Can’t figure out what to buy those guys and gals who already have everything? Well, don’t buy them anything; give them a free book! Then instead of paying for yet another unwanted sweater, you can use the money that you saved to make donations to charity in the names of your friends and relatives. Of course there are many deserving organizations, but right now funds sent to aid those devastated by the typhoon in the Philippines will be the difference between life and death.

At Jersey City Free Books you won’t have to stand in line at the cash register. You can relax and take as much time as you like to choose titles that will give all the names on your list many hours of reading pleasure. You can still gift wrap the books so to be able to put something more than just an envelope under the tree. Plus, the note of thanks and explanation from the charity certainly will communicate the true meaning of the season better than any card.

Jersey City Free Books is located at 297 Griffith St. Hours are posted at http://JerseyCityFreeBooks.com

# # #

Jersey City Free Books is a community book store that provides something to read without charge, obligation, registration or indoctrination. Jersey City Free Books serves seniors, students, the unemployed and working families. Thousands of books are available. Everyone is welcome to take any number of books for their reasonable, personal use. Jersey City Free Books is eager to assist local charities by providing quantities of books.

Back in the late-90s, Anthony Olszewski rented a Downtown Jersey City building that for many years had been the location of the political promotions business of Nick Baffa. For over half a century, Baffa had sold buttons, posters, bumper stickers and other graphic weapons to all sides. As might be expected, Nick Baffa was originally a registered Democrat, but he “converted” to Republican at the request of none other than Frank Hague himself.

The structure barely held (overflowing as it were into a series of collapsing sheds in the backyard) a century of hoarded items. Amidst the debris, like flakes of gold nearly hidden by gravel, were examples of the marketing from many of the political campaigns of the Hague and then Kenny machines. The collection contained a case of original, but not mailed Jersey City Garden post cards.

In A Cycle of Power, The Career of Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, Richard J. Connors, described how John V. Kenny’s anti-Hague organization only was able to rent a single hall for events:
“Kenny also tried, with little success, to line up meeting halls for the spring. He usually found that they were “all booked up” — John Malone had seen to that! A supporter did manage to sign a contract for one hall, the Jersey City Gardens, Saturday nights from January through May.”

For a limited time, these rare printed items are available without cost at Jersey City Free Books, 297 Griffith St. One per person, please do bring an envelope for these delicate actual relics of Jersey City history.

Jersey City Garden Postcard – Higher Definition Image Front

Jersey City Garden Postcard – Higher Definition Image Back

The current issue of Instigatorzine — an Art and Literature magazine based in Jersey City — carries an article by Jenna Kildosher about Jersey City Free books:
“…
Jersey City Free Books is exactly what it says: free books for anyone who walks in. The concept started out as a sort of book swap on a single shelf. Anthony continued the practice of the bagel store the burned down in late 2006 and had discontinued the swap when it was rebuilt. Since then the number of books have outgrown that shelf. They’ve spread onto nearly every surface of Anthony’s shop, grown stacks high and filled boxes upon boxes. When the weather permits, he stays late and displays them outside for passers-by to discover.
…”

# # #

Jersey City Free Books is a community book exchange that provides something to read without charge, obligation, registration or indoctrination. Jersey City Free Books serves seniors, students, the unemployed and working families. Thousands of books are available. Everyone is welcome to take any number of books for their reasonable, personal use.

http://JerseyCityFreeBooks.com
The Facebook Page is
https://www.facebook.com/JerseyCityFreeBooks

Instigatorzine is a quarterly literature and art magazine. Founded in 2010 by Keith Chiappone and Narciso Espiritu Jr., Instigatorzine features top artists and writers in each discipline. For more information, please visit the Web Site:
http://instigatorzine.com

Jersey City Free Books
297 Griffith St., Jersey City, NJ 07307
http://JerseyCityFreeBooks.com

Anthony Olszewski
Anthony.Olszewski@gmail.com

Available starting on 09/5/13 — many hundreds of volumes with a literary perspective

Someone with a great love of books wants to help Jersey City by giving many hundreds of titles carefully collected over the course of three decades. The group has a literary focus — most are Fiction or Criticism — but Graphic Art, History, Philosophy and Theology also are represented. Of particular value are the back issues of literary magazines and journals, Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, and many others.

If at home I wasn’t worried about an avalanche of books already, I’d be very tempted to keep all of these fascinating titles myself. Actually, even at the risk of being buried alive by books, the temptation still is great!

This fine group of books will be available Jersey City Free Books starting on Thursday, 9/5. Thousands of books are always available every afternoon except Sunday. A complete schedule is available at the Web Site.

# # #

Jersey City Free Books is a community book exchange that provides something to read without charge, obligation, registration or indoctrination. Jersey City Free Books serves seniors, students, the unemployed and working families. Thousands of books are available. Everyone is welcome to take any number of books for their reasonable, personal use.

http://JerseyCityFreeBooks.com
The Facebook Page is
https://www.facebook.com/JerseyCityFreeBooks

Donate at the Jersey City Free Books GoFundMe Page.
Jersey City Free Books popup table

Jersey City Free Books
297 Griffith St, Jersey City 07307
(Just off of Kennedy Blvd. in the Jersey City Heights)

The shop hours are listed at the Main Page of the Web Site.

JerseyCityFreeBooks@gmail.com

http://JerseyCityFreeBooks.com

Only able to serve the community through donations, Jersey City Free Books has always depended on the kindness of friends.

Donate books and other ways to help Jersey City Free Books!

Students and other serious readers in your community urgently need these books: solid recent fiction and non-fiction, including text books less than three years old. Literary classics are always welcome. Children’s titles and books of all types in languages other than English are great, too.

You can donate quality books at 297 Griffith Street, Jersey City, NJ 07307 during the hours listed at the Main Page of the Web Site.

We can’t take damaged books, encyclopedias or text / computer books more than a couple of years old. Audio or video tapes also can’t be used. We currently can’t accept any more mysteries, thrillers, or Romances. Comic books, graphic novels and some hobby magazines are OK, but in general we cannot take mass market periodicals. Any normal wear and library books are fine. Books with water damage, mildew, missing covers / pages or badly stained will not be accepted. We are not able to pick up books.

Jersey City Free Books operates on the basis of from each according to ability, to each according to need. There is no requirement to donate books. If you have quality books that are not being used — especially those scheduled to be discarded — it would be great if you shared them with others.

Cash donations are not requested and will not be accepted.

Jersey City Free Books provides something to read without cost, obligation, registration or indoctrination; everyone is welcome to take items for reasonable personal use. If you represent a charity or an institution, please communicate that.

Though we are located in Jersey City, there definitely is no residency requirement to receive or to give books.

As books are constantly arriving and then finding new homes, there is no inventory list. Jersey City Free Books cannot reserve, search, hold or send personal alerts concerning a particular title. Books are obtained by visiting the shop and on the basis of first come, first served.

If you have any questions, email JerseyCityFreeBooks@gmail.com email address.

Reading frenzy at Jersey City Free Books!

Here at Jersey City Free Books, there are thousands of titles that are waiting for you to open them. Like the tide, hundreds ebb and flow each week. Something I find interesting (And I’ll be the first to admit that I — a riot incited by the then LeRoi Jones — cut my eye teeth on MacBird and was weaned on WFMU — have a particular point of view.) — akin to Sherlock Holmes’s dog barking in the night — are the books that aren’t here.

Norman Mailer — A great author with a career spanning some sixty years, celebrity blending into towering cultural figure and one of the really new practitioners of New Journalism. Besides a stray volume of his political campaign reporting, the ONLY book by Mailer that’s ever graced the shelves of Jersey City Free Books is Harlot’s Ghost (copies of which regularly come and go). This is not only Mailer’s worst book, but it qualifies as one of the worst books ever written. I can only imagine that ol’ Norman had some pressing tax or alimony bill and was by which compelled to clear out every half-baked and rejected short story from his file cabinet by hanging it on a CIA frame.

Yukio Mishima — His influence reverberates through Japanese Culture, World Literature, the Martial Arts, Physical Culture and even World History. Translations were best sellers in the US and the Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea was made into a movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Sarah Miles. Not a single book by Mishima has ever been seen at Jersey City Free Books.

Anthony Burgess — Very popular author, especially in the ’70s, of many books, most importantly A Clockwork Orange — still a strong seller today. No books by Anthony Burgess are now or ever have been at Jersey City Free Books.

Jerzy Kosinski — Another hugely popular figure from the ’70s, one who for a time nipped at Mailer’s New York City celebrity heels. Kosinski wrote (assembled?) Painted Bird, a profound work. He also wrote Being There, a popular book and an even more popular movie. To date at any rate, seek Jerzy Kosinski at Jersey City Free Books and you will not find.

I mentioned the shelves in search of certain authors to someone and she remarked, “Gee, you get to see all the trends.” I do have credentials to prove proficiency in pattern recognition. Actually though, the truth runs closer to Afterword’s John Massett’s observation that, “In your stories, nothing makes any sense. In the old Jersey City, nothing used to make any sense.” In Jersey City PG (PreGentrification), with no place for pretense in the budget, things just were the way they were.

For the Hunger Games internal colonies of rural and inner-city America, incarceration is the peculiar routine. Vast numbers pass through prison, going from little to less opportunity, and then only when life is not shattered or converted completely to crime.

For the many more favored — with concrete walls and steel bars not in city’s centers, but hidden by darkness at the edges — the places of captivity are easy not to see. To ignore suffering is in itself an evil, but if that’s not reason enough, the outcome of nurturing a rot deep within society cannot be good.

Orange Is the New Black — with a light touch — opens the doors of a prison and brings millions inside for a brief visit. The human spirit shines through with the humor, but the situation’s reality is not disguised. And maybe, hopefully, viewers will continue to think at the end of each episode about the Country and the times in which they live.

Jersey City Free Books is proud to supply books for the production of Orange Is the New Black.

# # #

Since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world. Although prison populations are increasing in some parts of the world, the natural rate of incarceration for countries comparable to the United States tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 population. The U.S. rate is 500 prisoners per 100,000 residents, …
…
… And these men are overwhelmingly young: Incarceration rates are highest for those in their 20s and early 30s. Prisoners also tend to be less educated: The average state prisoner has a 10th grade education, and about 70 percent have not completed high school. Incarceration rates are significantly higher for blacks and Latinos than for whites. In 2010, black men were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000 residents; Latinos were incarcerated at 1,258 per 100,000, and white men were incarcerated at 459 per 100,000. …
…
Blacks, particularly young black males, make up a disproportionate share of the U.S. prison population. In 2008, young black men (ages 18-34) were at least six times more likely to be incarcerated than young white men (see Table 2), according to a recent analysis by Becky Pettit, a University of Washington sociologist.7 She finds that young black males without a high school diploma were more likely to be in prison or jail (37 percent) on any given day in 2008 than to be working (26 percent).
…
Only in the last few decades has the passage into prison of young black men with little schooling emerged as routine. “For these young men, born since the mid-1970s, serving time in prison has become a normal life event,” note Pettit and Bruce Western, a Harvard sociologist.
…
http://www.prb.org/articles/2012/us-incarceration.aspx
# # #

When your fifteen minutes of fame comes right from Andy Warhol himself, what do you do for an encore?

If you’re Cleo Odzer, the answer is quite a bit.

Cleo lived as a hippy in Goa, India, becoming heavily involved in both drug use and trafficking there. She returned to New York, stopped taking drugs and went on to earn a PhD in Anthropology. Cleo worked full-time in Communications for a substance abuse not-for-profit, wrote three books — Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India, Patpong Sisters: An American Woman’s View of the Bangkok Sex World, and Virtual Spaces: Sex and the Cyber Citizen. This, plus a cable TV show and Web projects.

In the late-90s, I maintained the Max’s Kansas City Web Site. Cleo Odzer, a MKC regular some thirty years before, sent me the Andy Warhol column seen below. We emailed each other fairly often. After a while, the messages reflected that she was increasingly unhappy with life in New York.

Then Cleo Odzer sent a message that she’d gone to Goa and was overjoyed to find that many of her friends still were there. I didn’t receive any more emails from Cleo after that. A year or so later, I did a Web search and discovered that she’d died. Cleo Odzer, following in the path of Hesse’s Goldmund, found that a trail that’s smooth and downhill at eighteen is rough and steep decades later.

But just the other day, I heard from Cleo again. Someone brought in a bag of books to donate — one by Cleo Odzer. Through writing, we transcend time and space and so never end, becoming like the angels.

Cleo Gerry Miller, the pop scene’s perpendicular pet, was so stunned the other night at Max’s when she spotted her new heart throb (a member of one of the top five groups in the country) necking in the back of Max’s upstairs discotheque with pop-columnist Cleo, that she wrenched the blonde writer from his arms and punched the surprised singer square in the jaw. Cleo only a petite 5’5″, lifted herself up from the floor during the brief skirmish that ensued and whacked Gerry from behind with the closest available thing she could find, a half full salad bowl, spilling lettuce and other assorted greens all over Gerry, her embarassed suitor, and the booth next to them which consisted of Viva!, Rene’ Ricard (that’s another story), and Al Aronowitz. The battle royale that was almost ignited since Viva! and Rene’ “don’t take that stuff from nobody,” was averted when public relations man Dominic Sicilia, an ex-Vic Tanny member, stepped into the middle and put everyone in their seats with some deft Japanese wrestling techniques. We’ve since heard that the enraged Miss Miller (who,incidentally, is featured sans clothes on page 105 of tne November Playboy), promised she “would get Cleo” and is laying out for her nightly in the back room of the scene. Renee Ricard

Photo by Ashlee Espinal/ The Jersey Journal

Jersey City Free Books to participate in Jersey City Peace Fest on 06/29/13

Jersey City Independent: Activists, Artists Coming Together for Jersey City Peace Fest

What:
A FREE community event for activist groups local to Jersey City to come together in peace and solidarity.

Where:
Pershing Field Community Center
Pershing Field Park — Manhattan and Summit Avenues, Jersey City
http://goo.gl/maps/znctY

When:
Saturday, June 29, 2013
2:00pm until 7:00pm

For more information:
Erik-Anders Nilsson
jcpeacemovement@hotmail.com

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
FREE!

Come and meet, learn about and join these local, progressive
community organizations on SATURDAY June 29th from 2pm until 7pm in the Pershing Field Vietnam Veteran’s Community Center which is in the center of the Pershing Field Park between Central and Summit Avenues – near Manhattan Avenue in JERSEY CITY.

PARTICIPATING GROUPS:

– Jersey City Free Books
https://www.facebook.com/JerseyCityFreeBooks

– Civics For The Emerging Activist
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Civics-For-The-Emerging-Activist/309087559184959

– Black Waxx Multimedia
http://blackwaxx.com/

– Occupy Jersey City
https://www.facebook.com/groups/510165532365370/?fref=ts

– Jersey City Food Not Bombs
https://www.facebook.com/JerseyCityFNB

– We Are Change – NJ

– Truth-Media.info
http://www.truth-media.info/

– Jersey City Peace Movement
https://www.facebook.com/JCPeaceMovement

– Guerrilla Activism Radio
http://guerrillactivismradio.com/

– Jersey City Film Crafting Collaborative

– Club for the Uniquely Abled
https://www.facebook.com/groups/100988936620049/?fref=ts

– Anakbayan NJ
https://www.facebook.com/anakbayan.nj

– AngelaCARES, Inc.
https://www.facebook.com/AngelaCARESInc?fref=ts

INVITED groups
Still waiting for confirmation:

– Action 21
– Jersey City Homelessness Advocacy Group

Bands / Musicians:

-Snowball 37

-Audiobodies
https://www.facebook.com/TheAudioBodies

– Jonathan Detres (Bagpiper)
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanDetresPuertoRicanBagpiper?fref=ts

-Grace and Joseph (instrument duet)

Artists:
-Andy Michael Madrona
-Gary Wynans
-Roxana Zavala Marroquin
-Miguel Estevao Paula Brito
-Jessica Siemens
https://www.facebook.com/JessicaSiemensPhotography1?fref=ts

(more to be added!)

-Light Refreshments
-Literature/Documentaries
-Art
-Live Entertainment and Cultural Performances