In Queens, everyone's a friend of a friend removed from Tony Bennett. When he announced plans to build a performing arts school - somewhere - in New York City, I knew the somewhere should be Forest Hills, in fact, I knew just about where the corner stone should go . . .

       . . . Just about?

       Well yes, before the Woodhaven Boulevard bridge construction started, when the footbridge was the highest point around, one could climb to the top and survey the area (eating handfuls of sweet mulberries from an ancient tree at the center of the walkway.) Now that everything's swept away to crank out another Home Depot, my bearings are lost.

       The concept of school and community together in symbiotic embrace has prevailed throughout time. Imagine trying to separate Heidelberg and the school? A remarkable place untouched by time or war since the Middle Ages. Italian Bologna and Studium are equally inseparable, a community proud of the public planning of centuries; the town boasts of having no large squares to highlight imposing facades, every building is equally important serving the beauty of the whole. In England, the union worked so well at Cambridge, that when Harvard Collage was founded in America, the local Massachusetts community was renamed Cambridge, hoping to emulate the harmonious meld.

       In all fairness, the entwining process is not always love and kisses. The English Cambridge, was founded by scholars fleeing Oxford during the town and gown riots of the 14^th Century. (A tavern brawl escalated into a colossal melee between townsfolk and scholars and arrows flying.) Like any 800 year old marriage, there's bound to be a few bumps along the way.

       Manhattan seems at first glance the most appropriate site, but it might be too majestic, too impersonal and distracting to accord the proper background for a young arts school. On one hand, Manhattan is the center of the arts universe, lots of agents, and casting directors, and so plunge the kids right into the thick. On the other hand, there is a warmer, more personal, and classical approach to education.

       Find a place for monastic solitude in which to build the school, a rural community within a community within city limits.

       Forest Hills has many benefits. Consider the location, midway between, Kennedy Airport and Manhattan, suggesting a convenient stop off point for international travelers, allowing busy performers easy access to lectures and master classes, setting aside an hour or so when traveling to or from engagements, and offering the school greater instructional diversity.

       Ample room adjoining hundreds of wooded acres for a university-style campus, performing spaces, a school of graduate studies, dormitories, and guest accommodations; industrial land parcels are locally available for inclusion in the school's real estate portfolio to insure future expansion. Forest Hills has a robust housing market for choices ranging from stately mansions to apartment rentals.

       It would be remiss not to point out, the property is encumbered at present, insatiably ambitious politicians sold the community's soul along with their own, but the consignee has yet to collect. If we presuppose the courage present in abundance to claim and protect their most basic rights, then why should the community not openly compete for situations in their best interest? The contention that the right of community self determinism does not exist is a very old saw sung by exploiters of humanity for centuries.

       H.G. Wells, in his tome that served as a textbook in English schools, The Outline Of History, (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1920) uses the following passage to cite the vacuous nature of society under the Caesars. The abrogation of community self-determinism shocked this Englishman's sense of civility.

. . . a certain Herodes Atticus, who lived in the time of Hadrian, had an immense fortune, and he amused himself by huge architectural benefactions to various cities. Athens was given a racecourse, and a theatre of cedar, curiously carved was set up there to the memory of his wife; a theatre was built at Corinth, a racecourse was given to Delphi, baths to Thermopylae, an aqueduct to Canusium, and so on and so on. One is struck by the spectacle of a world of slaves and common people who were not consulted and over whose heads, without any participation on their part, this rich man indulged his displays of "taste."