The Bronx Ink

On most days, Dagger John’s restaurant at Fordham University earns its reputation as the most popular on-campus eating place. Students gather in the spacious dining area with music playing in the background.

But on Sept. 27, the music disappeared and half of the tables were taken over by baskets of vegetables and food scales. Half a dozen people gathered around each table, checking out and selecting vegetables and there was a line of customers extending out the door.

The interloper is officially called the St. Rose’s Garden Community Supported Agriculture Market. It is a cooperative vegetable buying club that invests in Norwich Meadows Farm in upstate Norwich, N.Y. The founder is Jason Aloisio, 27, an ecology Ph.D. student at Fordham, who is also the founder of an on-campus farm, St. Rose’s Garden.

“I love eating good food,” said Aloisio, “and I want people to connect to the nature through food. I want them to put their hands in soil, to see what food look like originally.”

Aloisio sees St. Rose’s Garden and the co-op farmer’s market as ways to help make diets healthier in the Fordham community and even the Bronx at large.

People can buy cheap organic vegetables, including tomato, parsley, radish, soybean, turnip, pepper, carrot and garlic grown in St. Rose’s Garden, or they can join the co-op and receive different fresh vegetables every Thursday from Norwich Meadows.

St. Rose’s Garden is believed to be the only on-campus garden in the Bronx; the only other on-campus farmers’ market is at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Growing up in Shoreham on Long Island, Aloisio learned to eat healthy food. As a child, his father, a dentist, kept no candy or desert at home. Fast or processed food was also rare in his home.

“We always had cooked food,” Aloisio said, “so I grew up with real good food.”

Throughout his four years at Fordham, Aloisio has brought that sensibility to the Bronx.  When he’s not fulfilling his teaching responsibilities as a Ph.D. candidate, he spends his time on the rooftop of the university parking garage, which he considers his private lab. His dissertation is about “green roofs” in urban areas.

St. Rose’s Garden was originally a piece of unused land that university officials gave  to Aloisio to grow edible plants like tomatoes and pumpkins in order to demonstrate new uses for wasted spaces. But he decided instead to use the 1,500-square-foot area to build an on-campus community farm for the whole school.

Aloisio first had this idea of creating a garden on the grounds last year, but wasn’t able to recruit enough volunteers.

This year, Aloisio prepared a formal proposal to change the abandoned land in the unused corner of the school near faculty parking garage into a community garden. He also went to different academic departments, trying to get at least $1,750 to buy essential materials for the garden.

The proposal earned Aloisio a little more than the minimum from three deans at Fordham University who also volunteered in the garden’s construction.

In April, Aloisio and Elizabeth Anderson, an undergraduate student studying environmental policy, started advertising for more volunteers through blogs and by sending emails to students.

On April 23, more than 50 volunteers, including students and faculty members, showed up to assist Aloisio and Anderson building the garden. They removed weeds, built eight raised beds covering 244 square feet and bought 20 cubic yards of soil to fill them. They also laid a water system and planted seeds that blossomed into rows of eggplants, green beans, green and red peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, pumpkins and basil.

St. Rose’s Garden offered up its first harvest in September. Green leafy vegetables poked out of their beds. Eggplants turned purple and hid under big leaves. Pumpkins were still in the yellow flower phase, quietly waiting their turn to ripen into fruit.

The garden has also helped grow other efforts at Fordham.

John van Buren, the director of Environmental Policy Program who serves as the faculty advisor for St. Rose’s Garden, is including eight hours of volunteer work at the garden as part of his class.

“Aside from providing fresh, organic vegetables, and an opportunity for playing in the dirt,” said Aloisio, “the underlying mission of St. Rose’s Garden is to be an educational catalyst, both in the classroom and in social settings, for discussion about the broken food system and coupled human-ecosystem interactions.”

He seems to be reaching that goal. “He (Aloisio) is very outgoing, a good person to get things going,” said Joe Hartnett, a junior biology student in the environmental policy class who was one of the volunteers. “He always makes things clear. He is a really good teacher.”

Aloisio was Hartnett’s assistant teacher when he was a freshman. Hartnett said Aloisio brought a lot of different ideas to their environmental classes, making their studies fun and easy to understand. “He is very vocal and energetic,” said Hartnett. “In his email to me, he would say something like ‘Yes, Joe. You CAN do this!’ ”

“He is so passionate,” said Samir Hafez, an economics and environmental policy graduate student. “I admire him for his energies. He never gets discouraged.”

Aloisio says the food co-op is another important component of his campaign to encourage healthy eating.

Consumers pay $16 per week to get a share of six to eight pounds of vegetables and fruit. They agree to buy produce from the farmers for 10 weeks. The vegetables are delivered to Dagger John’s every Thursday for less money than in the supermarket because there is no middleman.

Consumers don’t know what they will get for the week; it depends on what’s available. All the vegetables are picked less than two days before the market.

Katie Buckle, a sophomore at the Gabelli School of Business, did some math with her two roommates. They realized that it would only cost about $5 per person to receive more than enough healthy fruit and vegetables so the three of them decided to pool their money and buy a share together.

“The local farmers send whatever produce they have freshly harvested that week, so our weekly bounty will change and we will likely receive new fruit and vegetables we’ve never tried before,” said Buckle. “To me, this element of surprise is the best part.”

There are currently 137 shares of the co-op, more than Aloisio expected. “We were aiming for 50, and we got 137!” said Aloisio. “I was a little overwhelmed.”

Three resident assistants bought some shares to set up a little farmers’ market in their dorms.

“It helps me to keep a healthier diet,” said Jordan Higgins, a senior biology student. Higgins said she had to Google how to cook much of the produce, but it made her eat more vegetables.

Norwich Meadows Farm also provides vegetables to students at Fordham’s  Lincoln Center campus.

Both the co-op and St. Rose’s Garden share space at Dagger John’s. The student-run farmers market allows people who didn’t buy a share in the co-op the opportunity to enjoy fresh vegetables.

John Craven, a Fordham business professor, was one recent satisfied customer. “This is the best baby carrot I have ever had,” he said as he sampled a small fresh carrot grown in St. Rose’s Garden. He did not even scrub off the mud before he ate a second one.

Money earned by selling produce from St. Rose’s Garden goes to the daily maintenance of the garden.

“This is really not for profit,” said Aloisio. “We just want to get the food to people.”

The first day of the two markets was especially long for Aloisio. More than 200  people stopped by. Even though there were three volunteers helping him, Aloisio still had to answer all the questions about the food and the garden, organize containers and refill vegetables, and find bags for those who forgot to bring one.

Four full containers of vegetables were left after the first day. Aloisio and his volunteers donated all the vegetables to a local non-profit group called Part of the Solution. These vegetables are repacked in Part of the Solution’s food pantry.

Aloisio would like to have more efforts in the Bronx beyond Fordham. Statistics from the Department of Health show that  only 6.3 percent of Bronx residents eat the recommended five daily servings of fruit or vegetables.“I hope to get more people involved,” he said, “Maybe refugees in the Bronx can come and work in the garden. Or maybe make it a refugee garden or a asylum garden.”

At the moment, however, it’s hard for people outside of the Fordham community to benefit from the garden. Visitors have to show a valid ID and pass a security guard to get on campus.

In the meantime, Aloisio is focused on keeping St. Rose’s Garden working smoothly.

All volunteers work on a weekly basis now. But as the mid-term approaches, a lot of students are too busy to help. Aloisio dedicates most of his time to the garden.

“I have free time, somewhere, not really,” said Aloisio, as he dropped off four containers of vegetables at Part of the Solution — alone.

Emergency teams responded to a 911 call regarding suspicious white powder found in an office near Fordham University Tuesday morning.

DNAinfo reported that an FDNY Hazmat team and the NYPD rushed to One Fordham Plaza to investigate the substance, which was discovered under a desk in the fifth floor office. The building was not evacuated and there were no reported injuries.

 

Police yesterday released a video of two men wanted for beating a Fordham father to death, mugging him for $15, according to the New York Daily News.  The suspects attacked Bimal Chanda, 59, on the second-floor landing of his apartment Saturday.

Over 160 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe lived in a tiny, country poor man’s house in what today is the Bronx.  The New York Times reports that the famous poet’s cottage in the Fordham neighborhood is receiving finishing half-million dollar renovations and this month has opened to students.  October marks the month of the poet’s mysterious death and ends with Halloween.

 

Last Saturday, dozens of visitors were able once again to view the newly refurbished cottage that was home to celebrated American poet and author Edgar Allen Poe in the mid 19th century.  The city’s parks department and Bronx Historical Society re-opened the cottage doors on October 15 in Poe Park, showcasing the historical home’s year-long $500,000 face lift.

Edgar Allen Poe moved into this white cottage in 1844 with his wife, Virginia. His original rocking chair is on display. The study upstairs and master bedroom, which contains his original bed, are still under renovation and are set to open later this year.

A Bronx man is in critical condition at Saint Barnabus hospital, after allegedly attacking his neighbor with a machete, dousing himself with flammable liquid, and setting himself and the house he was in on fire, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Police say the man, who is identified as Teddy John, 36, may have been involved in a long-running dispute with the family of the machete attack victim, 65-year-old Hobart Barrow.

The incident happened just before 9 a.m. Sunday on 2447 Southern Boulevard, south of Fordham Road. Barrow was treated in hospital for lacerations, and later released. Police are investigating.

 

The Bronx gave Philippine President Benigno Aquino a warm welcome even as President Barack Obama shied away from a one-on-one meeting with the Philippine leader.

Aquino is in the United States to participate in the launch of Obama’s Open Government Partnership, a global program that aims to promote transparency and accountability in governance. The Philippines is one of the initiative’s eight founding members along with Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

Aquino’s first stop for his three-day trip to New York and Washington was at Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus, where he received an honorary degree from the school. Hundreds of students, dignitaries, and Filipino immigrants  visited the university’s Keating Hall for a glimpse of the maroon-clad Philippine chief executive. Some Filipinos wore jackets emblazoned with the logo of Ateneo de Manila University—Aquino’s alma mater, a Jesuit university in Manila that has close ties to Fordham.

“Ateneo and Fordham together?” Fordham president Joseph McShane joked during the ceremony. “The world doesn’t stand a chance.” The room, which was packed with Filipinos and Americans, erupted in cheers.

Shane noted that Aquino closely followed the career of his late mother, former president Corazon “Cory” Aquino. In 1986, the university gave her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree shortly after the former housewife led the People Power Revolution that ousted strongman Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino’s name will soon be engraved next to his mother’s in Fordham’s “Terrace of Presidents,” a set of stone steps that contains the names of all the world leaders giventhe same honor by the university.

However, “Noynoy,” as he is widely known, is not as popular as his parents were in their prime. His father, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., was assassinated in 1983 and died a martyr; his mother, on the other hand, was revered as a political icon until her death in 2009. Despite winning the 2010 elections in a landslide, Aquino’s poll ratings have dropped significantly just one year later. Critics have accused him of being bent on persecuting former government officials instead of focusing on critical issues such as the reproductive health bill, which would make contraception universally accessible in an impoverished country with a population of 94 million.

His public persona also suffered a beating due to regular media updates of his personal life. Photos with women—often decades younger than his 51 years—frequently made it to the front pages of newspapers. He is the country’s first bachelor president.

Amando Doronilla, an administration critic from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a national broadsheet, alleged that Aquino’s “stagnant rating in opinion polls and his scant economic record are bad news to Barack Obama… the US leader does not need another messenger of bad news visiting Washington.”

But poll ratings seemed to be the last thing on Aquino’s mind as he accepted Fordham’s highest honor. Smiling broadly at audience members who cheered him on loudly and gave him two standing ovations, he talked about good governance, democracy, and the role his parents played in Philippine history, particularly during the Marcos era. “People tend to bow to unlimited authority,” Aquino said. “But the laws of one man cannot prevail against the power of an unfettered conscience. Our social contract cannot tolerate anyone being above the law.”

Aquino added that by the end of his term in 2016, he hoped that “Filipino people will have grown accustomed to genuine public service and become so intolerant of corruption, that whether a saint or sinner succeeds me, no one will be able to roll back the tide of progress and good governance.”

Matthew Novick, a 19-year-old student who heads the Fordham Philippine-American Club, said, “He’s exactly what the Philippines needs—not corrupt, passionate, dedicated.”

Aquino’s popularity with Filipino-Americans was evident by the number of immigrants who came from all over the different boroughs just to get a glimpse of him. “I’m here because he’s my president and I respect him,” said Isel Garcia, 26, a student from the Bronx. “Honestly, I expected him to do more, but I thought his speech was encouraging. I’m sure the improvements will eventually come.”

Bobby Nuñez, a 41-year-old Filipino immigrant from Queens, agreed. “He’s very idealistic. People don’t believe him as much as they used to when he first won the election, but I still do.”

Maxine Cruzam, 21, a Fordham biology student, said it was an honor for her to sing both the American and Philippine national anthems during the ceremony. “He is such an icon,” she said. “I was born in the U.S., but his mother had done a lot for my parents when they were still living in the Philippines by giving them back democracy. I can’t make an educated decision about what he stands for, but I’m proud of how he represents the Philippines to the United States with his heritage.”

Not everyone was such a fan. Melissa Ortega, a 22-year-old who works with a nonprofit group in the Philippines,  said that she expected more from Aquino, especially on the reproductive health bill. “We need a president with balls,” she said. “I wish he would stand up to the Catholic Church and step up for the people.”

Aquino will return to Manila after attending conferences for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.