That’s what streeteasy.com suggests in a recent posting.
I’m all for it, since I still have allegiance to the area. But I also have my concerns. I wrote my proposal for how New York City could make Jamaica more attractive to people who might be drawn to the area. Yes, it involves one of the worst mistakes of the Bloomberg era – the killing of the great beacon on the hill, Jamaica High. Please read my essay on streeteasy.com: http://streeteasy.com/blog/how-nyc-could-really-revitalize-jamaica-queens/ Comments are welcome on that site. GV
Martha Gottlieb Taylor
12/21/2015 11:18:41 am
George, thinking of you this morning, I checked into your website an found this wonderful article. As one of those who still lives happily in the house my parents bought when I was three and raised my four children (all five of us are Jamaica High alums), I share your sentiments. Great read!
George Vecsey
12/21/2015 11:41:43 am
Martha, thanks. I admire you and a few others who are where you grew up. Don't go nowhere. GV
George Vecsey
12/21/2015 11:46:14 am
Very impressive: three of the first emails I received were from Artie Benoit, Rich Rodin and Stan Einbender, three players from those great mid-50's basketball teams. The three of them could go to PS 26 and challenge anybody, right now, right?
bruce
12/21/2015 01:13:59 pm
George
George Vecsey
12/21/2015 01:48:15 pm
Bruce -- you Canadahooskies and your sly sense of humor.
bruce
12/21/2015 04:35:56 pm
george,
Brian Savin
12/21/2015 10:24:02 pm
I'm not sure about this, George. JHS was graduating less than 50% of its students when Bloomberg took notice, as you may have mentioned in a prior post. When does a school warrant change, if not then? What the Mayor did was make a determination that things were so bad that he had to rebuild from scratch. So, the BoE created four smaller specialty schools, all sharing facilities and athletic programs, focused on math and science, college board exams, arts and letters, and community service. Changing the discussion can often help in solving problems. I remember when the schools in my old town were being crowded by a mini baby boom and the town needed to reopen a closed school. Parents rebelled because it meant bussing from neighborhoods. My own neighborhood school Principal was asked to take over the new school and deal with the uproar. What he did was organize the curriculum of the new grammar school and announce that it would prepare students for the International Baccalaureate certificate and would admit on an application basis. The complaints abruptly ended and the school was over subscribed. Given the upward mobility goals of Jamaica, I would think the Bloomberg plan may be assisting and fostering that potential, while also refocusing on how to help the struggling student population. Time will tell.
George Vecsey
12/22/2015 08:31:46 am
Brian, I know that small units work. I see them work up close via relatives teaching and being taught in NYC and Long Island. No argument. In Jamaica's case, they cooked the books -- put dropouts and even young people at Rikers Island and other places into Jamaica's stats. Hangin' jury, as they say in the westerns.
Andy Tansey
12/25/2015 08:58:50 am
I don't know enough about the JHS change to comment.
George Vecsey
12/26/2015 10:32:41 am
Andy, thanks for your great visceral response to being back in Jamaica. It belongs on the streeteasy web site. You OK with that?
Andy Tansey
12/27/2015 06:05:12 am
George: 8/9/2016 02:56:20 pm
Good blog here! return to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. Comments are closed.
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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