The Pane-Air Painter

Berch. That’s the way the painted windows are signed. Berch? Who is Berch? Berch is Berch Augustine, but nobody in the neighborhood calls him that. He’s Picasso. He’s Michelangelo. He’s painting palm trees on the glass doors at Tasty’s. “A window without a painting looks naked to my naked eye,” says Berch, a lanky man wearing camouflage cargo pants and combat boots defined by Jackson Pollock drips. There’s a handful of sterling silver rings on his…

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The Svelte Soprano

When Jenny Searles says hello, it sounds like a powder puff patting a pillow. Her voice is small. And that’s what’s so shocking — it’s extraordinarily ordinary. Ah, but when she sings! That’s when her voice box becomes a 3-D boom box, opening full throttle to soar up the scales like an American eagle in flight. In opera, you need a voice that’s bigger than life; nobody uses a microphone. Jenny’s a soprano; her high notes sound as though they should shatter…

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The Man Who Never Runs Out of Ice

It’s the crack of 8 a.m. when the black security gates of Tri-Boro Beverage and Ice roll up with a roar, and Carlo Caraccia unfurls the American flag. He proudly hangs the red, white and blue by the front door that’s plastered with signs: Beware of Dog; Coors Light Mardi Gras and Blue Moon. Guinness, a horse of a Great Dane who’s the color of a Halloween midnight, bounds out as the first customers pull up to the ramp with their empty coolers. Beware of Dog? Carlo laughs. The sign…

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The Evolving Earth Mother

“Welcome to Fairyland,” says Maria L. Delgado. Maria, whose pixie-cut hair is the color of a shiny new penny, is Hobbit-high, so when she opens the wooden gate that towers over her, it is indeed a magical act. In her back yard, there’s a thicket of bamboo, a plot of Russian sunflowers and a crop of corn. In one corner, there’s a gingerbread-style play house that looks as though it ran away from Hansel and Gretel. Next to it are a green-plastic tike table and an ocean-blue…

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