Norwood News Editorial
Time for a Meeting

Foodtown owner Sydney Katz has offered Bedford Park shoppers a biscuit -- a bus to transport them across the parkway to shop at his Norwood Foodtown store. Residents, who have been inconvenienced for a year because of Katz' decision to keep another market from opening up shop in the former Bedford Park C-town store he owns, aren't buying it. And for good reason.

Why should anyone anywhere in this city be consigned to shopping at a particular market at a particular time of day? Katz didn't even present his offer in person, but in the form of an anonymous statement delivered by one of his subordinates.
It's a shame Katz has chosen to ignore community pleas for a meeting. He is a wealthy businessman -- a native of the same community he is slighting -- who made his fortune serving Bronx customers at nine stores. The least he could do is discuss the issue with concerned shoppers.

Bedford Park residents, many of them senior citizens who have difficulty carrying their grocery bags back across Mosholu Parkway, along with Community Board 7, Assemblyman Jeffrey Klein, and Councilwoman June Eisland, have done an excellent job putting pressure and Katz and have vowed to keep up the pressure.
We urge all of our readers to support their effort. Next time you're in Foodtown, tell the management that Sydney Katz has a duty to meet with members of the Bedford Park community.

Care for Trees.
Don't Kill Them.

A neighbor writes, "How about an article on how we all can help on summer care of all the new trees in our neighborhood?" On p. 14 in this issue we provide some tips on caring for the trees in the neighborhood.

We do have to say however, that the most important advice on caring for trees, new or old, is "DON'T KILL THEM!" This sentiment comes from seeing a particular tree, on Hull Avenue just north of East 204th Street, that has had two feet of its bark stripped all the way around about a foot off the ground. While the leafy bower is still green -- and likely will be for most of the summer -- the tree has surely been killed and will be skeletal by next spring.

There is another on Kossuth Avenue just north of East 208th Street, one on Gun Hill Road around Hull Avenue and one on Steuben Avenue just north of Mosholu Parkway. Maybe some of our neighbors don't like trees -- they attract dog walkers and litter -- or maybe they should have a hankering for concrete. We don't know. Now that it's 90 degrees all of us here at Norwood News really prefer the shade to hot cement.

The other possibility is that there is an ancient desire among humans to pull bark from wood, perhaps an urge born of the old stone age when making good straight spear handles from wood was important for survival. If that be true we are fortunate to have many acres of woods nearby within walking distance.

There are plenty of old dead sticks and fallen logs back there that would be fine for "de-barking". Living street trees, on the other hand, are expensive amenities that we need to preserve. Killing them is a crime in this city and whoever is doing it should stop..

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