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Native American Gangs

In the February 1, 2005 edition of Law Enforcement Technology, writer Liz Martinez investigates Gangs in Indian Country and offers the following insight:

Native Americans have some of the highest poverty and addiction rates in the United States and a rapidly increasing population, along with some of the highest rates of infant mortality and lowest educational levels. Because the reservations are in remote areas, the opportunities for jobs and industry are virtually non-existent.

Coupled with the fact that many young people have lost touch with or never known their native languages, customs or religious traditions and are exposed to the relentless commercialism of mainstream America–yet are without the wherewithal to achieve most of the commercial ideals–and the white-hot anger erupting among American Indian youth and manifesting itself in an explosion of gang involvement should surprise no one.

Gangs create bonds of belonging for those who feel outcast, lost and disconnected.
Helping to find ways to retie the disconnected to the positive moral core of society must become a paramount human mission reaching from suburban corral to urban core to rustic reservation.

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Claes Oldenburg’s Torn Notebook

Another example of “Pretentious City Pretend Art” is Claes Oldenburg’s Torn Notebook currently found marring the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Claes Oldenburg created some magnificent and provocative pieces of art over his career but Torn Notebook is not one of them. I have felt that way from the moment the monstrosity was first described in the local Lincoln newspaper many years ago.

Here’s why: The good people of Nebraska have an identity crises.

Continue reading → Claes Oldenburg’s Torn Notebook

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Central Park Saffron Gates

The unveiling of the ugly “draperies gates” in New York City’s Central Park was the epitome of what I call “Pretentious City Pretend Art.”

Continue reading → Central Park Saffron Gates

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Newark Population Statistics

The incredible shrinking Newark urban core is disappointing, fascinating and understandable from an economic opportunity point-of-view.

Continue reading → Newark Population Statistics

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Urban Renewal Means Negro Removal

Last semester at Rutgers-Newark one of my students stood before the class to present his idea for a play that dealt with an issue striking the core of Newark. That tall and lithe black (I do no know his cultural identification) male student said to us the truth as he knew it: “Urban Renewal means Negro removal.” He wasn’t trying to be funny. That phrase has been over-used into a cliche but on that cold day in Newark, in the refurbished second floor Bradley Hall rehearsal space, we all felt a little smaller and colder.

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Urban Wilds

I reflect back a decade to something I read from a Federal land survey that claimed every person in the contiguous United States – including the forest hermit and mountain lurker – is no more than 17.6 miles from a road.

Let’s consider that idea of magnitudinal urban sprawl for a moment.
The history of the development of America has been one of extreme Westward movement: We want to get away from each other; we want land of our own; we need private space.
Suburbia is a perfect example of this sort of “lazying out” from the city core – but what happens when suburban areas become tighter and paved and they transmogrify into “Megalopolises” as geographer Jean Gottmann suggested in 1961 or the ever-infringing “Edge City” as Joel Garreau described in his 1991 monograph of the same name.

As the ability to sprawl subsides and we all have the ability to touch a road in all directions without moving a step, we will begin moving on top of each other.
Soon the only way to build new infrastructure will be skyward atop existing superstructures as the paths and the woodlands and the empty spaces become memories and parking lots and superhighways and the final means of transit for storing people.

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A Curious Return to the Lancasterian Monitorial System

With the rise of exclusive online teaching via WebCT and Blackboard where teacher and student are never in the same room together, we are in a rebirth of a strange form of the 1805 Lancasterian Monitorial System in 2005 and beyond where thousands of students will sit and stare at a flickering image of an instructor standing before them.

Continue reading → A Curious Return to the Lancasterian Monitorial System

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Corruption in Newark

On May 1, 2005, the New York Times reported the following:

“Shereef Cheatham, a single mother of four, had been waiting five years for a rent assistance voucher when the Newark Housing Authority diverted $3.9 million in federal funds from the program in 2003 to pay for property near a proposed hockey arena downtown. She is still waiting.
Millions of dollars have been diverted from providing affordable housing for the urban poor in favor of building self-interests in the inner city. The New York Times continues to unveil the Newark disgrace:


More than 21,000 people were on the waiting list for the vouchers when the housing authority used the $3.9 million, a small portion of the total budgeted, to buy 12 privately owned lots. The purchase came after a lawsuit thwarted the city’s plan to seize them through condemnation. Those lots were crucial to building the arena, which was at the time intended to be the home for both the New Jersey Devils hockey team and the New Jersey Nets basketball team. The arena, now for the Devils alone, is scheduled to open in 2007.”

The beat goes on but someone is needed to end the beating of the poor in the urban core.

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Writing Advice for Authors

If you are an aspiring book author I want to give you some blunt author-to-author advice you will not likely get from your publisher or your agent. Agents and publishers generally do not want this sort of discussion to take place between authors because they don’t want us sharing this information.

Continue reading → Writing Advice for Authors

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Hand Jive: American Sign Language for Real Life

I am pleased to announce my book with Janna M. Sweenie, Hand Jive: American Sign Langue for Real Life is a done deal. This will be a funky and fantastic look at ASL and how you can learn to communicate with the Deaf in a fast and furious way.

Barnes and Noble logo

Our book will be published by Barnes and Noble Publishing, Inc., (yes, they publish books as well as sell them!) and the book will be distributed by Sterling.

Hand Jive: American Sign Langue for Real Life will be available for purchase in the Fall of 2006 and for more information on this book and other exciting ongoing and future projects, be sure to visit us online at http://BolesBooks.com.

Be sure to check out the book cover art.