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The Paper of Record for East and West Villages, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown

September 17, 2015 • FREE Volume 5 • Number 15

A tale of two Catholic churches in the East Village, now merged BY MARY REINHOLZ

PHOTO COPYRIGHT HARVEY WANG

he Redemptorist priest, resplendent in a bright green cassock, stood outside Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic church in the late summer sunlight, greeting the faithful that streamed out of a 10:30 a.m. Spanish-language Mass at his

soaring cathedral-like edifice, at 173 E. Third St. between Avenues A and B. The Reverend James Cascione, the parochial vicar and a member of a missionary order that established the parish in 1842 for a then-German Catholic neighborhood, also dispensed blessings CHURCHES continued on p. 26

The Bean: The little cafe that could...and really did! BY KATHRYN ADISMAN

he Bean found itself in a David and Goliath story when giant Starbucks muscled the independent favorite out of its home in 2011. But the neighborhood coffee shop fought back. And therein lies a tale. Ike Escava, owner of the

original The Bean, at First Ave. and E. Third St., was at the end of his 10-year lease, negotiating with the landlord for an extension. One day, as Ike told it, “Somebody walked in and started measuring. The manager said, ‘Can I help you?’ ‘We’re here for the renovation.’ THE BEAN continued on p. 4

Adam Purple on the fire escape at the top of his Forsyth St. building overlooking his beloved Garden of Eden during the winter of 1982.

Adam Purple, L.E.S. gardens godfather, dies on his bike BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

dam Purple, the legendary Lower East Side gardener who fought a losing battle to save his spectacular Garden of Eden from destruction for a low-income housing project, died Monday as he was bicycling over the Williamsburg Bridge. He was 84. The cause of death was apparently a heart attack, according to Time’s Up, the Brooklyn-based cycling and environmental group that

had taken in Purple in recent years. Carmine D’Intino, a good friend of Purple’s, said the iconic activist and environmentalist — known for his flowing white beard, purple garb and mirrored sunglasses — had been biking around midday from the Williamsburg headquarters of Time’s Up, to meet him in the East Village. Purple had been living at the Time’s Up space in recent years. As usual, Purple had called D’Intino beforehand and

told him when he was about to head out to meet him. He would have been riding a folding bike that D’Intino gave him a few years ago. “He would call me when he got to Manhattan and tell me what he was doing,” he said. But this time, no second call came. Police did not immediately have information on what may have happened to Purple — whose real name was PURPLE continued on p. 6

WWW.EASTVILLAGERNEWS.COM Andrea Alton alt of control!........page 23 | May 14, 2014

www.EastVillagerNews.com

PHOTOS BY CHRIS ORTIZ

HOUSE AND GARDEN: Councilmember Corey Johnson has remained quiet on the Elizabeth St. Garden debate, not wanting to intervene on an issue in the district of Council colleague Margaret Chin. But, in response to The Villager’s queries, Johnson is now at least saying that he does support building affordable housing at a city-owned site in Hudson Square, which is the alternative plan that has been proposed by Tobi Bergman, chairperson of Community Board 2. A spokesperson this week told us, “Councilmember Johnson supports the Community Board 2 recommendation for construction of affordable housing at the Department of Environmental Protection water-shaft site located at Hudson and Clarkson Sts. He looks forward to working with C.B. 2 in the coming months on a suitable plan for that site.” However, as for whether the affordable housing project slated for the Elizabeth St. garden should now be shifted to this West Side site, saving the Little Italy garden, Johnson, well...would not go there. “The Elizabeth St. site is located within Councilmember Chin’s district and Councilmember Johnson rarely weighs in on issues or land use items in other councilmembers’ districts,” his spokesperson said, adding, “He has the utmost respect for Councilmember Chin.” Actually, the full board of C.B. 2 has not voted on whether to designate the Hudson and Clarkson Sts. site for affordable housing. The board is still on record from years ago supporting a park / playground at the location. Yet, Bergman said, developing housing there “has been discussed in the board’s Executive Committee and informally among many members, and it has strong support as an alternative to the Elizabeth St. Garden site.” Bergman added, “The bottom line for the L.M.D.C

funding is that this is an issue for the city administration to resolve with the community, not one to be decided through an L.M.D.C. funding decision. H.P.D. should withdraw the request and work with us on a variety of good affordable housing opportunities instead of taking this action, which can only sour the relationship.” At its scheduled hearing on Thurs., Sept. 17, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was set to consider an application by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development for a $6 million grant for the 100-unit senior housing project earmarked for the garden.

MATERIAL KIDS: Don’t cry for me...Kyle and Camille, above. You just won tickets to see Madonna on her Rebel Heart Tour at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night in NYC Community Media’s Madonna tickets contest! Kyle lives in the East Village, and Camille hails from Williamsburg. For the rest of our readers, don’t feel bad that you lost. You can still enter our Ricky Martin concert tickets contest! It’s loca! See our ad in this week’s issue for details. HERE’S COMES THE JUDGE...DELEGATE: Say what you want about her boss, Sheldon Silver,

and her husband, William Rapfogel, but Judy Rapfogel, the former’s longtime chief of staff, was elected a Democratic judicial delegate last week in the 65th Assembly District, which covers the Lower East Side and Lower Manhattan. Out of nearly 10,000 people who voted, more than 1,000, or about 10 percent, penciled in the oval for Rapfogel. Of the fi ve winners, she came in last. Meanwhile, former Assembly Speaker Silver, of course, is facing federal corruption charges, while hubby William is serving time in the slammer for embezzling funds from the Metropolitan New York Council on Jewish Povery, the charity group he formerly led. A large amount of the stolen cash was found stashed in the bedroom apartment of the Rapfogels’ Grand St. apartment. She has said she didn’t know about the stolen dough. Anyway, she’ll now be helping select our judges.

MAY THE SCHWARTZ (CAPTION) BE WITH YOU: In last week’s print edition of The Villag-

er, a caption on page 10 under a photo of Arthur Schwartz in the article “Attorney and police don’t see eye to eye in spy cameras case” was a misprint. The caption should have stated that it was Schwartz and that he was handcuffed while in court in July as he was being given his return court date.

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September 17, 2015

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Marc Wishengrad blew a shofar from the balcony at the Rosh Hashanah service.

Celebrating the spirit of ’76! Make that 5776, to be exact BY TEQUILA MINSKY

e’re everybody-friendly, God-optional and artist-driven,” said Amichai Lau-Lavie, spiritual leader of Lab/ Shul. Amichai leads his Rosh Hashanah services with inclusive and empathetic, yet challenging guidance. The stage is filled with musicians — on violin, flute, guitars and percussion — performing liturgical and world music melodies and rhythms. Prayers and music are accompanied by projections on a screen. This is an Amichai Lab/Shul service. “We’re nomads,” Amichai declared. The location for this September’s Jewish new year observance, on Sun., Sept. 13, was quite different from the previous Lower Manhattan venues. At City Winery, at Varick and Vandam Sts., the ark for the Torah was a wine cask. This year, 5776, the services were held in an early-Romanesque auditorium on Upper Fifth Ave. “It wasn’t big enough,” filmmaker Sandi DuBowski said of City Winery. DuBowski is known for his work on the intersection of L.G.B.T. people and their religion. He is currently making a long-term documentary on Amichai, sort of a “Hoop Dreams” and “42 Up” magnified. Amichai directed Storahtelling — which mixes Judaism with the arts and new media — for years, and is now a rabbi-in-training at the Jewish Theological Seminary, graduating in May. All 583 seats of the Academy of Medicine’s E. 103rd St. auditorium were filled for Rosh Hashanah. Plenty of worshipers from Downtown EastVillagerNews.com

(the physical home of Lab/Shul) — including from the Lower East Side, the Village and Tribeca — made the trek, as did congregants from the Upper West and East Sides, Long Island, Queens and New Jersey. One regular flies from Sante Fe each year to take part. Joining the worship team, musician Natan-el Goldberg travels from Israel to perform with guitar, percussion and a voice that makes you melt. “I am just the medium of this music,” he said with total humility. The services were streamed online. Shira Kline, sporting a swath of bright-blue bangs, led the short family-friendly service for kids up to age 7, followed by activities, keeping them busy while parents worshiped. The Storah (story plus Torah, acted out) Service for adults featured original and dramatized translation of the Torah into English, in three acts. Wrapping up the morning service, Rabbi David Kline blew the traditional ram’s horn shofar, an ancient trumpet. From the balcony, Marc Wishengrad’s sustained, embellished blowings from a long, twisted Yemenite shofar, bought in Borough Park, added to Kline’s traditional tones. Wishengrad is also a trumpeter. Tribeca resident Jewel Bachrach said of the schlep to the Upper East Side, “It was worth the trip.” After the service, many joined the worship team across the street in Central Park at the Harlem Meer, where Tashlich took place. In the Shedding Ritual, the previous year’s transgressions are symbolically cast off by throwing pieces of bread into a natural body of flowing water.

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September 17, 2015

THE BEAN continued from p. 1

‘Which renovation?’ ‘The Starbucks renovation.’” A customer called The New York Times to report that a local shop was getting displaced by a chain. “When Starbucks took over the location we had spent so much time building up,” Escava recalled, “it felt that the roof was caving in. It was scary. I was basically out of business.” Luckily, a childhood friend of his, Sammy Cohen, came to the rescue. A wholesale clothing importer in Bangladesh, Cohen offered to become a working partner and had enough capital. “We’ll open three shops!” Cohen declared. And it came to pass. They were able to open in a new space a block away, at Second Ave. and E. Third St., that was bigger and nicer — and before Starbucks opened in their old space. The new place sports a mural of the original shop by Jim Power, the Mosaic Man. “The amazing part of the whole story,” said Escava, “was we opened up the Broadway shop across from the Strand by the end of August” — two weeks before they were evicted on First Ave. He closed and went to work the next day and saw the same faces. Some people were just coming to show support. “I felt like George Bailey in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life!’ ” Escava recalled. They opened on Second Ave. in December and then on First Ave. at E. Ninth St. in June 2012. Thus, in under a year, they grew an insulated presence in their neighborhood, the East Village. Escava thinks there’s a story in how supportive the neighborhood is. “When Starbucks took our store, there’s an invisible picket line that people still don’t cross,” he said. “The East Village is unique,” Cohen said. “Customers here are very loyal. They always root for the underdog.” Escava, who described himself as a Sephartic Jew from Brooklyn, has deep roots in the neighborhood. He was previously a partner in a family-owned clothing business on the Lower East Side. But, he said, “The world changed.” He found himself competing with chains. He decided to go into coffee because he loved the product and wanted to do something smaller on his own. “I wasn’t planning to do partners,” Escava admitted. “I’m lucky Sammy came along.” “Being in business with your best friend,” co-owner Cohen concurred, “it all boils down to trust.” In April 2014, the team extended their reach into Williamsburg, where Escava said they’ve been accepted. Typically, they look for a corner space with wraparound windows. Every location features an exposed brick wall,

PHOTOS BY KATHRYN ADISMAN

CONTRIBUTORS

The Bean: The little cafe that could

A menu showing The Bean’s caffeinated creations, painted sideshow-style by Nicolina.

tin ceiling, cushioned benches and outdoor seating. The Bean also prides itself on promoting local artists and being part of the community. With four stores and 60 employees, they might be a chain themselves. However, Escava said, “We consider ourselves a small shop — not cookie-cutter.” Cheyenne, the shift lead at the E. Third St. street shop, agreed, saying, “This is a place about not fitting in.” At the Broadway shop, Jordan, who formerly worked at Starbucks, said the difference is in the drinks and the vibe. Starbucks, he said, is “candy drinks.” The Bean’s signature coffee drinks have names that Ike Escava, pun on cultural icons — co-owner. the NutElla Fitzgerald, “a fine romance”; the Frozen Mona Lisa, “a blended masterpiece”; the Great BamBeano, “a Ruthian blast.” The caffeinated creations’ names are painted on the wall behind the counter like sideshow posters by Nicolina, evoking a vintage East Village vibe. “Contemporary throwback,” was how barista Tanya described it. “The decor is part of the vibe,” explained Andrew, shift lead at the E. Ninth St. shop, who worked at Yaffa cafe on St. Mark’s Place until it closed last October. “The customers make the store,” he said. Beyond coffee (their house blend is from Gillies, in Brooklyn), The Bean’s

The Bean’s original owner and now

menu includes 30 teas, 20 smoothies, an organic juice bar, and vegan, gluten-free and kosher food options. Finding a gluten-free bagel that tastes good isn’t easy, Cohen noted, adding, “We’re very picky.” Escava sees the coffee ritual as an escape. And, ironically, in escaping from Starbucks, The Bean itself sprung to life again, stronger than ever. “Starbucks created this niche,” he said. “Starbucks helped us have a rebirth. They did me the biggest favor of my life!” The score so far: The total number of Starbucks stores in New York City: 283? The Bean: 4. And counting… . EastVillagerNews.com

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September 17, 2015

Adam Purple, 84, gardens legend, dies on bridge PURPLE continued from p. 1

September 17, 2015

PHOTO COPYRIGHT HARVEY WANG

David Wilkie — on the bridge. A department spokesperson said they would only have a record if there had been a crime. However, Bill Di Paola, executive director of Time’s Up, said from what he was told, Purple was found in the middle of the bridge. Passersby reportedly performed CPR on him to try to save him. Di Paola said a man he knows by his first name, Jacques, told him that he had been riding by and saw Purple on the bridge and that he did not look like he was alive. Di Paola said Purple would ride over the bridge and into the East Village about twice a month to shop for food at Commodities Natural Market, at E. 10th St. and First Ave. “I think the summer took a toll on him because it was very hot,” D’Intino said. “He was living in a little room at Time’s Up. He was thinking about moving in with me.” Di Paola said Purple had been living at Time’s Up for the past three years, in a small room located off the bike-shop work area. “He really had no place else to go and he liked Time’s Up,” he said. “Being around our bike shop and energy really energized him.” In a statement, Time’s Up said, “Yesterday, we lost one of New York’s most well-known and colorful environmentalists. We also lost one of Time’s Up’s oldest and most dedicated volunteers. “We all knew and loved Adam. His commitment to a sustainable lifestyle was unrelenting and all encompassing. The community garden that he created with his own hands was so lush and grandiose that even NASA saw it — from outer space! Appropriately, it was called the Garden of Eden.” Purple helped with day-to-day operations and night management at the space. Di Paola said Purple helped sort parts and assisted during their recycle-a-bike workshops. In a feature story two years ago about Purple hanging out with the younger cyclists, the Daily News dubbed him the “Original Hipster.” David Wilkie — who would later become Adam Purple during the psychedelic era — was born in 1930 in Missouri. Purple would always tell The Villager how he had been a police reporter there. According to D’Intino, he was also an English teacher and was drafted during the Korean War, but was given a special noncombat post. As for how Purple got his nickname, he once told The Villager it came from “the magic mushroom.” He also went by at least two other monikers, including General Zen and the Rev-Les Ego. Last Thursday, D’Intino met with Purple at the Time’s Up space and they spoke about getting in touch with the elderly activist’s family members and putting his papers and archival materials — including about his beloved Garden of Eden — in the right hands. According to D’Intino, Purple’s survivors include a son, about age 30, who teaches English in Japan; a grandson who is in publishing in California; and several daughters. The grandson republished Purple’s miniature-size book of koans, “Zentences,” which is included in the New York Public Library’s Rare Books Department. His former wife — who was known as Eve — is probably still alive, according to D’Intino, though he said Purple “didn’t like her because he got locked out of an apartment by her and a lot of his personal possessions got taken away.” Di Paola said he spoke to the police detective on

Adam Purple on the fire escape at the top of his Forsyth St. building overlooking his beloved Garden of Eden during the winter of 1982.

the case, who told him they were having trouble tracking down Purple’s family members to notify them of his death. At one point, Purple had a cult following. His devotees — who were vegetarian, like him, and did not wear any leather garments or leather shoes — were known as the Purple People. Purple’s garden was demolished in 1986. The fight had become so heated that, as The Villager reported back then, future Councilmember Margarita Lopez had fumed she would tear the green oasis down with “my bare hands” if she had to. “He had been knocked out of the garden,” D’Intino recalled. “He was depressed for about a decade. He had a court order saying they couldn’t destroy it — but they destroyed it anyway.” The Garden of Eden covered 15,000 square feet between Forsyth and Eldridge Sts. near Stanton St. With planting beds in Zen-like concentric circles, it featured corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, asparagus, raspberries and 45 trees. “It was a work of art — an earthwork, a work of art that was also ecologically based,” Purple said in a 2006 interview. Adam and Eve would bike up to Central Park to collect horse manure and bring it back to fertilize the garden’s soil. Regarding how Purple came to live in his Forsyth St. building, D’Intino said it was because he had first been the super there, but it was then abandoned by the landlord. Purple continued to reside in the old tenement without electricity or any services, before it was ultimately demolished by the city around the turn of the century to make way for housing for the deaf. According to D’Intino, Purple was compensated $10,000 by the city after the building was taken from him. Di Paola recalled how Purple’s bike would have bells on strings hanging down from the handlebars, and that to ring them, he would have to shake the whole bike. The cycling activist also remembered how, back when he was living on Broadway at Astor Place, he stepped out of his building only to find a wiggling path of purple footprints on the sidewalk. These had been made by Purple’s friend George Bliss, who wheeled a drum with purple paint inside of it to create them. The prints led back to the site of Purple’s destroyed garden.

“And Adam was on Regis and Kathy Lee talking about the garden,” Di Paola added. “I think George was there and he was wearing a mask — it was like a beehive.” In more recent years, Purple could sometimes be spotted biking around the Lower East Side collecting cans. “His paradigm, it was antithetical to the modern paradigm,” D’Intino said, “which is just to pave over all the green spaces.” Purple never liked to drive in a car, since he was “anti-the internal combustion engine,” he added. D’Intino said that last Thursday when he met with Purple at the Time’s Up space to discuss his estate, the legendary environmentalist gave him a very warm embrace — which was unusual for him. “The last time, he was very physical and hugging me,” he said. “Usually, he was austere, intellectual. “He said he’s not going to make it to see the water rise up a couple of feet in the neighborhood.” Di Paola said Time’s Up is planning to hold a memorial for Adam Purple in the next couple of weeks, most likely in the East Village, possibly at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS). It was at the opening of MoRUS, in December 2012, that Purple probably made his last public speaking appearance. Still angry at former Councilmembers Miriam Friedlander and Lopez for supporting the destruction of his Garden of Eden for housing, he blasted them as “psycho-boobies.” For those who would like to add their thoughts or remembrances of him, a memorial has already started outside the group’s Brooklyn space, at 99 South Sixth St., in South Williamsburg. Di Paola recalled how when the city was about to take away Purple’s building, he and others went inside and tried to occupy it in a last-ditch effort to save it. “On the first floor, all the beautiful purple tie-dye clothes were hanging up and there were his diaries,” he said. “The diaries were fascinating: On one day he’d be collecting horse manure and the next day he’d be on Regis and Kathy Lee. That was his life. “We didn’t get to preserve his diaries, but Time’s Up played a part in preserving him as a living legend.” To see a short film about Adam Purple by Harvey Wang, visit https://vimeo.com/29275235 EastVillagerNews.com

Pope-ular Francis kicks off U.S. tour in city BY SHAVANA ABRUZZO

Official New York schedule:

he “slum bishop” won’t be slumming it in the Big Apple. Septuagenarian superstar Pope Francis will receive a rock star’s welcome when he disembarks from “Shepherd One” at J.F.K. Airport next week (likely lugging his own bag), as part of a three-city apostolic trek on the East Coast, featuring a 40-hour spirit around Gotham that would leave Batman breathless. Soon after landing, the 78-year-old pontiff — the fourth pope to visit the U.S. — will hold a prayer service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown. The next day he will speak at the United Nations, visit a Harlem school and conduct services at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Then it’s off to meet the adoring masses selected by lottery in a procession through Central Park on his way to Madison Square Garden to lead a Mass using a high-backed chair. Outside the venue spectators can admire a 20-story mural of his holiness commissioned by the Diocese of Brooklyn. Even New Yorkers unable to snag a freebie ticket are in seventh heaven. “Just to know that the Holy Father is in town and that I am in the same airspace as him is good enough for

Thurs., Sept. 24 • Arrives at J.F.K. Airport, 5 p.m. • Evening prayer at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 6:45 p.m.

Fri., Sept. 25 • U.N. General Assembly, 8:30 a.m. • Multi-religious service at 9/11 Memorial & Museum, World Trade Center, 11:30 a.m. • Visits Our Lady Queen of Angels School in East Harlem, 4 p.m. • Papal motorcade through Central Park, 5 p.m. • Madison Square Garden Mass, 6 p.m.

Sat., Sept. 26 • Departs for Philadelphia, 8:40 a.m.

Visit www.Popefrancisvisit.com for updates.

A mural in honor of Pope Francis’s visit as it was recently being painted on a building in West Midtown Manhattan.

me,” said Brooklyn resident Lucia Wells, who plans to take the day off and catch all the action on cable television’s “pope channel.” Francis, who drives a 1984 Renault and rails against global warming and consumerism, has gained worldwide fans of all stripes and faiths since his March 2013 inauguration as head of the Catholic Church, bishop of Rome, sovereign of Vatican City and champion of the poor.

“I am a sinner,” he told some of his first audiences, with his trademark pastoral style. Francis has baptized the babies of single mothers and installed showers at the Vatican for the homeless, with whom he sometimes sits down to a meal. He commemorated the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper by washing the feet of inmates at the same Roman prison that Pope St. John Paul II visited in 1983 to forgive

his attempted murderer, Mehmet Ali Agca. The Pope will stay at the official residence of the Holy See mission on the Upper East Side. He has requested water and bananas in his room, and spartan meals of fish, chicken and white rice. Community News Group and New York Community Media extends its best wishes to Pope Francis, and sincerely hopes the Holy Father ventures across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Queens and the Bronx his next visit!

Fast ’n’ fun Vatican facts! Last supper? Likely chicken BY SHAVANA ABRUZZO

onaco is widely regarded as the world’s smallest country, but that tall honor goes to a micro-state an eighth the size of Central Park, located 400 miles away in the Italian capital of Rome. Vatican City is home of the Catholic Church, and the site of the papal residence and the Holy See — the Church’s supreme organ of government. The Vatican is governed as a monarchy, with an elected pope as its head and an appointed president. Its citizens numbered less than 594 in 2011, including 71 cardinals, 109 members of the Swiss Guard, 51 members of the clergy, and one nun inside the Vatican walls, in addition to more than 300 clergy members, most of whom are dispersed around the world as diplomats. The Vatican mints its own euros, prints its own stamps, operates its own media, issues its own passports and license plates, and has its own media outlet. It also has its own currency in the form of the Vatican lira. It has its own legal system, EastVillagerNews.com

though Italian courts deal with criminal matters, such as the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II. The Vatican has its own astronomers, who conduct research with a state-of-the-art telescope in an observatory 15 miles from the city at the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo; the Vatican has a second research center in Arizona. It has a turbulent past — before Italy’s unification in the late 1800s, the government seized all of the papal states except for the Vatican, which refused to succumb to the Kingdom of Italy. Benito Mussolini signed the sovereign state into existence in the late 1920s, compensating the church $92 million (more than $1 billion in today’s money) for the lost papal states. Past Popes have used the Passetto di Borgo to escape dangers. The secret passageway was built in 1277 as a route to the fortified Castel Sant’Angelo on the banks of the Tiber River. It saved Pope Clement VII from certain death in 1527, when the henchmen of Roman Emperor Charles V rampaged through the city, murdering nuns and priests.

BY SHAVANA ABRUZZO

look into the papal diet over the course of its 2,000-year history shows that popes are only human, and some have stuck to the letter of canon law while others have succumbed to the mortal authority of a hearty appetite. Jesuit minimalist Pope Francis likes baked, skinless chicken, salad, fruit, and a glass of simple wine. He occasionally indulges in dulce de leche, a caramel milk pudding, and “Bagna Cauda,” a classical farmer’s dish made of roasted veggies dipped in a garlic broth and served in an earthenware bowl warmed by a candle. His Bavarian predecessor Benedict XVI enjoyed a traditional wurstel salad, a pork dish called “schweinsbraten,” and baked cherries topped with cream. Polish John Paul II had a soft spot for pierogis. Boniface VIII’s tableware, including the salt bowl, was made of solid gold. Terrified of being poisoned, he had a full-time food taster and ate with “magic knives” supposed to detect poison on contact. Clement VI famously said that his

sober predecessors “did not know how to be Pope.” He hosted extravagant meals where only he was allowed to eat with a knife to prevent an outbreak of violence. Martin V’s German-born chef had more than 70 separate recipes for the diverse social classes visiting the Pope. Kings feasted on spicy chicken soup while working ranks were fed leek broth. Pius IV liked to quench his thirst with barley water, and sate his appetite with frogs fried in garlic and parsley. Leo XIII, the first pope of the 20th century, ate his meals alone on a folding tray. He breakfasted on a cup of coffee and a small roll of bread, dined on boiled meat and veggies, and supped on soup, prompting his physician to remark, “I eat more in one meal than the Pope does in seven days.” Paul VI liked “to unwind in the evening with a light scotch and soda,” while Milanese nuns prepared his meals. He reformed the rules on fasting for the poor, whose lives he felt were hard enough. Pius V wasn’t much of an eater, and threatened to excommunicate anyone who dared to fortify his broth when his constant fasting began to take a toll. September 17, 2015

PHOTO BY WILLIAM ALATRISTE / NYC COUNCIL

Riding the 7 train to Hudson Yards, clockwise from bottom left, state Senator Brad Hoylman, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, City Councilmember Corey Johnson, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez — chairperson of the Council’s Transportation Committee — Mayor de Blasio, Assemblymember Richard Gottfried (hidden from view) and Borough President Gale Brewer.

The (loco)motion passes! Next stop Hudson Yards!

ayor Bill de Blasio and local politicians rode on the newly extended No. 7 subway line to W. 34th St. and 11th Ave. Friday

for the ribbon-cutting at the new Hudson Yards stop. Outside the terminus, straphangers can enjoy a new system of tree-lined parks and boulevards.

The new station — the city’s fi rst in 25 years — is expected to bring 32,000 riders a day to and from the developing neighborhood, helping fuel Hudson

Yards’ growth. Another station potentially could be added to the line in the future at W. 41st St. and Tenth Ave., if there is money for it.

Jefferson Market Garden Thanks all our generous donors and volunteers who made our 40th Anniversary a great success!

George Paulos, JMG Board Chair, honorees Adrian Benepe and Barry Benepe, Susan Sipos, JMG Horticulturist/Garden Designer (photo: Tequila Minski)

Presenting The Brooke Astor Award for

Outstanding Contributions to Urban Gardens To SUPPORT the Garden: www.jeffersonmarketgarden.org

September 17, 2015

EastVillagerNews.com

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C.B. 3 member, wife, future in-law die in car crash BY ALBERT AMATEAU

n a tragic highway accident, Morris Faitelewicz, 58, a longtime Lower East Side civic leader, his wife, Beth, 54, and their intended son-in-law, Yehuda Bayme, 31, were killed on Monday afternoon Sept. 7 returning from a Labor Day weekend in the Catskills. The couple’s daughter, Shani, 27, who was engaged to Bayme, and the Faitelewiczes’ sons, Yaakov, 29, and Ani, 23, were seriously injured when Morris lost control of the car, which rolled over several times on Route 17 in Sullivan County. Morris, who celebrated his 33rd wedding anniversary with Beth in June, was renowned for his long years as a volunteer in a Hatzolah unit, ES 17, a Jewish emergency medical service team on the Lower East Side. A fi rst responder to the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack, Morris was commanding offi cer of the New York Police Department’s auxiliary volunteer emergency medical service rescue unit at Ground Zero. He supervised other E.M.S. teams in the area for almost nine months. Beth Faitelewicz was

a registered nurse at Beth Israel Hospital. In June 2002 Morris earned the Port Authority’s Exceptional Service Award for his work at Ground Zero, and in September 2002 he earned a New York City Council proclamation honoring him and his unit for work at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 and during the months that followed. He was citywide coordinator and deputy inspector of the auxiliary police’s rescue unit until his death. State Assemblymember Sheldon Silver said he knew Morris for 40 years. They were neighbors in the Grand St. co-ops and both worshiped at the Bialystoker Synagogue. “Our community mourns the devastating loss of Morris and Beth Faitelewicz and their future sonin-law, Yehuda Bayme,” Silver said. “Morris spent most of his life in the Lower East Side community and he was dedicated to making sure the quality of life in this community was as good as it can be.” Stu Loesser, a former neighbor of the Faitelewicz family who was a spokesperson for Mayor Bloomberg, said, “Beth and Morris didn’t just lend a hand to help

EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY PROJECT PLEASE JOIN US FOR Community Engagement Sessions to discuss East River Waterfront Design Following Hurricane Sandy Tuesday, October 6, 2015

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These community engagement sessions build upon the planning undertaken as part of HUD’s Rebuild by Design Competition. Spanish, Mandarin, and Cantonese interpreters will be present at both community engagement sessions. A Fujianese interpreter will be present on October 6th. For special needs assistance, please call (917) 933-7444 by Friday, October 2. Dinner will be provided.

September 17, 2015

From Morris Faitelewicz’s Facebook page, a photo of him taken on Nov. 11, 2001, at Ground Zero near the Liberty St. Bridge. “The next day we were rushing to the Belle Harbor plane crash!” he captioned it. “Probably only picture of me at Ground Zero during those 9 horrible months.”

Downtown recover from Sept. 11; they put everything they had into helping Lower Manhattan and the city come back.” A member of Community Board 3 for more than 20 years, Morris served as a vice chairperson of the board about fi ve years ago. Herman Hewitt, a veteran C.B. 3 member who is the board’s fi rst vice chairperson, said health and safety were always Faitelewicz’s key issues on the board. “He’s always been a person who is very dedicated to his community, especially in terms of his work with the auxiliaries and his emergency service,” Hewitt said. “He was 100 percent dedicated to that.” As for where Faitelewicz fell on the issues, Hewitt said he voted with the Grand St. group, which has always tended to be “more conservative” than the rest of the community board. “He was always considerate to

people during discussions,” he said. “He was honest in telling you exactly what he feels about it. “He was a really, really considerate, great person. I never had any issues with him. If there were disagreements, it was always on the issues and nothing personal.” The funeral for Morris and Beth was Wed., Sept. 9, at the Bialystoker Synagogue. Hewitt, who attended, said the place was packed with what he estimated were around 300 people, plus more people in the streets outside. He said he saw Judy Rapfogel, Silver’s chief of staff, but that it was so crowded, there may have been other local V.I.P.’s there that he just didn’t see. On his Facebook page Faitelewicz posted a photo of his father, a Holocaust survivor, sitting in a doorway in Dachau concentration camp wearing prison-style striped pants, shirt and cap. His father and mother emigrated to the U.S. in 1950. The funeral for Yehuda Bayme was the following Tuesday at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Raised in Riverdale, he had recently moved to the Lower East Side. State police in Wurtsboro said the accident happened around 4:30 p.m. Sept. 7 on State Route 17 near Exit 112 in Mamakating Township. “The vehicle, occupied by six family members, was returning to New York City after spending the weekend at a resort in the Ellenville area,” according to a police statement. “Based on the initial investigation the vehicle was traveling eastbound in the driving (right) lane and attempts to move into the passing (left) lane. An uninvolved vehicle was already in the passing lane, so the vehicle’s operator quickly steers back into the driving lane. The operator overcorrects the steering and leaves the roadway off the right shoulder. The operator again overcorrects the steering to the left causing the vehicle to overturn. The vehicle rolls onto its side, becomes airborne and rolls several more times before fi nally coming to rest,” said the police statement, identifying Morris Faitelewicz as the operator. Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, whose district includes the Lower East Side, paid tribute to Morris in a statement the day after the tragic accident on the fl oor of the House of Representatives.

With repor ting by Lincoln Anderson

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POLICE BLOTTER Fatal plunge on E. 3rd

Natty dread walk

A woman staying at actor David Harbour’s third-floor apartment on E. Third St. near Second Ave. fatally plunged into the building’s rear courtyard on Mon., Sept. 14, around 5 p.m. A source identified the woman as Christian Croft, 29. She reportedly exited from one of the apartment’s rear windows onto the fire escape, walked along it to the right, and then either fell or jumped. At the time, Harbour was in Toronto at the premiere of “Black Mass,” the new film about Boston mobster Whitey Bulger starring Johnny Depp. “She was someone who struggled,” Harbour told the Daily News. “She was in the shelter system. “I was trying to help her out. I’m very confused, I don’t understand how this happened. She seemed to be a lovely person. It’s a terrible tragedy. I’m very shaken by this.” According to the News, police said the woman had a history of mental health issues. The Tony-award nominated actor did not immediately say how he and the woman had met.

On Thurs., Sept. 10, around 4 p.m., police spotted a man allegedly walking between subway cars on a northbound L train as it arrived at the Eighth Ave. station. The dreadlocked man refused to show police his ID and stated multiple times that he didn’t “have to do anything,” according to a police report. When they tried to arrest him, he went rigid and also caused a scene, the report added. Kyle Cooper, 23, was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. Moving between subway cars, even if they are not moving, is not allowed and is punishable by a $75 fine.

Law of gravity

weapon, a misdemeanor. A folding knife that is openable with a one-handed flick of the wrist is deemed an illegal gravity knife under New York law.

Guest got violent A guest not only overstayed his welcome at an apartment at 242 W. 14th St., he then got violent. He refused a request to leave at about 3:15 a.m., on Sat., Sept. 12, punched his 26-year-old host and threatened him with a knife, police said. A 22-year-old woman witnessed the incident, according to a police report. The two men did not know each other, the report adds. Angel J. De Pena, 23, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor menacing.

Police on patrol in the Village spot- Bus attacker busted ted a knife poking out from a man’s front right pants pocket on Sat., Sept. A man shattered an M.T.A. bus 12. They deemed the blade to be a door at 10 a.m. on Sat., Sept. 12, pogravity knife and arrested its owner, lice reported. The bus’s 36-year-old 35, at about 12:15 a.m. near the south- male driver accused Jose Barral, 59, west corner of Seventh Ave. South and of punching and breaking the door W. 11th St. The man was arrested and near the intersection of W. 12th St. charged with criminal possession of aT:8.75”

and Eighth Ave. Barral was arrested and charged with criminal mischief, a felony. According to the police report, doors for city buses cost $1,000. It was not immediately clear what caused Barral to flip out.

Catch suspect caught A 27-year-old woman told police that she saw a woman sifting through her purse inside Catch, the trendy restaurant and bar at 21 Ninth Ave. in the Meatpacking District, on Sat., Sept. 12, around 3 a.m. The victim’s husband then observed the suspect take the purse from the table and carry it outside just after 3 a.m., according to a report. They confronted the alleged thief and retrieved the purse. Christina Callaway, 24, was arrested and charged with grand larceny, a felony. Surveillance video that could help prove whether Callaway did it or not was “not yet retrievable,” police said.

Zach Williams and Lincoln Anderson

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EastVillagerNews.com

September 17, 2015

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September 17, 2015

EastVillagerNews.com

Substitute’s book a valuable lesson on schools BY LENORE SKENAZY

hat’s it like to be a substitute in the New York City public schools? That’s not what Elizabeth Rose’s new book, “Yo Miz!,” is about. It’s about what it’s like to be a sub at 25 New York City public schools over the course of one year. The songwriter and playwright had been teaching at the same school for 10 years — Vanguard, on E. 68th St. — and loving it. But then came a Department of Education edict regarding about 2,500 “excessed” teachers — teachers not fired, but whose school no longer had a paid position for them. What becomes of a teacher without a school? Rose’s cohort was to be churned through the system: Substituting a week at a time at school, after school, after school. Rumor had it that this was supposed to drive them so crazy, they’d all quit — which is something Rose considered. But then she reconsidered. Outsiders aren’t generally allowed into the schools. Here was her chance. “It was,” she decided, “irresistible.” And so began a year that swung from inspiring to infuriating on pretty much a weekly basis.

Her first placement, Baruch High School, was filled with students eager to study the Code of Hammurabi and what makes for a just punishment. It’s the kind of place most of us wish our kids could go — but only about 450 of the brightest of the bright get in. This deployment was quickly followed by one at an unscreened school on the Lower East Side where Rose was thrown into chemistry class — she’s an art teacher — and threatened with assault. One student had a gang insignia tattooed on his face. Stints followed at the High School of Fashion Industries, a buzzing hive of creativity with students’ handiwork draped on dress mannequins. Then there was a week she spent guarding an unused door in a fetid hallway at another school. The principal screamed at her when she requested a bathroom key. From the students to faculty, everyone looked beaten down. There was another week at a high-energy graphic design school where students worked on the latest video-editing equipment. And then came a week at a school in Washington Heights where she was put in charge of the art class. Here the supplies all fit into one cardboard box: a bunch of colored

pencils. “They all needed sharpening,” says Rose. And naturally, “Someone had run off with the sharpener.” Someone had also run off with any kind of leadership. Rose learned that she was there only so the school could claim its students had fulfilled their art class credit. “It was a scam.” She took a deep breath and decided it would at least be a week worth remembering. “Take out your pens,” she told the class. “We’re doing self-portraits. What is your most interesting feature? Exaggerate it.” A table full of boys refused. “They said, ‘No, this is whack.’ ” So Rose went to the whiteboard and started drawing them. This enraged the boys. What right did she have? They retaliated by drawing her — and not kindly. But she had the last laugh. They were drawing. The next day Rose brought in some art supplies from home. The next day, some more. On the last day, however, she brought in Oreos instead, and announced, “Today we’re going to do an art project.” Her assignment? Write on the whiteboard all the things they thought an art class should have.

Paper! Paint! Field trips! “We Deserve a Great Art Class!” Rose scrawled at the top of the board. Then she gathered the students in front of the board, backs to the camera for legal purposes, and told them they could make whatever gesture seemed appropriate. It’s a gesture you’ve seen on the highway when you cut somebody off. The photo summed up Rose’s outrage and what she hopes will be ours, too: How can a school of 600 young people have no art supplies in the creative capital of America? How can some kids never go on a field trip when they live just a few subway stops away from one of the greatest art museums in the world? How can some schools have video-editing equipment, or discussions about Hammurabi, and others have dank halls, screaming principals and just one week of art? “Once you meet these kids, you’ll feel how much you want them to have a chance at success,” says Rose. Feeling it. Skenazy is a keynote speaker and author and founder of the book and blog “Free-Range Kids”

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EastVillagerNews.com

September 17, 2015

PHOTO BY Q. SAKAMAKI

Judging by the looks of this officer and dancers at Brooklyn’s West Indian American Day Parade, police-community relations definitely were warm — make that hot! — on Labor Day. See Pages 6 and 7 for more photos.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Don’t give up the fight! To The Editor: Re “ ‘N.Y. Corporate U.’ is crushing us, critics cry” (news article, Sept. 3): Thanks to N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan for strength and leadership over the years and for organizing the rally, and thanks to the speakers who represented thousands of people. Special thanks to the 200 who stood in the heat and listened and brought the messages back to

the thousands opposed to N.Y.U. 2031. And kudos once again to Terri Cude and CAAAN2031 for leading the foot soldiers every day, in every way. If N.Y.U. had taken advantage of the vast knowledge, expertise, talent and dedication of those willing to work with them, free of charge, to come up with a non-destructive plan years ago, it could have been occupying academic, lab, office and student space, with room to grow, for years now, instead of spending academic money for lawyers and architects and PR people.

IRA BLUTREICH

The superblocks community of residents, faculty, staff, children, seniors and small businesses has been living with uncertainty and anxiety, without any real contact with the N.Y.U. administration and real estate developer trustees. N.Y.U. has still not answered why it needs to demolish Greenwich Village — the Greenwich Village that has made N.Y.U. a unique location for years. What if Paris tore down its Latin Quarter and the Sorbonne? Stay strong, my friends. Chin and Quinn did us in, but we will fight and we will win! Judith Chazen Walsh

E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published.

Will de Blasio’s bubble burst? 16

September 17, 2015

EastVillagerNews.com

Forefather’s papers bring abolition fight alive NOTEBOOK BY OTIS KIDWELL BURGER

ome 50 years ago, my mother, Elizabeth Willcox Kidwell, sold the papers of her grandfather, Sydney Howard Gay, to the Butler Library at Columbia University. The library would not permit me or a niece to see these papers (“too fragile”), and so these letters kept by my abolitionist great-grandfather, including unique records — names, dates, “owners,” money disbursed over two years that aided the escape of more than 200 fugitive slaves — were buried in files for decades. Then in 2007, a student found them and described them to Eric Foner, a professor at Columbia. And Tom Calarco also heard of the papers and talked about them to his friend, Don Papson, the founder of the North Star Underground Railroad Museum, near Plattsburgh, N.Y. Foner subsequently published “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad” (W.W. Norton) this year. And Papson and Calarco published “Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City: Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives” (McFarland) also this year. Informing these meticulously researched, illustrated books, this rare material provides an inside look at the brave and dedicated people who worked for the cause of abolition in and around New York from 1833 to ’65. A recent series on Channel 13 suggested that without the abolitionists, this would have stayed a slave-based country. That seems debatable. Slavery was already stressing the country. Abolition seemed inevitable. My great-grandfather, Sydney Howard Gay, was born in 1814 in Hingham, Massachusetts, into an old New England family. His father, Ebenezer Gay, was a lawyer, stern and eccentric. Sydney was highstrung and intelligent. His three older brothers had left home. Sydney attended Harvard at the age of 15. Too young. He neglected his studies and was recalled home, sick, two years later. His mother got him a job with a counting house. He lived in Boston with his brother, Dr. Martin Gay, “a distinguished analytical chemist.” Then the company sent him to China. One hundred days by sailing ship, he arrived in Canton just after a devastating fire burned down much of the city and “The Hongs,” the foreign warehouses. EastVillagerNews.com

Elizabeth Neall Gay and Sidney Howard Gay, the great-grandparents of the writer, who is a longtime resident of the Village, where she lives on Bethune St.

Returning home, he then traveled west, across the Alleghenies, down the Ohio by canal boat, down the Mississippi, where he admired the fine plantations on the banks, and the slaves, so well housed, well dressed, well fed, so much better off than the wretched free blacks in the North. The abolitionists were crazy, and would tear the country apart. But later he wrote in an article about how he was handed a pistol before touring a plantation for inspection. For protection? Against these happy slaves?

and others, and encountering more stories. In 1842, George Latimer and his wife Rebecca stowed away on a ship in Virginia. Eight days after arriving in Boston, Latimer was recognized. His master came up from Virginia and had him jailed and charged for larceny. Three hundred black men protested on the courthouse steps, a petition of 65,000 names — weighing 15 pounds — was circulated and George’s freedom was bought for $4,000. Massachusetts passed a law to prevent this from happening again. William Garrison praised God. Apparently, no one thought it was odd to charge a man with larceny for stealing himself. In 1845, Jonathan Walker arrived at Sydney Gay’s office at the National Anti-Slavery Standard. He had been a shipwright and had been caught in Florida trying to smuggle seven fugitive slaves from Pensacola to the Bahamas. The seven slaves were returned to their master, with one trying to commit suicide. Walker was jailed for one year, chained with 20-pound chains, barely fed, forced to sleep on the floor… and publicly branded on the palm of his right hand with the letters “SS,” for “slave stealer,” and stood in the stocks and smeared with rotten eggs. But such cruelty was regularly inflicted on slaves — chaining, whipping, branding and degradation sometimes for minor offenses or for running away. Sometimes valuable “property” was even crippled as punishment or a deterrent to others. Walker moved to the Midwest and was encouraged to give talks about

The Civil War draft rioters attacked the Tribune office, likely enraged by Sidney Gay’s anti-slavery editorials.

Sydney and another young man started a business in New Orleans. It failed. He had to write his father for fare, and arrived in Hingham exhausted, ill and depressed, a failure. He started to read…and emerged sometime later, to his family’s astonishment, a dedicated abolitionist. He began to teach, write for the Hingham Patriot and lecture, traveling often by horseback. Once, staying at a safe house, he was alerted in the middle of the night; a mob was coming for him. Gay escaped through the back of the house, down a lane into the woods. He was now to meet other abolitionists, the Hoppers, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, to go on a speaking tour with Douglass

his ordeal. His branded hand became one of the anti-slavery movement’s most powerful symbols. Sydney Howard Gay became editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1844. The Standard office was a busy place. Gay edited, wrote, did layout and proofread through long days and nights. He also entertained people like the Hoppers, Wendell Phillips and other abolitionists, meanwhile funneling fugitives on their way north. Fugitives were sent from stations in Philadelphia or Delaware, and were met at the ships or trains by Louis Napoleon, a free black man, who conducted them to the Standard office. This was well known; why didn’t the slave catchers hang around the door, waiting? The whole system was not really “underground” or secret. Once a visiting African was even escorted by a friendly policeman to the Standard office, for safekeeping. No photographs or pictures of Louis Napoleon have been found, although many newspaper reporters knew him. The secret records from the Butler Library cover the last two years of Gay’s tenure at the Standard: He included names of runaways, owners’ names and the amount of money he disbursed to help 200 slaves on their way to freedom. During his earlier years of riding on horseback on lecture tours, Gay met Elizabeth Neall and her abolitionist parents, Daniel Neall and Sarah Mifflin Neall. Sarah’s father, Warner Mifflin, had been one of the first Quakers in this country to unconditionally free his slaves. (They were actually his wife’s slaves, but wives could not own property.) Daniel Neall had once been tarred and feathered by a mob because of his beliefs — out of some respect, not on his bare skin, which could be fatal. “Ruined a perfectly good jacket,” he said later. Elizabeth met Gay…mud-spattered and exhausted…on her doorstep. “Fresh and beautiful…his future was decided!” says a family account. Elizabeth was “very well educated for a woman of her day.” She drew well, wrote poetry, was intelligent and a Quaker. She had to leave her Quaker Meeting in order to marry an outsider. Eventually they settled in a “white carpenter-Gothic house designed by Ranlett” in the northern part of Staten Island, where many abolitionists also lived. Many people came to visit. Gay took the ferry to Manhattan to the Standard office, and later to the New-York Tribune office, where he worked with Horace Greeley. Slavery had been a part of the Americas since the beginning. AzABOLITIONISTS continued on p. 18 September 17, 2015

Freedom-fighting forebears ABOLITIONISTS continued from p. 17

tecs, Mayans, Incas, etc. had their very own slaves. When Columbus landed in the Bahamas, he eyed the Taino Indians, and said, “a very sweet and hospitable people. They will make good servants.” They didn’t. After they had all died of overwork and unfamiliar diseases, the Spanish replaced them with African slaves, who built them a road across the Isthmus of Panama — 100 years before Plymouth Rock — on which they hauled the gold looted from Peru to the treasure ships at Porto Bello… . So much gold that it depressed the price of gold throughout Europe. Some of the slaves escaped and exacted horrifi c revenge, pouring molten gold down the greedy throats of their Spanish captives. The Dutch brought slaves to Manhattan and treated them with greater decency. Later, the English imposed harsh restrictions on African slaves and Native Americans. During the Revolution, the English recruited black slaves with a promise of freedom. When they lost the war, they shipped several thousand black Americans out of the country; some descendants still live in Nova Scotia today. Washington also enlisted black slaves. (What became of them? Did they get reabsorbed into the South where Washington lived?) Blacks fought on both sides of the Civil War, and many came north when that war ended. Those who stayed in the South suffered another form of slavery after Reconstruction, starving as sharecroppers or being “arrested” when labor was needed and forced to work on chain gangs. The slave ships — sponsored by many European nations — brought more than 12 million slaves (those who survived the trip) to the Americas. Most were brought by the Portuguese to Brazil, but 388,000 arrived in the American South. They were sold like livestock, teeth and muscles checked, etc., and on the plantations began lives of learned helplessness. Body servants washed, fed and dressed the white slave owners and their infants. Gangs of slaves worked like machines in the fi elds. Slaves were kept subjugated by fear and enforced ignorance. It was a crime to teach a slave to read. And yet the slaves, kidnapped from many tribes, and speaking many languages, developed a common language and a common culture, and probably learned a lot about the world just by listening to the dinner table and bedroom conversations of their owners…fl ies on the walls — “three-fi fths human,” yet smart enough to know there was a better way up North. But the North was not so innocent.

September 17, 2015

Its inhabitants had grown to love slave-raised and -produced sugar, rum and tobacco. And the great mills of England and New England depended on slave-raised cotton. Cotton cloth was sold around the world. The New England coastal towns grew rich on whales and slaves. Many Northerners, therefore, were furious at the anti-slavery activists who threatened their livelihoods. Abolitionists were often violently attacked or even murdered. For their part, some abolitionists refused to use sugar, rum, tobacco or cotton cloth. The United States banned the slave trade in 1808, but the law was frequently broken. The need for slaves accelerated after the cotton gin was invented. Children of a slave mother were slaves, regardless of who the father was. Some owners kept the children, but others bred slaves to sell. One man visiting a plantation was startled to realize that many of the fi eld hands were the owner’s own offspring. (A few owners did provide for such children and their mothers, but rape was a cheap way of acquiring new slaves.) And a boy who might pass for white if he escaped North, was sold deeper South, and put to work in the fi elds until he became a more “suitable” color. Some of the fugitives arriving at the Standard offi ce and sent up North were noticeably less dark and African looking. Handsome Fredrick Douglass was half-white, an escaped slave who taught himself to read and write and became a compelling orator and international fi gure. To escape recapture after publishing his autobiography, he had to fl ee to England for safety. Great Britain ended slavery in her territories in 1834. The Bahamas, Jamaica and Bermuda became free without any serious consequences — which is why Walker was taking slaves to the Bahamas and Douglass fl ed to England. But in the U.S., the economies of the South and the North were deeply embedded in slavery. Initially, abolitionists like Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, thought the problem could be solved by moral suasion, logic and reason. Others thought violence was the answer. Violence had already killed a newspaper publisher, and now Nat Turner and John Brown and their followers turned to violence for freedom! And were violently killed. Violence erupted into the Civil War, which killed more than 700,000 people….50,000 at Gettysburg alone. One hundred years after Reconstruction, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated… ABOLITIONISTS continued on p. 24 EastVillagerNews.com

‘Pie Show’ plumbs primal fears of parenthood Chapman and Cheek on the joys and pains of ‘Labor’ BY CHARLES BATTERSBY

heater calculated to terrify is everywhere during the month that culminates with Halloween — but “The Pumpkin Pie Show” is off to an early start, as of September 24. This is the 17th annual presentation of psychologically complex, often shocking and occasionally gruesome monologues, which this year will tackle the horrors of parenthood. We spoke with writer/ performer Clay McLeod Chapman and actress Hanna Cheek to talk about “The Pumpkin Pie Show: Labor Pains.” The show has been a mainstay of East Village theater for so long that even its creators are surprised. “The first ‘Pumpkin Pie Show’ in New York was at the first New York International Fringe Festival,” says Chapman. “We were here when that began almost twenty years ago. It had its root in wanting to put on a show with my actor friends, wanting to do it without a lot of money, and therefore not a lot of production elements — no costumes, no set, nothing beyond the story strapped to our backs.” Cheek points out that the show still uses that barebones aesthetic today. “We take the fourth wall, and push it back behind the last row of the theater,” she notes. “We’re speaking directly to the audience, inviting them to be the other person in the scene or story that we are telling. That matches with the lack of props, the lack of costumes. Everyone’s imagination in the room is coming together and becomes communal. That’s what fills out the EastVillagerNews.com

PHOTO BY KL THOMAS

Birth of a nightmare: Clay McLeod Chapman and Hanna Cheek welcome a new arrival into the world, when “Labor Pains” premieres on Sept. 24.

details.” Each monologue contains a blend of horror and comedy. This year, the roles played by Cheek include a woman who cuckolded her husband with Sasquatch, as well as darker roles, like a predator who kidnaps children. “As a performer I love to find that kernel of humanity in the villain, and Clay, as a writer, loves to embellish that kernel,” she said. “At least once a year I get to play some

fantastic, dubious characters and find the heart in them, and that’s why I keep coming back.” “Hanna is a dubious character in and of herself,” jokes Chapman. “Every writer is trying to find the best actors that they can work with. I lucked out early on and found Hanna, and have exploited her talents for decades.” Blending humor with horror is difficult to pull off — but as Cheek explains, “That’s part of the fun

for me as a performer. That volley between horror and comedy, they each allow the other one to land more fully. The more we make you laugh, the more comfortable you feel in our hands — and then we can tighten the fist around you and you’re trapped, and that’s horrifying. Then we release you again with laughter, and the laughter becomes a deeper laugh — and the horror bePIE, continued on p. 20 September 17, 2015

Comedy and horror seed ‘Pumpkin’ stories PIE, continued from p. 19

comes that much more terrifying.” Many of Chapman’s stories end with an ironic twist, which longtime audience members have come to expect from his writing. “The twist exists in the character from the very fi rst word,” he explains. “I’m a ‘Twilight Zone’ baby. There’s no denying it. That is where my pop culture heritage started. The challenge will always be to make the twist feel organic and real.” People who missed previous installments of the show will be able to hear them as podcasts on Fangoria in the near future. Chapman and Cheek are the sole performers confi rmed so far, but Chapman hints about reuniting with some of the previous cast members. “The back catalog is pretty expansive, so we’re hoping to have some special guests come back and reprise their pieces from yonder, way back when.” Cheek says her favorite old story from previous shows is one called “Overbite.” “It’s from a show called ‘Big Top,’ where all of the stories were from circus performers. She’s one of my favorites. She’s the Iron Jaw at the circus and she spins from her teeth and her story of twisted revenge.” “It’s tragedy!” chimes in Chapman, and the two giggle, sharing a private joke from their decades of collaboration and friendship. Horror fans will also be interested in the recently released fi lm “The Boy,” which Chapman wrote the screenplay for, along with Craig Macneill. “The Boy” is based on a chapter from one of Chapman’s “Miss Corpus” novel, and tells the story of a nine-year-old who is heading down the road to becom-

PHOTO BY BLAIR ANTHONEY FROWNER

“The Pumpkin Pie Show” shines a light on the darkness within.

ing a sociopath. It is a slow burn, with many small reveals leading up to a violent conclusion. “We made an active choice at the beginning of the process to deconstruct the slasher movie,” Chapman says of the fi lm. “In a way, it’s like a sheep in wolves’ clothing. If you come in expecting ‘Friday the 13th,’ you will be disappointed. But if you expect to see something a little new, a little different, a character portrait of a sociopath — that, to me, is a little bit off the beaten path and exciting.” The prolifi c Chapman also has a

graphic novel coming out this October on Michael Bay’s new comic book line, 451 Media Group. It is called “Self Storage,” and Chapman describes it as “A lovely little ZomRom-Com about what it would be like to stumble upon a zombie in a self-storage unit.” Think of it as “The Walking Dead” meets “Storage Wars,” he says. Hanna Cheek will jump right from “The Pumpkin Pie Show” into another performance in “The Honeycomb Trilogy,” beginning on Oct. 13th. In the project, which she

describes as “a sci-fi fi lm on stage,” Cheek plays Ronnie, the grizzled, war-weary leader of a community in the wake of an alien invasion. We’ll have more coverage of “The Honeycomb Trilogy” in the weeks ahead. “The Pumpkin Pie Show: Labor Pains” runs Thurs.–Sat. at 8 p.m., from Sept. 24–Oct. 10 at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place, btw. First Ave. Ave. A). Purchase tickets ($18, $15 for students) in advance, at horsetrade.info. Artist info at claymcleodchapman.com.

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Buhmann on Art

Enrique Martínez Celaya: ‘Empires: Sea’ and ‘Empires: Land’ BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN (stephaniebuhmann.com)

nrique Martínez Celaya’s two-part exhibition aims to create a complex experience that is simultaneously visceral and elusive. Blending reality, fantasy and memory to create a world that is both semi-autobiographical and universally applicable, the artist’s oeuvre spans a large variety of media. The two installations (“Sea” and “Land”) reflect as much, featuring new paintings, sculptures, needlepoint and poetry. Together, these diverse components inform a dedicated search for authenticity and a sense of belonging, while remaining conscious of the fact that self-knowledge is limited. In this particular exhibition, land serves as a metaphor for what is known, has been discovered, declared, and generally feels familiar. In contrast, the sea is employed to address the mysterious, great unknown at our fingertips. Though this ambitious project marks his first solo show with Jack Shainman Gallery, Los Angeles-based Martínez Celaya has shown his work extensively, including at the Hood Art Museum and The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

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Enrique Martínez Celaya: “Empires: Sea” (installation view). At Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 W. 20th St.

Through Oct. 24 at Jack Shainman Gallery. “Empires: Sea” is at 513 W. 20th St. “Empires: Land” is at 524 W. 24th St. (both locations, btw. 10th & 11th Aves.). Hours: Tues.–Sat., 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Call 212-645-1701. Visit jackshainman.com.

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Enrique Martínez Celaya: “Empires: Land” (installation view). At Jack Shainman Gallery, 524 W. 24th St.

EastVillagerNews.com

“The Bloom, for the Wilderness” (2015. Oil and wax on canvas. 74 3/4 x 101; 3/4 x 2 1/2 inches, framed).

September 17, 2015

Bringing nuance to the North Korea narrative Soon-Mi Yoo’s essay film is a revealing look at the country

COURTESY KINO LORBER

A group of North Korean children gather to sing one of the titular “Songs From The North” in Soon-Mi Yoo’s essay film.

BY SEAN EGAN

oon-Mi Yoo is tired of the conventional western narrative surrounding North Korea. She’s had it with the “satiric and, frankly, racist takes” that “use North Korea as kind of a cheap joke,” and the winking, “kind of dishonest,” news coverage, courtesy of outlets like Vice. “But then, it’s not just Vice,” the filmmaker notes. “It’s even PBS or BBC, these journalists who went into North Korea — they’re thinking of going in with already kind of a set idea. And their brief exchange in North Korea confirms their idea that these people are brainwashed. “And they react to it really badly. Like emotionally. They hate the place. You know, they hate the place, they hate the people. You know, ‘It’s an awful place.’ And I say, like, ‘I kind of know that already.’ Like, I’ve been told,” she laughs. “And so, what else can you tell us from your experience, or your endeavor, that’s more than this surface reaction that anybody can have. So I felt a little bit responsible.” This sense of responsibility led to “Songs From The North.” The Cambridge, Mass.-based Korean filmmaker’s first feature length work is an unconventional and deeply personal essay film determined to bring insight and nuance to the narrative of

September 17, 2015

North Korea and its people. In order to achieve this, Yoo recently travelled to North Korea three times to film, and the footage she shot there comprises a large portion of the movie. “Initially, my first and second trips, I was invited, quote unquote, or brought in, by somebody who had a very good relationship with the regime,” she discloses. “Her whole thing was that I was there to actually shoot footage for [tourism] promotion,” she reveals, despite the freezing December weather of her first visit. She found it difficult to shoot much beyond the designated tourist sites, though, because minders were watching her. “At the end of my third trip I realized that no matter how many times I go back, I would only accumulate a tiny bit of the material that I’d be actually satisfied with,” she says, also noting the air of oppression and paranoia that managed to surprise her when faced with it firsthand. “The footage, and my own experience, was very fragmented.” Despite this, many of her shots are artfully framed, and she managed to capture landscapes not approved by her minders and stolen moments with average North Koreans. In one particularly evocative sequence, Yoo simply lingers on a woman cleaning, as steam rises from a bright pink bowl of hot water nearby. The bowl stands in stark contrast to its bleak surroundings, and

the woman is charmingly bashful about being caught on camera. “I find those moments touching,” Yoo says. Also touching is the contemporary interview footage of Yoo’s father. “At the time I didn’t know that I was going to use the footage, but I wanted to have it on camera anyway,” she explains. “He offered more than what he had told before in terms of experience. My understanding of his experience deepened,” she notes. This revealing footage provides useful historical context via a fascinating anecdotal lens. The film’s final component is extensive archival footage. Yoo incorporates illuminating government news broadcasts, as well as sometimes strangely beautiful domestic entertainment — from melodramatic revolutionary films to colorful, flamboyant stage productions praising the regime. “In a way, North Korean fictions are like documentaries, and so-called North Korean documentaries are more like fiction,” she observes. Though she recognizes how well the regime manipulates the media, and the propagandistic nature of this art, she says she “found them to be, a lot of times, very moving” in their genuine emotion — especially the titular revolutionary songs. She cites, for instance, a striking scene in the film, where she observed people plodding along in the -26 degree cold while propagandist songs played over loudspeakers, and realized how

this “entertainment” could almost function as a coping mechanism. “At first I thought it was just terrible, you know this kind of propaganda, just — you cannot escape it, right? You know, you’re out in the open and there is this loudspeaker blaring about some ‘great leaders,’ or ‘dear leaders,’ ” she recalls. “It would drive us crazy, you know? And it did drive me crazy. But then I realized, ‘Actually, maybe it’s better than having to just walk in the cold without anything,’ ” she concludes. “Before, I guess I wasn’t looking and listening carefully enough,” she muses. “And so I reacted similarly to most people, in the sense that I reacted to the message. I reacted to the ridiculous singing about the ‘dear general,’ or whatever,” she continues. “And through this process of making this film, what I really learned was to listen and watch a little more carefully.” And with “Songs From The North,” Yoo has certainly provided audiences with a rare opportunity to watch and listen more carefully — in order to better actually understand the people of North Korea. “Songs From The North.” Directed by Soon-Mi Yoo. 72 minutes. Opens Sept. 18 at Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Ave. at Second St.). Yoo will be present at the Sept. 18 & 19 screenings. A program of Yoo’s short work will also run on Sept. 18. Call 212-515-5181 for more info or visit anthologyfilmarchives.org. EastVillagerNews.com

She’s playing ‘Possum’ for laughs Andrea Alton’s Fringe hit extends its run, and her range

IMAGE BY IRWIN KROOT

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

nown by comedy, theater, and LGBT benefit audiences from our town to Provincetown for her profane Molly “Equality” Dykeman character, Andrea Alton added another potent creation to her satirical arsenal last month, when “Possum Creek” made its debut at FringeNYC. It was an unexpected and welcome change of pace (literally!) for Alton, whose sunny but dim Beth Ann is every bit as meek as Molly is brash — and just as much a product of her time. Set in Possum Creek, Ohio from the outset of the Civil War to over 30 years later, the eight-character solo show begins as Beth Ann’s husband goes directly from the altar to the Union Army, vowing to return and consummate their marriage. What follows is a series of beautifully crafted comedic misunderstandings, as the beyond-naïve virgin bride escapes to the relative privacy of an outhouse, where she composes letters to her absent Joseph (“I hope that you are enjoying the war,” she writes, in an early missive that nails her kind but clueless world view). Joseph’s failure to reply to a single letter doesn’t deter Beth Ann from penning thousands of them, full of wildly misinterpreted observations about the goings-on in her small rural town. Through the years, Beth Ann’s chipEastVillagerNews.com

per disposition insulates her from life’s grim realities — although her inability to grasp the basic concepts of agriculture, reproduction, and the Underground Railroad tests the patience of the entire town. Oddly, the good citizens of Possum Creek never give in to temptation and yell at her, even when she’s playing a decisive role in the devastating waves of disease and starvation (Alton seems to imply that people were just more polite and decent back then, even when it was to their own detriment). Garbed in the same cartoonish, ballooning hoop dress throughout, Alton slips in and out of flawed characters (brimstone preacher, closeted neighbor, crackpot doctor) while playing Beth Ann with a level of sincerity that grounds the punchlines and slapstick in a sober, often sad, reality. In a further triumph of tone, the events unfold in a style that mocks the hushed, plodding school of storytelling employed by Ken Burns — making “Possum Creek” a sweet and subversive Civil War satire that creates its own revolutionary blend of sex, race, heart, and hope. Written and performed by Andrea Alton. Directed by Eric Chase. Runtime: 50 minutes. Fri. Sept. 25, Thurs. Oct. 1 & Fri. Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. At The Celebration Of Whimsy (21-A Clinton St. btw. Houston & Stanton). For tickets ($18), visit smarttix.com. Show info at possumcreektheplay.com. Facebook: facebook.com/ possumcreekplay. Twitter: @possumcreekplay.

PHOTO BY JEREMY PATLEN

Andrea Alton shines as a sunny but dim Civil War bride, in “Possum Creek.”

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Freedom-fighting forebears ABOLITIONISTS continued from p. 18

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and our country is still not free of its slave history. Many abolitionists also spoke out for women’s rights. Like slaves, women had very few rights. They had few good ways of earning a living. The charming romances of Jane Austen contained a hard fact: A woman’s life depended almost entirely on choosing and attracting the right husband. In America in the 1800s, if a woman’s husband turned out to be a drunk, a wife beater, a gambler or even a murderer, she had nowhere to turn. Any money she might have had became his. If she left, she would be penniless…and her husband would keep the children. (California during the Gold Rush was so desperate to attract wives for miners it passed laws to allow married women to keep whatever money they had. It also made itself slave-free despite attempts by Southerners to bring slaves and plantations into the territory.) Sydney and Elizabeth Gay worked tirelessly for the abolitionist cause, and for women’s rights, too. But it was not until a generation later that their daughter, my grandmother, was able to stand on the back of an open touring car and exhort of “some children, stray dogs, and the town drunk,” until a crowd collected and the main speaker was able to address the subject at hand, “Votes for Women!” Sydney Howard Gay retired from the National Anti-Slavery Standard after 14 years, sick and exhausted. He later joined the Tribune under Horace Greeley, who promoted him to managing editor. Yet, Gay and Greeley did not agree politically. On the mornings when Sydney’s editorial appeared on the front page, Elizabeth wore her bonnet at a jaunty angle. When Greeley’s appeared, the bonnet almost hid her face. During the Civil War draft rioters attacked the Tribune office, probably due to Gay’s abolitionist editorials. Greeley, a pacifist, was whisked away to safety and a young reporter sneaked out to Governors Island for guns. But, as the papers noted, the “ammunition doesn’t fit the guns!” Gay was getting ready to use the steam hoses from the steam presses to repel the mob when the Army showed up. Two other men have quite different accounts of how they brought

guns and grenades into the Tribune. In any case, the ammunition did not fit the guns, and the grenades would have blown everyone to hell. But the rioters, hearing of these preparations melted away. (Similarly, at The New York Times, as Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. will tell you, during the riots, they installed a Gatling gun in the building’s window on Newspaper Row to defend the pro-Lincoln paper.) On Staten Island, Elizabeth sent the children to safety and had a reporter teach her how to shoot, and sat up all night with a pistol. “A Quaker! With a gun,” she mourned. But these were violent times. The rioters did come to Gay’s house, but stopped first at a bar on Bard Avenue, whose bartender — not previously known as friendly to Gay — told the mob the Army was down there waiting for them. So the mob went back to the Staten Island Ferry and instead kicked an old negro woman apple-seller to death. Gay and Greeley finally parted company, and Gay retired to Staten Island. He wrote a biography on James Madison and a four-volume history of America with William Cullen Bryant. But Bryant died halfway through the first volume. Gay finished it. I don’t know who got the credit. His last years were pain-filled and he was partly paralyzed after a fall. Elizabeth lived on to become “a very old lady in white lace cap.” Most Africans sold to slavers were prisoners, taken in many tribal wars. One chieftain told slavers they were really performing humanitarian service; for what could he do with his prisoners if he couldn’t sell them? Just kill them. The “peculiar institution” caused hundreds of years of pain, injustice, death and war, only to be followed by lynchings, Jim Crow and, eventually, Selma and civil rights. This book describes those dark, often-forgotten days when abolitionists, black and white, helped to achieve a second revolution, in which all of us, regardless of race, religion or creed, at last had a real hope of freedom. Don Papson will speak about “Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad,” and I will share some family lore on Sun., Sept. 20, beginning at 6:30 p.m., at Left Bank Books, 17 Eighth Ave., between 12th and Jane Sts. ($5 suggested donation.)

EastVillagerNews.com

September 17, 2015

A tale of two Catholic churches, now merged CHURCHES continued from p. 1

September 17, 2015

PHOTO BY MARY REINHOLZ

on former members of the nearby Church of the Nativity, at 44 Second Ave. That humble house of worship was built in 1970 out of brick and cinder blocks and mostly paid for with parishioners’ personal funds after a predecessor sanctuary was demolished in the wake of an electrical fire. Nativity closed Aug. 1 and merged with Most Holy Redeemer, part of a massive downsizing within the Archdiocese of New York that reduced the number of parishes from 368 to 296. Asked about the consolidation of the two East Village churches, which created a new as-yet-unnamed parish amid emotional protests from Nativity attendees torn from their spiritual home, Cascione said it was going pretty well, all things considered. He introduced a reporter to Cristina Tejada, 36, a slim woman from the Dominican Republic, noting she had been at Nativity for 21 years. “I’m one of the few who doesn’t mind” the merger, Tejada, a naturalized citizen and teaching assistant, said later. “Other people are enraged. I don’t know why they are so attached to that building,” she said of Nativity, the now-empty church that is often derided as an eyesore by locals. “It’s beautiful right here,” she said. “It’s a new day.” She noted that the former Nativity parish — created by the archdiocese in the 19th century to serve waves of Irish Catholic immigrants — lost its resident Jesuit pastor in 2007. A year earlier, the church faced closing but fought back with a letter-writing campaign. The archdiocese responded by attaching Nativity to St. Teresa’s, at 141 Henry St. Most Holy Redeemer acted as an administrator of the church starting in March 2014. “We didn’t have a real pastor after the Jesuits left,” recalled Tejada. She was referring to the religious order known as the Society of Jesus, which had led Nativity since the first part of the 20th century, when it was housed in a Greek-revival sanctuary purchased by the archdiocese from the Second Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1832. “We had diocesan priests coming in from other parishes to say Mass,” she said. “The Redemptorist fathers also helped out. We were like a flock without a shepherd. We didn’t even have an office for years.” She is clearly comfortable in her transition to Most Holy Redeemer, which was built in 1852 with a majestic array of imported stainedglass windows and marble, along with a tower containing eight bells.

Reverend James Cascione and congregants outside Most Holy Redeemer after a recent Sunday Spanish-language Mass.

Yet, Tejada sometimes joins other former Nativity congregants in saying the rosary outside their shuttered church on Sunday mornings. Some say they are fearful that the archdiocese will sell Nativity to developers eyeing the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. “Cardinal Dolan could do that,” mused Claudio Marte, 60, a cab driver for a private service who attended Nativity for 32 years. He was among about a half-dozen other Latinos praying outside Nativity on Sept. 30 and hoping it wouldn’t become luxury condos. Marte described Nativity as having been “all about love” and like a second family, especially for a congregation of about 250 that he said had became largely Hispanic over the years. Dolan, in his Nov. 2 decree, attributed the Second Ave. church’s closing to a lower attendance, fewer priests and changing demographics. “Dolan talks about demographics,” Marte said. “But for 30 years, we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, and there would be 700 to 800 people coming to Mass, lined up around the block.” He now attends Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on 263 Mulberry St, saying it’s near his Lower East Side home. Mercedes Sanchez, 33, a leader in an aborted effort to stop the closure of Nativity, noted in a series of e-mails that Dolan’s decree had been announced at the church, but there was no mention at the time that parishioners had only 10 “useful” days to appeal his decision, a deadline that she and her group missed. Both the archdiocese and the Vatican rejected appeals to keep the church open. Sanchez is now attending Most Holy Redeemer and claims to have moved on.

“We didn’t get a chance for a fight, but we’ve accepted our fate and we will help to rebuild the new parish,” she said. “We’re gradually finding our place as lectors and ministers.” In the meantime, Sanchez, a media relations specialist at a New York business college who grew up in the East Village, seeks alternatives for Nativity. Along with others, she is proposing that the archdiocese consider turning part of the church’s rectory into a retreat center and chapel, with services for the homeless, named after the late activist Dorothy Day, co-founder of the anarchist Catholic Worker movement and a prospective candidate for canonization as a saint. Day, who worshiped at Nativity for decades, was 83 when she died in 1980 at Maryhouse, a Catholic Worker residence at 55 E. Third St. Her granddaughter Martha Hennessy, who lives most of the year on a farm in Vermont but stays at Maryhouse when she’s volunteering for the Catholic Worker, said she supports the idea of making Nativity available for the homeless and “providing them with showers and mailboxes.” The Right Reverend Sean McGillicuddy, pastor of Most Holy Redeemer and superior of the Redemptorist order at the church, said on Fri., Aug. 28, that he had just returned from vacation and hadn’t entered into any discussions about what to do with Nativity’s two buildings, which are now the property of the new parish but under the authority of the archdiocese. He said he believes that when the archdiocese listens to the concerns of the parishioners, “I’m sure it will do the best for everybody.” McGillicuddy noted that there had been numerous Catholic CHURCHES continued on p. 27 EastVillagerNews.com

CHURCHES continued from p. 26

PHOTO BY MARY REINHOLZ

churches built in “years gone by” — especially Downtown around the City Hall area — for the large number of Catholics arriving in New York more than a century and a half ago. “But as time went on, the numbers decreased, so the need wasn’t there for so many churches,” he said. “Holy Redeemer has a small congregation. By uniting it with Nativity, it’s a stronger congregation.” Father Cascione, who is also associate pastor at Most Holy Redeemer, said that church attendance at Sunday Masses had “increased quite significantly” since the merger. “We were around 120 at the Spanish Mass and now we’re 180,” he said. “We were 35 at the noon Mass and now we’re about 50.” He noted that the church also has a 9 a.m. Sunday Mass and one at 7:30 in the evening, plus a Saturday Mass at 5:30 p.m., which used to draw 20 to 25 and now has close to 40 attendees. But Cascione said that the merger also caused Most Holy Redeemer to lose parishioners from Nativity. “A little more than half are going to other churches and a few have dropped out completely. But I honestly believe that it has gone as well as it can go,” he said of the merger. He estimated the combined attendance is now about 350 to 400, whereas before at Most Holy Redeemer, “it was 250 to 300.” Cascione also noted that a painting from Nativity has been transferred to his church. A photograph of Dorothy Day is now in a side altar of the church, “and we definitely want

Cristina Tejada, a former Nativity parishioner, at Most Holy Redeemer before the start of a Mass.

to have some kind of a shrine” for her, he added. Copies of the Catholic Worker are on a table in the back of the church that people can see as they enter for services. In addition, he said, McGillicuddy is in the process of naming the merged parish. Cascione said the pastor will submit three names and Cardinal Dolan will pick one. Despite such glad tidings, there is still lingering resentment and allegations of “secrecy” over the manner in which Dolan issued his decrees about the church closings and mergers throughout the archdiocese, which encompasses Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island and six counties to the north. “Within all of this was the grave chaos that Cardinal Dolan created because he did not make the decrees available to any of the parishes, including Nativity,” said Sister Kate Kuenstler, a nun and canon lawyer in Rhode Island who is a member of

an international religious congregation called Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ. She represents a number of parishes in the archdiocese that have appealed Dolan’s Nov. 2 order. It was Mercedes Sanchez who contacted her for help. Sanchez said she wasn’t able to read Dolan’s decree for Nativity until Dec. 22 — and was monitored as she did so by two women at the archdiocese’s office on First Ave. — weeks after the deadline for appealing had passed. The Vatican’s Congregation of the Clergy required a copy of the decree for the appeal process. Joseph Zwillling, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, said he and other administrators went to “extraordinary lengths” under church law to publicize the decisions that were reached regarding the parish mergers. He said they did so in a variety of ways, including having letters read in all of the parishes that were involved, issuing a press release, and having Dolan available for multiple interviews. Zwilling insisted that it was not necessary “or required” for the archdiocese to post the decrees on its Web site, but acknowledged that not doing so was an oversight on his part. “When this was brought to my attention, the decrees were posted immediately, and they were posted at the time of the follow-up announcements in May,” he said. Responding to other questions, Zwilling said there were no additional mergers contemplated “at this time by the archdiocese.” He added that he did not know the total number of appeal cases currently before the Congregration of the Clergy in Rome.

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A genius who climbed on a tenement sky

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and portrayed drug kingpin Revilla in “Miami Vice.” Piñero died at age 41 of cirrhosis. His ashes were scattered across the Lower East Side, just as he had wished in “A Lower Eastside Poem,” his famous 1985 work, which begins: Just once before I die I want to climb up on a tenement sky to dream my lungs out till I cry then scatter my ashes thru the Lower East Side. PHOTO BY ARLENE GOTTFRIED

iguel Piñero was born in 1946 in Gurabo, Puerto Rico. When he was four, he moved with his parents and sister to the Lower East Side. After his father abandoned his family four years later, Piñero would steal food so that his family could eat. He joined gangs and was soon committing crimes. After stints in juvenile detention and on Rikers Island for robberies and drug possession, at age 25 he did a year in Sing Sing Prison for armed robbery. While in jail, he wrote the play “Short Eyes.” After his release and with the support of the Public Theater’s Joe Papp, it was nominated for six Tony Awards and won the Obie Award for Best Play of the Year, springboarding Piñero to fame. In 1970, he founded the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, along with Miguel Algar�n among others. Piñero also acted, with roles in such movies as “Fort Apache, The Bronx” and “Breathless,”

Miguel Piñero.

Photographer Arlene Gottfried, who now lives in Westbeth in the West Village, was friends with and documented the multitalented Piñero, who she fondly called Miky. “When you were with Miky Piñero you felt like you were in a movie or a play,” Gottfried said. “He was a genius self-destructive dramatist. If he loved you, you were friends for life.” September 17, 2015

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September 17, 2015

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