Penelope Morales (on left) with friend

When someone is in need, Brooklyn comes to the rescue. At least that’s what Penelope Morales is hoping will, ultimately, happen. Morales, 27, grew up in the Farragut Houses and went to Public School 307.

Finding the Co-Pay

Battling leukemia,  she is now trying to pull together the co-payment that she needs for a life-saving bone marrow transplant.  Morales left Brooklyn in 2009 to live in Orlando, Florida for its milder climate.  She is supposed to have the operation in April, but she is having trouble finding the $6000 that she needs to pay UnitedHealthCare for the transplant. 

Commendably, she refused to go on Medicaid while living in New York, saying

“When I was in New York, the doctor told me to go on Medicaid. I was like ‘no.’ I work forty hours a week. I won’t let this stop me.”

Raising Money Together

Now, people from near and far are trying to help Morales to have a fighting chance.  Her relatives have started a nationwide call for assistance. As her mom, Marie Morales, frankly explains, “Without the operation, she is going to die.”

And this is where Public School 307 is stepping in. The cheerleading coach, Tracy Dickerson, who trained Penelope Morales, is having her current team pitch in.  As she said, “I haven’t been able to sleep. I keep thinking what I can do.”

They are joining the team to raise money for Morales. And they sure hope that it will be enough.

Ellarslie Mansion Museum

After spending about one year in the Trenton City Museum, a rare ceramic vase is being carefully packaged for its return back to Brooklyn.

The vase was originally made in 1904 as part of a set of four, for the St. Louis World’s Fair, by the Trenton Potteries Company, and was on loan to Trenton form the Brooklyn Museum. But last month the museum asked for the return of the vase after Trenton fired the full-time director of the Ellarslie Museum.

“The return of the vase was requested because of concerns over its safety and security,” Brooklyn Museum spokeswoman Sally Williams said.

Brian Hill was fired in September after serving as the full-time museum director for ten years, along with 150 other employees of the city as part of an overall citywide reduction in workforce. In Hill’s stead an intern has been installed.

Hill’s layoff was a violation by the city of an agreement they had with the independent Trenton Museum Society, the owner of the collection which is kept in the city-owned Ellarslie Mansion in Cadwalader Park. The agreement stated that the city will pay the expense of having a full-time, qualified director in exchange for permission to exhibit the various artifacts in its facility.

“This all comes from not having a director,” museum society president Robert Cunningham said of the loss of the vase. “You can’t interact with other museums fluently without a director, and I think we’re now seeing evidence of that.”

Before Hill’s leaving he was working on organizing an exhibit which would bring all four vases in the set together for the first time since 1904, to be displayed at the Trenton Museum. The plans for this showing have fallen apart without the help of a director to put together the project.

“This seals the fate of our attempts to get the four vases back together again,” Cunningham said. “It’s something that was very important to us and should be to the city. I don’t think that the Brooklyn Museum has any plans to exhibit it or not. It could just go into storage.”

The artwork, which shows a kind of ‘Google Doodle,’ shows two cameras replacing the famous letter ‘o’s to smash the internet empire’s new privacy policies and search result modifications. Google’s changes last week have sparked riots and complaints throughout the nation.

The new program will merge all previous privacy policies of its products into one, compiling every individual’s information in a single spot and sharing it with other Google services. Lawmakers, tech lovers and the Google-using nation are in a muted uproar with concerns for their online privacy.

“People are upset for two reasons. The first is that Google is just now making this new use of data explicit, and the second is that there is no way to opt out and still use any Google service,” said Dan Olds of the Gabriel Consulting Group. “It’s not that Google is collecting more information. It’s that they’re combining information from all of their various products and services and using it to laser-target ads at users. I think that some users and privacy advocates are looking at this as a slippery slope.”

When Spike Lee makes a new project, he doesn’t just make it – he breathes it. Last summer, Lee quietly filmed his latest movie set in the Red Hook Houses of Brooklyn.  Using Brooklyn’s largest housing project as his backdrop, he spent 19 days there filming the story of a boy’s adventures.

Residence Speak

And it’s always telling to see what residences of a neighborhood being portrayed in films have to say about it. While Sundance Film Festival slammed Lee for his unrealistic portrayal of the city complex, residents are singing his praises.

As tenant association President Lillian Marshall said,

“The people of Red Hook have changed. You can come here and leave your door unlocked to go the store. We are a community.”

Crime Rate Changes Dramatically

And the crime rates do tell that story.  Since 2005, the crime rate for the 3000 apartments has dropped 40%. Louisa Miranda, who rented out her living room for Lee’s production crew, said,

“Just because we live in this community doesn’t mean we are gangsters. We are hardworking people trying to raise our kids right.”

Spike Lee didn’t just jump in and jump out of the Red Hook Houses project. Residents say that he actually spent six months talking to residents about their day-to-day lives before filming there for 19 days.

A Telling History

Certainly, the Red Hook Houses have a history.  Two decades ago, Public School 15 Principal Patrick Daly was killed when he came there looking for a student who was late to class. Then, in the year 2000, the city started the Red Hook Community Justice Center which hosts a vast array of programs including GED classes. In 2005, the NYPD actually opened a stationhouse right on the property of the Red Hook Houses. And since then, residents say, they have been telling a different story.

As Red Hook Court Judge Alex Calabrese said,

“Red Hook is fabulous. It’s a neighborhood on the rise.”

And that’s just what Spike Lee tried to capture with his latest endeavor.

108 weapons were relinquished to the New York Police Department, including 61 revolvers, 29 semi-automatics, 2 shotguns, 3 rifles and several others. Some of the firearms were armed.

The program has helped remove 7,600 guns from the streets of Brooklyn since its inception in 2008, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has stated that the borough is safer. He even has the statistics to back up his claim. Explaining that 2011’s homicide rate was the lowest since 1963, Kelly said there were 195 murders in total last year. There was not a single murder in the 78^th Precinct, which includes Park Slope, and there have been no murders in 2012 so far.

Kelly acknowledged “critical support from District Attorney Charles Hynes, the Brooklyn clergy and borough residents,” without which the program would not progress, or reveal such optimistic results.

“Murders in Brooklyn fell to below 200, to 195, for the first time in nearly half a century in part because of concerted efforts to get guns off the streets in partnerships like these,” Commissioner Kelly said.

Flor de Toloache

Everyone in Brooklyn knows that we break the barriers – and our mariachi skills are no exception.  Brooklyn is enjoying a great new mariachi band, and what makes this one unique is that it’s all women.  Playing Saturday night at Williamsburg bar El Moderno, the group called Flor de Toloache, is the City’s first all-female mariachi band.

Mariachi Traditions

Typically, in Mexico, this musical genre is played by men and it has the tradition of being passed from father to son.  As the group’s founder, Mireya Ramos, explains, she is proud to be doing what would be seen in Mexico as a man’s job!

As she said,

“It feels powerful, in a way. I feel like I have a voice. I feel like I’m making a statement.”

They stick to tradition in many ways, playing old-fashioned songs such as “La Malaguena” and “Por Un Amor.” They wear traditional mariachi clothing as well, with the black “charro” outfits and even the silver trim on the sides of their pants. However, instead of wearing sombreros, these ladies have flowers adorning their hair.

Group Beginnings

The group has named itself after a Mexican plant that is used for love potions. Two band members, Ramos and Veronica Medellin, live in Jersey City while members Sonia Montez, Eva Lou Vossmerbaumer and Shae Fiol live in Bushwick and Sunset Park.

Next up for the Flor de Toloache? They are saving up money for studio time so that they can record their first album this spring.  And they are certainly breaking ground with each step that they take – and each song that they make.

Check them out and enjoy!

The new center, which measures 20,000 square feet, is shaped as a curved glass building partially embedded in the hillside at the northeast corner of the garden. A leaf-shaped “living roof”, measuring 10,000 square feet, will feature more than 40,000 plats and will hopefully earn LEED Gold status with its geoexchange system aimed at heating and cooling the indoor space, as well as rain gardens that gather and filter storm-water.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden president Scot Medbury explained: “The Visitor Center will help transform the face of the Garden to our neighbors, visitors and passersby- not only beautifying the street, but bringing the spirit of the Garden to the streetscapes beyond. This extraordinary structure is not only a building, but is every bit a landscape as well, and we’re very excited to invite our fellow Brooklynites to explore how a building can serve as a garden, and how plants can be beautifully integrated into an urban environment.”

The new Visitor Center is set to open in May, with other new additions being added to the Garden as well, including a Herb Garden, a Woodland Garden and Native Flora Garden. New Water Gardens, Children’s Discovery Gardens and others are also under way.

Linette Beckles and Tracy Agarrat own the takeout burger joint that offers six-seats for enjoying their shark delicacies.  The restaurant has three chefs who take the shark meat, season it for 12 hours and then fry it up and top it with chadon beni, tamarind sauce, cole slaw, lettuce and tomatoes.

Shark Burger Brainstorm

Beckles got the idea for the shark delight after visiting a street stand in the Port of Spain. She returned home and told her sister to forgo on their plans for a clothing store.

“Let’s sell burgers and fast food made the Trini way,” she said to her sister, instead.

They figured they had a creative idea when they scoured their area for anyone doing Trini burgers – and came up empty.  Chef Humberto Dominguez has been with them since day one, making important tweaks to their recipes.

Large Customer Base

The London-born sisters who also lived in Port of Spain for many years are bringing Trinidad to New York.  Customers drive from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene, and even as far as Connecticut, to get the Trini burgers they miss from home. As Agarrat explained, “They’re missing Trinidad.”

Picture by Nicholas Fevelo for New York Daily News

Creativity in the neighborhood is indeed on the rise, and tens of dozens of people have been pushing a city planning board to reject the arrival of the store, which bid on a 58,000 square-foot shop on Third Avenue and Third Street.

Whole Foods had planned on setting camp within a month, after confirming with the Board of Standards and Appeals, before Gowanus locals began bombarding the board with complaints.

Cassandra Weston of the Old American Can Factory opposes the idea. “New York City has enough high-end retail,” she said. “This unique industrial neighborhood needs to be protected.”

“Part of what makes Gowanus special is its economic diversity,” agreed Adam Kendall. “Small businesses and artists depend on it.”

In the meantime, researchers in the area have found that manufacturing spaces attract three times more jobs than retail ones. “These manufacturing jobs help families stay above the poverty line,” said Anita Durst.

Still, Whole Foods insists that it cares for its employees, boasting a ranking among Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for the past fourteen years. Spokesman Michael Sinatra said the store plans to create 300 to 350 jobs, and also employs artists for various tasks.

“The art community is near and dear to us,” he said. “We employ in-house artists to do signage for our chalkboards. We often use café spaces to showcase art,” he added.

Looks like Brooklyn will be able to preserve its skyscrapers after all.  While the plan still needs to be approved by the full City Council, the landmarks subcommittee just voted 4-0 to approve of the preservation plan.

Preserving Traditions

As Councilman Steve Levin (D-downtown Brooklyn) explained the rationale behind the preservation.   “There’s been a lot of development in downtown Brooklyn, to the extent that downtown Brooklyn’s skyline is totally altered from what it was ten years ago.”

He continued, “It is now marked by really tall buildings, and there are going to be more really tall buildings that are all very modern. These buildings along Court Street are early skyscrapers; they were built in the ‘20s. They defined Brooklyn’s skyline for the last 80 years. As the new ones come in…there’s really a risk that at some point these buildings would be dismantled [and] the skyline of Brooklyn would be gone.”

Fighting Against Landmarking

The Real Estate Board of New York, however, has been blazing ahead with an attempt to stop the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District plans, which would cover 21 buildings in the neighborhood.  They sent out thousands of mailers explaining why the plan is a terrible one.  Showing an unimpressive building on Court Street, the mailings ask, "This is a landmark?"

The flyer agues that, “Landmarking will send costs skyrocketing for local residents and business owners. In these economic times, when every dollar counts, landmarking threatens to send Court Street back to the ‘bad old days’ of empty storefronts and dirty streets.”

REBNY president Steve Spinola also opposes the landmarking, saying, “This landmark designation will add millions of dollars in additional costs to property owners and retail tenants. That is an extraordinary burden to place on property owners at a time when the district is already experiencing a 17-percent commercial vacancy rate. This is another case of the city landmarking away its economic future.”