With hard work, skills and resources (including a lunch from Katz’s Deli!) Temple Emanu-El volunteers showed up in force today. Citizens Committee for New York City with Lori and Emily provided strong hands and organizing skills.
Teens and parents worked along the sides of the park and in Elizabeth Hubbard Garden and M’Finda Kalunga Garden as well as in The BRC Senior Garden Patio. The young women and women’s group worked with Lori on the patio. They built three enormous garden tables and repotted the plantings! The young men went Tom (new volunteer and friend of Laura and Kevin) installed the hose stanchion, dug a trench for the new hose line and worked on tree pits. And a large group painted almost every bench in the garden (all in sore need of paint)! One group worked up front lining and widening the pathways in Elizabeth Hubbard and planting bulbs for the spring! The garden was swept and cleared areas of debris.
It was a good day. One family has pledged to help Bob Humber (Coordinator of Elizabeth Hubbard) maintain and continue to build that garden.
Bob, K, Chris, Kate, Carol, Lauren, Kevin, Tom, and Joe were the gardeners (and friends of gardeners) who helped out supervising and working.
Merwood–Salisbury: “When Sara D. Roosevelt Park opened in September 1934 it …represented a decisive act on the part of new Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to distance himself from his predecessor, Mayor James J. Walker, and to usher in a new era of civic responsibility in city planning….intended, not for a park, but for social housing.”
“…The land in question had been acquired by the city only a few months before the stock market crash of 1929, at greatly inflated cost. After the existing tenement buildings were demolished in 1930 the site became a barren wasteland of demolition rubble, a “Hooverville” of shanty houses and bread lines…”
With clarification from Joyce Mendelsohn:
….”Tammany politicians and Judge Joseph Force Crater kept the project from getting off the ground. They made shady deals with property owners, jacking up prices that the city paid — while pocketing huge kickbacks for themselves — turning a slum location into a prohibitively expensive land for development.” -‘Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited’, (Second edition Columbia University Press, 2009. p. 162)
Great turn out with too many to thank. Let me know if I missed you!
Jen Itzkowitz organized the donations and food (terrific job), food boss Kevin stepped in to lead the day in food. Penny led the pruning brigade with Oriol (who brought a very good friend who spent the day chopping down a tree in the garden), Jenifer organized the children’s shed, Chris, Kevin, Lauren (yes, who had a baby this week), George, Carol, Kate and Shel were all on tree pit renovation. Beautiful job with all the tree pits from Stanton to Delancey (we’ll finish up tomorrow). Turi pruned, Joe watched the gate and welcomed people, Ted was on turtle pond duty and helped with sandbox removal and fixed the wheelbarrow’s flat tire. Raisa planted tulips. Wendy Brawer of Green Map Systems planted tulips in honor of Adam Purple across from the site of the former “Garden of Eden” (thank you Wendy!). Carolina from Combo CoLab began installing rainwater harvesting (or repairing what has been here). Kirsti of Partnerships for Parks (who organized our tool and bulb drop off) stopped by to say hello. Turi also befriended a butterfly (look at the photo carefully) that resembled a leaf. Anyone know what kind it is? And what about those terrifying ‘crickets’ guarding the chain?
Bob and K did things too.
Morgenstern’s Ice Cream gave us LOTS of ice cream without standing in line for this sought after treat! -Rivington between Chrystie and Bowery.
WNYC’s Science Friday Ira Flatow talks with Cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard who studies how our streetscapes shape our bodies, brains and behavior.
Ira: I followed one of your tour routes…My first stop was a city green space. We are at a community garden at the Sara D Roosevelt Park in historic lower east side of NY. If you look into the garden it really makes you forget that you are in the lower east side. It is beautifully taken care of there are park benches, there is a place to play chess, sit and relax and plenty of greenery and when you look around you can clearly see that people have been gardening in this garden all summer. I would describe my physical state as being relaxed, “vacation- y”, and very much feeling at one with nature here…”
photo: Steve Elson
Colin: “…That spot where you were was such a treasured find on that walk. We really didn’t expect to find anything that tranquil, that kind of oasis of greenspace on the walk.”
Ira: “It’s really true you just walk in there and suddenly you’re in a different place.”
Ira near the Hua Mei Bird Sanctuary:
Can Science Help Build Happier Cities? OCT. 16, 2015 – with thanks to Ted Glass
The Ohioans (this time the women of the group) who show up almost every year came once again to help out in the Elizabeth Hubbard Garden and in the M’Finda Kalunga Garden. They removed a great deal of trash from the front.
Jim, founding member of the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden, and his daughter Jordon who grew up in M’Finda Kalunga and in Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden. Jordon now works with Partnerships for Parks as the Director of the Technical Assistance Program.
Last night at the Arsenal Partnerships for Parks: Certificates were awarded (mentors were as much mentored as ‘mentees’)-Speakers:
Sabina Saragoussi, Director of Partnerships for Parks
Marie Winfield, Friends of Thomas Jefferson Park
Heather Lubov, Exec. Director of City Parks Foundation
Mitchell Silver, Commissioner of NYC Parks
Commissioner Silver, Marie, Mia, Carmen and Thomas Jefferson Park advocates
Heather Lubov-City Parks FoundationExecutive Director, NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, Sabina Saragoussi, Director of Partnerships for Parks and Leah Worrel Technical Assistance Manager, Parks Foundation
Marie Winfield of Friends of Thomas Jefferson Park (Sara Roosevelt’s sister park in East Harlem) – gave the talk on behalf of participants:
“Good evening park advocates, Commissioner Silver, Executive Director Lubov, Leah and Nicolas, and all of the Parks and Partnership staff who have made the Leadership Academy possible. I’m very happy to speak on behalf of this year’s Leadership Academy participants and as a community member of East Harlem. Before applying to the Leadership Academy, working closely together with Mia Hernandez, we put together a report including a list of priorities and how we thought Thomas Jefferson Park could improve. At the top of that list was simply a cleaner park: a desire to make the park usable in the mornings and evenings again for families, seniors, children during warm season weekends – which was most often characterized by unmanageable trash. I just walked through the park this afternoon with my kids and the difference is really staggering from before the Academy and now that it has ended.
In that time, we had a community meeting with our borough commissioner, park manager, the City Council Speaker’s office, which brought forth a new summer maintenance plan with suggestions from community members. We did regular observations – most thanks goes to our dog walkers in the park – and solicited feedback from the community both at events and online. We hope to meet again as a community with Parks, the Speaker’s office, to make sure that out park only continues to improve.
It has been great to have the resources of the Leadership Academy – really useful presentations and workshops, hearing about other park advocacy groups from all over the city and how they are succeeding, and to have the most amazing mentor – K Webster from the Sara D Roosevelt Park Coalition – and now what we consider a sister park to Tom Jeff. Most useful – was simply to have dedicated time each month, a reason to sit down and revise a mission statement, to really step back and take a look at my community and the park – a community going through gentrification, which is targeted for rezoning, with a high needs for social services – and to focus on what park advocacy really means in that context and the most effective ways to proceed and reach out to our community.
One of the greatest things about this program was being able to take back information to other community members – when we had a workshop on ioby, I took that information back to a local community garden to a member there who started fiddling around to see how it worked, and that same time revised a budget that we worked together on for participatory budgeting. When the call for Parks Equity funding came out, we were able to get a proposal together to the City Council Speaker’s office which then qualified them for a grant from Green Thumb dedicated to East Harlem Community Gardens.
It has been great to hear the many successes of the other park groups during the Leadership Academy and to look at my park through a new lens. I really can only encourage other park advocates in the room and in your communities to make use of the Leadership Academy, if you have a project you have been stalling on or need inspiration for a new project – you will have a great place here with the support and resources to see it through. Thank you again to everyone who made this program possible, good luck to all of the new applicants for the next cohort, and I hope to see you soon at Thomas Jefferson Park.”
The Literary Review: Daniel Wolff …in his new poetry collection, The Names of Birds published by Four Way Books
“…On the surface, the collection appears to offer a meditation on the natural world through a series of poems based on, and named for, birds. The poems do take place in nature, as the narrators observe birds in an unnamed and isolated environment; dig a little bit deeper, however, and Wolff reveals a larger concern for questions related to life, loss, and the inevitability of change. He shows us that experience is not meant to be easily defined.”
