FORUM: “The Young Lords Party: 40 Years Later” with panelists Augustín Lao-Montes, Marta Moreno-Vega, Johanna Fernández, Darnell Enck-Wanzer and Andrés Torres, at Hunter College’s Faculty Dining Room, 8th floor, West Bldg., 6 p.m. Free.

FILM: “El Círculo,” a documentary about Dr. Henry Engler, a former Uruguayan guerrilla leader who was imprisoned for 13 years during his country’s military dictatorship, premieres at El Café at El Museo del Barrio, 6:30 p.m. Free, RSVP to www.elmuseo.org.

CLASSIC: Acclaimed Bolivian guitarist Piraí Vaca at Americas Society, 680 Park Ave., 7 p.m. Free.

THURSDAY 3

FLAMENCO: Chano Domínguez Quintet, a flamenco/jazz combo, presents new interpretation of the 1959 Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” at Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St., 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. shows. Cover $30. Through Sunday.

“Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo” at BAAD!

THEATER: Charles Rice-González’s “Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo,” a gay-themed Christmas comedy, returns to BAAD!, 841 Barretto St., in the Bronx. Through Saturday and Nov. 10-12. Tickets $20.

“¡Viva Pinocho!” at Pregones Theater.

 SALSA: Cita Rodríguez and her orchestra perform tribute to her late father, Pete (El Conde) Rodríguez, at Latin Tinge Thursdays, Brooklyn Crossroads Supper Club, 402 Third Ave. at Sixth St. in Park Slope, Brooklyn, 6 p.m. Tickets $5-$10, ladies free until 8 p.m. Read more..

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  By the rivers of Babylon

There we sat down and wept

When we remembered Zion.

Psalm 137

THE afternoon sun dipped low over the empty lots around Charlotte Street. There in the long shadows stood three boys against a backdrop of smashed bricks, crumpled beer cans and a busted bike wheel. Behind them, past the tall weeds of this urban prairie, loomed decrepit apartment buildings.

Yet the trio were grinning, their faces friendly, even goofy. Look closer at the picture and you can see why they smile:

A scrawny mutt’s snout peeks out from their huddle.

Thirty years ago this summer, I returned to the South Bronx, where I grew up, with a Yale diploma in one hand and a beat-up Pentax camera in the other. Raised to get a good education, become a doctor and escape, I had instead come right back to teach photography — on Charlotte Street, no less, the world’s most famous slum.

In the four years I had been away, the South Bronx had gone from anonymous to notorious, a brand name for urban decay and despair. The landscape of my childhood had vanished, its buildings abandoned, stripped and incinerated.

Private tragedies became public humiliation in 1977. Howard Cosell damned the place, declaring, “The Bronx is burning,” as the cameras showed fires flickering beyond Yankee Stadium. Looters picked clean Tremont Avenue’s stores during that summer’s blackout. President Jimmy Carter made an obligatory pilgrimage — as Ronald Reagan would during his campaign in 1980 — for a photo-op amid the rubble.

The only way I could even try to confront this confusion was to slice it up into snapshots, each frame giving the illusion of a neat answer to inexplicable questions. For five years, I wandered from Fordham Road to Mott Haven, taking thousands of pictures in parks, street fairs, stores and even empty lots.

The negatives ended up stuffed in a closet. And the South Bronx was quietly transformed in the late 1980s by community campaigns that created new homes, community gardens and smaller schools. I became a journalist and traveled to Latin America, where I confronted poverty that made New York’s worst look tame.

But I always came back to the Bronx. I have spent much of my professional life chronicling the same streets I photographed as a young man. Six years ago, I moved back for good, with my wife and son. Some people thought I was crazy; cynics swore it hadn’t changed much from the Bad Old Days of 1979.

This year, I dug out the old pictures. The images may be black and white, but to look back upon them now is to discover that their secrets are revealed in shades of gray. In a landscape that was written off as uninhabitable — if not unsalvageable — you can see creativity, faith and even a kind of innocence.

Click. In the middle of a Mott Haven street, a lone couple hugs tightly and twirls to the music of an unseen orchestra. Squeegee boys dart out among the land yachts rolling off the Deegan to cadge a quick quarter.

Click. A couple with faces etched by lines depicting a tough journey rest for a moment, she with her groceries and he with a beer. An artist fills an abandoned building with lithe torsos made from the charred wood that had choked its apartments. A blind guitarist sings boleros from a faraway island. Read more..

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         NYPD police officers stand guard outside the Riverdale Jewish Center Thursday after four men arrested in a plot to bomb two local synagogues.

 Mayor Bloomberg told worshipers at the Riverdale Jewish Center where four men were arrested in a terrorist bomb plot that they were never in danger thanks to the NYPD and FBI.

“Sadly this is just a reminder that peace is fragile and democracy is fragile and we have to be vigilant all the time,” Bloomberg said early Thursday. “The good news is that the NYPD and FBI prevented what could have been a terrible event in our city.”

Bloomberg spoke hours after the NYPD and FBI arrested four alleged terrorists who planted what they thought were explosives in a car outside the center on Independence Ave. and at the Riverdale Temple, two blocks away.

The cell’s diabolical dream was to create “a fireball that would make the country gasp,” a law enforcement source said.

The group also plotted to blow a plane out of the sky at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, Orange County, authorities charge.

The purported terror cell had 37 pounds of inert C4 explosives, Kelly said. The bogus explosives were supplied by FBI agents during the year-long investigation.

Kelly said the alleged terrorists “wanted to commit Jihad,” but added that “no one was ever at risk” because the operation that led to the arrests was “highly controlled.” Read more..

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James Cromitie, one of the men arrested in an alleged terrorism plot, was escorted by federal agents from 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan

Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, officials said. But the men did not know the bombs, obtained with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were fake.

The arrests capped what officials described as a “painstaking investigation” that began in June 2008 involving an F.B.I. agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America. As part of the plot, the men intended to fire Stinger missiles at military aircraft at the base, which is at Stewart International Airport, officials said.

“This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. The mayor was expected to appear at 6:45 a.m. Thursday at the Riverdale Jewish Center morning services, joined by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. Read more..

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THE REV. WENDELL FOSTER, who was born 85 years ago in a small town in Alabama, came to New York as a 13-year-old with no parents and no money, only the hope that life “up North” would be different.

In 1978, he became the first black elected city official in the Bronx, where he served for 24 years as a councilman. His daughter, Helen Foster, currently holds his old seat, representing the 16th District, which includes Highbridge, Morrisania and the South Bronx.

A veteran of the civil rights movement, Mr. Foster is sometimes called upon to memorialize his former compatriots. On the occasion of Black History Month, Mr. Foster sat down for a conversation in a small office at Christ Church in Morrisania, where he has been a pastor for 42 years. Dressed in a suit and tie, he spoke about life as it once was in the Bronx and reflected on two old friends. Read more..

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