By Bob Cooley From the cramped alleyway converted into her shop, The Silversmith, at 184 ¾ West 4th St., Ruth Kuzub was a quaint artist and curiosity to the tourists who flooded the neighborhood every year. But to us, she’s a legend with an incredible story who made an indelible impact on the history, culture
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The More We Learn
By Julie M, Miwa Ph.D. Many of us make New Year’s resolutions every year, only to break them. So why is it so hard to change? Neuroscientists have found a gene, lynx1, that could add important clues to our understanding of our learning potential. Many of us, as human beings, seek to improve and grow.
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A Quarantine Episode: The Afterlife
By Calogero Salvo Six feet of separation. That’s how close we can be to each other in order to avoid infection. The recommendation that six feet of separation can prevent a virus’s spread stems from research conducted in 1890 by Carl Flügge, a German bacteriologist, who demonstrated that a microbe-containing droplet couldn’t travel further than
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AIDS, Now COVID
By William Self “I felt sick.” “I went to the Doctor and was tested.” “I’m positive and there’s nothing they can do.” “They think I’ll recover.” We heard these words very often during 2020 and the current COVID-19 pandemic. But they were first heard in the early 1980s; only then there was no recovery, only
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An AIDS Foundation Weathers COVID
By Susan R. Miller In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has mirrored the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In both cases people were, and still are, dying of a disease that seemingly came out of nowhere. For COVID-19 researchers, as it was for HIV/AIDS researchers, it has been an all-hands-on-deck scenario to treat and
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Broadway
By Gordon Hughes On, or approximately, March 7th, 2020 eight musicals I was involved in closed down. Went dark. Curtains not going up nightly. Not sure how else to put it. This was the end of theatre as we knew it. Counting my paper route, I have been employed/working steadily since 1953. That’s 68 years,
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Opening the Heart-Mind: The Art of Zen
By Christopher Keevil What is Zen? A crocus in early spring? Evening quiet as the sun goes down? Maybe it is stilling the mind in deep meditation? Or austere practices in a monastery? After thirty years of Zen practice, I see it as training that begets openness to the truth of my life and the
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Art Therapy
By Dana Costantino Art therapy is a form of therapy in which creative expression is used to foster mental well-being and promote healing. There is a belief that an artist of some kind lives within all of us, and working to tap into that in a nurturing and safe setting is increasingly becoming a desired
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Global Cinema, the Newest Streaming Channel, Acquires The Lost Village
By Anthony Paradiso My father, Roger Paradiso, made an award-winning film called The Lost Village, that premiered at Cinema Village in 2018. The film appears on the newest streaming platform on the block, Global Cinema Online. Another film of Roger’s, The Queen of Camelot, appeared in the “Global Non-violent Film Festival,” which only accepts documentaries
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Nonsense or a Paradigm Shift
Abstracted from “A Scientists View of Almost Everything” by Mark M Green A scientist is a skeptical searcher for truth. I’m one of them and therefore find it very difficult to accept the kinds of “nonsense” to be found on web sites of people like John M. Carroll (https://johnmcarrollhealer.com/) with claims of special powers of
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Rethinking Church and Religion in a Post-Pandemic World
By Rev. Alexis Lillie Associate Pastor, Church of the Village For the first time in the country’s recorded history, the majority of Americans do not currently belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque. This cultural shift is due in large part to an increase of Americans with no religious preference—the so-called “dones” and “nones”—according to
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Covid Clinicians, Like HIV/AIDS Caregivers, Suffer Untreated PTSD
By Robert Kroll Long after the advent of palliatives for AIDS and anti-retroviral drugs, University of Maryland virologist and HIV/AIDS specialist Dr. Carla Alexander was having Thanksgiving Day dinner at a colleague’s house in San Francisco. At the dinner table, the host told Dr. Alexander, “You are sitting next to a woman who lived through
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The Story of Michael Konnon: How the Son of Greek Immigrants Founded One of the World’s First HIV/AIDS Specialty Pharmacies
By Anastasia Kaliabakos The 1980’s marked the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in New York City. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, commonly referred to as AIDS, is a chronic condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. HIV is a sexually transmitted infection that interferes with the body’s ability to fight diseases, leaving patients susceptible to
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Just Imagine
By Ed Chinery Last year at this time, when quarantine was only a couple of months old, I couldn’t seem to escape the frightening voice in my head from thirty-some years ago—“Who’s gonna get sick? Who’s gonna die?”. Almost every day I had to consciously stop myself from tumbling into a perversely seductive spiral. It
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Artwork by Machine Dazzle
Machine Dazzle has been dazzling stages via costumes, sets, and performance since his arrival in New York in 1994. Notably, he has collaborated with Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, Chris Tanner, Soomi Kim, and Bombay Ricky, Prototype Festival, Opera Philadelphia, and Spiegleworld. In September 2019, Dazzle premiered his new
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Mom and Her HIV+ Son
By an Anonymous Mother November 21, 2010 was like any other day. Two of my three children came for a visit. We were so happy to see them. After a day of working outside we’d gone upstairs to change into clean clothes and within a few minutes, there was a knock on the door and
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Black Queer Here: Saint Pauli Murray
Interview by Dee Dee Perry Throughout Pauli Murray’s earthly journey (1910–1985), the activist carried many labels: Black, Queer, Attorney, Professor, Poet, and Priest are only a few. Murray, a vocal African-American feminist who publicly identified as a woman, privately struggled with both sexuality and the confines of gender identity, and unsuccessfully sought gender-affirming care. During
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Full Stop, Full Disclosure
By Maggie Kneip After my husband died of full-blown AIDS any talk of him came to a full-stop. I was reminded of this recently, and how far we’d come since, when I received an invitation to a Zoom from his former office. In the late ‘80’s John was a rising star journalist, I was a
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The Need for HIV Screening and Treatment Behind the Prison Wall
By Aakash Shah and James McGreevey The contours of his expression relaxed. The wrinkles on his face grew less tense. “Doc, I didn’t even know that I had it until I got there, but I am so glad I found out,” Michael sighed. “I was one of the lucky ones who did.” The “it” Michael
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A POCs on This House: African American Mistrust of the US Healthcare System
By Nathanael L. Holley Sometimes, I have moments when I really want to get a COVID-19 vaccine. I say to myself, Nate, this is science, if you want to be a part of the solution and not the problem, you need to do this. Then there are other moments when I see CEOs and other
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Knowledge Is Power: Power Is Kindness
By Dale Atkins, Ph.D. When I think about AIDS 40 years ago, I’m sad, of course. Like so many of us, I lost good friends far too soon. As a psychologist, I’m also sad when I recall how tough it was for people to be kind during those early days of AIDS. And now that
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The Day the Village Stood Still: Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan
By Roger Paradiso A little over one year ago, the Village was shut down due to the worst pandemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic. I have written about the mom-and-pops in the West Village in this series of articles, published with the support of WestView’s George Capsis. It is hard to believe that all five
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Andrew Berman, Village Activist Extraordinaire
By Carol Yost Andrew Berman, executive director of the nonprofit Village Preservation (formerly known as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation), has an impressive resume. In his time at Village Preservation, the organization has: Helped secure landmark protections for over 1,250 buildings in our neighborhood. Helped secure zoning protections for nearly 100 blocks. Secured
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Police Reform: NYC Breakthrough
By Brian J Pape, AIA The city’s newly adopted laws to combat sex traffickers, but avoid entangling their victims or those selling sex in the criminal justice system, have gotten the brunt of publicity about police, it seems. But against a background of horrendous events nationwide, involving various police departments, we recently got news of
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Raising Up Womens’ Artistry, Uniting the West Village with Global Collaborators
By Hannah Reimann One of the most striking silver linings of our pandemic time is the power of women taking on everything from essential city work, childcare, fatal and near-fatal illness, nurturing those suffering from racial injustice, providing domestic balance and the ability to create new artistic expression when it appeared all had been lost
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Your Guide to the Ballet Barre Practice
By Dana Jean Costantino Ballet Barre has quickly become one of the most sought after and popular forms of working out, both body and mind. As a former Ballerina and as someone currently practicing Yoga, I wanted to dive deeper into learning more about what this particular workout has to offer and bring that information
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Lifetalk with Roberta Russell: Healing Through Alliance
By Roberta Russell I devoted much of the ‘80s to writing, and simultaneously living, a book about how to have a mutually therapeutic alliance—RD Laing & Me: Lessons in Love—with the late famed Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, MD. Partly in the service of that goal we took MDMA, also known as Ecstasy. It was a
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A Modern Dive into Antiquity
By Anastasia Kaliabakos The Titanic. The RMS Lusitania. The USS Arizona. All of these are famous ships tragically destroyed, their debris and broken parts submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Shipwrecks, although devastating, serve as a sort of time capsule through which we, benefitted by modern technology and equipment, are able to gain insight
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Will We Ever See the End of Hunger in America?
By Kieran Loughney The smell of my mom’s apple pie baking in the oven. Many of us have that one childhood encounter with food that lodges itself in our consciousness, and when recalled, snaps us back to home and family. Some unfortunate children among us never have that pleasurable experience. For such kids, there exists
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What Makes HIV+ Gay Men Open or Private About Their Status?
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. Each person’s medical history is personal and private. At the same time, it’s always patients who charge the leading edge of medical innovation. What factors are at play when a person decides how public or private they will be about the medical challenges they face? My goal is to try to
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The Farm Supply
By Jeff Hodges In 1990, when my daughter was four, we started frequenting the Carmel Farm Supply on our weekends away from Greenwich Village. The proprietor, Red, was a tall, striking figure with red hair, red beard, cowboy hat, and a necklace made from raccoon penis bones. We soon discovered that he had an avuncular
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The First Time
By Keith Michael Spoiler alert: This is not a cheerful tale. On Friday, March 26th, while I looked for migrating spring birds in the Willow Oaks across Perry Street, Millie, my irascible corgi muse through more than nine years of monthly articles here in WestView, took her morning walk with me for the last time.
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Joan’s Shanghai
By Joan Klyhn Joan’s Shanghai is a memoir of a childhood in Shanghai in the ‘30’s and ’40s of the 20th century. I am primarily writing it for myself, extending it to my friends, and now to the many people who have shown themselves fascinated with this period in the past. Falling Over in the
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SUPERHERO X: Life or Death in Apartment Buildings
By Robert Kroll Life in an apartment building is tough; it’s treacherous, death-defying. Apartment residents are literally at the mercy of all the other people who live, sublet, and visit in their building. If one person leaves a burning cigarette or a candle alight, you could become a crispy critter. If one person leaves the
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Epigenetics: Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
Abstracted from “A Scientists View of Almost Everything” by Mark M Green I’ve often wondered if my compunction to lock doors and to be thinking of the dire possibilities of my actions came from some experience of my childhood. Did huddling under the school classroom desks to protect our selves from an atomic bomb set
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Ramsey Clark (1927-2021): America’s Gandhi
By Bruce Poli Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General for LBJ’s Great Society (1967-69), author and supervisor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and one of the largest and most prominent figures in the development of civil rights legislation in America, died at age 93 on Friday, April
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Two Plays and a Journal by Julian Beck
By Robert Heide In the summer of 1957 the founders of the Living Theatre Julian Beck and his wife Judith Malina went to jail with members of the Catholic Worker including Dorothy Day. They were protesting civil defense drills in New York City that they believed were held as a preparation for (nuclear) war that
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Edith Stephen: From Sound into Silence
By J. Taylor Basker We lost our Westbeth icon, the dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Edith Stephen, on March 18th at 6:55 p.m. Her friend and neighbor, jazz guitarist Steve Berger, was holding her hand; there were six of us with her. My dog put his head and body flat, across from her—he knew she was gone. She was
