NYC Sentinel

Filling the pantries, New York City’s hungry children

By Alexandra Waldhorn Over the past year, lines at many of the city’s 1,000 emergency food organizations have gotten longer, and many of the people are younger as the recession’s crippling effects continue. A new report by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) found that there has been a 21 percent spike in the number of people who depend on emergency food since the beginning of 2009.

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A Times Square-lit vigil for homeless youths

By Lynsey Chutel For 30 minutes on a chilly evening last week, the JumboTrons of Time Square beamed the images and stories of some of America’s homeless children taken in by Covenant House. Below the bright light of the screens, Covenant House held a vigil to raise awareness of the plight of more than a million homeless young people across the country.

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123 Sesame Street, New York, New York

On November 10, 1969, Ernie and Bert had their first sketch and Gordon took a girl named Sally on a tour of the neighborhood. The 8-foot-2-inch Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Kermit the Frog, Susan and Bob all entered the scene, and the numbers two and three, the letter W and how milk is made [...]

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From parking lot to playground, a Bronx school transformed

By Alexandra Waldhorn New research from a February 2009 report published in the journal Pediatrics found that having a daily recess period of just fifteen minutes or more improves teacher’s ratings of classroom behavior. Yet in New York City, where 43 percent of schoolchildren are overweight or obese, there are 118 elementary schools without playground access, affecting about 100,000 children citywide.

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Future Olympic athlete brings snowboarding to a trampoline in Central Park

Korath Wright had no problem doing a 180, 360, corkscrew, tame dog or a backside 720 when he took his snowboarding tricks to a trampoline in Central Park Monday evening. But when asked to do a Spark 60, Flamingo, an Andre 3000, and an upside down 360 – snowboard tricks originating from the minds of 9-year [...]

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An immortal birthday party for the Wizard of Oz

Heart, courage, brain and a pair of red sparkly shoes are famous to many. The “Wizard of Oz” turned 70 and New Yorkers of all ages came out this week to celebrate with a past-bedtime free concert and film screening in Central Park. Lines circled around Rumsey Playfield as people waited with bundled blankets under their [...]

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