If, as Elvis Costello said, yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper, what are last week’s links? I ask because I think I finally figured out yournabe.com’s system – they post the articles on their website a week after they are news. So herewith, some links to articles I thought were relevant last week:
Velazquez Weighs in on Bike Lane Controversy
The Courier continues to do some excellent original reporting. Good luck finding it on their website (I’ve given up trying).
This week’s case in point is an article by Michele De Meglio on the proposal announced last week to convert four closing Catholic schools into public charter schools. As De Meglio reports, there are some devils in the details. Sex and religion details, specifically. Outside the limelight of the Mayor’s and Bishop’s joint announcement was a statement by Bishop Frank Caggiano, the vicar general to Diocese of Brooklyn, in which he said that the Diocese is exploring the possibility of introducing legislation that would “fit part of the strategic goals of preserving the vision”. In layman’s terms, that means teaching Catholicism in public schools. It also means not teaching sex education. In fact, Caggiano said that the Diocese would abandon the plan “if asked to teach sex education”.
The Diocese is, of course, free to do what it wants with its buildings. But if it wants its students to continue to have a quality education, it might find that cutting off its nose to spite its face is not the way to go about this. First off, whatever schools go into these buildings will be public charter schools. So the Diocese would not be asked to teach sex education, rather sex education would be taught in its buildings by public school teachers (sex ed is required to be taught in public schools). Likewise, there are other ways to teach religion that don’t require (probably unconstitutional) amendments to the State education law. The Diocese would be free to teach CCD or other after-school classes, and presumably could do so in its own buildings – that same buildings with the charter schools. This seems to me to be the best of both worlds – good public education and after-school religious education for those who want it.
But the Diocese is saying that it will take its ball and go home, rather than engage in tolerance and compromise that might actually benefit its students (again, its their right – it is their ball). Which is too bad, because this charter school proposal is a potential silver lining to what would be a very sad loss for many communities. This dogmatic reaction just shows that the Diocese really can’t have much faith in its message, if it require a captive audience for instruction or must “protect” that audience from ideas that it disagrees with. But based on the large number of lapsed Catholics I’ve come across in life (all of them products of Catholic education), maybe the Diocese does have reason to doubt.
(The greatest proponent of Catholic education I have known in my life was my father – a Protestant who spent ten years in Jesuit schools in Spain. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Spain was probably the most devout of the Catholic countries in Europe. This devotion was promoted by Franco, to the degree that non-Catholic churches weren’t even allowed at that time. Despite all this – or maybe because of it – the Pilar School was very tolerant of my father’s religious beliefs. He was never forced to have any Catholic religious study – he simply left the room during mass or during religious instruction, and the priests and everyone else had no problem with that. Other than being excluded from this part of the education (which is what his parents wanted), he was never ostracized or made to feel unwelcome or unworthy. As an educator and a product of Catholic education, I think my father would also be pretty appalled at the Brooklyn Diocese’s position on charter schools.)
At last week’s CB1 meeting, Councilmember Yassky’s office announced a new public art initiative. The initiative is a response to the rather woeful lack of public art (and opportunities for public art) in a neighborhood of artists. Organized in conjunction with the Open Space Alliance, the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition “will be comprised of members of the local arts community, with a mission of scouting out ideal locations for public art in North Brooklyn, actively seeking out partnerships and funding for public art in this area, and keeping its members apprised of all public art opportunities.”
The coalition will hold a special meeting about Public Art in North Brooklyn on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009, at the Brooklyn Brewery, 79 N.11th St. (between Wythe Ave. and Berry St.) in Williamsburg at 6:30pm. The meeting will include presentations by public arts organizations that are currently offering opportunities to Greenpoint/Williamsburg artists.
For more information, contact Rami Metal in CM Yassky’s office – (718) 875-5200×14 or rmetal [at] council.nyc.gov.
There was a beautiful full moon rising over the East River bridges this evening. Unfortunately, the point and shoot was not up to the task.
Among the other good articles you’ll miss if you look for the February 6th Courier online are these:
Owners: Stores Still Suffering – Business Along Kent Avenue Has Not Improved Despite DOT’s Efforts
By: Greg Hanlon
This long, in-depth discussion with Kent Avenue business owners includes a great exchange with David Reina of David Reina Designs regarding the special side-street loading zone DOT especially for his business. Reina manufactures very large speciality hydraulic presses. DOT never asked Reina if a side-street loading zone would help his situation. And surprise, it turns out it doesn’t – wheeling 20′ sections of steel and large speciality machinery on a slow-moving forklift on fast-moving Kent Avenue doesn’t exactly strike Reina as safe. Plus, he doesn’t even own a street-legal forklift. The upshot is that DOT has eliminated three parking spaces on Grand Street to create a loading zone that will probably go unused.
New Start for Williamsburg Venue: Chez Bushwick to Receive $150,000 Cultural Fund
By: Aaron Short
The Rockefeller Foundation has given the East Williamsburg arts venue a $150,000 NYC Cultural Innovation Fund award.
Oh, and the Moore Street market has been saved and three more Greenpoint sites located over the Meeker plume have been given superfund status. But you can read about those online (on other papers).
The February 6 edition of the Williamsburg Courier has a couple of good articles on the Kent Avenue bike lane situation. Unfortunately, you won’t find these articles online.
First up, Greg Hanlon has quite a scoop from Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez:
Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who secured funding for the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, has weighed in on how to solve the problems along [sic] associated with the proposed Greenway and temporary bike lanes installed as placeholders.
Her solution? Remove the southbound lane of traffic on Kent Avenue and replace it with a lane dedicated to parking and loading zones for the light manufacturing businesses along the strip.
(Hanlon notes that DOT, citing safety concerns, is reluctant to move the bike lanes to one side of Kent. The concerns are legitimate, but only because DOT has chosen to this whole project on the cheap. The issue is this – if a two-way bike lane is located on the west side of Kent, cars leaving the new residences on that side of the street will have to look both ways for peds, then look both ways for bikes, and then look both ways for cars. The solution is simple – install traffic lights. In December, DOT announced that they were considering traffic lights at North 6th and North 7th.)
The scaffolding has finally come down at 268 Wythe, revealing the facade of MDIM Architecture’s latest project. The building, at the corner of Wythe and Metropolitan, will certainly contrast with its neighbor to the south, the very dark and brooding 80 Metropolitan. 268 Wythe definitely wins the design competition there (the actual product is much better than this cell-phone photo might lead you to believe).
UPDATE: Gowanus Lounge saw it too, and has a better photo (Bob likes it too).
Speaking of good reporting with no web presence, the Courier’s YourNabe web portal actually manages to be less useful as time goes on. Time was you could find some articles on their antiquated Web 1.0 site, but no more. A click through to the neighborhood pages shows no articles, and an archive search gets no hits.
Which is too bad, because the Williamsburg and Greenpoint Courier reporters do a really good job – they cover a lot of stories, and they cover them well. You should go out and pick up a copy. Or wait for their publisher to get a clue.
Today’s unseasonably balmy temperatures made it a perfect day to head down to the river and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine. Of course you can’t do that in a state park in Williamsburg, so we had to head to Gantry State Park in Long Island City.
Back here in Williamsburg, the State saved another $444.44 by keeping our state “park” closed for today – the only state park in the city that is closed this winter. The least the state could do is start a shuttle bus service to DUMBO and Long Island City.
(And I bet if our state park was open today it would have had a lot more people than the handful we saw at Gantry.)
Garbage day at Schaefer Landing (and this was a pretty light day).
Why is that in a new (ca. 2005) high-rise development, with hundreds of luxury and affordable units, is not required to provide some facility for off-street garbage loading? Probably the same reason that they are not required to provide all tenants access to the off-street drop-off area.
