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☆ A Principal Confronted a Teenage Girl. Now He’s Facing Prison Time.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

In a high school lobby in New Jersey, the principal saw a student heading toward a stairway and moved to cut her off. The student filed an affirmative action complaint against the principal, saying that he had grabbed her and “slammed” her against a wall. The student is Black; the principal is white and Latino. The principal, reporting the episode later that day, said he was preventing an altercation between the student and three others, who said she had threatened them. Over the months that followed, those roughly 60 seconds, captured partially on video, have divided neighbors across two towns, spawned two investigations and set off a legal process that could end with the principal in prison.

Persons: “, ” Locations: New Jersey

☆ A Showcase for Israeli Property Creates Rancor in a Diverse Town
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-11 | by ( John Leland | Arvind Dilawar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Hundreds of demonstrators protested on Sunday outside an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Teaneck, N.J., where 35 Israeli real estate companies were promoting their properties to potential American buyers. Cars honked in support, or drivers and passengers flung vitriol at the demonstrators. The demonstrators traded profanities and taunts with a much smaller group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators, and police had to break up a few potential fights, but overall they kept the two groups separated. The real estate show, at Congregation Keter Torah, is one of several in the area this month that have sparked heated protests. And just before the local events, at a sales event outside Toronto last weekend, a man was arrested on charges of attacking pro-Palestinian demonstrators with a nail gun.

Persons: Israel, profanities Organizations: Jewish, Keter, Toronto Locations: Teaneck, N.J, Israel

☆ Rescuing Abandoned Dogs Is His Rehab
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The dog that saved Mike Favor’s life was a German shepherd puppy named Honey: 8 weeks old, heart condition, four months to live. When he heard about the puppy, at a rescue organization where he occasionally volunteered, he knew he couldn’t take her. “I’m too new into sobriety,” he told his fiancée at the time, who also volunteered at the rescue center. Favor is a big tough guy, son of a cop, a self-described “street dude” with a chip on his shoulder. Favor, 40, showed off the product of that encounter: a 4,000-square-foot rescue center and sanctuary for abused or neglected dogs called Freedom Home.

Persons: Mike Favor’s, Favor, “, ”, Honey, “ I’ll Locations: German, Staten Island

☆ What Endures After a Climate Activist’s Suicide: Grief, Anger and Hope
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-19 | by ( John Leland | More About John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As they walked together that night — Mr. Morales before heading home to East Harlem, Mr. Buckel before returning to his husband in brownstone Brooklyn — their lives were heading in very different directions. “I thought, Oh, God, another article,” Mr. Morales said. “I was a little aggravated,” Mr. Morales said. Mr. Buckel was writing in the first person. Mr. Morales showed the email to another worker at the composting site: Does this say what I think it does?

Persons: Mr, Morales, Buckel, David, ” Mr Organizations: Prospect Locations: East Harlem, Brooklyn

☆ He Thought His Chuck Close Painting Was Worth $10 Million. Not Quite.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( John Leland | More About John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

You befriend a curmudgeonly stranger and one day, out of the blue, the old grouch bequeaths you a gift to change your life. But for Mark Herman, a former dog walker now living on Social Security, an auction house in Dallas told him exactly how much that fantasy was worth. In his cluttered apartment in Upper Manhattan on Tuesday, Mr. Herman watched speechless as the auctioneer declared the final bid on Lot 77070, an untitled Chuck Close painting that briefly, improbably, belonged to him. On hand to record Mr. Herman’s reaction was Amy Sargeant, one of two filmmakers who contacted him after the story of his painting appeared in The New York Times this summer. She had read about it on a ferry to a remote island in Tanzania.

Persons: Mark Herman, Herman, Chuck, Herman’s, Amy Sargeant Organizations: Social Security, New York Times Locations: Dallas, Upper Manhattan, improbably, Tanzania

☆ The 1963 March on Washington Changed America. Its Roots Were in Harlem.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( John Leland | More About John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Sixty years ago, in the summer of 1963, a four-story townhouse on West 130th Street in Harlem became the headquarters for what was then the largest civil rights event in American history, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For one summer the house, a former home for “delinquent colored girls,” was a hive of activity — so frenetic that the receptionist twice hung up on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by mistake. Together with Mr. Randolph, they became known as the Big Six. As Courtland Cox, one of the march organizers, recalled, “People were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they wanted to make a statement to the nation.”

Persons: ”, Martin Luther King Jr, King’s, Bayard Rustin, Philip Randolph, Rustin, Randolph, John F, Medgar Evers, Courtland Cox Organizations: Jobs, 130th, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Urban League, Racial, Student Nonviolent, Mr, National Guard, University of Alabama, “ Locations: Harlem, Washington, Birmingham, Mississippi

☆ The Chuck Close Painting Is Heading to Auction. The Dog Walker Abides.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( John Leland | More About John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Paintings by Chuck Close once sold for as much as $4.8 million. He offered the painting to Sotheby’s, which scheduled it for auction last December but then withdrew it because Mr. Close’s studio and longtime gallery had no record of the painting. Instead of a jackpot, Mr. Herman had a bill for $1,742, for stretching the canvas onto a frame. “One reader commented that I was the Dude redux,” Mr. Herman said, referring to the lovable stoner in the Coens’ “The Big Lebowski.”He so is. Mr. Herman passed.

Persons: Herman, Chuck Close, Caroline White, White’s, Mr, Herman said, Alfred Fuente —, ”, —, Close’s, Taylor Curry Organizations: University of Massachusetts, New York Times, Heritage Locations: Chelsea, New York

☆ A ‘Thoroughly American Opera’ and More: The Week in Reporter Reads
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-28 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“He has created an entirely new phase of musical art and has produced a thoroughly American opera.”The anonymous critic who wrote these bold words didn’t have a performance of Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” to evaluate, or a recording. In June 1911, all the reviewer had to go on was Joplin’s 230-page piano-vocal score. “Its production would prove an interesting and potent achievement,” the critic added, “and it is to be hoped that sooner or later, it will be thus honored.”It turned out to be decidedly later. More than half a century passed before the opera finally premiered. When it did, its brilliance, shortcomings and unfinished aspects made it a work begging to be completed — giving creative artists room to experiment boldly with this “new phase of musical art.”◆ ◆ ◆Written and narrated by John Leland

Persons: Scott Joplin’s, “, John Leland

☆ Was the Rolled-Up Painting in the Dog Walker’s Closet Worth Millions?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( John Leland | More About John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mr. Close, best known for his monumental photorealist portraits, had not yet found his style and was painting in an expressionist mode heavily influenced by Willem de Kooning. Mr. Close sued on free speech grounds. His lawyer, in what became a well-known First Amendment case, argued that “art is as fully protected by the Constitution as political or social speech.”The lawyer was Mr. Silver, future poodle owner. Mr. Silver prevailed in court, then lost on appeal. Mr. Close, who later dismissed the exhibition as “sort of transitional work,” lost his job.

Persons: Herman, Chuck Close, “, ”, Willem de Kooning, Bob Dylan, Close, Silver Organizations: University of Massachusetts Amherst, New Locations: New York, “

☆ An Elite School, a Boy’s Suicide and a Question of Blame
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-02 | by ( John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Suspected suicide attempts among adolescents Ellis’s age were up 49 percent in 2021 compared with prepandemic levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Because it did not contextualize in any way what the issues were in my son’s suicide. And it says the school is being proactive to deal with this mental health crisis. Totally dishonest.”Jeffrey Gural, Ellis’s grandfather, also pressed the school’s board of trustees. The elder Mr. Gural is chairman of GFP Real Estate L.L.C.

Persons: Gural, Tompkins, “, ”, ” Jeffrey Gural, Ellis’s, Newmark Knight Frank, Ellis, ‘, ’ ”, Ann’s Organizations: Centers for Disease Control, Newmark Holdings

☆ Politics, Police, Pozole: The Battle for Sunset Park
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( John Leland | Lexi Parra | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For Sonia Cortes, the battle for Sunset Park began with soup. Two years ago, after the pandemic wiped out her job as a seamstress, Ms. Cortes started selling pozole, a brothy Mexican soup, in the park, a 25-acre swath of green in southwestern Brooklyn. By last fall, the Sunday market had grown to more than 80 vendors, mostly immigrant women selling Mexican street food and wares to large weekend crowds. They called it Plaza Tonatiuh, after an Aztec sun god. On Easter Sunday, dozens of officers clashed violently with vendors and organizers, who locked arms in resistance.

☆ Harry Belafonte Knows a Thing or Two About New York
▼ + stars: | 2017-02-03 | by ( John Leland | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Harry Belafonte’s New York was a lot like yours and mine. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a Harlem church basement through Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and met W. E. B. Mr. Belafonte could tell you a thing or two about New York. He has been the best-selling singer in America and a pillar in the civil rights movement. Takes a lot of courage and a lot of power to step into the space and lead a holy war.”

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