IN THIS ISSUE:

EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES: ALL ABOUT LOVE by Deborah Mutnick

THE STORYTELLER
Mikela Ragin enacts the work of storytelling in 2020. As she puts it: “I will record it. What we carry and how we use it...I’ll write it down for us to look back on whenever we need to.”

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF A NEIGHBORHOOD COOPERATIVE
Reflecting on her experience as a volunteer at a local garden and a food cooperative, Ashar Foley concludes that “achieving community integration is deliberate and ongoing work—like democracy.”

SAVE LENOX ROAD!
Judy Spence chronicles the history of a neighborhood once “pretty much closed to people of color” and now known as “Ground Zero,” where freestanding houses face the wrecking ball.

BUILDING A LIFE IN FLATBUSH
Meg Stentz tells the story of how she and her partner Mat met on Machu Picchu, wound up in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, and fell in love not only with each other but also with the neighborhood.

WITHIN YOUR PERCEPTION
In a freeform essay about “getting lost,” Kristofer Lyons takes us on a journey from the United Kingdom to Flatbush, where he moved at age twelve, and reflects on pain and empathy.

INVISIBLE
In this poem, Rachel Hayes creates a persona for the coronavirus that warns us to “see the error of our ways,” yet ends with the hopeful reminder that we have “an opportunity to begin again.”

LANDSCAPES
Noel Hefele’s landscapes celebrate, as he puts it, “experience in a moment of time, woven back into which it came.” Their stillness and solidity contribute to “a community’s understanding of itself.”

LOVE LETTER FROM ALASKA TO FLATBUSH-PROSPECT LEFFERTS GARDENS
Ana Malagon pens a love letter to the neighborhood, tracing her move from Seattle to Brooklyn in 2018 and her wistful departure for Alaska in the middle of the pandemic.

A COMMUNITY HISTORY OF COVID-19
In an interview with Norma Williams, Rev. Dr. Kirkpatrick Cohall depicts what it has been like to minister to his congregation and sustain a sense of community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interviewed by Laura Thorne, Emily Tellier describes life as a dancer, the “iconic space” of Gibney Dance, and what COVID restrictions have meant to her.

In an oral history conducted by Nancy Hoch, Nowshin Ali and Anurag Shrivastava describe their efforts to distribute food to the community through the organization People In Need.