Sad news tonight at the Old Stone House wine tastng: A biker died in a traffic accident on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.

Aaron Naparstak, the man who helped convince the local Commerce Bank to rethink the drive-in concept, informed me and a friend about the incident.

The accident occurred on Fifth Avenue at Warren Steet. This is how I understood what he said: the woman was cycling north down Fifth toward Flatbush when the door of a truck opened suddenly and hit her. She went flying off her bike and sent to the other side of the street, where she was hit by another truck She died on impact.

The New York Daily News describes it this way: As Elizabeth Padilla, a 28-year-old lawyer, attempted to pass a 10-wheel Edy’s Ice Cream truck, the driver of another truck parked on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope opened his door, witnesses said. Padilla swerved to avoid the door but hit the side of the moving ice cream truck, causing her to topple under the vehicle’s large rear wheels, police said. She was killed instantly, just six blocks from her apartment.

The friend I was standing with at the wine tasting had already heard the news. She lives on Berkeley Place in the building next door to the young woman’s apartment. Earlier today, a policeman came to her home and told her that one of her neighbors was in a biking accident. He wanted to know if she knew the young woman’s relatves. She did not.

In fact, my friend didn’t know the woman at all. The young woman moved in maybe three months ago. "There’s a lot of turnover in the building next door," she said. They never spoke. "I don’t even remember what she looks like," she added. But she feels very said,
nonetheless.

My friend asked the policeman how the young woman was doing. "Not very well," the police offier said.  Somehow she knew that meant she was dead. "It is every mother’s nightmare to lose your child. I felt sick to my stomach for the mother of that young woman."

A young life was lost today on Fifh Avenue. Her name was ELizabeth Padilla.

* A reader on Daily Heights notes that it is more than likely that Padilla was riding on (or trying to) ride on a well-marked bike lane. Much of FIfth Avenue from Flatbush to 20th Street is well-marked as such. 
 

Ashley Clark, one of the organizers of the Nurse-in, the protest against Barbara Walter’s comment about breastfeeding on THE VIEW, stopped by my in-box today and had this to say: 

"I’m one of the organizers or the nurse-in and we’d love to get in contact with R.  Would it be possible for you to send her my email address? Our website is up and although rough, it’s running (we’ve all had such craziness really with all this that there hasn’t been a whole lot of time)."

I forwarded her message to R. and then e-mailed her back asking her if I could interview her:

Thanks so much!  And yes, absolutely.  I’d love to talk…what would you like to know?

Readers, you’ll be the first to see….

R., the woman who was breastfeeding near Barbara Walters on the shuttle from New York to D.C. has made contact with me. 

This morning when I checked my in-box, there was an e-mail from R.

sure you can use my letter … i guess
the issue is that i did not use a blanket which we would have gotten
out of the overhead compartments but on the NYC – DC flight, you are
not allowed to stand up at all or else the flight is diverted to
another airport … so that was not a possibility.

R. is a manager at an international financial firm in Africa. I wrote her back immediately:

R, thanks for getting back to me.  I’ve breastfed on many a plane so I know exactly what you were going through. And you had just endured an 18 hour flight. Unbelievable. Sounds like your baby is a great flyer I’d love to ask you a few questions. Please answer them if you have a moment.

I think R. will probably respond to my questions. I can’t wait to hear from her. For the exclusive OTBKB interview with R. see June 10, 2005.  If you’d like to purchase the "It’s Only Natural" t-shirt, go to http: www.cafepress.com/otbkb

The woman, who breastfed her baby on an airplane near Barbara Walters surfaced in my in-box today.

A friend forwarded me an e-mail from this woman, let’s call her R., that she saw on a Washington D.C. mother’s  list serve (probably something like Park Slope Parents here in Brooklyn).

R. posted this after seeing Tuesday’s New York Times’ article about Lactivists:

Thank you for sending me the New York Times article on breastfeeding.  I believe that I was the woman on the plane.  I started my journey in Johannesburg, South Africa and flew to NY (18 hours) with my 2-month-old son.  I then switched airports to fly the shuttle to Washington, D.C. and encountered Barbara Walters on the plane.  I was three seats from her.  She made a comment about not wanting to sit near a baby which I ignored.  I breast fed during the take-off and landing to protect my baby’s ears.   He did great – did not cry at all – on all of the flights from South AFrica to DC and back. And he got to meet all four grandparents, a cousin, all of siblings and the whole neighborhood in our 2.5 week trip.   I thank everyone for supporting us about breastfeeding!

I’ve sent R. an e-mail and am hoping to interview her. I have so many questions. In my book, she is definitely having her Warholian 15 minutes of fame. On Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, anyway.

Remember Baba WaWa, Gilda Radner

Another school year is almost over. You can feel it in the air. The final stretch, the end of the line. Private schools let out later this week, while the public schools hang in there until the end of June. The joke around here is this: the more money you pay for school, the fewer days you spend there.

The kids look ready for the break. The big crowd of high school kids
who hang out across the street from the Mojo just keeps getting bigger.
And wilder. Last week my daughter and I saw one of the boys scale the
PS 321 building attempting to retrieve a frisbee stuck on the second
story roof. Fortunately, he did NOT get killed.

Graduation is just weeks away for the 8th graders at MS 51 and
schoolwork is definitely far from their thoughts. Footloose and fancy
free, high school spreads out before them, the world their oyster. And
yes, there’s been some misbehaving. They are spreading their wings,
experimenting with their own independence, giving their parents a good
scare.

Even the second graders know that the end of school is
in sight. This is the fun time of year: class trips, picnics, field
days, bird walks. My daughter’s class is embarking on a ambitious
photography study designed by her teacher: they’ll be learning how
photographers compose photographs. The children will have the
opportunity to try out many of the techniques photographers use – using
their own disposible cameras.

My daughter has gotten very attached to her beautiful young teacher
("I love her hair," she said the other day) and there will be tears at
the end of the term. It is always hard to adjust to someone new, and
much fear at the prospect.

Who will next year’s teacher be creates anxiety for both parent and
child. On the last day of school, parents find out which classroom
their child will be in come September. The kids run around: "Are you in
318? Are you in 318?" in a desperate attempt to find out who they’ll be
with next year; to get their bearings. This can be joyful as in: "I’m
with all my friends!" or dispiriting as in:  "I’m with no-one I know,
NO-ONE."

Sobbing can and will ensue.

The parents, on the other hand, are desperately interested in which
teacher their child has next year. They are all too aware of who’s
"good" and who’s "not as good." So they have to decipher the code: this
classroom means this teacher, that classroom means that teacher. Why
the school can’t just come out and tell you who your new teacher will
be feels downright silly. However, there’s always a parent with the
coveted  list that shows class number and teacher.

Invariably, I cry on my children’s last day of school. It’s when the
teacher walks out of the building with his or her class for the very
last time: that’s the moment that gets me. Every time.

The look of pride, imminent
loss, relief, and sadness on a teacher’s face.  The look of sheer panic, pain, and excitement on a child’s face as she hugs her teacher good bye.

The last busy days of June are here: parties, events, graduations, trips, good byes. So much to do, so little time.

And then we start all over again next year.

One can safely assume that my husband’s 50th birthday cake was probably the only cake EVER to have a Diane Arbus photograph painted on it in icing.

And that’s not all. The cake also had photographs by Muybridge, Stieglitz,  Julia Cameron, Ansel Adams, Feinineger and even Hugh Crawford,  painted in gorgeous sepia hues.

Created by Park Slope cake designer, Ruth Seidler, the cake was a vertible history of photography. And it was a smash hit at my husband’s 50th birthday party on Saturday night at The Old Stone House. An almond sheet cake with rasberry frosting on the inside and marzipany frosting on the outside, it was astonishingly delicious.

JollyBe Bakery  is the name of Ruth’s baking business. A former art restorer, she makes all kinds of painted, stained glass and sculptural cakes. For my father’s 75th birthday she created a Matisse cake that was also quite wonderful.

Last night, we had an impromptu after-party in our front yard on Third Street. The kids enjoyed singing Happy Birthday. Then they got to the part about "Are you 1?. Are you 2?   Are you 3,? Are you 4?…" etc.

Finally, my daughter shouted out: "Let’s just count by tens!

And yes, that was a more expedient way to reach the momentous number.

Sunday’s humidity got my daughter thinking about the green plastic frog pool that we keep in the basement.

"Can we use the pool today?" my daughter asked as she watched the children two buildings away splash and frolic in their own kiddie pool.

I can’t think of a warm day when she hasn’t asked me to take out the pool.

Usually my answer is a short and not so sweet: "No." And a don’t have anything  against her cooling off in the summer.

The quick answer is this: the tenants in our building no longer have access to the basement hose. Seems that, back in the day when the kids did splash and frolic in our green plastic frog pool,  the old hose leaked and we got the basement a tad wet.

But today my daughter had a new idea: "I’ll fill the pool myself," she said. "I can carry buckets of water up from the basement."

Looking forward as I was to a quiet Sunday afternoon rest on the plastic lawn chair in our front yard, I couldn’t argue with my daughter’s self-occupying plan to fill the green plastic pool one bucket of water at a time.

Heck, I’d probably get through the entire Sunday Times’ in the time it’ll take her to fill that pool.

So I carried the pool up from the basement and she began the labor intensive task of filling the pool. And as the kids in the building and the kids next door got wind of my daughter’s shallow pool, the fun was non-stop.

And then my downstair’s neighbor, sipping wine and eating antipasto with me at the green plastic table, remembered something.

Last year when neighbors on Third Street moved back to Manhattan, they gave us all the backyard equipment they wouldn’t be using anymore: the green plastic table, chairs and…

A HOSE!

Soon a long hose was being threaded out the basement window gushing beautiful, cold water. The children were ecstatic: my daughter’s shallow plastic green frog pool was  filling with more water than it had seen in years.  At this, the kids next door, ran home and got out of their wet play clothes and into swimsuits. This was serious SWIMTIME!

The kids splashed and frolicked in the  pool unti dusk when they got so cold they couldn’t stand it anymore. My daughter, goosebumped and shivering, wrapped herself in a colorful beach towel.

When I emptied the green pool onto the sidewalk, the children watched the water stream toward Sixth Avenue sparkling in the apricot  light of the setting sun.

Yesterday I learned that squirrels are an increasingly big problem in Park Slope apartment buildings. My story, gleaned from Park Slope Parents, really hit home with a lot of apartment dwellers who wrote to say that they have squirrels in their window boxes, squirrels on their ledges, and in some cases, squirrels in their furniture.

The only rodent we have on our couch from time to time is our beloved rabbit, Opal. Actually her full name is Opal Abu Opalina Crawford; a compromise between all the names my kids were fighting over.

White with a few black streaks, Opal is the perfect apartment dweller’s rabbit: she lives in a cage and enjoys brief walks around the living room. But she tires of them quickly and jumps back into her cage from the leather couch.

My son and I bought Opal on a whim over two years ago. We went to the two pet shops in the neighborhood (the one on 9th Street and the Petland on Fifth Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets) to "explore" the idea of getting a guinea pig, a hamster, or maybe some fish.

And then we saw the rabbits at Petland and we were hooked. My son gravitated toward Opal and held her in his arms. It was the one and only time that Opal seemed to enjoy being held in someone’s arms.  And my son looked so cute with Opal – "please mom, pleeeeeeze, mom," he said over and over. Next thing I knew we were  buying a cage, food, bedding, treats, toys, and a white rabbit.

When I got home, I surfed the Internet for information about the care and feeding of rabbits. And what I found again and again were warnings about rabbits NOT being the  best pets for children because they don’t really like to be held (and their bones are fragile). There were also warnings against keeping rabbits in apartments where there are a lot of wires because rabbits have a tendency to chew on electrical cords and that can result in: ELECTROCUTION.

Yeesh. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that I had just made an ENORMOUS mistake. With all the computers, printers, scanners, electronic equipment, and electric guitars this apartment can be a jungle of electrical wires.

But my son and daughter were already in love with Opal,

I, on the other hand, had worries up the wazoo. But those passed as we got used to having Opal around, and adjusted to life with rabbit.

Opal seems to have especially warm feelings for my husband (and visa versa). When he walks into living room she jumps up and down like a small puppy.

When we go away on vacation, our beloved caregiver boards Opal in her Coney Island apartment because her grandchildren love to play with her. Opal usuallly puts on weight on those visits: the sea air must be good for her appetite.

Sometimes I worry that Opal is depressed, that she is sick of her life in the cage in our living room. What kind of life is this for a rabbit? She spends most of her time drinking water, eating, and jumping from one side of the cage to the other. If she could talk, what would she say?

I’d love to know what she thinks of us and our not always tranquil life on Third Street.

<>

My children and I are obsessed with a black squirrel, who lives on our block. He/she climbs on the window sills and doorway molding of the limestone apartment building just east of our building. But, unlike one of the members of  Park Slope Parents, a community e-mail list service here in the Slope, we’ve never had to contend with a squirrel invasion in our apartment. 

Most days I check in on Park Slope Parents (Your Site for Parenting in Park Slope) to see if there’s anything newsworthy there. Amid the usual discussions of one-day potty training techniques, baby sleep problems, and the use of duct tape to treat warts, this post by a mom in Windsor Terrace really grabbed my attention.

HELP!!!! 311 is completely useless.  There is a squirrel in my apartment.  The woman who works for my landlord is here with her boyfriend, who is a carpenter/handyman.  We are without resources! The squirrel was in the couch, and is now between the wall and the cabinets. We need some kind of a trapper person? Does such a person exist?   I’m googling but fruitlessly.

HELP!!!!!

My heart went out to this woman who, in the midst of a squirrel invasion, was typing away madly on her computer, googling for help. Finally, in desperation, she reached out to her fellow Park Slope parents. Later in the day, she followed up with this:

I’m sorry to bog down the site with this, my third & final post of the week.  Just wanted to report that my landlord’s helper managed to grab the squirrel with a weird kind of a lasso thing he rigged with a mop handle and a rope, and he’s out.  PHEW!

This is not an uncommon experience apparently!  One family reported that they moved to a friend’s for a day and left a window open. Others reported having luck with a trail of crumbs to an open window.  Others reported ongoing problems as late as earlier this week — looks like it’s young squirrels season!  So keep those screens firmly in your windows. 

This Park Slope parent signed her latest post: Squirrel-free.  It’s  good to know that in an emergency you can always depend on Google and the kindness of strangers on Parkslopeparents.com.

The New York Times in their current special report, "Class Matters in America," says social class has become harder to see in the things Americans buy. Higher incomes, lower prices and easy credit give people access to so many high-end goods that "traditional markers of status have lost much of their meaning."

The series got me thinking about class in Park Slope.  What are the markers of class here? Needless to say, this is a class society with a high, middle and lower class living side by side. As Sloper, one of the readers of OTBKB, writes: Park Slope is really the sum total of all of us: the old slopers, the new slopers, the renters, the owners, the hipsters, the yuppies, the parents and children, the childless by choice, the singles, the married, the straight, the gay. As Slopers, we are at once extremely diverse in ways that are extraordinarily appealing, yet often so uniformly homogeneous in our quasi-bohemiam-bourgeoise aspirations that it is sometimes utterly nauseating.

And then he added: "I really do mean that in a totally non-judgemental sort of way."

Suffice it to say, class is a complicated issue in Park Slope. This is a neighborhood that prides itself on democratic values, inclusionary politics, and one of the oldest and largest member-run Food Coops in the United State. Viva La Revolution!

That said, the Slope isn’t exactly an egalitarian socialist society. It’s pretty damn privileged and pretty damn stratified in some clear and not so clear ways.

So, how does class work here?

Certainly, real estate must be  one measurement of class. But then, it all depends when you bought your house or coop. There was a time, a long, long time ago, when buying a house in Park Slope was a solidly middle class thing to do. Now only the rich need apply. But the early buyers and the recent buyers are living side by side in the same kind of houses. It can be a sign of status but it all depends on when you got in.

So having a house doesn’t necessarily define you in that way.

How about cars? The Volvo is probably the quintessential Park Slope car. But the Slope also has its share of Humvees, Hummers, and Hybrids. And there are people like my husband and me who picked up a used 1987 Volvo for $4000, more than eight years ago. By the same token, many a wealthy person has a reasonably priced Mini Cooper because its small size makes for easy parking. And they’re so damn cute.

And have you noticed the fancy cigarette boats docked in the Gowanus Canal? They are visible from Carroll Street. Who says you’ve gotta be "The Donald" to have a luxurious yacht?

How about private school? Do the rich go to private school and the middle class and poor…

This may be true to a large extent. But in Park Slope and Prospect Heights, there are people who say they are "forced" to send their kids to private schools they can barely afford because they don’t have the right address to get into PS 321. Some of them get their parents to pay, others get financial aid. Who doesn’t know people who are "school-poor:"  those who shovel over a big percentage of their income to pay for private school?

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t loads of loaded people who can comfortably dish out three tuitions at
$20,000 a pop. But private school as a status marker does and doesn’t wash.

To complicate things, attending PS 321 is a status symbol of sorts. It is, in many ways, like a private school. And while the administration is passionately anti-elitest and inclusionary, the school is inherently privileged because of the wealth and influence that exists in this neighborhood. A highly-accomplished PTA is able to raise money for value- added enhancements that are practically unheard of in many public schools.

How about services like child care? Here again, things get confusing. If a caregiver picks up the kids at school it probably means that both parents are working. However, that couple has lower status, says the Times’, then a family where a parent is able to pick up the kids at school because that family can afford to have one parent stay home.

But many families in Park Slope make the choice to keep one parent at home even if it is ill-advised financially (and might set them back in the big-picture scheme of things). Deep feelings about attachment parenting or the simple desire to be with one’s kids lead many a family to make these choices; and they are most definitely NOT a sign of status.

According to the Times’ it’s the parents that can walk to school with the caregiver that have the most status of all. Tricky.

What about shopping? The Times’ writes: "A family squarely in the middle class may own a flat-screen television, drive a BMW and indulge a taste for expensive chocolate." True. There are plenty of Park Slopers with high-end tastes who don’t have high-end incomes. I know people who care so much about good design, good food, and good things that they’re willing to fork over too much money for the things that matter to them.

That said, some of the most frugal people I know are those with the most money. Shopping at Target or Costco does not mark you as low status. Not at all. Shoppers at those stores run the gamut from lower-income families to large Orthodox Jewish families to sittin’ pretty brownstone dwellers from Brooklyn Heights. And everything in between.

How about the Food Coop? Does it just attract those who can’t afford to shop at Fresh Direct, Whole Foods, or Dean and Deluca? Not really. Was a time when the Coop was the only place in the Slope where foodies could load up on the organic food, produce, gourmet cheese and artisan breads they required. And they were willing to put up with the monthly work requirement and the Coop’s much maligned eccentricities, of which there are plenty.

The Slope definitely has a class system and it’s getting more and more obvious now that real estate values are rocketing skywards. And stratification breeds envy. OTBKB reader, Sloper, writes: "Somebody’s b-stone is always even more nicely renovated, on a better block, etc. and let’s not discuss how I envy the celebrity owners of townhouses on quaint tree-lined streets in the West Village. And last summer, I was at a Slope party, only to discover that we were nearly the only b-stone owners that did not have a weekend house in the Hamptons or Upstate (and these were "old slopers" not finance/law moguls). But, whoa, I don’t want to get too carried away here."

What makes Brooklyn such an interesting place is the crush of cultures and classes that co-exist (somewhat) comfortably. Sameness is boring. It’s fun to have neighbors from many many backgrounds, many points of view. While the Slope itself is, to some extent, homogeneous, it is near enough to other neighborhoods, other lifestyles, and other ways to be, to make it interesting.

And that’s what makes Brooklyn Brooklyn.

My daughter and I always know when we’re late for school when the father of the girl upstairs is entering the building just as we’re leaving.

When we’re extrmely late, we see the coffee clatch, the group of parents who sit at the Mojo until 9:30 or so discussing the state of the world – both local and geo-political.  That’s when we really have to pick up speed and pray that the
Assistant Principal isn’t handing out late passes just yet.

It’s embarassing to be late as often as we are because we live right around the corner from the school. Lately, PS 321 has gotten very agressive about penalizing lateness. "We keep getting calls from downtown," said one of the office ladies to me the other day. "They think our latenesses are excessive. They wanna know what’s going on."

In other words, late kids are bad for the school. It’s also not
condusive to the smooth running of the classroom. That’s what the
teachers always say, anyway. Understandably, it’s quite distracting
when kids stream into class between 8:45 and 9 a.m, when the teacher is
trying to do "Morning Meeting" or get started on the first lesson of
the day.

Back in the day when my teenage son attended PS 321, you’d get a plastic late pass from one of the office ladies, those lovable, slightly gruff women who sit behind the counter in the administration office. It wasn’t such a big deal then. A pain in the neck, yes. But I don’t think it went on any permanent records.  Now, the school is giving out late passes printed in triplicate and it is going on the child’s record, the record that determines where the child goes for middle school.

It seems that the middle schools take a close look at lateness and view excessive lateness as criteria for not accepting a child to their school.  Yeesh. Lateness is serious! Or: punctuality is serious business. As the office lady said, "What would you think of a teacher who walked in 10, 15 minutes late every day? What kind of review would he or she get?"

Point taken. Those office ladies have an admirably pragmatic approach to things.

I take some of the blame for my daughter’s lateness. She’s really hard to wake up and likes to linger in bed in the morning. We should probably wake her up earlier and force her to select her outfit the night before. She changes her mind about what she wants to wear three, four times in the morning, her bedroom floor a moutain of clothing rejections. It can be quite exasperating.

That said, we have been making a big effort to avoid tardyness. Today, when we saw the father of the girl who lives upstairs my daughter said, "We haven’t been seeing him that much lately. I guess we’ve been getting there on time."