Results tagged “cares”

Now that you've torn through your presents and are making room for new gifts and purchases -- why not give a little back? Green Brooklyn reminds us that we have until December 31st to make tax-deductible donations (to claim on 2007 income taxes). They were particularly moved by the amount of work Habitat for Humanity has been doing for Brooklyn, they just completed their 9th home in the area -- all "constructed using state-of-the-art, eco-friendly building materials, like cabinets partially made of sunflower seeds and counter tops made of recycled glass."

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures!

THEATER: System of Units, a performance group from Siberia, begin their site-specific collaboration with the local “interventionist performance group” TRYST outside today starting at 12:00pm, when the temperature will transcend 90°. So if you think it’s stinking hot, just wait ‘til you see how the Siberians hold up in this six-hour performance. Called Security Zone, the two groups will create "a mock construction site that plays with perceptions of labor and public space, expectations of daily interactions, and attitudes toward leisure and work.” (Part of the excellent Sitelines series.) - John Del Signore

Despite the warm winter weather, coat drives have not lost momentum this season in comparison to coat sales.

The 25 year old program was started by New York magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene, who also got James Beard involved, and Citymeals on Wheels supports agencies that provide "weekend, holiday, emergency and weekday meals to homebound elderly New Yorkers who can no longer shop or cook for themselves." Greene told NY1, "How can I as a restaurant critic, eating the way I eat, living the life I live, accept that there are people on my block who don't have enough to eat?"



You can donate to Citymeals on Wheels. (Earlier this week, the NY Times had a feature about Citymeals on Wheels.) NY1 also noted that 400 volunteers from God's Love We Deliver were working to bring holiday meals to men, women and children with HIV, AIDS, cancer and other illnesses - here's more information about GLWD.



And if you haven't gotten around to donating in some way, big or small, this season, don't worry, there are always opportunities. For instance, you can still donate a coat through NY Cares Coat Drive until December 31. City Harvest's canned food drive ends in mid-January. And here are some more ways to volunteer, via the city's volunteer website, Volunteer NYC.

1. Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a "car in the water / DOA" in Queens, an unstable building in Fort Greene, and an "unusual crime" at Laguardia ("PLANE RETURNING TO LAGUARDIA AIRPORT-US AIR. PILOT WAS HANDED A THREATENING NOTE. --BNN.")
2. The Times has a touching story about a cave-dwelling homeless man in the Bronx-- together with a nun, he delivers holiday food to needy families in the area.
3. A man took an upskirt cameraphone picture of a 14 year old girl at a Long Island mall, but luckily her aunt snatched the phone away.
4. Fox News says Rosie gave three times more money to charity than Donald Trump in 2004-2005, despite the fact that he has "billions" of dollars more money than she does.
5. Al Sharpton says that Sean Bell's blood alcohol level is "irrelevant" to the shooting case, because "There was no shooting by any of the victims, including Sean Bell." But police are saying that it is relevant, because Sean Bell was behind the wheel of a car.
6. A man, James Coletta, who tried to intervene between a former detective and retired cop who were fighting in Staten Island died from injuries he sustained (he fell onto a brick planter). Coletta refused medical attention at the scene; now his death is ruled a homicide.
7. There are 59 construction projects in one square mile of lower Manhattan - don't even think about driving around there
8. This was easily the most disturbing picture we've received on Gothamist Contribute this month. At this time of year, the homeless in our city need your help-- consider donating to the New York Cares coat drive.

October 26: The Caffeine Question

There is a lot to be said about Warren Buffett's announcement that most of his billions-of-dollars fortune will be given to charities, with particular focus on giving about $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And we hope his actions, as well as those of the Gateses, reverbate through billionaire and millionaire circles, because giving back to the world that made them rich makes sense - tax incentives or no. For instance, when Ted Turner donated $1 billion to the U.N. in stock, he said, "When I got my statement in January. I was worth $2.2 billion. Then I got another statement in August that said I was worth $3.2 billion. So I figure its only nine months' earnings, who cares?"

THEATER: The Ohio Theater is the site of two of summer's best play festivals, and the first, Clubbed Thumb's eleventh Summerworks, started yesterday with Anne Washburn's I Have Loved Strangers, "in which true prophets, false prophets, and non-prophets battle for the salvation of ancient New York." On the company's website http://www.clubbedthumb.org/ you can do some "research" before going, via various eyebrow-raising links; or you can just rely on the winning trifecta of excellent track records: of the Ohio, of Clubbed Thumb, and of Washburn herself, whose play Apparition recently showed to well-deserved acclaim. Over the next weeks, two other plays will be in the festival -- Erin Courtney's Alice the Magnet, and Rachel Hoeffel's Quail -- but each is showing for only a few days, so get under the thumb while you can. - Mallory Jensen

Two new locations in the Park Slope/Windsor Terrace neighborhoods of Brooklyn have discovered that giving is one way to bring in the people.

Today the Department of Education introduced new school hours that will give extra time for students who need tutoring. Parents and pundits are wonderig why the new changes are happening in the middle of a semester, versus the calendar year or a new school years, but this just seems like the usual DoE wackiness. Plus the DoE decided that the extra school period should be 37.5 minutes long, which makes Gothamist wonder if DoE doesn't like to round up. (It's actually because the DoE is using 150 minutes a week, over four days, to devote to the tutoring.)

The ballyhooed big snow did arrive, and the snowflakes are yooge. They are like millions of little clumpy chunks of Gothamist's "school's closed" dreams, but, alas, we have no car and live in a city with a great, working (for now) mass transit system. And, besides, if we were NYC public school students, NYC schools are open so no sledding in the park for us. We saw salt being dumped on streets yesterday, but will that be enough for the expected six inches we're getting luckily? (Actually, we're likely to get two to four inches.) The snow is supposedly to start melting tomorrow afternoon, which could mean an icy Saturday night. Snow boots and layered clothing are a must if you're traveling outside. And this is a good time to remind you about the NY Cares Coat Drive - donated a gently worn coat to someone who really needs one.

While we're not thrilled that the movie version of the musical Rent was shot mostly in San Francisco, Gothamist strongly urges you to go to Bryant Park at lunchtime to hear the cast members of the movie sing songs from the musical in a Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS event. Most of the musical's performers are reprising their roles - Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Herredia, Tracie Thoms, Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin (we love you, Detective Green) - plus Rosario Dawson (playing Mimi, the role originated by Daphne Rubin-Vega). They performed on the Today Show, and damn it, we get tear up when we hear "Seasons of Love."

What better way to get involved with volunteering than participating in NY Cares Day this Saturday, October 23. NY Cares has been sending volunteers to help tutor kids, organize libraries, teach seniors how to use computers, and on NY Cares Day, over 8,000 people will be helping out at city schools and raising money for them.

Some terrible and just plain strange crime stories involving older New Yorkers:

We found this NY1 story about Fulton Fish Market purveyors donating fish to the homeless really great. The fish are all fresh (one purveyor says, "The sea provides so much product sometimes you can�t sell it all"), and they are donated to 12 food pantries in the city. A few different agencies to donate your time or money: City Harvest, New York City Rescue Mission, and NY Cares. You can also find volunteer positions via Volunteer Match.

Hmm. Gothamist certainly supports a notion of community, being a part of a New York we can be proud of, and volunteer work. But no way are we volunteering for the convention - we still have beef with the GOP for the whole cruise ship thing. Full page ads for NYC2004 are running in the city's newspapers (click the image above to see the full ad), and there will be outdoor ads as well. Gothamist does think this picture of an elephant trying to eat Ed Koch is pretty sweet. [Slightly related: Gothamist on Ed Koch's movie reviews.] The NY Times's Michael Slackman writes about the effort, "Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican who has been cautious about appearing too close to President Bush, and Mr. Koch, a Democrat who has endorsed Mr. Bush for re-election, sounded as if they were trying to persuade New Yorkers to behave when the Republicans come to town."