WHEDCo Tells Bronx to Exercise, Step-Up

WHEDCo, the Women’s Health and Economic Development Organization, is promoting exercise and safety along with representatives of the NY City Department of Health and the Dep’t of Transportation. WHEDCO has been putting up signs encouraging people to use the stairs as an alternative to elevators, known as “stair prompts” at their 132-apartment Urban Horizons complex, at 50 East 168th St, Bronx NY. The Department of Transportation was there at an event on Wednesday afternoon, July 23rd, giving out bicycle helmets, fitted for children and adults. Their aim is to encourage bike riding and safety, since all children age 13 or younger, legally must wear a helmet when on a bicycle, scooter, skates or skateboard.

WHEDCo President Nancy Biberman said that the program encourages burning calories, not electricity. If residents at the apartment building want to stay fit, there are 10 stories of stairs to climb. Urban Horizons also had their cellar and boilers retrofitted recently. The Urban Horizons building is part of the former Morrisania Hospital, which WHEDCo rehabilitated 12 years ago. Recently, the organization has been focusing on reducing energy consumption in daily operations. They already have replaced all the refrigerators in the building’s apartments with new Energy Star, energy efficient refrigerators with the goal of keeping Con Ed bills down. Another thing that people can do is to carry a pedometer, to measure how many steps they take, and if possible, bring their sneakers to work.

Bronx Dominican Party time

The celebration of the Bronx Dominican Festival began Friday July 18th, at East 173rd St., between Webster and Clay Avenue. This begins a series of festivals and parties that will be capped off by the Bronx Dominican Day Parade down the Grand Concourse on Sunday July 27th starting at 11 am. The floats in the parade will be representing the biggest and best carnivals in the Dominican Republic. Other parades can be expected in the NY area, as August 16th is the anniversary of the restoration of the independence of the Dominican Republic from Spanish occupation, in 1863. T-shirts and banners with large Dominican Flags were on display and Hispanic music was played both recorded and live, blaring from the stage, including performances of merengue music and salsa. The heads of this year’s Dominican festival are Mr. Felipe Febles, and Rosa Ayala. Mr. Febles was there and mentioned his thanks to the event’s sponsors, including Health Plus, Western Union and Café Bustelo. Other sponsors include Con Edison, Mega 97.9 FM, Coca-Cola, Well Care and Montezuma Restaurant. Café Bustelo was giving out free samples of iced coffee.

Back to the Mott Haven Bronx Art walk

The 2nd annual Mott Haven open artist studio tour on Saturday, June 28th was a rare opportunity to meet and talk to artists in Mott Haven, Bronx NY and see their work. This is right over the Willis Ave Bridge from Harlem NY. Ben Cobbs, of Books, Notes and News, 137 Alexander Ave. was out with some of his choice antique maps on display. Mr. Cobbs has been participating in many of the Bronx Trolley tours and activities, displaying his antique book collections. Next door, Matthew Burcaw had his art displayed on the sidewalk. Mr. Burcaw has a “blue aquarium” on display at the AIM exhibit at the Bronx Museum, and was also selling Shav block prints in front of Alexander’s Café, near Alexander Ave and Bruckner Blvd. The Shav block prints are scenes of the area, including Alexander’s Café and other local street scenes. For more info, email Mrb06831@yahoo.com.

Down the block, Beth Brideau works at her studio with maps etched out on a computer, then cut with a plasma cutter. Ms. Brideau’s large art pieces have been on display in Milan, Spain, and local galleries. At the same studio, Darcy Dahl’s abstract paintings are on display. Mr. Dahl teaches drawing classes at the Haven Gallery, on Thursday evenings. See www.havenarts.org . He emphasizes having the artist see something new when he or she is drawing. Then take and do whatever you have to do with it. For more on Mr. Dahl’s work, see www.darcydahl.com .

Jazz Show, Harlem Style in the Bronx

This show happened Friday night July 11th as part of the Bronx Museum, first Fridays program. The main attraction ws the Ray Abrams band and the tap dancers. The Master of Ceremonies, Ariel Fernandez introduced the event. Mr. Fernandez is the producer of the “First Fridays” program, and in turn introduced Ms. Rashida Bumbray, who heads the Hoofer’s House and is a leading NY area tap dancer.

Rashida Bumbray then spoke on how she has been a curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and now leads, Hoofer’s House, for tap dancers. At this point, Ms. Bumbray brought out fellow dancers, Ms. Maud Arnold, Delores Sanchez, and Mr. Tamango, and they all started to dance, in an acapella hoofers line.

Then the band slowed things down with a sweet number called “L’il Darling,” including a great trumpet solo. The band conductor, Cyril Green, also invited the audience to dance in the back of the room. Another song played was the familiar Ray Charles tune, “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” opening with a classic sort of rhythmic piano chords and including a bassoon solo. The tap dancers and the band had never seen each other before, so the evening was truly in the spirit of jazz improvisation. The August First Friday event will be a special program outdoors at a park at Tremont and E 163rd St. For more details, see www.bronxmuseum.org .

British still Racist, and Screwing up Zimbabwe

Yes, the Queen and Prince Phillip of the UK are not nice people. See
http://www.realcrash.com/satanic-queen-and-philip-await-you-there/ for what they are doing in Zimbabwe. And they are running the financial system too through London and the Cayman Islands. That is why they are demanding that the Feds bail out the mortgage market, and do nothing to stop the home foreclosures in Harlem and the Bronx, NY.

Repo Man Out on the Corner

There's a repo man out on the corner;
And his name is Cong. Barney Frank;
He's a hustler if I've ever seen one;
Trying hard now to bail out the banks;

Congressman Barney Frank and his repo man trick are not going to work. Now Fannie Mae and Frankie Mac are collapsing and the floor is coming out of the mortgage and housing market. The prices keep going down. This is evil. Many people in Harlem, Bronx, Jamaica Queens tried to cash in on the real estate bubble, and now they need to get debt relief from the Government.

NY Prices Up, Buy Glasses Online

Yes NY prices are up, so buy glasses on line at
ZenniOptical.com

And they were recently covered on TV, see Zenni on Fox.

Glasses online sell for as little as $8 a pair. Also sold are sun glasses, glasses sensitive to the sun (photochromic lenses), bifocal lenses and progressive lenses. With the real estate costs at a high level in Harlem and in New York City in general, you save a lot by dealing with an online manufacturer. Zenni is manufacturing its own glasses and frames, to sell to the public, directly, online. No middleman, no brick and mortar stores to pay rent on, is the secret. So order your pair now, or multiple pairs. And remember, you are getting custom made, prescription eyeglasses, for real!

Non-Profit Organizations- Are they really different?

Non-profit organizations-- they seem so nice and they almost always have nice goals. Yet, at least in New York city, it is a big business. See in the local press from a couple of days ago in New York. The New York City Council- in their non-profit pork, fund between 2,500 to 3,000 organizations on the payroll, for a total of $46- million. Of course, other deals are in the shadows.

Do friends of the city council people get easy jobs at the non-profits. Other deals could exist. Two city council aides stand indicted for stealing $500,000 using the vehicle of phoney non-profits. Organizations run from YMCA and YMHAs to an organization to "Abolish the N - word."

AIDS is here to stay, testing in Harlem and Bronx

AIDS is here to stay, and with our high AIDS rates, that can even mean testing everyone, every six months. Maybe you could get an exemption, if you are in a monog. relationship, or not having sex, or no drugs, but it is around. Kids could even get AIDS or HIV positive status from weird things, like shaving razors or bloody contact sports. Poverty, with people having open sores and stuff can lower the threshold for HIV transmission. So, when the public health people want to test EVERYBODY in the Bronx for AIDS, this is not a joke, or a throwback to the AIDS hysteria of the 80s. AIDS deaths for NY City must still be at least a couple of thousand of people a year, or could be higher, masking as opportunistic infections of various sorts.

NY Times Sucks on Argentina

Yes, Harlem Face knows the evil face of the New York Times. In Harlem they want to feed the community to the developers and Columbia University. And in Argentina and South America they also promote the speculators against the people.

The idea is that Argentina's agriculture is being destroyed by soy monoculture and also I think Wheat or corn. The problem is that the speculators and the big estates want to grown only one or two crops. This is destroying modern agriculture, for the likes of George Soros and other speculators who have bought thousands of acres of land for cash export crops only.