west side spirit august 4, 2011

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Education: New Schoolon the Block Page 8

Diving into the HudsonFor a Good Cause

In Search ofCentral Park’s Past

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Baking as Artat Soutine’s

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ROBERTA FLACK’S UPPER WEST SIDE UPPER WEST SIDE

Unclean Waters

Page 3By Daniel Fabiani

Page 4

Love Song

Do 200 million gallons of sewage dumped into the

Hudson last week pose a health threat to

Upper West Siders?

2 • west side spirit • August 4, 2011 News YOU LiVe BY

expressKELLNER PUSHES NEW TAXI BILL—Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who has been pushing to increase handi-capped accessibility in the city’s taxi fleet, is pressing Governor Andrew Cuomo to approve an agreement with several taxi and livery associations that would increase the number of wheelchair-acces-sible vehicles while vastly reducing the proposed number of new livery permits to be made available.

“It’s hard enough to get the yellow taxi industry to agree amongst themselves,” said Kellner. “They’re embracing some-thing they’ve never done before, which is comprehensive accessibility.”

The governor is currently consider-ing a bill passed by the state legislature, the Livery Street Hail bill (A8496), that has been vehemently opposed by the taxi and livery industries and championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The bill would allow for 30,000 new outer bor-ough street hail permits to be sold to allow cars to pick up passengers who flag cars on the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx and Northern Manhattan. Lobbyists for the taxi indus-try argue that these new permits would detract from their business and harm existing medallion holders. The permits would also allow for dual-use livery cabs,

meaning cars could be dispatched as well as pick up street hails, which Kellner says is problematic because it would tempt dispatched drivers to pick up more lucra-tive street hail trips and erode the dis-patch system in the outer boroughs.

Kellner’s bill, the Access for All Taxi and Livery Plan (A4ATL), would reduce the number of outer borough livery per-mits and change them to 6,000 medallions, requiring 1,200 of them to be awarded to fully accessible vehicles. It would also require all 1,500 new yellow taxi medal-lions to go to fully accessible vehicles.

Kellner said his plan could save the MTA vast amounts of money by easing the burden on their Access-a-Ride pro-gram for New Yorkers with disabilities.

“There will be more accessible taxis and liveries on the road than the MTA owns,” said Kellner, who suggested it could save the agency up to $120 million while providing revenue for taxis and liv-ery cabs.

The new bill has the backing of many taxi and livery cab industry associations. Kellner said the reduction from 30,000 outer borough permits, which he called a potential “oversaturation,” to 6,000 medallions is a “a very good number to start with” and that the city could autho-rize another medallion sale in the future

if needed. He hopes that the governor will ask the Legislature to adopt this new plan when they are back in session instead of signing the current bill into law.

“If this plan can unite the taxi and livery industry, hopefully it can unite the Legislature and the gover-nor,” said Kellner.

—Megan Finnegan

FREE SUNSET JAZZ CONCERT IN RIVERSIDE PARK—The Riverside Clay Tennis Association pres-ents a free jazz perfor-mance by the Bob Kindred Ensemble, with vocalist Anne Phillips, on Saturday, Aug. 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. The performance is part of a series of sunset concerts on the tennis lawn overlooking the Hudson River at 97th Street. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets and picnic baskets.

—Ashley Welch

BROADWAY IN BRYANT PARK—The conclusion of Bryant Park’s lunchtime

Broadway concert series will feature performances from Mamma Mia!, Mary Poppins, Avenue Q and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on Thursday, Aug. 11. The concert will take place on the Bryant Park lawn at 12:30 p.m. and last approximately one hour. Performers from each Broadway show will perform two to three songs. Admission is free.

—AW

(Center) Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada hoists a torch to open the 2011 Summer Games at the New Balance Track & Field Center at the Armory in Washington Heights.

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WestSideSpirit.com August 4, 2011 • WeSt Side Spirit • 3

news

By Megan FinneganLast week, an emergency shutdown of

the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant necessitated a 200 million gal-lon dump of untreated sewage into the Hudson River, giving West Siders a brief taste of the horrific and unsanitary condi-tion that used to be the norm for the now cleaned-up river.

Following a four-alarm fire in the plant’s engine room, the cause of which is still being investigated, the plant had to close last Wednesday in the midst of one of the hottest summer stretches in decades, forcing the closure of city beaches and a slew of emergency mea-sures to get the plant back in operational order. The river is now almost back to normal, but some activists and politicians say that the incident should be a wake-up call to the city to improve its notification system when an environmental hazard threatens New Yorkers.

“The city did not immediately notify communities of the problem,” said State Sen. Adriano Espaillat. “People were alerted by the stench of the water, not a public notice.” He has called for a thor-ough investigation into the city’s handling of the situation.

Farrell Sklerov is the director of com-munications for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, the agency responsible for running all 14 of the city’s wastewater treatment plants. He said that the DEP did all they could while also working quickly to fix the plant.

“There’s been a very robust effort to try to alert the public to potential risks,” Sklerov said, detailing press conferenc-es and public notices that were issued through 311 and Notify NYC, as well as

signs put up at some of the more popular river access points.

John Lipscomb, a patrol boat captain for Riverkeeper, a Hudson River advoca-cy group, and manager of its water qual-ity sampling program, said that he saw people who were unaware of the sewage dump swimming in highly contaminated water in the days following the incident. He argued that, while the DEP did all it could to fix the initial problem, the city should have employed more ways of keeping people out of the river.

“Accidents in a metropolis of 8 million people are going to happen, so we need to be able to alert the public,” Lipscomb said, noting that he heard nothing about the problem on the radio until the weekend, several days after the dump took place. “If the lower deck of the George Washington Bridge is closed, I know about it. If there’s a rain delay at the Yankees game, I know about it. Why couldn’t I know about this?”

What’s not in question is that the accident clean-up was handled as effi-ciently as possible, and that while 200 million gallons is a lot of water, it’s noth-ing compared with the 30 billion gal-lons of untreated sewage that spill into the Hudson annually in what are called Combined Sewage Overflows (CSOs).

“CSOs are one of the most significant environmental challenges that we face,” said Sklerov, describing the combined sewer system design that most cities in the Northeast have used since the 19th century. “What goes down the drain in buildings and what goes down the gut-ter in the street goes into one pipe. That works perfectly well when the weather is dry, but when the weather is wet and it’s raining, most systems discharge.”

Since the water has to either go into the river or be forced back up into people’s homes, CSOs have become an expected part of sewage system operation, but Lipscomb says they pose a greater threat than a single emergency event.

When Riverkeeper took samples from the Hudson in May during a particularly wet time—meaning a high number of CSOs—about 80 percent of the sites test-ed as unacceptable in water quality.

“In May, of all our New York harbor locations, the best water quality we saw in the entire harbor was the water coming out of [the North River] sewer plant after treatment,” said Lipscomb. “You could have swum in it.”

Lipscomb said that even in the days fol-lowing the dump, many areas of the river tested as only “slightly elevated” for con-taminants; it was only in areas near where sewage had been forced to overflow that the levels were dangerously high. Still, it’s those areas that Lipscomb said should have been cordoned off to the public, with patrol cars if necessary, because of the risks of contact with the bacteria and con-taminants that untreated sewage contains.

“There are all kinds of problems that come from sewage-contaminated water,

from skin rashes to ear infections to, if you ingest the water, gastrointestinal problems,” said Lipscomb. “E. coli is one of the pathogens in untreated sewage and it causes, in some patients, kidney fail-ure.” He said raw sewage can also contain viruses that attack the nervous system and cause partial paralysis.

He said that two days after the sewage dump, he approached swimmers in his Riverkeeper boat near Fort Washington Park and they seemed afraid—but only because they thought he was from law enforcement. When he told them why they shouldn’t be in the river, they were surprised.

“They said, ‘What about tomorrow, there will be many children here swim-ming,’” said Lipscomb. “We find a way to cordon off sidewalks when there’s maintenance happening. If you went to that park and you lit off fireworks or you opened a bottle of booze—you did some-thing not permitted—you’d have law enforcement down there.”

“The city should develop very precise and effective notification guidelines,” said Espaillat. “It was pretty much kept under the radar but let me tell you, this is a big deal.”

Unclean WatersDo 200 million gallons of sewage dumped into the Hudson last week pose a health threat to Upper West Siders?

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By Daniel FabianiShe’s been hailed as one of the leading

songstresses of her time, but for the past 35 years she’s also been singing a soulful love song to the neighborhood that she’s called home.

Roberta Flack, the diva behind such hits as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” was honored at the “Bright Lights! Shining Stars!” gala hosted by the New York Dance Alliance Foundation on Aug. 1. At the ceremony, which took place at the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University, she was honored with the organization’s first Ambassador of the Arts award.

The singer recently took some time out from recording her new album, a Beatles cover record, to discuss the award, her career and life on the Upper West Side with us.

At the event last Monday night, a star-studded lineup of Broadway actors took part in song and dance performances. Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical In the Heights reunited, as did Smokey Joe’s Café actors Brenda Braxton, Felicia Finley, Ramona Keller and Deb Lyons. The NYDAF also awarded $50,000 worth of scholarships to promising young dancers.

“I’m more than honored to be chosen for this award at this time in my career,” Flack said. “The arts are all intermingled and I’ve worked with many dance compa-nies for my songs, so this is a true honor.”

A resident since 1975, the singer said that one of her favorite things about the Upper West Side is getting out and tak-ing walks through its different neighbor-hoods. She said that every day on the West Side presents an opportunity for new things to see. She also likes all of the different restaurants that have come into the community over the years. One

of her favorite places to shop is the Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center, near where she lives.

“The Upper West Side is a unique town filled with so many boutiques, delis, shopping and great people. You learn to love the town, no matter what,” Flack said. “One of my favorite places to eat is Blossom Vegetarian Restaurant, and when I shop for clothes I go to a women’s boutique called Really Great Things.”

The singer is known for her unparal-leled ability to tell a story through music and for not confining herself to one musi-cal genre—Flack has sung pop, soul, jazz, folk and more. She rose to superstardom with hits in the late ’60s and ’70s such as “Killing Me Softly with His Song” (brought back to fame by The Fugees in the ’90s), “The Closer I Get to You,” “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” and “Set the Night to Music.”

On the day we talked with her, Flack was mourning songwriter Gene McDaniels, who had died the day before. He had written many songs, including “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” one of her big-gest hits.

“I can’t believe it,” Flack said. “The music world lost a great writer. He will be deeply missed.”

Born in Asheville, N.C., and raised in Arlington, Va., Flack’s earliest musical influences were at the local AME Zion Church when she was a young girl, but she soon found she was more attuned to the local Baptist church instead, where she was known for sneaking in to hear the sermons because the music caught her ear. It was raunchy, spontaneous and full of the life Flack wanted to sing. She began taking piano lessons at age 9 and started listening to a wide range of popular music, which influenced her to become a singer. She hasn’t slowed down since.

The singer has recorded 25 albums of

live, studio and compilation releases. Her next effort is a cover album of Beatles hits entitled Let it be Roberta, scheduled to be finished by the end of the year. A small tour will follow.

“I love to sing Beatles songs,” Flack said, singing one of their tunes. “I think Paul and John are geniuses.”

In addition to her music, Flack is

also passionate about education. Earlier this year, she helped open the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx. The school offers a free after-school music program to kids, which she said is a jewel that she wants more people to know about.

“We need support for these young, tal-ented kids,” she said.

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Digging into Central Park’s PastBy Allen Houston

The past and present came together in Central Park last week.

While sunbathers lounged on a nearby hill and dog walkers traipsed into the undergrowth to find a remote spot to play fetch, a group of archeologists, pub-lic historians and college students exca-vated the remains of an African-American village that dominated the area from the 1820s until its destruction to make way for the building of the park in the mid-1850s.

Seneca Village was once home to a population of more than 260, predomi-nately freed blacks, and included three churches as well as a village school. Its boundaries stretched from 81st to 89th streets and 7th and 8th avenues in Central Park.

“We think Seneca Village is really important because it underlines the fact that there were African-Americans here throughout New York City history,” said Nan Rothschild, an archeologist from Barnard College and Columbia University, who co-directed the dig.

The dig was a collaboration between Barnard College, the City College of New

York, the City University of New York, Fordham University and New York University.

Two sites were exca-vated over the past eight weeks, with the final day of the dig taking place July 28. The first site that was uncovered was the home of William G. Wilson, a porter and sexton who had a wife and eight children and lived there from 1850 until being evicted for the creation of the park in 1856. The other was part of a square where the people of Seneca Village had socialized.

Items discovered in the excavation of Wilson’s house included a stoneware beer bottle, roasting pan, teakettle, marbles, a toothbrush handle carved from bone, a child’s shoe, ceram-ic shards, glass and nails, among other items.

The project started in the 1990s when data was collected on the area. After soil coring and ground penetrating to

find the areas that had been the least disturbed over the years, permission to dig in the park was granted by the parks department and the Central Park Conservancy.

“I was interested in an archeological dig to uncover information about the African-American experience in New York,” said Diana Wall, an archeologist

from CCNY and CUNY and dig co-director.

“We’ve looked at this com-munity as more than work-ing-class because there were professionals living here as well as rag pickers, which is interesting because you aren’t always able to live where you want to live so you have to live among your folks,” said Cynthia Copeland, public his-torian at NYU and co-director of the excavation. “What I think was most important was people was that people lived and worked together in a col-lective vein.”

Items from the site, includ-ing material stored in 250

Ziploc bags, will be taken to Barnard College where they will be cleaned and catalogued to learn more about the peo-ple who once lived here.

“This community was more middle-class than others in the area because they had their own houses. They were also free up here from the everyday presence of racism,” Wall said.

Undergraduates excavate part of Seneca Village at an archeologi-cal dig in Central Park on July 27.

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Diving into the HudsonFor a Good Cause

Baking is Art at Soutine

By Lisa ChenWhat’s the best birthday present

you’ve ever received?13-year-old Ally Witt received the ulti-

mate present for her bat mitzvah this past Sunday when family friend Aaron Perl, 11, and his father Mitch swam a one-mile stretch of the Hudson River in honor of her birthday.

Father and son swam from 99th Street to the 79th Street Boat Basin to help Witt fundraise for AHRC Nassau, her mitzvah project. Thanks to the Perls, Witt met and surpassed her goal of raising $10,000 for AHRC Nassau, which offers services for those with intellectual and developmen-tal disabilities, like Witt’s uncle.

“I was so happy that they wanted to be involved,” said Witt of the Perl family, longtime family friends who often spend holidays with the Witts. “It really meant a lot to me.”

“I thought it was a good thing to help other people with disabilities, people that are less fortunate,” said Aaron Perl. “I thought this kind of gift was a lot more meaningful than just a donation.”

Cool breezes and warm water made for a pleasant swim on Sunday. Supporters and passing joggers and bikers watched and cheered on the Perls, who were flanked by safety kayaks. Branches and leaves from last week’s thunderstorm remained in the water, but kayakers removed them from the path of the swimming duo, who swam side by side for the entire swim. The Perls completed the swim in 19 minutes and 44 seconds, a personal record for the two, who usually swim the same distance in double the time.

“The water was warm and I had a lot of fun out there,” said Aaron Perl. Hearing people cheer him on “felt great and made me go faster, ’cause I knew people were supporting me.”

The event, called “Mitzvah on the Hudson,” was briefly threatened by last week’s Hudson River sewage dump, which forced several beaches to close. The river remained closed in the days leading up to the event until it was declared open on Thursday morning.

“I had been monitoring the water qual-ity for the whole week so I wasn’t wor-ried about any leftover residue from the dump. Just to be safe, we gargled a bottle of water with 25 percent hydrogen perox-ide afterwards,” Mitch Perl said.

The physical feat is especially impres-sive for Aaron, who was born with a con-genitally short femur and overcame his own physical disability with painful sur-gery at age 6. Since then, Aaron has been incredibly physically active, competing in triathlons like his father and winning four of the 13 he’s participated in.

His father said that Aaron’s incredible physical strength comes from “his heart. He’s got the heart of a lion and it just goes,” Mitch Perl said.

Witt and the Perls hope to repeat the charity swim next year, opening it up to the public in a continuing effort to raise money for AHRC Nassau.

When asked if she would consider par-ticipating in next year’s swim, Witt hesi-tated. “I’ll leave the swimming to Aaron,” she said.

To learn more or to donate to Ally Witt’s fund, visit ahrc.org.

By Angela BarbutiMadge Rosenberg has baked in her

612-square foot bakery at 70th Street and Columbus Avenue for 28 years, where children stop in on their way to school to pick up one of her famous croissants and celebrities order extravagant cakes, such as an edible volcano created in honor of L. Ron Hubbard.

West Side Spirit: What’s your background?Madge Rosenberg: I worked for Life magazine and Time Life Books’ Foods of the Worlds series—each one was about the food and culture of different coun-tries. I started baking for George Lange at Café des Artistes, [who] had sent me to New York Tech for a couple of baking classes. I moved away for two years to South Carolina. When I came back in ’81, Columbus Avenue was really booming and I decided to open the bakery.

What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve ever made?Twelve years ago, we made a full-sized Humvee for the U.S. Army’s 225th anniversary. We set it up in Times Square. The frame was wood, with layers of vanilla cake with camouflage fondant. The army logo was in chocolate. Everyone we ever knew came to help us. The guys from the army didn’t come until the day of the event. They said if they’d known the bakery was so small, they wouldn’t have ordered it here!

What are your favorite places on the UWS?To eat, I like Celeste. I love the lobster rolls at Luke’s. I love Fairway. I miss Barnes and Noble. I like Patsy’s and take my grandchildren there for pizza. They have great rosette rolls.

What’s your favorite dessert here?The strawberry tart—pastry cream and strawberries with a thin crust. The choc-olate concorde—two layers of chocolate meringue filed with chocolate mousse.

Do celebrities come in?Mary Tyler Moore came, even though she is diabetic. Harrison Ford, Alan Alda, Lady Gaga’s mother. Bill Cosby orders stuff.

What changes have you seen in your business?Prices have gone up for flour and sugar.

We use about 400 pounds of flour a week and 200 pounds of sugar. There are a lot more food allergies now. We now make

gluten- and dairy-free and vegan pastries.

What are your bestsellers?Our croissants are very big. We ship our flourless

chocolate cake all over—we’ve even sent a couple to the military.

What have been some creative cake requests?For their wedding, two women wanted a spaceship with replicas of them inside. We created a fabulous Oscar cake for Nicole Kidman—it was all gold. Harvey Weinstein had a party and ordered it. For a TV pilot, a man had to fall off a balcony into a cake. It was so big they sent a truck for it. It had to be real cake so he wouldn’t get hurt.

Who are your mentors?Julia Child, Jacques Pépin. [Pépin] has a lovely demeanor and is very gener-ous with his time. I’m a member of the Women’s Culinary Alliance—it’s a great organization that’s been around for over 25 years.

Are you competitive with other neigh-boring bakeries?Bakeries are very generous. Magnolia sends people here if they don’t have a certain item. I never pass another bakery without trying something. I like the choc-olate icebox cake from Magnolia and the whipped cream cake from Lady M on the Upper East Side.

news Block party

Aaron Perl, 11, gives his father Mitch a high-five after swimming a mile trek on the Hudson to raise funds for AHRC.

Soutine Bakery owner Madge Rosenberg stands in the doorway of her shop sur-rounded by her staff.

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Now Enrolling for Fall! Attend an Open House


New School on the BlockBy Maria Riley

This September, Bill Swan and Maria Conti, Manhattan parents who have endured the preschool admissions pro-cess, are bringing The Goddard School to the Upper West Side. Swan, along with Goddard Systems CEO Joseph Schumacher, recently chatted with us and shared insights into what sets these schools apart from the rest.

Why Goddard?Bill Swan: One of the aspects of the

Goddard model that attracted us was the involvement of the owner. The Goddard model is that the owners are present on a daily basis. The education director is there-fore freed up to be in the classroom with the teachers, monitoring, coaching, mak-ing sure the model is followed and deal-ing with special issues with children. Her devotion is specifically and 100 percent to the educational aspect of the program, and not caught in the administration aspects. That’s unique to The Goddard School.

Joseph Schumacher: We want to pres-ent a high quality childcare alternative owned by members of the community. We think that gives us the benefit of having a locally-owned school operated by a mem-ber of the community but with all the advantages of a large corporation such as we are. What we have is a very solid core

which is nearly identical across the coun-try. Outside of that core there is a lot of opportunity for flexibility and creativity for the franchisee.

Curriculum VitaeSwan: I’m a clinical psychologist,

Ph.D. I did work as an associate dean, but the most immediate, direct, relevant experience is that I ran my own consult-

ing business for over 20 years. I have the entrepreneurial background, business management background and awareness of the educational world.

Maria [Conti] has an MBA and a mas-ter’s in counseling. We each had been moving in separate spheres, but this enterprise is going to bring us together. We both love children; we have our own child, a 7-year-old daughter. We both went through the preschool process ourselves not long ago.

New School in the CitySwan: The impetus for opening up a

preschool started with touring our child through a number of them in Manhattan. There is a relentlessness of that process. As we went through the process—there are a number of fine, wonderful, strong schools out there, but I did notice that some didn’t seem to care that much about the parents’ schedule or special circum-stances or even bother to have the basic customer service skills that you would think would be present in a business.

Joseph Schumacher: Our quality assurance is the foundation of what we do—health, safety and security. Once we have those standards, there is great opportunity for creativity and flexibil-ity by the individual franchisee. Things like…what we call enrichment pro-

grams, which are programs in addition to the standard curriculum—yoga, sign language, second language, fitness and things of that nature.

Swan: The 4 and 5-year-olds have smart boards, reminiscent of CSI, where they move things around on the glass in front of them. The children can draw on them, touch what they drew, move it to another part of the screen, and com-bine it with what another child did. It’s a fabulous opportunity to engage children in something interesting and have them work together on a project.

School PhilosophySchumacher: Our program is based on

[Jean] Piaget and it’s contextual learn-ing, playful learning. Our students are so very different and we really embrace all the differences. A typical Goddard stu-dent is a child that’s interested in learn-ing and having fun. The Goddard teacher has a base education, a love of teaching and real intellectual curiosity. All the les-son plans are teacher-prepared and that provides a lot of flexibility in the event, for instance, you’re doing a lesson plan about spiders and there’s a thunderstorm outside that catches the kids’ attention. You’re not locked in to staying with spi-ders. Kids learn best in what their most interested in at the time.

By Steve SchwartzMaking the decision to return to

school after several years off can be a dif-ficult one, requiring a significant devotion of effort, time and money. But now that many people may be facing staffing cuts and layoffs, it’s a more popular decision than ever.

The benefits of returning to school are numerous. By going back to school now, you may enjoy the results of your efforts to a greater extent. In your past educa-tional endeavors you may have been at a different place in your life, and you may not have found school to be as easy or ful-filling as it could be now.

Professional development workshops and trainings are regularly offered on weekends, providing the opportunity to gain additional skills in computer sci-ence, the financial sector or any other field. Becoming licensed in your field of

expertise and passing a licensing exam can be a valuable way to boost your job prospects whether you are out of work or simply seeking to further your career by exploring other possibilities.

How can you pursue continuing edu-cation while guaranteeing that you will be able to balance your current home and work responsibilities? The solution is relatively simple: In order to maintain the results of your efforts at home and at work, simply choose a course sched-ule that does not conflict with your other responsibilities. Most continuing educa-tion programs have course offerings that will fit in with your work schedule, and simple time management techniques and planning will allow you to fulfill any pre-existing commitments.

What can you hope to gain by pursu-ing continuing education opportunities? You can obtain a master’s degree; finish a

baccalaureate degree; study English as a second language to improve your speak-ing, reading and writing ability; or simply take courses in a particular area of inter-est for personal enrichment. Classes are available during the day and evening at a variety of universities around the five boroughs to accommodate virtually any schedule.

Another benefit of taking classes at a university is that doing so will gener-ally allow you to take advantage of that university’s resources, including library facilities, student center, computer labs, writing tutors, student programming and career advisor and management resources.

Many companies offer tuition reim-bursement programs for graduate degree and certificate-granting pro-grams. This means that, upon comple-tion of your degree or certificate, your

employer might partially or completely reimburse you for any costs associated with the program. Another factor that may lessen the cost of continuing educa-tion is the fact that the IRS will allow you to deduct up to several thousand dollars of your tuition costs each year. In addi-tion, employees with undergraduate and graduate degrees and those who have certificates in their career field tend to receive higher salaries.

It is never too late for you to go back to school to earn your first degree or an additional one. Not only will doing so increase your career prospects in the short term, but it can be an incredibly ful-filling experience.

For more information about free and low-cost continuing education pro-grams and offerings in your neighbor-hood, contact your local high school, college, adult education center or com-munity center.

Steve Schwartz is a professional col-lege admissions counselor and tutor for SAT, Regents and Advanced Placement exams.

Education

The Big Jump BackIn an economic downturn, many people consider returning to school

W e s t S i d e S p i r i t . c o m A u g u s t 4 , 2 0 1 1 • W E S T S I D E S P I R I T • 9


Cowboys and aliensDirected by Jon FavreauRunning time: 118 min.

According to Movieinsider.com, Cowboys and Aliens cost $100 million to make. Such information would normally be irrelevant, except for the fact that this week a different alien invasion movie, Attack the Block (made for only a fraction of Cowboys and Aliens’ price), turns out a thousand times better. Media dupes will pay more attention to Cowboys and Aliens (because it comes pre-sold as a video game and has a $30 million ad budget to inflate its signifi-cance) but here’s the truth: Cowboys and Aliens only offers the routine “thrills” that money will buy, while Attack the Block—the year’s best action-adventure film—has beauty, humor and intelligence money can’t buy.

Executive producer Steven Spielberg continues the disappointing new arc of his career as the presenter of junk like Super 8 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. In each film, Spielberg disgraces his own sig-nature themes, the relationship between humans and aliens and the frisson of the familiar facing the unknown. It was clear from his great War of the Worlds of 2005 that 9/11 had turned Spielberg’s famous sci-fi benevolence into skepticism. After the spiritual apex of summer 2001’s A.I., Spielberg began to show a suspicion of extraterrestrial others and see malevolence in their assorted intrusions.

Now, Cowboys and Aliens sets this paranoia in the Old West, where an out-law (Daniel Craig), land baron (Harrison Ford) and settlers (Keith Carradine, Sam Rockwell) battle invaders from outer space who seek gold ore to power their ultimate assault—an intergalactic jihad. If that prem-ise sounds exciting, just wait until you see the predictable, politically shallow, uncon-vincing nonsense that Spielberg and direc-tor Jon Favreau have made.

Apparently, $100 million means you won’t risk asking audiences to think about their fear of the Other or the racial and territorial issues of the American West. Merely after a circus, Spielberg sanc-tioned the hack Favreau, whose lucrative but unimaginative Iron Man movies have consistently bested Spielberg’s recent box office numbers, to deliver profitable clap-trap. (Spielberg should be leading fanboys to appreciate the visionaries John Moore and Paul W.S. Anderson.) Neither a classic western nor a parody, Cowboys and Aliens misuses generic aspects of the western,

failing to update the historical notions of civilization vs. wilderness. Instead, video game frivolity predominates. The late-arriving Native American characters don’t figure into a new vision of cultural differ-ence, they’re merely exotic—harbingers of mysticism and resurrection—while the film indulges a silly, violent fear of surrogate aliens.

Super 8’s alien baddies were asinine enough, but here they come again. These vicious creatures quit their reservation (without mentioning the Native American response to territorial expansion) through advanced, jet-propelled spacecraft that lasso humans and yank them up into their ships like rodeo cattle. When acting aggressively, these aliens open their crus-tacean-like crotches to reveal ugly, grasp-ing talons, gross threats to human life (still failing to articulate a parallel to eminent domain).

Cowboys and Aliens says nothing about U.S. cultural history, which makes it infe-rior to Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s script for Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex, which used the same post-Civil War peri-od to address post-9/11 anxieties. (Critics and fanboys who disrespected its non-blockbuster status ignored its fascinat-ing themes.) Jonah Hex’s conflicted hero is replaced with Craig’s amnesiac settler who awakens bewildered after an abduc-tion; fighting the aliens relieves his back-story of criminal responsibility. This con-fused sense of heroism extends to Ford’s quasi-John Wayne role as a he-man racist who must resolve his issues with Indians, Mexicans and his bratty son (Paul Dano, carrying the stench of There Will Be Blood).

Favreau can’t blend these disparate ele-ments (who could?); his hackwork merely gets the F/X on screen with no style or wit.

He flubs the Spielbergian shot of an upside-down riverboat in the desert (like the ocean liner in Close Encounters) and cheapens Spielberg’s signature reunion scenes—even between Ford and Dano. As in the Iron Man movies, Favreau shows no feeling for visualizing ideas. (Typically, a joke about needing matches misses its obvious visual punch line.) Bad as J.J. Abrams with Super 8, Favreau botches the Spielberg motifs: the aliens hoarding their loot of gold teeth, glasses and watches, and the metaphysi-cal transformation of a female alien. His method is to bilk bored, mindless audiences with half-joking, half-sincere exploits, fight scenes featuring pig bladder punching nois-es and pointless rifle vs. spacecraft shoot-outs.

Attack the Block and Jonah Hex both enhanced their genres with an inspired revamping of familiar conventions. But Cowboys and Aliens is an uninspired, third-rate rehash of Western and monster movie lore. It turns genre into formula. Spielberg has done the unthinkable: After laying the groundwork for mythological pop cinema, he has proceeded to destroy its appeal via minion hack directors who not only lack his flair but trivialize his basic humanist message.

Mysteries of lisbonDirected by Raúl RuizRunning time: 272 min.

Chilean-born director Raúl Ruiz returns with another philology experi-ment in Mysteries of Lisbon. This four-hour European extravaganza follows the entwined destinies of Catholic priest Father Dinis (Adriano Luz), who entered the min-istry as a response to worldly chaos, and orphan boy Pedro da Silva (João Luis Arrais and the adult José Afonso Pimentel) in 18th-century Portugal. But the film is primar-ily a pageant of narrative styles featuring Ruiz’s signature teasing points of view—he combines classical melodramatic devices (romantic close-ups, lush landscapes) and avant-garde devices (distorted lenses, odd-ball angles) with literary and theatrical mannerisms.

Several times, one character says to another, “I’ll explain everything to you,” and that’s the Ruiz trope: The narrat-ing voice-overs shift, just as settings leap between time periods as confessions turn to memories, present time gives way to dreams. Ruiz keeps reminding viewers to notice his formal design. The film’s struc-turing motif is young Pedro’s small theatri-cal diorama, a gift he receives that inspires fantasies throughout his life. The toy also symbolizes Ruiz’s philosophical approach to life as a series of melodramatic adven-

tures whose only significance lies in our imagination.

If the title suggests soap opera rather than political history, that’s part of Ruiz’s game—but it’s also why this art proj-ect feels overlong for its purpose. Never deeper than its frequently alluring surface (creatively lighted in a survey of painterly styles by Brazilian cinematographer André Szankowski), Mysteries of Lisbon takes a long time to relay games of romance, decep-tion, various duels, births, deaths and acts of vengeance. The soap opera becomes slightly absurd, but without that satirical edge that distinguished and justified Luis Buñuel’s films, especially those made in a digressive—and brief—mode.

Ruiz’s period settings and ironic mod-ern suggestiveness resemble Catherine Breillat’s recent Sleeping Beauty, another philological experiment that was strength-ened by Breillat’s sexual politics, examin-ing the language and presentation of fairy tales as the source of women’s romantic ideology throughout time. Breillat’s key image of the ageless Anastasia (Carla Bensainou) hiding inside a grandfather clock and looking out at the world is recalled by Ruiz’s image of young Pedro’s face framed by his toy proscenium. It’s a visual jape, whereas Breillat produced a powerful symbol for the eternal yearning of female intelligence. Sleeping Beauty penetrated social and sexual politics while Ruiz is content to play with “mys-tery.” He falls back on the superficiality of formalism, constantly referencing paint-ings, drawings and other films (Dreyer’s Gertrud , Visconti ’s The Leopard , Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon when he’s adroit, Héctor Olivera when he’s treading water).

This deliberate sumptuousness was not a problem when Ruiz made Time Regained, the 1999 deluxe Proust adap-tation that was almost a patriotic view of the mysteries of France’s cultural heritage. The cultural preeminence of Proust’s char-acters and story—plus a gallery of French movie stars—made Ruiz’s game-playing in Time Regained seem a fascinating form of cultural code. Mysteries of Lisbon doesn’t feel compulsory, and Ruiz lacks storytell-ing passion. There’s no narrative drive as to what comes next—not even when Ricardo Pereira is on screen as Alberto de Magalhães. A Latin version of Olivier’s Heathcliff, Pereira is dramatic-looking even when the movie is slack.

Ruiz is a gifted imagist who can create immediately vivid single-image scenarios of abundant background and foreground information (such as a room of monks huddled together, listening in on Father Dinis’ family secrets). But such rare shows of brevity mean Mysteries of Lisbon some-times becomes “Who Cares?”

film

Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Aliens.

artificial GritCowboys and AliensMysteries of Lisbon by arMond white

W e s t S i d e S p i r i t . c o m A u g u s t 4 , 2 0 1 1 • W E S T S I D E S P I R I T • 1 1NY PressWednesday, 8/3

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When I opened up my current issue of Wine Spectator, a feature article I was completely unprepared to see in my monthly wine rag intrigued me. Buried among the reviews of new releases from Carneros and Burgundy and lists of the top wine destination restaurants in America was a feature article on some-thing that had nothing to do with wine—a full-page, Penniless Epicure-length article on Ethiopian coffee and why the writer (Mark Pendergrast) thought the beans from this part of the world were better than those from anywhere else.

I had never delved into the world of high-end coffee. It was intriguing. It seemed, as I read, that it had much in common with fine wine production. Single producers, harvesting by hand, small-batch production…all of this was sounding very familiar. Then I tried to find some of the coffees he talked about. Not only are they extremely difficult to track down, but when you do find them, they are all available by mail order only. There are some sources in Manhattan for

Fair Trade and smaller producer coffees, but there is no consistency. One small shop’s Jamaican Blue can be great while another’s is bland and weak.

I am by no means persuading anyone to abandon their corner mom-and-pop coffee shop! The world needs more small neighborhood retailers. What became my focus, however, as I thought about my c o f - fee search in the

terms of this column, was, “Is there a way to get better-than-average coffee from a retailer that has many locations?”

So to continue my theme from last week, I will be staying away from wine once again as I try to find some unique brews that are available in more than one location.

My first home-brewed cup of cof-fee came from the evil empire itself,

Starbucks. When I perused their “pre-mium” coffee selection, I was con-fronted by a decent number of choices. Ultimately, I went with one of their “bold” blends, the Komodo Dragon. This coffee is blended from beans harvested from all over Asia’s coffee-growing regions. The tasting notes on the packaging told me to expect syrupy cedar notes and a spicy finish. After brewing a strong pot

at home, I can say that it isn’t bad cof-fee but I would hardly put it in the bold category. While it had some very mild cedar notes to it, it wasn’t intense and spicy the way I had hoped it would be. This was a drinkable pot, but certainly

nothing special.The next place I tried was Oren’s Daily

Roast. This outfit has been around for 25 years and has many locations all over Manhattan. Their coffee of the day when I visited was one of their site-specific blends, Guatemala Antigua. This was one of the smoothest, darkest, richest coffees I’ve had in a long time. Notes of cocoa, caramel, burnt sugar and even dried fruit

on the finish made it delicious and com-plex all the way through.

The last coffee I tried was at the hub for New York’s hipster-iest java, Mud. While there’s only one brick and mortar store, the ubiquitous bright orange Mud Truck can be found in several different locations around the city at any given day of the week. The Mud experience has as much to do with East Village rock club bravado as it does with coffee; it took me a full five minutes to find the actual coffee on their website.

I tried their classic MudTruck Blend, which is billed as their standard cup of joe. This was the darkest and earthiest cup of coffee I tried in the experiment. It didn’t taste so much like cherries and cocoa as they had advertised as much as it did…well, mud. This coffee was a bit much for me, but if you like your brew super-full bodied, this is your place.

So if you’re ready to give your morn-ing cup the same scrutiny that you do your bottle of Bordeaux at dinner, try one of the surprising blends from one of Manhattan’s chain coffee shops. You may find more variety than you bargained for!

Follow Josh on Twitter: @joshperilo.

By Josh Perilo

Coffee for Everyone Give your cup of joe the same scrutiny as a fine wine

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By John William Narins

Boris Mikhailov is among the more celebrated artists to emerge from the former Soviet Union since the

fall of communism. This is all the more remarkable given that his medium is photography. One of his signature projects, Case History (the original title might be more accurately, if less fluently, rendered as “The History of a Disease”), is a series of 400 pictures of the homeless in Mikhailov’s native city of Kharkov, Ukraine. The Soviet state had ensured that homelessness was virtually nonexistent, but upon his return to Kharkov from a stay in Germany in 1996, Mikhailov was suddenly struck by the extent of societal transformation. The glitzy, all-too-conspicuous hyperconsumption that had become the international image of the post-Soviet world came at a cost: the creation of a parallel underclass whose poverty and misery were at least the equal of the prosperity of the so-called “New Russians” (and “New Ukrainians”).

The first show in an American museum dedicated to Case History, MoMA’s exhibit (through Sept. 5) includes 19 of the 400 shots, billed as deeply disturbing—signs are even posted at the entrances, warning more squeamish visitors to think twice before entering. The photographs themselves are not as shocking as all that, but they do grab your attention. Their very scale is arresting; each photograph measures 93 by 50 inches. The scale varies, so that the figures may be a bit smaller or larger than life-sized, but the images always seem too close for comfort. Mikhailov’s subjects are thrust forward into our personal space and demonstratively uncover for us their breasts or genitals.

Nudity itself, however, can hardly provoke a modern audience. The choice of subject matter, too, is entirely traditional; from its early years, photography’s function as recorder of “objective truth” has associated it with journalism and social commentary. More interesting and provocative is the artist’s tightrope walk between differing approaches to photography. Much in this show underscores the documentary mode

for which Mikhailov is known: the “human,” tilted and apparently unplanned camera angles; uncorrected red eye (unavoidably obtrusive in this large-scale format); night shots crudely forelit, as if taken with an amateur’s flash; and the uniform, “standard” sizing of the photographs. This is reinforced even by how the works have been hung: unframed and unmounted, pinned to the wall with a pair of thumbtacks (the bottom of each photograph curving away from the wall), like casual snapshots on a bulletin board. Such treatment is geared toward defusing the exaltation of art suggested by the museum context. It would seem to urge us to view them as unplanned, s p o n t a n e o u s l y captured truth.

But in the work of a professional photographer, and even more so in a museum setting, all these are conspicuously considered devices. They manifest not objective documentation but the artistically contrived simulation of documentation. Aggressively choreographed compositions further undermine the photographs’ apparent claim to objective chronicling (especially the series in the “winter” section of the show, grouped on the back wall and given the separate title of Requiem, although this is nowhere indicated).

Of course, there are always authorial choices, even in photography, but image selection, cropping and the like do not strike at the heart of photography’s putative truth-recording abilities. Contrived composition goes beyond unavoidable choices

of presentation, making it obvious that the photographer is consciously influencing the source material.

Mikhailov’s subject matter participates in the same inner conflict—in pointedly grubby surroundings, unappealing subjects pull aside clothing to show us scabs, rashes and tattoos. Mikhailov sees himself as representative of the late Soviet intelligentsia, characteristically opposed to the Establishment, and his depiction of the social underclass manifests a traditional opposition stance (the almost stereotypical stance of the documentary photographer). But these works seem more aimed at the aestheticization of the grotesque. Making art from ugliness is an equally defiant rejection of the salon aesthetics that Mikhailov’s generation automatically associates with official

Soviet art.The photographs

included in this show were taken over a single year (from spring 1996 to spring 1997) and, as you circle the room, you pass through privation in four seasons. Along with constants of subject matter and the standardized format and presentation of the photographs, this tends toward a harmonious presentation of intentionally discordant material. The approaches taken in the separate works, however, are so various as to undermine that sense of unity. It is as if each shot is influenced by a different aesthetic from the photographer’s inherited inventory of photographic genres. Shots of a scruffy old man in a uniform and undershirt, raising an ax like a flag (a potential Raskolnikov?), or the contrived compositions of the Requiem group, derived from Russian

orthodox iconography, clash with pictures

designed to look like uncomposed candids. In one of the shots here (although there are others like it in the original series), the photographer includes himself in the frame, looking on intently as his subject bares his rash-covered buttocks. The move introduces the issue of voyeurism, of the potentially disquieting relationship between the photographer and his obviously vulnerable subjects. Elsewhere, the voyeur is only implied by the “exhibitionist” posing for the camera.

Mikhailov’s Case History amounts to an attempt to fuse seemingly incompatible visions of contemporary photography. This is the chief underlying tension of the exhibition and, even if the extent of his success in resolving those tensions remains an open question, it is a fascinating quest.

Making a ‘Case’ for MikhailovMoMA presents the United States debut of a “deeply disturbing” Russian photographer

“Untitled” from the series Case History 1997-98.

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W e s t S i d e S p i r i t . c o m A u g u s t 4 , 2 0 1 1 • W E S T S I D E S P I R I T • 1 5

PRESENT THEBUILDING SERVICE WORKERS OF THE YEAR

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NominateYour favorite doorman,

Do you know a great doorman, porter or “handy-man” where you live?

Is there an office cleaner, security officer or maintenance worker who helps

make life a little easier at work? How about a school, theater, event or

stadium cleaner who you believe deserves some extra recognition?

Once again this year, Manhattan Media and 32BJ SEIU, the property service workers

union–is honoring the workers who keep the city's commercial, residential and other

buildings running smoothly. This fall in a special awards ceremony on October 21st, we will

feature building service workers who go above and beyond to make tenants’, residents’ and

New Yorkers’ lives better.

GO TO: WWW.SEIU32BJ.ORG TO VOTE

Nomination Deadline is Wednesday, September 15th.For more information contact Jessica Christopher at 212.268.8600; [email protected],

or Kwame Patterson 212.388.3676; [email protected]

office or school cleaner!



PRESENT THEBUILDING SERVICE WORKERS OF THE YEARWORKERS OF THE YEAR

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Do you know a great doorman, porter or “handy-man” where you live? Is there an

offi ce cleaner, security offi cer or maintenance worker who helps make life a little

easier at work? How about a school, theater, event or stadium cleaner who you

believe deserves some extra recognition?

Once again this year, Manhattan Media and 32BJ SEIU, the property service workers union–

is honoring the workers who keep the city’s commercial, residential and other buildings running

smoothly. This September in a special awards ceremony, we will feature building service

workers who go above and beyond to make tenants’, residents’ and New Yorkers’ lives better.

GO TO: WWW.WESTSIDESPIRIT.COM TO VOTE

Nomination Deadline is Tuesday, September 6th, 2011. For more information contact Jasmin Freeman at 212.268.8600; [email protected]

or Kwame Patterson at 212.388.3676; [email protected]


By Chandni RathodA visit to the Bronx Zoo usually entails

animal attractions, lessons about the natu-ral world and, if you’re lucky, a ride on the bug carousel. A single trip to the zoo can help turn your child into a mini-veterinar-ian, a young science teacher or an animal enthusiast. This summer, prepare to add LEGO engineer to the list.

From July through the end of Septem-ber, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Bronx Zoo and LEGO have teamed up to create The Great Summer Zoofari: A LEGO Wildlife Expedition, where Master Builders will expertly shape LEGO piec-es into intricate, life-sized lions, tigers and bears. In an effort to help visitors learn more about the zoo and the WCS’s global field work, the series of LEGO-inspired sculptures will inhabit the park all summer alongside the real-life animals. You’ll find Kihansi spray toads near the Reptile House Lawn; Chilean flamingos by the Pheasant Aviary; and the zoo’s own LEGO-made King Kong at the Congo Gorilla Forest.

“Children love animals and they love LEGOS. The combination of the two is sure to make a lasting impression on our guests,” said Max Pulsi-nelli, WCS assistant director of communica-tions. “The Great Sum-mer Zoofari : A LEGO Wildlife Expedition was developed to use the popularity of animals and LEGOs together to further connect our visitors to wild nature and help tell the story of the Earth’s endan-gered wildlife in an entertaining way,” he explains. “We focused on species that are both exhibited at the zoo and ben-efit from WCS’s field conservation work around the globe.”

Upon entering the park, Zoofari ad-

venturers will receive a “Passport” to guide them through the new exhibit, packed with interesting factoids. Along the way, kids can stop to get their Pass-port stamped while learning how they can help make a difference in protecting the wildlife.

Little zoo goers can also assist LEGO Master Builders as they continue to con-struct the various animal-themed sculp-tures, like penguins and giraffes. Ultimate-

ly, the Master Builders will oversee the build-ing of a giant LEGO Mystery Mural in the Dancing Crane Pavilion, which will reveal an animal scene when com-plete.

Looking for more family fun? The park will also be featuring Wildlife Theater shows, crafts and activities in collabo-ration with the Museum for African Art, which re-opens on Museum Mile in September, as well as conservation learning stations. The Bank of America Explorer Zone will host educational displays to teach visitors why field scientists track animals in the wild with camera traps and how gorilla con-servationists determine habitat areas that need safeguarding. At a kid-friendly lunch tray station, tots can try their hand at pre-paring meals for gorillas, tigers and bears.

For a hands-on approach, plan a Zoofari day via the Bronx Zoo’s Interac-tive Trip Planner. Kids can chart their own adventure to visit much-loved ani-mals by following a colorful drawing of the zoo’s online map. After making their selections, the map cleverly configures

the fastest routes to your chil-dren’s chosen exhibits.

Safari goers can edit and reroute their personal guide until it’s adventure-ready. While expanding

your knowledge of local and global wildlife and conservation, you

just might find yourself going home with the next Jane Goodall.

The Great Summer Zoofari: A LEGO Wildlife Expedition is presented by Dis-ney Vacation Club and sponsored by Bank of America. To learn more about the Bronx Zoo and The Great Summer Zoo-fari, visit bronxzoo.com.

This Saturday evening, enjoy read-ings, songs and interpretive perfor-mances of Shel Silverstein’s work from musicians, professional enter-tainers and special celebrity guests. Little ones who love Silverstein’s

classic books, like The Giving Tree, and his delightful poetry will enjoy this special tribute. The event takes place at 7 p.m. at East 72nd Street. For more information, visit summer-stage.org.

Hot Tip of The Week

Shel Silverstein Tribute in Central Park

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Build a GorillaAt the Bronx Zoo’s Summer Zoofari, life-sized LEGO animals aim to teach and inspire

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By Alan S. Chartocki’ve met an awful lot of people who

say that they smoke marijuana. they laugh when i tell them that i never have. Nevertheless, a lot of people smoke or have tried it and have created an underground economy, sort of a prohibition do-over, that has helped criminals in our country main-tain their elevated style of life.

With these illegal distribution networks come a loss of taxes on the product as well as guns, gang fights and public corruption of one kind or another. in fact, you can’t have corrupt cops and public officials with-out drugs like marijuana. As Willy sutton once put it, “that’s where the money is.”

We all know it—you’d have to be in la-la land not to get the way it works. Of course there are those who appropriately point out that marijuana use will get peo-ple high, impair their driving and cause accidents. that’s true. But in a society where a far worse drug, alcohol, does far more damage, we allow the sale and sub-sequent taxation of the more dangerous one and send people to jail for the other.

there are people who will tell you that their pain and suffering from ill-ness, sometimes terminal, is alleviated by smoking marijuana. there are studies suggesting this is a fact and so in some parts of the country, like California, it is legal to use marijuana like other any med-icine to help those who need it.

Naturally, there are some entrepreneur-

ial Americans who extend the concept of medical marijuana to its pure recreational use—again, like alcohol. these folks have an expansive view of who needs medical marijuana, and are not averse to making a buck by selling the stuff. Obviously, there will be a lot of doctors shopping to find willing prescribers, just the same as folks who seek out more dangerous narcotic drugs that are manu-factured by drug companies.

into all of this comes the dynamic young governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who is very, very good and pragmatic at judging what the public wants. On this one, how-ever, he has a problem. He has positioned himself, as has the president, to the right of center to pick up centrist swing voters. But the polls are changing. Americans are becoming much more tolerant of the use of medical marijuana. it’s hard for most folks to imagine making a criminal out of a dying cancer patient who experiences some relief from the drug.

Of course, most right-wing libertarians are all for marijuana legalization under the mantle of keeping government off their backs. Nevertheless, our history in this country has been to promote the concept of “reefer madness.” Marijuana, we are told, is a gateway drug: First you smoke weed, then you graduate to other drugs. in some cases that is accurate—but it can be

the same with the use of alcohol. By allow-ing the use of marijuana, we can spot those with problems and refer them to experts who might be able to help them.

For his part, Cuomo has announced he is opposed to medical marijuana, and his words made more than a few ripples when he said he was reconsidering his position.

that’s good; he should. His risk, and he knows it, is that people running for the presidency will eventually be asked whether they’ve ever smoked pot. God forbid! if they are for the fair-minded use of marijuana, they will be portrayed as permissive nuts, cartoons will show them smoking weed and hallucinating.

Cuomo has shown guts on things like marriage equality. He has appropriate-ly led, not followed. if he senses a sea change in public reaction to marijuana, he’ll be tempted to get out in front. that’s why he sent up smoke signals to the pub-lic when he said he was reconsidering his opinion on medical marijuana but was still opposed. this is called “running it up the flag pole and seeing who salutes.”

Hey, we’re going to get medical marijua-na. the only question is whether this gover-nor will have the cojones to do what is right.

Alan s. Chartock is president and CeO of WAMC/Northeast public radio and an executive publisher at the Legislative Gazette.

Sharing School Space To the Editor:

i credit public Advocate Bill de Blasio for trying to get public and charter schools to share lim-ited space (“Learning to Co-exist,” July 28). However, public schools are aware of the unequal allocation of scarce resources that the char-ters benefit from.

When the parents and administration at p.s. 9 in Brooklyn spent two years rebuilding the school’s library with the help of $450,000 in grants, only to see Brooklyn east Collegiate Charter school be given 6 hours, 45 minutes to p.s. 9’s 4

hours, 30 minutes to use the library, one can understand why co-location may not be welcomed.

A state judge recently voted against the teachers union and the NAACp by closing 22 failing schools while granting

permission to 15 char-ter schools to share space with public schools. some elemen-tary schools may have wanted to expand to K-8 to increase the supply of middle school seats.

there are seat shortages for current and future students throughout the five boroughs. the dOe has commitments

for $9 billion over the next four years to renovate schools and create 30,000 seats

in 56 buildings. Because of race to the top funds, Albany last year increased the charter school cap from 200 to 460. By more than doubling their number, i fore-see charter schools gaining an unequal proportion of these additional seats.

Both public and charter schools can provide parents with a choice for a qual-ity education for their children. But in a period of scarce resources, careful exami-nation needs to take place to see how co-locating a charter school will affect the public school.

perhaps when students have equal time in libraries and elementary schools are able to expand into middle school, Bill de Blasio will recognize a peaceful educa-tional coexistence.

Daniel M. WolkenfelD

East 82nd strEEt

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

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The Governor’s Next Big PushCuomo should get in front of the medical marijuana debate


By Lorraine Duffy MerklI was being sent to prison.At least that’s how it felt when the

summons for jury duty showed up in my mailbox.

FYI: It’s mandatory, like pay-ing taxes. Failure to appear, aka FTA, can result in civil or criminal penalties—and then there’s something about a $1,000 fine. In addition, anyone who skips out on their civic duty is automatically assigned a new date for future service.

And so I reported to 100 Centre Street promptly at 8:45 a.m.

The court clerk, like a social director on a cruise ship, went over the activi-ties of the day. He opened his mono-logue with a rousing “Good morning, jurors!” a la Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam. When he didn’t get a big enough welcome in return he said it again, with the annoyance of a gram-

mar school teacher who expects the class’s enthusiasm to match his own. We all replied in unison—this time with feeling—so we could move on…to the film.

It begins in medieval times, depicting how, if you were accused of wrongdoing, you would be tak-en into the woods and burned or drowned by villagers. “Is this fair and impartial justice?” asks the announcer. Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer then walk us through a segment called “Your Turn,” which

shows citizens just like us talking about how much they don’t want to serve. Many heads in the room nodded in agreement.

A judge then made an appearance to give us a “You Make the Call” pep talk.

The court clerk returned and smirked as he announced, “It’s gonna be a long day.”

A few jurors acted out over their “incarceration”; however, most of us took

our service in stride. Florescent lighting notwithstanding, the accommodations weren’t bad—they’ve got Wi-Fi now, as well as a vending machine that stocks Fritos and Raisinettes.

The morning went by quickly, as we were brought before a judge on a crimi-nal trial for jury selection. I was excused from what would have been a four-month trial. Then I sat around for the rest of the afternoon.

The juror’s lounge had a study hall quality to it; my peers were working, reading, texting or doing what they do via computer. I did some writing, read a novel and checked my email, and while I ate lunch I caught up on a missed episode of the “The Good Wife” on the Internet. It was sort of business as usu-al, but instead of doing all this from the comfort of my Raymour and Flanigan sectional I was in a functionally fur-nished courthouse.

On day two, our call time was 10:30

a.m. Again I worked, caught up on calls, (in the hallway, since there are no cell phones allowed in the jury room), got my to-do list squared away and read more of my book.

We were granted a two-hour lunch, so I ventured nearby to Century 21, the dis-count designer clothing store that people swear by but I never frequent because it is nowhere near my life.

At 3 p.m., the court clerk got back on his mic to perform five minutes of Catch a Rising Star-worthy schtick: “How we doin’ this afternoon? Everyone enjoy their lunch? Remember, there’s no food or drink allowed in the jury room” (so no waitress to remember to tip). And on that, we were dismissed.

As we left, he handed us our proof of service certificates, reminding us that our $40 per diem would be mailed from Albany in six to eight weeks, and bid us adieu with a wink and a smile and a “See ya in six years.”

I’m almost looking forward to it.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barne-sandnoble.com.

By Bette Dewing“The impersonal hand of government

can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.” Hubert Humphrey’s wisdom repeatedly appears here, because, as Dr. Samuel Johnson discovered, “We need as much to be reminded as informed!”

Being informed, of course, comes first—as for the “helping hands of neigh-bors,” I just learned that The Hallmark Channel is rerunning the award-winning, autobiographical The Waltons in August. Yup, back-to-back episodes of the life of this Depression-era family air weekdays from 4 to 6 p.m.

Unfortunately, it’s up against the “news” that we’re thankful many still watch (even if reading The Daily News, The New York Times and this weekly are much more essential), though surely there’d be less bad news if The Waltons and not Jersey Shore and Lady Gaga influenced our customs and views.

The Waltons’ creator, Earl Hamner, 87, recently explained how he “wants to throw things at the TV set” for its “gra-

tuitous violence and celebration of per-versity” that also infiltrates movies and music. So write about it, Earl! Speak out about it, and when the Library of Virginia gives you a Lifetime Achievement award later this fall, protesting cultural tox-ins could be your greatest achievement!

Notice that, in the Big Apple, those helping hands often come in the form of building staff members, like Nelson Burgos, the mainte-nance supervisor at 420 East 80th Street. On July’s hot-test day, he and his assistant Robert checked on age 70-plus tenants who lived alone, asking “Are you okay? Is there anything we can do for you?” My tenant source replied, “No, but it sure helps to know you care!” Amen!

Apartment house staffers are the first line of defense against crime and other emergencies, but above all they provide daily social interaction, which is helpful to all but especially to those too much

alone. And the media, which so deter-mines public concerns, often forget the latter, even in heat waves and blizzards.

Critically needed are stories and photos of commonplace but unad-dressed suffering such as the one

in Pulitzer-deserving Manny Fernandez’s Aug. 2, 2006, New York Times story, “Checking Up on Those Trapped at Home,” vividly illustrated by Ozier Muhammed’s photo of a heat-depleted 86-year-old retired nurse who couldn’t afford to run her air conditioner.

This is the coverage elders need: to show elderhood reality, which needs infinitely more attention. Reportedly 300,000 of New York’s almost 1 million 65-plus population live alone. Many are 85-plus. But any elder news and photos shown are of excep-tionally vigorous and socially involved old people.

Ignored is the natural need for vital connections between family genera-

tions. Accepted is age apartheid in gen-eral. It’s no wonder whoever opened my letter to the mayor sent a “thank you for your condolences” form letter in return with no acknowledgement of this paper’s editorial and my column strongly commending this son’s daily calls to his mother. That’s something all adult off-spring should emulate, we said—such interaction could even help reduce Medicare costs.

City Hall promised to “follow up” on how to get these essential-to-societal-health messages to the mayor. Again, there’s so much cultural resistance to more than peripheral ties between adult offspring and their parents, especially between sons and their mothers—forget mothers-in-law.

So support the mayor’s good sonship and The Waltons’ extended family and neighbor interdependence.

Contact [email protected] for the Fernandez story and Muhammad photo, for Charlotte Bloomberg’s good son tribute and to email about Nelson Burgos’ concern for his elder tenants. Attention must be paid! It can be done if enough of us try!

[email protected]

The Jury’s Still OutDante’s Purgatory and court duty have a lot in common

Harking Back to Bygone Virtues Cultural change can come if enough of us work for it

new york gal

Dewing Things BeTTer

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