Rest in Peace: Frank N. Mickens, Legendary Brooklyn High School Principal

The Daily Challenge, NYC's only Black Daily, in today's edition reports the passing of Frank N. Mickens, long time Principal of Boys and Girls High School, the Pride of Bed Stuy, author, activist and fighter for equal opportunity in education. Mr. Mickens reportedly passed away in his sleep Thursday morning. Mr. Mickens began teaching in 1968, becoming principal of Boys and Girls HS in 1985. He retired from the NYC Department of Education in 2004.

Mr. Mickens was known as a no-nonsense disciplinarian, as witnessed in the photo above as he patrolled the halls, here with a walkie talkie, often with a bullhorn. He showed that by getting kids to respect him, themselves, and each other, it was possible to turn a problem-plagued school around. He fought for school improvement and school funds, and many scholarships and incentives were made available to his students. Under Mr. Micken's tenure, the school had 85%+ college bound graduates.

Brooklyn Beat had the privilege of walking the halls with Mr. Mickens during a couple of visits to Boys and Girls, and it was clear, that as much as he accomplished school improvement by being a strong administrator, he loved his students and they loved him. Nothing escaped Frank's attention, in the halls, in the classrooms, or outside of the building.

At times controversial as he tangled for funds for his school and community with the NYC Board of Ed, I found him a funny, sometimes jovial and blusterous, but at the same time thoughtful, charismatic, and dedicated professional. Frank was one of a kind.

Mr. Mickens wrote "It Doesn't Have To Be This Way: How To Create A Positive
Environment In Our Schools." In it he discusses "No matter who you are, you want the same things for your kid. Whether you're in Buffalo or Brooklyn, you want a good academic and a safe environment for your kid."

More details here: http://www.bickley.com/mickens.html

Chooo-choo! : NY1 Says That Governor Dave To Name MTA's Former Chair Dick Ravitch as Lt. Guv

From NY1 Political Itch (Road to City Hall):

From: Political ItCH [Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 4:10 PM

Subject: NY1 ItCH Alert: Paterson To Select Richard Ravitch As Lieutenant Governor

NY1 has learned that Gov. David Paterson will be selecting former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch to serve as his lieutenant governor.

Paterson will formally be making the announcement at 5 p.m. and NY1 will be taking the announcement live.

Yinka Shonibare, MBE @ Brooklyn Museum

Experience a wide selection of contemporary art at The Brooklyn Museum. Yinka Shonibare MBE, British - Nigerian artist's conceptual sculptures, videos,and photography explore class, immigration, imperalism and colonialism. The intriguing work uses Dutch wax fabrics, headless scuptures, eroticism, politics, and humor. The Dorian Gray and the ramblings of a dandy are a couple of narratives explored by this interesting artist.

The artist's website:

http://www.yinka-shonibare.co.uk/yinka-shonibare-home.html.
Also, Sun K. Kwak's torn black tape landscape environments, Reflections of the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video, and Tavares Strachan: The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project). We've been otherwise engaged this past spring and had not been to the BM since the winter. We caught the final day of the Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea show, which was too good to miss.



Above: Oarsman in a Top Hat, by Gustave Calliabotte

But there are still plenty of thoughtful and provocative works to see, in new and existing collections, at the Brooklyn Museum. Don't forget the long-term installation of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party.

Brooklyn Museum:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/

Independence

Neil Gaiman's "Coraline" Off-Broadway

An incredible, haunting, production at the Lucille Lortel Theater, "CORALINE" based on the graphic novel written by Neil Gaiman, gets a suitably alternative, off-Broadway spin by the MCC. The play, with Jayne Houdyshell in the title role, with a wonderful cast,concerns a young, smart,and bored English girl who loves to explore.

As you may know, Ms Houdyshell is not a child, and delivers an enchanting performance, following the young Coraline ("not Caroline!") as she moves through a mysterious story that combines fairy tales, mystery, and archetypal mythologizing right out of the Joseph Campbell handbook.

Great performances also included January LaVoy, Francis Jue, Elliot Villar, William Youmans, and Julian Fleisher, who seems to understand cats,whether they are the garden variety, paw-licking, human disdaining kind, or the mythical, able to talk and get you out of fairy tale jams type.

There is an indisputable creepiness, from the strange and charming set, with its piano fragments as scenery, to its score by the show's solo musician, Phyllis Chen, (although the cast helps out with the occasional toy piano or plucked piano string). Ms.Chen plays just pianos: an upright, a toy piano, and a strange kind of altered piano that produces some strange tonalities (and atonalities) indeed. The music by Stephin Merrit is sublime.

Behind a door, Coraline finds a strange parallel universe, and encounters her "Other Mother" played by the creepy-in-costume David Greenspan, who also wrote the play based on Gaiman's book. While each member of the cast knocked his or her performance out of the park at one point or another, and there were many funny and spooky songs performed throughout, it was Greenspan's Other Mother who triggered absolutely explosive applause by his performance of the song "Falling" which was a jewel of bizarre and shattering beauty in the midst of an already haunting theatrical production. It made me pine for an audio or video recording in the future. An enchanting, charming, disturbing, and altogether transporting evening of musical theater.

At the Lucille Lortel Theater on Christopher Street at Bleecker through July 5.

--Brooklyn Beat

The Hidden Agendas of the Albany Shutdown: Mayor Mike Gets a Hot Calzone While Lobbyists Derail Democratic Reform

The Village Voice's Tom Robbins explains why the situation in Albany isn't "dysfunction" or "chaos" that simply happened -- no, it is the result of an intentionally engineered plan, pushed by lobbyists and funded by billionaire Thomas Golisano, that is purposely designed to derail the reform agenda of the new Democratic majority in Albany. Unfortunately, the majority proved too slim and easy to topple. Details here from the Voice journalist Tom Robbins that will help to make some sense of what's happening up along the Northway and its continuing impact on renters, gun control, NYS health care issues and more.

-Brooklyn Beat

Tom Robbins, July 1, 2009, Village Voice:

The tabloid version of the Great Senate Stalemate of 2009 goes something like this: Those bozos in the State Senate—who can't be trusted even on a good day to get their lunch orders straight—brought the people's business to a screeching halt over a petty internal dispute about who got to wield the gavel at meetings.

There is just enough of a patina of truth to this comic-book description of the Albany shutdown to convince a lot of otherwise sensible citizens to lather up in rage. After all, this is the same corps of elected officials that has managed to incur a higher rate of criminal indictment than many of New York's toughest neighborhoods. Who were these dolts? How dare they pose as leaders? Throw them all the hell out.

Naturally, the biggest promoter of this tale is the New York Post, which quickly dubbed the standoff a circus and then gleefully provided a clown to wander the capitol halls. The Daily News also got into the act, firing up its readers with its "Don't Pay the Bums" campaign. In these accounts, the fact that there are hugely important stakes for everyday New Yorkers in the outcome of the Senate fight is barely mentioned. Nor is the embarrassing truth that what transpired in Albany in the past month is the local version of a banana republic coup. In this case, the conspiring generals were lobbyists and one very power-hungry billionaire, Tom Golisano. Their goal was no different from that of those democracy-fearing Iranian mullahs: to overturn the results of a popular election.


Read Tom Robbins' excellent full article from the Village Voice here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/columns/senate-coup-plotters-hidden-agenda/

Also, the NY Post's Fred Dicker on what goes around, comes around: If revenge is a dish served cold by people of taste, well Mayor Mike must feel like he has been fed a hot calzone straight from the oven by the Dems in Albany:

NY Post's Fred Dicker here shows why payback is a *%^$#... but Mayor Mike'll never learn:

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nypost.com%2Fseven%2F07022009%2Fnews%2Fcolumnists%2Fits_dem_payback_vs__mayor_177147.htm

Update: Back to the Future: Education in NYC

The DoE (still not the "BoE") released the following press release:

NYC Department of Education
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2009
N-1, 2009-10

MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND NEW YORK CITY’S BOROUGH PRESIDENTS CONVENE EMERGENCY BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING AFTER STATE SENATE FAILS TO VOTE ON SCHOOL GOVERNANCE BILL Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York City’s Borough Presidents this morning convened an emergency Board of Education meeting. The meeting followed the New York State Senate’s failure to vote on school governance legislation before the existing statute expired Tuesday night. With thousands of students slated to begin summer school today, the Mayor and the Borough Presidents re-constituted a central School Board, comprised of two members appointed by the Mayor and one by each Borough President, according to State law. The Board moved to appoint Joel I. Klein as Chancellor, delegated full authority to Chancellor Klein to run the schools, including contracting authority, and passed a resolution urging the New York State Senate to adopt a bill modifying and extending Mayoral control of the schools.

The Board’s members include: First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris and Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg; Dr. Dolores Fernandez, appointed by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.; Jimmy Yan, appointed by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; Deputy Mayor for Education and Community Development Dennis M. Walcott, appointed by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall; Deputy Borough President Edward Burke, appointed by Staten Island Borough President James P. Molinaro; and Carlo Scissura, appointed by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. All City employees on the Board will forgo compensation related to services on the Board.

The full text of the Board’s resolution urging the New York State Senate to vote on Senate Bill no. S5887, which would extend Mayoral control until June 30, 2015, is below.

The Board set the date of its next meeting as September 10, the first Thursday after Labor Day.

###

RESOLUTION URGING THE NEW YORK STATE SENATE TO
ACT IMMEDIATELY TO ADOPT S5887

WHEREAS, before the landmark Mayoral control legislation enacted in 2002, meaningful educational progress in New York City was stymied by a governance structure in which there were frequent political battles and no real accountability for results;

WHEREAS, under the governance structure enacted by Chapter 91 of the Laws of 2002 and Chapter 123 of the Laws of 2003, Mayoral control has brought stability and accountability to the New York City school system. Under Mayoral control, New York City children have made substantial progress, with rising test scores, declining dropout rates, and a narrowing of the achievement gap;

WHEREAS, the legislation adopted in 2002 and 2003 provided for a sunset date of June 30, 2009, whereupon provisions enabling Mayoral control would no longer be in effect and the form of governance which predated the reforms would be revived;

WHEREAS, the New York State Assembly has adopted Assembly Bill no. 8903-a, which would extend Mayoral control until June 30, 2015;

WHEREAS, identical legislation was introduced in the Senate as Senate Bill no. S5887, but the Senate did not vote on it in time to prevent the Mayoral control legislation from sunsetting; and

WHEREAS, the failure of the Senate to act in time to avoid sunset has created chaotic conditions in the City school district, where virtually every decision – from personnel decisions to policy decisions – could be subject to litigation and uncertainty;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board of Education calls on the New York State Senate to take immediate action to enact S5887.
###

Back to the Future: Education in NYC

An emergency meeting of a newly reconstituted "NYC Board of Education" will be held at noon today at NYC education HQ (aka "Tweed courthouse"). The Mayor and the Borough Presidents each have a candidate. It is believed that the Mayor can count on the support of the Manhattan and Staten Island BPs, and possibly Brooklyn as well.

NY TIMES: "Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, said he planned to appoint his chief of staff, Carlo A. Scissura. Mr. Stringer and Mr. Markowitz called for an immediate meeting of the reconstituted Board of Education on Wednesday.

Under the old system, 32 neighborhood school boards were responsible for overseeing middle and high schools in their districts and for hiring superintendents. Since Mr. Bloomberg took control in 2002, those boards have been turned into parent councils and stripped of their power. The chancellor now appoints superintendents."

NY Times on what may be to come:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/nyregion/01control.html?_r=1

Parents and others who assumed that the toothpaste was out of the tube, and that the Mayor's wealth, political clout, and his army of political and media operatives, made the continuation of Mayoral control a given are surprised, some perhaps jubilant, at the turmoil that the chaos in Albany has wrought. Although "money changes everything", in this case, politics, however dysfunctional, manages to trump wealth, throwing a wrench into the Mayor's own well-oiled political machine.

- Brooklyn Beat

A Rave in the Desert

The chance event, November 1996, 3 days in the desert, conference organized by Chris Kraus featuring Jean Baudrillard, Roseanne Alluqere Stone, The Chance Band, and others.

"Motel Suicide" by Jean Baudrillard and the Chance Band
http://www.last.fm/music/Jean+Baudrillard+with+the+Chance+Band/_/Motel-Suicide+%2810%29

http://www.last.fm/music/Jean+Baudrillard+with+the+Chance+Band

On Baudrillard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard


http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/index.html

http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=291

On Chris Kraus's SmArt Fiction:

http://www.ctheory.net/printer.aspx?id=291

Summer Mysteries

http://m8ball.nicksoft.info/

We were at my son's high school graduation from Brooklyn Tech yesterday when I got a text from one of my other kids at home (we only got 2 tickets per family) about the death of Michael Jackson. An amazing talent with global impact that somehow transformed into a stranger, later life. I guess no one can account for the effects on the personality of talent and celebrity, even for a pop "genius."

And I guess the tabloids didn't call the King of Pop "Whacko-Jacko" for nothing:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1195750/Michael-Jackson-set-plastinated-missing-deadline-cryogenic-freezing.html

I liked Michael Jackson. I liked Prince too, maybe a little more because he was more R&B and raw. I remember going to see Purple Rain when it first came out and someone in the theatre yelled out “Michael who?” MJ was a huge, influential talent, maybe more so because he was more pop-mainstream than Prince, other artists. I guess ultimately, like Elvis, and the other somewhat tragic figures in pop history, Michael Jackson will be defined by his eccentricities as well as his talent, charisma and creativity.

Notes on the Clinton Hill Collapse

I got a call from a friend whose family owns a building on Myrtle Avenue between Hall and Ryerson. They are two doors down from the building that collapsed. My friend and her mom were there with City engineers yesterday, assessing the threat of possible damage to their building. At present, it appears no significant immediate damage and it sounded as though the engineers were hopeful although the building, 491, will probably require shoring up from inside. Residents and the ground floor business are still being asked to stay away.

The Purple Nail Salon that inhabits the storefront in this building along Clinton Hill's busy commercial strip, remains closed. The business owner had just made a significant investment to upgrade the shop, so they are hoping that the current closing will be temporary and brief.

Brooklyn Beat and family had a home on Hall Street below Myrtle from 1989 - 1999. We passed by the neighborhood earlier this month on our way to a baby shower in East Williamsburgh and were amazed at the huge apartment tower going up near the corner of Myrtle and Hall, a couple of doors down from John's Luncheonette and Donut shop. The building was erected in what was formerly a warehouse space. Relative to the rest of the block, it is a giant edifice in this otherwise realtively low-rise nabe.

While the building that fell, 493, is reported to have had a long crack in its facade, perhaps a decade in the making, and possibly unregulated renovation-construction had occurred as well, one may wonder if the adjacent construction of the large apartment tower in anyway contributed to infrastructural weaknesses, that in some way worsened 493's own (according to Department of Buildings) apparently shakey situation. Hopefully the situation is now stabilized.

Details: NY TImes Fort Greene-Clinton Hill blog:

http://fort-greene.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/vesper-building-on-myrtle-collapses-no-major-injuries/

Photos;check out Geralyn Shukwit’s album here:
http://www.eyemaze.net/journey/

Ideations, Iterations, and idée fixe

Dylan: The Jungian Perspective
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=643&Itemid=40

It’s tough rocking in the Islamic republic:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=102710

Sinkholes near the Dead Sea:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=103339

A Way Back

Damn that foolish soul and all of the joy that the passage of time takes and gives.
Damn that stubborn soul, and the decades spent searching for a little glory hidden in the prisms of infinite possibilities, and finally finding a little bliss, a fragment of salvation, in savoring the simple joy of having everyone together again. A groovy Father's Day, a simple happiness never imagined in my own youth, they, no longer exactly ours, busy with valedictories, taking center stage, medals polished to a high burnish,keeping the beat, traveling the world, daring to burn bridges between here and childhood and yet always finding a way back home again.
--Brooklyn Beat

Back ta Brooklyn: Personal Notes

We are enjoying, savoring really, the last future perfect moments before we pickup our older daughter from JFK in a couple of hours, who is returning home after studying in Europe for the year. She has traveled, experienced, and grown. We last saw her in December-January when we all spent the holidays together in Rome. She was away for her sisters' final year in middle school and her brother's final year in high school. She was away for the bulk of the 2008 election campaign, election night, and the Obama inauguration. She was away for the first wave of the swine flu in NYC. Away for various birthdays, hers, her mom and sibs. Now she is returning. Versed in a new language and culture. We are getting set to welcome her back to the ranch,this new person, welcome her back to her parents and siblings at home, back to famiglia. Back to Brooklyn.

IRAN NOW: The Players & 'Palace intrigue plus Twitter'

I listened to Professor Hamid Dabashi of Columbia University on Doug Henwood's WBAI-FM show Behind the News yesterday. Dr. Dabashi had some interesting perspectives on the current situation in Iran. Here, a collection of his speeches and recent interviews on Iran now:

http://www.hamiddabashi.com/

"Calling Iranian politics "byzantine" doesn't quite do the trick, because all Byzantium really had going on was palace intrigue. Tehran is that, plus Twitter" writes Gabriel Winant in Salon. Who hates who and what the future may bring.
A guide to the players on Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/19/iran/?source=newsletter

'Where is my vote': Iran

Image from http://www.tehran24.com/

Wow, does this bring back memories of the demonstrations, widely supported in the West, that resulted in the fall of the liberal-on-the-surface-but-dictatorial-behind-the-scenes Shah of Iran in 1979 which resulted in the ascendance of Ayatollah Khomeini which, needless to say, was perhaps an even greater surprise as it led to the rise of Islamic theocracy. Democracy as "the worst form of government, except for all of the others."

from wikipedia on the Fall of the Shah:
"On October 22, 1979, at the request of David Rockefeller, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo medical treatment. This act was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement, which had been angered by the United States' overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh, and years of support for the Shah's rule. The Iranian government demanded the return of the Shah to Iran to stand trial; the American government refused to turn him over.

"This resulted in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis. According to the Shah's book, Answer to History, in the end the USA never provided the Shah any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country."

Ambivalence, confusion, and transient and conflicting popular sentiment have always made for complex foreign policy decisions and fostered unexpected repercussions.

Check out Twitter "Iran elections" for late news on current political activity in Iran.

Roubini: 'Green shoots in the economy' but also 'yellow weeds'

Nouriel Roubini, who was so far out front among the pack on the current economic crisis that one might think he had also invented a time machine, takes a more sober look on the impact of the stimulus plan and the hopes for a rebound:

Reuters Investment Outlook Summit: "Roubini, who rose to prominence for predicting the global credit crisis, tore down the "green shoots" theory that a rebound is imminent, saying there was a significant risk of a "double-dip" recession where the economy expands slightly only to begin contracting again.

"In addition to green shoots there are also yellow weeds," he told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.

He pointed to the growing divergence between business sentiment surveys, which have been improving in recent months, and industrial production, which is down sharply and receded another 1.1 percent in May.

Details here: http://www.reuters.com/article/InvestmentOutlook09/idUSTRE55F4ET20090616

Bloomsday: "Introibo ad altare Dei."

--Berneice Abbott portrait of James Joyce


Whether in Dublin or in Brooklyn, NY, June 16 remains forever and always, Bloomsday. BLOOMSDAY marks the day in 1904 on which all the action of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses takes place. It is celebrated every year on 16th June by Joyceans all over the world.

Excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679641629&view=excerpt