Month: October 2020

Wrapping a white shawl around her shoulders, Sara Angel Guerrero-Mostafa heads to the backyard garden. She surveys her work: She’s just finished planting tomatoes, okra, eggplant, beets, spinach, sugar peas and squash. Sara is MoMI’s deputy director of education and community engagement. Look, here’s a chili pepper that’s perfect for picking. She plucks it with panache. Sara’s vegetable garden used to be potted on the balcony of her apartment, so she’s glad to give the…

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“Do you know the story of the Bundt pan?” Emily Bicht is sitting on her back balcony, her cascading Boticelli Venus red ringlets flowing in the breeze like waves frolicking on the beach. Emily Bicht is an artist. She’s talking about the inspiration for her “Bundt Life,” an art installation that features a 2.5-foot-high sculpture of a Bundt cake, painted sports-car-shiny hot pink and sprinkled with glitter. “Hot pink,” she says as she points to a photo of the work on her…

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On 48th Street right off Ditmars Boulevard, there have been recent repeated reports of a UPO – an Unidentified Parked Object. The Space Shuttle Cafe at 48th Street and Ditmars Boulevard. The shiny black and white shuttle-shaped UPO, which like an ostrich looks as though it can fly but cannot, is patriotically decked out with peeling decals of the Stars and Stripes. Big, bold black letters bellow: “Space Shuttle Café United States.” The intruding shuttle cafe is no small matter…

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Step by step. That’s how Viviane Matano likes to take things. Viviane’s the owner of Vivi Pet Care. Thus far, in her 56 years, her steps – some small, some large and several that were admittedly sideways – have landed her right where she wants to be. Which is standing in a pack of playful pups who are wagging their tails like flags and jumping up, her mask be damned, to give her wet, sloppy kisses. Viviane, who grew up on a farm in São Paulo, Brazil with dogs, cats, cows…

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Sometimes, in the middle of things, you just need to stop and take a break. Nilcee Kitani Schneider walks to the courtyard of her apartment building and unfurls her bright-pink yoga mat on the concrete pathway. Nilcee is a reiki teacher. Nilcee, who is wearing a diamond-shaped crystal around her neck, kicks off her sandals, takes a deep breath and settles into a cross-legged position. She raises her eyes to the sky, then gently closes them, leaving the world behind. Opening her arms…

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