Brittney Rodriguez is an 11-year-old ball of energy. She bounced from her spot, kneeling on the floor in her black dress, to the other side of the white-walled classroom, looking for a hot glue gun. She eagerly announced to anyone who would listen that she wants to go to NYU and be a heart surgeon when she grows up.

Meanwhile, a few inches from her, Pamela Flores and Brianna Gonzalez, both 11, sat cross-legged between a table and the wall, putting pieces of grey paper onto a large sheet and giggling, swapping stories about mutual friends from school. They were making a background for an “Angry Birds” project.

The girls were at a Friday afternoon session of NYC Sparx at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, in the South Bronx. The center is located off of a wide avenue and has an adjoining basketball court and playground, but these girls stayed inside, in their classroom on the second floor whose walls are littered with posters and messages declaring “Sparx Rocks” or “Girls Rule.” There they learned about technology and how to be creative within STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — fields.

NYC Sparx is an outreach of NYC Parks and Recreation’s Computer Resource Center (CRC) with the goal of helping young girls in the Bronx mine their interest in technology and combine that with the arts.

Laira Reid helps Kaylee Torres, 11, with a project at NYC Sparx in the South Bronx
Photo by Karis Rogerson

“The Bronx was chosen since most of the STEM programs available are located in Manhattan and other boroughs,” Sparx Technology Director Laira Reid said. “We wanted to give the Bronx girls the opportunity to have access to a free STEM program that did not require them to travel to another borough. Not all of the girls would be able to afford the transportation costs or would be able to travel the distances safely.”

According to City Data, in 2013 30.7 percent of Bronx residents lived below the poverty level, compared to 14.6 percent in the rest of New York State. For a family of four, this would mean having an income of $23,834 or less, according to the Census Bureau.

Most of the girls who attend NYC Sparx are of Hispanic or African American backgrounds, Reid said. This makes sense, considering each group made up more than 40 percent of total population in the Bronx in 2014.

But those demographics are underrepresented in STEM fields. Latinos make up only 9 percent of STEM jobs, and African Americans (even men) hold few jobs.

Reid said one of the main challenges for girls from minority communities who want to get into technology, including Latina or African-American girls, is economics.

Brittney Rodriguez, 11, is making stick figures out of popsicle sticks to add to her 3D demonstration of what her birthday party will look like. Photo by Karis Rogerson

“Being into technology requires you to be able to play with the technology, this can get expensive,” she said. “If your family does not have expendable income, you may not have access to the newest technology available.”

In addition, a young girl’s location has a lot to do with her potential future in STEM.

“Living in a community that in and of itself does not have the money to attract technology business also means that in order to see it hands on you would have to travel,” Reid said. “This could be a problem if your family doesn’t have money for the rising cost of transportation to and from.”

Co-Director of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering Science and Technology Studies Christopher Leslie said whites and Asians make up the majority of students in STEM fields, while black, Latino, Pacific Islander and Native American numbers are much lower.

“It does seem that Asian and white men see a brighter future for STEM,” Leslie said. “When they encounter difficulties or have these experiences they know that it’s part of the education process of engineering. Students who don’t have a secure sense of the future won’t necessarily think that they should stick to it.”

Leslie also said that a person’s economic background has much to do with their success in STEM.

“Sometimes it seems like other people are having success because of their social class and not because of what they learn,” he said. “If you come from a less privileged background, you’re showing up at college needing to learn the content and how to study it, and that means that [you] don’t have the same advantage as other students. They might learn a lot, but at the end they’re going to be perceived as being less capable.”

NYC Sparx is for girls only, Reid said, because that allows the participants to open up and learn in a way they might not to if there were boys in the group.

“One of the conversations I had was, ‘How come there’s no boys here?’” she said. “I said, ‘Would you talk to me about the stuff we talk about if there were boys here? Would you even come?’ They say, ‘Oh, we would come, but we wouldn’t talk that much.’ And that’s why this is our group.”

Reid, 34, was recruited to help lead the program when it launched in July, she said, and works directly with young girls four days a week at two different locations. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she works at St. James Recreation Center and on Wednesdays and Fridays at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, both in the Bronx.

“I have to work on getting [the girls] to be proud of the fact that, yeah, you are a geek, you are a nerd, what’s wrong with that?” said Reid. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The people who are making the money, doing the innovative processes, are the geeks and the nerds.”

Pamela Flores, 11, uses a hot glue gun to put together a backdrop for an “Angry Birds” project at NYC Sparx.
Photo by Karis Rogerson.

Flores said that she enjoys coming to the class because she likes to create things.

“It’s really fun,” Flores said, “and it’s things that I like to do, like create things.”

She is especially fond of using the 3D printer, something Gonzalez also enjoys.

“I like to design things and since we have a 3D printer we can print [them],” Gonzalez said. “I would like to learn how to make people and from that learn how to do an animation.”

Reid said she feels like the impact they are having is greater than just teaching girls to embrace their love of technology.

“We have a lot of preteens,” she said. “People aren’t talking to them about some of the things they need to know as they’re getting older. And then it’s like, if you’re interested in technology, is anyone even telling you that it’s okay to do that as your profession? Having those discussions as a group helps them out a lot and those are one of my favorite times when we’re here.”

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Before the well-known, talked about and bet upon runners pass the corner of Crescent Street and Queens Plaza South in Long Island City, Queens, the crowd sees a different group of marathoners: the wheelchair racers.

Around 9:30 this morning, the street began to fill with music and cheers from approximately 100 gathered spectators whose goal was to encourage the competitors of the 2015 New York City Marathon.

The crowd was a diverse group consisting of a wide variety of people from different backgrounds— everyone from the Long Island City native who has watched the race from this spot for the past 10 years to the out-of-towner who took a break from her own morning run to watch to Eugene Chisolm, a construction worker from Long Island City.

Chisolm, 59, like his father before him, lends his hands to building upon the city he lives in.

“Somebody’s gotta do it,” he said of his work. “It might as well be me.”

Although he has watched the race on TV in the past, Chisolm said it’s better to be there in person to cheer on the racers.

“At the end of the day, I get to drink the water and Gatorade they leave behind,” he added with a laugh.

Chisolm especially likes to watch the wheelchair racers. He believes many of them are veterans like himself.

Every time the crowd’s cheers grew louder, signifying the arrival of another wheelchair athlete, the ex-Marine smiled. “This is what we’re fighting for,” he said.

People gathered at the corner of Crescent Street and Queens Plaza South in Long Island City, Queens, cheer as one of the wheelchair racers passes through. Photo by Karis Rogerson.

For Chisolm, the marathon is more than just a race. It has significance, he said, for the heart.

He joked that he, at his age, he would be unable to run 26.2 miles, but that he admires those who are.

“It’s a blessing, “just to make it, ” he said.

Even more, though, he thinks the NYC Marathon is what America stands for. The participation of wheelchair racers, he said, proves that in this country, everyone has a chance.

“I love it,” he said. “This is America.”

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As a 10-year-old, Rose Villanueva snuck into the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park, crawling through the porthole and sidestepping glass fragments and garbage before climbing all the way to the top to catch a glimpse of the forbidden view.

Many years after her adventure sneaking into the building, Villanueva returned and visited the renovated lighthouse.

“It’s nice,” she recalled today of the visit several years ago. “It’s clean, you can walk up … you can go through the door.”

Today Villanueva, now 67, attended the 23^rd annual Little Red Lighthouse Festival, which celebrates the restored building and brings attention to a little-known park in Upper Manhattan.

Originally built in New Jersey, the lighthouse was taken apart and brought to its current location in the 1920s, where it was in use for barely a decade before the construction of the George Washington Bridge rendered it obsolete. In 1942 Hildegarde Swift wrote his children’s book, “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge,” which brought fame to the building, but for a period during Villanueva’s childhood, it was abandoned.

“Bums would go in there,” she said.

The Little Red Lighthouse, which has not been in use for decades, was the site of an annual festival today. Photo by Karis Rogerson

Today, the riverside park was filled with families for an early fall afternoon outing. Vendors lined the sides of the grass, selling everything from handmade soaps to books while a brass band filled the air with lively music. People mingled with each other, sat on the grass and ate food in paper plates, and many signed up for tours of the lighthouse.

“[The festival] gives people an opportunity to know the lighthouse, the area and to see how pretty it is,” Villanueva said. “It’s a pretty part of the city. It’s not all just downtown.”

Dan Lampen, 35, from Hamilton Heights, brought his son to the park to enjoy the afternoon.

“He listened to the book reading and is enjoying the brass band,” Lampen said. “[This is] a hidden park, I feel like. I don’t know how many people are aware of it.”

Another attendee, Alissa Redpath, 25, from Fort Washington, said the park is her favorite place, although she believes it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

“I love it down here,” she said. “The recognition of places like this that have kind of been forgotten is really important. The small little parks in the city are really what make up our great city. So I think that anything they can do to bring awareness to the smaller areas that don’t really get that much recognition is really great.”

Redpath loves the park at all times, even after dark when others might describe it as “creepy,” she said.

“It is dark to walk, but once you get down here there’s all the lights of the bridge, you can see the whole city and it’s wonderful,” she said.

Mary Antonini, 27, a babysitter from Haven Avenue, agreed.

“We love the Little Red Lighthouse,” she said. “It’s sort of off the beaten path, there aren’t a ton of people here, which is great. I like the idea that it’s sort of away. You’re not in the middle of Central Park.”

While today’s event was free and open to the public, vendors paid a fee to set up their booths and ply their wares.

Ramona Prioleau, 49, who runs the Harlem-based social enterprise FraMiATi, said the purpose of that fee is one of the reasons she chose to attend.

“The vendor fee is a donation to the park,” she said. “So it’s not really going to line any more pockets. I thought that was a great idea. We’re a social enterprise, so it fit with what we want to do.”

FraMiATi is a soap and hand cream business that donates a portion of its proceeds to nonprofits. They recently partnered with the American Cancer Society to provide soaps to the society’s Hope Lodge. Prioleau, the founder, said the idea of giving back is very important to her, and that impacted her decision to attend the festival.

“This is in the park and for the community,” she said. “It was a slam dunk.”

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For yearly travelers to the Sept. 11 memorial in New York City, the 14^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks was another opportunity not only to focus on remembering the tragedy, but also to celebrate America’s recovery.

Jose Colon, a New Yorker, visits the memorial every year on the anniversary and has put together a vest decorated with medals and insignia in memoriam of the victims. He lost a firefighter friend in the attack 14 years ago.

Although he visits the memorial every year, each anniversary brings with it new emotions, he said.

“Sometimes I just sit, and sometimes I get mad,” Colon said. “You know, we were attacked here, in our own country. [9/11] changed the country and the whole world.”

Colon added that in his 14 years experiencing the anniversary, he’s noticed a slight change in public attitude toward the event.

Jose Colon, who honors the 9/11 anniversary every year, wearing a vest he put together to honor and remember the event while downtown on Sept. 11, 2015. Photo by Karis Rogerson

“People today, it’s not like before,” he said. “Before, you would be more crowded here. Today people seem to be forgetting about it, but this is something you cannot forget, because at any given time, it could happen again, you know?”

Members of the public were not allowed into the memorial itself until early afternoon Friday, but that didn’t keep the very faithful from showing up downtown.

Conspiracy theorists on street corners urged passersby to look more closely into 9/11 and interested people stopped to write the names of loved ones on a mural Century 21 set up on Church Street, while others merely hustled from subway stops to work. Many stopped to remember the tragedy more than a decade after it shook the country, but many others appeared engrossed in the mundaneness of work on a Friday morning.

While Colon said he believes in remembering in order to prevent a reoccurrence, others simply wanted to remember and honor those lost.

Navy veteran Richard Fill of Easton, Pa., said he travels the 75 miles from his home to ground zero every year to keep from forgetting the event. He’s afraid others have lost interest.

“I never forget, but probably for a lot of people it’s just another day,” Fill said.
“But it’s not another day. To me, it should be considered like a national holiday, where nobody works on Sept. 11.”

Fill, who visits the site every year, worked for U.S. Airways and was on the crew trying to land hundreds of flights on Sept. 11, 2001, said the event really “touched home,” and that is another reason why he makes the yearly pilgrimage to ground zero. He is also proud of his country.

“The country’s a mess, but to me it’s the best country there is,” Fill said. “Every country has its problems, but there’s no other place I’d rather be than the U.S.”

A native New Yorker and Staten Island resident, Wanda Thompson, took a moment Friday to leave a message on the side of a wall that Century 21 had turned into a mural in honor of the day.

“God Bless America,” she wrote, saying she stops by the memorial every year and appreciates the country’s recovery.

“I’m always so encouraged, and it makes me feel so good to come down and see everybody,” Thompson said. “It makes me love being a New Yorker even more.

“Never mind Taylor Swift,” she added, laughing, “it should be Wanda Thompson the ambassador for New York.” (Swift was named New York City’s Global Welcome Ambassador for 2014-2015 last fall).

Thompson acknowledged that the anniversary is a solemn occasion memorializing a tragic event. Nonetheless, she said, she is able to see ways in which America has become stronger because of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It makes me feel happy that, as sad as it is, it has brought a lot of people together that might not necessarily have come together,” Thompson said. “So I love that as ugly as it may be, but on today — and you know, this whole week and even other times — that we could talk about it and share stories and it’s bringing us together.”

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