Stargazing at a cemetery, where it is dark and quiet

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we look at amateur astronomers and a cemetery in Brooklyn who gives them a permanent place to look up at the air. We will also get details about a deal in Albany to weaken a law that mainly influences the Jewish schools of All-Boys, known as Yeshivas.

“It seems incompatible, right?” Said Julie Bose. It was more a statement than a question.

She talked about how amateur astronomers set up telescopes at a cemetery – in particular the cemetery she runs, De Evergreens, in Brooklyn. The astronomers like it, and not just for the rolling hills and architecture. (One of the architects of the former chapel that uses the cemetery for offices was Calvert Vaux, who is better known for designing Central Park with Frederick Law Olmsted.)

Usually the astronomers are dark as the evergreens. “You don’t have all the light pollution through the city,” said Bryanne Hamill, the chairman of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York.

Now the cemetery is planning a center of $ 20 million that can be used for what Bose called ‘celebrations of life’, as well as community meetings and external meetings in which no funerals are involved.

There will be a separate observatory for astronomers. The association said that a partnership with the cemetery would create “a permanent hub” for public star and astronomy education. The association will equip the observatory with telescopes and guidance systems. The group will offer the voluntary astronomers to lead educational programs.

Astronomy can be an expensive hobby. A portable telescope can cost nearly $ 20,000, and Hamill, a retired lawyer and judge of the familysaid there were no public places in the city where people could look at stars through telescopes. The members of the association bring their own equipment to events at the cemetery, such as the Spring Starfest of the association, which was planned for tonight, but was moved before 30 May because clouds and rain were in the prediction.

As the association was astronomy more accessible, the cemetery was looking for new ways to “open our place more to the public,” Bose said. “The modern cemeteries reconsider how they make connections with the community and try to stay relevant while we continue to honor the people who are buried here.”

In collaboration with the Stadsdienst van Veterans’ Services, the Evergreens started a landscape architecture training program for veterans living in New York, with courses at university level and practical training by specialists from the Davey Institute, the non-profit research arm of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Five people graduated last year and two are now working in Central Park, Bose said. Seven completed the program this year. She expects to register 10 more next year.

But the evergreens is primarily a cemetery. The Afro -American artist Bill Robinson, known as Bojangles, is buried there. For example, the etiquette -Arbiter Amy Vanderbilt. Yusef Hawkins, a black teenager who was surrounded by white young people and was shot in the Bensonhurst part of Brooklyn in 1989, is that too.

There are also several victims of the explosion of the general slocum steam boat in 1904, as well as a single grave for six from the Triangle Shirtwaist -Vuur in 1911 were only identified a century later. And there is the grave of Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century post inspector who has led a push for a rarely forced anti-vice law Thought in recent lawsuits on abortus pills.

Just like several other cemeteries in Brooklyn, the Evergreens was a Victorian creation. “Today we consider death much different than the early Victorians who built these cemeteries,” wrote Suzanne Spellen in Brownstoner in 2020. “Life was difficult for most people, life expectations were generally much shorter, and for rich and bad, death could easily come from the children, illness, illness or war.”

Modern medicine and improved living conditions have now “pushed death as far away”, she wrote, but “the Victorians embraced it as a part of life. “

“Funerals generally took place in the house and buried in a beautiful park where people could visit, and even make it a day, turned out to be extremely popular,” she added. In those days, Green-Wood Cemetery, a few miles from the evergreens, was the number 2 tourist destination in the state of New York, after Niagara Falls.

Hamill said she thought it was ‘poetic’ to look at the stars at a cemetery, “appreciate that we were all born from Stardust from exploding stars, and we return to dust at cemeteries.”

“That places life in perspective,” she said.

Weather

Expect some rain and possibly a thunderstorm, where the temperature reaches 63. The rain will continue in the evening, with clouds and a dip to around 53.

Alternative

In fact until 26 May (Memorial Day).

The last metro news

Changing an age-old law that mainly influences the Chassidic Jewish schools of All-Boys, known as Yeshivas, has been a top priority among leaders of the Chassidic communities of New York, who tend to vote as a block.

Now the government is Kathy Hochul confronted with criticism of her efforts to weaken that law.

A proposal to hand over the supervision of the state about religious schools was a last-minute addition to the budget package of the state. Hochul, looking ahead to what promises to be a difficult re -election fight next year, was apparently looking for chassidic Jews. The measure was adopted to the Senate on Thursday and was sent to the meeting, where also approved.

Education experts, including the head of the State Education department, have accused Hochul of looking for political support at the expense of children, as well as some legislators and various members of the Governor’s own staff. Betty Rosa, the Commissioner of State Education, told the New York Times last week that the changes in the measure amounted to a “travesty” for children who go to religious schools who do not offer basic secular training. This week the Rosa spokesperson called the measure ‘Interference’.

The urge to adjust the rules for Hasidic Schools, which collect hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars, but sometimes offer no primary education, was led by speaker Carl Heastie. His conference includes ultra -orthodox and chassidic legislators who are skeptical about every government involvement in their schools.

Support also came from non-Jewish legislators who represent parts of the Lower and Middle Hudson Valley, where Hochul and Congressional Democrats will fight next year to remain in office. Every opportunity to use the Hasidic community, which tends to vote as a block, would improve the prospects of Democrats against Republicans who have played for increasing conservatism and the support of the Hasidic community for President Trump.

Heastie characterized the measure as an attempt to give religious schools different options to comply with the Studies Act. “It’s not a loose,” he said. “We have used many of the regulations that the state board of regents has used. It lets Yeshivas and schools simply enable themselves to get into accordance with.”

But Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat in Manhattan, described the measure with the changes as a ‘secret back room agreement’. And Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, the director of Yaffed, a group that supports secular education in Yeshivas, called the move “a direct attack on the future of tens of thousands of Hasidic children.”

Best diary:

I was in the audience for a performance of the production of Rebecca Freckknall of “A Streetcar Named Desire” on the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In the last minutes of the piece my heart was in my throat and the tears flowed. In my cloudy peripheral vision I saw a young woman next to me. Her shoulders gently vibrated while she cried. After the house lights rose and the ovation died, I turn to her.

“Can I give you a tissue?” I asked.

“Yes, actually,” she said. “That’s very nice.”

I gave her a tissue.