‘Left us much too soon’
Reggae fans mourn Morgan Heritage lead singer Peetah
Too soon” was the resounding response from reggae music fans upon hearing of the death of Peter Anthony “Peetah” Morgan. Morgan was the lead singer of the family musical group Morgan Heritage who died last week at 46. The statement posted on social media did not share a cause of death, according to The Associated Press.
“Peetah has left us much too soon,” said Randy Chin, president of VP Records, the Queens-based independent Caribbean-owned reggae and soca music record label.
Morgan Heritage, formed in 1994, consisted of five children of reggae artist Denroy Morgan, known for his popular 1981 album and single, “I’ll Do Anything for You.” Morgan Heritage’s popularity resulted in international fame and musical honors. The band’s 2015 album “Strictly Roots” won Best Reggae Album honors at the Grammy Awards in 2016, and it received a Grammy nomination two years later for its 2018 album “Avrakedabra.”
Real-world advice
“Lessons, slogans and catchy phrases” don’t hold up against “real-life, real-world” experiences, says Lancelot Theobald Jr., author of “They Haven’t Made an Ax That Can Chop Down a Dream: Five Keys to Reinvention.”
Using his life as an example, the Trinidad-rooted author shows readers how to “create the circumstances to find fulfillment” and surpass “challenges and struggles.”
“What brought it [the book] from the subconscious to conscious action was the combination of being trapped in the COVID pandemic, coupled with the George Floyd killing,” said the actor and dance and fitness instructor, who pondered writing the book for decades. “I had feelings of depression and helplessness and one day decided enough is enough, and set out a plan and had a vision of what I was going to accomplish during this pandemic.
“I set five lofty goals for myself that I would accomplish during the pandemic and writing a book was one of them,” he said. Among his achieved personal goals were two acting gigs — a part in the Amazon Prime production “Hilo 3,” and a starring role as Army Officer James Carter in “Oculus,” which premieres in April. The book is available from Amazon. com, BarnesandNoble.com and other retail outlets.
Younglao remembered
The Caribbean community recently said goodbye to Michael Younglao, the longtime West Indian American Day Carnival Association (WIADCA) board member, who died Feb. 17 at age 73.
Younglao was the husband of Yolanda Lezama, former WIADCA president and president of the Carlos Lezama Archives and Caribbean Cultural Center, named for the late New York Carnival co-founder. A memorial service was held for Younglao in San Fernando, Trinidad, on Feb. 21.
“We will miss his voice and commitment to the organization and our Caribbean community,” wrote WIADCA board members in a Facebook post. At the Trinidad service, mourners spoke of Younglao’s invaluable insight and knowledge of the aspects necessary to produce the annual New York Caribbean Carnival and make it successful.
Black photogs exhibits
The Black Photographers Collective (BPC) members’ Black History Month exhibition “Black Life” runs through Friday at The POINT Community Development Corp., 940 Garrison Ave. in the Bronx.
BPC members Howard Cash and Jamel Shabazz crafted “Black Life” from the works of its membership, displaying “a wide range of cultural experiences.” For information,” call Rudy Collins at (646) 316-8924, send email to bak9@aol.com or call The POINT at (718) 542-4139.
This is a big month for the Black Photographers Collective, which is also participating in “Long Journey Forward: Black Men in Passage” at the East Village’s Wilmer Jennings Gallery, 219 E. Second St. at Avenue B. This show will be on display until Saturday. More than 40 photographers (including Hakim Mutlaq, above l.) from diverse backgrounds and ages are taking part in the show. For information, call (212) 674-3939, send email to kenkeleba@msn.com, or visit Kenkeleba@msn.com.
Street parking was already scarce in Hoboken, N.J., when the death of an elderly pedestrian spurred city leaders to remove even more spaces in a bid to end traffic fatalities.
For seven years now, the city of nearly 60,000 people has reported resounding success: Not a single automobile occupant, bicyclist or pedestrian has died in a traffic crash since January 2017, elevating Hoboken as a national model for roadway safety.
Mayor Ravi Bhalla was a City Council member in 2015 when a van struck Agnes Accera, 89, as she crossed a street in the bustling downtown business district. Bhalla didn’t know Accera, but he attended her wake and said her death inspired him to push for better safety.
“I felt it wasn’t acceptable,” Bhalla said. “Our seniors, who we owe the greatest duty of safety to, should be able to pass that street as safely as possible. For her to actually be killed was a trigger that we needed to take action.”
Bhalla became mayor in 2018 and the city committed to Vision Zero, a set of guidelines adopted by numerous cities, states and nations seeking to eliminate traffic deaths. Proponents believe no accident is truly unavoidable and even want to do away with the word “accident” altogether when describing roadway fatalities.
Sweden originated the concept more than a quarter century ago, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted Hoboken in 2022 when announcing his department would follow Vision Zero guidelines.
Major cities including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Baltimore and Portland, Ore., have integrated aspects of the program into their safety plans, including at least some form of daylighting, the term for the removal of parking spaces near intersections to improve visibility.
Hoboken’s success has chipped away at the notion that reaching zero traffic deaths is more aspirational than achievable.
“That goal is obviously bold,” said Leah Shahum, founder and director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit advocating for street safety. “It’s also meant to help us kind of shake off the complacency that we’ve had for too long that traffic deaths are inevitable, that what we’re experiencing today is just an unfortunate and unavailable byproduct of modern society. That’s not the case.”
While Hoboken’s plan has numerous components, including lower speed limits and staggered traffic lights, daylighting is often credited as one of the biggest reasons its fatalities have dropped to zero.
Ryan Sharp, the city’s transportation director, said when roads need to be repaved, Hoboken takes the additional step of cordoning off the streetcorners to widen curbs and shorten crosswalks. It’s already illegal to park at an intersection in Hoboken, but drivers often do anyway if there aren’t physical barriers.
Some of the new concrete structures are equipped with bike racks, benches and even rain garden planters that help absorb stormwater runoff. If there isn’t enough money for an infrastructure solution right away, the city puts up temporary bollards.
“There really isn’t a silver bullet or any magic, innovative thing where we’ve cracked a code,” Sharp said. “Our approach has been more about focusing on the fundamentals. We’ve created a program where we’re layering these things in year after year.”
But removing parking from a place where it’s in short supply has critics.
Joe Picolli, who opened the Hoboken Barber Shop on Washington St. in 2018, said the curb extensions — or bumpouts — have made it difficult for downtown merchants to win back business lost during the pandemic.
“Before the bumpouts, there were a lot more buses, a lot more cars, a lot more parking,” said Picolli, who lives in Point Pleasant, N.J., and sometimes has to trail street sweepers to find parking. “It’s good as far as people walking on the street, but it’s bad because you’re not getting the flow from other towns.”
Dunkirk” star Barry Keoghan, who posed unclothed for Vanity Fair’s video cover, also made a big impression when he danced naked in the hit movie “Saltburn.” Very big. The hard-bodied heartthrob has inspired thousands of fans to descend upon the film’s location in a tiny village in North Hampshire, England. The hunk’s admirers have been stripping down and dancing naked in front of the 700-year-old mansion where the movie was shot.
The streakers have been videoing themselves dancing to “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, just like Keoghan did in the film, which features several murders and lots of kinky sex scenes. The most infamous one being where he drinks the bathwater of “Euphoria” star Jacob Elordi’s character.
The estate and the 150-room mansion are not open to the public, but the movie’s devotees have discovered a public trail through the property that allows them to Instagram photos of themselves in front of the stately home.
The country house’s owner, Charles Stopford Sackville, has called in security to keep the trespassers off his property, but because of the public trail, he can’t stop them. The hoards have only increased since “Saltburn” was released on Amazon.
The film has been a huge hit with audiences, but received zero Oscar nods for director Emerald Fennell, who won an Academy Award for the “Promising Young Woman” screenplay in 2023.
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French fashion designer Claude Montana, who died last month at the age of 76, wasn’t mourned by those who loved his wife Wallis Franken.
In 1996, the fashion model jumped out the kitchen window of the second-floor Left Bank apartment she shared with her husband and fatally landed on her head.
“It was the most upsetting story I have ever reported,” said Dana Thomas, who wrote up the tragedy for The New Yorker.
“Claude Montana was a drug-addled, physically violent monster who drove his American fashion model wife to kill herself.”
Thomas posted her story on The Style Files on Substack. “I’m not putting it behind the paywall, because Wallis deserves to have her story told to as many people as possible,” Thomas said.
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A portrait of Pierre Toussaint has been placed on permanent display inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Toussaint (1766-1853) was born a slave in Haiti and died a free man in New York, after raising funds for the first Catholic orphanage and founding the city’s first school for black children.
The Toussaint portrait by Hunt Slonem was donated to St. Patrick’s by the artist and it was blessed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan after a Mass at the cathedral.
Toussaint’s remains were moved in the late 20th century from the cemetery of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry St. to the crypt below the main altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Ave. He is the first layperson to be buried in this special place normally reserved for bishops of the Archdiocese of New York.
“I feel a very strong connection to Pierre Toussaint, and I’m very thrilled to see the painting at St. Patrick’s,” Slonem said. “It’s not just me doing it, I believe it was just God’s will that I was blessed to be asked to do it.”
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Travis Kelce, the tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs who is lately more famous as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, was on his best behavior in Vegas last weekend.
A source says Kelce was warned by Swift’s dad that a photo of him just dancing with another woman would bring in big bucks from tabloids.
Security at each club in Vegas for the celebration of the team’s third Super Bowl was asked to keep onlookers at least 6 feet away.
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Civil rights leader Dr. Clarence B.
Jones — one of the last surviving activists who worked directly with Martin Luther King, Jr. — will speak March 7 at the 92nd Street Y.
Jones, who carries on Dr. King’s legacy as chairman of Spill the Honey Foundation, will be joined by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Gayle King in discussing the historic bonds between Black and Jewish communities in the struggle for equality in America.
Before working with King on an early draft of the “I Have a Dream” speech, Jones was profoundly influenced by a Rabbi Joachim Prinz speech underscoring the strength of the Black and Jewish coalition.
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Jay Leno has gone to court in California to be named the conservator for his wife Mavis, who has dementia. The couple, married for 43 years, have a joint fortune of $450 million and no children.
Top family law attorney Martha Cohen Stine said, “This legal proceeding will allow Leno to update both their wills and decide which charities their money will go to no matter who dies first.”
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Royal expert Hugo Vickers, who has written books on everyone from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to Greta Garbo, is no fan of Meghan Markle.
“Harry got on well with Prince William, Kate, and the rest of the royal family until he married Meghan,” said Vickers, who will be among the speakers at Eve and Edward Lemon’s Capital Rare Book Fair at the University Club in Washington, D.C. in May.
Admirers of President John F. Kennedy can buy an autographed copy of his iconic tome “Profiles in Courage” for $5,500 or an inscribed photo of JFK in the Oval Office for $6,500.
You can browse thousands of books and memorabilia from around the world at Finefairs.com/capital-rare-book-fair.
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Out & About:
Julianna Margulies and Julia Haart are speaking at the Anti-Defamation League’s four-day conference at the Javits Center starting March 4 …Billionaire Blackstone founder Steven Schwartzman, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and AI expert Mark Minevich were among the VIP’s at the FII Priority Miami Summit. Minevich, author of “Our Planet Powered by AI,” talked with his fellow delegates about the future of innovation, sustainability, and AI.