The Phantom Apartment

The Phantom Apartment

            I never thought I would say this!  You know how hard it is to find an affordable apartment in Manhattan with all the amenities you could want, in a neighborhood that has everything a tenant could desire.  Well, I found one on the upper west side, in a building called the Haswell.

            I contacted the brokers, SLP Properties and P2B Ventures; after reading the prospectus on line.  It said that the reconstructed building (12 stories built over the original 6 stories of  existing rentals) would have 64 units for sale at an average of $2,000 per square foot.  The building is now under construction and scheduled for completion by approximately the spring of 2018.

            Amenities would include outdoor spaces like a roof garden, a beautiful new lobby, and a reading room for those of us who find it difficult to read in our own apartments.  (This way we could share what we’re reading with anyone who happens to be sitting there!)  We all know that the Upper West Side is a great place to live-subways and parks nearby, a McDonalds just one block away, homeless shelters right around the corner, and two large buildings (one directly across the street and one adjacent to the site) that have been going through reconstruction for over three years. 

            Then there’s the noise.  It’s true that West End Avenue is restricted to commercial transportation like trucks, buses and construction vehicles, but the developer plans to store the trucks necessary for the reconstruction of 707 West End Avenue in the garage that now exists on the ground floor of the premises (94^th to 95^th Streets.)  However in order to do this they have to lower the floor and raise the roof of the garage.  You can believe that the people who now live on the second floor of the building are not happy about this!  Also, I spoke to someone who now lives on the seventh floor of the building who’s worrying about the platforms they will have to construct on the present roof of the building so that they can add the ten story condo with the 64 units.  (Yes, it’s 10 more floors, not 12.)

            The developers say not to worry!  The old tenants will have many improvements added to their existing apartments when the construction begins: central air conditioning, new windows, a new lobby and a new elevator on the north side of the building that will proceed directly from the lobby to the entrance to the new condos. The only problem is that the old tenants will not be able to use that elevator, and anyone living next to it on every floor from 2 to 7 has already been moved or evicted to make room for the elevator.

            Oh, as I mentioned before, the new building even has a new address: 707 West End Avenue, instead of 711 West End Avenue.  But don’t try to find it on the canopy of the existing building!  It’s not there yet.  It will exist in the future.  The same future that predicted we would have flying cars by the 21^st century, a comfortable home for every citizen of the U.S,  no people dying in civil wars around the globe, temperate climate for all the citizens, and enough food for everyone in the world.  And enough schools so every child could be educated, and intelligent and compassionate leaders to guide us through this wonderful utopia that would exist by 2050. 

            So I think I’ll wait before I apply for an imaginary apartment at 707 West End Avenue. In the meantime, I suggest we should camp out in front of the site and close our eyes.  When we fall asleep we might dream about the phantom apartment.

                                                                                                Gerri Gewirtz  (8/26/16)

A Family Tradition

                                                

Twenty-six years ago my son Jaime was six years old.  He was very small and thin and had just started the first grade in a public school on the upper west side of Manhattan.  We decided to enroll him after school in karate classes at the Westside YMCA where his older sister, Jennifer had been taking gymnastics.

            Jaime was shy and reluctant to join the other students, but the instructor, who was a respected senior black belt in a style of Japanese karate called Seido was an inspired teacher.  He had a Japanese assistant, a young woman who was especially attentive to beginning students like Jaime.  She used to stand by his side and physically move him around the room to help him participate in kata and endurance training.  She helped him learn the Japanese terms like osu and the numbers from one to ten. Jaime learned fast and I soon found out from one of the parents whose son was also involved in Seido programs that there was a wonderful teacher in our neighborhood who was even better with young students like Jaime.  His name was William Oliver and everyone in the Seido community extolled his teaching style and prowess as a karateka.

            At the same time that all this was happening, Jennifer suffered a debilitating accident (tearing a tendon in her knee) during her gymnastics training.  She was told by an orthopedist that she could no longer compete in gymnastics and reluctantly accepted the role of student manager of her high school gymnastics team.  But she missed the social and physical activity that she was used to in her gymnastic training.  It finally dawned on me.  “Why don’t you try Jaime’s karate class?”

            We asked the orthopedist if this was possible given her knee problems.  “It’s okay, so long as she’s careful.  It will probably help develop the muscles in her knee.”

            That was the beginning of a long career that would define Jennifer’s life after her thirteenth year.  As of today, she has spent twenty-five years in karate training and teaching, and this week celebrated (with her husband, Matt) achieving her fifth degree black belt as a karateka.

            Jennifer met Matt in Oliver’s class where they were both training as teenagers.  They both progressed quickly, but it wasn’t always an easy task.  Oliver was a demanding teacher, strict and sometimes overbearing.  When Jennifer was ready to train for her first black belt just before she reached the age of 18, she was an expert karate student.  But she was having problems with discipline at home.  Often rebellious and stubborn, she came into conflict at home with my husband and myself.

            Shihan Oliver was aware of this because by then both my husband and I were both his students at the dojo.  He told Jennifer that we would have to sign off on her application to go for black belt.  We had a long talk with Jennifer about expectations for her in our home relationship.   She agreed to modify her behavior.  We signed the application and at 18 she received her first black belt in Seido karate.

            Matt and Jennifer, originally only friends and karate partners, became a couple who not only trained together but were now living together as romantic partners.  They were also Susheki-Shihan Oliver’s senior black belts.  One Saturday morning as they arrived at the dojo to train with Oliver, they were shocked to discover that he had suffered a heart attack. At fifty-two years old, the great champion, and their beloved teacher, was dead.

            At first, the Seido community of black belts was too grief-stricken to continue with his classes.  But finally, they met in a group and urged Matt and Jennifer to continue with his legacy and teach his students.

            Jennifer and Matt married in 2007 and had a child named Maya.  She spent her infancy in the dojo and when she was three years old began training in Jennifer’s pre-karate program.  She is now six years old and a green belt. This year she was proud to take part in the celebration that presented her parents with their fifth degree black belts.

            Congratulations, Kyoshis Jennifer and Matt!

What Price Measurement

            Recently I had an interview with an organization called Strategic Measurement and Evaluation, a company that has been hired by the New York DOE to score and evaluate the upcoming Core Standard math and reading tests that will be administered in the New York City public schools in April.  These tests will be given grades 3 through 8 for the second time this year.  Last year there was so much controversy about the multiple choice questions on the reading tests that parents threatened to sue Pearson (the publishing company that created the tests.)  Pearson accepted a settlement out of court and agreed to revise the tests for this year.

            From what I saw of the math multiple choice questions at the training I attended and some of the values questions on the reading part of the test, they will have problems this year too.  Not only that, but they were asking for certified teachers to work from four to eight hours, either during the day or in the evening to score the tests and were offering to pay $20-$25 per hour for that deadly assignment.  As soon as I saw the samples of the questions and the working conditions (in a room at a hotel near La Guardia Airport) I vowed not to have anything to do with the program.

            I have filled part time and temporary positions since I retired as a New York City English teacher twelve ago and I never got paid less than $30 an hour.  Most tutoring and mentoring jobs paid $45-$65 per hour.  Adjuncts make at least $75 an hour teaching for SUNY or CUNY.  Any professional job, such as the one described above, that pays less than that will only attract people who are desperate to earn extra money or who probably have a full or part time teaching job.  That means they will come to this extra job already tired and stressed out.  They are bound to make mistakes when they are beyond two hours of this monotonous assignment.

            Does SME have any connection to Pearson?  Their main offices are in Illinois.  Pearson is a world-wide organization with branches in several states.  Why is SME paying so little for such a difficult assignment?  How much is SME getting paid from the city for this assignment?

            Considering the fact that schools and teachers are now being evaluated based on students’ achievement on these core standards rubrics, I think it’s disgraceful that the tests will be graded by a company that hires teachers to work under these conditions.  Parents and other New York City teachers and administrators should be made aware of this situation.

A Plan that Worked

In the 1990’s, when I was teaching at Walton High School in the Bronx, during the height of the HIV epidemic; the Board of Education decided to institute a program that involved providing condoms at selected schools.  Maybe Walton was chosen  because it used to be an all-girls school and they did get pregnant.  I do know that to commemorate the event, Magic Johnson, who had just announced that he was HIV positive, decided to host an assembly at Walton.  The administration, students and the media were all there to publicize the event.  Some parents, in Staten Island and Queens objected strongly to the program but it went ahead anyway.

            Volunteer teachers (myself amongst them) were trained by the Board to teach about HIV and how to use condoms to prevent exposure to the disease.  We taught the lessons once a week during the third period in selected classrooms to either our own students or with another teacher present in his or her subject class. (We were warned not to mention the term pregnancy during the lessons.)  I mention this because I just read that the city has decided to reenter the fray by initiating a poster campaign at MTA bus and subway locales to educate students about the dangers and consequences of teenage pregnancy.

            Some viewers have stated that they find the ads demeaning and immoral and others have said it’s a very good idea.  I have no opinions one way or the other on the subject because I haven’t seen the ads yet or spoken to teenagers about them.  I just have one question?  Why now?  Statistics here and in the rest of the country don’t show an increase in teenage pregnancy but nearly 9 out of 10 teenage pregnancies in the city are unplanned.  The city spent over $400,000 to implement the program which includes a survey, a website, and video games to teach the dangers of an unplanned pregnancy.

            Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, denounced the campaign, saying it ignored the racial, economic and social factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy and stigmatized teenage parents and their children.  Planned Parenthood originally helped to sponsor the condom distribution plan described above and, of course THEY were stigmatized at the time for even suggesting such a program.

            In today’s political climate, where the Arkansas legislature has passed a law to outlaw abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy, I’m not surprised that New York City has hired a public relations company to stigmatize teenagers.  Better trivialize the issue with emotional posters and video games than do what we actually did almost thirty years ago to prevent pregnancy in the first place.  And it worked!

Who Speaks for Us?

                                                                            

                There has been much comment and controversy concerning the role of feminism in the women’s movement.  Everything from the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary  of the publication of The Feminine Mystique to a documentary on public television tracing the modern history of the women’s movement.  Today Maureen Down in the New York Times focused on the books and comments by two powerful women executives (from Facebook and Yahoo) who have recently instituted policies that seem to contradict the original tenets of the movement about whether a woman’s place is actually in the home or at her job site.

                All this reminds me of the contradictions about policies circulated by the original founders of the women’s movement concerning lesbians, housewives, professionals, women of color and other factions that abounded during the original demonstrations and publications.  One thing was certain: the reason that feminism floundered as it progressed through the 20^th and 21^st centuries was the very reason it is weakened today.  It is focused on middle and upper class women who have never really benefitted from the gains made down through the years and it was mostly an American phenomenon.

                To support this contention, I could cite many examples.  Two of them were outlined by articles in the Times today.  One dealt with sexual crimes committed against women in the military that went unreported for years because women were afraid to speak out against their male trainers who were above their rank and intimidated them.  It was also the military protocol (controlled by male officers) that made it difficult to prosecute these sex offenders.  It is only at the present time, when thousands of enlisted women have had the courage to come forward to report these crimes, that the military establishment has decided to do something to change this environment.

                The same could be said about availability of child care that was described in an article about Japanese mothers today who have full time jobs but sometimes have to wait years to get their children placed in nurseries that are terribly crowded or not available to them at the present time.  This is also true for millions of women around the world, and even in big cities in the US, where subsidized day in unavailable or too expensive for lower and middle class mothers.

                It’s true that women like the CEO’s of Facebook and Yahoo have all their childcare needs provided for them so they can maintain full professional responsibilities and spend time with their children whenever they want.  But what about single mothers throughout the country who have to find alternate facilities so they can continue to work and provide for their children’s needs?  How has the women’s movement helped improve the situation for them down through the years?

                Until the women’s movement recognizes that a women’s place is anywhere where their rights as parents and workers are truly protected by social movements or the government and works to protect these rights, it will not represent the true mission of feminism in this generation.