#kevinblythesampson,#murals, #Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
Showing posts with label art and plitics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art and plitics. Show all posts
7/18/15
12/13/10
Kevin says: Nero Fiddles while Newark New Jersey Burns
Nero fiddles while Rome burns, Newark is turning into a city of God
But who is Nero
Over the course of the past few days the whispering campaign has started
The layoff of police officers in Newark, has started the gossips and fear mongers
Tongue wagging.
I was talking to a friend who owns a alarm shop, and he said that he is getting more and more business
He told me that this city thugs…………. have begun testing the response time of the Newark police department
They have been pushing doors hard enough to set off the alarm
Then standing in the background they try to see how long it takes for the Police
To show up
This is a tech used though out the ages
But law enforcement responds with patrol techs that include
Being systematically unsystematic.
Therefore, they had better watch their asses
Having said that
Their they are
Teasing
Testing,
Tasting
At least
This is the gossip
I have had several people advise me
Not to walk around at night like
I used too
I hear rumors of three deaths a day,
Shooting, shooting
Of course this didn’t start with the police layoffs
The mood was set months ago by
No jobs, no programs no care
Whose fault is it?
Not the Cops,
Not the Mayors
not The governor
Rodney’s …..
Lord knows it not the President Obama
Its not about fault, anyway
Its about bad economic times and a inner city
Impact well beyond the rest of the country
Anyway
I have felt the chill in the air….. long before it got cold
The have seen
The look of uncertainty on the faces of the working poor
For over a year
The violence of inaction
On the faces of business folks
Sitting idly by while no customers come in
To purchase or to order
I have seen it in the faces of family and friends
A despair
A desperation and longing
for some happy days
Or ………………..just some good days
I refused to believe that a few laid off cops
Caused this up surge in crime
It’s the holidays
Christmas is a brutal time for any city
A formative time for crime
A constant cause of stomach aches for me
Depression for others
And most of all a time of robberies
I didn’t believe that laying off some cops
Would change a city this fast
But it has
It’s a pr war and the city is losing
Once people stop feeling safe,
Ok once people start feeling even less safe
Its lost already
More people retreat t inside and less eyes on watching
On the outside
I have a advantage
People don’t pay attention to old people like me
Unless they look closely
And see my dead eyed stare
As they figure out that I am too not only old
Too mean to play with
Anyway
While
Walking to the bus stop today
I walk to ferry street by the way
Today their were more people on the street
It was crowded on the street and barren in the stores
As I was walking
Some thing told me…………………. to turn my head
And just as I did
Two young guys riding double on a bike
All dressed in black
Whizzed past me
I mean Evel Knievel fast
As they did
They extended their arms and as they got near a street vender
A stall set up by the curb selling winter wears
Glove and hat s scarps and more
Where was I
Mean both of these guys flying past on this bike
Snatched a arm full of gloves, hats and belts
They didn’t slow down,
They didn’t hesitate
They didn’t miss a beat
The storeowner ran out of the coffer shop, located no more
Than ten feet away
But it happened so fast
Their was nothing to do………..but sigh
I mean it was like……………..watching one of those Japanese movies
Where assassins riding on motorcycles, Spray machine gun fire at their subject
And keep on trucking
It happened too fast to react
The shop owner and me, just looked at each other,
As we bent down to pick up and clean up the carnage
Nothing was said
Two old men looking at each other
Silently
I felt like we were both veterans of Normandy
Not a word was said
It didn’t have to be
I continued on and got on the number one bus
Which is lately has been coming much slower
The bus was crowded
The traffic was horrible
But it was warm
Suddenly the whole bus turned their heads to the left
I looked just out side my window
And saw that their was a crowd of kids fighting
Now I am talking about a Portuguese kid fighting a Latino kid
I mean these kids were no more than 10 years old, with a group of about 15 kids watching
The girls were the loudest egging the boys one
Well those two boys squared off and hooked the shit out of each other
My fellow occupants of the bus looked on quietly, reverently
No one said a word,
Except for one old black woman……………………who said
“That’s a damn shame”
We looked on as the kids fled running in a pack, and almost knocking over
A group of Old Portuguese ladies walking gingerly further down on Ferry Street
Man I thought that in their minds
This must be a land that time should have forgot
Onward bus, every where I looked
People were walking just a little slower
I got to school and was glad for the respite
Then I remembered the police lay off
And thought to myself that some thing is going on bigger than
Just that
This must be happening on a lot of corners in America
It isn’t just a Newark problem
But a national problem
And it started to snow a bit
And I said to myself
This might help
Folks don’t like the cold
3/7/10
Kevin Says: Black like me,art,race and baggage
So I will seek to clarify this a bit
I won’t go into post black…..
Just yesterday I met with a group of artist and students for the city with out walls mentoring program. This program takes high school students and pairs them with working artist.
My group of friends decided that instead of working alone we would pool our resources and provide the students with maximum exposure to artist.
The Artist were Jerry Gant an African American, forty something, he is a performance artist, a graffiti pioneer, a working artist, who paints, sculpts and more.
Kevin Darime an artist, a painter and more….. he is thirty something, originally from Trinidad and is a cool guy, with a sex and the city slant.
Then me a beat up fifty some thing African American, ex-cop sculptor painter and lunatic.
The Students are first generation American, one was born in the United States, and his family is from Nigeria. Smart kid with a bright future.
The other kid is black and Puerto Rican, from Newark smart and hell also.
My student is Haitian, born in Haiti, but raised in the United States since he was a baby.
None of these students who are first generation Americans, knew much about their past.
Our first advice to all of them was to go home, find your parents, find your history and we can work from there.
When we spoke of race, jerry and I were on the same page. Even though are backgrounds are very different. We are both invested in African American history and servicer to the community.
Kevin D,. Who is of a different generation was freed of the constraints of the baggage of race and more that both Jerry and I carry around.
I looked at his wonderful work on his wall at his studio.
Amazing work, free of or in spite of race.
I looked around this room and realized that these young people are the new African Americans. The African kid wasn’t any different that any of the African American kids that you might have met in a good school in Newark. The Puerto Rican, black kid was like so many I have met, American. The Haitian kid who parents still speak Creole in the house, was hesitant to even say he was Haitian. When I first asked him where his family was from he said American
These are the new African Americans………….
Are they as African American as I am, can they be with out the baggage of slavery, and of the civil rights movement………can they be
Of course it’s not about me decided, they decided…………..
And it fits
I am from another time and a different place…………..
I just wrote my blog stating that I wanted to explore all of the things that I have been deprived of by virtue of my age, sex and race.
I grew up an African American in a country that didn’t love me.
I grew out as an outsider exposed to the same things as white kids, but never really being a part of the American Dream
The election of Obama has freed me in many ways.
Do I feel as thought there is a race problem in America?
Of course
Race it is an American thing, as American as Apple Pie as H.Rap brown long ago said.
But it is just as convoluted around the world, race class and skin color.
It’s not an American thing but a color thing, just as much of a problem in Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico or Africa as it is here.
So why am I still screaming, why do African Americans feel like they have the lock on oppression……….
Having said that
America it’s my country,
And with the election of Obama, for the first time.
I can fly a flag and be proud
I can shout out my love of America from the hills tops
All the wild being cognizant of the tea party movement and those that would return to
The ways of the past.
I can love America, now with out losing sight of its many imperfections
The civil right movement the black power struggle, required me, and no implored me to make art work that logged on to that struggle
This has informed and hindered my work.
.I grew up like most of American.
No there weren’t that many African American images on the television.
I along with the rest of my people applauded Dianne Carroll in “Julia”.
So I grew up watching Gregory peck in Moby dick.
I watched the grapes of wrath
Read clock work orange, 1984, animal farm, les miserable,
I read and loved, the count of Monte christo
Huckel berry Finn, tom sawyer
I wanted to be a pirate and or a cowboy just like opie in Mayberry
I wanted to By Tom Sawyer not the slave…………….
I wanted to fly in a rocket to the moon
And to stand in a podium on the Washington mall
And say some thing besides I have seen the mountain top
Now we have
Now I can
What am I saying?
That no I am ready to confront to reexamine how these stories and books affected me
I can go back now to the stories of my youth
And reclaim them
Render them,
I can look at
I have to look at all of this stuff once more, as an American
As some one who is included.
No race is still a mess
But slowly
I am being freed from the restraints of addressing this portion of my child hold
With out quite frankly feeling like a “uncle tom”
Am I rushing to leave race art, no as long as I am black their will still be some struggle
In my work
But for now I just want to explore what it is like to be an artist
I wonder if the world will be receptive
No I am not a 30 some thing sex in the city artist
I am not a skate board carrying member of the new generation of face book artist
I am a old Negro………..who had watched from the sidelines for years
I am now seeking to reclaim a part of the American story that was denied to me for so long
2/23/10
Kevin speaks about Old Dick Cheney, heart attack my ass…
Former Vice President Dick Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, his office said, and will remain in a Washington hospital for at least another day.
Let me start out by saying that Unlike Vice president Dick Cheney,
I don’t wish any one unwell…………………. including him.
Having said that,
I was listening to the talking heads on the news channels; dissect what happened to the Vice President. What kind of treatment is he getting, how many heart attacks has he actually had.
Let me tell ya….
He has had five heart attacks; by God they ask how he has survived so many, what is his secret recipe.
Isn’t it obvious?
, he is white, rich, connected and has the best health care in the world. If he has a hangnail some one comes running. He is a vice president for god’s sake, he spits out more venom that a room full of snakes and just keeps on ticking.
Now me, I am a middle aged black man, over weight, with high blood pressure ,A borderline diabetic……………. and my fat ass cant get a thing looked at....................
Most importantly I don’t have health insurance not a drop, if I get sick it’s off to an emergency room,
Full of stabbing and gun shot victims.
Oh sorry that was the old days,
Nowadays will sit for about 10 hours in a room full of used to be working class people, who don’t have either health insurance or jobs.
Lets see I will Sit and wait, ten hours at least,
Ok maybe they will get to me before that, if I am acting a fool and passing out.
But do you think that this old black guy would survive 1 heart attack. Let alone five……….and still have the time to reek havoc on a country and people that he professes to love and serve
Give me a break
Again I wish old dick well,
I just wish he would share some of his good health insurance and secrets to remaining standing……….and alive.
Alive and well even after being responsible for so many deaths and mistakes.
Trickle down, small government, my ass…………….
Hey dick
Let us cash in your health insurance;
We could probably get most of those people help that are sitting next to me in our imaginary hospital waiting room.
Spread it around, spread some thing around besides your anger for once.
Again I wish you well,
I do have a question though
Haven’t you seen the light yet, seen God or some thing when you wee having those five heart attack
Why didn’t you come back to this world with love and help in your heart.
I guess not
Your good doctors never let you get that close, to the light or God…………….
First heart attack at 37 and still ticking
Go figure
Cheney suffers mild heart attack
By: Jonathan Martin
February 23, 2010 03:55 PM EST
Former Vice President Dick Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, his office said, and will remain in a Washington hospital for at least another day.
Cheney was admitted to George Washington University hospital after complaining of chest pains and lab tests revealed that he did in fact have a heart attack.
"He is feeling good and is expected to be discharged in the next day or two," his office said in a statement, noting that he had a stress test and a heart catheter
6/16/09
Kevin Blythe Sampson is so pleased to be Included in this upcoming exhibition……….at the AVAM
The American Visionary Art Museum is located in a historic location in downtown Baltimore at the base of Federal Hill.
800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD, 21230
AVAM:
LIFE & LIBERTY,and the Pursuit of Happiness
upcoming “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” exhibition at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, which will open
Friday October 2.
Please plan to join us at the museum that evening!
. The next exhibition Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, curated by Roger Manley, opens on October 1. The quest for human rights and the search for personal fulfillment, as proposed in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, provide the starting point the exhibition. Works by the last surviving descendant of the Tsars of Russia, Iroquois Indians, French Revolutionaries, illegal immigrants, Algerian War veterans, Guantánamo Bay detainees, Holocaust survivors, incarcerated prisoners, African-American civil rights activists and Iraqi doctors are among the 50 visionary artists to be featured.
Other Post relevant to the upcoming show
Film and fantasy
Years ago, young Renaldo Kuhler retreated into an imaginary, illustrated world. Now his private universe — captured in a documentary by Brett Ingram — is ready for visitors.
Ingram, a professor in the Department of Media Studies, became friends with the artist when both were working at the N.C. Museum of Natural Science in 1996. Slowly, Kuhler began showing Ingram intricate drawings and telling him stories of Rocaterrania, a tiny nation of Eastern European immigrants who survived years of revolutions and tyrannical leaders.
Artist Renaldo Kuhler, captured in an image by Brett Ingram. Ingram's feature-length documentary, “Roccaterrania,” explores Kuhler's artistic world.
Somewhere along the way, Ingram realized the ups and downs of Rocaterrania mirrored Kuhler's own life. He knew there was a compelling story to be told.
Twelve years and a Guggenheim later, Ingram has finished his documentary on Kuhler, his life, his work and the ways in which Rocaterrania has been a haven for the illustrator.
The first person to see the film “Rocaterrania” was Kuhler himself. Ingram took a TV and VCR to Kuhler's apartment. “I was sitting on pins and needles. He loved it. He said, ‘Mr. Ingram’ — he's always formal like that — ‘Mr. Ingram, I wouldn't change a thing.’”
Renaldo Kuhler, left, and Brett Ingram
So far, the film “Rocaterrania” has been screened in eight film festivals — including the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival and the RiverRun International Film Festival — received a positive review in Variety and drawn the attention of The New York Times, which ran an article on Ingram and Kuhler. “The New York Times article has definitely put Renaldo and the film on the map,” Ingram says.
He hopes the film will continue to be shown at prestigious film festivals and eventually find a home with a distributor. And it will be interesting to see what happens with the film as Kuhler's work becomes more known.
Even before the NYT article, Kuhler had made plans to participate in a group show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore in October curated by Roger Manley. The exhibition is titled “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” which Ingram finds oddly appropriate. The world of Rocaterrania grew out of Kuhler's lonely childhood with critical parents. When his family left their New York home and bought a cattle ranch in Colorado, Kuhler grew even lonelier and turned to his fantasy world.
His parents made him feel that he was wasting his time drawing Rocaterrania. Now, 60 years later, art dealers are calling him and people all around are interested in seeing his work.
Has all the attention turned his head? “Renaldo is Renaldo,” Ingram says. “He doesn't seem to change. But he is enjoying the validation. He wishes his parents were alive to see this.”
6/14/09
This is a article on my best friend Reynolds ………….Puki Pacifista by the american artist Reynolds in Roma
© 2009 art a part of cult(ure)
Aut. Tribunale di Roma
http://www.artapartofculture.org/art-a-part-of-culture/
Puki Pacifista by the american artist Reynolds in Roma | studio.ra | 1Fmediaproject
6 Agosto, 2009 | Di r.losapio
Inserito in: eventi mostre
101 lettori | nessun commento
PUKI PACIFISTA: dal 6 al 14 agosto 2009; opere di Reynolds.
Performance artistica partecipativa: giovedi 6 agosto, alle ore 18, studio.ra | 1Fmediaproject - Roma
Lo Studio.ra presenta Puki Pacifista, opere su carta dell’artista americana Reynolds. I Pukis di Reynolds sono piccoli acquerelli di “guerriglia” che deridono i capolavori di pittura, viaggiando in tutto il mondo. I Pukis glorificano il mondo della cultura celebrando storie scomparse attraverso la visualizzazione di ciò che di solito è nascosto.
I Pukis sono accompagnati da una video-installazione di “Puki Procession“, un progetto in movimento in cui i partecipanti, vestiti in vesti rituali, portano i Dipinti Puki su Banner. A ciò si affiancherà la performance partecipativa in onore dell’antica Goddess, antichità scomparsa in Iraq, e dei riti indigeni che sono minacciati da culture egemoniche. Partendo dallo Studio.ra, i partecipanti percorreranno un breve itineriano del Parco archeologico dell’Appia Antica, nella Valle della Caffarella, fino alla Fonte della Ninfa Egeria: un territorio storico e artistico pieno di richiami allegorici e leggendari.
Reynolds ha studiato pittura con Richard Pousette-Dart al Sarah Lawrence College, e si è laureata con una specializzazione in Women’s History (“Le Donne nella Storia”).
Ha conseguito anche un BFA e un MFA dalla Scuola di Arti Visive.
Ha insegnato per sette anni presso il Guggenheim Museum, attualmente è istruttore in una Galleria-Studio presso il Brooklyn Museum, e in una Family Programs di artisti per la American Folk Art Museum.
Una delle sue più recenti mostre personali è stata “Imagina a Vagina” in Brasile.
Nel 2008, le acqueforti di Reynolds hanno illustrato “Moving Mediators: Ghosts of Interventions Past and Present” al Museum Man in Valparaiso, Cile insieme alle opere di David Medalla e Jill Rock. Al Museo Man, diretto da Adam Nankervis, sono state esposte anche le Puki MOMdonnas in una mostra personale “Il Puki Adventus”, a Liverpool, in Inghilterra. Fra le numerose mostre ricordiamo “Blender”, a cura di Cordy Ryman a Sundaram Tagore Gallery di New York, e “Close to the Edge” una mostra itinerante con Kevin Sampson, che comprendeva il recente arresto di Danny Simmons del Corridoio Galleria nel 2009.
Reynolds ha partecipato ad ogni Biennale di Londra dal 2000, compresa la “Pollinations” a Berlino nel 2003. Nel 2008, le Pukis sfilate “La Pucelle Puki” hanno attraversato Parigi con i partecipanti alla Biennale di Londra per onorare la pace.
Il Puki Parade partirà dalla galleria il 6 Agosto alle ore 18. Condurrà gli spettatori e partecipanti e ritornerà allo Studio.ra per un rinfresco. L’artista ha creato i costumi per coloro che desiderano partecipare. Quanti intendono celebrare la “Puki” (vagina è il significato in lingua filippina) possono portare anche i propri costumi di carnevale, delle feste o delle sagre.
Per ulteriori informazioni contattare Raffaella Losapio a (tel. +39 06 43417800 - +39 3491597571) o l’artista a Reynolds (codice internazionale di linea) - 1 917 328 0386.
Per altri approfondimenti sull’artista, ecco il suo sito web: www.reynoldsnart.com.
studio.ra | 1Fmediaproject
Via Bartolomeo Platina, 1/F - 00179 Roma
Tel. +39 06 43417800 - +39 3491597571; www.studiora.eu info@studiora.eu
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PUKI PACIFISTA
August 6-14, 2009
Works by Reynolds
Artist Performance and Reception: Thursday, August 6 th, 6 p.m.18,
studio.ra | 1Fmediaproject - Roma
Studio.ra is pleased to present ‘Puki Pacifista’, by the American artist Reynolds. Reynolds’s ‘Pukis’ are small watercolors on paper that have travelled around the world in transitory ‘guerilla’ installations that mock masterpiece painting. Pukis glorify world culture by honoring disappeared histories through the display of what is usually hidden. The Pukis are accompanied by a video installation of the ‘Puki Procession’, the ongoing performance project in which the participants, dressed in ritual vestments, carry the Puki paintings on banners. The participatory performance honors the ancient Goddess antiquities lost in Iraq, and indigenous rituals which are threatened by hegemonic cultures. Departing from Studio ra, the performance will march along a route that includes the archeological park of the Appia Antica, the Caffarella Valley and conclude at the source of Ninfa Egeria.
Reynolds studied painting with Richard Pousette-Dart at Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated with a concentration in Women’s History. She also has a BFA and an MFA from School of Visual Arts. She taught at the Guggenheim Museum for seven years; currently she is a Gallery Studio Instructor at the Brooklyn Museum, and a Family Programs artist for the American Folk Art Museum. Her most recent one- person show was “Imagina a Vagina” in Brazil. In 2008, Reynolds’s etchings were featured in “Moving Mediators: Ghosts of Interventions Past and Present” at Museum Man in Valparaiso, Chile, along with works of David Medalla and Jill Rock. Museum Man, directed by Adam Nankervis, also featured the Puki MOMdonnas in a one- person show “The Puki Adventus”, in Liverpool, England. Group shows include “Blender”, curated by Cordy Ryman at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in NYC, and “Close to the Edge” a traveling exhibition co-curated with Kevin Sampson, which included a recent stop at Danny Simmons’s Corridor Gallery in 2009. Reynolds has participated in every London Biennale since 2000, including the “Pollinations” in Berlin in 2003. In 2008, the Pukis paraded through Paris with London Biennale participants to honor peace in “La Pucelle Puki”.
The Puki Parade will depart from the gallery on 6th August at 6 p.m. and lead spectators and participants back to the gallery for the reception. The artist has make up costumes for those who wish to participate. Participants wishing to honor the ‘Puki’ (meaning vagina in Filipino) may bring their own carnival costumes.
For further details contact Raffaella Losapio at info@studiora.eu, by phone at 0039 06 4341800 – 00039 3491597571 or the artist Reynolds at (international code)- 1 917 328 0386.
For further details about the artist, Reynolds, visit her website at www.reynoldsnart.com
studio.ra | 1Fmediaproject
Via Bartolomeo Platina, 1/F - 00179 Roma
Tel. +39 06 43417800 - +39 3491597571;
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5/25/09
Living In | Bloomfield, N.J. A Starter Spot for Suburbanites
TIDY ALTERNATIVE A view of Church Street in Bloomfield, a place with tightly packed houses, a great commute, and lower prices than Montclair and Glen Ridge. More Photos >
Published: May 22, 2009
CHRIS AND LISA CHEPLIC sometimes find golf balls in their backyard, sliced there by duffers taking whacks at the neighboring Glen Ridge Country Club. But they say they can deal with issues like that; in fact, it’s a small price to pay for actually having a backyard.
Seventeen months ago, they paid $379,000 for an 85-year-old three-bedroom Dutch colonial in the quiet, verdant Brookdale section, and they do not plan on leaving anytime soon. Ms. Cheplic is expecting a baby girl next month, and the couple have settled in.
“We wanted a nice starter home that was affordable, in our price range,” said Mr. Cheplic, a Port Authority police officer who is stationed at Newark Liberty International Airport. “It was location more than anything.”
After searching in Montclair and Glen Ridge to the west, many house hunters have ended up in Bloomfield, an Essex County township of about 45,000 that straddles the Garden State Parkway.
Houses here might be smaller and more tightly packed than they are in towns to the west, but Kevin Kinney, an agent for Rhodes, Van Note Realtors in Upper Montclair, says they sell for about half as much. “It’s a steppingstone into the suburbs,” said Mr. Kinney, who is a vice president of the West Essex Board of Realtors.
It also has a stop on the New Jersey Transit’s seven-year-old Midtown Direct train line — and is closer to Pennsylvania Station than Montclair or Glen Ridge are. Enough planning has gone into its layout that the township is soon to receive a 2009 Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future, a research and policy group that advocates revitalization while preserving open space.
Bloomfield has long been known as a working-class town where families stay for generations. Although it has become more diverse, it remains charming in an old-fashioned kind of way.
Holsten’s, a restaurant-cum-ice-cream parlor near the Cheplics’ house, made its mark on the national consciousness two years ago because the last scene of “The Sopranos” was shot there.
Recently, municipal leaders formulated a two-phase plan to redevelop the area around busy Bloomfield Avenue at the south end, which has plenty of stores but not as many residents.
“In order to make the stores successful, you need people to live there,” said Raymond J. McCarthy, a real estate appraiser who has lived in Bloomfield for 31 years and has been its part-time mayor for the last eight years.
The plan, approved in December, calls for several hundred units of housing and shops to be built near the train station. The development will not alter many of the features that brought people like the Cheplics to town. They enjoy strolling through Brookdale Park, at the northern end of the township, and they like to eat at the Nevada Diner on Broad Street.
“It is probably a town that is on its way back up,” said Francis Busby, an agent for Keller Williams Realty. “Before they opened the Midtown Direct line, Bloomfield was kind of stuck.”
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
Bordered by Montclair and Glen Ridge to the west, Nutley and Belleville to the east and East Orange and Newark to the south, Bloomfield Township takes up a thin sliver of northeastern Essex County. It is about five miles long and one mile wide.
“You’ve got everything around you,” said Vic Reczynski, a 27-year-old Bloomfield resident who with his wife, Colleen, decided about 18 months ago to assume the $200,000 mortgage on his parents’ home instead of buying in a neighboring town. “New York is 20 minutes away,” he said. “There are great restaurants in Bloomfield and Upper Montclair, places for eating and shopping, and you’re a half-hour from any mall.”
Bloomfield Avenue, which cuts through the southern section of town, is lined with storefronts and municipal buildings, and home to Bloomfield High School. Watchung Avenue cuts across the northern end of town, passing through the mostly residential Brookdale and Oak View sections.
Broad Street, which runs north-south, links to West Passaic Avenue when it crosses the Garden State Parkway. It runs alongside the town green, then cuts through Glen Ridge Country Club, which is surrounded by wood-frame houses with small, tidy yards.
“There’s not as much room as we like between the houses,” Mr. Cheplic acknowledged, “but that’s not a problem.”
The Brookdale shopping district is near the intersection of Broad and Watchung. Things there have not changed much over the years, which in some ways lends it charm. In addition to Holsten’s, there are two barber shops, a hair salon, Mastriano Prime Meats and Poultry, a pet shop, a liquor store and a Greek restaurant.
According to statistics compiled by the state police, the crime rate hovered around 32 incidences per 1,000 residents in 2006 and 2007, the most recent years for which data are available, compared with 45 per 1,000 in 2004.
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
Agents say that calls from prospective buyers have increased since the beginning of the year because of lower interest rates, and that bargains can be had, at least when compared with two or three years ago. Mr. Kinney is listing a three-bedroom colonial built in 1930 in the Oak View section for $468,000. It sold for $522,000 in March 2006.
A recent look at the Garden State Multiple Listing Service (gsmls.com) revealed 215 homes on the market. The median price was $309,900. The range was from $135,000, for a one-bedroom condominium in the Brookdale Gardens complex, to $829,000, for a renovated 106-year-old four-bedroom colonial.
Sales have remained steady, but prices have dropped by about 7 percent. According to figures supplied by Mr. Kinney, 313 houses sold in 2008, down 3 percent from the 323 in 2007.
The average 2008 list price was $338,000, and the average sale price was $325,000. The average 2007 list price was $357,000, and the average sale price, $349,000. The average length of time on the market was 82 days in 2008, versus 68 days in 2007.
Bloomfield’s affordability, especially relative to Montclair, is a strong selling point. The gap has grown. The average 2008 list price for a house in Montclair was $745,000; the average sale price was $740,000.
“You have taxes that are much lower in Bloomfield than in Montclair because Montclair doesn’t have as many industrial locations,” said Tammy Williams-Blackwell, an agent for Re/Max Village Square in Upper Montclair.
A four-bedroom colonial listed at $399,000 in Bloomfield had a 2008 tax bill of $7,895; a four-bedroom colonial listed at $399,999 in Montclair had a 2008 tax bill of $13,044.
THE COMMUTE
The Bloomfield train station, built in 1912, is on the Montclair-Boonton Midtown Direct line to Penn Station. A monthly pass is $135. Six trains make the 28- to 36-minute trip to New York on weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m., and six trains go to Bloomfield from 5 to 8 p.m.
The Bloomfield Parking Authority has waiting lists for permit lots near the Bloomfield and Watsessing stations; the latter is one stop closer to New York. Permit parking at the Farrand Street lot, near the Bloomfield station, is $200 for six months. Long-term meter parking is available. Parking at the Myrtle Street lot at the Watsessing station is $100 for six months.
Another option is to take DeCamp Bus Lines (the No. 33, 44 or 88) to the Port Authority in Midtown. One-way trips take about 25 minutes, and a 40-trip pass is $205.
WHAT TO DO
There are two large parks in the township: Brookdale Park, to the north, designed by the renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and Watsessing Park to the south. There are eight other smaller parks, and the recreation department offered a list of programs in the spring that ranged from adult Pilates to a Guitar Hero tournament to hip-hop dance classes. The township runs camps for prekindergarten through seventh grade.
Bloomfield Arts (bloomfieldarts.org) has listings for theater, dance, concert bands and orchestras. The Historical Society of Bloomfield has a museum in the public library on Broad Street.
THE SCHOOLS
The system has eight elementary schools. Bloomfield Middle School is for seventh- and eighth-graders, and the high school has about 1,800 enrolled in Grades 9 through 12. SAT averages last year were 453 in math, 453 in reading and 449 in writing, versus 514, 492 and 494 statewide. The class of 2008 had a 93.1 percent graduation rate, versus 92.8 percent statewide.
THE HISTORY
Bloomfield Township and the 1796 Bloomfield Presbyterian Church on the Green are named after Gen. Joseph Bloomfield, a two-term governor who also served in the House of Representatives. According to a 1972 book about the church, the general gave $140 to its building fund during a visit in July 1797.
Technorati Tags: bloomfield new jersey,kevin bythe sampsno
5/23/09
The Meaning of Michelle Obama
By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Scherer
It was just two days after the Inauguration when an e-mail went around to Michelle Obama's staff, instructing everyone to be in the East Room of the White House at 3 that afternoon. The First Lady's advisers arrived to find the room filled with ushers and plumbers, electricians and maids and kitchen crew gathered in a huge circle, and Michelle in a T shirt and ponytail, very casual and very much in charge.
"This is my team that came with me from Chicago," Michelle said, pointing to her communications staff and policy people. "This is my team who works here already," she went on, indicating the ring of veterans around the room. Many of the household staff had served for decades; some had postponed retirement because they wanted to serve an African-American President. And so the two groups formed concentric rings and spent the next hour or so making sure that everyone had a chance to meet everyone else. I want you to know that you won't be judged based on whether they know your name, Michelle had warned her advisers. You'll be judged based on whether you know theirs. (See pictures of Michelle Obama behind the scenes.)
The White House became as much Michelle Obama's stage as her husband's even before she colored the fountains green for St. Patrick's Day, or mixed the Truman china with the World's Fair glasses at a state dinner, or installed beehives on the South Lawn, or turned the East Room into a jazz lounge for a night or sacrificed her first sock to the First Puppy. Of all the revelations of her first 100 days, the most striking was that she made it seem natural. She did not spend decades dreaming of this destination, and maybe that's the secret. "I'm not supposed to be here," she says again and again. And ever since she arrived, she has been asking, "What are the things that we can do differently here, the things that have never been done, the people who've never seen or experienced this White House?"
Three generations, two adorable girls and a dog — no First Family has lived with the weight of hope and hype that has landed on the Obamas. Clothes they wear fly off the shelves. Dog breeders from Germany to Australia couldn't keep up with the demand for Portuguese water dogs after Bo debuted. Michelle is the first First Lady to make Maxim's hottest-women-in-the-world list. (She's No. 93; it probably wouldn't be proper for a First Lady to come in any higher.) Cameras with lenses that can count her pores from three states away are trained on her around the clock. Former East Wing veterans marvel at the lovesick coverage she gets: when Oscar de la Renta questions her fashion sense — "You don't ... go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater" — the response is, essentially, Well, what does he know? This is what a paradigm shift looks like. (See pictures of Michelle Obama's fashion diplomacy.)
The question now is what she plans to do with all this attention. We ask the usual questions of any new First Lady: What is she really like? How does she see her role? But it is only of Michelle Obama that we ask, What does she mean? Few First Ladies have embedded themselves so quickly in the world's imagination. And none have traveled so far, not just from Chicago's South Side to the East Wing, but from the caricatured Angry Black Woman of last spring to her exalted status as a New American Icon, as if her arrival will magically reverse eight years of anti-American spitballing, elevate the black middle class, promote family values, give voice to the voiceless and inspire us all to live healthier, more generous lives.
She admits that the sheer symbolic power of the role is perhaps greater than she anticipated. "I tried not to come into this with too many expectations one way or the other," she says on a sunny May afternoon in her East Wing office. "I felt like part of my job — and I still feel like that — is to be open to where this needs to go." She's always shown a shrewd eye for the strategic detour, suspending her career in favor of helping her husband get elected, then getting her daughters settled and her garden planted and, in the process, disarming the critics who cast her as a black radical in a designer dress. She will say she's just doing what comes naturally. But whether by accident or design, or a little of both, she has arrived at a place where her very power is magnified by her apparent lack of interest in it. "Over the years, the role of First Lady has been perceived as largely symbolic," Hillary Clinton observed in her memoirs. "She is expected to represent an ideal — and largely mythical — concept of American womanhood." That was not Clinton's favorite part of the job. Maybe this is Michelle's true advantage: she appears at peace, even relieved, that her power is symbolic rather than institutional. It makes her less threatening, and more potent at the same time — especially since her presence at the White House has unique significance. (See pictures of when Michelle met Hillary.)
The great-great-granddaughter of slaves now occupies a house built by them, one of the most professionally accomplished First Ladies ever cheerfully chooses to call herself Mom in Chief, and the South Side girl whose motivation often came from defying people who tried to stop her now gets to write her own set of rules.
Getting to Know You
Just a year ago, more people had a poor opinion of Michelle Obama (35%) than a good one (30%). During the primaries especially, she was too hot, and not in the way Maxim means it. She talked about America as being "just downright mean," and lazy, and cynical, how life for most people had "gotten progressively worse throughout my lifetime." Seeing an opportunity, conservative critics dubbed her Mrs. Grievance, called her bitter and anti-American, to the point that her husband had to defend her patriotism and call the attacks on her "detestable."
Her portrayal may have been a caricature, but it was also taking a toll. People who traveled with her from the earliest days in Iowa say she was a quick study, receptive to feedback on what was working and what wasn't. She began talking less about the country's problems and more about its promise. By the time the New Yorker parodied the parody of her as a machine-gun-toting revolutionary, she was reintroducing herself at the Democratic Convention as a wife, a mother, a sister and a daughter, listing why she loved her country and why her husband was the man to lead it. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree.)
And so the debate about What She Means shifted again, but this time it was feminists wondering if she or her handlers were using the J. Crew twin sets and Donna Reed hair to reassure white voters that "she's just like you." Under the liberal magnifying glass, Michelle was suddenly a victim, forced by her husband's ambitions and society's expectations to tone it down, soften it up, step back. "How will Michelle Obama feel as she becomes what she has long resisted — an extension of her husband?" asked Rebecca Traister in a Salon article called "The Momification of Michelle Obama." She was giving up her job, her $212,000-a-year salary and her independence, which prompted the commentariat to lament the sacrifices she was having to make in terms of her identity. Even her own mother told People that "Michelle had worked so hard to get where she was. I kind of feel bad for her."
Asked about this analysis now, Michelle rejects the idea that she has had to sacrifice at all. "I know women who have given up a lot of themselves," she says. "And there were times in my marriage where I put stuff aside. This isn't one of those times." And she didn't change, she insists; people just had time to get to know her. On the other hand, she brought to the White House a longtime friend and marketing executive who, as social secretary, describes her job as managing "the Obama brand." In any case, by the time she held the Bible for her husband on Inauguration Day, her approval rating had jumped nearly 40 points. And she was just getting started.
Girl Power
After four months in the White House and two years on the campaign trail, she's learned how to help people relax around her so she can get down to business. She makes fun of herself and of her husband, and teases a male reporter about his struggle to accurately describe her outfit during her European tour. "You didn't know you'd be covering cardigans," she says, but that's O.K., since her husband doesn't know cable-knit from argyle either. When she tries to explain why she's constantly hugging people, she reaches out and grabs your arm and holds it. I'd be intimidated too to meet the First Lady, she says. "That's why I'm so touchy with kids, because I think if I touch them and I hug them, that they'll see that it's real, and then they'll relax and breathe and actually kind of enjoy the time and make use of it."
Put her in a room with black teenage girls and her message couldn't be more radical or more all-American: Anyone can be anything if they are willing to work hard enough at it. This is inspiration with an edge. The honors student who wrote her Princeton thesis about being black in the Ivy League knows that the difference between success and failure can be cruelly random. She knew lots of bright kids growing up, she says, "and you slowly see people slipping through the cracks, you know that there but for the grace of God." She had friends who could have thrived in college, but their parents didn't believe in going into debt to pay for it. "I saw kids like me who were using their loan money to help their parents pay the electric bill, and therefore they'd run out of money for books and couldn't feed themselves over the course of the semester ... So I just keep thinking about those kids who are missing opportunities by a hair, by a breath, by a parent, by a teacher, by a dollar amount, and I'm kind of working to make up some of that difference to the extent that I think I can." (See pictures of the civil rights movement from Emmett Till to Barack Obama.)
One of her fantasies during the campaign was that in her White House, famous people wouldn't just come in; they would go out into the community too. So on a cool day in March, she dispatched a regiment of role models to schools across Washington, including singers Alicia Keys and Sheryl Crow, Ann Dunwoody, the first female four-star general, and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel into space. Michelle visited Anacostia High School, where violence is common and signs on the walls tell students which baby supplies will be available through the Baby Bonus Bucks Redemption Program. She sat with a group of 10 girls and three boys, who had been chosen, she told them, because "somebody in your school thought that you had a lot of potential." She recalled how she had lived close to the University of Chicago but never set foot inside growing up. "It was a fancy college, and it didn't have anything to do with me." Maybe you feel the same way about the White House, she suggested. "There are so many kids like that," she observes, "who are living inches away from power and prestige and fame and fortune, and they don't even know that it exists."
Which is why that night, the women leaders reassembled at the White House for a dinner with more than 100 students from schools across the city to celebrate Women's History Month. Tonight is your night, Michelle told the girls. So don't be shy. "Poke and prod and figure out how [these women] got to be where they are and what you can do in your lives to get yourselves ready for that next step. Tonight we just want to say, Go for it! Don't hesitate. Don't act with fear. Just go for it." Because all the women in the room, she told the girls, see a little bit of ourselves in you.
"It's one of those events," she says looking back, "that stand out in my mind as, This is why I'm here."
See pictures of the fashion of Michelle Obama.
See pictures of people around the world watching Barack Obama's Inauguration.
White House Life
After Barack Obama was elected to the Senate, people asked Michelle if she'd be moving to Washington. "I was like, no," she says. "All my support is the support you build up over the years. It is my mom, girlfriends — you move away from everything." But when he won the White House, Michelle effectively moved her support system with her, not just her mother but old friends who are scattered throughout both the East and West wings. Other longtime Chicago friends are occasional visitors and joined the Obamas for spring break, as they have for the past several years — but this year the gathering took place at Camp David. Among the traditions is a talent show, with everyone required to perform. This year Michelle demonstrated her skills with two hula hoops; Obama and the men sang "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." The visits typically include charades, singing, board games — although now that the Obamas are making use of the White House bowling alley and pool table, the other families tease them by saying they'll refuse to play any games that the Obamas can practice in the new house.
As strange as White House life can be, it is providing Michelle a kind of balance she has seldom known. From roughly the time their first child was born, her husband was commuting to the state capital, the nation's capital or the campaign trail. Michelle all but charged him with abandonment, as he described in The Audacity of Hope: " 'You only think about yourself,' she would tell me. 'I never thought I'd have to raise a family alone.' " (See pictures of the White House kitchen.)
Winning the presidency was the ticket to at least one kind of normality. "Among the many wonderful things about being President," Barack tells TIME, "the best is that I get to live above the office and see Michelle and the kids every day. I see them in the morning. We have dinner every night. It is the thing that sustains me." The President refers to what he calls "Michelle time," when he takes a break during the day and retreats to the residence. Semiregularly, Michelle appears in the West Wing with the dog or their daughters for a brief but lively interruption. The family does "roses and thorns" around the dinner table, with all of them saying something good and something bad that happened to them that day. "And if the kids really, really need to see him, they can," she says. "They're free to walk in. They're welcome wherever they want to go around here." But they can also just ignore him, since they know he's around. "That's been terrific," she says. "It's more normal than we've had for a very long time."
Michelle's day starts at dawn, when she walks the dog and then hits the treadmill; she's had the same personal trainer for about 10 years, who has relocated to Washington from Chicago. There are no regularly scheduled meetings with her staff and never any meetings before the girls go to school. She tells aides which days she wants to be "on"; she can concentrate all her public events into a couple of days a week, leaving her free to sit in a lawn chair at the soccer field watching the girls play. Then there are the parent-teacher conferences, the play, the birthday party, the calls with parents to discuss the sleepover. "Kids force you into a normalcy," she says, "that, you know, it even trumps this [place] in some ways."
The Obamas' marriage has a history of tension around chores: as his career took him away for long stretches, Barack admitted, "my failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly became less endearing." Michelle smiles about this and says, "That's off the table." Now they live in a house with 35 bathrooms and in which all domestic tasks are taken care of. "She thinks it's nice that people play 'Hail to the Chief,' " the President says. "But I still am expected for family dinner on time, and I still have to walk the dog." He gets the night shift, Michelle says. "That's usually right before bed. It's like 10 p.m. We sort of handle Bo like we did the kids. I'm the early-morning person ... Once I go to bed, I don't care what happens. Just make sure the dog doesn't have an accident." She talks about the dog with the smitten tone of a girl who never had one of her own before. She walks him frequently, sometimes every couple of hours. "He's getting to the point where he can be naughty," she says, "like you walk in the room and it's like, 'Where'd you get that sock?' " The family has learned to limit Bo's range of potential destruction by keeping doors closed. "We try to set him up for success," she says with a knowing smile. (See pictures of Bo and other presidential dogs.)
Maybe this is what women watching her covet: not the clothes or the glamour or the glory, but the fact that she seems to be having a blast, in a way Laura Bush and the rest never did. After working hard for 20 years, she gets to take a sabbatical, spend as much time as she wants with her kids, do as many high-impact public events as she chooses and, when it's all over, have the rest of her life to write the next chapter. "I don't even know what that is yet," she says, but she'll have choices then, as she has now, that most working mothers only dream of.
See pictures of Sasha and Malia Obama at the Inauguration.
See pictures of Michelle Obama's style evolution.
Division of Labor
Ask anyone in the East Wing how Michelle sees the role of First Lady and you hear a lot about "supporting the President's agenda." But what happens if she disagrees with her husband about some policy he's embraced? "I'm sure I do what every spouse does," she says, as though their potential disagreements are in any way like any other couple's. "We'll have conversations, and we'll share our opinions over the course of the conversation. But I don't want to have a say. Really, there are a lot of times when I'm like, Don't tell me what happened today at work. I just don't want to hear it, because I want the home space to really be free of that." Unlike in the Clinton White House, when a member of the First Lady's staff was in nearly every important meeting, Michelle does not send an emissary to key policy debates or the 7:30 a.m. meeting in chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's office. But no one who heard her on the campaign trail can imagine for a minute that she doesn't have strong views on many issues, or that her husband doesn't know what they are.
She has dropped some of the traditional baggage that First Ladies have hauled around for eons, passing up this gala or that benefit for the first time since Bess Truman's day and planting her famous garden to teach a lesson about healthy eating. Like all First Ladies, Michelle will at some point do or say something that gets her in trouble, and it won't just be wearing $540 sneakers to work in the food bank, the way she did last month. (See pictures of Barack Obama taken by everyday Americans.)
But in her Technicolor dresses and famously buff bare arms, it's hard not to wonder if Michelle isn't daring us all to just roll with it, to be a little bolder at a time when the country could use all the courage it can muster. "You've got to make choices that make sense for you," she says, "because there's always going to be somebody who'll think you should do something differently." When prodded, she admits with a wry smile that there are moments when she misses her old, anonymous knock-around days. "It's a lot easier to live your life," she says, "when everything you do doesn't have a consequence."
But that path, at least for a while, is blocked. Just before our interview, she'd been out on the South Lawn walking Bo when she took a wrong turn. "We happen to walk past the gate where the visitors were coming, and I heard this 'Yeaaaa! It's Bo!' ... Bo is like, 'Who's calling me?' " She's laughing now at the spectacle of a dog who is world-famous, at a house trafficked by thousands of strangers every day, at a life in which every stroll can become a headline. "I was like, Oh, darn, I should have gone around the other way."
— With reporting by Jay Newton-Small and Karen Tumulty / Washington
Technorati Tags: the meaning of michelle Obama,kevin blythe sampson
Michelle Obama: a new type of First Lady
From The Times
November 5, 2008
Sarah Vine
That rather sad, muffled noise you hear behind the whoops and cheers of Democrat America is not the sound of defeated neocons mourning the passing of trickle-down economics; it is the sound of sobbing in the Élysée Palace. For Carla Bruni, reigning queen of First Ladies, the game is finally up. Cindy McCain would have been a push-over; even Sarah Palin she could have coped with, sexy specs or otherwise. But in Michelle Obama, Ms Bruni has truly met her match. This is a First Lady like none before.
In truth, from the moment Michelle Obama stepped on to that podium at the Democrat convention what seems like, ooh, about three million years ago, we all secretly knew which way this race was going. Sure, he had big, sticky-out ears; sure, all those luvvies made that embarrassing YouTube song about him; but if Michelle thought that he was OK — if she chose him — then he just had to be a good man.
Everything about this woman speaks to the modern, post-feminist woman: she is manifestly clever, independently minded, attractive in a normal, accessible way (and not in a scary, plastic-fantastic Cindy way). Her demeanour is a reassuring mixture of sassy and self-deprecating; her easy, confident dress sense neither too sexy nor too self-conscious. Most of all, however, she appears to be the personification of sanity, a woman who, while clearly supportive of her husband’s quest for world domination, is nevertheless not afraid to point out when he is danger of drinking too much of his own Kool-Aid.
The evolution of the role of First Lady is a fascinating one. Until now, they have essentially been available in two flavours. The first is the meek, supportive grin-and-bear-it model, as exemplified by Laura and Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan and Mamie Eisenhower. Often Republican, invariably well-coiffed, they seem to simultaneously be at the centre of the action yet a million light years away from power. Often, this impression is grossly unfair. Laura Bush’s favourite writer, for example, is Dostoevsky — not that you would have known it from the press release: too intimidating, too intellectual for the wife of the man everyone wanted to share a Bud with.
The alternative is the two-for-the-price-of-one First Lady. These tend to be ball-breaking Democrats such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. They have their own careers, their own lives and their own minds.
There is one exception: Jackie Kennedy. She was pure style, a fashion clothes horse who still, 40 years on, has the power to inspire double-page spreads in Vogue magazine.
What makes Michelle unique is the way she so skilfully unites all three: supportive, independent and a fashion icon. Sarah Palin blew £90,000 on her campaign wardrobe but let’s face it, it is that blue shift dress that we all remember.
In the last American election, the big question was this: who would you most want to share a beer with? In this one, it was more like: who would you like to share a Martini with? The answer of course being Michelle. (Barack could maybe make himself useful by popping out for some crisps.) Michelle is not only invigoratingly intelligent, proud of her urbanity, but also unafraid of showing her abilities. She is certainly the only wife of a presidential candidate I can remember who, instead of playing herself down, played up the general uselessness of her husband in matters domestic — and in doing so not only held her ground intellectually but also reached out to all those women who, while devoted to their spouses, also find them slightly useless in matters of sock-tidying.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about Michelle however is what having a woman lawyer like her in the White House means. For it is not often one can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that there is an educated, intelligent, sensible female voice being heard in the corridors of power.
At the 2004 Democrat Convention in Boston, when the unknown Barack Obama stepped up to the plate to deliver the keynote speech, she famously said to him: “Don’t screw it up, buddy.” One cannot help hoping those words were repeated last night.
Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.
4/5/09
What a day saturday was hanging with my cousins the Doctors..........
my cousins at the hospital in Elizabeth to VIsit my Uncle Othello...............cousin Benda, Darrolyn and Jessie
What a day Saturday was, it was bittersweet but still a great day.
I got to hang with three of my favorite folks, my cousins, Dr Darrolyn MCarroll
who is not only my first cousin but a best friend,
Darrolyn is an extraordinary woman who
is oh so smart in both the books and in life.
She was raised along with me and my siblings, Darrolyn is my other sister.
Anyway funny unpretentious woman who after having some health issues is changing her life to do something creative.
Hopefully along with me………………anyway
Where was I
My cousin Dr. Jessie McCarroll
a music genius now in his seventies but still going stronger than me……by the way
Jessie is the brother of Jessica my wonderful cousin who I got to spend some great time with in Alabama.
Jessie moved to New York from the south long ago he is a New Yorker living downtown for many years
His life is music, and Colombia U, art and people or so I figure, because the fruit never falls far from the tree.
Anyway we had to go to my cousin Virginia apartment in the senior citizens home in Rahway New Jersey.
Cousin Virginia McCarroll by the way was my earlier mentor; she is now 93 years old and had to be placed in managed care. Virginia was the strongest woman I have ever known. She was a lab tech and lived on riverside drive for many many years in New York. This woman actually went to France in the 1930’s to become an artist. She is from born in the south but was a New Yorker for sure. She speaks several languages to this day like my Deceased Uncle Raleigh McCarroll, who by the way was a interpreter at the Nuremberg trials in Germany he spoke at least 5 languages.
Anyway Virginia………I feel so bad because for so many years she had been an every week part of my life.
When I got married she came by my house at least three times a week. Made me plant a garden over saw it, made me fix things around the house. Ok she fixed them.
The over the course of the past ten years I have sorely neglected her. These are these things that make for guilt and baggage. Life got in the way and ……………you know the rest
So here I was in her apartment with my cousins, Jessie is like his sister brilliant. Funny and more.
He has traveled all over the world with his group the Pan African Society for musical arts Education.
What a guy what a family
What happened to me………………duh
Virginia sold at the Englishtown flee market for a half a century.
As a child I would often accompany here, jersey boy here
She was strong as any man, and Virginia wore her hair in an afro in the 1940’s until.
She wore African garb from time to time and had visited Africa on more than one occasion.
I often speak about my father being the first afro centric in America; I don’t know I think Virginian might have been first.
She could out work any man, was smarter than most men and didn’t take shit from any one.
Loved this woman
Virginia was into healthy living before any one
She laughed in a high pitched cackle
That made us children calls her the witch
She didn’t mind at all
She practiced stone magic and more
And guess what I found her magic bag and voodoo dolls for a lack of better name
I found animal paws in glass
This apartment was crammed packed with more than I can describe
A virtual museum of African collectables, memoribia, slide movies cd.
What a place
What a woman
Ok I haven’t been around the help here as much as I should have been
But I got to spend some quality time with Jessie, Darrolyn and Darrolyn wonderful daughter Kim,
Who lives with the other light of my life
Aunt Vernell Oliver (McCarroll on fifth ave in New York
Kim is a lot like me in her love of new York and the night
Ok so we stopped at a Brazilians restaurant
Hey right underneath my apartment
The food was great and Jessie spoke to the staff who is my friends
About his numerous visits to Brazil.
In any case what a day
What a family
I just realized when I wrote this that woman the woman in my family were the ones that made me a artist
The men might have gave me subject matter
But it was the woman perhaps understanding how hard it is to become what you want
Were the ones the encouraged me and protected me from the men who thought
That art was a …………………….unmanly thing
Man
Woman
My cousin Virginia has all of my early work
Which I just recovered
She spent time in Haiti and when I was perhaps 15 and did my first real painting
She commented that I painted like a Haitian
That was way over my head
But now when I gaze at this work I can see it
When I became a cop
My mother one day out of the blue
Said take a ride with me to the post office, in Elizabeth
I did
She went over to the FBI wanted board of criminals
And pointed out a Police composite sketch
She said that if you have to become a cop
Become a police composite artist
It was over my head until years later
My chief of Police called me in to congratulate me on my arrest record and Job performance
Their was a slot open in the detective bureau and all of the senior officers
Recommended me for the slot
But that was not to be until about five years later
Anyway the Chief asked me to name the kind of specialized training
That I wanted
My mother popped in my head
I want to be a police composite artist
And you know what he sent me to that school
And the rest is history
Where was I
Thanks mom
Woman
Later when I graduated from composite art school
I remember having to pull over on the New Jersey turnpike
To cry and thank my mother for her vision
My Aunt Vernell encouraged me
Brought me paints
And introduced me to Jacob Lawrence and Romaine Bearden
Long long ago
She owns two or three beardons by the way
She hung with the guy
My Sister Donna
Best friend
Another amazing woman
Smith Graduate and genius…project manager……………….woman
My daughter
Son Jason and Daughter Lauren
Annual funds manager at the Cooper Union in New York
My all time best student
this daughter of mine
Anyway
Woman
Cant forget my Step Mother, Mother, Friend and the ones that hold me together
Gran Ruby
who is also from Alabama
God my family is from Alabama
what a fine group of people
God no wonder I used to have complexes
Anyway
McCarroll Family
Bravo
Bravo Family
And please check out my cousins stuff below
Genius, Genius…………
It humbled me just looking at Jessie's life and education
Dr. Darrolyn McCarroll-Lindsey MD
Internal Medicine Physician - Franklin, Massachusetts
Dr. Jesse C. McCarroll
African American Studies
Professor Emeritus of Music
Dr. McCarroll currently teaches as a part-time faculty member in the African American Studies Department. He teaches African American/Caribbean Music. Previously, he taught Jazz in the Humanities Department.
Publications:
- Jesse McCarroll and Marvin S. Adler, Elementary Music Teachers Almanack, Parker Publishing Company.
- Jesse McCarroll and Marvin S. Adler, Timely Lesson Plans for Every Day of the School Year and Making Music Fun, Parker Publishing Company.
- Jesse McCarroll (Contributing Author) Teaching Jazz: A Course of Study, published by the International Association of Jazz Educators and Music Educators National Conference.
Scholarly Accomplishments:
- June 1999
Educator of the Year Award by the Association of Black Educators of New York. - May 1999
Performance Excellence Award, New York City College of Technology of The City University of New York, (CUNY) - 1987
CUNY Scholar - 1984
Scholar on Campus, New York City College of Technology. - May 1, 1982
Piano recital, formal opening of the Saenger Performing Arts Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and was given the "Key to the City."
Dr. McCarroll studied piano with Friedrich Wuhrer at the Mannheim School of Music, Mannheim, Germany; Marianne Matousek Mastics at the Cleveland Institute of Music; and Thomas Richner and Martin Canin, in New York City.
Under the auspices of Operation Crossroads Africa, Dr. McCarroll performed in a quartet on a tour of eight countries in West Africa. Special performances were given for the presidents of Mauritania, Liberia and Ghana. In addition, Dr. McCarroll has given numerous performances in the United States. He has been honored by the Black Music Caucus of New York and by the National Black Music Caucus of Music Educators national conference. Dr. McCarroll is on the Curriculum Committee of the International Association of Jazz Educators.
Degrees:
- PhD, Education
Teachers College, Columbia University - MA, Education
Teachers College, Columbia University - BA, Piano
Cleveland Institute of Music
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