“A couple of weeks ago I got discouraged,” said Special Terry, a nine-year veteran of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “My daughter said ‘I hope what happened to you doesn’t make you forget about your dreams and aspirations.’”

What happened to Terry was a worst case scenario. She knew that the Department had to lay some people off due to budget cuts, but she hoped she wasn’t one of them.

After all, Terry was one of the most experienced social workers in her office. She had been working for the Department for years as a public health educator and correctional counselor, transitioning people from jail back into their communities. She had skills. She was about to get a Master’s in Education from Long Island University.

In early May, however, together with three other colleagues, she received a letter. Her last day of work for the City was May 14. On that day she lost her health insurance as well.

Until that point, Terry, a 45-year-old single parent of two daughters, had done well for herself and her family. She was earning $1,352 every two weeks, enough to pay the $679 rent for low-income housing in the North Bronx and support her daughters. Her older daughter, Chrisshawmba, 22, graduated from college last year with a degree in Criminal Justice. Her younger one, Erica, 13, is in middle school.

But suddenly the only money she gets is $380 weekly from unemployment. Like many other New Yorkers battling the economic downturn, she entered a different, uncertain world. It’s a world where if your daughter gets sick, you don’t know how to pay for the hospital. It’s a world where you scramble to cover rent while desperately looking for jobs. And you have to do everything at the same time, quickly.

Terry has always made a point of was having good medical care for her children, but now, with health insurance gone, she just prays that her kids don’t get ill. In early July, however, an insect bit her daughter, sending her to the emergency room. When Terry told the doctors she had no insurance, they panicked, she said, and told her to apply for Medicaid. But because she collects unemployment she is ineligible for Medicaid. Her daughter feels better, but Terry is worried about the medical bill waiting around the corner.

Terry is also concerned about her younger brother’s son, Dejon, the sick, two-year-old boy she is raising. Dejon’s mother passed away last August, and nobody else can care for him. Born prematurely, Dejon’s lungs never developed completely. In the last 11 months he has had three hospitalizations for pneumonia.

For Terry, who had never experienced unemployment before, the most humiliating aspect of her new life was applying for food stamps. She felt other people would see her as someone who exploits the system, rather than as someone who needs a little help to get back on her feet.

“When people lose their jobs and go to agencies where people receive on-going assistance, they kind of view you like you are a loser,” said Terry, who feels she is not begging, only getting her due. She eventually successfully applied online for food stamps through LIFT, a non-profit organization whose stated mission is to combat poverty and expand opportunity.

In between tending to the baby, counting her pennies at the grocery store, and showing up in court to get her rent adjusted to match her new, lowered income, Terry frantically scours the internet for jobs.

In two months she has scored three interviews, including one with Odyssey House, a drug treatment center based in New York City. But she has still received no callbacks. The memory of the lost job she loved motivates Terry to keep looking for positions and keeps depression at bay.

Terry will get her Master’s in Education in September. She is confident she will land some job by the end of August. She also still hasn’t given up on her dream, founding an organization to help integrate formerly incarcerated people back into her neighborhood, the Edenwald Projects in the North Bronx.

That brings her back to her daughter’s words about her aspirations, which make her feel better.

“I’m gonna get back out there again,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

In the film Tiny Furniture a 22-year-old girl called Aura returns home to her artist mother in a TriBeCa loft with a useless film theory degree, 357 hits on her YouTube page, and her tail between her legs.

Throwing away her clogs, she dives into a new life very similar to the one she had before college. She steals $20 bills out of her mother’s Prada purse, parties on East Village fire escapes, and drinks her mom’s wine.

Roughly put, that’s the story of Lena Dunham, who wrote, directed, and played the leading role in this movie, which received the narrative film prize at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference. It’s also the story of an increasing number of young New Yorkers who live with their parents to save money while trying to launch their careers.

“The advantages of living at home are myriad,” Dunham said. “The tangible are food, laundry, magazine subscriptions, someone to nurse you when you are sick; the intangible are warmth, support, humor, and the feeling of being truly home.”

In 1980, 11 percent of 25-34 year-olds in New York lived in multi-generational households. By 2008 that number had jumped to 20 percent, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center.

In Manhattan the number of people in this age group living in their parents’ homes increased by 40 percent from 2000 to 2008, all the more evidence that it has become more socially acceptable to return home to mom and dad.

This phenomenon has been accentuated by almost two years of a weak economy. Some of the laid-off young adults went back to living at home to save cash, as did recent graduates looking for jobs that are not there or going through diabolic cycles of unpaid internships.

Raised in New York, Sara Allen graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in writing last March. Then she had two fancy internships in New York, one at a public relations firm, the other at a high-end event planning firm. But nothing came out of them, and she is now living with her parents in Sugar Hill, a small town tucked in the mountains of New Hampshire, where they recently started a bed-and-breakfast.

“It’s a little bit like living in a fish tank here,” she said over Skype, during a break from looking for jobs on LinkedIn and Twitter. “But right now I can’t afford living on my own in New York. It’s expensive.”

These sons and daughters of baby boomers who have come back home after college for economic reasons have been labeled by some sociologists as “boomerangers,” signaling a new type of relationship between parents and their offspring.

“Parents should treat them like adults, and they should come back home expecting that they will have to behave like adults,” said Susan Morris Shaffer, an educator for more than 35 years and co-author of the parenting guide, Mom, Can I Move Back In With You? “They should treat their parents the way they would roommates, not expecting them to do their laundry or have dinner on the table.”

One of the hot issues for boomerang parents is whether or not to charge rent. Some parents charge their children no rent. Some ask for a market rate rent, others for a percentage of their children’s income, and a few have devised an escalating rent scheme to put a bit of pressure on them.

Experts like Linda Perlman, a psychotherapist who co-authored Mom, Can I Move Back In With You? and the mother of a successful boomeranger, thinks that making children pay rent is only one way to teach them financial responsibility.

“The whole point of staying at home is to save money so that they can get out,” she said. “Rather than financially, they can give back in kind; they could cook dinner, clean a little bit after dinner, give a ride to a sister to the gym.”

That’s more or less what happens at the Dunhams’, where Lena doesn’t pay rent but tries to contribute to household chores.

“I take out the trash, wash the dishes, pick up milk from the store, keep my music down,” she said. “It’s a real team effort.”

Living with your parents after college and asking them for spending money after your teen years have long been regarded as something only losers do and something kids and parents should be ashamed of. But the recession has taken away much of that stigma.

“We would have rather been homeless than been back with our parents,” said Shaffer. “Now it’s not a failure if your child has to move back.”

For young adults like Allen and Dunham, it certainly wasn’t shameful.

“It would have been more shameful struggling in Bushwick obscurity just to prove a point,” Dunham said. “I really like my parents, and they have excellent taste in food, décor and media. So they presented a better roommate option than most.”

In some ways, the economic downturn has brought America closer to Europe in terms of parents supporting kids in their twenties, although the United States is still far from challenging countries like Italy, the long-established land of mammoni, mama’s
boys who don’t think twice about having their mothers wash their clothes or cook their food well into their thirties.

“If my kid asks me something like that, I’m gonna whack him on the side of his head,” Shaffer said. “But parents should stop whining about their kids being at home, make it a win-win situation, and turn it into an opportunity to coach them a little bit more.”

Dennis Crowley, amministratore delegato del social network più corteggiato del momento, ricorda perfettamente quando ha avuto l’idea da 125 milioni di dollari. Dopo il jogging lungo il fiume Hudson con un dispositivo che registra tragitto e velocità della corsa, ha scaricato i dati sul computer e confrontato la performance con quella dei suoi amici. «In quel momento ho pensato che se c’è competizione anche il jogging diventa più divertente» spiega Crowley. «E ho cercato di trasformare la realtà in un grande videogioco alla Super Mario Bros».
Quattordici mesi dopo, il suo Foursquare, un sito internet e applicazione iPhone a metà tra gioco a premi virtuale, guida cittadina e navigatore per trovare amici, è stato valutato da Yahoo! ben 125 milioni di dollari.
Operativa in oltre cento città al mondo, Foursquare è la stella della Silicon Alley, la galassia delle start-up newyorkesi. I capitali, copiosi nella Silicon Valley e a Boston, sede del Massachusetts Institute of Technology, negli ultimi mesi stanno arrivando sempre più a New York, attratti da giovani businessman di talento che non possono più aspirare a lavori super pagati in banche come Morgan Stanley; manager di Wall Street licenziati a caccia di nuove sfide; e grazie a una città dal carattere innovativo, capace di offrire una serie di agevolazioni alle start-up: uffici a prezzi contenuti, aiuti per acquistare computer e un fondo da nove milioni di dollari.
Il venture capital per le start-up di New York è schizzato a 566 milioni di dollari nel primo trimestre 2010, un incremento del 18,9% rispetto al quarto trimestre del 2009, e 75 imprese hanno ricevuto capitale nel primo trimestre di quest’anno, un 11,9% in più dell’ultimo trimestre 2009, secondo gli ultimi dati di PricewaterhouseCoopers e della National Venture Capital Association. «Benché la Silicon Alley di New York non stia soppiantando la Silicon Valley» spiega AnnaLee Saxenian, ordinaria di imprenditoria tecnologica ed economia regionale all’Università di Barkeley in California, «certamente New York in questo periodo sta brillando, e ha grandi potenzialità».
Crowley, newyorkese, 33 anni e modi da guascone, è il volto della nuova, scintillante Silicon Alley. Ex istruttore di snowboard appassionato di hip hop, dopo il master in Interactive telecommunications alla New York University, ha fondato nel 2004 il servizio Dodgeball, per segnalare agli amici dove ci si trova in città in un dato momento inviando un Sms. Un anno più tardi, Crowley ha venduto Dodgeball a Google, che però ha lasciato sfumare il progetto ritenendolo in fin dei conti troppo macchinoso per poter decollare. Crowley, però, nel marzo 2009 insieme al compagno di master Naveen Selvadurai ha riproposto la formula di Dodgeball in salsa iPhone, incorporando un nuovo ingrediente rivelatosi il tocco vincente: il meccanismo del gioco a premi. Gli iscritti a Foursquare contendono medaglie virtuali ad amici e sconosciuti. C’è un trofeo per chi va in palestra dieci volte alla settimana, un altro per chi mangia fuori in almeno 30 pizzerie diverse in un mese, un altro ancora per chi riesce a trascinare in discoteca 50 persone. E poi c’è’ il bottino più ambito: il più assiduo frequentatore di un locale viene incoronato sindaco virtuale.

«Questo gioco crea assuefazione» sospira Mike Caprio, un consulente informatico di Brooklyn che tra le varie medaglie può vantare pure quella di sindaco della rinomata pasticceria The Blue Stove nel quartiere Williamsburg. «A volte entro a comprare una fetta di torta di rabarbaro solo per raccogliere punti e difendere la leadership».
Musica per le orecchie degli investitori, pezzi grossi come Albert Wenger, partner di Union Square Ventures, Ron Conway, sostenitore della prima ora di Google, Kevin Rose, fondatore del sito di social news Digg, e Jack Dorsey, cofondatore di Twitter. Tutti stravedono per queste medaglie perché non solo influenzano, ma cambiano il comportamento dei consumatori.
«Gli iscritti adorano vantarsi di essere stati in un locale più di ogni altro» racconta il ventottenne cofondatore di Foursquare, Selvadurai. «È il gusto di poter dire che lì sei di casa, sei qualcuno, mentre altri sono semplici clienti». Gli investitori ora attendono da Crowley e Selvadurai buone notizie sul fronte del modello di business. E pare ci siano. Crowley si sta orientando a far pagare i commercianti per collocare pubblicità con offerte promozionali per gli iscritti a Foursquare.
«È troppo presto per sapere se il sistema funzionerà» dice Crowley, che tra l’altro potrebbe presto dover affrontare la concorrenza di un prodotto simile al suo targato Twitter. «Credo però che i modi per fare profitto cambieranno prima che riusciamo a metterli a punto». Intanto, però, alcuni business stanno aderendo con passione a Foursquare. Una compagnia di taxi di New York ha offerto corse gratuite al sindaco virtuale dell’aeroporto John F. Kennedy di New York. Perfino un cimitero del Maine ha voluto essere della partita: mette in palio una visita guidata del Camposanto ai foursquaristi che dimostrino di esserci stati almeno cento volte.

Silicon Alley
Coniato alla fine degli anni ‘90, il termine (letteralmente Vicolo del silicio) indicava un gruppo di aziende informatiche con sede vicino a Union Square, TriBeCa e SoHo, in un corridoio che costeggia da nord a sud la Broadway, nella sezione meridionale dell’isola di Manhattan. Ma con il tempo gli uffici di queste imprese si sono sparpagliati in diverse zone, e il termine ha cominciato a connotare le aziende dot.com di New York in generale.
Boom di iniziative
Dal 2003 la Silicon Alley annovera sempre più start-up e contende a Boston e San Francisco la palma di centro tecnologico principe degli Stati Uniti. Dal 2007 la seconda sede per dimensioni di Google è a New York, e oggi conta 700 impiegati. Yahoo! non si è fatta attendere e ha aperto un ufficio con vista su Bryant Park. Dal 2009, poi, la Silicon Alley è diventata leader nel campo della pubblicità e dei new media. Senza contare la sfilza di start-up Web 2.0 che hanno messo su bottega.

Il SOLE-24ORE, pubblicato il 21 aprile 2010

Un documentarista freelance di Brooklyn è tornato dall’India a febbraio con venti ore di interviste filmate. Disperato, ha confidato a un amico che servono mesi per trascriverle. “E che problema c’e’?” gli ha detto lui. “Assumi degli stagisti che lavorano una decina di ore alla settimana”.

Il trentanovenne signor Jonathan Krabbe all’ora di pranzo ha messo un annuncio sul popolare sito di inserzioni Craigslist.com ed e’ uscito a fare quattro passi.

“Incredibile,” racconta Krabbe, “quando sono tornato ero sommerso dalle e-mail”.

Venti messaggi nelle prime 24 ore, e dopo due giorni erano saliti a 52. Così, il signor Krabbe, dopo una serie di colloqui, ha assoldato non un paio, ma una task-force di stagisti, chiedendo un impegno non retribuito e per corrispondenza di circa dieci ore a settimana.

Adesso una casalinga quarantenne di Seattle è al lavoro per trovare sponsor. Un dottorando in neurologia di fede mormona sta cercando evoluzionisti e filosofi da intervistare. Una studentessa del college artistico Pratt a Brooklyn è a caccia di qualcuno che prepari un’animazione per il trailer. Una trentenne con esperienza in documentari a carattere naturalistico sta masterizzando DVD da distribuire ad altri tirocinanti incaricati delle chilometriche trascrizioni. E c’e’ pure il capo-stagista, il cui compito è coordinare tutti gli altri.

“Questi stagisti sono fantastici,” spiega Krabbe. “Stanno contribuendo al progetto con entusiasmo benché possa promettere loro solo esperienza e un eventuale compenso in caso si venda il documentario”.

Il numero degli stagisti non pagati in America è cresciuto in modo sensibile negli ultimi mesi, secondo il più grande database di tirocini, Internships.com, che segnala un aumento del 28% nel 2009 rispetto al 2008. La stessa tendenza si delinea considerando i dati degli uffici stage di università di primo piano come Stanford, dove quest’anno sono arrivate ben 634 offerte di tirocini da aziende della Silicon Valley, più del triplo di due anni fa. E il fenomeno è fotografato anche in un ampio studio uscito il 5 aprile scorso a cura dell’Economic Policy Institute, un Think tank liberale con sede a Washington.

Le aziende hanno bisogno di manodopera gratuita, specie in un momento in cui hanno dovuto licenziare o comunque non si possono permettere di assumere. Inoltre un numero crescente di neo liberi professionisti o titolari di start-up, che hanno perso il lavoro per la crisi economica, ricorrono agli stagisti senza compenso per massimizzare la produzione senza incidere sui costi, secondo Mason Gates, fondatore di Internships.com, bacheca online in cui sono pubblicate 17mila offerte di stage da parte di 7mila imprese in 70 diversi ambiti.

Ma per rendersi conto del proliferare di questi stage spesso sospetti in start-up talvolta oscure, basta concedersi una passeggiata virtuale su Craigslist.com, edizione New York. Qui, ogni giorno vengono pubblicate dalle quaranta alle settanta offerte di stage. Di cui solo una su dieci segnala tirocini a pagamento, e anche tra questi la chiara indicazione del compenso è frequente come un’eclissi solare.

Le opportunità di lavoro gratis per “stagisti super star”, come vengono battezzati in alcuni annunci, sono variegate: sviluppare una strategia di marketing per una start-up di cioccolato biologico InTheRawChocholate; aumentare il volume di traffico di un sito centrato sulla bellezza femminile chiamato Realbeautyis.com tramite una titolazione più congeniale ai motori di ricerca; scrivere articoli per un blog sulla vita notturna newyorkese come Joonbug.com o promuovere compagnie telefoniche su Twitter per conto di start-up come Socialcord.com.

Gli studenti, sia pure con master e perfino dottorati, si accontentano di uno stage non pagato perché è sempre meglio di essere disoccupati, e in America il tirocinio è ormai il passaggio obbligato per qualsiasi tipo di professione. E poco importa se lo stage non rispetta le norme indicate dal Ministero del Lavoro nel documento Fair Labor Standard Act, secondo cui lo stagista non deve sostituire un lavoratore stipendiato, e soprattutto non deve svolge un compito che produce un “vantaggio immediato” alla compagnia, ovvero aiutare l’impresa a fare profitto.

“Generalmente non è legale chiedere a uno stagista di sbrigare lavori altrimenti assegnati a impiegati assunti,” spiega Jay Zweig, un avvocato dello studio Bryan Cave di Phoenix in Arizona con esperienza ventennale in diritto del lavoro. Benché Zweig precisi esistano alcune eccezioni per studenti impegnati in tirocini che valgono crediti universitari.

Il Ministero del Lavoro dello Stato di New York sta adottando misure per sanzionare aziende che offrono stage illegali, ma si urta con una diffusa reticenza degli stagisti nel riportare casi di abuso: sono preoccupati di cucirsi addosso una fama da piantagrane.

“Masterizzare DVD non è elettrizzante,” spiega Nicole McDonald, 27 anni, una delle stagiste del documentarista Krabbe che sta lavorando gratis per acquisire esperienza nel campo in cui intende specializzarsi. “Eppure Krabbe ci permette di contribuire con le nostre idee alla realizzazione di un documentario, il che è affascinante e fa curriculum”.

Per McDonald, in un mercato occupazionale così asfittico perfino lavorare gratis diventa un’impresa. La competizione è feroce. Negli ultimi due, tre anni a combattere la battaglia degli stage non sono solamente gli studenti, ma anche professionisti disoccupati e sottoccupati con la voglia di cambiare impiego o aggiornarsi.

“Senza uno stage oggi non fai nulla,” fa spallucce Lois DeSocio, 55 anni, una vita da freelance per Newsweek e riviste di moda come Zink e adesso curatrice di un blog del New York Times dopo il tirocinio in redazione. “Mi sono iscritta a una scuola di giornalismo proprio per ottenere un buon stage”.

E in questa lotta per accaparrarsi i tirocini migliori c’e’ anche chi gioca sporco, e si rivolge ad agenzie come la texana Fast-Track Internships: alla modica cifra di $799 aiuta un potenziale stagista a lavorare gratis a tempo pieno.

Contact me: 001.347.306.8922, damianobeltrami AT gmail DOT com.

Follow me on Twitter: @damianobeltrami

Say goodbye to yet another dusty, musty piece of vanishing Manhattan.

All that’s now left of Skyline Books is a sign in the window reading “End of an Era. Thanks for 20 Great Years.”

That’s how long Robert Warren’s used book store at 13 W. 18th St. lasted - a kind of hole-in- the-wall home to a universe of rare books, from first editions of Beat Generation classics like “The Dharma Bums,” to pornographic Italian comics to an autographed copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office.”

But last Saturday, Warren, 55, bid the neighborhood farewell. He says he can’t afford to renew the lease, which increased by more than 50%.

“The evils are three,” he said, combing through a copy of an $8,000 first edition of “Les Americans” by Robert Frank. “The big book chains, Amazon.com and online auctions like eBay.”

For years, the Bronx native collected books, scouting for them at fairs and estate sales.

Warren says Skyline Books was his life, its employees his family, among them his “fiancée,” Linda, a 12-year-old, 15-pound gray tabby cat fond of jumping the shelves.

“Linda is the manager in command,” said human store manager Christopher Cosgrove. “She is cold with dogs but super-friendly with customers.”

“You know why I come here?” asked Joseph Jesselli, a reporter for thesmokinggun.com, a couple of days before the closing. “For the creaking floor, the dust, the feeling of a book in your hands.”

Others would show up just to meet other bibliophiles.

“This place was a communion between people who love books and history,” said Jennifer Parkhurst, a former English teacher who was flipping through “First Selected Poems” by William Packard, whom she called a friend.

Last week, Warren was walking around his racks, reshuffling travel guides and philosophy pamphlets, making sure they were not trashed by customers.

“For them, they are just books,” he said, picking up a children’s tale, “Horseshoe Tree” by Lucy Daniels and stroking it. “But I know them one by one.”

Warren plans to donate most of his collection - about 10,000 books valued at $75,000 - to New Alternatives, a nonprofit that works with homeless kids. Warren says he wants to share his treasure trove with younger generations.

For himself, Warren will only keep a bright red poster, a Republican banner from the Spanish Civil War, which he plans to put in his living room. Many customers had inquired about buying the poster, but were rebuffed by the steep asking price - $10,000. That’s a joke, because it’s actually not for sale.

“Sometimes there are things that have no price,” Warren said. “Like this shop; it was my baby.”

Karina Ioffee contributed reporting and editing

The message on Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, posted at 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, asked where his pancakes were. The words were typed from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.

At the time, the sentence, written in street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — meaningless to anyone besides Mr. Bradford. But when Mr. Bradford, 19, was arrested the next day as a suspect in a robbery at the Farragut Houses in Brooklyn, where he lives, the words took on greater importance. They became his alibi.

His defense lawyer, Robert Reuland, told a Brooklyn assistant district attorney, Lindsay Gerdes, about the Facebook entry, which was made at the time of the robbery. The district attorney subpoenaed Facebook to verify that the words had been typed from a computer at an apartment at 71 West 118th Street in Manhattan, the home of Mr. Bradford’s father. When that was confirmed, the charges were dropped.

“This is the first case that I’m aware of in which a Facebook update has been used as alibi evidence,” said John G. Browning, a lawyer in Dallas who studies social networking and the law. “We are going to see more of that because of how prevalent social networking has become.”

With more people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook, MySpaceand Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.

Up to now, social networking activity has mostly been used as prosecutorial evidence, Mr. Browning said. He cited a burglary case in September in Martinsburg, Pa., in which the burglar used the victim’s computer to log on to Facebook and forgot to log off. The police followed the digital trail to Jonathan G. Parker, 19, who was arrested.

As part of his defense, a suspect in an Indiana murder case, Ian J. Clark, claimed he was not the kind of man who could kill his girlfriend’s child. But remarks he was found to have posted on MySpace left him vulnerable to character examination, Mr. Browning said, contributing to his conviction and a sentence of life in prison without parole.

In civil cases, too, online communications have helped strengthen evidence, especially indivorce cases, where they are often used as proof of cheating.

And postings by a probationary sheriff’s deputy, Brian Quinn, 26, of Marion County, Fla., on his MySpace page led to his firing in June 2006 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.”

Such cases are becoming more prevalent in part because Congress in 2006 mandated changes to the federal rules of civil procedure, expanding the acceptance of electronically stored information as evidence.

With the use of a Facebook update as an alibi, such communications may also be used to prove innocence, Mr. Browning said.

Mr. Bradford’s arrest was for the mugging at gunpoint of Jeremy Dunklebarger and Rolando Perez-Lorenzo at 11:50 a.m. on Oct. 17, according to Mr. Reuland, Mr. Bradford’s lawyer.

Mr. Bradford, who was facing charges in a previous robbery, contended he was in Harlem at the time of the Oct. 17 robbery — a claim supported by Mr. Bradford’s father, Rodney Bradford Sr., and his stepmother, Ernestine Bradford, Mr. Reuland said.

Mr. Reuland acknowledged that, in principle, anyone who knew Mr. Bradford’s user name and password could have typed the Facebook update, but he regards it as unlikely.

“This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this; he is not Dr. Evil,” Mr. Reuland said, adding that the Facebook entry was just “icing on the cake,” since his client had other witnesses who provided an alibi.

Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said he could not discuss details of the case because it was sealed. But he acknowledged that Facebook was crucial to the charges’ being dropped.

But Joseph A. Pollini, who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said prosecutors should not have been so quick to drop the charges.

“With a user name and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page,” Mr. Pollini said.

“Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers,” he said. “They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.”

Please check out a longer version of the story here.

If you want to know how this story came about click here.

A group of Brooklyn teachers went back to school this week for some vital retraining. Computer skills? New Math? No, good old-fashioned handwriting.

About 70 educators attended a workshop at Boerum Hill’s PS 261 on Pacific Street on Tuesday organized by Handwriting Without Tears, a national group that hopes to keep handwriting from becoming a lost art in an age of standardized testing and emphasis on keyboard skills.

“Let’s learn pencil grasp,” shouted the workshop leader, Diane Eldridge, starting off with that most-basic of skills because, she said, she recently saw a child holding a pencil as if it were a Stone Age tool.

Several teachers nodded knowingly. Others stared at the chalk with puzzled faces. A couple, looking slightly embarrassed, glanced down at their pens to see if, they too, were guilty of the offense.

Eldridge told teachers that the key is preparing to hold a pen properly.

“Writing is like scuba diving,” she said. “Before jumping into the ocean, you need to jump into a pool.”

During the workshop, teachers were asked to bang wooden sticks, clap their hands and sing — all strategies for preparing kids for the act of writing.

“Pick up a crayon, this is easy to do. I just tell my fingers what to do,” sang Eldridge. “My thumb is bent, pointer points to the tip, tall man uses his side, I tuck my last two fingers in and take them for a ride.”

All this fun, games and re-education doesn’t come cheaply — PS 261 Principal Zipporiah Mills spent $17,000 this year to get her staff up to speed on teaching cursive writing — but parents definitely approve.

“It’s a lost art,” said Klara Carames, co-president of the Parent Teacher Association at PS 261. “Nobody teaches cursive anymore, and I’m glad the school is offering this program.”

At the end of the workshop, the happiest students were indeed the teachers themselves.

Claudia Rivera, a 30-year-old special education teacher at PS 261, had entered the room typing quickly on the keyboard of her Blackberry. When she left, she was drawing a neat capital “D” on a mini-blackboard.

She looked like she had re-adjusted to the ancient tool called chalk.

A version of this story appeared in print on November 13, 2009, on page 13 of The Brooklyn Paper.

A judge on Wednesday acquitted a Brooklyn maintenance worker who was arrested in 2007 for carrying a bundle of fake dynamite he found in the trash.

Ending a bench trial, the judge, Acting Justice Vincent M. Del Giudice of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, scoffed at prosecutors’ argument that the worker, Robert Lopez, intentionally caused a scare when he sat on his stoop with the theatrical prop.

“Would you prosecute all the people who sit on their porch with a lighter that looks like a grenade?” Justice Del Giudice asked one of the prosecutors, Brandon Story.

The saga unfolded on July 22, 2007, when Mr. Lopez was taking out the garbage at Cadman Towers, an apartment complex on Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. He said he found what was a clearly bogus bundle of dynamite.

Mr. Lopez took the prop with him, with plans to turn it into a piggy bank, figuring the hollow sticks were perfect for piling quarters. He was on his way home when two transit workers spotted the fake bomb and called the police.

As Mr. Lopez sat on the stoop of his apartment building, at 46 St. Felix Street, catching his breath on the hot summer day, the police descended on him.

Mr. Lopez, 40, was indicted on charges of violating a state law that makes “placing a false bomb or hazardous substance” a felony that carries up to four years in prison.

Mr. Story and a fellow prosecutor, Christopher Eribo, argued that Mr. Lopez caused public alarm by carrying the device from his job to his home and by “placing” it on his stoop.

Joshua Horowitz, Mr. Lopez’s lawyer, insisted his client was a victim of overzealous prosecution.

“My client was just resting on the porch of his own house where he had been living for four years, would he ever wanted to hurt his neighbors?” he said.

Shortly before the judge’s verdict, which came after months of postponed hearing, Mr. Horowitz had advised Mr. Lopez to consider taking a plea deal that would have given him three years’ probation.

“Why should I plead guilty if I haven’t done anything?” Mr. Lopez said before entering the courtroom.

Mr. Lopez, who has no job, said he was soon going to be homeless because he had no money for rent. But he said he was more worried for his mother, who he said received a diagnosis of cancer last week.

“My mom is going to be happy, my sister is going to be happy, all my family is going to be happy,” Mr. Lopez said. “And the bond guy is going to clap his hands — every time I see him he asks me why I’m still going there.”

Mr. Horowitz said coming out of the court, “I feel on top of the world. It’s like winning the World Series.”

Mr. Lopez looked at him and smiled.

“Remember my promise?” Mr. Lopez asked his attorney. “Now I have to take you to a steak restaurant.”

Mr. Horowitz did not decline the offer.

Rosa Martinez used to stroll to the local money transfer office in Corona every week to send $200 to her family in Cuenca,Ecuador.

She still goes to the Delgado Travel office, but not to send money. Instead, it is she who collects a little cash from those family members in Cuenca.

“My husband used to earn $140 a day working three, four days a week as a construction worker,” said Martinez, 48. “Now he gets $80 a day and works two, maximum three days a week.”

The economic downturn has battered the nation in recent months, but it also has deeply affected countries like Ecuador, where a recently improved standard of living has devolved with less money flowing from immigrants working in the U.S.

“I hope that God fixes this mess,” Martinez said. “If not, we’ll have to go back to Cuenca.”

Hector Delgado, president of Delgado Travel, which has 70 offices in Ecuador and 29 in New York, began seeing a decrease in money transfers last fall.

“At the beginning, it was a slight reduction of 5% in October,” he said. “But then we went up to 9%, 15%, up to 22% in February.”

Data released recently by the Central Bank of Ecuador confirms the trend: Remittances decreased by 8.6% in 2008. They amounted to $3.1 million in 2007, dwindled to about $2.8 million last year and are continuing to fall.

In Queens, the struggle of Ecuadoran immigrants can be seen at “la parada,” or “the stop,” a stretch on 69th St. and 37th Ave. between a small grassy park dotted with yellow tulips and a basketball court.

Day laborers like Enrique Cunas arrive at 6 a.m. and wait for pickup trucks to pull over. Men swarm the truck when the driver yells, “I got jobs!”

The workers rely on a patchwork of jobs to feed families 3,000 miles away and fuel their dreams of building Swiss chalet-style houses to enjoy when they go back to Ecuador. But these days, most hardly make enough money to keep their beds in cramped apartments.

“I have six kids in Ecuador,” said Cunas, a builder from Naranjito, a village of 13,000 in Guayas. “When I speak to my wife and my kids, I ask them to understand that the situation is kind of difficult here. It really is.”

By 4 p.m., workers who haven’t found a job for the day start kicking a soccer ball around in the basketball court.

“At least we can have some fun playing ball,” said José Morales, 22, a construction worker.

Meanwhile, the workers’ dream homes in Ecuador sit only half-built, a sign of tough times on two continents.

“Farmers who have family in the [U.S.] were quickly building big houses in the outskirts of the town,”Nadia Balden, owner of Mayo restaurant in Cuenca, said in a phone interview. “Now, you see their lambs and cows lazily walking around the building sites.”

Nick Loomis contributed reporting

AUDIO SLIDESHOW by Nick Loomis