of our constituents, our community members. And to really serve community members from all throughout the district, right from Chinatown, all the way to the Red Hood waterfronts and public housing residents in Red Hook.
"Local media is so important for all of us and to get the stories of our community members out is really critical. We have a lot of incredible people in Red Hook with incredible knowledge. So I’m excited!" doing advocacy and organizing work on a whole range of issues; everything from climate change to national reproductive rights work to organizing around affordable housing and land use. I’ve been on the community board and have been very engaged for a long time and in education and as a parent organizer, as a PTA president for many years, working with parents at my daughter’s school and the administration around how to support our residents on all kinds of things, everything from how we help children perform, achieve academically, right, but also children who are hungry. They won’t do well in school if they’re hungry. It’s everything from supporting families through job insecurity and immigration concerns,
you know, food insecurity. So that’s been a lot of my work in the neighborhood, in the district. So I’ve been I’ve been working in the district for quite a long time and I’m truly honored to be in this position to both run a campaign, to really be embraced by community members and to really lift up the needs of working-class residents in our neighborhood. BA: What people in Red Hook do you admire? AA: Oh my goodness. You know, Brian, that’s like asking, you know, like, who is your favorite child? You’re going to get into some trouble here (laughing.) I guess I’ll just have to totally cop out here because I don’t want to just list a few people. I think
We also talked a lot about budget, justice and really what that means is centering the needs of the residents in how we look at the budget and certainly what we are going to be fighting for. We want to serve everyone from public housing and immigration services to ensure that there are sufficient resources for trash pickup to meet our sanitation needs. These are two goals I’ll be working towards.
BA: I hear you. I also wanted to ask how have you been able to manage having a campaign with being a parent combined with still having to deal with the pandemic? AA: It’s a great question. I think exactly how we’re all managing, right? We’re working people who are active in our communities. So it means there’s what we do for work and there’s what we do for the community and there’s what we do for our families. So obviously, the volume here is significantly raised, because a campaign and certainly being an elected official is a very different volume of work. It’s kind of a 24-hour job. But I think I’m not different than any other parent who’s struggling to do the best that they can take care of their kids, protect the safety of their neighbors, you know, multi-tasking. And a good friend of mine told me the other day, you can only eat a Thanksgiving meal one bite at a time and so it’s just moving through the things you need to do on a daily basis and keeping your eye on the goal. It’s hard. As a working mom, it’s always been hard. It’s always hard to balance. We’re driven by love and passion and by wanting the best for our community so that that keeps me energized when I’m feeling really tired. Every every day is a new miracle. When you’re managing all your competing things in your life, it’s tough, but humans are incredibly resilient and, you know, have a capacity for doing a lot. BA: I’ll just turn it over to you now, is there anything else you’d like to add? AA: I’m just really looking forward to, you know, working with the Red Hook community and really excited about the amount of activism in the neighborhood. We’re entering a new time and the challenges are complex, but I’m definitely bolstered and excited by working with the community. I challenge the issues and confront the things that we need for our communities. So stay tuned, folks!
BA: Can you just tell me a little bit more about yourself, your background and who you are as a person? AA: I’m a Brooklynite. While I was born in Puerto Rico, I grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, but I’ve been in the district for 20 years. My husband actually grew up in Red Hook and Sunset Park. He kind of moved back and forth, and that’s how I found my way to South Brooklyn, where we started our family as the parents of two public school students, one in middle school and one in high school. So we have been like many of the parents, nervous about this return that happened yesterday.
BA: Thank you Alexa. I really appreciate you taking the time. AA: Anytime, Brian, thank you again. I know it’s been tough schedules, really tough but thank you for, you know, being a voice for me to the community and from the community to me. Local media is so important for all of us and to get the stories of our community members out is really critical. We have a lot of incredible people in Red Hook with incredible knowledge. So I’m excited!
But I’ve worked in social justice movements and non profits for much of my career, both supporting non profits,
Red Hook Star-Revue
Red Hook has its own flavor. And it’s a community that is very tight-knit and very vibrant. It has a New York City grit and resilience and really just deep love for each other and I really admire that. But there are too many people to name a favorite honestly.
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October 2021, Page 9
we get letters Great memories
not forget and those who followed in him in spending close to $130 billion dollars past multi year MTA Capital Programs.
He really enjoyed the paper as he loved growing up in Red Hook. It was like one big happy family from Verona Street down to the waterfront. Also from Conover Street to behond Richards Street.
In May 1981, MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch wrote a letter to then Governor Hugh Carey, members of the State legislature, along with NYC Mayor Ed Koch. He asked that prompt action be taken to meet the increasingly desperate situation of public transit. It was a time when subway and bus ridership was falling due to track fires, equipment failures, chronic delays, growing crime and out of control graffiti.
Many thanks for sending the Star-Revue to James Mack, Brick, NJ. We are writing to inform you of his passing.
The parents all taught the kids: King Sullivan told Wolcott to tell Dikeman to spill Coffey all over Van Dyke’s Beard. It couldn’t have been a better or nicer place in which to grow up. Many thanks again and the best to you and all in Red Hook.-The Mack Family
Bring back Howard
Not sure when my subscription runs out, so here is $50. Bring back Howard Graubard or I’ll get a bunch of Irish guys to go on a hunger strike.—John O’Hara
From our MTA specialist
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MTA CHAIRMAN ROBERT KILEY This past August 9th was the fifth anniversary for passing of the late NY MTA Chairman Robert Kiley. Let us
In June 1981, the State legislature responded. They passed and Governor Carey signed into law the Transportation System Assistance and Financing Act of 1981. This afforded MTA legal authority to issue bonds for funding. In the following September, the first modern MTA five-year capital program totaling $7.2 billion was approved. This began the rebuilding of NYC’s subway and bus systems. Long Island and Metro North Rail Roads quickly followed. One of then Governor Mario Cuomo’s best transportation decisions, was his appointment of Kiley as MTA chairman. Kiley was the longest serving MTA chairman holding the position between November 1983 till January
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1991.
most $130 billion dollars..
Kiley oversaw a major restoration of a transit system that was on the decline. Under his watch, with the assistance of NYC Transit President David Gunn, who served from 1984 to 1990, the MTA invested in new subway cars and buses, upgraded subway stations, tracks and signals along with improving on-time performance. This resulted in a significant increase in ridership. Elimination of graffiti, especially on subway cars, was a top priority. Kiley also brought on board Bill Bratton as chief of NYC’s Transit Police to improve safety.
Federal support for transportation has continued to grow over time. When a crises occurred, be it 9-11 in 2001, Super Storm Sandy in 2012 or COVID-19 in 2020, Washington was there for us. Additional billions in assistance above and beyond yearly formula allocations from the Federal Transit Administration (prior to 1991 known as UMTA) were provided. In 2009 the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided billions more.
He supported planning initiatives which served as the foundation to advance MTA NYC Transit’s fare system from tokens to the Metro Card. As MTA Chairman, under his watch, Kiley was also successful in winning several billion dollars in grants from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration today known as the Federal Transit Administration. Washington played a major role in paying for many capital improvements. Following the historic 1982 - 1986 effort under Kiley, MTA capital programs for 1987–1991, 1992–1999, 2000–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014 and 2015-2919 funding totaled al-
Washington has made available $1.5 billion in 2021 FTA funding for the MTA. This does not include billions more in CARE COVID-19 transit emergency relief funding. There are other opportunities for hundreds million more in discretionary national competitive grant programs.—Larry Penner (Larry Penner is a transportation advocate, historian and writer who worked for the Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office. This included the development, review, approval and oversight for billions in capital projects and programs for the MTA, NYC Transit, Long Island and Metro North Rail Roads, MTA Bus, NYC Department of Transportation along with 30 other transit agencies in NY & NJ)
news briefs Bene DJ on Coffey Street
For those CSR folks in the New York Area! We are hosting a Clara Rockmore Album Release Party in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on October 9, featuring live theremin performances by Elizabeth Brown, album listening session, DJ sets from Bene’s Record Shop, cheap records and drinks! All proceeds go to Red Hook Mutual Aid. Shout outs to Brooklyn CSR member Theo S. for helping make this happen! Coffey Street Studio,153 Coffey Street Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY, October 9, 2021 6-10 pm $10 suggested donation
Wall Gallery
Where human eyes have never seen i’ll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you - sun ra dreams are free, motherfucker! - minutemen with love and light, mississippi records csr the second show at the Wall Gallery:“ATLANTIC, works from Berlin” Petra Flierl Martin Colden Hagen Klennert Frank Lambertz Gregor Wiest October 8, 2021 - December 12, 2021 The Wall Gallery, 41 Seabring Street Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY 11231 thewallgallerybrooklyn.net
Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue
Come to Portside
Sat 10/9 -Sun 10/10 2-6 pm Red Hook Open Studios. Artist Alex Barrett art flag installation on the ship and fend. Open during the following week We are promoting this book event to Red Hook people and especially NYCHA residents. The library will be there all winter, and the park remains in reduced form once snow falls (we reduce the footprint to not impede snow plows).
Amazon Flex
The first of Red Hook's three new warehouse facilities seems open for business. It is the one next to the ballfields on Bay Street. PS - the ballfields look like they may open one day as well. Signs went up in the front of the facility saying that parking was for Amazon Flex only. A quick check online reveals that Amazon Flex is a kind of Uber for delivery drivers. Meaning that if you have a smart phone and a car, you can drive over and pick up packages to deliver.
Recent Forest Ranger Actions
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Forest Rangers respond to search and rescue incidents statewide. Working with other state agencies, local emergency response organizations, and volunteer search and rescue groups, Forest Rangers locate and extract lost, injured, or distressed people from across New York State. In 2020, DEC Forest Rangers conducted 492 search and rescue missions, extinguished 192 wildfires that
burned a total of more than 1,122 acres, participated in eight prescribed fires that served to rejuvenate more than 203 acres, and worked on cases that resulted in 3,131 tickets or arrests. "During New York’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are enjoying the outdoors than ever before and our Forest Rangers are on the front lines to help people get outside responsibly and get home safely," said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. "Rangers’ knowledge of first aid, land navigation, and technical rescue techniques are critical to the success of their missions, which for more than a century have taken them from remote wilderness areas with rugged mountain peaks, to white water rivers, and throughout our vast forests statewide
Greenpoint Music
HR of BAD BRAINS will be performing live Sunday, October 10th at The Kingsland in Greenpoint Brooklyn with local bands ALIENS and Public Nature. All Ages Show 16+ with covid vaccination proof Doors 6 pm, Show 7 pm The Kingsland 269 Norman Avenue Brooklyn Tickets avail on Dice. FM. kingslandbk.com/ @thekingslandpresents
And Away We Go
Gallery Players opens its 55th season with And Away We Go by Terrence McNally – the first New York revival since its premiere in 2013. Opening Saturday, October 9, the show will run for 12 performances through Sunday, October 24. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 PM,
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Saturdays (October 16 and 23) at 2 PM, and Sundays at 3 PM. And Away We Go, McNally’s love letter to the theatre, is a laugh-out-loud theatrical romp through two millennia of theatre history. Starting with the Greeks in 458 BC Athens, it hurtles us to Shakespeare’s England, jogs on over to French Versailles, visits late 19th century revolutionary Russia, lands in Coconut Grove in the 1960s and then on to today. Six actors play thirty-six characters in this time-traveling, time bending, zany, funny peek backstage throughout the ages. Bringing And Away We Go to the Gallery stage is director Mark Gallagher who shepherds a versatile cast featuring Kieran Danaan, Sue Glausen, Robert Mason, Tasha Milkman, Victoria Narayan, and Drew Reilly. Tickets are $30 for adults and $25 for seniors over 65. Tickets can be purchased online at http://galleryplayers.com or by calling Ovationtix at 212-352-3101. IMPORTANT: Please note that everyone entering the theater will have to show proof of full vaccination along with photo ID. Audience members will be required to wear masks at all times. Gallery Players is located at 199 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 (between 4th and 5th Avenues in Park Slope). Take the F, G, or R train to 4th Ave - 9th St. Website: http://galleryplayers.com
October 2021
Op-Ed: Is Aviles Conflicted? by Erik Frankel
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conflict of interest? Questions emerge about DSA candidate Aviles’s time as Program Director of the Scherman Fund The Scherman Fund is a huge nonprofit fund with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, including millions invested in hedge funds, some in the Cayman Islands. As Program Director, Alexa Aviles managed a portfolio in the tens of millions. She was given a mission to spread the money around to various progressive groups in New York and around the country. During her tenure, she oversaw donations to numerous organizations in Brooklyn, including key grass roots groups in Sunset Park and Red Hook within District 38. Ms. Aviles has yet to explain how, as a socialist and a member of the DSA, she justified working for a non-profit largely engaged in investing in the very same capitalist institutions she reviles. It turns out, it was worth it for her. The Scherman Fund’s 990 tax forms
"It’s no wonder Make The Road’s action committee felt the need to endorse Alexa in the Democratic primary in June." from 2018 show a series of large donations to one organization, Make The Road New York. $200,000 in two contributions for “Sanctuary NYC Campaign” and another $25,000 for “Get Out The Vote”. The 2018 form also shows $40,000 to the Red Hook Initiative for “RedHookFarms”. It’s no wonder Make The Road’s action committee felt the need to endorse Alexa in the Democratic primary in June. The irony is Ms. Aviles was in charge of the Governmental Transparency and Accountability program at the Scherman Fund. Ms. Aviles clearly was thinking about her run for a long time. She wanted to
make sure potential backers knew she means business. Especially in a crowded field with a number of qualified candidates. While she champions her record as an educational activist and her time as a PTA member, she really has been making hundreds of thousands of dollars, first as a consultant, then at a politically beneficial job as programdirector of an influential charity. While we don’t expect to hear from the Aviles campaign on this, we encourage them to at least respond with a statement for the public’s sake. We are running a campaign based on
transparency, something that is desperately needed in District 38 where third party groups and the communityboard have provided anything but. Our opponent is running with the support of all the very same institutions that have stifled growth in Sunset Park and Red Hook for years. They claim to be for environmental justice and housing justice but have failed to deliver for the working people of the district. They want affordable homes and good paying jobs,not empty promises and continued gentrification. We’re running a campaign to provide an alternative to the status quo which, despite her radical leanings, Ms. Aviles will continue to represent. We call on her campaign to release the Scherman fun’s 990 tax forms for 2019 and 2020 which are unavailable to the public. We ask them, for transparency’s sake, to reveal if any of the money went to groups which then backed her bid. Erik Frankel is running for the City Council is District 38 to replace the term-limited Carlos Menchaca.
What is the DSA and why are all three Red Hook legislative seats about to be their property?
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phrase I have been making use of when talking politics with friends is that I wish there were just two political parties - Democrats and Progressives. I believe in good government, and too many Republicans, reinforced by Ronald Reagan, feel that government is the enemy. Hypocritically, since they spend so much money and energy to be part of what they profess to hate. The reason I wouldn't miss most Republicans is because, in my lifetime at least, Republicans have stood against things I am for, including: worker's rights, human rights; world governance (such as the United Nations); separation of church and state; and the social safety net. Probably the only times I would have thought about voting for a Republican were for NYC mayor John Lindsay and George Romney, once governor of Michigan. So take Republicans off the table, and you are left with one side of a party that is for the gradual transformation into a just society, and another side that wants things to move a little more quickly. Leaders like Bill Clinton and Obama are mainstream Democrats who believe that change moves incrementally in order to not be disruptive. Progressives like Bernie Sanders believe change is long overdue.
by George Fiala I would love to always be able to make a choice between candidates like Biden and Sanders, knowing that whoever wins would be a plus. And guess what—since his first election, Sanders, who calls himself a socialist—has been very patient, being a progressive influence on the Democratic party, without seeking to tear it, and our institutions, down. When people speak about European political parties as Democratic Socialists, I like that. It seems to me that it is a good mix of the best of Democrats and the best of Socialism, accepting of both in search of an ever more fair society. But now I have been forced to take a deeper look at what at first glance I would take as the same as the European parties I like. Forced because, in case you weren't aware, we in REd Hook are represented, not by Democrats, but by something called the DSA. If Aviles wins, all three of our local representatives are members. I looked at the DSA-NYC website to find out what they are. The first thing you see is this: "We’re NYC-DSA, the NYC chapter of the largest socialist organization in the U.S. We believe a better world is possible. We are building it right here in New York City.
New York is one of the most unequal cities in the country, but it doesn’t have to remain that way. As democratic socialists, we’re building working class power to challenge the dominance of the wealthy and the powerful in the five boroughs. Together, we aim to transform New York into a place where working people have the power in our democracy to ensure that everyone can live a dignified life." OK - it all sounds innocent enough. As Patti Smith sang ,People have the Power. But then you go to another page and find this: "Our goal is not to reform the US capitalist economy, but to dismantle and move beyond it and—arm-inarm with movements and working people across the world—to build a socialist world free of the domination of US imperialism. The realities of the climate crisis reinforce the critical and urgent need for societal transformation. We seek to build a truly democratic socialist society in the future, one that finally eliminates all racial, national, gender, and other oppressions. One where all people, regardless of sexuality, ability status, or line of work have the same rights. A world where our economy is managed democratically, its commanding heights are brought under social ownership and control, and we move towards a radical reduc-
The good thing about both is that they listen and respect each other. Sanders understands that his hard work and integrity has put him in a position to effect the change he believes in, without being disruptive.
Red Hook Star-Revue
tion of working time. Where human flourishing and ecological sustainability are harmonized, borders are opened up and eliminated, the prison system and police are abolished, and politics is truly democratized." I know that in theory, a number of you reading this will think it all sounds great. But really, do you want your local city and state representative to use their power and position to "dismantle our capitalist economy?" We already have a lot of socialism in our system. Social Security, all manners of insurance, bank bail-outs, public housing. I believe it's Democrats, even mainstream ones, that have been responsible for that. Lets look at public housing in NY (NYCHA). In theory, public housing is meant to provide a decent place to live for individuals and families who do not earn enough money, for whatever reason. Starting with the Reagan tax cuts, local public housing degraded as federal funding was cut, part of the Republican party philosophy. There are over 300 NYCHA properties. In socialist theory, whatever resources are available to maintain NYCHA ought to be shared in an equal and just way. However, local activists are demanding that the Gowanus Houses be treated separately, with more money simply because of a rezoning. Not socialism. I say forget the ideology, lets pick our leaders by their competence. So far, DSA people haven't impressed me. I kind of miss Felix Ortiz, something I never thought I would say.
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October 2021, Page 11
Vaccine Wars & those on the sidelines
T
he politics surrounding Covid-19 are bewildering to say the least. 2020 revealed so many things about our society, and some of the insights are increasingly worrisome –– dystopian as hell. From masks to vaccines, just how far are we willing to take our politics? Covid-19 is a virus that doesn’t care what your political beliefs are, it is indiscriminate. Yet from the start, many people had opposing viewpoints on masks and public safety, often along political party lines. If you were a Republican or in a red state you were encouraged to get back to work, take up for ‘civil liberties’ and decide if wearing masks was for you. Viral videos of anti-maskers defiantly resisting mask mandates and store policies can easily be found online.
Meanwhile, some Democrats and leftleaning folks, who are believed to be more inclined to comply with CDC guidelines, seem to have developed an attitude of arrogance and condescension around Covid do’s and don’ts. The psychology behind some of this behavior can be framed with the concept of in-groups and out-groups. An in-group is a group of people who cluster with each other based on a variety of factors including gender, race, religion, etc. Out-group members are seen by in-group members as people holding oppositional belief systems. Both groups often understand and value their beliefs as indicators of morality. Unfortunately, our society is already framed this way, and yes, even a virus (or virus politics) can have you sorted into an in-group/out-group dynamic. Addition-
by Roderick Thomas ally, the pandemic emerged during one of the most visibly, racially charged times in modern American history and a bitterly contentious election year. The politicization of Covid-19 was bound to happen, but it shouldn’t continue.
Information about mask protocol has evolved over time as more knowledge has been gained. And while this is understandable, given the circumstances surrounding the pandemic it’s also understandable why the public is fatigued with evolving Covid safety guidelines. Yes, I think vaccine hesitancy is normal, however the deaths from Covid have been terrifying, and as new variants of the virus are discovered, we collectively experience more loss. Those stories of grandmothers, close friends, sisters, fathers, etc. losing their lives to Covid are getting closer to home. Sadly, an unfortunate once-in-a-lifetime event is simply political fodder for some politicians seeking to deepen roots in their political group. Senator Ted Cruz for example is vaccinated, yet openly and regularly calls for bans on mask and vaccine mandates. Cruz, recently came under fire for his apparent hypocrisy when he used the hashtag #yourbodyyourchoice. Cruz, who now lends his support to some Black NBA players who are choosing to remain unvaccinated, did not support the bodies of these same Black men for their choice of peaceful protest against police brutality. All in the name of politics, branding, and reelection. And then there’s the media, from CNN and MSNBC anchors to late-night talk show hosts, mainstream media coverage around vaccines has only further high-
lighted how polarized we are in America. “A vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in, we’ll take care of you. An unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.” Said Late Night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, regarding unvaccinated people and their access to hospital care.
When rap superstar Nicki Minaj voiced her views on the vaccines, she caused quite an unanticipated frenzy. In a series of tweets, Minaj states that she would not attend the 2021 MET Gala, due to her being unvaccinated, but would likely get vaccinated for her upcoming tours. Minaj also went on to mention a friend of her cousin’s who allegedly suffered impotence after being vaccinated in Trinidad (Minaj’s birth country) –– a strange, unnecessary anecdote. While her tweet referencing her cousin’s friend could be described as weird and perhaps irresponsible at the worst, it was however inaccurately framed by many media personalities. Impotence was not her viewpoint or recommendation on vaccines
Minaj’s impotence tweet to her 22 million Twitter followers,’ set off days long debates that then involved White House, many media personalities, Tridinadian health officials and leaders, Dr. Anthony Faucci, the UK Prime minister, and many others. Her infamous tweet became facetiously known as ‘ball-gate. For reporters, Joy Ann Reid led the pack in the criticism of Minaj saying,
“For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives, my God, you could do better
than that. It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing that you got that. That people listen to you and they listen to you more than they listen to me,” However, Joy Ann Reid quickly dialed back some of her criticism after Minaj dug up an old tweet of her’s where she also expresses vaccine hesitancy,
“I mean, will anyone ... anyone at all ... ever fully trust the @CDCgov again? And who on God’s earth would trust a vaccine approved by the @US_FDA ?? How do we get a vaccine distributed after this broken, Trumpist nonsense has infected everything? Even if Biden wins?” –– Joy Ann Reid
Covid vaccines are now political, many folks don’t feel comfortable sharing their vaccination status because of the hostility they may face, be they ‘vaxxed or un-vaxxed.’ Vaccines have become a new identifier similar in some ways to how we talk about ethnicity or nationality. I’ve watched friends vaccinated and unvaccinated, enjoy each other’s company one moment, then spiral into shouting matches over vaccines, despite breathing one another’s air… all day – make it make sense. Taking the vaccine is in most cases the best choice for people. Yet, for those of us on the sidelines (and others), uninterested in the political theatrics and ingrouping/out-grouping of one another, simply visit the CDC website. Everyone needs to employ some empathy, we all desperately need it now.
(Instagram: @Hippiebyaccident, Email: rtroderick.thomas@gmail. com, Site: roderickthomas.net)
The Billion Oyster Project fundraiser by Richard Dodd The Billion Oyster Project (BOP) threw a shucking good party on a rainy September 23 night that raised over $300,000. This seventh annual fundraiser took place at the Liberty Warehouse in Red Hook. New Yorkers dealt with the rain (any inconvenience seems mild after dealing with COVID-19) and partied as only New Yorkers can. Over a dozen aquaculture farmers from Maine to California offered fresh shucked oysters. The oyster farm branding game was on display and featured colorful names such as Laughing Gull, Lucky 13, Violet Cove, Stormy Bay, Hama Hama, Forty North, Empire Oysters, Cutty Hunk, and East Coast Blonds along with mainstays Fisher Island, Taylor Oyster Farms, and Cape May Salts.
The shellfish serving stations offered lemon slices, horseradish, cocktail sauce, and champagne vinaigrette to pair with the oysters. Purists chose to eat their briny treats au naturel and savor the natural juice called liquor. The oyster farm’s location, water mineral content, algae, and salinity impart a unique flavor profile.
What a difference a year makes
Last year the sixth annual Billion Oys-
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ter Party was held virtually via Zoom due to the global pandemic. How do you shuck an oyster virtually? It was also a year of financial hardship for oyster farmers on the East Coast who saw their restaurant clients cease indoor dining and curtail oyster purchases. Fortunately, Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy stepped in to purchase oversized oysters from farmers and repurpose them for environmental restoration. The two-milliondollar buyback program called SOAR (Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration) procured five million oysters from over one hundred oyster farms. Those oysters are now cleaning New York Harbor as ecosystem engineers and not happy hour table fare. The Billion Oyster Project was formed in 2014 by Pete Malinowski and Murray Fisher. They had the vision to clean up New York Harbor by planting and growing over a billion oysters by 2035 across 100+ sustainable oyster reefs. Since an adult oyster can filter fifty gallons of water a day, this army of prehistoric creatures—whose origins date back an estimated two million years - would perform a magical form of environmental alchemy. These briny superheroes can not only transform
polluted to clean water, but they also create habitat for other marine life; function as a buffer to dampen storm surge and offer hope to restore our damaged estuary for future generations to enjoy. Peter and Murray’s Ode to Saving New York Harbor
Cast away fear, cynicism, and doubt, Summon a billion briny angels to drive pollutants out. There is more to this story …
The Billion Oyster Project has grown to become one of the largest estuary restoration projects in the United States. The educational reach of this movement has evolved into a center of excellence for citizen-science initiatives around the world. In fact, it is touching the lives of a projected one million students who are being introduced to a world that embraces environmental restoration work to heal our planet. Perhaps a bit of prose and poetry paints the BOP story: A Partygoer’s Ode to The Billion Oyster Party
The Billion Oyster Party, On the 23rd day of September. Welcomed a celebration of the hardy, This was a Shellabration to remember.
www.star-revue.com
Facing storm clouds and sheets of rain, Partier’s chose oyster revelry over cancellation pain. Over 300,000 dollars was raised, The BOP team and attendees deserve to be praised. Yes, New York Harbor will be saved, By the better angels of our nature. And with a little help from our friends, The briny angels summoned from nature.
Richard Dodd is a freelance writer, environmentalist, and published author richdoddwriter@gmail.com
October 2021
ON DECK
Melvins unapologetically unplugged. Way back in 2014, the mighty King Buzzo made his NYC solo debut with an acoustic set at Santos Party House, and it was even more epic than the album (This Machine Kills Artists) he was supporting. The guy is a solid rock star, from the hair to the unaffected vocals to the measured perfection of his guitar playing, but what proved the point was when he’d stand at the side of the stage, beating a four count on the low strings, stressing the 1 and the 3 with head thrusts, as if someone else was at the front taking a solo. No one was, he was just rocking, alone with his battle axe. It’s in that way that Five Legged Dog—out Oct. 15 as download and double-CD, and a multi-colored, 4-LP set early next year—is so magnificent. The trio pillages its back catalog, all the way back to their first album, 1987’s Gluey Porch Treatments with “Eye Flys,” tastefully paired with a cover of Free’s “Woman.” That track is a good indication of what makes Dog great. There’s no lighter-side-of-Melvins going on here, no finger-picking or stool-sitting, and no fudging, either. Steve McDonald plays acoustic bass guitar and Dale Crover bashes away with brushes, and the vocals are spot-on with close harmonies in Black Sabbath melodies, like they’re circled around a dumpster fire. They also cover Brainiac, Alice Cooper, Buck Owens, the Rolling Stones, the Turtles and Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking” from Midnight Cowboy, but their covers of themselves (“Oven,” “Night Goat,” “Civilized Worm”) are what nails it. Five-Legged Dog is heavy and unflourished, no electricity but no fancy filigrees, just big, massive, rock.
Storm Lake: A Call to Arms for the Future of American Journalism by Dante A. Ciampaglia
American journalism is on the ropes. The nation has lost one in four newspapers — 2,100 publications — since 2019. (That number has surely grown during the pandemic.) Half of what’s left is owned by vulture capitalists, private equity firms and hedge funds that have perverted local media ownership into cynical resource extraction. Newsrooms are gutted, and what’s left is consolidated for maximum short-term profit. These VC-run specters debase themselves at the altars of algorithms, sullying their communities by chasing cheap clickbait traffic. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to still have a paper. Some 65 million Americans live in news deserts. How did this happen? How could the shining newsroom on the hill fall into such disrepair? Art Cullen, the nobody’s-fool editor of the Storm Lake Times in Storm Lake, Iowa, has some thoughts.
“Rural communities are a lot weaker now than they used to be, and that makes rural newspapers weaker,” Cullen says in the new documentary Storm Lake. “Without strong local journalism to tell the community’s story, the fabric of the place becomes frayed.”
Art and his brother John, the paper’s publisher, founded the Times in 1990, and they’ve seen up close the forces reducing that fabric to shreds: bitterly-divided politics, vertically-integrated conglomerates killing small businesses that form the bedrock of local advertising, social media. “Without readers you’ve got nothing,” Cullen says in the film. “But now people want to get their news for free because apparently looking at
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Deerhoof Actually Does. It’s hard to imagine how a band might follow up something as grandly and hilariously epic as Love-Lore, Deerhoof ’s mad mashing of 40 some odd covers and interpretations—from Ornette Coleman and Pauline Oliveros to Voivod and the Velvet Underground to TV show themes and commercial jingles—into barely over a half an hour, but in barely a year later managed to do so. Actually, You Can (out on CD, cassette and download October 22 from Joyful Noise Recordings, with green vinyl coming soon) isn’t quite as long and isn’t quite as nuts but it’s every bit as joyous, meticulous and voracious. The influences aren’t on their sleeves this time, but they’re drawing from Handel and Maya Angelou, metal and rancheros, and the many fancies of each of the four members. Home recordings from each of them were arranged into miniature masterpieces by drummer Greg Saunier but, at the insistence of bassist/singer Satomi Matsuzaki, the constructions were all songs that could be played live—in the hopes that that would happen again. Actually, You Can is actually the band’s third record in 18 months, and its disparate, tight-fitting parts puts them in league with the taut mania of Talking Heads and US Maple, but happily they lack the cold, impersonality of those bands. It’s a charming record that flies by fast enough that repeat listens are pretty much guaranteed.
ON STAGE
I’ve written about the last couple albums by Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog albums in these pages, and they’re good records, but they’re a great live band (with at least as many legs as the Melvins). They’re their breakfast on Facebook is all the information they need to live as an informed voter in America. That’s not how you sustain a democracy.”
Storm Lake, directed by Beth Levison and Jerry Risius and currently on the festival circuit and playing a limited theatrical run ahead of a premiere on PBS’ Independent Lens on November 5, is about a newspaper and the family that owns it, powers it, and ensures it remains on newsstands. It’s also a documentary about the community that sustains the twice-weekly paper, the neighbors and citizens who make up the readership and whose stories the paper tells. “When it comes to news,” Cullen says in the film, “our motto is, ‘If it didn’t happen in Buena Vista County, it didn’t happen.’” But perhaps most importantly, Levison and Risius weave those narratives into “a treatise on civic engagement,” as Cullen describes it to the Star-Revue, and the primacy of local media in our national conversation. “That’s the role newspapers fundamentally play, and people take that for granted,” he continues. “I hope people [watching the film] can see the connection between a functioning democracy and an informed electorate.”
That reality, so vital to the American experiment, had been obfuscated by more than a decade of the Facebook and Twitter outrage-hate-read machines. It was further eroded in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, when fact and truth somehow became up for grabs. Americans’ trust in media cratered during this time, which coincided with an acceleration of shuttering newsrooms. It was also in this environment that the Storm Lake Times and Art Cullen won a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials “that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in Iowa.” Suddenly, this little paper in northwest Iowa — and the Mark Twain lookalike at the top of the masthead — gained national attention. Publishers came calling; cable
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finally getting the chance to go out and support those albums with a quick, three-stop tour starting at the Bell House (in a Le Poisson Rouge showcase) on Oct. 7. The following night, they’re at Creative Alliance in Baltimore and ending up at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia on the 9th. https://lpr.com/ lpr_events/lpr-presents-ceramic-dog/
Liturgy is also getting out to support their two recent records (also covered in these pages), hitting the same cities in a different order. They’ll be at the Metro Gallery in Baltimore on the 13th and Milkboy in Philadelphia on the 14th, ending up at the Knitting Factory on the 15th. https://www.knittingfactory. com/event/tw-eventinfo/Liturgy/11147805/ And way back in 2019, I interviewed Blake Sandberg about the return of his band, Aliens. He’s been working with different line-ups recording new songs and pulling new things together, and will play at The Kingsland on Oct. 10, sharing a bill with none other than H.R. of Bad Brains. Public Nature round out the bill. http://kingslandbk.com
Meanwhile, back home in Red Hook, Pioneer Works will be firing on all cylinders when Black Midi visits from London. If you have any doubt what the Brits mean when they call a track a “total banger” check out the video for “John L,” the lead-off track for their last album Cavalcade (released in May and keeping the Rough Trade sound alive). Their particular postpunk prog pounding will rattle Pioneer Works to the rafters on Oct. 20. https://pioneerworks.org
news and internationally read papers, too. “Small Town Paper Makes Good” is a clicky headline when all other news about small town newspapers is calamitous.
Risius, a cinematographer and native Iowan, also came to town. He lives in Brooklyn now but originally hails from Buffalo Center, about an hour from Storm Lake. Like so many others, he noticed Cullen and the Times’ Pulitzer win and, intrigued, paid the paper a visit. Risius, spent half a day with Cullen, shot some material, and soon reached out to Levison — both teach at the School of Visual Arts — about making a feature documentary. Levison was working on another project and couldn’t take it on. A bit later, in August 2018, Risius sent Levison a column Cullen wrote for the New York Times, “In My Iowa Town, We Need Immigrants.”
“It made me cry,” Levison says. “I’ve never really heard a voice like that before. His perspective was fascinating, and I thought, ‘Wow, if these 800 words are so powerful, I wonder if there’s something here.’” She looked at what Risius shot on that half-day scout, she got on board, and soon they began raising money to make the film. Storm Lake begins in March 2019, taking us inside the Times newsroom as it covers everything from the Democratic presidential primary to climate change’s impact on crop growth to the Iowa Pork Queen’s visit to an elementary school (with a diapered piglet in tow). It also captures the ethic that earned the paper that Pulitzer. Its concluding section chronicles the paper in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic taking to task the state government and Tyson Foods for misinformation and obfuscation about the true toll of the virus — especially on meatpacking plant employees, who are overwhelmingly immigrant and, often, undocumented. When the filmmakers came to Storm Lake, Levison says “we were really open to what we saw on
(continued on page 15)
October 2021, Page 13
The Dukes of Snyder, Part 2
W
hen we last left the Dukes, patriarch John Jacob Snyder straddled a hardware empire in a once sleepy Flatbush that was now busting its britches. All thanks to technology.
Since 1878 the Brighton railroad, created by Flatbush Dutch potentates to feed northern Brooklyn vacationers from Prospect Park southward to the Dutch Masters’ hotel in Brighton Beach, had been chugging into Church Avenue, its first stop, four blocks west of the Dutch Reformed Church at Flatbush Avenue. Then in 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge opened and provided the first rail link to & from Manhattan, thanks to elevated lines that linked to cable cars over the bridge. But the 19th Century trains were all steam-driven, slow and sooty, until 1900 when they became electrified thanks to new-fangled overhead wires attached to trolley poles. This innovation sped access for the well-to-do City folk now gobbling up the detached homes rapidly replacing farmland south of Prospect Park. A train of new “suburban developments” rumbled toward the seashore: Prospect Park South, Beverly Square, Ditmas Park, South Midwood, Midwood Park, Fiske Terrace, West Midwood were all erected between 1900 and 1905, producing thousands of new customers for the growing commercial hub surrounding the old Church. By the time Papa Snyder passed on in 1908, eulogized as “one of the oldest residents of Flatbush and until 10 years ago, the only German occupant,” there were three “Snyder’s of Flatbush” hardware stores he bequeathed to his sons, Alexander (born 1855), John (born
by Joe Enright
1862) & Phillip (born 1870). Phillip The Youngest Snyder became the manager of the shop at Flatbush & Clarkson Avenues and in 1895 he hired a young blonde lass named Florence Louise Robinson to keep his books. Florence lived in an apartment alongside the Long Island Rail Road tracks on Atlantic Avenue, not far from today’s Barclay Center. Her dad didn’t have much of a commute to get to work since he was a flagman in the sprawling LIRR trainyards nearby. As it happened, Phillip Snyder was a Lieutenant in the 13th Regiment of the National Guard, headquartered just a few blocks from the Robinsons in an armory at Atlantic & Flatbush Avenues (razed in 1906 to erect the LIRR Terminal building). Whether Lt. Snyder first chanced upon Florence in those noisy environs and offered her a job is lost to history. What we do know is that love bloomed amidst Snyder’s nails and screws because Phillip & Florence set a marriage date for August 27, 1895. But Phillip hid the betrothal from his parents, sensing their disapproval of his fondness for a girl they considered far below his station. “Marry the daughter of a soot-covered flagman? Hah! Why, the very idea!” So, Phillip got cold feet and literally left Florence standing at the altar. And that’s where things got interesting. Fearing the fury of a woman scorned, the next day the wealthy Phillip transferred all his property to his oldest brother and plotted his flight to an unidentified Western town. “Not so fast, bub,” Florence declared, and her employer was arrested on a bench war-
rant for “breach of wedding contract.” Phillip was dragged before a Kings County Supreme Court judge and the Brooklyn press got busy. Florence’s suit asked for $25,000 (almost $900,000 today’s). However, even then, the wheels of justice ground slow: the matter did not come to trial until February 1897. After Phillip and Florence testified, the jury deliberated for less than an hour and found Phillip incredibly guilty, although it did reduce the award four-fold. But wait, there’s more! After the verdict Phillip and his siter Nellie announced that they were going to marry Frances and Daniel Esquirol, respectively, in a double wedding ceremony come the Fall of 1897. The Esquirol family lived in a fancy house a block from Phillip’s store and were just as loaded as the Snyders. Flatbush society rejoiced! Ah, but alas, Phillip, still smarting from his public humiliation, and worried that Florence would show up and cause a commotion at a public service, convinced his betrothed to wed him in a private ceremony on August 5th, attended by only two witnesses and a preacher. So, if you’re keeping score at home, that’s two secret August weddings for Phillip, two years apart, but only one consummated. As Fall in Flatbush waned and the New Year arrived, ushering in the “The Great Mistake of ’98” – the wedding of Brooklyn and the three other outer boroughs to Manhattan to form a new New York City – Flatbush caterers wondered, “How come we’re not getting any orders for that Snyder-Esquirol wedding extravaganza?” An intrepid reporter finally uncovered the shocking truth of Phillip’s private ceremony, compounded by the doubly shocking revelation that his sister and her Esquirol fiancée also went the super-dupersecret-wedding route in December!! Caterers were bummed. Then finally, the triply shocking news – lovely Florence was marrying her childhood sweetheart over by the wrong side of the Atlantic Avenue tracks!!! Was everything going to end happilyever-after? Not quite, because now the Manhattan press began competing with their Brooklyn brethren for the next headline in this continuing soap opera. The frenzy caused Phillip to suffer what appears to have been a nervous breakdown, although the attending physician described it as mere “cerebral congestion.” Papa Snyder, minding Phillip’s store at 765 Flatbush Avenue on February 7, 1898, was asked by a reporter for his take on the family drama and replied: “The wedding came before we expected it, but it is all right. I told Phillip to take life easy for a few days.” Phillip recovered and quickly returned to work but – I am not making this up – he immediately ABANDONED his no longer secret wife, Frances Esquirol. She then hired Frank Harvey Field, the same attorney who represented the jilted Florence, and sued for divorce. Scurrying into the Kings County courthouse one day, lawyer Field announced that the scoundrel Phillip, facing new alimo-
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ny, had yet to satisfy the judgement he owed Florence. Thirteen years later, Phillip’s abandoned wife Frances died at the age of 36 of Bright’s Disease. She passed away in the home adjoining the Esquirol estate on West Clarkson Street (now Woodruff Avenue) that, sadly, her father had built as a wedding gift. Meanwhile Phillip spent his remaining years managing an asbestos shingle business inside the Snyder hardware emporium at Bedford & Flatbush while residing in the family home on East 21st Street, overlooking what would later be designated in 1978 as the Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces Historic District. Following multiple strokes Phillip died in 1925 before he could re-re-marry. Alexander The Eldest Snyder took a different path. Forsaking metal for wood, he bought into a lumber company on Union Street in Gowanus, owned by Sylvester Ross, forming the Ross & Snyder partnership in 1888. In 1903 Ross would build the stillstanding four-story limestone mansion at the southwest corner of Carroll Street & Prospect Park West. Perhaps realizing he was not setting a good
example for home construction from which he might benefit, Ross sold the mansion for an ungodly sum, leaving no doubt that lumber was becoming increasingly profitable, given the thousands of wood frame houses then being built in southern Brooklyn. Row houses were out. Peaked roofs, light and space were in. Ross died in 1907, leaving the reins of the company to Alexander and his son, Frank (born 1884). Not long after, Alexander was elected VP of the Flatbush Trust Company and would remain an influential economic force in Flatbush until his death in 1923. Frank then expanded the lumber operation along 3rd Avenue, north of Union Street, but when the Depression hit, he relocated to a more affordable location on Douglass Street, east of 3rd Avenue. Alas, the firm became insolvent in 1937 and Frank became an “incinerator salesman.” Talk about burning your bridges! By 1947 Frank was renting an apartment in Fiske Terrace, sending reminiscences to the Brooklyn Eagle about old Church Avenue. He died hours after Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers won the fourth game of the 1947 World Series at Ebbets Field when Cookie Lavagetto famously broke up the Yankees’ no-hitter. IN PART THREE: The Mayors and Royalty of Flatbush, including the Duke of Bedford Avenue.
October 2021
Radio Free Brooklyn keeps growing by Mike Cobb
F
or Rachel Cleary, the dream of starting a radio station came about while in repose on her living room sofa. She was initially inspired by her desire to translate her experiences at open mics to radio. She recalls discussing the idea with her partner Robert Prichard and friend Tom Tenney.
“We knew a physical location was too expensive. They got the idea to do an internet station and realized they could buy a domain name for $8.00. It built fast, I jumped in, and we launched in May 2015,” Cleary says.
Prichard owns a production company called Surf Reality and has produced a number of live events and theatrical series, including Radical Vaudeville and the KGB Show. He is best known as the former proprietor of Surf Reality’s House of Urban Savages, which was a black box theater on the Lower East Side that ran from 1993-2003. Tenney has produced the Mixed Media Festival, a number of shows including GrindhouseA-Go-Go, and he also managed a brick and mortar theater called “Space.” Previously, Cleary had done stage work and voice overs but had never worked in radio. She started filling in on special projects and management roles. She enjoyed the work and launched her own show “Hear and Now with Rachel C”, which she has been producing and hosting since November 2015. Cleary is now the Musical Director of the station. Eventually, the team rented a room below a bike shop in Brooklyn. Today, the station is located at 199 Cook Street in Bushwick. Cleary says the new space is nicer, well lit and climate controlled. It looks more professional “though musicians usually don’t care about the looks,” she quips. They are set up for band performances, though they’re still not holding live events due to Covid concerns.
In terms of Covid safety, Cleary says, “We have protocols. For example, we can’t have more than three people at once in the station. Though, unless they’re on the mic, artists don’t need a mask. I can also set up my own rules. We ask for documentation of vaccination for anyone entering the studio. Temperature checks will also be put into place. If not, I can meet artists outside. I don’t want to be a risk to anyone. If you’re unvaccinated, you’re at risk.” She has adapted to the pandemic by interviewing many artists and bands via Zoom. “I was initially against it because I like the spontaneity that comes from meeting in person, but Covid changed that.
FILM: STORM LAKE (continued from page 13)
the ground. We really went with open hearts, open minds, and I think that made a big difference.” The filmmakers encountered some folks who didn’t want to appear in a film about the Storm Lake Times and the Cullens, such was their opposition to the staunchly progressive paper and family. But they otherwise gained wide access to the community and the Cullens. That includes witnessing up close the daily struggle to keep the Times’ lights on. The Cullens — Art’s son Tom, wife Dolores, and sister-in-law Mary are also on staff as reporters — always seem to be one dropped ad away from disaster. To help keep the enterprise afloat, Art and John are now on Social Security and volunteer their time to ensure the paper continues making payroll. The film is a necessary corrective to the myths that sprung up about the paper in the wake of its Pulitzer win, and the Cullens’ openness and candor is bracing.
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Zoom has value because I can talk to people who couldn’t otherwise come into the studio. I’ve gotten to talk to people from all over the world. Covid forced me to think outside the box, and Zoom opened things up,” she adds. The station uses several different programs including Dropbox, Megaseg, and AudioHijack for technical production. Cleary is able to work remotely via the use of a program called VNC Viewer, which allows her to login to the station’s functions remotely and see everything that’s happening. All broadcasts are archived and available for listening via the station’s website.
A management team handles the day-to-day station operations, and certain members are assigned a day of the week for which they are “on call”, meaning they are responsible for handling any incoming support tickets, urgent problems, and general queries from show hosts. “The team also has a Station Director and Programming Director, who function very much like chairs. It is very much a group effort,” Cleary explains. Being internet only, the station is liberated from the usual confines of FCC rules. “We’re freeform, so hosts can do what they want within certain parameters. You can swear on our station, and a lot of people do, at least on my show,” she muses. When asked if they’ve ever considered “getting on the dial”, Clearly says, “Hear and Now with Rachel C. is something I developed for Radio Free Brooklyn. I feel like it’s something that should stay there. The station is on the internet because it was an affordable option. Starting a terrestrial radio station wasn’t something that the co-founders had in the budget. This small project has snowballed, and I don’t know that it’s worth messing with a good thing. And people are very streaming-oriented now. They listen to their radio on the internet.”
As an organization, the station has achieved non-profit status and is supported by donors and staff contributions. “We operate on a cooperative model. Everyone who is a part of the community pays monthly dues, but they also have a voice in what happens. These dues, along with grants, tax-deductible donations from the public, and merchandise sales all fund the station. We also receive funding through various drives, like Facebook birthday fundraisers, and in-person events in the pre-pandemic days,” Cleary explains. When asked what makes for a good show, Cleary pauses and says, “Knowing your subject and what they
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If I can go nose into people’s business, why shouldn’t I have a film crew come in and nose in our business,” Cullen says. “They didn’t make us look like hicks or braggarts or whiners, and they easily could have.” Levison says that while she and Risius thought they were making a documentary about Art, as they shot they “really started to see how this isn’t just a film about a newspaper. It’s also about a community. Those two are really deeply intertwined and interdependent.” And as the film makes clear, that interdependence is a microcosm of the larger story of the state of American journalism. Local, fact-based journalism is in danger, imperiling a free and healthy press and a healthy and functioning America. Locally-owned papers like the Storm Lake Times, the Carroll Times Herald, and others in the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation are rightly heralded as success stories in an age of hedge fund dominance. But it’s all too tenuous when a paper’s fate can come down
want to talk about is important. I want them to know that they’re respected and treated well. Our focus is their art. And though it is work, I always try to be welcoming and make it fun. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
After having been involved for seven years, Cleary continues to be inspired by the positive feedback she receives from former guests. “I enjoy finding out about new and local artists, and I play music that isn’t getting played elsewhere. People appreciate that. I had a friend who reminded me that radio is kind of a dying art form and that it’s important. That encouraged me,” she says. Looking ahead, the station is seeking to cautiously welcome more in-studio programming. “We are accepting proposals for new shows and are looking to expand our talk programming. I am personally spearheading a benefit album project that will feature various musical artists with proceeds from the album going to Radio Free Brooklyn. I’d love to do more in-person interviews for my show, even if it’s interviews conducted outdoors with fully vaccinated guests. I’m back to doing a lot of Zoom interviews, and that’s getting a little tiresome,” she says.
The public can find out more by signing up for the monthly station newsletter, following the station on social media and listening to individual shows. Cleary adds, “We love hearing from listeners, we really do! I want people to know that Radio Free Brooklyn is a collaborative community. We work together on projects. I have been a guest on other people’s shows and vice versa. There is no way a 24-hour internet radio station, which no-one is paid to run, can possibly continue unless people care about it and come together to make sure it works. And that’s what’s happening here.” For more information, go to: https://radiofreebrooklyn.com
Mike Cobb is a writer, musician, and multimedia producer. Reach him at: https://www.mc-obb.com
to external factors like a lost advertiser or onerous health insurance premium increases.
That’s the story Risius and Levison capture in Storm Lake. Its call to arms to defend journalism is rousing for those of us who love newspapers, but it’s also a snap-to-reality awakening for others who might not appreciate the precariousness of American journalism’s future. Newspapers continue to close. Vulture capitalists continue gobbling up and hollowing out newsrooms. Facebook and YouTube continue to hold outsized importance as platforms for news consumption. Hope could be on the way in the form of the bipartisan Local Journalism Sustainability Act. If it becomes law, its tax breaks and credits could staunch the bleeding and help resuscitate the industry. But if neglect remains the norm, the American experiment will teeter, dangerously. One cause for optimism: Levison says the film has been received better than either she or Risius could have predicted. “I never thought we would sell out
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theatrical screenings or have the kinds of conversations we’ve had,” she adds. “There’s been a lot of demand for the film, and that’s having an impact.”
Another: Cullen says he thinks “people are recognizing the value of good journalism, good, honest reporting, informed opinions, and they’re willing to pay for it.”
“There’s something unique about a newspaper that tries to embrace the whole community and not just one funnel or silo,” he adds. “Weddings and engagements and babies and quarantine news and who got busted for drunk driving — that’s something that brings a community together in ways these silos of information don’t, and that’s worth preserving somehow.” Storm Lake will screen at the Hamptons International Film Festival on October 13 and premier on PBS’ Independent Lens November 5. Additional screening information can be found online at stormlakemovie.com.
October 2021, Page 15
The Suave Sound of a Generation
M
usic has been the sound of humanity’ s oppressions and will since the beginning of times, sharing it's essence with revolutionary and changing periods. “ Allen A, better known by Suave_A, has been surrounded by instruments since he was a school boy going to church. Coming from a Haitian heritage, and growing up in the Caribbean section of Flatbush, the rapper has seen his skills developed from playing drums and piano on Sundays to the artist he is becoming now. His music goes beside the tendences of current rap to engage with the street sounds that have always represented the voice of minorities and reality.
“Since the very beginning I fell in love with music, with the sounds, with the notes. I could say it started with Gospel music, but also R&B, hip-hop, soul… I listened to all of them growing up.
by Rocio Gomez in a big important city as New York has always been.
At the beginning of the 80´s, Jamaican people settled in neighborhoods in the Bronx and Flatbush, at the same time that reggae music was travelling around the world with Bob Marley. Hip hop appeared in the 80's as a way to express resentment about unequal situations for the most unlucky classes of the city. The poorest neighborhoods joined with the music to tell the rest of the world about the Black revolution and movement.
Born in the same neighborhood as many other underground talents such as Joey Badass, or the late Pop Smoke, Suave_A moves away from traditional hip hop sounds. He gets straight into catchy choruses, lyrics rich in rhymes, and deep verses calling for dancing and street parties.
Despite his youth and his short professional career, the singer counts the support of a whole community that has seen other young people working hard, and setting all their enthusiasm into music. His dances and charismatic tone of voice show his potential as an emerging artist with nothing to envy to those he admires.
Following the line of American rappers like Chief Keef, and drinking from the havoc of Chicago’s streets and drill sounds, the young Suave_A makes his way for a new non-resting American rap trend. His music is an improvement from electronic and rap beats in the UK, but adapted to our much tougher underground culture.
Hip hop and reggae music were born in New York and Jamaica respectively, but both grew up in New York City as part of a special period of history. In the early 70´s and through the 80´s, the world was moving ahead with big changes in social and civil rights. With special attention to Black people's needs and rights, both music genres declared what was going on
His story might not be as different as other’s from big artists he looks up to such as the rapper Nas, who was told to drop school in his early teens, and focus on his music passion by a father who was already into it. Nas’ s father understood the system from an uncommon perspective in society, and his vision pushed his son to
“I focus on rap music because I think this is the voice of our generation. That is what I am into it now. Coming from a neighborhood like Flatbush, you really see and listen to everything, and you get involved on the vibes. It is more than a style; it is a signature”
Page 16 Red Hook Star-Revue
“Music plays a big role for me because I come from a history of music family. My dad is musician, my brother is musician, my mom is a singer. Raising up it was there. It was meant to be to focus on music. Here is where I am putting all my focus, all my effort, and hard work right now. I know if I can do it, I can go far.”
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not only follow his dreams, but also think outside the box until he made it. Self-education, consciousness, and a will for learning and reading are key to build the real and strong personality demanded to become an artist.
Suave_A ensures some of the big challenges of the music industry are keeping on as an artist as well as working with other artists on his level to lift him up.
“You need to find the right people to work with. Find good music, good rhythms, styles, work plays. I am still developing, so I need to keep writing, and find my self confident, so from here to a year or two I find my total stage. I will be in a better place than I am right now. I just need to move forward. A challenge is a challenge, so you got to face it, or you find an excuse to do not do it.“ His video for the single No Time To Waste was presented to the public on Friday July 23th as his first ongoing project.
Suave_A has been working on new material to complete his catalog, and it will be dropped soon. The young artist has all the qualities to become the next rapper who sees his career skyrocket from the Underground of New York to the top of the podium. The fact that music is an essential part of his life is also an inspiration for those who like him come from struggles, and fight for achieving a better spot probably away from the standards of society. Suave-A can be heard online at Soundcloud , follow him on Instagram : www.instagram.com/suavea_ebe, or in his Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCuJNBbfWIvhjFont2XyZ6tw.
October 2021
Letting in the light at Five Myles
T
ry to imagine a world without windows, how uninhabitable homes and works spaces would become, how menacing and dystopian buildings would seem from the outside. Windows are an indispensable element in any human abode, an architectural necessity without which interiors becomes oppressive. For those of us inside, they frame fragments of the outer world, letting it in, and for those on the outside they may offer a glimpse into how others live. Depending on the light, they may reflect the beholder, and contain simultaneous, overlapping visions. Selections from Meridith McNeal’s ongoing series of paintings, Inside Outside Windowphilia are on view at Five Myles in Crown Heights, juxtaposed with vibrant student art inspired by this work. The exhibition, The Way We See It, Meridith McNeal and ART YARD students, is on view through October 9th.
Since a loved one’s wrongful conviction, McNeal has been investigating the layers of meaning that imbue windows as they let in and keep out, particularly in the specific and terrifying sense of being on one side or the other of incarceration, and she has created an extensive body of work exploring these themes. Her watercolors are remarkable for their rendition of clear and reflecting surfaces and the surprising ways they re-frame various frames and play with the position of the viewer. Her interior, looking-out paintings in the show include the quiet and haunting Inside Out Quarantine Fire Escape depicting a fire escape and its shadow on the wall in hues of grey and cream, and its reflection on gleaming hardwood floors. Another interior, Inside Outside Recovery Rain evokes the post-impressionists as a green and pink garden view is streaked with and dappled by rain. Looking-in paintings from the series include storefront windows in Red Hook and Atlantic Avenue, scenes that capture the artist’s gaze, the wares on display, and reflections of streetlights and buildings, the world refracted and multiplied and captured all at once. Student work in The Way We See It was created during ART YARD’s 2021 summer session which kicked off their Year to Heal and Restore. Students met on Zoom and in person in the gallery space where they learned a variety of watercolor techniques and how to approach large-format paintings, using McNeal’s work as a jumping off point. The life-size window paintings display the individual standpoints of each student, from where they face out to where they face in. They bring lightness, air and depth into the large
Opera: by Frank Raso Fire Shut Up In My Bones
The Metropolitan Opera reopened on September 27 with the Met Premiere of a new opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones, which is the first opera by a black composer to be performed at the Met. The opera, which has a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, about a boy who is sexually abused by his cousin, and spends his life trying to overcome his trauma. The first act focuses on Billie, Charles’ mother, who is cheated on by her husband Spinner. She threatens him at gun point, put ultimately decides to “leave it in the road” and the family moves in with Charles’s Uncle Paul. Billie needs to feed a family of 6, resulting in Charles developing feelings of loneliness, causing him to be vulnerable to his cousin Chester. Throughout the opera Charles is haunted by two characters Destiny and Loneliness, both of whom are played by Angel Blue. The characters observe Charles, while also affecting his decisions. Throughout the rest of the opera Charles attempts to absolve his guilt, through religion,sex, and joining a fraternity. He is hazed at the college, rendering that solace useless, and develops a relationship with Greta, the final character played by Angel Blue. However, Greta says they can only be friends as she is in love with another man, causing him to resort to murder to
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by Diana Rickard
The images are as follows: Akash Wilmot, My Window of Peace, 2021, watercolor on paper 55x36; Kevin Anderson, My Window of Mystery, 2021, watercolor on paper 55x36; Meridith McNeal, Inside Outside Quarantine Fire Escape (Clinton Hill, Brooklyn) 2021, watercolor on paper, 75x55.
black box space, and the dark walls add intensity to the paintings while personal and cultural histories and emotional states enter a dynamic dialogue with each other. Delphine Levenson’s My Window of Vines, in the palest of blues, includes multicolored tassellike vines that ornament a trellised window. On the side, in sharp contrast to the dreamy hues is a small, sharp gold lock, a reminder of the need for protection. Akash Wilmot’s My Window of Peace includes deeper blues on the walls around a window which frames an urban scene, graffitied buildings and fire escapes under a large globe of the sun. The lines have wiggle and swagger, making the painting active and alive. Kevin Anderson’s enigmatic My Window of Mystery places a window in the middle of a landscape. It depicts a staircase leading to a mysterious center. This painting uses primary color dramatically, and the composition is reminiscent of mystical iconography. Sigrid Dolan’s My Window of Shush looks in on an empty classroom and silence is made palpable by the softness of her palette, rendering a strained, controlled moment in time. Elizabeth Morales’ My Window of Liberty? emphasizes being locked out or locked in, with the artist looking out at a floral burst of fireworks while a pained ghost of a figure looks in, imploringly, clutching bars. Other paintings on view include Zahir Prudent’s My Window of Memory, Robin Grant’s My Window of Busy Stillness, August Levenson’s My Window of Blissful Ignorance, and Sarah Gumgumji’s My Window of Motifs, as well as teaching artist Reg Lewis’
My Window of Perception and Perspective, and teaching artist Jacob Rath’s My Window of Zoom Out.
end his grief. But he decides “to leave it in the road” and talk to his mother. The production makes use of videos projections and abstract sets to cover quick scene changes and produce less graphic versions of disturbing scenes in the opera. The singers all excellently portray their characters, including Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta, Latonia Moore as Billie, and Will Liverman as Charles. The performance was a powerful evening of theater which will hopefully return in future seasons. Fire Shut Up In My Bones will have it’s final performance on October 23rd.
is spread that Boris sent assassins to kill the infant Tsarevich Dimitri.
Boris Godunov
Modest Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov’’ has a troubled history. The opera was written in a short seven scene version in 1869, but it was turned down by the committees of Russia’s Imperial Theater on the grounds that it lacked a female lead. Mussorgsky revised the opera, adding more folk songs, a third act set in Poland which featured the Polish Princess Marina, and a finale scene in the Forest of Kromy. The Metropolitan Opera is going for shorter running times this season so they opted to perform the 1869 version. To summarize, the plot follows the rise and fall of Godunov, beginning with officers forcing the people to shout for him to take the Russian throne which leads to a massive coronation scene. However, a story
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The Way We See It includes a table of portfolios of ART YARD student work that I found myself getting lost in. Pouring over the books I was impressed by one sophisticated work after another. Some of these are inspired by teaching artist Reg Lewis’ poem/ meditation “Shhh vs. The Courtroom in the Head (AKA) Stressing Less”, including mixed media collages such as Karla Prichett’s using pen and ink, strips of typed text, and sparse use of color in a Kandisnkyesque composition; Sarah Gumgumji’s colored drawings of large, cartoonish exclamation points on a page of the New York Times announcing Covid-19 deaths; and Marilyn August’s meditative cut paper burst of lotus petals. The range of work on display in the portfolios speaks to the quality of art education and the commitment of the students to grapple social and political issues and personal struggles through both simple and complex modes of visual expression. Also included in the portfolio is work by Thea Adams Bey, Zeke Brokaw, Sigrid Dolan, Robin Grant, Reg Lewis, August Levenson, Delphine Levenson, Madison Mack, Meridith McNeal, Eden Moore, Elizabeth Morales, Kayla Morales, Zahir Prudent, Jacob Rath, Nayarit Tineo, and Akash Wilmont. Five Myles is located at 558 St. Johns Place. Hours are Thursday – Sunday, 1-6. More information is available at www.fivemyles.org.
This news comes to a monastery in Moscow, leading to the young and ambitious monk Grigori to take the name of Dimitri, and pretend he is the Tsarevich resurrected. Boris meanwhile suffers guilt from the murder, and he graduallygoes insane following a fruitless search for redemption. The 1869 version is dramatically weaker than the revised one, Dimitri is reduced to a supporting character and Boris’s mental deterioration is rushed. The tweaks in the production to do not help, particularly placing the scene change between Scenes 5 and 6 in the middle of Boris’s mad scene. However the musical performance was excellent, Rene Pape reprised hisportrayal of the title role, and his performance was astonishing. David Butt Philip made the most of his stage time as Grigori, and the performance was well supported by Sebastian Wiegle in the pit. The supporting cast gave excellent performances, especially Aimen Anger as Pimen, an elderly monk in Moscow, and Ryan Speedo Green as a travelling monk who sings a folk song at an inn on the Lithuanian border. Boris Godunov will have its final performance on October 17th. Frank Raso is a 12-year old Brooklynite with a die-hard love of opera. He has seen nearly every Metropolitan Opera production since the 2018/19 season.
October 2021, Page 17
Books by Quinn SURVIVAL MISSION
Review of Black Star by Eric Anthony Glover, illustrated by Arielle Jovellanos Review by Michael Quinn
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Extreme temperatures. Flash flood alerts. Wildfires. Sounds like this past summer, no? These conditions are also found on the fictional planet Eleos, the setting for Eric Anthony Glover’s debut graphic novel, Black Star. Brilliantly illustrated by Arielle Jovellanos, the story follows an all-female team of scientists dispatched on a mission into deep space to retrieve a rare flower needed to generate a vital medicine to save human lives. The mission hardly qualifies as a success. Caught in an asteroid storm shortly after takeoff, the spaceship crashes on Eleos. Most of the crew is killed on impact. Its two survivors—Dr. Harper North, the leader of the mission, and Samantha Parrish, the team’s wilderness expert—are soon pitted against each other in a game of life-or-death. Battered and bruised, they race each other to the ship’s detached escape shuttle: There’s only room for one of them onboard. The novel opens with North shortly after the crash and much of the action is seen from her perspective, so it makes sense we’d root for her. But through a series of flashbacks, another picture of her character forms that makes us question our allegiance. Turns out, not so many people died on impact as we initially thought. Trapped in the wreckage, Parrish pleads with North to save the ship’s medic, Fletcher, whom we later learn is her lover. North wastes so time leaving them both behind. Freeing herself, Parrish cradles Fletcher’s lifeless body in her arms after failing to resuccitate her. For Parrish, it’s now no longer simply a question of survival. It’s a matter of revenge. North, making her way across the inhospitable planet to the escape shuttle, is aided by her tablet, the Guardian—sort of like a super-sophisticated, talking Apple watch. It gives her weather updates, acts as a GPS, and provides detailed information on Parrish’s whereabouts. It’s also able to recall conversations, and provide scenes from the past in which North is able to zoom in on details she might have missed while they were happening—for example, Parrish and Fletcher playing footsie under the table. The Guardian is neutral, yet benevolent, vested in the survival of all of the crew members. North, we realize, is subtly manipulating it by the information she feeds it and the questions she asks—an unusual twist on the old man-versus-machine angle.
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The longer we spend time with North, the more we wonder, Is this the person we want to survive? Parrish is hostile, unlikable, but clearly wronged—and somehow, therefore, in the right. The action becomes unexpectedly nail-biting as the two get closer to their target—and their inevitable confrontation.
ON THE BIG SCREEN
Glover is a screenwriter and he’s conceived this work cinematically; in fact, it’s based on an unproduced screenplay. The scenes are vividly brought to life by Jovellanos’ fantastic illustrations. North is depicted as a beautiful person of color; Parrish, as a scowling, short-haired Caucasian. They often appear in a tight palette of reds (for North) and blues (for Parrish). Their fights, fittingly, are purple-hued. Sort of functioning as a DVD special feature, Jovellanos gives a little background on her process at the novel’s end, discussing some of her inspirations (including Ripley from Alien), her process (using depictions of North’s hair as signals “dramatizing how she goes from a reclusive scientist on a mission to someone just desperately trying to survive”), and how she conceived the action and landscape. Not all of the ideas made it to the finished book, but it’s an interesting look at an artist’s process.
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Graphic novels, like film, are a visual medium, but films are aided by what actors bring to their roles. While none of Glovers’ characters fall flat, they sometimes come up a little short for a reader. We’re plunged onto the planet and we’re plunged into the characters’ lives without any idea of what brought them here as people. We’re not given too much to go on about what motivates them (other than the broad strokes of survival and revenge) or what makes them unique. They say and do the things you’d expect characters in a space comic book to do. The real novelty here isn’t the characters, though; it’s Glover’s skillful manipulation of how we feel about them. This is not a place many novelists
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October 2021
Jazz by Grella Lion In Winter
L
ate style, the idea that an artist’s work changes markedly as they see the end of life on the horizon, is mainly reserved for discussions of literary figures, or else musicians, like Beethoven, that literary figures hear of enough to dig, if not understand. Another way to put it is that it is a middle-to-highbrow topic that you can read about in The New Yorker and follow by lamenting the loss of someone without ever having to bother reading or hearing a substantial amount of their work. Not that it doesn’t exist, it does, but is rarely something of an identifiably different manner than what had come earlier. In Beethoven, it is more attributable to his long deafness and his developing inner ear than his failing health, and even Schubert’s late works are much like his earlier ones, though the calmness and depth in the music does have a haunting quality when one knows the composer wrote them while he knew he was dying. at the age of 31, from syphilis.
Because the culture of literature rarely touches on jazz, you’ll be challenged to find any analysis of late style in the music of jazz musicians. Jazz, an improvisational music, constantly fluid, usually sits outside of the idea of identifiable stages in an artists’ development. The great jazz musicians are always developing, always becoming closer to their true selves. Listening to a musician with a long career, like Sonny Rollins, means hearing a through-line of both expanding experience and wisdom and a refining centering of just what they mean to say and how they say it. The exception is Miles Davis, who was simply one of the great musicians civilization has produced, and one of the few artist across all genres and fields who pioneered one breakthrough idea after another, only to leave those behind and move on to the next innovation. There’s really no one in jazz or 20th century music as a whole, even Stravinsky, who so often and so successfully left a definite style behind to move on to one both entirely new and entirely identifiable as his work, his sound, his voice. The only creative figure who seems to me in the same realm of innovation and public impact was Picasso. Miles would point out that he needed to move on to new ideas and not repeat himself, even going so far as to call it a curse. But through the evidence of the music, it was much more and much greater than that: be-bop, cool, hard-bop, modal jazz, jazz-rock fusion, the indefinable slabs of sound heard live on Agharta and Pangaea. The only time this constant run of innovation faltered is during what turned out to be his last years, the twilight comeback of 1986-1991. The funk/rock/pop albums he made during that period have been demanding a revisionist hearing, and two new recordings that capture Miles live, shortly
by George Grella
before he died, are the keys to this. Merci Miles! Live at Vienne (Rhino) and The Lost Concert (Sleepy Night) are not just fantastic albums, rippling with excitement, but real documents. These concerts came days apart, July 1 and July 10, in France during his 1991 world tour, and the latter one was his penultimate live appearance.
The studio albums from this period are all a mixed bag, with concentrated, sophisticated ideas competing with ordinary vamps and lazy goals. This was, seemingly, the sole time when Miles repeated himself. The major live release, We Want Miles (Columbia), showcases a great band and a tired-sounding trumpeter. But the July, 1991 sets are rocking from end to end,
"He could still give you something you never heard from him before; on “Human Nature” from the July 1 concert, he teases at the harmony with as much emotional depth as ever, and plays some of the most beautiful phrases ever heard from him on record." and Miles is on fire throughout, playing with great strength and dexterity, as quick-thinking and intelligent as always. And he could still give you something you never heard from him before; on “Human Nature” from the July 1 concert, he teases at the harmony with as much emotional depth as ever, and plays some of the most beautiful phrases ever heard from him on record. The performance turns into a furious minorkey exploration on a pedal tone from the whole band, with an extraordinary solo from alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, a reminder that Miles was also one of the great bandleaders of all time (Garrett himself has a fine new release, Sounds From The Ancestors, on Mack Avenue). The Lost Concert is not just excellent musically, but a wonderful record of a special event, a “Miles and Friends” concert that honored the man by bringing on stage some of his most important previous band members. After opening with “Perfect Way,” “New Blues,” and “Human Nature” with his basic band (Garrett, Deron Johnson on keyboards, bassists Joe “Foley” McCreary and Richard Patterson, and
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drummer Ricky Wellman), comes a wave of stars and superstars: saxophonists Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Bill Evans, and Steve Grossman; keyboardists Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Herbie Hancock; guitarists John Scofield and John McLaughlin; bassists Dave Holland and Darryl Jones; and drummer Al Foster. That’s an incredible bunch of musicians, and they cycle in and out of the likes of “All Blues,” “In A Silent Way/It’s About That Time,” “Watermelon Man,” and “Footprints,” before a massive jam on the latter-day staple, “Jean Pierre.” It’s stunning. It’s also enlightening. Miles breakthrough during this period was less technical than conceptual. He had already honed his ideas to working with simple but sophisticated ideas over a steady, hellaciously funky groove, giving everyone exceptional freedom within a space defined by a bass line. With the right musicians, this was a recipe for making music that was as exalted for the mind and heart as it was for the hips, a ne plus ultra of ensemble performance across every conceivable genre. Where did he have to go? For Miles, that was the social music idea, that you could make music that brought people together in pure pleasure, but could be as sophisticated and lasting as Beethoven—don’t give people disposable crap or forgettable bubblegum, give them something for the body and mind, don’t pander, and let them experience the joy of it.
These concert albums are social music to the max. The band is beyond cooking, and hearing them build up from something as delicate as the lovely melody of “Human Nature” to an explosive end that has Wellman sounding like he’s pounding his snare into the floor while the crowd is heading into orbit in ecstasy is transformative—the musicians themselves are creating and defining a state, and then transforming it into a near-overwhelming social experience. Meanwhile Miles, like Matisse—ailing but still fecund with imagination, taking his physical limitations and turning them into the wonderful cut-outs—darts in and out, shapes the direction of the music, outlines ideas with as much logic, clarity and beauty as always, says just what he means and nothing more. He recorded a bit more after July 10, and made one more live appearance, in Los Angeles, then checked into the hospital in September, where he died of a stroke, pneumonia, decades of physical ailments and too much hard living.
October 2021, Page 19
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October 2021