Razor Apple had this photo of Fort Green’s big rock all dressed up for Halloween. How cute.

This from New York 1:

Just days after fire gutted through
a Brooklyn church, parishioners gathered for Sunday mass. NY1’s Amanda
Farinacci was there and filed the following report.

Calling it God’s mission, some two dozen parishioners showed up for
mass at the Iglesia Presbyterian Memorial Church, only two days after a
fire burned through its doors.

“It was definitely a great devastation, but we’re hopeful that
everything is going to be restored and we’re still going to be coming
here and serving God the way we’re supposed to, so we’re happy about
that,” said parishioner Judy Reyes.

A three-alarm fire tore through the 125-year-old Park Slope Church
Friday, gutting its rectory and a community space used for day care and
local events. No one was inside during the early morning fire, but the
flames left the beloved church, home to hundreds of Hispanics in the
community, in ruins. Fire officials have ruled the fire an accident,
possibly a problem with the heating system.

Church organizers now say they believe in miracles, because two
irreplaceable Tiffany stained glass windows were undamaged in the fire
and a glass case holding the gifts of the communion went untouched.

“When we walked in the building, even the glass was out of smoke,
nothing has happened in that area, and God has preserved that because
it’s holy and to anoint the people,” said Pedro Montalvo of Iglesia
Presbyterian Church.

The church is classified as a landmark by the city Department of
Buildings. Organizers say the fire has taught them to appreciate the
historic building, and inspired them to expand its mission of serving
God and the community:

“We have so many plans for the future and god is going to use this
to help us obtain those goals and objectives that we have,” said Anna
Davila, who has been a parishioner of the church for 10 years.

Insurance appraisers are expected at the church this week to assess
the damage. Meanwhile, the church will keep to its normal mass
schedule, believing nothing can keep its parishioners from attending
services.

– Amanda Farinacci
            
            
       
   
 
 

Ann L. Buttenwieser, a former Parks Department
official, had the great idea 25 years ago of putting a swimming pool
on a barge and mooring it somewhere in the city’s 578 miles of
waterfront. Yesterday it became a reality. This from the New York Times.

Standing in a
terrace garden in Lower Manhattan yesterday, Ms. Buttenwieser watched
the Floating Lady float by after it glided under the Verrazano-Narrows
Bridge and past Governors Island. It is now more pool than cargo
hauler, but it is still not quite ready for its next life as a
destination for dog-paddling, backstroking New Yorkers.

It still
has to sidle into Pier 2 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, where the last of the
pipes and wires will be connected. And one more thing — it must be
filled with fresh water. It arrived full of rainwater from storms it
sailed through on the way north from the Louisiana shipyard where its
makeover began.

The pool is 25 meters long, or half the length
of an Olympic-size pool. For swimmers who never learned the metric
system, that works out to just over 82 feet. It will have seven lanes
and be four feet deep. Also on board will be dressing rooms with
bright-colored tops that look like outsize Legos.

It will not
stay at Pier 2 once the work is finished. The Parks Department, which
will operate it, has yet to decide exactly where it will go.

Ms.
Buttenwieser was excited as the Floating Lady passed yesterday. “It’s
like having a baby,” she said, “but there you only have to wait nine
months.”

Ms. Buttenwieser, 70, was so committed to the idea of
floating pools that she started a nonprofit organization, the Neptune
Foundation, to make them a reality. So far, the foundation has raised
$3 million of the Floating Lady’s $4 million construction cost.

Yes,
she was a swimmer in college, but her goal was to draw people to the
city’s underused waterfront. To design the pool she recruited Jonathan
Kirschenfeld, an architect who once designed a floating theater. (It
was never built, he said.)

As they explain it, wherever the
Floating Lady ends up, it will be attached to four uprights that will
hold it in place, sort of.

“If a fast ferry comes by and there
is a certain amount of wake, it will go up and down,” Ms. Buttenwieser
said. But it will not tilt much — seasickness is not expected to be a
problem on the Floating Lady — and the uprights will keep the Floating
Lady from drifting away from its pier.

Her idea for a floating
pool came along before the city turned a retired Staten Island ferry
boat into a jail. There has been talk of floating bus depots, floating
apartment buildings off Staten Island, floating lofts for artists off
Harlem.

“From the city’s point of view, the floating pool concept
is a very good one,” said the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe.
“Building swimming pools is very, very expensive. And outdoor swimming
pools, they have a short life in the summer, and you have to find lots
of land for them, which can mean taking over park land that’s used for
something else. So a floating pool is an ideal solution.”

They found this big rock in Fort Greene while digging a sewer line on Vanderbilt Avenue. Here’s the story from the New York Times and a great pix by Richard Termine!

New York Times: The rock is jagged, seven feet tall, very roughly nose-shaped, and covered with a fine, tawny dust. A contractor digging a sewer line yanked it out of the street bed on Tuesday and plunked it down at the curbside near Park Avenue.

Since then, life on Vanderbilt Avenue has been subtly transformed. Adults study the rock. Children trace shapes in its dusty face. Its gravitational force seems to have slowed life a notch. For those who have come to love the rock, it is a reminder that under the crust of the city lies the entire planet.

“It’s really kind of a visceral thing,” said Christopher P. Moore, a member of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission who lives up the block from the rock. “You feel rocks, you feel the earth.”

Susan Raskin came home from work on Tuesday to find her dog barking at the rock in front of her house. Her cat seemed spooked by it, too. Ms. Raskin, a children’s social worker, was not scared. She thought the rock was one of the most lovely things she had ever seen.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived in Colorado and there were mountains,” she said yesterday morning as she stood beaming at the rock. “But I live here. This is a big thing.”

That it is, said the man who brought up the rock in the maw of his big yellow excavator.

“It weighs about 10 tons,” said the equipment operator, a scruffy man in a green sweatshirt named John, who declined to give his last name because of possible union difficulties. “I had to break the street a little wider to dig it out.”

This was Halloween last year.
   
   
      

 Halloween
morning, the kids popped out of bed early, ready for their breakfast
candy. "Stop stealing from the trick or treat bowl. That’s for later,"
Hepcat bellowed. Even Teen Spirit, who is historically difficult to
rouse in the morning, was up and ready for high school in record time,
his pockets stuffed with Hershey’s kisses.

The Oh So Feisty One
packed her cowgirl chaps in her pink backpack. "Just in case my teacher
lets us put on our costumes." This was unlikely because her school
prohibits any recognition of Halloween in sensitivity to the children
whose religious beliefs prevent them from participating.

Smartmom
tried to get some work done Monday but by 2 p.m, she
surrendered to the reality that Monday afternoon and evening were for
one thing and one thing only: Halloween.

First crisis of the day
was the case of the missing cowboy hat: OSFO searched the apartment
high and low. Smartmom finally unearthed it underneath Teen Spirit’s
bed.

Second crisis: Teen Spirit needed a shirt for his impromptu
pirate costume. "You can wear this black shirt of Dad’s." Smartmom told
him. "No he can’t," Hepcat screamed from the living room. "That’s my
special shirt."

"it’s alright, mom," Teen Spirit told Smartmom ever-attentive to Hepcat’s  moods.

They
did manage to find a billowy white shirt in the closet. Teen Spirit
strapped on his belt, plastic sword, and the pirate hat he’d purchased
at Rite Aid, ready to join a band of roving teenage pirates who were
waiting downstairs.

Aargh.

Trick or Treating on Seventh
Avenue, OSFO was, characteristically, driven to procure as much candy
as she could possibly fit into her shopping bag. They were joined by
Ducky, Groovy Aunt’s newly adopted one-year-old daughter from Russia,
who was dressed in a zip-up bunny costume with little paw gloves and a
cloth carrot.

Her first Halloween ever – god knows what Ducky
was thinking. Big brown eyes open wide, she inhaled the crazy costumed
scene from her stoller.

The group went back to Groovy Aunt’s
for some apartment-building style trick or treating. Volume is what
that’s all about. "Let’s see," OSFO calculated. "They’ve got six floors
and eight apartments on each floor…”

OSFO hasn’t learned her multiplication tables yet, but still, that’s a lot of candy.

Third Crisis: OSFO developed Halloween fatigue mixed with an acute case of "not being the center of attention."

That
darn baby in that darn bunny suit: Ducky was sucking all the attention
out of the room with a straw. OSFO ripped off her cowgirl chaps and
flung her Payless cowgirl boots across the living room and staged a a
world-class snitsky. Arms tightly crossed, she faced a wall and snarled. The only remedy: a large does of alone time.

Rejuvenated
by a few minutes of quiet and three mini Twix bars, OSFO was ready for
a little trick or treating and the Halloween parade. "The houses with
the Jack-O-lanterns are the ones with the candy," she said with the
assuredness of a seasoned navigator. Racing up and down the brownstone
stoops, she rang on door bells and filled her bag with more candy.

Crisis
number four: By the time they got to the parade, it was over. The
streets were filled with teenagers. Teen Spirit was spotted in front of
Starbucks with a can of shaving cream – horror of horrors. Strange to
say, with all her worries about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, Smartmom
never once imagined he’d be a shaving cream trickster.

Live and learn. Hepcat trailed Teen Spirit and the teenage pirates to Barnes and Noble and insisted that he be home by nine.

Before
bedtime, OSFO weighed her Halloween treat bag on the bathroom scale:
"I’ve got five pounds of candy. Don’t anybody touch it," she screamed
and then proceeded to stash it in her secret hide-a-way.

Halloween
Crisis number five: The day after Halloween, Teen Spirit couldn’t keep
his eyes open during English class. He fell asleep on his desk.
Smartmom hopes he didn’t snore. Now that would be very distracting.

How was your Halloween?

–Posted November 2005

Picture from flickr

NOVEMBER 5 and NOVEMBER 12 at 7 p.m. BROOKLYN’S OWN, CAPATHIA JENKINS AND LOUIS ROSEN AT JOE’S PUB

The team of outstanding Broadway vocalist CAPATHIA JENKINS and award-winning songwriter/performer LOUIS ROSEN returns to Joe’s Pub with their new band for three exciting concerts to celebrate the launch of their debut CD, SOUTH SIDE STORIES, a suite of songs of youth, coming of age and experience. The concerts will also include selections from the acclaimed TWELVE SONGS on poems by Maya Angelou, which debuted at Joe’s Pub last year in two sold-out concerts; and a preview from Rosen’s newest work for Ms. Jenkins, GIOVANNI SONGS, with words by the acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni.

Ms. Jenkins’ is currently appearing on Broadway in "Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me," and has also been seen in "Caroline, Or Change," "The Civil War," and Bacharach and David’s "The Look of Love." Louis Rosen’s songs and theater music have been performed in concert halls, cabarets and theaters in New York and around the country. He was recently awarded a 2005-2006 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition.

"Something quite magical can happen when a composer has a specific voice to serve as his muse. Consider the case of Louis Rosen, the Chicago-bred, now New York-based songwriter, and his songbird of choice, Capathia Jenkins…performing songs set to the poetry of Maya Angelou…and Rosen’s nostalgic, romantic, guilt-laced, emotionally charged song cycle, South Side Stories” – Chicago Sun-Times

Today, on closing day at the Prospect Park Carousel, we all took a ride on the merry-go-round horses.

–Maybe it was because it was the last day or

–maybe it was because I hadn’t been there in at least five years or

–maybe it was silver haired man has been running it for as long as I’ve been bringing one of my children to the carousel (since 1991 with Teen Spirit, since 1998 with OSFO) or

–maybe it was the nostalgic music of the caliope or

–maybe it was the dead leaves falling all around or

–maybe it was my childhood memories of Sundays at the Central Park carousel or

–maybe it was because I was there with my sister, OSFO, and Ducky

but I had a very melancholic ride on the carousel today. I went into a kind of spinning revery thinking of times gone by and all the rides we’ve had together on that carousel and how quickly they/we/us have grown up.

It was a real Joni Mitchell moment. "And the seasons they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down We’re captive on a carousel of time.."

"The Circle Game" not withstanding, it was a sort of blissed out melancholy if you know what I mean. I wanted to close my eyes and stay in it for as long as I could.

But the ride only lasted about five minutes.

TAKE A TOUR of the Atlantic Yards footprint with Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report, who writes the best  journalism being writting about the yards bar none. He also runs NY Like a Native. Tours for the Curious.

This extensive tour will be offered on Saturday, November 4, at 1:30 p.m. The cost is $15/person. The rain date is Sunday November 12 at 1:30 p.m. Given that Mr. Oder does not give Atlantic Yards thumbnail treatment, the tour will last 2-2.5 hours. Meet up point is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, Hanson Place at Flatbush Avenue. More information is available in Mr. Oder’s post about the walking tour or by clicking here for his New York Like a Native tours site.

Moveon.org wants to remind democratic voters that there are only 8DAYS left to win back Congress! You can sign up to make calls!

This year, victory will come down to voter turnout. We’ve found the Democratic-leaning people who often don’t vote in mid-term elections like this one. If we can just get these “unlikely voters” to vote, they’ll provide a winning margin in a whole bunch of races.

Over 30 races are in a dead heat – margins of a few thousand or few hundred votes.  We’ve tested these calls, and we know they work – the people we talk to are much more likely to turn out.  Your calls could tip the balance – but we’re in a daily struggle to make sure we’re reaching more voters than the Republicans’ infamous turnout program. Can you help? ATTEND A PHONE PARTY!

and many, many more Iraqis. October was the 4th deadliest month since the war started.

SATURDAY FORECAST: Very windy. Heavy rain early. Drying out in the afternoon. Wind gusts could cause power outages and down trees.
Sunrise 7:21   Sunset  5:57
Record high 83,1919
Record low 29,1979.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers 
 

Smartmom is mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. You
should not send your kid to school if he’s throwing up or has diarrhea!

Sounds reasonable, huh? But the old Conventional Wisdom has been
turned upside-down, thanks to the insane competition to get into a good
middle school.

Last week, another parent told Smartmom’s friend, Lawyer Mom, that
it’s better to send her fourth-grader to school sick and then pick him
or her up later than risk too many absences on the child’s elementary
school record.

See, fourth grade is the year that matters for middle school
admissions and middle school admissions people look at testscores,
grades, absences and lateness.

And all things being equal, absence and lateness are the deal-breakers.

These middle schools don’t want the kids with the lousy alarm clock,
slacker parents, or compromised immune system. They want the kids whose
parents are stupid enough to send them to school when they’re sick.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Wouldn’t you know it, just days after this disturbing conversation
with her friend, Lawyer Mom’s son woke up with a stomachache,
accompanied by diarrhea, cramps, the works.

“Mommy, I can’t go to school,” came the young man’s voice from the bathroom.

Lawyer Mom’s body pulsed with worry as she heard her friend’s voice
echoing in her head: Send him to school. Send him to school. You can
always get him later after the teacher has taken attendance. Then he
can make his exit. But whatever you do: send him to school.

“Look,” she told her 9-year-old son through the bathroom door.
“You’re not going to die. Go for a couple of hours. If it gets really
bad, I’ll come pick you up.”

O righteous parent who does what is best for her child! Lawyer Mom
knew that, diarrhea or no diarrhea, she was investing in her child’s
future. Harvard, Yale, Upper Carroll Middle School. Visions of Phi Beta
Kappa were dancing in her head.

So what if he was coming down with a stomach virus? The present moment no longer exists: it’s all about the great big future.

Sure enough, the nurse called at 10:30 am. “I threw up,” he told his mother over the phone.

Lawyer Mom ran over the school (she lives a block away) and picked
up her son. She apologized profusely to him. Luckily, he’s an
easy-going guy. He didn’t mind too much that his mother had sacrificed
his health, his comfort, and the health of the other school children
for middle school.

Later, Lawyer Mom emailed her son’s teacher and told her what
happened. The teacher emailed back: “That’s the silliest thing I’ve
ever heard. He doesn’t have excessive absences. You’ll get other kids
sick.”

But what does that teacher know? She’s not the one choosing between
the 90-percent on-time student and the 89-percent on-time student.

Smartmom herself heard the head admissions honcho at High School for
Telecommunication Arts and Technology tell a group of parents point
blank that, because the school had many more applicants than it can
handle, she checks the number of lates that the child got in seventh
grade.

If there are more than 10, she said, she just scratches the name off the list. “Lateness is a big deal around here,” she said.

It’s no wonder parents are in a tizzy about these things.
Tizzies-R-Us. Last week, the New York Times revealed that parents are
holding their children back until they are 6-years-old for kindergarten
in order to give them an edge over their classmates.

What about a 12-year old kindergartner? Now, they’d definitely have
an edge over their classmates. Why not hold the kids until they’re 14
or 15, and let those teachers deal with adolescent angst. And no,
kiddo, you can’t work on your MySpace page during Choice Time.

Perhaps Smartmom is a bit sensitive on the topic because OSFO is not an early riser.

“If you don’t get moving, girlie,” Smartmom told her the other day,
“you’re not going to get into the middle school of your choice.”

“I care more about my sleep than middle school,” OSFO said pulling her blanket over her head.

“Okay,” Smartmom said trying not to go ballistic. “So if you get into a terrible middle school, don’t blame me.”

Smartmom could not believe what she was saying. But she couldn’t
stop herself: “I will not defend you when they ask me why you were five
minutes late more than 10 times.”

The OSFO stormed out of her bed, got dressed, and kept her hair
styling to a quick six, seven, eight (“Would you finish, already?”),
nine minutes.

Thankfully, they got to the schoolyard just in time. The OSFO
wouldn’t even look at her when she said goodbye. “I love you,” Smartmom
whispered but she was gone.

Smartmom felt ashamed of herself and terrible for the things she had
said to her terrific little girl, who, she hoped, wasn’t now completely
traumatized and afraid about middle school like her mother.

And fear is what it’s all about: fear of failing, of not having
enough; of not adequately preparing one’s children for the free market
economy that we live in; fear that they won’t measure up.

Mostly, Smartmom is afraid that she has succumbed to the real parent
trap: trying to do the right thing for your kid without really thinking
deeply about what the right thing is.

Later that day, Smartmom apologized to OSFO. “Good, maybe I won’t
have to hear about middle school first thing in the morning.” OSFO said
still smarting from what Smartmom had said.

Smartmom promised she’d never bring up the topic again. But she knew
she was lying. It was as inevitable as the occasional stomachache, a
bout of diarrhea, or parents behaving badly.

Thanks to Pastor Daniel Meeter, of Old First Church, who looked up 45 Montgomery in Francis Morrone’s gem of a book, "An Architectural Guidebook to
Brooklyn" (available at Community Bookstore — it used to be right on the front counter). Morrone has done follow up books about NYC and Philadelphia.

45 Montgomery Place was built 1898-99 by Babb, Cook, and Willard, the same
architects who went on to build the Carnegie Mansion on Fifth Avenue
and 91st Street in New York City. 45 Montgomery is French Renaissance style,
with rusticated granite base, a broad porch, limestone parlor floor,
and limestone-trimmed red brick above. "The most beautiful thing here
is the entrance with its elaborate consoles and superb central
cartouche."

Does everyone know about Francis Morrone: Go to his web site for more about this architectural historian/critic/wonderkind/city tour guide/general smart fellow. This weekend he is doing a tour of Midwood.

Fonda of Zuzu’s Petals had this priceless recollection to add. Even if it’s not the right house it’s a great story.

I think that house on Montgomery Place was the one owned by Cyril Golodner who, with her husband, raised their family there. I met Cyril
quite a while ago, right after her husband passed away. Her daughter
from way out of town had ordered flowers from me for Mothers Day and Cyril made her way down to the shop to tell me…in a really unpleasant
way…. just how much she didn’t like them.

I don’t know how i did it
but instead of getting all defensive and bent out of shape, I was able
to see how lonely she was and whatever i did, she left smiling. Over
the next 10 years we became pretty familiar. She’d come to the shop and
ask me to fill a small vase when one of her kids was coming to visit.

We
always had long conversations while I put the flowers together. She was
smart, funny, tough. I liked her alot. When she decided to put the
house on the market we had a long talk about how that felt for
her…..hard, and sad.

I heard she died recently. She’d moved away and
lost touch. S i am thinking of her right now and can just see her face
and hear that bark of a laugh she had….

"6 million plus". yeah…you
go girl."

If it’s not cyril’s house then, gilda ratner it…."never mind"