Island
Living 47: Don't Dump on The Rock
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
Back home now,
Las Vegas behind me, the first official day of spring
raw, chilly and wet here on Staten Island. Across
the hills and valley out my back windows the branches
of the trees remain bare, and the birds haven’t
begun to nest and sing. But I have the green tips
of bulbs forcing themselves through the wet earth
of my almost-restored back garden, new leaves imminent
on my hedges along the front fence, and it seems
as if the place that Wu Tang Clan calls “The
Rock” is about to bust out all over. Fastest
growing borough in the entire city, according to
the new national census. Population up fifteen percent
since 1990. With particular growth across the North
Shore, my home turf, and a significant expansion
of this area’s African American, Hispanic,
and Asian populations. Welcome to you all, I say;
this place needs you. Help make it thrive and throb
with life again; it’s been stuck in the doldrums
way too long.
Down the hill
from me, between my home and the Stapleton Houses,
they’ve almost completed a large new residential
complex for seniors sponsored by St. Vincent’s
Hospital, due to open later this year. I’ve
seen them build it from the bottom up, and it makes
a fine addition to the neighborhood, in my opinion;
we can use some concentrated maturity and experience
around these parts. It stands where, years ago,
I watched local kids play little-league baseball
on summer weekends. I like to imagine the psychic
residue of that young athletic energy seeping up
from the ground and wandering through the apartments
and corridors and recreation areas of this new red-brick
building, inflitrating and charging the collective
unconscious of the elderly residents with childhood’s
diamond dreams.
What’s
going on here has certainly begun to draw unusual
attention from other quarters. Sunday’s New
York Times, which as a rule pays little attention
to this furthest corner of the metropolis, had at
least three stories on Staten Island -- one relating
to the census, of course, and another predictably
addressing the closing of the Fresh Kills Landfill.
Long overdue, to say the least, the shutting down
of that monumental eyesore and biohazard. This resulted
not from any long-standing goodwill toward Staten
Island or good faith from the city government (though
Giuliani did help on this) but instead from patient
persistence -- not to mention petitions, lawsuits,
and the threat of secession -- on the part of island
residents and their elected representatives. Putting
a permanent halt to the growth of the world’s
largest garbage heap became Staten Island’s
version of the Velvet Revolution, the peaceful,
bloodless overthrow of the communist regime by the
Czechs and Slovaks in the late ‘80s.
Do you suppose
that, now that the city’s other boroughs no
longer can dump on us literally, its residents will
stop doing so verbally? The disdain for Staten Islanders
and the eco-betrayal of the island by the rest of
the city that the landfill represented for half
a century now symbolizes a debt the city owes us,
as well as a wound, literal and symbolic, that will
take years to heal. And hugs and air-kisses won’t
do the job, I can assure you.
While in Vegas,
I got to hear the great Nigerian playwright (and
Nobel Prize-winner) Wole Soyinka speak on what he
calls the “theology of reconciliation”
now rampant in South Africa and other parts of that
ravaged continent. “No reconciliation without
restitution,” he proposed. And that’s
what I say to the Manhattanites and Brooklynites
and other New Yorkers suddenly cozying up to The
Rock and assuming that, with no effort on their
part, all is forgiven. Make things right and we
may forgive. Stay on your good behavior and we might
forget. But remember: In 1858 we burned down the
quarantine station forced on us by the city government.
We can do it again. Don’t dump on The Rock.
The third Staten
Island story I found in the Times last Sunday
obliquely concerned that historic event, and referred
to it briefly in reporting the discovery of a 150-year-old
quarantine-station cemetery under a section of the
St. George municipal parking lot, where the New
York City Dormitory Authority (don’t ask me
where that name came from) has initiated the construction
of a new borough courthouse and a parking garage.
In a timeline for the quarantine station, the paper
of record noted that after almost 60 years of peaceful
protest against the periodic infections of previously
healthy Staten Islanders traced to the quarantine
station, the island’s outraged citizenry finally
took matters in hand and torched the pestilential
hospital buildings.
The city papers
dubbed this uprising “The Sepoy Rebellion,”
naming it for a world-famous 1857 struggle between
the oppressed people of India and the colonizing
British Empire. The analogy remains apt. And it’s
not coincidental, by any means, that the Staten
Island poetry collective to which I belong has adopted
with pride (and a sense of local history) the name
of The Sepoy Rebellion. Don’t dump on The Rock
-- or you’ll have me, J. J. Hayes, Marguerite
Maria Rivas, and Wil Wynn to answer to.
Speaking of
poetry: I’ve just received notice that I’ve
been selected for a Council for the Arts and Humanities
for Staten Island Performing Arts Award, to make
possible the premiere on Staten Island of a multimedia
live-performance version of a project called ”Spine,”
my collaboration (as a writer and performer of my
own texts) with the Finnish photographer Nina Sederholm
and the Finnish composer Mikko Hassinen. This represents
my first grant ever for my creative activities,
so I'm stoked. Don't know which is more welcome
-- the funds that’ll make possible the staging
of the piece, the opportunity to perform it in full
here on my home turf, or the recognition. But I’m
delighted that it’s come from my own community.
We’re planning a June debut; place, date, and
time not yet set. I’ll post notice of performances
here, and the Advance and COAHSI Newsletter
will list it as well, so keep your eyes peeled.
It’s great
to be home. See you around.
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©
Copyright 2001 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
By permission of the author and Image/World
Syndication Services,
P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002
USA.
