GWENDOLYN LEE

New York City’s Greenmarket celebrates its 40th anniversary this season.

Stands of fruits, vegetables, produce, jams, and breads circle Union Square all year to offer its lively consumers fresh ingredients.

But the yield for fresh ingredients has become unpredictable due to climate change.

Demand for sustenance is high and many farmers are anxious about the looming danger of climate change.

“I can definitely see it affecting us in the future.” Steven, a vendor for Stokes Farm, one of the many providers for the Greenmarket system explained the complications that come with hotter summers.

“Every vegetable is on a different seasonal cycle. Broccoli and spinach don’t do so well in the heat, while tomatoes love hot weather,” he said.

Ahmad, a vendor for John D. Madura Farm, has worked in the field for 11 years.

He talked about unpredictable weather and yields on the farm, saying, “Every month, every week, there’s something different,”

Ahmad expressed concern about climate change and is unsure about the effect it would have on his farm.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency website, many weeds, pests and fungi thrive in warm, humid climates, and farmers currently spend more than $11 billion per year fighting weeds in the United States.

“You get something, you lose something– until you figure out what you need to change,” Ahmad said. To many farmers and vendors at the Greenmarket, climate change is a mysterious dark cloud that hovers over the fields and gives rise to anxiety.

“I pretty much see movies all day,” Rafer Guzman told Baruch College Now’s journalism students at the end of July at the Vertical Campus.

To many kids and young adults, watching movies all day for a living sounds fun. But to professional movie critic Rafer Guzman, it can get “frustrating at a certain point, because sometimes, there’s just nothing to say– but you have to say something.”

“You have to see absolutely everything, even if you don’t like it,” Guzman explained.

But Guzman doesn’t mind seeing terrible movies because he believes that “you always learn about what makes movies good or bad.” Many reviews by Guzman will include what he thought the director did well, or which scenes worked or failed.

It wasn’t until after Guzman graduated when he started to critique movies.

“I had no idea what I was doing with my life at all… There was no grand plan from the very start,” he said.

All Guzman knew was that he liked movies and music, that he watched a lot of movies, and that he listened to a lot of music.

Guzman told the students that he started writing freelance movie reviews at 26 and sold them to companies willing to publish his reviews.

Since then, Guzman has published over 900 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, which have appeared in publications such as the Boston Phoenix, the Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.

GWENDOLYN LEE

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