Celebrating Community
The United States Postal Service (USPS), local delegates, and community leaders venerated Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini by renaming the Dyker Heights Post Office in her honor. The virtual press conference took place on the anniversary of her death, Dec. 22, 2020. Mother Cabrini and her seven Sisters arrived in New York in 1889, helping Italian immigrants who were struggling with […]
When my first sister told me that her adolescent son had discovered David Bowie, something powerful struck me. My nephew, I realized, had joined the legion of outsiders. He had recognized (on some level) that the world was a complicated place, that in the inescapable realms of majority rule, you usually don’t get to choose to be on the winning […]
As I type this shortly after Christmas, I’m already listening to 2021. And man it sounds good. I try not to be a person who depends on hope, and that negative capability is one of the things that helped keep me (mostly) rational and above water through 2020. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst? More like, expect the […]
Looking back a year ago, most Brooklynites continued to be astonished by Trump’s megalomaniacal corruption. Yet we were grateful the country had avoided a grave crisis because everyone knew our golf-happy President could never manage one. If we could just make it to November and elect “any functioning adult” we told ourselves, everything would be OK. And then it all […]
Winter is always a difficult time for homeless people in New York City, but the coronavirus pandemic has created new problems that make it even more challenging to survive the winter. I had the opportunity to talk to a military veteran and former hip-hop dancer, who recently became homeless, about his trials and tribulations. He asked to remain anonymous, so […]
Review of Invisible Ink by Patrick Modiano, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti Review by Michael Quinn What constitutes a life is not only our experiences, but our feelings about them. Especially as we grow older, our memories play a role here, too. We lean into some, and are unexpectedly overcome by others, triggered by a smell, the name […]