News Roundup: Faster Bus Lanes, Volunteering on Thanksgiving, etc.

News from the past week:

• Radio Rookies 10 Year Anniversary: Where Are They Now? (WNYC)
• Mapping Main Street: Flushing, Queens (Urban Omnibus)
• Answers About Community Philanthropy (City Room)
• Service Announcements Serve Cycling Rules With Humor (City Room)
• Artful way of dealing with graffiti (Queens Courier)
• Fast Bus-Only Lanes Headed To 1st And 2nd Avenues (Gothamist)
• More kosher soup kitchens aiding the newly poor as recession impact deepens (Jewish Week via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Thanksgiving volunteering (Time Out New York)

Happy Independent Bookstore Week!

This week is the first ever NYC Independent Bookstore Week. It’s a great time to pay a visit to your friendly neighborhood bookstore, or to discover new ones around the city. Coordinated by the Independent Booksellers of NYC, the week includes dozens of author readings, signings, and other exciting events including:

• “State by State” reading and “Neighborhood by Neighborhood” essay contest at WORD in Greenpoint
• Jonathan Safran Foer reads from “Eating Animals” at Community Bookstore in Park Slope
• Fall Picture Book Parade at Books of Wonder in Manhattan
• Even a photo scavenger hunt for the adventurous!

Check out the full schedule to get your literary on, and support local businesses this week!

Teams of Tech-Savvy Teens

MOUSE Squad is a program that provides training and support for middle and high school students to run computer help desks at their schools. In addition to a technical curriculum, students also receive training in career readiness, problem-solving, literacy, job etiquette, and teamwork. Sounds like the schools themselves also benefit from having a team of trained student technicians on hand to troubleshoot computer problems.

88 NYC students attended the last MOUSE Team Training event on November 7, where they participated in workshops, dismantled and reassembled a computer, and delved into HTML code. There’s no doubt these are going to be important skills for these students after they graduate, so it’s good to know this program is out there.

The next MOUSE event is a digital editing and remixing workshop that will be held on November 18.

Teachers and students: To bring the program to your school, sign up to attend an info session.

Playing with (Canned) Food

It’s that time of year again! From now until November 22 at the World Financial Center, you can ooh and ahh at sculptures made entirely out of full cans of food. It’s all part of a friendly competition called Canstruction, in which all of the building materials will be donated to City Harvest.

When visiting, bring an extra can of food to donate. But avoid sardines and tuna—those look like popular shapes for construction.

News Roundup: Housing for Veterans, Bicycle Collective, etc.

News from the past week:

• Jericho’s walls will house returning vets (Daily News)
• On Holiday, Considering the Plight of Homeless Veterans (City Room)
• Two Harlem Streets Named for Civil Rights Leaders (City Room)
• Art Show Shines Light on Sex Trafficking’s Victims (City Room)
• One endpoint of the NYC waste stream (Freshkills Park Blog)
• High Line-inspired projects (Freshkills Park Blog)
• Hate crime collision (Indypendent via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Two-Year Colleges, Swamped, No Longer Welcome All (New York Times)
• Cuts to After-School Programming Draws Protest (Mount Hope Monitor)
• Students Transform Senior Center Garden (Mount Hope Monitor)
• Band of Bicycles (The Leaflet)
• UWNYC Launches BoardServeNYC (New York Nonprofit Press)

Brooklyn Residents to Team Up for Solar Energy

Solar energy can reduce electricity costs and your impact on the environment, but the initial investment can be huge, and the technology and installation process can be confusing. That’s why One Block Off the Grid (1BOG) is trying to make the transition to solar both cheaper and easier.

With the 1BOG model, residents of the same city can team up to get group discounts on photovoltaic equipment. They receive guidance on which technology to use and who to hire to install the systems in their homes. Simply knowing that hundreds of other members of your community are going through the same thing probably helps a lot too!

1BOG is focusing on a few cities at a time, and they haven’t quite made it to the east coast yet, but Brooklyn is on the list of future solar cities! Unfortunately, it’ll mostly only apply to homeowners, not renters. But if you’re buddies with your landlord, it could be worth a try.

News Roundup: Bake Sale Ban, Professional Network for Jamaica, etc.

News from the past week:

• NYC Students Rally Together (NYC Private Schools Blog)
• Groups Urge Opening of Vacant Condos to the Poor (City Room)
• ‘Suspects’ Talk Back: Muslims Complain to FBI (City Limits)
• Poverty Fighters Get Their Own Consultancy (City Limits)
• Helping Spin Gold From a Pile of Garbage (New York Times)
• U.N. Special Rapporteur on housing comes to Harlem (Amsterdam News via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Jamaica Consulate in NY: Organizing a community, tapping into the Diaspora through high-technology (Carib News via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Rally held to demand passage of Student Safety Act (Weekly Thikana via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Cool Hunting Video Presents: Window Farms (Cool Hunting)

Don’t Throw It Out… Fix It!

I am officially fixated on The Fixers Collective. This is one of the most interesting mission statements I’ve ever read:

The Fixers Collective is a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending. Our goal is to increase material literacy in our community by fostering an ethic of creative caring toward the objects in our lives. The Fixers Collective seeks to displace cultural patterns that alienate us from our things, by collectively learning the skills and patience necessary to care for them. Intentionally aligning itself with forces generated in reaction to the current economic crisis, the Fixers Collective promotes a counter-ethos that values functionality, simplicity, and ingenuity and that respects age, persistence and adequacy. The Collective also encourages participants to take liberties with designated forms and purposes, resulting in mended objects that may exist both as art and within a more limited, utilitarian context.

The project grew out of an exhibition at a gallery and reading room called Proteus Gowanus, and meets on Thursdays from 6:00 to 9:00p.m. If you have an item that needs fixing, fill out a form in advance of the session (“Which aspect is broken? Guess 1. Guess 2.”).

If nothing in your life is broken (Hmmm…I wonder if they fix broken hearts?), you can become a Fixers Apprentice and be a part of the solution! And if the knowledge itself isn’t enough for you, perhaps the Fixers Apprentice Badge will be motivating.

The emphasis on mending and re-purposing objects appeals to the environmentalist in me, while the collective brainstorming appeals to the team player in me.

Hat tip: Brooklyn Based

Vote Today!

Don’t forget to vote today. The polls are open until 9:00p.m.

To find out who’s on the ballot and what they stand for, see the Campaign Finance Board’s Voter Guide. (Be sure to read the ballot proposals too!) Note that the web version has more updated information than the guide that was mailed to your house, so it’s worth checking even if you already read the print version.

To learn about your rights at the polling place, take a look at NYCLU’s Voter Information.

News Roundup: Indigenous Immigrants, Vacant Condos, etc.

News from the past week:

• Indigenous immigrants demand adult education programs (Diario de Mexico via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Condos, Condos Everywhere (The Wonkster)
• At Bronx River, an Invitation to Text the Fish (Tremont Tribune)
• A Room and Not Bored: One Path out of Shelter (City Limits)
• Enviromedia Mobile Unveils at Borough Hall (GreenBeat Brooklyn)
• Bloomberg Announces Green Jobs (Sustainable Cities Blog)
• Keeping My Fire (Entry Level Living)
• Food Advocates Envision Rooftop Gardens and Vertical Farms (City Room)
• Gay Advocates Encouraged by Hate Crimes Bill (City Room)
• Sharing a Ride Before Sharing Their Bikes (City Room)
• Across City, Weekend Rallies to Curb Climate Change (City Room)
• State Crowns Two Brooklyn Trees as Champions (City Room)