Monthly Archives: March 2008

Civics and Urban Life

First NYC Public School to Say No to Styrofoam Trays

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Polystyrene, also known as styrofoam, is composed of Benzene, Styrene and Ethylene. Styrofoam is a licensed trademark of its manufacturer, the Dow Chemical Company.

Benzene and Styrene are both listed on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s hazardous substance list. Styrofoam does not biodegrade; it crumbles into fragments that have no expiration date. Styrofoam trays, as they fall apart, prevent other trash from decomposing.

It’s an environmental menace.

Now, PS 154 in Windsor Terrace joins the cities of Berkeley, California and Portland Oregon, where prohibit polystyrene food packaging is prohibited. Due to public pressure, Mcdonald’s stop using polysterene packaging in 1990.

Councilmember de Blasio has also introduced legislation, Intro 609, which would prohibit the use of styrofoam by City agencies and food establishments.

This is very good news and it was a great lesson in civic activism for the kids at PS 154.

I heard about it all day on WNYC. Must of been a slow news day what with no Obama speech, no Spitzer debackle, not Paterson revelations.

At PS 154, Council Member Bill de Blasio joined students and parents in an effort to replace styrofoam lunch trays with environmentally friendly trays made from sugar cane fiber.

Sugar cane fiber.

The Department of Education (DOE) currently uses over 4 million trays a week!

Made from sugar cane fiber known as Bagasse, these trays are made fro the cane fiber pulp left after juicing. The cool thing is this: they easily break down either in a landfill or in backyard composting, within 45 days.

That’s 45 days compared with the 10,000 years it takes to break down styrofoam.

10,000 years.

Councilmember Bill DeBlasio made an appearance at PS 154 at lunchtime. He is a public school dad who is on the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee:

“It is deeply troubling that the DOE knowingly purchases and uses million of styrofoam trays a year despite the fact that styrofoam is extremely harmful to our environment and creates massive amounts of waste.”

Eric A. Goldstein, Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council was also on hand:

P.S. 154 moves to the head of the class for seeking out more sustainable products for the school and its students. Now it’s time for the DOE to do its homework and bring recycling to all the city’s lunchrooms and classrooms,” said

A representative from Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools (P.A.S.S.) also made the scene: “With the help of local businesses and private donors we are choosing to serve our children their breakfast and lunch on biodegradable “sugar cane” trays. It is the first of many steps we are undertaking to ensure a greener, more ecologically sound Brooklyn and NYC,” she said.

Civics and Urban Life

Brooklyn Reading Works: Inner Lives Out Loud!

Brooklyn Reading Works presents Inner Lives Out Loud! Readings from Regina McBride’s Inner Lives Developing Characters Workshops with Stefania Amfitheatrof, Louise Crawford, Ann Marie Cunningham, Stephanie Hart, Margaret McIntyre, and Jennifer Wortham.

Using relaxation, sense memory, and emotional memory (Stanislavski acting techniques transformed for the writer) Regina McBride, the author of The Nature of Water and Air, The Land of Women and The Marriage Bed, offers a variety of exercises she’s developed to enable the writer to find a deeper, richer connection to the character he or she is creating.

These exercises are followed by writing periods, and opportunities for people to read and share their work. The atmosphere that Regina creates is safe, with the focus on exploration. Her class is designed to help the writer break into new territory with the character, and with the story itself.

Longtime participants in these workshops will read on Thursday March 27th at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House @ Fifth Avenue and Third Street.

$5 donation. Light refreshments and wine.

Civics and Urban Life

Listen to the Congestion Pricing Debate: Tune in Now

The debate about the congestion pricing plan rages on. And you can hear it now on these live audio streams. Tonight, John Liu, Chairperson of the New York City Council’s Transportation Committee, will discuss the merits of Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to ease traffic congestion and generate funding for mass transit, as well as the
compelling need for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to strengthen its own credibility with the public. Listen up.

7:30 PM (EST) WBBR Radio (AM 1130) on “Bloomberg New York”
(Live audio stream available at http://www.bloomberg.com)

8:00 PM (EST) WNYC Radio News (FM93.9 or AM820)
(Live audio stream available at http://www.wnyc.org)

Postcard from the Slope

Sugar Cane Trays not Styrofoam at PS 154

And the press conference with students, Parents Against Styrofoam in Schools, and City Councilmember Bill DeBlasio is today

Council Member Bill de Blasio will join students and parents on Tuesday to launch a pilot program at PS 154 to replace the styrofoam lunch trays with trays made from sugar cane fiber. The new environmentally friendly trays are designed to easily break down either in a landfill or in backyard composting, within 45 days. In contrast, the trays made of styrofoam typically take 10,000 years to break down and may be seeping toxic chemicals into the children’s hot food which is served directly on the tray. The quantity of trays used throughout the City is astounding. The Department of Education (DOE) uses 850,000 trays a day which adds up to over 4 million trays a week. Brooklyn Properties and The Juice Box are the official sponsors of the pilot program.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 11:00 a.m.
PS 154— 1625 11TH Ave, Brooklyn, NY – (In the Lunchroom)
.

Postcard from the Slope

This Week with OTBKB: Cocktails, Inner Lives, Video Shoot

Wednesday March 26: Join OTBKB and Brooklyn Based for cocktails at Sidecar, the groovy newish bar in the South Slope. 560 Fifth Avenue. 6:30 – 8 p.m.

Thursday March 27: Brooklyn Reading Works presents: Inner Lives Out Loud at the Old Stone House. Readings from Regina McBride’s workshops. 8 p.m.

Saturday March 29: If you are a Brooklyn blogger, get interviewed for a video about Brooklyn blogging by Blue Barn Pictures and me. Let me know what’s a good time for you (louise_crawford(at)yahoo.com. The shoot is from 11 am until 7:30 on Saturday the 29th in DUMBO. Email me if you can be there and what’s a good 90-minute time slot for you. You must be a Brooklyn blogger, who’s been around for 3 months, who updates with some frequency. This video will be at the May 8th Blogfest!

Brooklyn Blogfest

Parent/Teacher Conferences As Urban Team Sport

I can so relate to this post about parent/teacher conferences. Why, they’re a new urban team sport. It’s from My Sidewalk Chalk, which focuses on education.

In addition to navigating parent/teacher conferences, My Sidwalk Chalk blogger, Joyce Joyce Szuflita, consults with families who are looking for a good fit for their kids nursery school through high school, public or private. She knows Brownstone Brooklyn and she can help. 718 781-1928.

Let me explain the rules. You wait with hundreds of other parents in a giant shivering mass outside the school doors like it’s a Who concert with festival seating. (Imagine how those teachers feel, trapped inside with only an endless line of “issues” before them)

If you are an “elite” NUTS player like myself, you have a list of teachers and room numbers coded by location. In a school the size of Murrow, this is key. You race to the farthest room, sign your name on the list outside the door and repeat on all lists in the near vicinity. Then you send your husband who is having trouble reading the map to sign up on other floors. (This may be a tactical error)

If you are positioned outside the door when your name comes up on the list, you may go in and have your 3 minutes. If you arrive back to the classroom after your name has already been called you go to the end of the now endless list. The art of it is to fit in a couple of the less popular teachers between the majors.

The team who finishes all their conferences in the least amount of time gets to go home and have a stiff drink

!

ONLY THE BLOG KNOWS BKLYN RESTAURANTS

Restaurant Week: How’s it Going?

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New York Magazine’s Grub Street warns about Restaurant Week: Use it, Don’t Be Used By It:

Brooklyn Restaurant Week begins today, and while there are bargains to be had, be on the alert — too often, small restaurants sign on to get business, but then put the weakest things they have on the special menu or make up for the deal by relentlessly upselling bottled water, overpricing wine, and other tricks of the trade. That said, the good thing about Brooklyn Restaurant Week is that it tends to bring Brooklynites out of their neighborhoods. (Getting Manhattanites to come to Brooklyn to eat is patently out of the question, with a few ironclad exceptions like Peter Luger and the River Café.) We’ll skip over the places that, while of undisputed excellence, are basically just Manhattan restaurants that happen to be located in Brooklyn, like Chestnut or La Lunetta, in favor of restaurants such as Korhogo 126, the African restaurant on Union Street, or the always underrated Waterfront Ale House, where chef Ralph Yedinak does some of the city’s ablest barbecue and game cookery. Embers, one of our favorite steakhouses, is so cheap that you don’t even need Restaurant Week to get you out there — though if it helps, so be it. And after what Rob and Robin wrote about Bay Ridge’s magnificent Tanoreen, this week should be the excuse you need.

But I’d love to hear from YOU. How is your Restaurant Week going? Where have you been? How was it? If you own or work at a restaurant, tell us what’s going on.

Postcard from the Slope

Brownstoner Toots His Own Horn: Brooklyn Flea

Yesterday Brownstoner was, understandably, excited about the New York Magazine feature about his new Brooklyn Flea, which opens on April 6 in Ft. Green.

Own-horn-tooting alert: Something called New York magazine has a splashy feature on ze Flea that came out today. Senor Flea is a proud papa, seeing some 20 or so of our vendors showcased in all their splendor. It feels like a birth.

There’s even a handsome map that the mag’s designers expertly crafted from a lo-res e-fax we sent over with our barely legible rudimentary Flea layout. (This actually kicked our asses to concoct the market’s design for opening day, which we’ll make available here too.)

So for all the New York readers visiting us for the first time, enjoy our little hot mess, and find all our fierce vendors on the list to the right. And just wait til you see them all in the flesh.

Civics and Urban Life

Surrendering My License Plates

Yesterday I finally brought our deceased Volvo’s license plates to the DMV Express on 34th Street. We knew that we couldn’t discontinue our insurance unless we surrendered them.

Who can forget the hall of hell that the Department of Motor Vehicles used to be. Sometimes I think I am hallucinating when I go to the efficient, organized, even pleasant DMV Express. Like, is this for real?

Ah yes, it used to be an unfathomably horrific experience to get a driver’s license renewed or register a car. Yes, horrific. You never knew how long you’d be there. Entire lines would be stalled waiting for an employee to return from lunch.

Nowadays I go to the DMV with a kind of cautious glee. And yesterday was no exception. I looked forward to dumping the plates and truly entering life without a car.

“When I sold my car I wanted to throw a party,” the DMV employee who took my plates told me. “I mean, who needs a car. Especially if you live in Brooklyn. Driving around for at least a half hour looking for a space. It’s a waste of time.”

I couldn’t agree more.

“You’re going to be getting a check from us,” he said.

Apparently the City owes me what’s left of my registration fee.

You’re full of great news for me,” I said.

“Yes, it feels great to get rid of your car.”

Postcard from the Slope

Park Slope Sister Helping Sister with Incurable Blood Cancer

1495_0a14494193493db4850c6489060b1eMy friend Cindi has a sister, who has been fighting Multiple Myeloma for more than seven years. This is the same incurable blood cancer that Geraldine Ferraro has, Mel Stottlemyre of the Yankees, and what killed Peter Boyle and more recently Roy Scheider.

To help her sister, Cindi is involved with a volunteer initiative that obviously has a very personal meaning to her. That’s why she wants her Park Slope neighbors to know that Chris and Eric Reading (pictured above), fraternal twins who are recording artists from Nashville called The Readings, are doing a grassroots, myeloma awareness raising tour partnered and hosted by Borders Books.

Chris and Eric lost their mom Bonnie at the age of 51 to myeloma- 12 years ago. The Readings gave up offers for pro baseball and medical school careers to use their musical talent to give back. A percentage of all their gigs and cd sales is donated to cancer research all these years later.

They also wrote a song called Wanda’s Song for an anti- bullying initiative in schools that they are also involved with. They are terrific and talented southern rockers with tremendous integrity.

The NYC leg of their tour touches down on April 12th at Borders Books located at 576 Second Avenue @ 32nd Street. This is a free concert for the entire family and there is probably going to be a NYC comedian, who will open the gig ( very clean too).

Myeloma is a rare orphan cancer that gets little attention until a celeb dies from it and after a day or two- that disappears as well.

Cindi felt uncomfortable asking for help in sending the word. She wrote:

“But for my sister and all the patients we’ve come to know in the last 7 years, I’ve learned to keep asking. My passion comes from them and from those we’ve known who have died way too early.”

Visit http://www.tour4cure.net/ for more information or to make a tax deductible donation to T4C, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Civics and Urban Life

The Pain of Pink Evenings at Freddy’s Tonight

Rosemary Moore will be reading, The Pain of Pink Evenings, a monologue she wrote that is SO GOOD it was included in, The Best American Short Plays of 2000-2001.

She will be reading with a bunch of other writers, who write at the Brooklyn Writers Space. Located in Park Slope at 58 Garfield Place just below 5th Avenue. BWS offers “a professional, respectful, and warm environment for writers. The 2,000 square foot space includes a writing area with partitioned desks, a wall of windows and a skylight, a lounge/kitchen area, two bathrooms , and a private roof deck. Writers may enroll as full time members (24 hour access) or part time members (nights and weekends).”

Brooklyn Writer’s Space Reading Series
At Freddy’s Bar and Backroom
Mon March 24 @ 7:00pm-
* Rosemary Moore *
* Joan Minieri *
* Michael Lazan*
* Ezra Goldstein *

FREDDY’S BAR & BACKROOM
485 Dean Street
Dean Street & 6th Avenue
FREE
Subway: 2/3 to Bergen

Civics and Urban Life

The Oh So Prolific One: Leon Freilich, Verse Responder

2cbw1187NO RESTAURANT FOR THE WEARY

Brooklyn Restaurant Week is here,
Time for curious diners to cheer.
How’s the food at Applewood?
Is Blue Ribbon really that good?
River Cafe still outta sight?
(Just this once, the price is right.)
Three full courses, all deluxe,
With no need to wear a tux.
Dozens of eateries on the ballot,
Eager tasters, cleanse your palate!
March twenty-fourth to the thirty-first,
Be gastronomically immersed.
Monday to Monday, eat like a king
And queen–or lovers on a fling.

Postcard from the Slope

The Sweet Bitters Sing About Seventh Avenue

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Check out this duo of Park Slope singer/songwriters. I heard about them on Lucid Culture.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

Sweet Bitters is a harmony-based acoustic duo serving up tasty, flavorful folk-pop. Or pop-folk. Whatever. Sweet Bitters was created by two Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters, Sharon and Nina, who started blending their voices and said to themselves, “This harmony thing is fun.” Sharon liked singing on Nina’s songs and Nina liked singing on Sharon’s songs. And they sounded sweet — but not too sweet. A little bit of bitter thrown in was just right.

Their influences are The Roches, Aimee Mann, The Indigo Girls, Elliott Smith, R.E.M., Girlyman, Simon and Garfunkel, The Byrds, Squeeze, CC Railroad, Molly Pitcher, Aimee van Dyne Band, Allison Krauss, Eliza Gilkyson.

Not bad.

They have a song called “Falling Into Place” that’s about a late afternoon walk up Seventh Avenue in the winter. It’s real pretty. One of the few songs I know about Seventh Avenue.

Cool. They played at Perch over the weekend. Sorry I didn’t make it.

Civics and Urban Life

Only the Blog Links

Backyardskyii1_4A big week at Brooklyn restaurants (NY Times)

Eggstravaganza at pagoda (Brooklynometry)

Stanley Greenberg: the romance of infrastructure (Self-absorbed boomer)

A Friday called Good (A Year in the Park)

Hyacinths and bunnies (A Year in the Park)

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness (Bad Girl Blog)

Sometimes New York rejects you on its terms and you have to come to it on your own terms (Shelleytown)

Who is tree killing madman? (Washington Square Park)

Pix from Shelleytown

Postcard from the Slope

Easter Eggs, Gimme Shelter and Salad Nicoise

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Last night in our typical multi-tasking way, the Oh So Feisty One dyed Easter eggs, I made a variation on Salad Nicoise in the kitchen and we watched "Gimme Shelter" in the Living Room.

It could be argued that "Gimme Shelter" is the greatest rock documentary ever made. I’ve Dsc09528_2
loved the film for a long time but find it very difficult to watch as it chronicles the Stones’ 1969 American tour, which began hopefully at Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving and ended at a free concert at Altamont Speedway in Northern California, where four people died (one murdered practically on camera).

The Stones look so young at the beginning of the film. But as the film progresses they seem to lose whatever hint of innocence and hippie optimism they may have had.

A free concert. It was going to be like Woodstock. It was going to be "about people getting together, getting stoned and having sex," he told a reporter in the film.

The film is like watching the decline and fall of the counterculture in 90-minutes. Brilliantly filmed by the Albert and David Maysles, they catch on camera the mournful faces of Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts as they watch the violence that seemed to overwhelm that December day in 1969 on a 16mm editing screen not long after the show.

Sobering to say the least.

Dsc09565_2
OSFO worked hard on her Easter eggs. At first the dye didn’t seem to take. But OSFO in her innovative way figured out a way to make the egg color as bold as possible.

And the salad: it was excellent. tunafish, onions, mescalin salad from Trader Joe’s, a tasty vinegrette with Dijon mustard. I should have added some hard boiled eggs to the mix.

But OSFO used up the more than one dozen we had in the fridge.

 

Civics and Urban Life

Smartmom: It’s a Crowded House with Our Rockers

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

Lately, Teen Spirit has been inviting his friends and fellow bandmates to sleep over in the apartment. Smartmom and Hepcat are thrilled. That’s not sarcastic, they really are thrilled — for a variety of reasons.

First off, it’s better than not knowing where he is on a Saturday night and getting worried when he calls from Brooklyn Heights or Union Square at 1 am and says that he’s sleeping over at the house of a friend they’ve never heard of.

And these sleepovers give Smartmom and Hepcat a chance to observe and oversee their son’s recreational behavior and enjoy quality time with him and his friends. With college (hopefully) lurking in the future, Smartmom and Hepcat want to savor every minute they have left with their only son.

These impromptu slumber parties actually make Smartmom a little nostalgic for her lost youth. Buddha knows, she has plenty of memories of that golden time, when she and friends would laugh their heads off watching Gilda Radner, Larraine Newman, Jane Curtin and Chevy Chase on that first season of “Saturday Night Live.” Later, they’d fall asleep in a sea of sleeping bags in the den of her parent’s Riverside Drive apartment.

Ah, to be 16 years old in 1975 in New York City. Smartmom and her friends felt like they were inventing the world of drinking beer and listening to jazz at the West End near Columbia University. It was a time of so many firsts: love, sex, Rosanne Rosannadanna, gin and tonics at the Dublin House on West 79th Street (did every under-age Upper West Sider drink there?).

The future may have been looming in the distant horizon, but she and her friends enjoyed the there and then when it was the here and now.

Like Smartmom, Teen Spirit is soaking in the glory of being a teen in New York City. And like Smartmom, he’s blessed to have a great group of high school friends.

One of them likes to write songs with Teen Spirit in the living room. While the loud guitar playing and emotive singing may annoy their neighbors (Smartmom is sorry), these sessions have more than once resulted in some really good songs.

One evening, Teen Spirit and this friend sang through a long list of Beatles songs complete with rousing vocal harmonies. Smartmom secretly sang along in the kitchen while they sang “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”

Another friend is creative when it comes to seasoning his food. One morning, when Smartmom served him scrambled eggs, he asked if they had any interesting condiments in the fridge.

“Sure,” she said, a tad confused.

After minutes spent in deep exploration, he emerged with a jar of candied ginger and mayonnaise to add to his eggs.

Saturday night, Teen Spirit’s band, Mighty Handful, played a rollicking, frolicking set at Don Hills, a dark, skuzzy club on Spring Street just east of the Ear Inn. Afterwards, Teen Spirit brought home three boys and one girl to sleep over.

It’s all good, of course, but the apartment has begun to feel like the F train at rush hour. And the truncated size of their living room (where Hepcat now makes his office) makes for tight sleeping quarters.

Still, Smartmom grabbed some blankets, their inflatable mattress, sleeping bags and pillows and threw them into the living room.

When she got up the next morning, the living room floor was wall-to-wall kids: two on the couch, two on the rug and one on the hardwood floor without a blanket.

It reminded Smartmom of the time she and five high school friends went to hear a band called Deadly Nightshade at CBGB and afterwards all piled into the apartment of a friend on Central Park West where they all slept, chastely, in the same bed.

“What happened to the Noguchi coffee table?” Smartmom wondered out loud about the kidney shaped glass top table with the collapsible wooden legs.

“Oh, it was really heavy,” one of the kids said. “But we managed to move it over there,” he said pointing to a space right next to Hepcat’s desk

Hepcat will love that, Smartmom thought.

Smartmom remembers that freedom of being a teen. Sure, there were these obligatory grownups around, but the only people that really mattered were her friends. The world revolved around them and there was no one else she wanted to be around.

Teen Spirit feels the same way. It’s a time of intensity and discovery. And moving the coffee table if you need room to sleep.

O, to be 16 in New York!

It’s perfect for Teen Spirit, but you couldn’t pay Smartmom to sleep on a hardwood floor these days; her cozy bed suits her just fine, thank you very much.

Postcard from the Slope

The Sweet Bitters Sing a Song About Seventh Avenue

Check out this Park Slope duo. Their song, “Falling Into Place,” is about a Tuesday afternoon walk up Seventh Avenue.

Sweet Bitters is a harmony-based acoustic duo serving up tasty, flavorful folk-pop. Or pop-folk. The group was created by two Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters, Sharon and Nina, who started blending their voices and said to themselves, This harmony thing is fun.

Sharon liked singing on Nina’s songs and Nina liked singing on Sharon’s songs. And they sounded sweet — but not too sweet. A little bit of bitter thrown in was just right.

They played this weekend at Perch. I wasn’t there but saw a mention of it on Google Park Slope Alerts. Their influences include, The Roches, Aimee Mann, The Indigo Girls, Elliott Smith, R.E.M., Girlyman, Simon and Garfunkel, The Byrds, Squeeze, CC Railroad, Molly Pitcher, Aimee van Dyne Band, Allison Krauss, Eliza Gilkyson.

Brooklyn Blogfest

Bob Says: News from Gowanus Lounge

Saturday night Lola Staar’s Dreamland Roller Rink was the place to be. GL’s got the pix, too:

Some history was made in Coney Island last night when Dianna Carlin opened her Dreamland Roller Rink in the landmarked Childs Building on the boardwalk. It was only the second public event the historic structure in the last half century. The building–which has been made available by Taconic Investment–was decorated in white lights and billowing pink and orange fabric. The event was sponsored by Glamour Magazine and Tommy Hilfiger, which provided money for the rink, courtesy of a contest that Ms. Carlin won. They were shooting a documentary about the project last night. A rink was set up in the middle of the building. Entertainment included what one would expect at a Coney event: hula hoop people, stilt walkers and a number of scantily clad performers. Singer Ashanti made an appearance, as did actress Marissa Tomei, who spent a lot of time on skates. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was on hand for time, and most fixtures on the Coney Island scene, such as Coney Island USA’s Dick Zigun were there for a while. It was an excellent night

Civics and Urban Life

Au Contraire: The Occasional Note from Peter Loffredo

Here’s something from our pal Pete of Full Permission Living and Full Permission Writing about “sleeping on it.”

Did you ever end your day with an unresolved problem? A knot of some sort you couldn’t untangle at work, or a relationship conflict that seemed to have no clear resolution? Who hasn’t? But have you had the experience of waking up the next day with the solution suddenly as clear as could be, as if it had been there all along? Most of you have had such experiences, which is why the notion of “sleeping on it” is part of the common wisdom in all cultures.

I just had one of those waking-up light bulbs this morning. Last night, our kids somehow managed, as kids do, to break a contraption in our house (I’ll spare you the details) that was essential to our domestic tranquility. It had to be fixed before I started sessions this afternoon. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to fix the darn thing last night. The better part of my wisdom told me to let it go because I was tired and ready to relax for the evening.

“Forget it. I’ll sleep on it.” I declared.

Low and behold, I woke up wide-eyed at 5 AM with the answer in its entirety right before me in a picture in my mind. I saw it. I knew what to do. I went back to sleep. A few hours later, and yes, now it’s fixed!
Just as I talked about in my essay on “Gut Feelings” (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/2008/01/gut-feelings.html), I was reminded that the bigger decisions and harder problems in life are better left to our unconscious mind, where our higher self wisdom, the knowledge of our entire species in the collective consciousness, and our imagination reside.

An article in New Scientist a couple of years ago referenced a study at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands that concurs (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8732) entitled: “Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say.”

Have a good sleep!