Twelve necks crane and 24 eyes squint to see the faded wall painting in the shadows, set deep in the apse of Fuentidueña Chapel. Mary the Virgin and a Baby Jesus dominate the scene in the center, flanked by the winged Michael and Gabriel on each side. Beside them stand the Three Magi, bearing gifts.
“This is the typical use of pagan iconography in Christian themes,” Nahson said. Continue reading
It’s pouring rain outside, but all Christy Tomacek can think about is the sun shining. Continue reading
ARTHUR WOOD remembers that he wanted to be president.
Not the kind that runs a nation and lives on Capitol Hill, but the kind of visionary president that runs a university of his own design and lives on a different kind of hill – Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Continue reading
If you happen to receive an invitation to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday in Bedford-Stuyvesant with Catherine Lewis – better known as “Miss Catie” by the neighborhood – by all means, take it. Her animated personality and jovial laugh will keep you slapping your knee well into the night. But when you finally sit down at Miss Catie’s table for the evening’s meal, try not to appear alarmed when your eyes survey the table and can’t locate the candied yams, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie that make up the usual trimmings of the most traditional of American meals. Continue reading
The night for mischievous tricks may have passed, but a horde of Halloween costumes will be on parade to treat visitors to Brooklyn this weekend – from beautiful ballerinas to “notorious” gangster rappers and every Cinderella in between.
All you’ll have to do is look down at your feet to see them. Continue reading
Like any three-year-old, Jayla Taylor has a fondness for candy. But an evening trip to fulfill her craving at a Brooklyn candy store a week ago nearly ended her life. Continue reading
On radiant, sunlit afternoons, Wilma Atwell – or “Bee,” as she’s known in her neighborhood – likes to go out in front of her colonial-style house and water her garden.
“It’s so nice here,” she said. “I’ve been living here 21, 22 years. I love it.”
Eleven blocks west and 14 blocks north of Atwell’s “farm house,” as she likes to call it, a man dressed head-to-toe in black rifles through a plastic trash bag, four feet long and stuffed with the castoffs of the college students that live in an adjacent building. Continue reading
New York City police officer Ruslan Matdiip couldn’t remember much of anything about what he did on Nov. 28, 2005.
On that day – the same day that fellow officer Dillon Stewart was gunned down on the job for making a routine stop in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn — Matdiip knew he had looked for evidence at the scene of the crime. He was sure that he followed department procedure, and he knew that eventually, a spent Luger nine-millimeter shell casing was found at the scene, three short blocks away from Prospect Park. Continue reading
Kate Cranston and Emily Post would be pleased.
A centuries-old culture is returning to Brooklyn, and it’s bringing its pinky finger with it. Continue reading
It’s a hot summer’s day, and Francine Dixon is sitting outside her Brooklyn café watching customers enter. Among the passersby, a middle-aged woman wearing a plastic hairnet and smeared magenta lipstick walks across Malcolm X Boulevard toward the entrance.
“You see that one right there?” Dixon says, motioning toward the woman. “I’ll bet you a quarter she’s gonna go in and ask for food.” Continue reading
Two weeks after the coalition death toll in Iraq passed 4,000, and a month after one of the youngest casualties of the Iraq war – an 18-year-old Queens resident — was buried, residents of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn seem to agree that the U.S. has overstayed its welcome in the Middle East. Continue reading
For spending all night in a mad house, Alex Pareene looks sprightly.
His tweed jacket is a bit rumpled, but there’s no restraining the ironic anti-Wonkette shirt beneath it, crisp and white with fire-engine red piping. As the editor of the popular political blog his shirt derides, Pareene’s usually known for his biting sarcasm. Tonight, Election Night 2006, he seems less acerbic. Continue reading