Year: 2016
Autumn and October at Albertine Books
The autumn is the season befitting deep thoughts and reflections, strolling through a neighborhood park fragrant with fallen leaves, and watching the nighttime sky on a quiet beach. Rainy and chilly days are perfect for patronizing museums, theaters, historic homes, and bookstores. The autumn awakens the mind and the imagination. A few months ago, I…
Great Public Spaces: a Few Ideas, Part II
The last several posts have addressed the pressing need for quality public spaces in the rapidly developing and transforming Jersey City. In the past decade, a group of volunteers have rescued a historic nineteenth-century cemetery from abandonment and neglect. This group hopes that the cemetery can be a splendid place for the people of Jersey…
Great Public Spaces: a Few Ideas, Part I
My previous post lamented the dearth of great, eye-opening public spaces throughout Jersey City and the nearly complete absence of any attention to this need in the redevelopment and building boom of the city throughout the last thirty years. However, genuine and realistic opportunities exist to ameliorate the lack of civic mindedness and inadequate planning…
Jersey City: Seeking Great Public Spaces
During the last several decades, Jersey City has redefined itself from a floundering industrial hub to a center for white-collar office work. At the same time, an aspiring arts community has seen its fortunes rise and fall and rise again, and urban-minded individuals and families view Jersey City as a place to move to, not…
This Labor Day Weekend
Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer. Americans flock to the malls and stores to take advantage of sales or fire up the grill to indulge in hamburgers and hot dogs with friends and family. That’s fine. Yet, how many of us consider the meaning and origin of Labor Day?
An Afternoon in Greenwich Village: Fading Bohemia
Several weeks ago, I spent a Friday afternoon in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Any casual devotee of the arts and literature understands the prominent position of Greenwich Village in the constellation of American bohemian. Authors, poets, playwrights, actors, and musicians began gravitating to the neighborhood before the Civil War with the opening of the Tenth…
A Neighborhood Peach Pie Contest
This Sunday, the Riverview Farmers Market will host its (now fifth) annual Perfect Peach Pie Contest at the Riverview-Fisk Park in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City. Any reader of this blog will recognize that I’m a proponent of localism, and it doesn’t get more local than a neighborhood baking contest. Unsurprisingly, I’m also a…
A New Life in Union Grove: Thoughts on the World Made By Hand Series
The Harrows of Spring concludes an eight-year fictional odyssey for author James Howard Kunstler. His four-volume World Made by Hand series began in 2008 with the novel by the same name. Each novel is set during a season within a single year. The series opens in the summer and now closes with spring, a time…
Albertine Books : a Sanctuary for the Mind and the Soul
Nestled inside the historic Payne Whitney mansion, a building designed by the legendary Stanford White, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side, Albertine Books is a bookseller located within the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Clearly conceived as a physical medium through which to promote French language, literature, and culture, Albertine offers…
A City’s Lost Dreams: Review of How Newark Became Newark
On January 1, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson wished a happy 300th anniversary to Newark, New Jersey, observing that Newark’s history paralleled that of the United States itself. Church bells rung, and celebrations occurred throughout the city. The Newark Museum launched a year of exhibits exploring the city’s historical and cultural heritage. A year and…
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