While sitting on an ambulance waiting for lunch...

Bored!

Annotated Bibliography - Research Articles

BARRY, ELLEN. "In Queens, Classes in Mandarin are also Lessons in Adaptation. (Cover Story)." New York Times 156.53958 (2007): A1-A15.

The author describes a phenomenon happening in Flushing due to Asian population which make up 40 percent of Flushing; The language issue, which is also causing political controversy. The article mainly talks about a group of Flushing residents of different backgrounds who are learning to Mandarin-Chinese due to its predominance in the neighborhood. The article explains the different reasons that some of the students have for learning the language among which the common consensus seems to be “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Most of these students are taking on this new language as a means of adaptation, which is ironic considering that Mandarin is the inducted language. The Article also explains the political reasons behind sponsoring the teaching of the class. These classes, though, are being taught in a basement of a housing project which is by far, suitable to be a classroom. Aside from this, the efforts by the person responsible for this class have not quite caught on with the tenants of this housing project, some laughing at the idea of learning mandarin and other appalled by the idea that having been born in this country, they would have the need to learn a foreign language to fit in. On a funny anecdote, one of the students tells of how she finally approached her Asian neighbor whom she had lived next too for over a year and a half and said to her that she was learning Chinese in mandarin only to find out that her neighbor spoke Fuzhounese. For the mean time, she has no urgent desire to begin learning this dialect.

Smith, Christopher J. "Asian New York: The Geography and Politics of Diversity." International Migration Review 29.1 (1995): 59-84.

This article, unlike the previous, speaks in much more technical terms. The article, which is a study based on social demographic, economic, and political structure speaks about the changes that have occurred in the town of Flushing. It speaks about the social struggles that certain families are facing. This article however does present the benefits that new immigrant families have upon entering these social networks that have formed due to the large concentration of coethnic immigrants. As these families discover different ways to survive in this country, they are faced with three options which the article refers to as Work, Voice, and Exit. The first option involves immigrants incorporating themselves in the sectors of the economy, whether they are formal or informal through various forms of employment. The second option, Voice, is to get involved, either as an individual, or as part of a group, in politics. Then the third option, Exit, involves learning their cultural aspects, whether it be moving from monoethnic neighborhoods to suburbs, and potentially also leaving cultural practices in an effort to adapt. The article also presents statistical data that proves the “white-flight” of Caucasian people to the suburbs and their corresponding increase in city numbers of immigrants. However, the Asian population was by far the largest growing number of immigrant groups.

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Happy Singles Awareness Day... lol

Central Park!

The sidewalk... and then some!

Commonly, New York is associated with neck-cramping skyscrapers, gridlock traffic and a stampede of people, not necessarily going anywhere but for some reason always in a rush and completely disconnected from the hundreds of other people they encounter just by walking down a city block. It is all too easy to forget that this city isn't just the hectic, yet glamour-filled concrete mayhem portrayed on TV. So you can understand my surprise when I moved in to the house where I currently live. While the house itself does not yell out for attention, the area it is located in certainly does bring into question all the common concepts that one has about living in this city.
My house is one of a block's worth of houses completely surrounded by trees, parks and even more trees. Right in front of my house there is a particularly dense lot of trees that currently, through the yearly scorn of the harsh winter weather, have forfeited their leaves and their vibrant allure. This being said, on those bitter evening after the rain has stopped, frozen and glazed the bareness of these trees, it is practically indescribable the sight produced by the street lights reflecting on the crystallized branches. During the rest of the year however, the foliage changes this grim, deaden, yellow portrait into a dense green that makes it almost impossible to visualize the main road it conceals. The impenetrable shade offered by these trees satiates the longing for relief from the scorching sun of the midday traveler or the prancing children.

As I was coming home one morning around early sunrise on a somewhat chilly, yet not entirely unbearable mid-spring morning, I noticed something I had never seen before. Across the road, due to the morning dew and the vast green lands that make up Kissena Park, along with the warming of the temperatures produced by the creeping sun, a solid fog, as those seen only in movies spread rampant across the park. The thing that was most striking was that as soon as the roads that surround the borders of the park began, the fog ceased, as if the fence surrounding the park were also containing the spread of the fog. I couldn’t help but just stand there and observe spellbound. It was interesting to discover something so strange yet mesmerizing so close to home, that had I been asleep like I should’ve been, I would’ve never seen it. And thus, as a good New Yorker, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the camera phone.
Very pleasantly I commute these sidewalks; whether running late for that morning class or simply catching the bus to the nearest subway at the end of the street, there is just something about being surrounded by nature that simply soothes the daily battering that is the New York lifestyle.

The Death and Life of Great Amercian Cities - Introduction Review

Like the author, Jane Jacobs said herself in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” the book is “an attack on current city planning and rebuilding.” The Author makes the distinction that she is in fact not criticizing the new methods of design and style in new edification projects but is in fact attacking the reasons behind the rebuilding and the consequences they’ve created on modern society. As she revealed more about the topics that she will cover, she often began passionate rants, one of them, for example being the social developmental decay that is happening due to the lack of thought that goes into rebuilding housing projects and community center; and how new laws such as “No Loitering” is simple pushing “bums” into places originally meant for community recreation. She also talks about counterintuitive building such as “promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promanaders.”

- Juan

Forgotten-NY

Forgotten-Ny - Queens Crap

Hey All!!!
Forgotten-NY is a site that is basically dedicated to posting up random historical information about New York City's forgotten or neglected landmarks, and other miscellaneous standing bits of history. This site ranges from talking about cobblestone streets and how they came to be to commonly overlooked street lamps and their historical backgrounds. Well, as I was checking out this site which was rather trivially informative, I couldn't help but check out what they had to say in their section label "Queens Crap." One particular article, the one about rezoning North Flushing, caught my attention. The article was a letter written to the editor of the Times Ledger bringing to their attention the problem with the rush for land by developers. They claim that many families have actually decided to move out of the area due to the horrible overdeveloping going on. The bigger problem is that while North Flushing was scheduled to be Rezoned in order to protect the original structure of the neighborhood, in fact other area have been successfully rezoned while North Flushing residents are still waiting. This particular article caught my attention because I'm actually a resident of Flushing, and while I don't particularly reside in North Flushing, I have noticed around the area the problem which they were alluding too. Just two blocks from my house developers bought two properties and turned it into one big four family house. As I kept scrolling down the page, I kept seeing other articles about places here in Queens and I couldn't help but think "oOo... I know where that is" overall, I find this to be a very interesting site... Anyway, see you all in class

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