Talk Bronx New York

“It is beyond anybody’s imagination when I started that a Puerto Rican could ascend to that position, to the Supreme Court,” said Edwin Torres, who in 1959 was hired as the first Puerto Rican assistant district attorney in New York

In the summer of 1959, Edwin Torres landed a $60-a-week job and wound up on the front page of El Diario. He had just been hired as the first Puerto Rican assistant district attorney in New York — and probably, he thinks, the entire United States.

He still recalls the headline: “Exemplary Son of El Barrio Becomes Prosecutor.”

“You would’ve thought I had been named attorney general,” he said. “That’s how big it was.” Read more..

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Father Alexander Agyepong who is originally from Ghana with friends Gloria Bai and Tomasa Mendes at Papaye Restaurant in the Bronx

Largely a Puerto Rican and African-American borough for several decades, the Bronx has become a mecca for immigrants from all over the world, according to new Census Bureau numbers.

Some 31% of the borough’s almost 1.4 million residents are foreign-born, making the Bronx one of the top-10 largest and most diverse cities in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community Survey, released in December.

“A borough which was, at one time, largely native-born is now a mix of groups that, in the history of the Bronx,  could be unprecedented,” said Joseph Salvo, population director of the city Planning Department.

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The Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation society contributed to the creation of a new coastal park in Argentina. The park protects a number of rare seabirds, including the Magellanic penguin. Magellanic penguins call the Bronx Zoo’s Russell B. Aitken aviary home, too. The Magellanic penguins weigh up to 25 pounds and live up to 25 years. Photo by Julie Larsen / Wildlife Conservation Society

Stroll north through the Bronx Zoo and you’ll spy the Russell B. Aitken seabird colony, where cormorants flap and penguins dive for sardines.

Fly south 1,000 miles from Buenos Aires and you’ll spot Patagonia, a windswept South American plateau where wild cormorants and penguins nest. You’ll catch sight of Argentina’s newest coastal park, created last month with help from the Bronx-based Wildlife Conservation Society. Read more..

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‘COLLAGE THE COLORS OF WINTER’

The title of this program might seem like an oxymoron: winter doesn’t appear to have many colors, much less those worthy of collage.

But that isn’t true for Noah Baen, who leads the drop-in family art projects at Wave Hill, the 28-acre Bronx garden. On Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Mr. Baen will help children discover a surprising variety of hues. In “Collage the Colors of Winter” young visitors will hear a seasonal story in the Kerlin Learning Center and then go outside to gather natural materials (above).

“The witch hazel blooms in winter,” Mr. Baen said. But while it may be too early to observe those yellow and orange blossoms, “we’re likely to see red and purple berries hanging from bushes.” Children can collect sweet-gum seed balls, which are often red-brown, as well as evergreen sprigs.

But Mr. Baen also encourages appreciation of the hazy shades of winter, which are like bit players who take turns onstage when the glamorous stars have exited. “The harmonies are subtler, so there’s more of a place for the neutral shades to sing out, and textures as well,” he said. Read more..

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SOUTH BRONX, N.Y. - At Validus Preparatory Academy, a new public high school in the poorest congressional district in America, students have kept journals since the early primaries, created election art, studied opinion polls in math classes, designed brochures on the issues, read memoirs by the candidates and even delivered speeches in their stead. And after the principal dashed around to plumbing supply stores for enough PVC pipe to build a voting booth, they got a chance to punch their own electronic ballots in a national mock election for students.

Being so steeped in the presidential race, the students at this predominantly African-American and Hispanic school on Bathgate Avenue are a little on edge about the outcome. They say they are excited about the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama could become the first black person elected president of the United States. (In the mock election results so far, 88 percent of Validus students chose Obama.) But many also admit to some nervousness that it won’t happen. And even if he does win, they’re crossing their fingers that he’ll be up to the job.

“If Obama doesn’t win, it’s a big disappointment,” said Dorian Whyte, 18, who moved to New York City from Jamaica. “And I think if he does win, also, it can be a disappointment, if he doesn’t deliver.”

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