Celebrating Community
During the first half of my twenties, I cared about art, not politics. I skimmed the news about wars and oil spills and participated in elections as a matter of civic duty, but deep down I intuited that nothing good or exciting would ever happen in Washington – or probably anywhere in the real world, which I found alienating and […]
Every day we share ourselves, our thoughts, our preferences knowingly and unknowingly across the web and elsewhere, leaving our digital footprints behind. But why should we care? The first decade of the 2000s saw the birth of several current-day digital marquees: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google. In 2006, I remember uploading pictures and posting status updates on Myspace, the most popular […]
In the wake of manmade tragedies, natural disasters, and other local or global shocks to the system, people often begin, optimistically, to feel that, upon recovery, life surely cannot return to normal. We’ve seen and felt too much. The everyday, numb routine has fallen away, revealed its mutability, and given us space to rethink our choices and values. In these […]
Watching the President speak about China and the tariff/trade war he initiated against China is exhausting. One day he says a deal is in the works and the stock market soars. The next day he tweets something offensive to Chinese sensibilities, adds a threat of new tariffs on more Chinese goods, and the market tanks. Scary headlines follow. A […]
(originally published August 1, 2017 2017 has felt like a collaboration between movie makers David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, and now, after McCain’s dramatic “no”— Frank Capra. Not too long after this vote the United States Antagonist-in-Chief, I mean President Trump, unleashed a series of tweets about the filibuster and how Senate rules should be changed to only require […]
Buffalo, New York and New York City (specifically 31st Street between 7th and 8th Avenue) are separated by more than 350 miles. Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, is about ten miles from 31st Street between 7th and 8th Avenue, and Buffalo is still over 350 miles away. Let’s take a quiz: if a sports team […]
Sunny’s raises $65,000 and is still looking for more According to their website, and a story that aired on WPIX-TV, Sunny’s much publicized campaign to raise $65,000 to help the bar purchase the building from Sunny’s family has succeeded. Tone Johannsen, who married to bar owner Sunny Balzano, has raised money from a number of events including an art auction. The […]
Red light district John McGettrick, co-president of the Red Hook Civic Association and longtime Red Hook leader, has been at the forefront of local traffic safety way before Vision Zero. When Fairway first opened, he led the fight for a stoplight on Van Brunt and Sullivan Street. That was achieved. Because of the imminent arrival of the new Red Hook […]
When I was first offered this column about a year ago, my intention was to focus on local politics as a member of the progressive Democratic Left, and to only occasionally, when appropriate, tie these issues in with national politics. I, like most of those around me as well as the pundit class, believed that Hillary Clinton would be the […]
After the 2008 election Paul Krugman wrote that it was “the end of the monster years.” Krugman’s reference was to the prior 14 years of GOP control of Congress starting in 1994. During that time America’s political life had been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monster in this case defined as being abnormally cruel. Ugly and frightening creatures like Tom […]