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Loving - The Movie. A beautiful portrayal of a forgotten civil rights story

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Ruth Negga (2 nd from right) stars as Mildred and Joel Edgerton (right) stars as Richard in Jeff Nichols LOVING, a Focus Features release. Credit : Ben Rothstein / Focus Features   Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving grew up in the rural unincorporated town of Central Point, Virginia. They met in high school, spent time together, and eventually, when Mildred became pregnant, decided to marry. But this was the 1950’s and Mildred was African American and Richard was white. Virginia had anti-miscegenation laws which made their marriage illegal. How did these two young people get beyond Jim Crow and fall in love? Well that had a lot to with Central Point VA. Central Point was and is still a very rural area. At a distance of about 90 miles south east from Washington DC it was community with a history of poor farmers, black and white, ignoring the rules of segregation, living together. According to a 2012 article in the Washington Post , Central Point and Caroline Count...
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The Poster House - Graphic Arts in New York City

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  The Poster House is quickly becoming one of my favorite museums in New York City. It offers deep dive exhibits into the production and use of graphic arts around specific themes. On my last visit they were exploring the history of the Push Pin Agency and a second show on the posters and music of the era of Blaxploitation films. Currently, the Poster House is hosting two shows that explore both history and culture. Puerto Rico in Print: The Posters of Lorenzo Homar (through Sept. 7 2025) Lorenzo Homar (1913-2004) was a Puerto Rican artist who helped found and /or worked in three of the island’s major graphics workshops: Centro de Arte Puertorriqueño; División de Educación a la Comunidad, which was tasked by the government with producing materials for public cultural education; and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. Born in Puerto Rico, Homar’s family moved to New York City when he was fifteen years old. Due to the family’s financial needs, Lorenzo went to work in a textile...
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Location: 119 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011, USA
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El Barrio (Spanish Harlem), New York City

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Mural of Oshun on P.S. 7   The New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, now known as El Barrio, has been the first stop for many immigrants over the decades. I recently took an early morning walk through part of El Barrio to enjoy some of its original architecture. East Harlem developed as the first train lines were built during the second half of the 19th century. Between WWI and WWII, the area was the landing place for mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants. They built businesses, churches and synagogues. After WWII, the children of these families used their GI benefits to go to college, and to buy homes in the outer boroughs and suburbs of New York. So by the 1950’s there were plenty of apartments ready for the “great migration” of Puerto Ricans. They moved into the area, which was close to jobs in lower Manhattan, and which came with the Catholic infrastructure already in place. So East Harlem became known as “Spanish Harlem”, or to the people who lived there, El Barrio - The N...
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Location: East Harlem, New York, NY, USA
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Alphabet City, New York

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    For full disclosure, I have a deep and strong nostalgia for the New York of the 1970’s. Yes, I know all of the issues with crime and drugs. I lived through them. But the city had a “realness” then that 21st century gentrification has done away with. One neighborhood where this is fully evident is in Alphabet City. Alphabet City is the area east of Greenwich Village. Its name comes from the fact that the avenues there are named A through D, being east of 1st Avenue. It stretches from Houston Street north to 14th Street. When I was in college it was a poor, working class neighborhood. Drugs were rampant. Many buildings were abandoned, and squatters had moved in. The play/movie “Rent” is set in this area. There are clues to the age of store. One of them is not having an area code Homemade chairs set up for hanging out Alphabet City was one of the first neighborhoods in New York to be gentrified. While it has made the area safer, it has also struck at the heart of it. In the o...
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Location: Alphabet City, New York, NY 10009, USA
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