Amy gives me an Easter Egg

Caught one of many loving people laying eggs for another East Hunt 6th Street Garden

Easter Egg Hunt Tompkin Square Park

Shirley thank you for all you do for our community!!!!

Shirley works for the Parks Dept. here at Tompkins Square Park and Shirley we appreciate you!

Shirley says her main inspiration are her kids and grand kids. She loves her work for the Parks Dept.
"New York is what is happening. If there is something to be made of yourself, here is where it's at."

Shirley we love you! Thanks to you and all the people that work so hard to keep Tompkins so beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!

coolest book store on St. Marks Place

East Village Books, 212-477-8647  I love '60's imagery.  The color sensibility from that era is mind blowing and I mean all naturally for me...just love the colors and the poster art.

Yaffa Cafe, St. Marks Place

Hal superstar bicycle doctor musician and Jeff local NYC artist

Hal is a face we all know and love. His band is www.kilifax.net and he is the best all around New Yorker with a magical flair for bike repairs at Bicycle Habitat at 244 Lafayette Street between Spring and Prince.

Jeff is a local NYC artist like me and he said "People need to support owner operated shops!

Jeff@JefferyMaron.com

infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure

Your Con Ed bills go up to pay for this tsunami of over the top community crushing supersized development and aren't you glad so many mega dorms in the East Village are not for profit supersized student housing...?  The bills also go up I am guessing because of all the lawsuits.  

Houston Street and this has been going on for so long...today the streets are blocked off block after block but at least it doesn't resemble a terror attack ...

Tina Negron's murderer --Help catch him --here is his photo

Drew Peterson accuses next door neighbor of stalking! Surprised? No.

Watching Nancy Grace and there it is -- the number one suspect -- the husband accuses the next door neighbor of stalking.
Surprise? No surprise at all. So typical and another red light...one of many.

I am glad as many people as possible are watching this guy. I feel so sorry for the children.
I worry for the next door neighbor's safety but at least a lot of people know and that may be better than a restraining order.

Diane Sawyer's piece on prostitution is heart breaking.

Diane Sawyer's segments on prostitution is heartbreaking and one of the first points she makes is the high statistics of violence these women endure and the also death. Surprise, men think they are disposable and Sawyer estimates the life expectancy is 35.
Factors besides enormous violence, verbal abuse, humiliation are also homelessness, drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Many also suffered child abuse.

Based on the above paragraph it makes the law's focus prosecuting these women even more heart breaking. Some women interviewed said they did exit the industry after being arrested. Sawyer also reports the pimps are rarely prosecuted and the segment highlighted how abusive they are. The use fear, intimidation and violence and walk away unscathed.

Legalizing prostitution would be best but with careful monitoring and open available support services to exit the industry and also help with any of the abuse issues such as violence, homelessness, drugs and alcohol abuse. If it is legal than women who are confronted with violence can turn in theory to the police where they can't and in fact are more likely to be arrested than their pimps and clients.

If it is legalized than women and clients can be tested to make sure they do not have diseases. If it is legalized and kept out of the parks and streets than women and girls who are not sex workers may not be harassed by men looking for sex workers.

Sawyer's show does not cover male prostitution or under age prostitution.

One young woman, Skyler who studied opera sang as Diane Sawyer requested and her voice was beautiful. She suffered a trauma so terrible she cannot talk about it and since the interview she disappeared. Made me cry. Is she dead? Did she descend further in to despair and drugs? Her friend had the most enormous stabbing wound with over a hundred stitches and Sawyer said this woman did return to live with her grandmother. It was clear she had suffered so much on every level possible.

abc.com Sawyer says to go here and you can express your thoughts and there is info on resources.

After I posted this I thought more about the politics of sex, the double standards and the hypocrisy.
I think of an ex President who used an intern and it was free exchange -- he played on her emotions giving her gifts but he became angry when she did not understand her role and that she was ultimately disposable. I don't care how liberated people think they are -- there is still shocking sexism and women have to deal with the hostility of this "knowing your place" and this "disposable" mentality. I made art when I was very young literally turning that concept of disposability around.

There is hypocrisy and it can also be found in women. A socialite that barters a very expensive dress or trip to some where for being a companion does not consider that sex work. Economic power, opportunities and ideologies seem out dated and dishonest.

There are women that marry men or date them with the clear understanding the money and the gifts are part of the deal and the same with divorcing these men. It is lucrative and more money than most of these women can earn in mainstream corp. America or for that matter in a life time. I have heard the rumor that women that marry men for money with the intention of making money attempt to get pregnant right away because a child means more money for the lucrative divorce settlements which are their ultimate goal and this does go both ways with men that marry women for their money and same gender relations. Sexual politics have economic issues that are part of most everyone's lives.

I wish Diane Sawyer uses her resources to track down Skyler if she is alive and help her to get off the street and return to her musical education, help her get employment and help with her drug addiction.

Calling all Angels

Jane Siberry with K.D. Lang singing Calling all Angels is such a beautiful song, poetry...one of my most favorites....

Kid Magic Garden postponed due to weather

Dear Gorgeous Gardeners,

I am so looking forward our Spring season kickoff, seeing many of you again, and meeting new gardeners and kids! But the forecast is calling for snow on Saturday, and in any case, being bitterly cold and windy. So many of you have expressed interest in coming and volunteering, and a few of you have emailed me back with concerns about the weather...

So... after talking it over with some of the other gardeners, we've decided to postpone the event for 2 weeks. I hope that everyone who planned on coming out this weekend can make it on Saturday, April 12th from 2-5 instead. And maybe some of you who wanted to come this Saturday but couldn't can come that day instead!

If you have emailed/ spoken to me about this Saturday, please email me again, so I know no one is going to brave the cold and find a locked garden! We won't be doing egg painting, as that moment will have passed, but will dream up another fun art project to do with the kids, along with pizza garden seed and flower planting, an exciting composting workshop, and other gardening projects.

New Children's Magical Garden Spring kickoff:
Saturday, April 12th
2-5 PM

Rain date:
Sunday, April 13th
2-5 PM

Happy brrrrr Spring, and enjoy the lengthening sunlight!
Kate

Tina Negron's murderer is out there his photo P28 The NY Post

Tina Negron's murderer is out there his photo P28 The New York Post
You can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-tips
if you have any information.

James Gonzalez 42 is wanted for the murder of Tina Negro stabbing her to death at Key Food at Avenue A and 4th Street Feb. 29th, 2008 here in the East Village.

You can see his photo in today's The New York Post page 28.

The NYPost states he then turned his rage on Tina Negron's co-worker and stabbed her in the torso. She survived the attack.

Please help spread the word and catch this murderer.


I am posting this again and I wish I had a photograph to post with this.

Old New York goodbye, New New York has arrived, poem: New York City Dreams

City of dreamers
even broken dreams have their beauty like a worn out facade
but they tell us it is about money
dreams in to dollars
called losers if we can't cash in,
it is about mega bucks this new city "make over" for college town kids and power brokers broke it down
yeah they broke it down
the beauty of old New York City for their mega monolith sea of glittery mirrors
concrete mega builds
river of denial mega dorms
half empty hotels
and invisible "you are not welcome signs"

NYC is was a city of dreamers and possibilities
but we had dreams
dared to have dreams
still do
still do
dream

Used to be called Urban jungle
hinting at something wild
but now it is just a mega shopping mall
for college kids, tourists and a donald trump bad reality show

Demonstration planned Monday at the gates of Columbia U.

To Coalition to Preserve Community Members and other interested:

(1) The Coalition to Preserve Community will have a general meeting next Tuesday, March 25, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM in St. Mary's Church, 521 West 126th Street. We have a demonstration planned on Monday, March 31 at the gates of Columbia, 116th Street and Broadway, 4:30PM. (more info to follow)

(2) Below is an article published in the Columbia Spectator by Tom DeMott discussing the rezoning of 125thStreet with a critique which emphasizes problems with the arts initiative component and solutions to that, the general displacement aspects, and Columbia's relation to Harlem planning.


Invest in This: Harlem Not For Sale
By Tom DeMott
PUBLISHED MARCH 12, 2008

So the Department of City Planning has a planning problem. It needs to come up with a zoning change that will allow the real-estate industry to score big on 125thStreet, Harlem, U.S.A. and simultaneously appear as benign, even artsy-driven,dialoguers.
Illustration by Ramsey Scott

Creating openings for the boys who control New York City is the agency’s motivating impulse when defining successful development, no matter what kind of happy drivel they throw at us when they compose their treatises on urban removal.

It is obvious to anyone walking historic 125 that the heart and soul of the neighborhood is at stake. Even tourists and other non-natives glimpse this as they amble through, and they don’t have the collective memory—the familiarity with landmarks of resistance too numerous to conjure, the soapbox tradition of true democracy, loud notes boasting Aretha’s gospel and JB on the good foot every half block (real quality of life), the University on the Corner of Lenox Avenue, the bent rims, even the blue tape (7th) and the red tape (8th) and all that inventive, desperate, exploitative, creative street hustling that an Ivy League education can’t suss, even as it teaches its own to do the same with a fountain pen.

Unfortunately, the culture alive and well in decision-making entities large and small, “elected” and unelected, teaches us that raggedy ain’t too good, that Shange’s little ole Record Shack really needs to be replaced with some younger and commercially viable arts storefront initiative. True, I am biased. I’ve enjoyed buying my Mapfumo, Evora, Manguana, and Alpha Blondy there on my extended breaks from the nearby Manhattanville Post Office, where I received a pay check for decades, but that don’t mean I am narrowly defining a real arts initiative as one that only preserves brother Shange’s beautiful shop (or re-opens Bobby’s Happy Hut, etc.).

Yes, planners should find a way to keep these businesses here, but let’s start with something grander. Let’s get a real arts initiative—easily accomplished if will and imagination triumph over vicious, cynical, and desperate opportunism. Let’s bring Barry Harris’s Jazz Cultural Theater, and its all-arts equivalents, to Harlem. Let’s watch a new round of Barry’s girls and boys growing out of shoes and growing into Monk and Mysterioso, cultivating authentic generational connections, and letting souls run deep (and this ain’t some Bollinger-esque invocation of Harlem’s friggin’ “mystique,” my brothers and sisters). The housing project grounds where Thelonious walked alone on winter days, gesticulating to himself, stopping by his snowy woods and creating hisDavids, are fast disappearing. Pols who claim that the Coalition to Preserve Community exaggerates the bleak future of Grant and Manhattanville Houses and who pay no mind to MindyFullilove and Neil Smith are punks who lay down for the man. Yeah, it’s like that.

It’s like that because we are talking about the annihilation of a culture. City Planning and Blond Burden knocking it down, displacing residents and artists and businesses, taking away the light, and bringing us that CU “transparent” architecture which puts those inside not with us, but under glass—which is quite frankly where some of them should be on view, resting permanently.
Look, if you’re deadening a culture, you barter in death. Arts initiative... hell, it is all about affordable space that’s open and available, not some pimper’s paradise for connected not-for-profits regranting space to the humble and non-threatening. It is all about not kicking out the people who have lived in Harlem and who make Harlem, Harlem.

Let’s find an organized way to help those young people, stepping out of the crowd to rhyme at the21st Annual West Harlem Coalition Anti-Gentrification Street Fair, to flow, mix, make poetry and music, yeah to rap. (And we ain’t talking about some handpicked, politically sanitized poets, even though my favorites were talking New York, talking gentrification, just folks who found other means to soapbox—after all, it’s the Harlems that supply and re-supply our country’s honest, and fun, language.) Let’s revive the Hispanic social clubs, at least some authentic version, so important to Harlem’s culture.

Let’s get Columbia U (hey, they are the architects for much of Harlem’s goings-on and have been for decades) to dump its current eminent-domain-violating eviction expansion plan. Many of us fought hard 20 years ago to shut down the Harlem-on-the-Hudson plan (luxury housing in the same spot as CU’s proposal, posing as mixed income, fostered by the Harlem Urban Development Corporation’s pols who used that project as a poverty pimp slush fund for years). Columbia gave it lip service, but was scoping out its own manifest destiny there, so it let “city planners” play in their sandbox for a bit. CU is linked to all zoning changes, including this arts shell game.

If you think I’m tougher than the rest on my 125—which ain’t mine or yours (or the real estate holders’, or Columbia’s, or Rangel’s) but America’s—imagine an interview with Lester Young on the subject of the New York City Planning Commission’s Arts Initiative. You couldn’t quote him ’cause he spread curses like tasty collard greens but the homogenized version might be, “Screw your uptown theme park and kill this bureaucratic gesture and its inevitable bland bureaucratic outcome right now.” If creativity flows from an area’s diverse and singular sensibility, the loss of that culture and those individuals stymies artistic advance. Harlem’s storied contribution is reduced to sad carny sketches of tourists passing by some second-rate local history museum with a unknowing curator from the “non-profit sector” whose prime interest is getting paid.

Jacob Lawrence enjoyed painting his community and knew its struggle was essential and wonderful. David Dinkins getting booed for supporting his employer’s land grab was participatory art. Where are the Columbia professors who are letting their trustees gangster us with zoning for dollars all over Harlem? Where the fuck are you? (That’s for Lester.)
William Carlos Williams wrote: “It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there.”

Better let our poets—who dance, paint, write, play, rap, talk, protest, ball, act, and sing—live and breathe here, along with the rest of us who need to be here too. And give those drummers in Marcus Garvey Park some amplification and cushions ’cause this is a live tradition of many, not a networking of the glass-domed elite. No sellout, no skulduggery, no flim-flam, no displacement, no bio-labs, no eminent domain, and no phony arts initiative. Harlem is not for sale. Harlem, no sevende. Invest in that!

The author is a member of the Columbia College class of 1980. He is a member of the Coalition to Preserve Community.

TAGS: 125th Street, arts intiative

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/29901

GO TO www.stopcolumbia.org

man's letter in The NYPost "Who's next in line for NY Governor? Ron Jeremy?

David Patterson fell and it was at a record setting pace. If when he was sworn in he had focused less on stand up comedy and also on implying he was going to be on higher moral ground than Spitzer than it might not have been such a fall. Patterson is on higher moral ground than Spitzer but the letter in The New York Post sums it with irony and humor. It does feel like the fall of Rome or we are watching the makings of another HBO special series and there are far more steamy scandals that we do not know about until we see it remade on HBO or our great grand kids will be watching the behind scenes "things" we never knew about. Anyway, yes the new governor will be left in place and the State and City of New York are in bad shape despite way back when the mayor at some point saying the city budget was more than okay and remember city council voted themselves a raise...???? Hello?

The city is heading for dire straits and it is wrong to be making budget cuts especially to school programs. In fact I wish we could get more organized help to get more kids off the streets after school and with some in depth one on one mentoring where volunteers sit with them and go over home work. These kids need one on one individual attention and if it means corporations open up their conference rooms after school and sit with these kids going over home work -- something to get the support they need. Cuts are the last thing NYC needs. It is sad to see the work fare program cut from the Parks dept if that happens. Does the city have to be bailed out like Bear Stearns? How many more tragedies that look like terrorist attacks but are infrastructure or construction related can the city take and handle with budget cuts? The NYPD has under 40,000 police policing 8 million plus people and their starting salary is not a recruitment tool but the opposite. I am one of many that still wants our firehouses closed REOPENED! We don't want hospitals closed with the population only increasing and the calamities too.

I am very upset about many things but this letter in the NYPost made me laugh.
Women porn stars are carving out new grounds in terms of becoming entrepreneurs and in Jenna Jameson's case a media mogul.
I do believe the women in the porn business have suffered child abuse and are further exploited in the industry until some break through to this new level of power where they become multi-faceted business women.

The letter made me laugh and it is rife with irony because a porn star like Ron Jeremy would at least have been honest and it feels to me David Patterson was not. He was not prepared to be thrust in to the limelight and the scrutiny that comes with it.

Tina Negron's murderer is out there his photo P28 The New York Post

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2008/03/tina-negrons-murder-help-catch-him-here.html

Here is a color photo and the wanted poster in Spanish please spread the word and the photo

You can call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-tips
if you have any information.

James Gonzalez 42 is wanted for the murder of Tina Negro stabbing her to death at Key Food at Avenue A and 4th Street Feb. 29th, 2008 here in the East Village.

You can see his photo in today's The New York Post page 28.

The NYPost states he then turned his rage on Tina Negron's co-worker and stabbed her in the torso. She survived the attack.

Please help spread the word and catch this murder.

Kidsmagicgarden.net (still threatened by eviction) celebrates Spring Equinox and needs volutneers!!!

www.kidsmagicgarden.net
Children's Magical Garden de Carmen Rubio
Stanton and Norfolk Street, L.E.S.
F train to Delancey, 2 blocks north
an L.E.S. community garden for all, especially kids, for over 25 years and counting. Envision it made permanent!

Dear Lovely Garden Supporters,


This is a reminder that this Saturday, March 22nd from 2-5 will be the garden's official kickoff to this year's growing season. We will be planting seeds (in containers) for our new pizza garden, learning about composting kitchen scraps and lasagna style gardening (as well as some um... soil moving in there for the enthusiastic) signing up new members, and also there will be hard boiled egg painting for the kids in honor of the Spring Equinox! The garden will provide several sets of water colors, and 2 dozen hard boiled eggs (organic, which I know even so might disappoint some of you caring vegans, but I thought it was better than plastic eggs with sugary jelly beans...) If anyone has more hardboiled eggs to share, please bring them, as kids often like painting more than 1.

I could also use volunteers in these areas: Flyering with me tomorrow and Friday in the neighborhood.
Someone to volunteer being in charge of the kids painting station at the table (a very fun job)
Multiple photographers who will please email/get me a disk after the event so that we can document it and put it up on our website.

Anyone who wants to bring/contribute juice, water, and healthy snacks is very welcome!
Packets of seeds of all kinds are welcome, (organic preferred) with emphasis on vegetables and herbs that are yummy on pizza.

Come join us for an exciting day of growing veggies, flowers, kids, community, and celebrating the return of spring!

Happy, happy Vernal Equinox!
Kate Temple-West, garden director with Alfredo Feliciano, director and founder.

--
www.kidsmagicgarden.net

Nixmary if there is a Heaven she deserves a special place

Just heartbreaking to think of her suffering and how she died.  It was if she lived in a concentration camp and was tortured, starved and every horror that could be inflicted on her was by the people that were suppose to care for her.

Too horrible and again there had to be so many red light warning signals that were ignored.   This case must be one of the worst in NYC's history.

There is something so sick about the anger...the rage that was directed at her as they blamed her and justified their viciousness in their warped minds.  

In every religion, culture there is some kind of believe in karma  or "what goes around comes around" but how can justice truly be served in this case?    The hope that they will never be around children ever again or walk the streets.   Joel Steinberg comes to mind and he is out in the public world which is a horrible thought.  

If there is a Heaven this little girl is in a very special place.

AM New York landmarked Webster Hall and more

Bravo for Andrew Berman and www.gvshp.org for ground breaking work on behalf of New York...the real New York!

http://weblogs.amny.com/entertainment/urbanite/blog/2008/03/after_today_city_has_1189_land.html

AM New York's coverage of land marking in our neighborhood and that includes Webster Hall.

The landmark helps protect our history and our community.  Every opportunity to tear down our historic buildings has opened up the door to developers to supersize on an old infrastructure and for mega dorms, sky piercing luxury condos and mirrored hotels that reflect a history destroyed and a community no longer welcome.

If NYU could have I am sure they would have bought Webster Hall and supersized it for yet another hideous mega dorm.

Gardeners are NYC's green heroes.

Gardeners are NYC's green heroes and they help communities city wide with their efforts. They help our spirits and our environment. We need as much green space as possible and places to go and sit and remember the beauty of nature.


From: NYC-GardensCoalition@yahoogroups.com [mailto:NYC-GardensCoalition@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Magali Regis
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 10:31 PM
To: Magali Regis
Subject: [NYC-GardensCoalition] Next NYCCGC Meeting - Thursday 20 March 2008

To: New York City Community Gardeners
Subject: Next NYCCGC Meeting - Thursday 20 March 2008

Dear gardeners,

Happy Spring to you all.
You are invited to attend the next NYCCGC Gardeners' meeting on Thursday, 20
March 2008 - 6:30 - 8:00pm
at the Neighborhood Preservation Center
232 East 11th Street (btw. 2nd & 3rd Ave.)
New York NY 10003

This month's NYCCGC meeting will also be our official Annual meeting. We invite
all our members and the NYC community garden community at large to bring ideas,
comments, criticism and ways to improve our Coalition.

We'll be discussing what we achieved in 2007 and what we hope to accomplish in 2008.

________________________________________________________

AGENDA FOR NEXT MEETING: Thursday, 20 March 2008:

Introductions

Forum 2008 Planning committee

Report from Legislation Committee

Report from GreenThumb's GrowTogether

Report from NYCCGC By-Laws committee

Open discussion

Neighborhood Coalitions Reports

________________________________

Rape suspects caught but so far not Tina Negron's murderer at least as far as I know

I only get my info from the news but all the suspected rapists I mentioned on this blog have been apprehended.

So far I have not heard an updates on the capture of Tina Negron's murderer so I can only guess he has not been caught.

I am thinking hard on violence towards women and until abusers step over the lines that allow the NYPD to make arrest what can a woman do.

I have some ideas I am formulated based on warning signals like hostile verbal barrages, blaming the victim, trying to control her and anything associated with her, creating a hostile environment, etc. I want to organize them and share them with some people including some lawyers which will take me time but I also would like the laws and resources to grow so women can get support. I have some theories on how women's privacy is violated by abusers and how that be documented but for now it is conceptual...I am in think tank mode.

I have a link to saferide www.rightrides.org on my link page and I am thinking along these lines for women that are on the receiving end of hostile behavior and finding "safe rides"for women Fridays and Saturdays ( www.rightrides.org) but it doesn't mean a car ride home...more like "safe resources"...thinking...

Note: I told NYU and the 9th Precinct that NYU should contact and support rightrides or create a program like right rides because such a high number of young people are crammed in to the East Village with the bars and the need this as a resource and the police can work with them on this.

Emailed Sheldon Silver

Just emailed Sheldon Silver asking for help with NYU re: community outreach resource centers and actually for all the mega dorms in the East Village so that includes Cooper Union, The New School, NY Law, and SVA.

Crane Coverage from the East Village

neithermorenorless.blogspot.com

you can see the latest crane tragedy documented but if you go to the blog site and type in the blog search engine the word crane and scroll d

Down you can see the taxi crushed from the crane incident by my home...soon to be ex-home.

if you type mercedes into the search engine of the blog neithermorenorless.blogspot.com you can see a mercedes cooking like a marshmallow by Tompkins Square Park because yet another man hole cover in the area had some serious potentially dangerous problems.

type in gas and you can see just one of many turn outs by the FDNY for gas leak problems.

In fact for one gas leak the NYPD had blocked off the entire street where La Mama Theatre is.
Post 9-11 there has been a mad rush to supersize and we have had many problems and they just don't make the news.

In NYC be cautious where you walk and that includes your dogs because you may get the shock of your life or die. Do not park over man hole covers. Do not walk under scaffolding and yes cranes too.

A mega crane like that is pictured at the Cooper Union "fractured aquarium" building my name for the newest "dubai on bowery" to hit the East Village. I think I have a picture of the mega crane or part of it on this blog.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcbY376I7vOR5ykJqBdfwsqerMRzt13Y8_wvyNNUfd5IhMBYdjgsPB73mfnxkM7uJQ_Lr9ur2YcPeefzWJyUHD0mZRKhSZYIIR5W2qptjQJSdu5aPJ6qMRzWiaUMPJw6eUEdfJKuVQ1Ls/s1600-h/DSCF0991.JPG
picture of Cooper Unions massive crane on my blog

just type in Cooper Union on my blog search engine
Cooper Union and their massive crane is the entry

Just very very tired and traumatized from very upsetting stuff in my life. Ciao for now.
SBT artist
and p.s.
my cell phone died so I do not have your tele. numbers.