KINGS’ COUNTRY
Town hall series seeks to amend US Constitution
Can I get an a-mend? One participant at the March 5 event, shown holding a copy
of the Constitution, discusses a possible 28th Amendment. Photo by Gregg Richards
COURIER L 48 IFE, MARCH 13-19, 2020
The best reads
— handpicked by
some of the best
Bklyn bookstores
Greenlight Bookstore’s
pick: “Deacon King
Kong,” by James
McBride
Set in a housing project in
Red Hook in the 1960s, this is
a picaresque, almost Dickensian
rollick that starts when the
lovable but constantly drunk
titular deacon shoots a young
drug dealer at point blank
range. The novel is a little overthe
top (especially the insanely happy
ending), but is also compassionate and tender toward
its characters, while also being open-eyed about their flaws and
limitations. It is one of those satisfying novels that is a pleasure to
recommend.
— Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, Greenlight Bookstore 686 Fulton
St. between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene,
(718) 246–0200, www.greenlightbookstore.com.
Word’s picks: “The Ice
Cream Man and Other
Stories,” by Sam Pink
Sam Pink is the most compelling
new poet of the growing American
underclass, a broadly precarious
crowd in perpetual service to
the fat and happy. His stories
of psyches bent by misfortune,
twisted by repetitive work,
and broken by social realities
resonate with all of us who have
worked in kitchens and food service, all
of us who have watched the middle class collapse into the
low-wage basement of the once-prosperous land of the free. He is
the millennial heir to James Kelman and Charles Bukowski, and I
cannot recommend this collection more highly than that.
— Jeff Waxman, Word 126 Franklin St. at Milton Street in
Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.wordbookstores.com.
Community Bookstore’s
pick: “Footprints:
In Search of Future
Fossils,” by David
Farrier
A meditation on the collapsing
tempo of geologic time and
the human lifespan, Farrier’s
book reckons with the traces
we leave behind, from ancient
footprints to domestic artifacts
to the “future fossils” we are
creating right now. Ranging from the
microscopic — the chemical composition of air, sea,
and soil — to the unimaginably vast — mountaintop removal, strip
mining, deep sea drilling — Farrier composes a litany of human
gestures that mark, now permanently, the surface and the depths
of our planet.
— Samuel Partal, Community Bookstore 43 Seventh Ave.
between Carroll Street and Garfield Place in Park Slope, (718)
783–3075, www.commu nityb ookst ore.net.
By Kevin Duggan We the People of
Brooklyn, in Order to
form a more perfect
Union, are going to make some
changes!
A series of town-hall meetings
across the borough, organized by
the Brooklyn Public Library, is
crowdsourcing ideas for the next
update to the country’s founding
document. The dozen “28th
Amendment Town Hall” sessions
are designed to capture the needs
of modern Americans, according
to the series organizer.
“Constitutions are almost poetic
documents because you try to
describe the life of the community
and the society,” said Jacob Orsos,
the library’s Vice President of arts
and culture.
The Constitution was last
amended in 1992, when the 27th
Amendment regulated wage
changes for members of Congress,
and Orsos hopes the forums will
suggest ways to adapt the text
to reflect the technological and
societal changes of the last 28
years.
At the first session, at Bedford-
Stuyvesant’s Macon library branch
on March 5, dozens of people
made a wide range of proposals for
the 28th Amendment, including
allowing formerly-incarcerated
people to vote, help ing people
struggling with housing, and
providing universal health care.
Others advocated getting rid of
the 231-year-old document entirely
and starting from a clean slate,
said Orsos.
The talks, taking place at
branches of the book lending
agency, high schools, correctional
facilities, and possibly senior
centers, will each feature one or
two moderators who guide the
discussion , while library staffers
record the suggestions from the
audience.
By the end of the series, a halfdozen
“Framers” will create a draft
proposal for a new Amendment
for the U.S. Constitution based on
those meetings, and a final, refined
amendment should be ready by
mid-October, a few weeks ahead
of the November presidential
election.
Orsos, a Hungarian native,
thought up the project when he
became a US citizen, and he
worked with the library and the
American Civil Liberties Union to
create the five-month series.
During his naturalization
process, he learned about the
Constitution and how it has changed
over the centuries , he said.
“The nature of these efforts
is ever-changing, but always
looks back at its original form,”
said Orsos. “It’s a moving effort
of mankind to try to describe
mankind.”
“28th Amendment Town
Hall” every two weeks at various
locations. Next event at the
Brooklyn Public Library’s Sunset
Park branch 4201 Fourth Ave. at
43rd Street in Sunset Park, (718)
435–3648, www.bklynlibrary.org.
March 24 at 6 pm. Free.
Making love and ‘War’
By Bill Roundy Woo-hoo!
Brooklyn serves
as the battleground
between angels and devils in a
romantic new theater piece
opening in Manhattan on March
19. “The War of Woo,” written by
Carroll Gardens cartoonist Dean
Haspiel, will have extra resonance
for those who have read his graphic
novel series “The Red Hook,” set
in a sentient Kings County that
secedes from the United States.
“My passion for sequential
art and the stage finally hit an
apex when I realized I’d written
a theatrical prequel to my comics
series — which makes sense, since
‘The War of Woo’ is a play about
the unholy merge between the
kind and the profane,” said
Haspiel.
The artistturned
playwright
has created several
supernatural stage
shows, but this is his first
production intimately tied to
his home borough. “The War
of Woo” is set in Gowanus, a
cosmic crossroads in the play,
just as it is a link between
neighborhoods in the real
world, said the show’s creator.
“Gowanus has served
as my creative space
since 2007 when I joined
a studio of cartoonists.
Gowanus also serves
as the bridge between my home
in Carroll Gardens and Red
Hook,” said Haspiel. “My new
play … is about an unholy
gentrification between
Hollywood, Heaven, and
Hell, beginning at Smith and
Ninth Street.”
“The War of Woo”
at the Gene Frankel
Theatre (24 Bond St.
between Lafayette
Street and Bowery
in Manhattan,
at warofwoo.
brownpapertickets.
com). March 19–
April 4; Wed–Sat
at 8 pm, Sun at 3
pm. $25.
Natural redhead: This
Demon, drawn by Dean
Haspiel, is a character in
the comics-theater piece
“The War of Woo.”
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
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