A research tip for NY-based grad students who are interested in the Caribbean and Latin America: check out the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at Lenox Avenue and 135th Street. The center houses some incredibly important collections that are relevant for Caribbeanists. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (a Puerto Rican), after whom the center is named, amassed a collection of rare books, slave testimonies, art, etc having to do with Black history, which included (of course) the Caribbean.

Here's a gem in the collection that seems like fecund ground for a NY-based research project: the meeting minutes and bylaws of Las Dos Antillas Political Club. This was an organization that Schomburg himself helped begin in the last decade of the 1800s. It worked to raise money, medicine, and munitions for the independence movements in two of the Antilles ("Antillas" in Spanish)--as the islands of the Caribbean were known. The two Antilles were Puerto Rico and Cuba and it'd be fascinating to unravel a bit of how those revolutionary movements were supplied and shaped from the exterior. Las Dos Antillas Political Club was dissolved in 1898 (which coincided with the Spanish-American War, fought, in part, over control of these two islands).

Where did this club meet? What's become of those meeting places? I suspect a lot of the Cuban membership in the club lived in New Jersey, even at the end of the 19th century. Is that the case?

I live in and love Harlem. (Yes, it's the front line of gentrification and affords a complicated vantage point on social and economic issues in New York and the U.S.) There are so many wonderful things to try and do north of 110th Street, but people who might not live in the neighborhood might not know where and when these wonderful things happen. (An excellent source for more information beyond just this post is Harlem Bespoke.)

Daytime Suggested Itinerary of Awesomeness:
1. Saturday brunch at any of the excellent restaurants mentioned below;
2. Followed by a stroll past the original Red Rooster location, for a sense of Harlem lore (138th and Adam Clayton Powell aka 7th Avenue, See here.);
3. Then, a stop at the north end of Marcus Garvey/Mount Morris Park for fresh fruit at the farmer's market (Saturdays until November, ends at 3:30pm). Fun Fact: the park's name was changed in the 70s to Marcus Garvey Park by a politician looking to curry favor in the district; it didn't take and the locals still insist upon calling it by its older name, Mount Morris Park;
4. And, finally, sitting at one of the benches in the park to listen to the drumming circle that gathers every Saturday and plays for hours.

Nighttime Suggested Itinerary of Awesomeness:
(aka A few of the many excellent restaurants in the neighborhood):

Chez Lucienne on Lenox Avenue (aka 6th Avenue), just north of 125th Street.
This French bistro is run by Burkinabés (people from Burkina Faso) and has interesting dinner or drink themes every night. Saturdays feature live African bands. Expect good French wines, mussels, French fries, steak au poivre, etc. They have sidewalk dining when the weather is nice (as it is these days), which is great people watching.

Mobay on 125th, a few steeps east of Lenox Avenue (aka 6th Avenue).
Caribbean fusion food and drink, festively decorated with hanging lanterns and lights both in and outside. Live music many nights. Jerk chicken, coconut encrusted shrimp, signature rum punch cocktails. The food is amazing.

Native on Lenox Avenue, just north of 118th.
Creative reinterpretations of "traditional" dishes from across the world with addictive sangría. Moroccan fried chicken served with collard greens, beef short ribs braised in red wine. They also have sidewalk seating during warm nights. And did I mention the sangría?

Red Rooster on Lenox Avenue (aka 6th Avenue) just north of 125th.
Marcus Samuelsson's Harlem spot is in the spotlight as New York's latest haute cuisine. Its fame is deserved. They have a happy hour before 7pm on Mondays through Thursdays, which is an excellent way to sample the signature cocktails (note the infused bourbons that line the back of the bar). My favorite is the Earl of Harlem. Reservations are hard to get, so why not just walk up, put your name down for the evening and be flexible about where they seat you? Communal tables at the bar, al fresco dining, and live music some nights.

Moroccan artist Malika Zarra and her band that's as worldly as she performed at the New York festival "Between the Seas" on Friday. She sang in at least four languages--Berber, Arabic, French, and English--songs that ranged from traditional Berber ballades to poetry she herself wrote. And they took the time to introduce the audience to musical styles associated with various Sufi "brotherhoods" in Morocco. This video does not do the evening justice; it's just to tempt you to go to her website (above).



Between the Seas is a new "Mediterranean world" art festival in New York City. It was begun by Aktina Stathaki, Ph.D. (a Greek dancer) with the sensibility that the Mediterranean Sea is itself a region of shared cultural resonances. So, instead of thinking "North Africa" or "Southern Europe" or "the Levant," the festival hearkens back to the conception of water and not landmasses as being the defining cultural or regional (or political) unit. Though now we think of social units in terms of land ("Europe," "North America"), for most of recorded history, people thought in terms of the rivers and seas that linked them. And so we had the Nile, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic. It's cool to see art and cultural expression once more being interpreted in this older vein.

A few computer geeks in Paraguay have come up with a brilliant idea: to use Paraguay's vast renewable electricity surplus to support internet data centers (IDCs) for companies like Google.

The situation is this: Paraguay has a huge surplus of electricity. It consumes something like 6,000,000 MWh a year, but produces about 50,000,000 MWh a year via its two binational hydroelectric dams Itaipú and Yacyretá. Right now, this excess energy is sold to its neighbors, the co-owners of the two dams (Brazil and Argentina, respectively). This excess, however, could be used to power data centers and, even were Paraguay's domestic consumption to double or treble in the next ten years (an unprecedented growth rate), there'd still be plenty. Itaipú electricity costs about $44 per MWh--a bargain compared to what the average cost is for industry in the U.S., $67.2 per MWh in 2011.

Paraguay is a developing country and this would bring in not only revenue, but improved infrastructure. It's geologically stable (landlocked--no hurricanes or tsunamis; not on a fault line--no volcanoes or earthquakes). And it's physically close to the growing South American giant: Brazil, whose internet and data consumption is continuing to skyrocket.

The place to develop this kind of data park would be in the eastern "department" ("state") of Alto Paraná, probably actually on the site of Acaray (a small hydroelectric dam) or the Paraguayan side of Itaipú, where there's already engineering capacity, security, and the beginning of necessary infrastructure.

The entire proposal, written in Spanish, is here: Uso de energía excedente en Paraguay para alimentar centros de cómputo.