}
Michael Rakowitz unsealed the 10 boxes of palm dates from Iraq and stared.
He had waited five long months for this moment, after battling bureaucracy in what began as a politically charged art project and ended as a labor of love. So would he taste one of these dates, a sweet memory of his childhood as an Iraqi Jew in New York and a bitter symbol of his family’s war-torn homeland?
No, he said, as he fought tears, “They’re not for me.”
Assemblyman Joseph Lentol (D-Brooklyn) really knows how to bring home the bacon.
Lentol, the influential chairman of the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Codes and leader of the chamber’s Brooklyn delegation, secured a total $11.2 million in controversial funding allotments known among lawmakers as “member items,” according to data released by the Assembly.
Not even Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) can top that. Silver — one of state’s most powerful politicians and the man responsible for doling out the funds to Assembly members — roped in $8.7 million.
They are the ghosts of East Harlem: Amid the construction of luxury condominiums and renovation of tenements are makeshift memorials to two murder victims slain on the same block. Candles and fresh flowers accompany photos. Messages on paper or on walls bid farewell. Alejandro Almonte became the latest victim Dec. 1 when a junkie slashed his throat after the hard-working porter refused to give him money, authorities said.
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It looks like the first water to fill McCarren Park Pool in decades will be of the frozen variety: The City Council has ponied up $300,000 to help turn the Greenpoint swimming hole into a part-time skating rink.
