WBGO Journal

Anthony Ferraro was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease at a very young age. His quest to be just another kid, led by his supportive family, set the stage for A Shot In The Dark, a new film documenting Anthony’s run at a state championship.

“Listen, I grew up blind and never let that stop me.  I was denied to a school I was never able to go to.  I used wrestling as an outlet to grow and learn things about myself,” Ferraro said.

Imagine a crowd of young women and girls riding through your Newark street, in style.

I met the Girls on Bikes crew on a Newark First Friday. They had yellow bicycles, green bicycles, pink bicycles with the baskets in the front. They had helmets too tight for Afro-girls and almost right for the loose curls. They showed up ready to pedal their brown girl joy through the Newark streets all the way from Military to Weequahic Park. 

Leaders Create Leaders, a business leadership podcast, just concluded its four part live miniseries, at the Grammy museum in Newark. Podcast production house ABF Creative and Prudential Financial teamed up with the show's creator, Gerard Adams, for four special episodes of Leaders Create Leaders.

"If music be the food of love, play on" is the opening line of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", and Theater Critic Michael Bourne loved what's playing on in Central Park.

A panel of economists and tax experts put together by the leader of the New Jersey Senate is recommending a variety of governmental changes to make the state more affordable.

The task force is suggesting new state and local public employees be shifted from the current defined benefit pension plan to a 401k-type plan and that all government workers get a less-expensive health care plan.

Theater critic Michael Bourne was super impressed by Renee Taylor's memoir performance of My Life on a Diet now playing Off-Broadway.

Click above to hear the review.

Illuminations: Short Films of Discovery is the latest work from Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno, the Emmy-nominated, award winning, husband and wife, social justice filmmakers from Newark.  The Bongiornos this week preview four of their short fiction films at Cinema505 in Montclair.

The four short fiction films ANGUISH, HEARING VOICES, GLASS WORKS and MOTHERLAND were all inspired by French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s acclaimed Illuminations.

New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer says a federal judge’s decision to temporarily block a Texas company from posting codes online that enable people to make guns with a 3-D printer is a big win for public safety.

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal says if the state finds other websites that offer those gun blueprints, he’ll take them down.

Duane Morgan, the former West Orange High School and Adelphi University star is a rising basketball professional in Spain.  This year he’ll be playing for Plasencia in the LEB Plata League where the competition and the crowds are even better.

Morgan's journey to the professional ranks has been one of perserverance fueled by a strong family and passion to succeed. 

Duane Morgan is the latest guest on SportsJam with Doug Doyle. 

Mark Di Ionno is a lifelong journalist who began his career as a sportswriter for the New York Post.  Most people know him for his front page columns for The Star Ledger and NJ.com.

Di Ionno's second novel is titled Gods of Wood and Stone.  It's published by Touchstone.

The two main characters created by the New Jersey resident is a blacksmith named Horace Mueller who lives in Cooperstown, New York and a shoe-in hall of fame Boston Red Sox baseball player Joe Grudeck. 

WBGO Commentator Mildred Antenor believes thinks that the current MeToo movement is giving sexual abuse survivors a voice that they never had before.

Mildred Antenor is an author and a professor at Seton Hall University.

Click above to hear the commentary.

Ever ask Siri the answer to zero divided by zero?

"Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends."

Gage Daye is still one of the best basketball players in New Jersey and he's involved in three summer leagues.  Daye, a Newark native is doing all that while working as an assistant coach at Bloomfield College, where he's the school's all-time leading scorer.

Daye works for his mentor and current Bloomfield head coach Gerald Holmes.  The two men have great respect for each other on and off the court.

In 2011, Coach Holmes guided his team, that included his star guard Gage Daye, to an NCAA East Region championship and an appearance in the Elite Eight. 

At the Newark Venture Partners Demo Day event, business is a sport, and the founders are the star players. Newark Venture Partners, the venture capital firm with a focus on tech startups, hosted its bi-annual event demonstrating their latest class of promising businesses. The event, Demo Day, took place at the Prudential Center in Newark, a venue normally associated with hockey rivalries and rock stars but attracted all kinds of business people on Demo Day.

Valveek for example, is still years away from completing college, but wants to get an early start on his career.

WBGO Commentator, author and Seton Hall professor Mildred Antenor is frustrated with mainstream media giving you only headlines when it comes to the unrest and corruption in her native county of Haiti.  Mildred says as she's matured, the country's issues have affected her more personally.

Click above to hear Mildred's commentary.

There have been plenty of movies about High School. There’s only one about 8th Grade. I dropped in on comedian turned writer-director Bo Burnham’s 8th Grade, which brings it all up to date.

I don’t know about you, but I was a little surprised by how on the surface my own 8th grade still is by watching Bo Burnham’s first film which updates the experience from transistor radios of my era to the ubiquitous cell phone and social media of 13-year-old Kayla at the Miles Grove Middle school somewhere in suburban NY.

On this month's Newark Today, hosted by NJTV's Michael Hill, we are joined by Mayor Ras Baraka, State Senator Ron Rice, and Founder of Salvation and Social Justice Rev. Charles Boyer to discuss New Jersey's push to legalize recreational marijuana and how it could affect the state's largest city. 

Theater critic Michael Bourne says he enjoyed the return of a show off-Broadway, he just doesn’t know what it is. 

Click above to hear Michael's review of Mummenschanz.

Two rookie police officers in Newark are being hailed as heroes for jumping into action and saving a toddler's life, earlier this week. 

The call came in Sunday after a 2-year-old girl was unresponsive after nearly drowning  in a pool in the city's North Ward. 

Restructuring New Jersey’s school funding formula has been a longtime plan for Senate President Steve Sweeney.  His plan increases the total amount of state aid to schools, but also changes the amount of aid districts receive.  

“Trying to find a solution to end the unfairness going on in this state.  Actually, the injustice where you have two classes of kids; the haves and the have nots,” Sweeney said.

While he didn't eat the meat pies available for theater guests, theater critic Michael Bourne loved the experience of  Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Theatre in NYC.

Click above to hear Michael's review of Sweeney Todd.

The popularity of soccer continues to grow in the U.S., and this most recent World Cup is heightening even more interest about the sport. 

Luke Dempsey, the author of Club Soccer 101: The Essential Guide to the Stars, Stats and Stories of the 101 of the Greatest Teams in the World, chats with WBGO's Doug Doyle.

Dempsey was also a guest on SportsJam with Doug Doyle.

Click above to hear the WBGO Journal interview with Dempsey.

In 2016, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Newark Public Schools sent out a joint statement calling for additional testing, monitoring and remediation of Newark's water supply in schools after discovering levels of lead that exceed the allowable state and federal levels. The city says they are complying with recommendations to address lead in Newark's water. Two groups have filed a lawsuit against the city claiming enough hasn't been done.  

WBGO commentator Mildred Antenor thinks the guidelines for hiring teachers needs a detailed review.

Antenor is an author and a professor at Seton Hall University.

Click above to hear her thoughts.

The 2018-2019 theatre season is underway, and WBGO's theater critic Michael Bourne is back, off-Broadway, with a long-overdue revival of a classic inspired by a classic "Carmen Jones".

With New York having such a rich sports history, one wonders why the idea of a sports tour hasn’t ever developed until now.

This week marked the launching of New York Sports Tours, an intimate, multimedia ride in a luxury vehicle throughout Midtown Manhattan.

Percussionist Chief Baba Neil Clarke is performing on Sunday July 1 at Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn as part of the International African Arts Festival, a celebration that kicks off Saturday June 30 and goes until the 4thof July.  

While writer-director Paul Schrader gets serious from the first minute of First Reformed, Schrader lets the full first act unfurl before he ups the ante in his new film, First Reformed by showing us at the 35-minute mark a suicide vest packed with TNT. That’s a long slow fuse, and the mark of a filmmaker who either has faith in his audience or has stopped caring whether anyone out there is watching. Well, I am.

Schrader has written 24 films and directed 20. It’s been mostly glorious, and always aspirational. His is a terrific filmography.

2018 marks the 153rd celebration of the holiday known as Juneteenth,  a day that many regard as the African-American Independence Day. WBGO's Alexandra Hill sits down with Seton Hall professor, historian, and longtime activist, the Reverend Dr. Forrest Pritchett.  Pritchett who was honored with the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 by then President Barak Obama, is one of many who are working to make the annual celebration a federal holiday.   

Earlier this month, a high school student in California was not allowed to talk about her sexual assault when addressing her classmates at graduation. The incident has prompted outrage across the country. WBGO commentator Mildred Antenor gives us her thoughts.

Mildred Antenor is an author and professor at Seton Hall University.