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Of Coups and Coops: “Hattie Carthan” Brings Chickens to North Brooklyn

Editor, Our Time Press
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By Yonnette Fleming

Livestock breeding and farming has been practiced by the women in my family for years. According to my grandmother’s accounts (a woman who raised hundreds of chickens at a time for consumption in her village of Berbice, Guyana, South America), when the women in our family�got married, they were given five live eggs(as part of a sort of dowry arrangement)�which were hatched (of course, roosters were allowed on those farms). They learnt how to raise those chicks , those chicks went on to become laying pullets and had other chicks. So the gift of fertilized eggs was the foundation of their� livestock farm.

And a gift from Heifer International has created new foundations for learning and living in North Brooklyn.  The Hattie Carthan Community Garden is raising chickens, thanks to Heifer’s livestock management funding that supports livestock management in urban centers around the world.

Through the garden’s�partnership with�Just Foods City chickens program, we were able to receive materials�to build a large coop with a run for the animals and purchase chickens which will provide our young market with fresh eggs and youth interns with hands-on livestock management experience. The coop was built at the end of the last growing season and our thirteen hens�arrived on March 18 at the community garden a few weeks ago.


�The pullets were raised� on the MimoMex Farm, which �is located on 16 acres of the Black Dirt region in Goshen, New York, some 46 miles from North Brooklyn. Nestled within the bosom of the Northeast Appalachian ranges, this series of valleys is a combination of areas with rocky forest land and rich, fertile left over from an ancient glacial lake bottom.� It is owned and operated by farmers Martin & Guadencia Rodriguez, natives of Mexico.

I feel truly honored to be raising the same breeds as my foremothers (Rhode Island Reds). The first days of bonding with the hens and getting to know them was indeed humbling. With only a few days of training under their belts, the hens are already using the stairs to enter and exit the coop and are beginning to go into the coop once the sun begins setting, thus making the process a lot easier. We counted half a dozen eggs yesterday alone. Listening to that familiar sound that announces the arrival of eggs� is just wonderful for us working.

Working with the chickens has been a welcome experience for me. To me, chicken-keeping is not an exercise in primitivism as it is an adventure in raising animals in a humane way which puts quality care as the vision instead of profits. Tasting the difference between a fresh egg and one sold to us in supermarkets is a small part of the rewards. The eggs from our coop are silky in texture, very tasty and filling. �Using humane approaches in our partnerships with animals is far more rewarding than inhumane approaches which creates huge profits. Our neighborhood youths are buzzing with excitement at the arrival of the birds and neighboring schools are�calling to find out how the kids can get� more involved in learning about these animals.

The eggs from our hens will be distributed in our discounted weekly mixed basket and dung will be added back to our compost. Please read more about our new weekly distribution programs in the market at hattiecarthancommunitymarket.com.

We will be gathering our chicken committee to begin livestock training and logistics for community chicken care interns.  Anyone interested in being�on the�committee that��preserves�the health and well-being of these hens, please download the online livestock volunteer form�and submit that�to us. We will upload our chicken care tip sheets to the Web site shortly and will update the status of our hens in this section periodically.�

Years ago, my grandmother passed on the gift of five fertilized eggs, start of a legacy that lives today.  The MimoMex Farm has passed on the gift of thirteen pullets to the Hattie Carthan Community Garden under� Heifer’s motto of  “passing on the gift of knowledge.”  We are happy to continue this act of giving by providing thousands of community residents and youth with valuable information and experiences around raising livestock in the city.

Feel free to stop by the farm to see the beauties if you find yourself in the neighborhood. Our coop faces the Lafayette Avenue side of our garden. The community is able to observe the birds from outside the coop during daylight hours.

To�join our crew of market volunteers, please send us an e-mail at hattiecarthangarden@yahoo.com.

NY Post Abuses Child in an Attempt to Smear School

Mary Alice Miller
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Last week, the New York Post published two articles and two editorials about a child who had complaints about the school she attended, Paul Robeson High School.
The Post quoted 15-year-old Alisha Strawder as saying if she “could burn down this school and get away with it,” she would. Alisha readily admitted she hardly goes to class.  Alisha’s chief complaints seem to be adolescent in nature: lurid tales of sex and drugs in the hallways.

School and community members are expressing concern about how the Post reporter was able to talk to the teen. According to a source within the school,  on or about the morning of April 9, Alisha and another teen were approached by the Post reporter as the girls were making their way into school. The reporter was able to lure the girls away from the school to a McDonald’s restaurant on Fulton Street, some 6 blocks away. It was in that McDonald’s where the girls were encouraged to give lurid descriptions of their school. Alisha gave the reporter what she was looking for, in exchange for a meal. The other teen had positive things to say about Robeson, which the reporter ignored.
One of the articles quoted someone named  Kasyra Strawder, who is supposed to be Alisha’s mother. In fact,  Kasyra Strawder is Alisha’s step-mother who lives with the teens father in the Albany projects. Alisha’s birth mother, an alumni of Robeson, was not quoted in the paper. In fact she was very upset at having her daughter used in such a crude manner by the Post. When asked if the Post had obtained a signed release giving permission to talk to Alisha, reporters seemed “blase,” stating they did not need one to talk to a student outside of school grounds.
Since the Post articles, morale at the school was said to be bad; the school community felt as though they were “hit below the belt,” especially after the recent hard fought court case to keep the school open. Students were upset about the articles. Many said Alisha engages in the activities she was talking about. Others wondered why she aired “dirty laundry.”
Educating urban children is never easy. Exactly two years ago, Our Time Press covered the story when Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz came to Paul Robeson High School to present Special Citations to 3 heroes who saved the life of  Robeson  honors student Kyle Owens. Kyle was stabbed inside Paul Robeson H.S. on March 28. Todd Myles, Physical Education teacher and Basketball Coach, and Vivian Gardner, Nurse Practitioner, revived Kyle by performing CPR and chest compressions. School Safety Agent Sheila Nesbit stopped the bleeding by placing pressure on Kyle’s stab wounds.
In the Post article, Alisha characterized Robeson staff as “uncaring.” A Robeson staff member who spoke to OTP on condition of anonymity said Alisha had only been in Robeson during her sophomore year; she had transferred from another school. After exhibiting some behaviors common to adolescents, several Robeson adults began “working closely with her,” including “a couple of assistant principals, the choir director, and school counselors.”
Some of Alisha’s concerns regarding social conditions among students  are founded, but in contrast to her characterization of an uncaring school community, Robeson has interventions in place to assist students. Divine Divas is a rights of passage program for Robeson students and girls from the surrounding community. African Voices Exhalting is a manhood-training initiative run by Carlos Walton, from Medgar Evers College. The school has a daycare center for 13 babies – not all the offspring of Robeson students. Robeson’s Life Center is said to be a “life saver” for students; “it keeps them in school,” by providing parenting and other services.
There are those within the school as well as in the community who are “of the mindset that the school is being set up” and wonder if “allegiance is to Klein and Bloomberg or education.” Robeson is seen as “a victim of the whole process of closing large schools.”
NYS Senator Eric Adams stated, “The Department of Education of the City of New York has a responsibility to its students, families, and communities to be thoughtful and methodical in any decision to close a school.  The State Legislature established a protocol last year, and the process clearly was not followed.  It requires individual site hearings and consultations, and the unprecedented outcry from neighborhoods affected by the school closures is ample evidence of the DOE’s lack of respect for this law.
“No one is concocting excuses for struggling schools; everyone agrees that they must successfully educate our young people.  The issue is whether these schools deserve immediate closure or an opportunity to improve – and whether they have been given appropriate support prior to the decision to shut them down.
“The enthusiasm for rejuvenating Paul Robeson shown by its community, its staff, and its students betokens an initial step in the revitalization of this high school.  It is most appropriate to harness this positive energy in support of a redevelopment effort.”
Just last year, Paul Robeson High School was one of the schools OTP highlighted in our annual recognition of local schools that send graduates to college. Among the eclectic group of Robeson graduates were 10 Citi scholarship recipients, and students who received the Brooklyn Old Timers Scholarship,  Guardian Achievement Scholarship from the NYPD,  the Albert Shanker Scholarship, and the Brooklyn Girl Friends Scholarship. One student won second place in the prestigious Random House Creative Writing Scholarship Competition.
From that article: “Paul Robeson  has a wide variety of academic programs geared to prepare students for college and professional careers via internships or career-based experiences. The 20-year  Robeson/Citi partnership with Citi (originally with Solomon Brothers) includes a mentor/mentee program, state-of-the-art technology, scholarships, college trips, support with Career/College Day, and internships for students. An op-ed school focused on business and technology, Robeson is home to 2 Virtual Enterprises, an international program that trains students to run a business. Robeson’s student-run businesses are Generation Design, a web design company, and Extravaganza Planning, an event planning company. Two of Robeson’s four Academies or Small Learning Communities are part of the National Academy Foundation: the Academy of Finance and the Academy of Information Technology offer advanced curriculum in Virtual enterprise and Cisco Networking Certification,  with students taking part in college classes and participate in enrichment activities like Toast Masters.”
Councilman Vann stood with the school during this time of crisis and is “supportive of the school and their efforts to improve.”
School and community members are expressing concern about how the Post reporter was able to talk to the teen. According to a source within the school, on or about the morning of April 9, Alisha and another teen were approached by the Post reporter as the girls were making their way into school. The reporter was able to lure the girls away from the school to a McDonald’s restaurant on Fulton Street, some 6 blocks away. It was in that McDonald’s where the girls were encouraged to give lurid descriptions of their school. Alisha gave the reporter what she was looking for, in exchange for a meal. The other teen had positive things to say about Robeson, which the reporter ignored. While sitting in McDonald’s, Alisha was pumped for her negative opinion of Robeson, paid for with the price of a meal. The Post reporter had no problem encouraging Alisha to miss valuable classroom time.

Big Turnout For Protest at Brooklyn Bridge to Keep Day Care Centers Open

Editor, Our Time Press
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7

By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Parents, caregivers, children, union representatives and supporters rallied in Downtown Brooklyn and then marched over the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, to protest the city’s decision to close 16 day care centers serving more than 1,000 children in New York.
Of the 16, 11 are Brooklyn-based and serve more than 750 children.
The closing are to go in effect on June 30.  The City is maintaining that the closings are related to budget challenges, and the centers targeted are located in neighborhoods which no longer need day care services.
“These working people are the life blood of the city,” said District Councilman Mathieu Eugene before the march.
“They work and pay taxes, and are a part of the economy.  We elected officals have to do everything possible to save our day care centers.”
According to the Administration for Chidlren’s Servcies, the centers slated to close include: the Court Street Day Care Center of Amico in Cobble Hill; the BBCS Duffield, Martha Udell, Alonzo Daughtry No. 3, Bedford Avenue and the Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center.
In a press release, District Council 1707 Executive Director Raglan George Jr., said “Since 2003, over 3,000 slots from day care centers were eliminated.  The day care school age after -school program, a  model for the rest of the country, was eliminated by this adminsitration.”
Parents stated that they need day care centers near their jobs. Sharman Stein, director of Communications for the NYC Administration for Children’s Services noted in February that ACS is looking into how services can be “consolidated.”  The closings, reportedly, are based on how expensive the lease is, the condition of the building and whether or not the center is used to capacity.  DC 7 has said that no decison about closing any center should be made without the completion of a Community Environmental Quality Review on each program.”

View From Here: Henry Louis Gates and His Sad Sense of History

David Mark Greaves
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5

What a strange history lesson Henry Louis Gates gives in an April 23 New York Times Op Ed.  He begins “Thanks to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics – the fact that he is African-American and president – Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.”

First of all, Barack Obama is not an African-American in the sense that it is being used here, as a descendant of people held as slaves.  His family history and his genetics did not pass through the physical and emotional trauma sustained for several hundred years.

Secondly, Gates says “There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.”

And for the rest of the long piece, he spends his time making the argument that it was Africans who sold other Africans to the slavers and therefore the blame for slavery cannot be attributed only to the Europeans which makes the question of who to go to for reparations such a problem for Gates.   What nonsense is this?  When there is a civil lawsuit for compensation, no one goes after the perp with no money.  The Africans may have been paid with some golden trinkets, and maybe African-Americans could make a case for dual citizenship and special trade opportunities, but the true wealth of the slave trade was made here, stateside.  This is where the human capital of Africans working as slaves was invested.

Before electricity and oil, it was the slave who supplied the energy to clear the land, build the roads and load the ships.  and perform all other things necessary to bring a nation into being on land that had been stolen from a decimated indigenous people in their first encounter with the Europeans.

Never mentioned in Gates’ piece are the 60% of the nation’s exports that were slave-produced or the banks, still existing, that handled that money and profited on those deals. He doesn’t speak of how the money made from slavery and the taxes on that money nursed this nation through the agricultural age and into the age of industry.  That’s the debt that’s owed.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Gates chose this time in the nation’s history for his musings.  There is an ugly part of the American nature showing itself, carrying guns to political rallies that bear an eerie resemblance to the pictures of the crowds at the lynching parties from a time not all that long ago.  In Arizona, a new law  says if a law enforcement officer thinks someone is not a citizen, that person can be stopped and asked to show identification papers, like in the old movies with the Nazi street patrols.  This is not the time to forget or excuse what evil ordinary people are capable of.  It is a time to hold them accountable, lest they do it again.

EMBRACING TREASURES: THE ART OF SURVIVING

Editor, Our Time Press
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Ten years ago, Our Time Press christened three blocks on Malcolm X Blvd., between Halsey Street and Decatur Street, “Antiques Row.” 

Our Time’s effort and intention was to help MXB antiquarians pick up business from the October 1999 “Come On Home to Bedford-Stuyvesant” Brownstone Tour.  It did.

Within two years, the corridor had extended from Anthony Smith’s Odd Things’ Collectibles at Decatur and MXB to Morton’s Antique Memories at the northwest corner of Putnam Avenue.  Clarence Barber, veteran of them all, and Paul Tyner and Greta Niles, who rented a space inside Tyner’s place, across from Barber’s, enjoyed steady traffic.   

Dalton Taylor’s The Victorian on Tompkins Avenue South, Ken William’s high-end Mercantile on the corner of Fulton Street and Irving, and Eddie Hibbert’s cave of a treasure chest on Myrtle, attracted collectors from all over the city. 

All of the furniture dealers had a common goal: to keep business going, and to prosper.

Now only Mr. “C” survives on the original Antiques Row.  Greta may be in Florida, site of her dream Antiques emporium.  Tyner and Morton have not been heard from, although Morton may be residing nearby. Mr. Smith is retired to stately Savannah, GA, his Odd Things replaced by the high-scale Thompson’s Interiors – hardly a place, now, for stuff. 

Taylor and Hibbert are still around, plying trade amidst salvaged architectural gems, from pier mirrors, painted wood mantles and victor-victrolas to brass hinges, old Ebony and National Geographic magazines, spinster’s diaries and framed photos of high school class pictures of the 50’s, and tons of other bits and pieces.

Business is slow.  “All small businesses are suffering because of the economy,” Taylor told us.  “Nearly 40 antique shops along Atlantic Avenue (site of 1999’s real Antiques Row) have closed their doors for good.  If you can keep the doors from closing, you’re doing OK.”

Plus a lot of folks are accessing their shopping via the Internet and selling their secondhand things for first-class prices on Craig’s List.   But these stalwarts are hanging in there.  Not because they love the business.

The answer to why Taylor, Hibbert and Mr. C are still around walked into The Victorian last week.  She asked to see Taylor’s doors.  Turned out the doors he showed her were too small to fashion a 6-ft dining table out of one of them.   Taylor advised that she visit Eddie Hibbert, where she would find exactly what she wanted. After all, Eddie is the door king.  Particularly antique and old one’s.

“Eddie sends three to four people a day over to my shop,” says Dalton. 

Small businesses are being forced to create commercial alliances to stay afloat. It commands integrity and respect and an understanding that sharing customers is the only way to go.  “It’s a buyers’ market, and people are not buying.”

It doesn’t hurt, either, that Taylor strips furniture, makes repairs, refinishes and executes a range of other artisan skills, including wainscoting and crafting moldings. He knows that in today’s economy, it pays to be multifaceted. 

Mr. C’s been a fixture on the avenue for close to 40 years, and admits that real estate investment and stock market tinkering has a lot more to do with it than the occasional sale of a rare, vintage mahogany mantle or a junked lamp.

Hibbert’s super-rare finds are stored in and sold from an open, easy-access warehouse situation at Greene & Gates, the heart of Clinton Hill’s brownstoner neighborhood.  He oversees the work of a Class A wood-stripping team, and he is known for his almost-uncanny ability to “attract” great pieces of furniture and unusual finds – the kind you see oil-polished in House & Garden.  Or that you used to see in the now-defunct H&G.

In 2001, Mr. Hibbert introduced us to Jomo Oliya, a cabinetmaker who said that antique dealers, “have a soul connection with nature, and with the builders and carpenters of the past.  They hold a piece of wood.  They understand it. They respect it. They know it was shaped from the heart.  They have a special knowledge.”

Mr. Taylor shared “knowledge” about brownstones, the final havens for much of Hibbert, Mr. C’s and Taylor’s objets d’art: “They are extraordinary treasures.  Like living within a work of art. And sometimes people fail to see that the beauty of them also is in the fact that they are always being fixed up, repaired, nurtured; they are living things.  They were made when craftsmanship was king.  They can never be replaced or built ever again.”
(Note:  Please see Our Time Press Business Directory for location and contact information for The Victorian and Eddie’s Treasures.)
– Bernice Elizabeth Green

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