Celebrating Community
The world knew Buddy Scotto for almost 92 years, I was his friend for the past seven. I first heard about him when I worked for the Brooklyn Phoenix newspaper in the early 1980’s. He was known in the office for getting rid of the ‘stench’ that permeated Carroll Gardens when the wind blew in from the Gowanus Canal. […]
(photo above: Brett Yates, winner of the Thomas Butson Award for In-Depth Journalism) I started the Red Hook Star-Revue ten years ago this summer. The main reason was that I like the newspaper business, a second reason was that I found Red Hook a challenging and interesting community, which I suspected had lots of stories to tell. A third […]
Red Hook is currently awash in the building of new warehouses. No doubt the biggest is the massive new UPS distribution facility that starts across Valentino Park, extending on the water all the way to the Cruise Terminal. The package delivery company paid $303 million for the property, which most recently was to be the hub of a new tech […]
In case you’ve been sleeping for the past six weeks, the United States has undergone yet another transformation. No, I’m not talking about the pandemic, although it could be that it is the disaster of COVID, combined with a really sick example of police brutality towards a black person, that has pushed the civil rights/social justice movement to what seems […]
New – the Phoenix is now online! https://www.digifind-it.com/phoenix/views/home.php COVID takes a Brooklyn newspaper pioneer by George Fiala Michael A. Armstrong, originally from the state of Washington, but who spent the majority of his 79 years in Boerum Hill, passed away last month after spending 17 days on a ventilator at Methodist Hospital. Dnynia, his wife and publishing partner, succumbed a […]
As I sit here about to write this final piece for the April issue, I checked the COVID-19 scoreboard to see that the US has gone over 1000 deaths for the day, the most ever so far, but probably a normal figure for a number of days or months hereon in. The blame game is already starting, with many criticisms […]
The nonprofit world An article in a recent copy of the Villager details some nonprofits that recently received grants from the New York Community Trust. The Trust is a public charity with board members chosen by public figures, including the mayor, judges and heads of institutions such as the Bar Association and Lincoln Center. The Trust was established in 1924 […]
If you pay attention to the financial news, or even political news, you will hear over and over again that interest rates have to be kept low because there is not enough inflation to keep the economy humming along otherwise. I’m all for keeping the economy humming – without jobs there isn’t enough money to pay the rent, something that’s […]
Gowanus cleanup The Brooklyn Eagle just published a great essay by Gowanus scholar Joseph Alexiou. He makes clear what many reporters never mention in their Gowanus Canal Superfund coverage: that New York City is doing its best to sabotage the cleanup. Titled “The Gowanus Canal will never be clean,” the article makes the case that it is local corruption and […]
This January marks the beginning of this newspaper’s tenth anniversary. It’s something I started myself back in 2010. I’ve written lots of news stories, headlines, filler – even crossword puzzles, but I never attempted any sort of creative or introspective writing. It’s probably because I’m not that good at it, and I didn’t want to waste valuable room in the […]