juvenile,” Friedman added, as if the trial had just ended. “My client had a bike; it was Morris who wanted a bike. Morris passes the gun to Nisbett and says, in effect, Show you’re a man .”
Friedman himself grew up in East Flatbush. He remembers being a kid walking home from summer evening concerts in Prospect Park in the late 1960s and feeling apprehensive, holding tight to his father’s hand. He has moved away from Brooklyn to a suburban town on the south shore of Long Island. So has Marcy Winslow.
Jerome Nisbett was barely literate, as evidenced by his written confession introduced at trial. At the time of the murder, he lived part-time with his mother in Bushwick and part-time with his aunt in Crown Heights. His father was a minister somewhere in the West Indies.
Attorney Howard Weiswasser, who represented Robert Brown, was asked how fourteen-year-olds like Gregory Morris acquire firearms. “Often, they literally find them on the street because someone has thrown away a gun used in a crime,” he said.
Attorney Howard Kirsch defended Morris. After trial, he said of young offenders in general, “These are the most dangerous kids in the world. They have no conscience, no control over their impulses. Their sense of morality hasn’t developed.”
Exactly how were Morris and his buddies caught?
“Like a lot of these kids, they couldn’t stop talking about it,” Kirsch explained. “They did it for street cred, to show how tough they were. If they had any brains, they’d keep it to themselves.” He added: “Once they’re caught, they sing like canaries.”
Why?
“Because they’re kids, because they’re stupid. Basically, they’re punks.”
Is there any defense against punks?
Olmsted’s biographer, Witold Rybczynski, was asked a few years ago what part of the designer’s personality we should emulate today. He responded, “It would be this sense of time, this sense of both patience and looking ahead, of saying there are certain things that take time and you have to plan for them and you just have to be patient.”
A park is a long time in the making, and is never complete. Olmsted planted many trees not much bigger than a broomstick; in placing them, he had to think years, even decades ahead. After construction and planting, Olmsted didn’t walk away. He monitored park maintenance and fretted over any modification of his plans.
The design of a garden, let alone a whole park, is not a game for those requiring instant gratification. There’s an old saw that defines gardening as the slowest of the performing arts—a philosophy that might surely have amused and pleased a drama teacher like Allyn Winslow.
Then there is Olmsted’s philosophy, which in the context of Winslow’s murder is ironic. For Olmsted once wrote:
No one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who visit the Park can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city—an influence favorable to courtesy, self-control, and temperance.
SWEET CHERRY: R.I.P.
BY C HRISTOPHER M USELLA
Sunset Park
S pider-Man was ready to save the girl again. Right there in front of the movie theater, the Cobble Hill Cinema. It was a warm night too; I don’t know how he does it, wearing that mask, and I have to wonder if those tights are made of that breathable fabric pro athletes wear. Behind the barricades, beyond the movie cameras and production crews, throngs of Brooklynites stood patiently in the warmth of the first night of summer, just to catch a glimpse of the actor Tobey Maguire donning the web slinger’s red and blue costume, and the damsel-cum-diva, Kirsten Dunst, waiting to be rescued. Meanwhile, in Sunset Park, not far from Cobble Hill, another piece of Brooklyn was waiting to be rescued that night.
Over on 3rd Street there was a block party. The johnny pumps were wide open. In Brooklyn, to beat back the clamoring heat of summer, we
Friedman himself grew up in East Flatbush. He remembers being a kid walking home from summer evening concerts in Prospect Park in the late 1960s and feeling apprehensive, holding tight to his father’s hand. He has moved away from Brooklyn to a suburban town on the south shore of Long Island. So has Marcy Winslow.
Jerome Nisbett was barely literate, as evidenced by his written confession introduced at trial. At the time of the murder, he lived part-time with his mother in Bushwick and part-time with his aunt in Crown Heights. His father was a minister somewhere in the West Indies.
Attorney Howard Weiswasser, who represented Robert Brown, was asked how fourteen-year-olds like Gregory Morris acquire firearms. “Often, they literally find them on the street because someone has thrown away a gun used in a crime,” he said.
Attorney Howard Kirsch defended Morris. After trial, he said of young offenders in general, “These are the most dangerous kids in the world. They have no conscience, no control over their impulses. Their sense of morality hasn’t developed.”
Exactly how were Morris and his buddies caught?
“Like a lot of these kids, they couldn’t stop talking about it,” Kirsch explained. “They did it for street cred, to show how tough they were. If they had any brains, they’d keep it to themselves.” He added: “Once they’re caught, they sing like canaries.”
Why?
“Because they’re kids, because they’re stupid. Basically, they’re punks.”
Is there any defense against punks?
Olmsted’s biographer, Witold Rybczynski, was asked a few years ago what part of the designer’s personality we should emulate today. He responded, “It would be this sense of time, this sense of both patience and looking ahead, of saying there are certain things that take time and you have to plan for them and you just have to be patient.”
A park is a long time in the making, and is never complete. Olmsted planted many trees not much bigger than a broomstick; in placing them, he had to think years, even decades ahead. After construction and planting, Olmsted didn’t walk away. He monitored park maintenance and fretted over any modification of his plans.
The design of a garden, let alone a whole park, is not a game for those requiring instant gratification. There’s an old saw that defines gardening as the slowest of the performing arts—a philosophy that might surely have amused and pleased a drama teacher like Allyn Winslow.
Then there is Olmsted’s philosophy, which in the context of Winslow’s murder is ironic. For Olmsted once wrote:
No one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who visit the Park can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city—an influence favorable to courtesy, self-control, and temperance.
SWEET CHERRY: R.I.P.
BY C HRISTOPHER M USELLA
Sunset Park
S pider-Man was ready to save the girl again. Right there in front of the movie theater, the Cobble Hill Cinema. It was a warm night too; I don’t know how he does it, wearing that mask, and I have to wonder if those tights are made of that breathable fabric pro athletes wear. Behind the barricades, beyond the movie cameras and production crews, throngs of Brooklynites stood patiently in the warmth of the first night of summer, just to catch a glimpse of the actor Tobey Maguire donning the web slinger’s red and blue costume, and the damsel-cum-diva, Kirsten Dunst, waiting to be rescued. Meanwhile, in Sunset Park, not far from Cobble Hill, another piece of Brooklyn was waiting to be rescued that night.
Over on 3rd Street there was a block party. The johnny pumps were wide open. In Brooklyn, to beat back the clamoring heat of summer, we
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