When 13-year-old Steven (King) Ayala strides confidently down the hall at South Bronx Preparatory, students follow.

When he enters Rosaleen Knoepfel’s sixth-grade classroom, people notice.

When he freestyles in her after-school program, his rhymes ring.

“Think twice,” he raps. “Wrong or right, think twice, day and night, think twice, death or life.”

King is one of more than 40 students in the after-school Urban Art Beat program at the middle school at 145th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven.

Read More

Photographer Anke Michaelson found artistic solace in church.

Churches in and around Staten Island’s North Shore are the subjects of Michaelson’s new photography series, Midnight Churches. The pictures, shot at night, feature churches whose lights are off, save for a few prayer candles in some.

Michaelson, 27, said she photographed the dark church interiors by placing two cameras in each house of worship and allowing the film to expose between one and three hours – creating a scene that can’t be seen by the naked eye.

“It’s just an extraordinary view of something everyone knows,” said Michaelson, whose pictures are on display in her husband’s restaurant, Marie’s Gourmet. “You get this effect like sculptures are illuminated and the colors are different.”

Michaelson said she chose churches because of the stained-glass windows. Sometimes she would have to visit a church four or five times to get the effect she sought. “It was definitely a learning experience,” she said.

The project was funded by a grant from the Council on the Arts & Humanities of Staten Island (COAHSI), said Michaelson, who has lived on Staten Island since emigrating from Germany as an au pair.

Her husband of seven years, Brian Michaelson, said he is glad to have the photos in Marie’s Gourmet, noting the works give the Italian café a feeling of warmth.

“I love them. I think they’re amazing,” he said. “When I was hiring, people came in and would call the booths pews. The pictures communicated that to them subliminally.”

The pictures, which will be on display through at least February 2008, are being sold for $500 to $700 each. Marie’s Gourmet is located at 977 Victory Blvd.

At first it sounds like a typical tale of gentrification: Spanish Harlem residents battle to save a community garden from being bulldozed to make way for apartments.

But the gardeners are fighting neighbors they’ve known for decades, not outside developers. The 116th Street Block Association, a nonprofit founded by locals in 1976, plans to build 55 apartments on the garden site for families making $40,000 or less.

Read More

Kindergarteners at Public School 58 tell their teacher “bonjour” when they arrive and “au revoir” at dismissal – and they speak a lot more French in between.

The Carroll Gardens school is one of the three city public schools that now offer French-English dual language instruction, to the delight of parents and the French Embassy, which had pushed for the program.

The city offers dual-language programs at about 65 schools, though most are taught in Spanish or Chinese. In September, 2007, students P.S. 58 and schools on the upper West Side and in the Bronx became the first to get the opportunity to be taught in French, which is spoken by an estimated 200 million people worldwide.

Chika Osaka visited the 4- and 5-year-old emerging French speakers of P.S. 58.

Dozens of women scheduled to give birth at Victory Memorial Hospital this holiday season had to find alternate sources of care weeks, even days, before giving birth.

Without a staff, the Bay Ridge hospital prematurely shut down its labor and delivery unit Dec. 21 — 10 days earlier than the original Dec. 31 date that was listed on employees’ termination letters.

Residents of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst are already worried about Victory’s projected Feb. 1 closing date.

Read More

The middle-age man with a weather-beaten face crouches over a red book in a corner off the sidewalk and scribbles on a notepad, while a young woman sitting across from him wears a worried expression.

After an agonizing few minutes for the fidgeting woman, the man looks up from under his worn straw hat and speaks to her in soft, reassuring tones. She nods and reaches into her purse to pull out a $20 bill. The man accepts the money and bids her farewell.

Master Li has just seen his first patient of the day.

Read More

Diabetic retinopathy is a progressive eye disease that affects longtime diabetics. Symptoms can range from blurred vision to sudden blindness.

There is no cure, but the disease can be controlled through regulation of sugar intake and laser surgery.

The cupboard is growing bare at food pantries throughout the city, and while one Queens facility is doing its best to keep up with the increased demand - it has not been easy.

“Sometimes the food [for the month] is literally gone in two weeks,” said Jacqueline Eradiri, the Executive Director of the Ridgewood Older Adult Center. “I don’t like having to turn people away.”
Read More

Maria Torres recalled the day 10 years ago, when she and a few others she called “on-water thrill-seekers” paddled in kayaks from Hunts Point to a little, tree-filled island in the East River.

Then Torres, the president of The Point Community Development Corporation, dipped a quill pen in ink and added her signature to a document that made the island she rediscovered that day a city park.

More »

The Reverend Jesse Jackson led a march to a Laurelton house surrounded by weeds after calling for a new civil rights movement to fight rising foreclosures and high-cost lending that have plagued minorities disproportionately - and southeast Queens, in particular.

“This is the economic crisis of our time,” Jackson said at St. Luke’s Cathedral on 232nd Street.

Read More