Walking Is Transportation

NEXT !

Impressionism, a digital image by Silver Lake photographer Marilyn Kiss

HALT THE DIGITS . . . FOR NOW

Though it's named for a Roman emperor, I find very little that's august--very little that's awe-inspiring, as the dictionary defines the word--about the eighth month of the calendar year.

Everybody's in Provincetown or Edgartown or some other town (everybody, that is, but me and all the other determined stay-at-homes). The start-up of the new season, in the arts and much else, doesn't begin till next month. The weeds growing between the sidewalk panels of slate or concrete are green and vigorous, not yet the husks of fall and winter.

In this intermediary time-space, I'd like to announce that WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION is undergoing one of its episodic changes of focus/identity. Because, I suppose, I am. Yes, again.

AN EMPTY VESSEL,
BUT PROBABLY NOT FOR LONG

In its most recent incarnation, WIT has been very much about Staten Island's north shore. For a while, I was producing a story, even two, a day. As a very wise artist and blogger friend told me last winter, one person working alone can't maintain that frequency for long.

Before that--which is to say, at its founding--WIT was concerned principally with transportation, urbanism and the environment. But  that focus proved too narrow. Months went by without a single entry. Until I decided one day that WIT could be anything I wanted, which is what it became. What I wanted, that is: a community newspaper without the paper.

And now it's changing again.

At the moment, WIT is an empty vessel. But I'm pretty sure it'll fill up with content soon enough, becoming more personal, more impressionistic, reflecting the changes in how I spend my time.

For example:

After doing most of my reading from a screen, I have begun, once again, to have a book, a physical book, "going" at all times. I'm planning to spend less time at this worktable and more time looking at art, updating my awareness of contemporary jazz, and learning more about dance.

Where all this leads, I can't say. What will not change is that, like most writers, I process my experience sitting at a keyboard. Whatever I experience will find its way here.

I hope you'll stick around to read (and view images of) the results.--Dan Icolari

#         #         #

FROM AUCKLAND TO ST. GEORGE VIA WILLIAMSBURG

___________________________________________________________________________

Meet the Neighbors

NOT POSH

When Auckland, New Zealand native Victoria Munro and her husband Rodrigo Sanchez checked out St. George for the first time, "I assumed it was a posh neighborhood," she told me recently, as we talked in the sunny kitchen of her large pre-Civil War clapboard house not far from the ferry.


St. George sculptor Victoria Munro and her daughter Violeta out for a stroll on St. Marks Place.

"The closeness to Manhattan, the grand old houses, the large properties, the views--all of it seemed to suggest 'posh,' " she said, adding that she and her husband were surprised to discover, after they'd been here a while, that not all Staten Islanders share their perceptions of St. George as beautiful and desirable.

But no matter. The couple is far too busy, getting settled in the house and neighborhood, caring for their no-longer-quite-an-infant daughter Violeta, and pursuing their career interests--she as a sculptor; he as an attorney--to worry about how some people view their home community.

With all the demands on her time and energy, the transplanted New Zealander has nonetheless managed to make her mark locally with "Going Bush," a recent exhibition at St. George's SHOW Gallery of her own sculptures, combined with a small show she curated of the work of an international group of artists with whom she's exhibited before, in her homeland and in Europe. That show was entitled, "We Go Far . . . And Way Back."

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

VICTORIA MUNRO GOES BUSH

The photo below shows four of Victoria Munro's porcelain sculptures, each representative in its way of the show's theme, "Going Bush," which is explained below in text from the SHOW Gallery's website.

In the New Zealand-English-to-U.S.-English dictionary, ‘going bush’ is translated as “to drop out of society or become reclusive." The expression is widely used not only when referring to a reclusive period but also to a notion that Kiwis and Aussies hold onto, that they, at any time, may be able to drop everything and be successfully self-sufficient in the wilds of their native countries.

Having grown up in New Zealand, this notion is firmly rooted in Victoria Munro’s perception of her own abilities to ‘go bush.' With no real inclination for, or experience in, the art of basic women vs. nature survival, this is a mere romantic ideal. Nonetheless, she holds onto this ideal, joining the long list of New Zealand artists to memorialize the intrinsic connection to their native bush.

More information: E-mail/vpmunro@hotmail.com; blog/http://victoriamunro.wordpress.com

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

THEY BOUGHT THE FIRST HOUSE THEY SAW

Victoria first arrived in the states as a one-semester exchange student at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where she found winters impossible (by contrast, she finds New York winters 'difficult'). That one semester included a three-week stay in New York, where, despite the weather, Victoria says that "after three weeks living here, I found it hard to imagine living anywhere else."

And eventually she did wind up in New York--in an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which soon was transformed, in places, into a high-priced tourist trap, from what had been a vital artists' community sharing space with a long-established working-class community. But Victoria says she and Rodrigo weren't really house-hunting when they arrived on Staten Island for the first time; they were on their way to a barbecue, invited by friends who'd moved to West Brighton shortly before.

"What we saw amazed us," Victoria recalls, referring to their friends' new home. "No, it wasn't a fancy house; it sat on a small plot of land, but it was a comfortable amount of space for under $300,000. You'd pay that for a studio in Williamsburg."

When Victoria and Rodrigo returned from Staten Island--just to see what was available, mind you--they checked out Craigslist, where they found the house they ended up buying--and never looked at another. The couple were married in the garden of their new house and, even before it was officially theirs, Rodrigo proposed in the garden, where his proposal was accepted. The couple's offer on the house was accepted, too.

Though much of her life is now situated on Staten Island's north shore, Victoria Munro still maintains her connection to the sector of north Brooklyn where art is made and shown. Her sculptures will appear next in a group show at Williamsburg's Minus Space.

#         #         #

WELCOME (BACK), PIER 76

___________________________________________________________________

Rumorama

Coming soon, a rumor come true--the new Pier 76, 76 Bay Street, St. George, offering "Darts, live music, sporting events, specialty pizza, fresh seafood," according to the signage on the awning above the entrance.

AN OLD NAME GETS AN UPDATE

When we arrived in St. George in 1977, there were a  handful of small, independently owned restaurants on the North Shore that didn't survive beyond the early 1980s.

These were middlebrow eateries that served straightforward meals with no pretensions, frills or highprices. Among others, there was the Brighton Lounge on Brighton Avenue and the Lido on lower Victory Boulevard, both Italian restaurants; the Kopper Cettle (cute, huh?) on Cary Avenue near Clove Road; and Pier 76, then a seafood restaurant on Bay Street near Slosson Terrace.

Interestingly, Pier 76 was one of the first to close its doors in the early 1980s and now appears to be the first to return. I've been following the rumors surrounding the ongoing renovation of the space, which now appears close to completion.

A DESTINATION DEVELOPING?

When I took this picture--on a hot Sunday afternoon in late July--I had just passed Steiny's, a small, recently refurbished bar on nearby Hyatt Street, where there were smokers congregated outside and people strolling up and down nearby streets. You could hardly have described the street as crowded, but it wasn't the usual Sunday ghost-town, either.

With the Every Thing Goes Book Cafe, Cargo, Pier 76, Karl's Klipper, Steiny's, Beso and Ruddy & Dean open, It's at least possible that a small weekend scene may be able to develop, fueled by tourists off the boat, shoppers at the various Every Thing Goes stores, and local diners and imbibers.

#         #         #

CHARTER SCHOOL MOVING TOWARD SEPTEMBER, 2010 OPENING

[FULL DISCLOSURE: My wife, Ellen Icolari, is co-lead applicant for the establishment of the Barack Obama Community Charter School on Staten Island's north shore.]

WANT TO LEARN MORE?
ATTEND THE PUBLIC PRESENTATION
AT THE PETRIDES COMPLEX,
MONDAY, AUGUST 3 at 7:30 P.M.

The submission on July 15 of an application for a pre-authorization planning grant from the New York City Charter Center was a key event for those working to establish the Barack Obama Community Charter School on Staten Island's north shore. The charter school's target opening date is September, 2010.

Photo at right, Board of Trustees meeting: From left, Lorna Harris, Arts Administration and Fundraising Consultant; Tina Sher, co-lead applicant; Marianne Castillo, Site Selection/Construction Management Specialist; Ellen Bate, Attorney; and Ellen Icolari, co-lead applicant (back to camera).

THE NEXT STEP

After establishing a board of trustees . . . engaging advisory consultants . . . identifying prospective locations . . . and selecting a founding principal . . . the group's next step is to present to the public a comprehensive description of the prospective charter school.

That description will include the school's underlying educational and social philosophy, the mix of educational approaches and services chosen to improve educational outcomes for our children, and the plan that will guide the school's establishment and ongoing growth.

That presentation will take place at a meeting of the Community Education Council (CEC) of District 31, to be held on Monday, August 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Petrides Educational Complex, 715 Ocean Terrace. (For more information, please call the CEC office at 718-420-5746.)

#         #         #

REAL ESTATE, LOCAL BUSINESS, AND THE RECESSION

(Photo by Leonid Tarassishin)

WHAT MY APPRAISER SAID

When my wife Ellen and I had our house appraised recently, I complained to the appraiser that the current appraisal figure was $20,000 lower than the one done three years earlier (before we made some very visible major improvements).

Once I had a chance to think about it, the appraiser's response seemed right. He told me this 'minor downward adjustment,' as he called it, was actually good news.

Such a small [!] decline in the valuation, he explained, showed that our property had held its value during a time of catastrophic losses in so-called better neighborhoods on Staten Island and elsewhere.

He added that, in general, houses in our area were holding their value (a) because of their close-to-Manhattan location; and (b) because, even at the height of the real estate bubble, their selling prices usually were lower than elsewhere on the island and closer to their underlying value.

RESURGENT STILL

The meaning of our appraisal runs exactly counter to the findings of a poorly researched May 15 New York Times story about a slowdown in St. George's resurgence by City Room reporter Christine Haughney.

Haughney noticed (or was told about) Brooklyn developer Leib Puretz's unsold condos. She interviewed Karl Reina, the Karl's Klipper restaurant's owner, and heard about its dwindling income. On the basis of those two examples, Haughney concluded that St. George's resurgence has, as she put it, stalled.

Nonsense. Leib Puretz's condos are unsold because they're overpriced. They were overpriced and unsold during the housing bubble; they're overpriced and unsold now. Karl's Klipper's income is falling because those who can afford to eat out in this economy prefer the more interesting experiences offered by local restaurants like Enoteca Maria, Beso, Bayou and Adobe Blues.

Ms. Haughney wasn't told about my new neighbors across the street--the ones who waited until the price of their new house fell to a level they could afford, then made their bid. She probably didn't hear about the new couple down the block, either. Both teachers, they bought a bank foreclosure after the former Section 8 tenants vandalized the property and the absentee owner jumped ship.

Last weekend, they were out there, planting a sidewalk perennial garden. What's more resurgent than that?

#         #         #

HOW A PLACE BECOMES YOUR HOME • WIT's FIRST CLASSIFIED

____________________________________________________________________

FROM THE ARCHIVES

I wrote the following in early 2008, at long last acknowledging that I have become a Staten Islander; that I got used to it, then got to like it. Not just the amazing house I'm fortunate to live in. Not just the New York City historic district that surrounds it. Not even the neighbors who have become friends. I mean that Staten Island has become home.

* * *

CAREFUL--YOU MIGHT LIKE IT

NOT HOT: Postcard view (dated 1910) looking south on Westervelt Avenue from Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island. Because this hasn't been a hot neighborhood for slightly more than a century, every building shown in this image is still intact and in a moderately good state of preservation. A portion of our house is shown in the upper left section of the image (notice the double-windowed gable and the spire to its right).

LIVING WHERE THEY WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD

Despite the sneering disdain of metro journalists who pay two grand a month for a closet in a renovated tenement on Avenue C and Houston Street, it's possible to live where they wouldn't be caught dead and actually like it. On Staten Island, I mean. Specifically, in one of the older neighborhoods on the north shore, near the ferry.

After a while, the plucked-from-the-Midwest streetscapes of Staten Island's north shore stop looking quite as foreign as they did. It starts to seem normal to be able to see the sky without craning your neck. Or to be the only person walking down the street, utterly alone with your thoughts, and not feeling in the least unsafe. You even get used to the quiet.

WHAT YOU GAIN AND WHAT YOU LOSE

Don't get me wrong now. Staten Island is hardly Valhalla. We live in a place everybody's heard of but very few actually know--a place routinely overlooked, underserved and dismissed. But there are times when going unnoticed, unacknowledged and underrepresented pays off.

Leaving Manhattan for places like New Brighton, St. George, Tompkinsville and Stapleton gets you twice the space for half the price, give or take a hundred or two. And maybe a view, a garden or a fireplace as well. There's always a seat on the FREE Staten Island Ferry. Always a chair at the barber's. Always a table at a decent restaurant; no reservations required. At public parks, even on the weekend, it can often seem like everybody's left town. Though the north shore's hilly streets are challenging for cyclists, they're one of the best non-park environments I've found so far as a walker.

My neighbor Martha, who moved to St. George from Battery Park City with her husband and two children, is hyper-alert for signs of gentrification hereabouts. She winces whenever she sees positive media coverage of our area, which she's certain can mean only one thing: She and her family, having found a pleasant place to live they can afford, will be forced out by high rents once again.

Given the national economic downturn and the shaky state of real estate everywhere, including Manhattan, I don't think Martha has a lot to worry about for the forseeable.

*         *         *

WIT's FIRST CLASSIFIED

FREE FOR THE TAKING is this 8- to 10-year-old washer owned by long-time friends, situated for easy street-level pick up in Livingston, near Snug Harbor. My friends are giving it away not because it doesn't work--IT DOES WORK!--but because (a) they wanted a front-loading machine, and (2) they wanted a more energy-efficient model. For more information, please call the owners at 718-816-8752.

#         #         #

NOT HOT: Postcard view (dated 1910) looking south on Westervelt Avenue from Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island. Because this hasn't been a hot neighborhood for slightly more than a century, every building shown in this image is still intact and in a moderately good state of preservation. A portion of our house is shown in the upper left section of the image (notice the double-windowed gable and the spire to its right).

LIVING WHERE THEY WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD

Despite the sneering disdain of metro journalists who pay two grand a month for a closet in a renovated tenement on Avenue C and Houston Street, it's possible to live where they wouldn't be caught dead and actually like it. On Staten Island, I mean. Specifically, in one of the older neighborhoods on the north shore, near the ferry.

After a while, the plucked-from-the-Midwest streetscapes of Staten Island's north shore stop looking quite as foreign as they did. It starts to seem normal to be able to see the sky without craning your neck. Or to be the only person walking down the street, utterly alone with your thoughts, and not feeling in the least unsafe. You even get used to the quiet.

WHAT YOU GAIN AND WHAT YOU LOSE

Don't get me wrong now. Staten Island is hardly Valhalla. We live in a place everybody's heard of but very few actually know--a place routinely overlooked, underserved and dismissed. But there are times when going unnoticed, unacknowledged and underrepresented pays off.

Leaving Manhattan for places like New Brighton, St. George, Tompkinsville and Stapleton gets you twice the space for half the price, give or take a hundred or two. And maybe a view, a garden or a fireplace as well. There's always a seat on the FREE Staten Island Ferry. Always a chair at the barber's. Always a table at a decent restaurant; no reservations required. At public parks, even on the weekend, it can often seem like everybody's left town. Though the north shore's hilly streets are challenging for cyclists, they're one of the best non-park environments I've found so far as a walker.

My neighbor Martha, who moved to St. George from Battery Park City with her husband and two children, is hyper-alert for signs of gentrification hereabouts. She winces whenever she sees positive media coverage of our area, which she's certain can mean only one thing: She and her family, having found a pleasant place to live they can afford, will be forced out by high rents once again.

Given the national economic downturn and the shaky state of real estate everywhere, including Manhattan, I don't think Martha has a lot to worry about for the forseeable.

*         *         *

WIT's FIRST CLASSIFIED

FREE FOR THE TAKING is this 8- to 10-year-old washer owned by long-time friends, situated for easy street-level pick up in Livingston, near Snug Harbor. My friends are giving it away not because it doesn't work--IT DOES WORK!--but because (a) they wanted a front-loading machine, and (2) they wanted a more energy-efficient model. For more information, please call the owners at 718-816-8752.

#         #         #

WEEKEND ONLINE GALLERY: RAGNAR NAESS

____________________________________________________________________

DECORATIVE . . . FUNCTIONAL . . . SCULPTURAL

The following Online Gallery selection shows not only the range of Clinton Hill, Brooklyn clay artist Ragnar Naess's work. It also makes evident his determination to be fully present in each piece he executes, whether it's purely decorative, straightforwardly functional, or unabashedly personal and whimsical. [Website, ragnarclay.com; e-mail, ragnae@earthlink.net.]

Magnolia

 

Four-legged bowl

Infatuation

 

 

Infatuation (two details)

#         #         #

RANT-O-RAMA 4

 Don't get me started

THE MOST NEGLECTED
GREENSPACE
IN ST. GEORGE

To call the North Shore Esplanade a greenspace is to dishonor that term.

At its northwestern end, between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place, the North Shore Esplanade is little more than a long sitting area punctuated by london plane trees where hardly anyone ever sits.

Why would anyone bother--except those who have nowhere else to sleep?

The elegantly named esplanade's magnificent harbor views are obscured by stands of volunteer maple, polonia, and ailanthus, which are themselves being choked by the unchecked growth of porcelain-berry vines.

Though the strip is swept and its garbage cans emptied regularly, it is a derelict, deteriorating piece of waterfront real estate whose configuration assures that it will remain what it has been since my wife and I moved here in 1977: an otherwise unused route to and from the ferry--or to and from a parking space. And it's not hard to understand why.

NEAR ST. PETERS PLACE

There's nothing to do, nothing to see, and seemingly no official interest in moving beyond the dreary status quo. Why bother shoring up collapsed seating no one will ever sit on anyway, right? Just block it off with sawhorses and yellow tape for an 'indefinite' period.

 

NEAR NICHOLAS STREET

I do not exaggerate when I tell you that this section of collapsed sidewalk has been in this condition for a decade at least. The sidewalk widens at Nicholas Street, so pedestrians and joggers just go around it. And since the esplanade lacks a vocal constituency, the city's Parks and Recreation Department has little reason to devote funds to fix it.

(Photo above by Rachel Icolari)

BETWEEN NICHOLAS STREET
AND STUYVESANT PLACE

The deteriorated state of the esplanade's beautiful iron railings is another example of Parks and Recreation's minimal investment in upkeep. The department obviously is more concerned with avoiding lawsuits (those hideous highway buffers shown below) than with maintaining the original ironwork. Like Snug Harbor's, these iron railings can last indefinitely, given the proper maintenance (and replacement, where appropriate, with ironwork of the same design and density).

 

(Photo above and photo above, right, by Rachel Icolari)

DON'T 'REFURBISH' IT--
RECONFIGURE IT FOR ACTIVE USE

On the esplanade, at about the halfway point between Nicholas Street and St. Peters Place, stands a concrete flagpole dedicated to local soldiers whose lives were lost in World War II, which is probably when the esplanade was designed and installed.

In terms of park design and use, it was the era of 'Keep Off the Grass' signs and genteel after-dinner strolls. That era is not coming back. So it's not just a matter of painting the benches once again and installing better lighting.

The model made for after-dinner strolling was retired long ago--as evidenced in the 1970s design of the nearby Lia Park, which includes sitting areas but also has sprinklers, swings, and provisions for active play. As anyone who lives near it can tell you, Lia Park a pretty popular place.

FRIENDS OF THE NORTH SHORE ESPLANADE?

I don't presume to know what mix of seating, play, performance, athletic facilities and other types of offerings might draw users to what amounts to an abandoned park. But especially now, with Cromwell Center shut down yet again, the community's lack of recreational space has become more severe. And it will only continue, as our area draws more young families to its affordable apartments, houses, condos and co-ops, if we don't demand additional park and recreational resources to accommodate them.

We need to begin the process of reclaiming this bit of St. George parkland now. Friends of the North Shore Esplanade, anyone?

#         #         #

A FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER TAKES TO THE STREETS

Photo by Jenny Waterson

CPG CO-FOUNDER GEORGE ROOS, A FORMER ST. GEORGIAN,
SELF-PUBLISHES TWO NEW PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS

I lived around a couple of St. George corners from George Roos for more than 20 years and knew him as a neighborhood guy around my age with a pleasant manner and a ready smile. We'd acknowledge each other in a friendly way when our paths happened to cross, but nothing more.

What I didn't know then was that George Roos is an accomplished professional photographer-- accomplished enough to have worked as a photographer of fine art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Knoedler Gallery.

By the time I arrived in St. George, George Roos had already established himself as an independent, serving important artists, galleries, dealers and collectors in Manhattan while adding architectural photography and portraiture to the specialties he could offer them.

But for Roos, photography was always more than just a way to make a living. "I have constantly photographed for my own personal pleasure and fulfillment," he says.  Though he moved to New Jersey a few years ago, the co-founder of Staten Island's Creative Photographers Guild (the CPG Gallery, which opened earlier this year, is housed in Roos's former studio), he remains an active part of the local scene, working to raise standards and increase opportunities for local practitioners.

WHAT HE SAW

In Street Seen: New York in the 1960's & 70's, George Roos introduces the photos that follow with this comment:  "Anything said of New York City can be true . . . whatever you want or need it to be, or whatever you are afraid it might be."

The NYC native then proceeds to evoke his mostly-lifelong home, but not, for the most part, with familiar symbols, streetscapes or architecture. Instead, he tells us simply, "This is what I saw," then shows us the New York of two post-mid-century decades by observing New Yorkers being New Yorkers.

Included are beauty shots of Washington Square Park, the forbidding yet utterly beautiful Women's House of Detention, long gone from Greenwich Avenue near Sixth; and the oversize Westclox 'Big Ben' replica that used to dominate the south wall of the grimy, unrestored Grand Central Station concourse.

But then Roos moves on to the people, to the kind of working-class street life that could still be found in a few Manhattan neighborhoods like Little Italy, Chinatown, the Lower East Side and Hell's Kitchen 30 and more years ago.  Though his subjects may be unlovely, or be shown doing unlovely things, Roos's lens is always respectful, never demeaning.

Street Seen also includes several sections devoted to New Yorkers participating in large public events, such as the Feast of St. Anthony of Padua (1969); the First Earth Day (1970); Chinese New Year, with not-yet-banned fireworks (pre-1997); an anti-Vietnam War march in 1968; and the funeral of then-Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the same year. These straightforward, unflashy, un-ironic  images don't need a lot of text to get their truth across.

HOW TO SEE

In his introduction to Exerceyese: Training Your Eyes to See Pictures Everywhere, Roos is quick to point out that the book "is not an instruction manual and presumes that readers are proficient in the use of their equipment."

What Roos is concerned with in this book is helping photographers see more fully and deeply--by being aware of the potentially startling images that, in Roos's view, are all around us, wherever we are, all the time.

As a group, the images Roos uses to make his case in Exerceyese are more abstract than those presented in Street Seen, less often concrete and reportorial. They're also mostly in color, whereas the photos in the earlier book were shot entirely in black and white.

There's another key difference Roos is quick to acknowledge. Digital photography, he writes, "has opened up a whole new world for photographers, allow[ing us] to shoot up a storm, knowing that anything that doesn't work can simply be deleted without [our] having to, literally, pay for our mistakes. Take lots of pictures," he advises,"shooting anything that catches your fancy." The images reproduced in Exerceyese show that Roos has followed his own advice about shooting digitally--often to startlingly beautiful effect.

*         *         *

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Street Seen, by George Roos. Copyright 2008. 80pp. Softcover, $24.95; hardcover with dust jacket, $35.95; hardcover with Imagewrap, $38.95. Order from Blurb.com. 

Exerceyese, by George Roos. Copyright 2009. 76 pp. Softcover, $30.95; hardcover with dust jacket, $41.95; hardcover with Imagewrap, $43.95. Order from Blurb.com.

#         #         #

AN ISLANDER WITH "ST. GEORGE ROOTS OF SORTS" COMES HOME

_______________________________________________________

Meet the Neighbors

(Photo by Willie Chu)

SOUGHT AND FOUND:
A BEAUTIFUL OLD APARTMENT
NEAR THE FERRY

Professor, working poet and performance artist MARGUERITE MARIA RIVAS did her growing up in pre-Bridge Huguenot, in what Rivas calls The Lily Cup House, at a time when large tracts of land nearby were still densely wooded.

But before that, before becoming homeowners, Rivas's parents settled as newlyweds in an apartment in St. George Gardens (now Seaview Estates), a recently rehabilitated 1929 courtyard development that straddles the hill between St. Marks Place and Hamilton Avenue near Curtis High School--giving Rivas what she describes as "St. George roots of sorts."

Often referred to as Staten Island's Unofficial Poet Laureate, Marguerite Maria Rivas is an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She holds a Doctor of Arts and Letters from Drew University and a Masters in English from CUNY. Her work has appeared in The Americas Review, The Multicultural Review and Earth's Daughters, among others; and her chapbook, Poetry Cannot Save You, was published in 2003 and reprinted in 2005.

(continued below)

Sea Meets Land Dreams of Sky, ceramic art by Judith Eloise Hooper

A PLACE TO MAKE A FRESH START

A while ago, finding herself with two grown daughters on their own and a large apartment in a neighborhood she didn't much care for, Rivas determined it was time to make a very different sort of move from those she'd made earlier as a wife and mother and then as a single parent. "It seemed like a natural choice," Rivas told me recently, "for a single woman who loves the Island, and enjoys working and playing in the city as well, to move to St. George.

"I wanted to live in a beautiful old house again," she explained, "and St. George and Silver Lake were the two neighborhoods I most wanted to live in." So Rivas advertised herself as a prospective tenant on Craigslist and on the St. George Civic Association e-group and before long got a call from a St. George homeowner with a one-bedroom apartment for rent. "The minute I stepped in the door and saw those high ceilings, the many large windows and the garden views," she recalled, "I was hooked."

The apartment had another key selling point. Its two-rooms-and-kitchen layout, though quite large, simply would not accommodate the three truckloads of accumulated possessions, including many books, that Rivas had to divest herself of before she could move in. "That was what I needed, though," she admits, "as I was still mourning the loss of my second marriage and needed to move on.

"St. George was the place that I wanted to do that in, and as soon as I saw the apartment, I knew that I was truly coming home again and that I could make a fresh start here, as my parents had made their start some 60 years before."

#         #         #