Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 11, 1991)
M r« . F ra n c e s U n iv e r s ity Eugene, 97403 S c h o e n -N e w s p a p e r ai O re g o n Roc L ib r O re g o n BSERYER PO RTI September 11,1991 "The Eyes and Ears o f The Community" Volumn XXI, Number 37 25<P Dance Theatre of Harlem Comes to Portland in 1992 Courtesy of the New York Times _ 0° My Mind __ ‘ A. M. ROSENTHAL Support A Toe Shoe Who was that standing and cheer ing, so full of pleasure and happiness? I Why, it was all of us, everybody in the huge ballroom, hundreds of us. And what were we cheering and hug ging ourselves about? The children, of course, and the young adult artists, but also some thing we had forgotten how to cheer and cherish — all the tale.it and cre ativity, bounce, zest and desire of New York, the great city of New York. You heard me: the great city of New York. It happened at a benefit. Can you believe that? Now everybody knqws that benefits are necessary. Where else is the money going to come from for this philanthropy or that cause? Particularly now, when the govern ment — every one of them, city, state, Federal — is cutting back to the bone and philanthropies, like hospitals or schools for talented children, or causes, such things as human rights or trees, will have to go, just too bad, if you don’t kick in yourself. Yes, but benefits have to be weari some. Everybody knows that too. It is some kind of a law, and it is very useful. It prevents people at the bene fit from getting above themselves just because they can afford a ticket or a table. Boredom is the great lev- eler, uniting everybody in the room — donors, beneficiaries and waiters. This benefit was on 34th street. Testing for Aids Twenty-three-year-old Kimberly Bergalis is dying. She’ll be the first American to die o f AIDS after being infected by her dentist Four other people contracted AIDS from the same Florida dentist, David Acer, who died last year. Meanwhile, dozens of medical woik- ers have been infected by their patients in the pastdecade. These incidents have ignited a raging debate over HIV test ing: Should patients have the right to know if their doctor or dentist is HIV positive? Do health-care workers have the right to know the same about their patients? In July, the Centers for Disease Control recommended that health-care workers who test positive for the AIDS virus tell their patients. This summer, the U.S. Senate voted to send HIV positive health care workers to jail if they know they have AIDS but con tinue to treat patients without telling them. This measure isn’t law yet, but critics fear that mandatory testing is on its way, invading privacy and sending the untruthful message that HIV-in fected people are highly contagious. Critics of testing believe the best way to protect public health is by focusing on better infection control procedures. How great is the risk of doctor- patient AIDS transmission? How can the public be protected from irrespon sible health-care workers? Should all hospital patients be routinely screened? Arc there alternatives to mandatory AIDS testing? What do YOU think? Join Jack Faust for this discussion on Sunday, September 22, 1991 from 6:00-7:00 p.m. For seat reservations, call Frank Mungcam, Alison Highbergcr of Liza McQuade at 231-4620. Guests should plan to arrive at the KATU studios (21st & N.E. Sandy Blvd.) between 5- 5:15 p.m. The public is welcome, but reservations arc required. which is nowhere — south of usual benefit country, but not south enough for SoHo chic. It was in the Manhat tan Center Ballroom, long closed but now prettied up, fit for the honor of receiving and displaying the beauty and genius of the Dance Theater of Harlem, for which the benefit was organized. The DTH is a dance troupe, a dance school, and it is an inspiration. Under Arthur Mitchell and his staff, it in spires children to value themselves enough to absorb the relentless disci plines of art. Then it teaches them to dance in such a way as to enrich their lives, and the souls of those who watch them. Unhappily, New Yorkers do not get to watch them enough. Things are getting tighter for this glory of New York, as it is for the other glories of New York — the other talent-schools, performing troupes, museums, li braries, concert halls without which this would not be a place worth vlslt- Cheer and sunburst in the great city. ing, and certainly not a place worth actually inhabiting. Naturally, these are the first to go in times of budget-cutting. The city stands to lose scores of millions in ticket and tourist money, but that’s how it goes. Fortunately, New Yorkers like Gayfryd Steinberg and E ’izabeth Ross Johnson Kennan, co-chairmen of the DTH evening, find it difficult to see the cost benefit of allowing the city to commit cultural suicide. But then they are not economists or gov ernment officials. Some of the girls and boys who once danced at DTH have become ballet stars or managers. Others have become executives or doctors. Some of them testified on video that the discipline and self-mastery ’.hey learned at DTH stayed with them always and were part of their success in life. That is obviously true. But the point is not that DTH turns all its young sters into impresarios, CEO’s or brain surgeons. It teaches children growing up in mean streets to find value in themselves, which of course is essential to being of any value to anybody else. Also, it teaches them to dance like crazy. 1 do not know the terminology bal let critics would use to describe what we saw but to me the whole perform ance was a dance of growth. Through the choreography, very small chil dren grew into somewhat larger chil dren, who became young adult danc ers, who became principal dancers and Broadway stars, and then they were dancing together, all separate and all part of each other, in elegant ballet or shaking the place with stomp, as life and art moved them In the darkened ballroom, it was a suO' burst, an hour or so of sunburst that was pure, total New York. Please, don’t write to me telling me 1 am too old, too well paid, to be sentimental or too whatever to admit how horrible, poor and stenchy New York has become. I know, I know.* 1 But, listen, I also know a sunburst when 1 see one. So call or write the Dance Theater of Harlem, 466 West 152d Street, New York, N.Y. 10031, or phone 212-967 3470. With very little money, you can support a toe shoe or give a whole, year of them to a dancing child. □ I Parents Face School Daze, Part II by Prof. McKinley Burt PDC and Housing Authority of Portland to Undertake Second Joint Project; Will Rehabilitate Cambridge Court Apartments The Portland Development Com mission (PDC), pending final approval by Commissioners at their monthly meeting September 11th, will make a $391,000 Investor Rehabilitation Loan (IRL) to the Housing Authority of Port land (HAP) to renovate the Cambridge Court Apartments at 5224 N. Vancou ver Avenue. It is the second joint project PDC will have undertaken with HAP. The first was Rosenbaum Plaza, which was completed in 1978. The Cambridge Court Apartment building is a 20 unit complex of two bedroom apartments. Upon completion, 14 unoccupied units will be rented to clients of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Homeless Families Program. This program includes Section 8 rent subsidies as well as funding to provide special services such as counseling and child care on site for residents. HAP will manage the property, located in the Humboldt neighborhood in N.E. Portland. Project financing will include Pri vate Lender Participation Agreement (PLPA) funds from Security Pacific Bank. HAP will invest energy rebates and private resource funds to meet the difference in project financing. Total renovation costs will be $451,737. Renovations will include complete electrical upgrades, total renovation of the kitchens and bathrooms and con version of the basement to meeting rooms and program offices. Indoor and outdoor play areas for children will I also be constructed. The architect on Sonda Wadsworth, Urban Entertainment Coalition, and Donna Walker-Collins, Associate Director of Marketing for the Dance Theatre of Harlem have teamed up to promote the Dance Theatre of Harlem visit to the Northwest next year. ______ ___ the project will be William Wilson, AIA, and the contractor will be Walsh Construction. Under a separate request, the Commission is also expected to ap prove a $184,500 IRL for acquisition and rehabilitation of an 11-unit apart m ent com plex at 2530 N.E. Killingsworth. The building features one-bedroom apartments and one-and two-bedroom townhouses. Project financing for this project will include PLPA funds from Security Pacific Bank and personal investment by the building owner, Douglas McCabe. McCabe will manage the property as well as perform the needed renova tions on the project. The apartments, located in the Concordia neighborhood, will provide additional low-and mod erate-income housing in Northeast Portland. PDC’s loans for both the Cambr idge Court and McCabe projects will include funding from the City’s Bureau of Community Development PDC’s Investor Rchabililation Loan program provides technical and finan cial assistance for rehabilitation of resi dential rental properly where the prop erty needs repairs in order to comply with local codes. Residential proper ties are to be offered at affordable rents and occupied primarily by low-to moderate-income families. The Portland Development Com mission is the City’s urban renewal, housing and economic development agency. _____ If last week’s article emphasized the observation taht “ eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” (or education), then today’s message is ‘parent initia tive’. Or in terms of that old street directive, “ You’ve got to bring some to get some.” This means taking advantage of any and every opportunity to enhance and support y our child’s learning struc ture. Considering the cutbacks in serv ices I cited, it is more imperative than ever that the parent participate in those formal groups already organized io bring parent, teacher and pupil into a produc tive intcrfacc-nol only the PTA, but those less structured vehicles for their interaction inititiated by the admini stration at many schools. You need to be seen, heard and involved (you have got to ‘show up’). But beyond this, the parents need to bring to the process their own in sights and innovations if they are to shore up a faltering structure. Certainly, the daily paper and television arc re flecting a nationwide apprehension in respect to our schools. The point is that both media are going beyond hand- wringing and arc citing examples con trary to the trend-from Schools of Excellence to the techniques of gifted teachers who are delivering quality education against all odds. So these are times when the parent needs to be on top of things, reading and assessing this pricless information, looking for an clcment(s) that could make the differ ence right in the local school. For instance, how many saw that "Learning In America” documentary last week on Public Television, Chan nel 10. There was a wealth of the type of educational resource I just cited. It was an cycopcning exposition of the people, ‘attitudes’ and techniques that arc making a big difference in some parts of the country-like moving trom ■1 a 25th to 97th percentile in math or reading. If you missed this program, get out your VCR; it is running again at 10 a.m. on Sunday, September 15 on Channel 10. Don’t miss it I am quite sure you will perceive the possibilities for local applications. A parent called me Friday because she “ sensed a definite concern” in my comment on the dearth of African American Science and mathematics tcachers-or their full utilization. Point ing out a “ horrible” lack of science and enviromental orientation and commitment at her daughter s elemen tary school, she and other minority parents HAVE ORGANIZED THEM SELVES to take on a lackadasical administration this Fall. They have asked me to pass on several goodies to you other parents. (They put in a lot of hours at the public library downtown this summer, surveying the literature and publications of Corporate America and the Education Associations and Government Agcncies-The group found $15,000 worth the resources in two months. Free!). Try these. Bird Box, Phillips Pe troleum Company, 16C4 Phillips Build ing, Bartlesville, Oklahoma 74004. This program provides bird nests of ‘recycled paper for the little kids to take home as part an Environmental Education Pro gram, “ Because as life unfolds inside these cardboard walls, so too docs an understanding and respect for the wonder of it all.” And of course there is IBM, MacDonalds, Apple, The Blazers, General Electric and so on. In other words there are those parents who arc going to "enhance and support” their child’s learning-and there arc those who arc going to wait in vain for the uncaring and the downright inept in the administration to do it for them. Won t happen! I hope that you arc raking notice that where I usually begin a scries from a “ gloom and doom” position as I did last week in this ca se-a breakdown in that critical, hard won structure created for the enchancement of minority edu cation-just consider that I have to get your attention, and that I usually come forward with solutions and remedies that can turn the tide. WE CAN EM POWER OURSELVES! In this con text we want to be on top o f things in respect to some very excellent pro grams where there should be no thought of cuts or attrition; TAG, MESA and similars. Also, there is a super excellent program run by the Urban League of Portland, Russell St. and N.E. Wil- laims: Whitney M. Young, Jr. Educa tional and Cultural Center. The level of tutoring and other afterschool support for our youngsters is the best in the city (3 to 8 pm Monday through Thursday; vail Gloria Phillips, Program Assistant @ 280-2600). I lr>ve the depth of their library (understandable) and wish to emphasize that this program deserves all the support we can provide. There are other good programs I have not mentioned here and parents need to get over to their schools, work on com- mitees and even visit that great orange administration building’ to avail them selves first hand of the data and specific informational services. Yes, it is true that 520,000 children enrolled this fall in Oregon’s finan cially strapped education system -and that we don’t know how this academic vs vocational tracking ploy is going to play out for minority kids, and we are cognizant that further cuts are coming- -but, nevertheless we arc going to have to take the offensive as indicated. When we think of our commitment think of the Latin name for the Redwood Tree, Sequoia Scmpervirens, “ Everlasting, Evcrliving!” I