A cut too deep
To The Editor:
With reference to your article on the cuts involving the M22 bus, it would certainly be more than a terrible disservice to the community (news article, March 5 – 11, “Bus cuts include cutting B.P.C. out of M22 route”). First of all, it is the only crosstown service below 8th St. (not including the very sporadic M21).
Secondly, with the lack of affordable supermarkets in Tribeca and Battery Park City, many families take the M22 to travel to Pathmark for their grocery shopping.
Next, let us not forget the hundreds of students and their caregivers who travel back and forth to school on a daily basis during the school year to get to class, and during the summer months to day camp programs, as well as baseball and soccer games in fields on the East River or Hudson River. We fought long and hard to get additional schools and sports leagues for our children, now our transportation is being taken away.
For those residing at the Hallmark, how are they to get across town and back? What about those in wheelchairs? What next? Perhaps the M.T.A. should research the impact on a community prior to making harsh decisions. Or better yet, engage the services of a financial advisor to ascertain where their money is going and how to better monitor and spend it.
Theresa O’Connor
Lithuanians built church
To The Editor:
Re “Keeping faith, Lithuanians pray church will reopen” (news article, March 5 – 11):
Our Lady of Vilnius Church is a cherished monument to Lithuanian immigrants and an adornment to Manhattan. The hierarchs did not build the church and should not be allowed to sell it for financial gain.
Saulius Simoliunas
P.S. 150’s unsung hero
To The Editor:
Re “Barbara Schneider, 70, top educator in District 2” (Obituary, March 5 – 11):
Barbara Schneider had an unsung, yet major impact on the children of Tribeca. In winter 2001 she stepped in during Principal Alyssa Polack’s maternity leave to guide the parents, faculty and children of what was then the Early Childhood Center through a merger with Bridges – to eventually become P.S. 150. Barbara was compassionate, wise, dedicated and savvy – all qualities we needed to navigate the Board of Education’s directives while keeping the essential core of our nurturing school environment. We owe a debt of gratitude to Barbara that is a mile wide.
Judy Levine
Former School Leadership Team co-chairperson, E.C.C. and P.S. 150
Column response
To The Editor:
Re “ Hateful column” (letter by Marlis Momber, March 5 -11):
In Ms. Momber’s written diatribe of distortions, her vitriolic response to my notebook column, “Sidewalk swastika solution; Trying to pave over hate” (Feb. 19 – 25) for her “rude Jews” insult, nowhere did she deny her slur, nor offer an apology. (Note that I did not use her name, and I doubt that most readers knew who she was until she outed herself.) It speaks volumes that in defense of her thoughtless remark, she has opted to go on the attack, twist my words, call me names, victimize the victim anew, and add further insult to injury. How unfortunate and sad.
The fact that Ms. Momber is German and a photographer is circumstantial and incidental. She could have been blue and a skydiver and I would have reacted the same way and written the same story. But precisely because of her nation’s history, she should have checked her words at the door. I can still feel their sting and the look on her face as she thoughtlessly uttered them. That she says she hardly knows me is irrelevant. What is more acceptable, to insult an acquaintance, a stranger or a friend? For the record, Ms. Momber and I have exhibited together, and at her last group show (of which I was not part), she came over to me and greeted me warmly.
That she decided to drag her previous good works into light as some sort of defense for hateful language is just wrong. And to compare herself with Jacob Riis, one of the nation’s greatest writers of social reform and important photographers of life in the Lower East Side tenements, well… . The clueless Ms. Momber states that Riis “built his reputation documenting ‘poor Jews.’ ” (Her quotes around “poor Jews”; what is she now implying?) In his book, “How the Other Half Lives,” a well-worn copy of which I have on my bookshelf, he chronicled all the destitute of the L.E.S., which included Native Americans, Greeks, Italians, Bohemians (Czechs), Germans, Chinese, blacks, Irish, English and Jews, among other nationalities. My putative elitist roots are here.
My column has been read by people of all backgrounds and in several countries, and they have all told me how moved they were by what I wrote. They get it. It is not about one swastika or a person of a particular ethnicity. It’s about any person of any background being verbally assaulted.
Instead of a rant directed at me, I think the mensch course of action should have been for Ms. Momber to have issued an immediate mea culpa and apology to me and to all those who she says e-mailed her, stopped her on the street and phoned her, instead of enlisting people to defend her and to slam me.
Bonnie Rosenstock
Letters policy
Downtown Express welcomes letters to The Editor. They must include the writer’s first and last name, a phone number for confirmation purposes only, and any affiliation that relates directly to the letter’s subject matter. Letters should be less than 300 words. Downtown Express reserves the right to edit letters for space, clarity, civility or libel reasons. Letters should be e-mailed to news@DowntownExpress.com or can be mailed to 145 Sixth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10013.
