More than a year after the departure of the previous nurse practitioner, the Graduate Center welcomes Adraenne Bowe to its ranks. She joined the GC earlier this semester.

A New York native who earned her nurse practitioner credentials on the west coast, Bowe became the second person to fill the role since the Student Health Services center was created in 1994.

Bowe’s arrival will doubtless be welcomed with sighs of relief from many students. For the past academic year a list of off-site clinics has bridged the gap between nurses. But these clinics were no substitute for a friendly face and sympathetic ear. Nor did they do anything to quell the anxiety felt by many GC students, (according to Sharon Lerner 40% of GC students are uninsured) who perched nervously in an unfamiliar doctor’s office petrified to ask, “How much is this going to cost?”

The omnipresent fear of the uninsured or underinsured is a problem of which Bowe is well aware. “I think one of the major challenges, here and everywhere, is the health care system,” she said. “It’s my goal to make this particular system and service as good as possible.”

The issue of health insurance has been a consistent challenge in Bowe’s career, which spans almost four decades. “Patients are basically put in the position of being commodities and the provider is put into the position of a corporate profit making system,” she said. “That can be very frustrating.”

In her new office on the sixth floor of the Graduate Center, Bowe’s desk is cluttered with items that had yet to find a permanent home. She sits straight-backed and attentive, in a chair positioned at the end of the desk rather than behind it. Her fingers link together loosely on her lap and her CUNY Graduate Center ID card hangs around her neck, showing the miniscule portrait of its owner, discernible by shoulder-length brown hair and blunt bangs.

Bowe hadn’t always wanted to be a nurse. She studied English Literature at Vassar College and had aspirations of becoming a writer — dreams that she would still like to fulfill. “My interests were originally in writing and literature. It’s not over yet,” she said, smiling. Her penchant for writing, she believes, is in her genes. Her father is author Harry Bernstein, who published alongside William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein in the early thirties. More recently, at age 98, he became the oldest person to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship grant for his third book, “The Golden Willow.” Bowe is currently reading an advance copy. “It won’t take me long,” she said. “His books are very easy to read. You just kind of slide through it.”

By the time she decided to swap coasts Bowe had already elected nursing as her career. She attained her Masters in generic nursing at the New York Medical College and spent two years practicing on the Lower East Side. “I think I became more socially and politically aware,” she said of her decision to become a nurse. “At the time I saw that people really could not function and achieve what they wanted to achieve if they were not well. That’s what inspired me.”

Bowe is no stranger to institutes of higher education, either as a student or a health care provider. She speaks highly of her experiences at public colleges and universities. At the City College of San Francisco, she took courses in such disparate disciplines as aviation and classical piano, before finally enrolling for nurse practitioner training at the University of California. Nurse practitioners are registered nurses who have completed advanced education in nursing, and are qualified to advise patients on disease prevention as well as diagnosis of acute and chronic disorders.

In addition to her experience in urban primary care, Bowe also worked as part of a mobile health unit in rural northern California, providing care and physical exams to people who would not otherwise have had it. “That was a very interesting position, but it was state funded,” she says. “Like all state funded programs it had its limits.”

“Everybody wants to live in San Francisco. I’ve been trying to figure out why I came back!” she joked. “Nurse practitioner positions on the west coast were not plentiful,” she said, identifying the reason for her return to New York. “The medical community was not as open to nurse practitioners simply because there was a lot of competition between doctors.” When she speaks, Bowe does so deliberately, and when she laughs, it is self-conscious. Like an experienced listener she doesn’t rush to fill the silence when conversation lulls.

In the interim, between returning to New York and taking up the position at the Graduate Center, Bowe worked at the Columbia Presbyterian outpatient clinic in Washington Heights. Prior to that she attended to City College students on the Upper West Side, as well as the Fashion Institute of Technology community in Chelsea. Before that, Bowe worked for twelve years at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, seeing survivors of childhood cancer, and evaluating the late effects of cancer treatment. Bowe was attracted to the job of nurse practitioner at the Graduate Center because here she could provide primary care with added emphasis on health education. ”This is a population that is interested in learning,” she says. “It’s an age group that I find particularly stimulating to work with.”

Experienced in dealing with the needs of student populations, Bowe feels confident in her ability to provide the correct support and assistance needed at the GC. “I don’t think anything is too small or too large to deal with,” says Bowe. “There are specific things that people are concerned with. Immunizations are very big, as are screenings for certain conditions such as HIV or sexually transmitted diseases.

“I think staying well is the most important thing for students. If a student wants to come in because they want to discuss what they’re eating or the fact that they’re not sleeping well, that’s something of importance and I can see them. They don’t have to be sick.”

Sharon Lerner, Director of Student Affairs, said wellness events would be organized over the coming months to help publicize the return of health services to the Graduate Center. She also emphasized that students should make their health a priority, particularly now that the service was back in place. “Despite repeated notices posted, sent to departments, people still don’t necessarily add certain things to their schedules,” said Lerner. Quoting Fall 2006 figures, Lerner estimated that 293 students had availed of student health services during that period. There are 4250 students enrolled for postgraduate study at the Graduate Center.

When asked why it took so long to appoint a new nurse practitioner, Ms. Lerner said the process had been exasperating. “I never surmised this could take as long as it did. I had it in my mind every day.” Lerner, who was assisted in the recruitment process by a Mount Sinai Hospital, also felt that the Graduate Center was at a disadvantage since it does not have a hospital integrated with the university. “We’re not a medical facility. We’re a university,” she notes, adding: “We’re within a state bureaucracy. You can’t go out and just make a contract with anyone when you’re a state entity.”

Despite the long and arduous process, Lerner feels that the appointment of Bowe, who was identified by Mount Sinai Hospital, was the best possible decision and one that could not have been arrived at in any other way. “It was always about finding the right person for the Graduate Center.”

While both Lerner and Bowe are inclined to agree that the Student Health Services Center is no substitute for a good health insurance plan, both understand the implications in terms of cost and affordability. Lerner advocated speaking with Associate Director of Student Affairs, Elise M. Perram when evaluating health insurance options. “Sometimes you can have student policies that are hardly worth the money that you pay for them,” said Lerner.

“It seems like there are a lot of choices but if you don’t have the money, or you’re going to get insurance that has such a high deductible that you will not use it, then I can’t in good conscience encourage that,” says Bowe. “I would urge students to come here and utilize this particular service and we’ll do the best we can.”  

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Their eyes met for little more than a second. “Cool” J.C. Rocwell acted instinctively. He sprang from where he sat and fell into step with the white-haired passer-by. At 6’2”, Rocwell towered above his new friend.

“Hello buddy,” he said as he intercepted the man’s path and pulled papers from the black Polo Sport bag slung around his shoulder. He thrust the bundle towards the captive observer. “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Do you like poetry?”

When Rocwell returned to the bench outside the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on West 125th Street, he clutched a crisply folded bill. He smiled, showing an expanse of pink gum and the quarter inch gap between his two front teeth. Then, just as spontaneously as his grin had appeared, his jaw slackened, his lower lip drooped and the smile vanished. His eyes recovered their former seriousness as he peered over the small, oval spectacles that rested midway down his nose.

“Did you just see that?” he said. “That guy just gave me ten dollars. You know why? He wanted to make a human connection.”

Rocwell has been making connections like this for years. It’s the way he’s been able to make ends meet and defy the stereotype of a homeless man in Harlem as a bum or a drug addict.

“I don’t hang around with the homeless because I’m not like them,” he said. “I know how to take care of myself.”

* * *

But, at 61, Rocwell allows it is getting harder and harder to continue the life of a poet on the street.

In his native New Haven, Rocwell had sat in on some classes at Yale University where he had a job scouring dishes at the college’s cafeterias. Lessons he learned at Yale helped his career as a street poet in New York. “I learned how to take a theme and create a story,” he said.

“I had a concept in the ‘70s. It was a big hit in the subway,’ said Rocwell, continuing in his own staccato rhyming style, “Everybody’s high on faxes! / Commuters are high on the daily news/ People who like music get high listening to the blues/ Midgets get high in elevated shoes/ I get high on different peoples’ views and listening to the blues too, and I get high on you.”

In 1972, Rocwell arrived in New York, age 26, to pursue a career as a poet and musician. There he met “D-Train” poet Rich Bartee and together they founded the “Poettential Unlimited Theatre.” Located on the third floor of a commercial building on West 125th, the theater became Rocwell’s first home in New York City.

“He and Rich Bartee were very closely associated in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said poet and essayist Louis Reyes Rivera, who described Rocwell and Bartee riding the subway preaching about poetry and love.

Rivera emphasized the importance of the Poettential Unlimited Theater as a platform to showcase talent in the early ‘70s.

“Black poetry took a resurgent stand in the ‘70s with institutions like Poettential,” said Rivera. “Poetry has always proliferated in spite of politics.”

However, for Poettential, economic realities prevailed. No longer able to keep up with the rent the theater closed its doors for good in 1978. With nowhere else to go, Rocwell became a drifter, renting cheap rooms when he could or relying on friends to let him sleep on a couch. Often he sought shelter on buses, subway trains and in abandoned buildings.

For a stint, Rocwell got by as a saxophone player in the subway before money got tight and he pawned the instrument. For a while he dressed as a clown and earned a living as a children’s entertainer using the name Chili Pepper Pearl-Lee Winkle. More recently he has returned to poetry, which he sells on the street or in the subway for a donation.

“When people pay for something, they pay attention to it,” he said. “If they didn’t pay for it, they’d throw it away.”

When he’s not selling his poems, Rocwell spends his time writing them at various city libraries, or, three times a week, at the Verizon Technology and Education Center in Harlem. James D. Carter, the center’s director, recalled that Rocwell had a functioning email account before coming to the center.

Since printing is not free at the Verizon Center, Rocwell must go to a library to avail of the free printing. Often he takes the bus to the library at Morningside Heights, swiping himself onboard with the metrocard bought with his poetry money.

“Normally on a Saturday I’m one of the first people in there so I can use the computers before it gets crowded,” he said. “I’m homeless. I haven’t got no place else to go. Sometimes when it rains, I come in the library.”

Experts say homelessness is becoming an increasing problem in New York. Lindsay Davis of the Coalition for the Homeless estimated that more than 35,700 people sleep in city shelters each night.

* * *

A 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated that the older population will mushroom between 2010 and 2030 when the “baby boom” generation reaches “older age.” Rocwell will be one of the estimated 40 million Americans age 65 or over in 2010.

With population numbers going up across the economic spectrum, inevitably so will the number of older Americans — classified as those 65 or above — living under the poverty line.

The growth of this particular cross section of society poses new and complex challenges to policymakers, families, businesses and health care providers. In its most recent strategic plan, the Social Security Administration cited increased beneficiaries one of its major future challenges.

Sometimes Rocwell takes the M102 bus from 125th Street to Malcolm X Boulevard and West 139th Street. From here he can walk to the Central Harlem Senior Center.

Inside the center on 140th Street, Rocwell meandered down a corridor that smelled of disinfectant. A mop in a yellow bucket of sudless water provided evidence of the smell. At the end of the hall, he entered a large room through the already open door, and positioned himself at the table where four other guests were already seated. A television rested on a bracket above the doorway and showed a movie with close captioning.

“Whose movie is that?” said an elderly lady looking up at the television through her thick spectacles. “Too much cussing. Nobody want to hear that.”

A large woman who wore a plastic apron and thick braids leisurely walked around the table and deposited a lunch tray in front of a frail woman with thinning hair.

* * *

Lunch consisted of two slices of bread, meatballs, noodles, and a salad served with milk and tea and, for dessert, pineapple chunks in a polystyrene cup.

“Aren’t you sick of meatballs?” said the bespectacled woman to no-one in particular. “We had meatballs twice last week.”

Rocwell comes here because the food is good and lunch only costs a dollar. The center also offers nutrition seminars, recreational activities, and computer classes. His only complaint is that the senior center is “full of old people.” Rocwell’s lifestyle all these years has required him to stay active and alert — he said doesn’t feel old like them.

“That’s Ms. Campbell,” he said scooping up a plastic forkful of noodles and nodding in the direction of a woman who sat knitting in the corner. “And that’s Pierre — he’s been all around the world.”

Across the room, an elderly Pierre sat with Jack who had recently come into the room to claim his “cussing” movie. They talked about downloading movies from the Internet onto rewritable CDs.

At the library in Morningside Heights one afternoon, Rocwell selected a volume of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry and opened it at the first poem, “Mariana.” “Look at the way he writes,” he said. “So visual. Look how he rhymes ‘latch’ and ‘thatch’:

“The broken sheds look’d sad and strange/ Unlifted was the clinking latch/ Weeded and worn the ancient thatch,’” Rocwell read. Then he lifted his eyes from the page, “‘and then the flick’d match set the whole place a’ fire!’ That’s how I’d finish that poem. That’s the kind of poet I am.”

* * *

After he had replaced the book on the shelf, Rocwell used his library card — registered to an old address at a homeless shelter — to reserve a computer so that he could work on his poetry.

The 11-inch slips of paper that Rocwell prints his poems on are decorated with smiley-faces, hearts, stars, and musical notes. Occasional words of text are selected, and emboldened or the font changed, to make for a more interesting read, said Rocwell. A variation of Rich Bartee’s mantra “More Hugging, Less Mugging” ran vertically along the boarder of the poem: “More Hugging, Less Bugging.”

Even though Poettential Unlimited Theater it is no longer a physical space, and Rich Bartee — fellow founder and friend — has been dead since 2003, the theater continues to exist as a concept, a “theater of the mind,” as Rocwell is fond of telling his unsuspecting patrons.

But Harlem today is very different place to Harlem 35 years ago. If rents on 125th Street were expensive then, they are — many locals would argue — now extortionate.

While New York may have dispensed with its mean streets image, competition underground is tough. In the subway Rocwell must jostle with Mexican guitarróns for performing rights and compete to be heard over MP3 players.

“I’m older, everything’s changed. People have all sorts of devices over their ears now and more taken by other stuff,” he said. “In the ‘70s it was beautiful. They didn’t have all these other devices, they were looking for entertainment.”

Rocwell stood on Broadway, outside the Morningside Heights library, scanning the faces of passers-by, searching for favorable recipients to his poetry.

* * *

A young woman strolled past sipping coffee from a paper cup. Their eyes met for little more than a second. Rocwell acted instinctively. “Excuse me, miss,” he said as he fell into step beside her, “Do you have a minute? Do you like poetry?”

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For more information visit Visual Resistance and Times Up.

A white-painted bicycle slouches against a lamppost a few steps shy of Crosby St., several feet from the busy traffic on West Houston. Withered flowers stick out of the bike’s spokes. The paint is flaking.

This quiet memorial the Village Voice called “Tomb of the Unknown Biker” is the only thing that exists to mark the life and death of twelve cyclists killed in New York City in 2005. “This spot was chosen symbolically as a marker for those people whose names could not be recovered,” said Ryan Knuckle of Brooklyn-based art and activist group Visual Resistance. “Houston Street is one of the deadliest Streets in south Manhattan.”

Naturally, bicycles are in abundance in ‘bohemian’ downtown Manhattan, but their riders aren’t just wearing cheap shirts and hair scarves — some are dressed in loafers and chinos too. As a microcosm of New York, the cycling community is as diverse as the city itself

Everyday cyclists in New York City take their lives into their own hands simply by making the routine journey to work or across town to visit a friend; too often they never make it to their intended destination. Some days or weeks later a white-painted bicycle, or “ghost bike,” might appear at the roadside where a cyclist was killed by an auto-vehicle.

Often bearing no formal relation to similar installations elsewhere, it is usual for ghost bikes to be placed at accident spots by anonymous individuals, sometimes under cover of darkness, since the law’s attitude to this activity remains somewhat ambiguous. In this way, these ghost bikes can sometimes seem to have appeared from nowhere.

The ritual marking of a cyclist’s death in this way can be traced to beginnings in Pittsburgh, but is now a collective cult effort that spans the entire globe. “At this point they’ve spread to 25 cities across the world,” explained Knuckle.

Although not always, many of the ghost bikes visible on the streets of New York are likely to be the product of a collaboration between Virtual Resistance and the environmental and bike advocacy group Time’s Up! “What we’re doing is underlining the places where people lost their lives because others don’t care,” said Bill DiPaulo, founder member of Time’s Up! “We started it, but you can do it yourself.”

Since the project began over two years ago, an estimated 30 ghost bikes have popped up in the five boroughs of New York City; four of these are situated within a mile of each other on Houston Street — nicknamed the ‘boulevard of death’ by local cyclists. Three of these bikes commemorate the deaths of Andrew Ross Morgan, who was struck and crushed by a furniture truck; Derek Lane, who fell under the wheels of an oncoming van when his bike slid on metal construction plates; and Brandie Bailey, who was mown down by a truck which continued for another 23 blocks before the driver finally realized he had hit her. “Houston Street is dangerous for bikes,” said DiPaulo. “A car is 4,000 pounds, bikes are much lighter. Cars can push you off the road and scare you.”

The fourth ghost bike on Houston Street commemorates the many undocumented cyclist deaths in New York City, but also exists as symbol of protest for the under reportage of bike accidents and deaths in media coverage and in official city records. One of two plaques screwed into the lamppost above the bike reads, “For all Those Whose Deaths Never Made the News.”

A 1999 report by the New York Bicycling Coalition exposed inconsistencies in the way that bicycle and pedestrian accident data was reported, compiled and classified for official records. The report states that while motorists self-assess their injuries — however small — in a Motor Vehicle Accident Report, the equivalent Bicycle Accident Report is only ever used to document serious injuries, such as that causing risk of death or likely to demand urgent hospital treatment. Since bicycle accident reports do not account for the full range and scope of injury, the erroneous perception that they are a small subset of existing traffic safety problems is further perpetuated.

“Because the bicycles are so tiny most people who kill them believe they should not be on the street,” said Audrey Anderson, whose 14-year-old son Andre was killed riding his bike near his home in Far Rockaway, Queens, in 2005. “The New York Police Department could care less about bike accidents,” she said. “Whenever a cyclist is killed in New York City it is automatically treated as an accident.”

Anderson said that she has not received any retribution for the death of her son and the driver of the vehicle never received a court summons or so much as a ticket.

“Unless you’re drunk, you’ll probably get away with it,” said DiPaulo on the NYPD’s lenient attitude towards reckless driving in the city. He also said that city officials should be doing more to protect people who endorse cycling and other environmentally friendly lifestyle choices. “ ‘Share the Road’ implies motorists and bikes should have equal rights,” he said. “We believe that cyclists should be treated better. The city should have respect for people who are doing their bit to preserve the environment.”

Last year the Department of Transportation announced that it would add 200 miles worth of bike lanes to New York City in the coming years. While this is too little too late for the cyclists who have already lost their lives on the city’s streets, it is a victory for the Traffic and Transportation Committee of Com-munity Board 2, who have been lobbying for bike lanes on Houston Street since 2004. In a recent development, the Department of Transportation presented an alternative plan to put bike lanes on adjacent Bleeker Street and Prince Street. “After a lot of going back and forth, the community accepted that plan,” said Ian Dutton, who leads the Transportation Committee, adding, “those bike lanes will be installed, first at Bleeker Street in October and Prince Street in November.”

At Time’s Up! headquarters on East Houston Street a number of abandoned bikes are pushed close together and piled high in the courtyard. They are the results of a recent reconnaissance mission by the organization and students from New York University who are intent on fixing up derelict bicycles and getting them back on the road. Occasionally however, one bike will be pulled from the pile and put to a much more somber but equally honorable use. Like the others, it will probably be subjected to some repairs in the basement workshop, but in addition to these repairs a few coats of white paint will be applied — even to the rubber of the tires. When the paint is dry, the bike will be taken and locked down at the place of an accident. It will live a second life as a ghost bike.

The process of creating a ghost bike is sad and moving. Friends and family experience a kind of powerlessness after the death of someone close to them, particularly in the case of an accident. Sometimes creating a ghost bike is the only useful thing that can be done. It is usual for mourners to feel guilt — what if they’d called this morning and delayed the journey by half an hour? Would the accident still have happened? Ghost bikes are a product of that powerlessness as well as a tribute to a loved one lost.

The bikes are painted white so that they stand out and become an easily recognizable feature of an otherwise normal street. “They become a stark illustration of the cyclist who isn’t there,” said Knuckle. “In the city they kind of glow.” Once locked in place they become a part of that particular street and its history; it is not unusual to see ribbons, flowers and candles adorning the bikes. “They’re not treated as graffiti or pollution,” continued Knuckle. “People respect them and they really become a part of their environment.”

Bikes are fairly mundane in artistic terms; however, the value of a ghost bike emanates not from the objects itself but is acquired in a way that mirrors Duchampian conceptual art.

As objects of fairly low value and importance, ‘junker’ bikes, as they’re called, are intercepted on the street where they have been abandoned, whitewashed and finally secured near the roadside of an accident spot. The meaning instilled upon the otherwise worthless object by virtue of its location is subsequently dictated by the meaning that the location has for the artist; often an accompanying plaque demarks this meaning. At the new public location, the bike becomes more precious than it was at its abandoned location. They are no longer just bikes they are symbolic of a person, a loss and an event.

The Visual Resistance mission statement is in part dedicated to the use of art to transform and liberate public space, as opposed to environmental issues which is the domain of Time’s Up!

If ghost bikes must be considered as public art, or even as objet trouvé, then the concept of space is important, since space contextualizes and lends meaning to modern art. Without reading the text on placards nailed above the bikes one can nonetheless infer what these iconic and highly specific memorials mean to represent.

Public spaces, so defined as places designated for public use, have long been identified with democracy. When necessary, streets, squares, and parks provide the platform whereby the First Amendment can be actively employed or interpreted. The identification of public space as the location of democratic practices further contextualizes and politicizes why ghost bikes exist in the public arena and why they are so important as displays of both grief and grievance.

As poignant reminders of the fragility of life, ghost bikes exist to warn motorists of the danger they and their cars pose to city cyclists, and prompt fellow bike users to exercise appropriate caution on the roads. “We place this marker there because each and every individual life is a part of the soul of the city,” said Knuckle, also a keen cyclist. “It could be me just as easily as anyone else.”

As the obvious descendents of wayside memorials and shrines that can be frequently observed on highways and roadsides up and down the country, ghost bikes are in some small way ideologically indebted to them. In turn, the wayside memorials have natural ties to Roman Catholicism and an article of that faith: purgatory.

Roman Catholics believe that prayer can lessen a soul’s time in purgatory; this is especially important for the souls of those who have died ‘out of grace’ as the result of an accident. The purpose of the wayside memorial then is to petition for prayers from passers-by so as to expedite the time that the soul of their loved one must suffer out of heaven. Simply by affixing a cross to a tree or hedgerow, that spot takes on a new significance; a sacred place is created where one was never intended.

The idea of petitioning for prayer bears some resemblance to the secular idea encompassed by ghost bikes, that the victims should not be forgotten or their deaths have been in vain. “I’m very interested and inspired by the wayside memorial,” said Knuckle. “Crosses usually have Christian symbolism, but what unites all these people at the moment of their death is that they are cyclists.”

The idea that common bonds unite people goes part way in explaining the sadness felt by the biking community when a fellow cyclist is killed and lost. Members of that group cannot help but feel personally attacked since the victim “could be me just as easily as anyone else.” Ghost bikes are emblematic of the grief, anger and fear felt at the demise of one who shared the same interests and worldview.

Since everyone living in New York is part of the fabric of the city, such public statements of loss are important and must continue to be allowed to exist as reminders of what were and what should not be again. “As people all living in New York we have to learn ways of living together and respecting each other,” said Knuckle. “We need to figure out a way of living together if we’re going to survive.”n

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