Angel Food Ministries Home Food Delivery Service Comes To Roosevelt Island With Affordable Meals For All

You Tube Video of Angel Food Ministries Program

Gristedes and Fresh Direct may have some low cost competition in the Roosevelt Island grocery food business from a couple of Monroe Georgia Pastors and The Roosevelt Island Disabled Association (RIDA). RIDA is the local sponsor of a new Roosevelt Island monthly food delivery service from an organization called Angel Food Ministries that will provide low cost meals to all residents, regardless of income, who sign up for their services. According to their web site:

Angel Food Ministries is a non-profit, non-denominational organization dedicated to providing grocery relief and financial support to communities throughout the United States. The program began in 1994 with 34 families in Monroe, Georgia (between Atlanta and Athens), and has grown to serve hundreds of thousands of families every month across 35 states...

The way the service works is that once a month a menu is distributed with a deadline for ordering and a pick up location. The January menu is located below and includes pricing as well as item information.

Angel Food Ministries Menu

Selections include a $30 regular box which Angel Ministries says will provide:

enough food for a family of four for about a week

and a $28 senior/convenience box of:

ten perfectly seasoned, nutritionally balanced, fully cooked meals - just heat and serve

as well as Specials.

Sample menu items include:

• New Orleans Style Chicken
  
• Grilled Chicken Strips & Penne Pasta and
  
• Beef & Bowtie Pasta among others
  

The deadline for January orders is January 11. More ordering information is available here.

Note that although Angel Ministries describes itself as a non profit, non-denominational organization it has a particular religious component that is included in each order. According to their web site:

... Angel Food Ministries crosses denominational lines and has spread the good news of the gospel of Christ through salvation tracts that are placed in each food order....

UPDATE - 1/8 - From RIDA:

To all RI residents, in regardes to Angelfood orders.
The Roosevelt Island Disable Association is a 501c not for profit organization whose only interest is helping families on RI.

We will not be placing any literature in any of the food orders that are placed with us. We are grateful to AF to provide Roosevelter Islanders to save money each month on their food purchases.

Jim Bates
VP RIDA

Roosevelt Island Coat Drive A Great Success!

Image of New York Cares Coat Drive logo

The Roosevelt Island Winter Coat Drive was a great success. Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society sends in the following update.

Dear Island Friends and Neighbors:

When we found out that New York Cares needed more coats to meet their goal, the RIHS placed a bin in our kiosk to collect coats. RIOC loaned us the bin and placed our flyers on the red buses.

In our two weekends we filled the bin and now there are 37 more coats added to the collection. Thanks to RIPSD the coats will be delivered to NYCares along with many more coats left at their office.

Hopefully more New Yorkers will now have a warmer winter. Thanks to our neighbors, RIOC and RIPSD for your rapid response.

Roosevelt Island Girl Scouts Seeking Adult Troop Leaders - Meeting Wednesday January 7

Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Leader Meeting

A training session for prospective Roosevelt Island Girl Scout leaders will be held on Wednesday, January 7 at PS/IS 217. (6:30-9:30 PM)

According to the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York:

Volunteers meet new friends, become mentors, acquire new skills, gain professional development opportunities through training, give back to the community and make meaningful contributions to the lives of our girls. Whatever your interest or the time your schedule permits, the Council needs your experience and energy to serve the increasing number of girls who are or wish to be Girl Scouts.

Here is the Winter 2009 NYC Girl Scout newsletter - The Leader Reader (PDF File).

Roosevelt Island Historical Society Photo Exhibit on Roosevelt Island Family Life During Early 20th Century And An Oral History From Former Resident

Biking on Roosevelt Island in early 20th Century

Swimming in East River off of Roosevelt Island in early 20th Century
Both Images of the Effler Family from the Roosevelt Island Historical Society

I received the following press release from the Roosevelt Island Historical Society announcing an exhibit of photographs documenting family life on Roosevelt Island in the early 1900's. The exhibit will be open from January 5- 31 at the Octagon with a reception on Sunday, January 18.

EARLY 20TH CENTURY PHOTOS OF FAMILY LIFE ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND

(Roosevelt Island, NY, January 5, 2009) – Imagine living on an island in New York City about 90 years ago, when your grandparent (or great-grandparent) would have been a youngster. The island was not very developed, so there was plenty of open land to stroll with a baby carriage or ride a bicycle. You hosted picnics for your friends and you could swim in the East River!

This is the bucolic way of life captured by 31 photographs displayed in the exhibition Family & Friends: The Effler Family on Blackwell’s Island (1914-1919).

“These photos give a remarkable view of the ordinary life of a family who themselves are an island among the local populations,” said Judith Berdy, President of The Roosevelt Island Historical Society which organized the exhibition. “The Efflers lived here when the Island was populated by more than 2,000 patients in two municipal hospitals and more than 2,500 prisoners in the penitentiary and workhouse. Despite these gloomy surroundings, they had a warm family life with their son and three dogs.”

The photos are part of a family album that was donated to the Society by Donald Effler, the grandson of the Efflers whose family life is richly documented.

At the Reception on Sunday, January 18, there will be special events: a guided tour for children plus a Dog Look-Alike Contest, inspired by the photos of the Effler’s pets: Mike, Vixen and Fluffy.

12 PM Children’s Tour of Exhibit
1 PM General Tour
2 PM Dog Look-Alike Contest
3-6 PM Reception and Refreshments

Supporters of the exhibition include: The Effler Family, Becker + Becker Associates, PRC Management, Mark Chipman and the Roosevelt Island Visual Artists Association. Funding was provided by the Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association.

The FREE exhibition will be on display from January 5 through January 31, 2009 in the lobby of The Octagon, an apartment building located at 888 Main Street. DIRECTIONS: Take the Tram at 59th Street and Second Avenue or the F train to Roosevelt Island. Take the Octagon Local red bus for 25¢ or walk 20-minutes north on Main Street.

The Roosevelt Island Historical Society promotes awareness of our Island’s unique story and pursues preservation of its landmarks and artifacts.

For more information on Roosevelt Island family life in the early part of the 20th century read these remembrances of a woman raised as a child in the 1920's on Roosevelt Island who also later worked in the hospitals here that were published in the March 16, 2000 Main Street WIRE.

Eleanor Schetlin was born in 1920, in the 20th year of her father's employment in the Island's storehouse. Now nearly 80, she treated members of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society and their guests to her luminous memories of her childhood here. She continued to live on Roosevelt Island into the 1950's, working at the Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing....

Creepy Spirits Scare the Crap Out of Visitor to Roosevelt Island's Former Lunatic Asylulm at the Octagon Rental Building

Image of 1897 Octagon Lunatic Asylum from nyc10044

Blogger Melissa Bastian travels the length of the F train subway line from Jamaica Queens to Coney Island Brooklyn with a stop at Roosevelt Island to do some exploring. She visits the former Roosevelt Island lunatic asylum that is now the Octagon rental building noting that Charles Dickens and Nelly Bly wrote about the asylum as a place of suffering and horror.

Her first impression of the new and improved Octagon residential building was:

... The architects really did do a wonderful job of restoring the structure; the building itself is indeed quite beautiful, with a spiral staircase winding around the perimeter of the atrium....

But then came her Dark Water moment when the spirits and ghosts of Roosevelt Island come alive.

... At first the space felt like most newly constructed spaces feel - sort of vacant and dead. But then, all of a sudden, a wave came over me - of panic, of fear, of Very Bad Things. I looked around, and the lobby was still as calm and unremarkable as could be. But this energy was surging through me with a force that made me feel as if I might fall down. I collected Sarah and got the hell out.

We crossed the street to a little area with benches and a sundial, and it took me several minutes of sitting and breathing to collect myself. Now, I am not one to go in for a lot of heebee jeebee mumbo jumbo. But I have this thing with places. I suppose the best way to explain it is that I believe in energy; that a place can be infused with the energies of its occupants if those energies are strong enough, good or bad, and that the traces can last long past their actual presence. I know it sounds a little goofy, and maybe I just watched The Shining too many times when I was a kid. But I've felt many things in many places, and never in my life have I felt anything like that. And I lived in New Orleans for chrissake. Granted, I went in knowing the history of the place, but it certainly isn't what I was thinking of at the time. I was thinking about how pretty it was, and the nice weather, and how yuppies like to live in expensive places with tennis courts. And it just hit me out of nowhere, like a sickness. Whatever it was that happened in there, it is not an experience I have any desire to repeat...

The Dark Water movie was filmed at the Eastwood (now re-named Roosevelt Landings by the new owners, Urban America) buildings not the Octagon but the spirits inhabiting Roosevelt Island may be all over the place. Remember the Encampment?

You Tube Video of Dark Water trailer

A reader points out a 4 bedroom/flexible 5 bedroom apartment available at Roosevelt Landings on Craigslist for $4125 a month. No word on whether that includes the spooky spirits though.

This 2007 NY Times City Room item has more on whether Roosevelt Island is haunted.

Recently renovated as a pricey apartment building named “Octagon,” tenants may find that their new apartments have “squatters.” In a May 2006 segment on “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN, reporter Allen Chernoff noted the eerie coincidence that, on the day that the Octagon reopened, the Roosevelt Island tram to Manhattan broke down. Additionally, pet owners observed that some pets refused to walk up stairs in the building. CNN invited in a team of ghost hunters, who claim to have detected several apparitions on their sophisticated equipment.

A Curbed reader may have spotted an Octagon ghost on the spiral staircase during a 2006 visit.


From Curbed:

I took a picture of the stairwell. in the attached photograph (above), you can see that it's still a delightfully maddening spiral, but also i do believe that is a ghost in the upper left corner of the picture. it's the grayish blur near the banister. it's not sunlight from the windows, as you can see that stops in the lower half of the picture. it's not a reflection from my camera's flash, because the surrounding wood would show a gradation of light.

Things To Do This Weekend in New York City and Roosevelt Island - Moonlight Bike Tour, Holiday Train Show W/Thomas the Tank Engine, Van Gogh & RI Tour

You Tube Video of NY Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show from David Hartman and PBS

Looking for fun things to do on Roosevelt Island or in some other part of New York City this first weekend of 2009? Here are some suggestions.

Free NYC recommends a moonlight bike ride later tonight through Central Park with Time's Up. According to the group:

This is a fun, relaxing auto-free ride through Central Park. Enjoy the tranquillity of the park & its beautiful ponds & waterways: a nature lover's dream. Totally safe. Bike guides front & rear.

Meet at 10 p.m., Columbus Circle (SW corner of Central Park) on the first Friday of the month, every month. (There is also a Prospect Park Moonlight Ride.)

The ride moves at a very leisurely pace with a few stops to enjoy the scenery. We usually finish before midnight, back at Columbus Circle. Total mileage is under 10 miles. We do not require lights (although if you have them you should bring them), and any kind of bike will work.

Sometime this weekend, try to visit the Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night exhibition before it closes on January 5 at the Museum of Modern Art. Writing about the Van Gogh exhibit, The Smithsonian Magazine says:

... What van Gogh fixed on, by daylight or at night, gave the world many of its most treasured paintings. His 1888 Sunflowers, says critic Robert Hughes, "remains much the most popular still life in the history of art, the botanical answer to the Mona Lisa." And van Gogh's visionary landscape The Starry Night, done the next year, has long ranked as the most popular painting at New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This inspired the museum, in collaboration with Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, to mount the exhibition "Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night" (through January 5, 2009). It will then travel to the Van Gogh Museum (February 13-June 7, 2009)...

Parents can take the kids to have their picture taken with Thomas the Tank Engine at the New York Botanical Garden's Holiday Train Show this weekend. According to the NY Post:

CHOO-CHOOSE THE BRONX

Trains - All weekend!

The New York Botanical Garden Train Show chugs along until Jan. 11, but Thomas the Tank Engine rolls into town tomorrow from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and hangs around only until Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. before continuing down the line. Adults can check out an elaborate miniature train that travels around mini city landmarks (like Yankee Stasdium, above) while kids visit with Thomas, take part in arts and crafts activities and become certified honorary engineers. Adult tickets are $20 and kids 12 and under pay $10. 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard, The Bronx; nybg.org, 718-817-8716

On Roosevelt Island this weekend, the Farmers Market will be open as usual on Saturday as is Gallery RIVAA, the Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association which is exhibiting the Winter of Change group show. Also, RIOC has produced a great self guided tour map (PDF File) of Roosevelt Island for any visitor or resident looking to stroll the Island and learn something more about it.

Good weekend transportation news. The MTA is reporting normal Roosevelt Island F Train subway service in both directions and RIOC is not reporting any Tram service advisories either.

Check out some other ideas on what to do in New York City this weekend from the NY Times Urban Eye, NY Post Weekend Calendar and Newyorkology.