On October 15, 2011, the Tucciarone family held their first family reunion in Edgewater, New Jersey. The Tucciarone family first arrived to the United States in the early 1900s. They were originally from Minturno, Italy, an ancient village about an … Continue reading
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Fighting To Be Himself
At 15, high school sophomore Hatuey Rodriguez could spend his afternoons doing plenty of other things. Instead, each day, this aspiring photographer travels more than an hour from the leafy suburban enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey to the gritty streets of South Bronx to box.
“I just want to be able to protect myself” he says. “A lot of kids in school are always starting trouble. I’m like ‘dude it’s Fort Lee, not Newark’. But suburban kids want to be tough.”
In addition to boxing, Hatuey studies the guitar and makes documentary films at the Maysles Institute in Harlem. “Knowing how to fight makes life easier” he says. “You don’t have to spend your time worrying about certain things, so you can just be yourself. Being cool in High School is not everything.”
The Canaries of Canarsie
Several hundred members of the Colorbred Canary Club met at St. Jude Church in Canarsie on October 1st for the 12th Annual Canary Competition. The mood inside the church gymnasium was quietly somber as a team of four highly trained judges slowly analyzed the entries, inspecting the birds based on a long set of detailed criteria.
The judges must complete a lengthy certification process where they learn a six point criteria for rating the birds and methods for identifying unwanted mutations. The judges are also trained in one of four distinct breed categories. Each category has multiple class divisions based on gender and “melanin” variations. Melanin is a term used for distinguishing solid color birds from birds that contain significant marbling. The judging process is not taken lightly. Many of the judges are professionals that travel throughout the United States to local canary competitions. In many of the categories, there are less than a dozen judges in the entire world who are qualified to participate.
Entrants from all over the tri-state area brought dozens of distinct breeds to participate in the event. Nearly all of the competitors were men from countries in the Caribbean including Guyana, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad, where many of the canaries are native and breeding is fiercely competitive. The grand prize was given to Abrahim Ogir of Queens for his star zebra finch, a breed for which he is well-known throughout New York City. Ogir placed highly in last year’s event, although this is the first time that he has won the competition.
Bomba in the Bronx
Bronx Dancer Milteri Tucker has brought a fusion of the traditional Puerto Rican dance Bomba with a modern twist back to the borough she calls home.
Tucker is currently teaching a Bomba workshop at the BAAD Theater in the Bronx where she says the goal of her six-week class is to do more than teach the moves of the dance. She wants the students to learn the culture and history of the people through dance in its purest form of folkloric dance.
“Dance is power. It is the canvas and we are the paint so we have to embody the form in order to take someone to another world for the duration of a performance,” she said.
The workshop began just months following her sold out performance at the Pregones Theater this past summer at the request of many women in the community.
The Bomba Bombazo Fall Workshop starts by teaching the three elements of the Afro- Puerto-Rican folkloric art form: song, rhythms and dance. Bomba is characterized by the communication between dancer and drummer. The dancer makes a series of movements that the drummer responds to with a synchronized beat. It is the drummer that tries to follow the movement of the dancer, not the other way around.
The workshop will conclude with a performance by the students of the workshop for the community at the end of October.
Walkway Over The Hudson Brings New Life to Old Landmark
For years, the Poughkeepsie-Highland Bridge was little more than a standing advertisement for tetanus shots.
After a fire in 1974 ended the span’s life as a railway connection to the east and west banks of the Hudson River, the bridge sat lifeless and left to rust away just begging to tell it’s historic story.
As it turns out, the steel that was used to build the span in 1886 was still strong enough to serve a purpose 123 years later. The rust that had residents complaining was hiding a potential cash cow for the Hudson Valley.
In 2008, the decision was made to refurbish the bridge into The Walkway Over the Hudson, which would turn the world’s oldest steel cantilever bridge into the world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge.
Before the park was opened, it was estimated that that the bridge would draw in between 250,000 and 300,000 visitors in it’s first year of operation and inject over $21 million in annual spending across the region.
Since opening in October 2009, over 1 million people have visited the state run park. Updated figures regarding the economic impact based on the surplus of visitors have yet to be released.
Looks like folks in the Hudson Valley will have to find a new way to remember their tetanus shots.
Occupy Wall Street Cleanup Effort
Occupy Wall Street protestors engage in their first ever collective cleanup effort yesterday at their base in Zuccotti Park. They gather to fold the tents, tarps and sleeping bags that have accumulated in the weeks they’ve lived there. Some get on their knees and scrub the floor by hand. Many unroll fresh garbage bags and don rubber gloves. Most of the supplies – mops, brooms, Windex, etc. – were donated.
Protestors organized the event to avoid being expelled from the park on charges of an unsanitary environment. The Department of Sanitation scheduled to clean the park today. Rumors that the NYPD could try to bar the protestors from returning and the activists are not taking any chances.
The General Assembly
Each night at 7pm, the Occupy Wall Street protesters gather at the north end of the park for what they call the General Assembly.
This is the protester’s decisionmaking body. It is a highly-structured affair, where careful attention to process wards off the sense of chaos that is never too far away.
The first half-hour is devoted to meeting mechanics. There are hand signals to signify assent, dissent, points of process, and more. There are times to debate issues, and other times reserved only for clarification of proposals.
Because amplified sound is not permitted by park rules, the protesters use an ingenious system of repetition they call the “human mic.” Each meeting, it is tested and tuned.
Last Thursday, a proposal from the Arts and Culture held the floor for a solid half hour. They needed $600 to hire security to move forward with a planned art show.
“What percentage of our total budget is this?” someone asked.
“I don’t know,” said the representative of Arts and Culture. “I’m not from Finance.”
NextGen Demo
Blah blah blah
Soundcloud, Reaper and NetGen Resources
Below are three tech resources that might be helpful as we move forward:
- Soundcloud – A WordPress Support explainer for customizing and embedding SoundCloud
- Reaper – A cheat sheet for common commands in Reaper (thanks Gosha)
- NetGen – A YouTube vid on uploading and displaying NextGen photo galleries in WordPress
Class survey through week four
Please fill out this firm before class on Tuesday, Oct 4.