At noon the playground began to clear. Indoors, parents were clustered around the bulletin board looking at the photos of the school’s teachers, conjuring up the face of next year.

Report cards, test scores, Parents clutched in their hands the familiar manila folder, the shopping bags of school work, art work, clay sculptures.

Some fifth graders cried. So were very “whatever” blase. One moms eye make-up was blurry and black from the sadness and the humid heat: giving her raccoon eyes and a genuinely mournful glaze.

Another friend said, “You know, we’re moving…”

OSFO’s second grade teacher looked on in disbelief that this class was moving on to the next big thing. It was her first year of teaching when she had OSFO and her friends. She was so new at it all; her first.

Smartmom ran into OSFO’s third grade teachers, a spirited woman with a large, warm face. “So this is it,” she said to Smartmom and gave her a hug. Smartmom has nothing but good memories for the way this teacher understood OSFO’s learning style; how she guided with a gentle hand and helped OSFO achieve good things. Tears were just under the surface for that encounter.

A hug and they moved on.

Smartmom held her shopping bag filled with single flowers wrapped in purple tissue paper. There was one for the crossing guard, one for the parent coordinator, who’s been at the school as long as Smartmom has.

One for Teen Spirit’s first grade teacher. “It all goes back to you in the lovely floral dress you wore on Teen Spirit’s first day of kindergarten. Thanks for everything,” Smartmom wrote in a note. She is now assistant principal.

One for OSFO’s teachers this year; one for the guidance counselor who is retiring and was so helpful getting the middle school muddle unmuddied.

But then the parents moved away, the backyard emptied in the light rain. Smartmom didn’t know what to do with herself. As she has done all year, OSFO was already on her way to a friend’s house.

Smartmom stood alone, looking for someone to talk to, someone to share news of next year’s teacher, next year’s path.

And then it dawned on her…

She has no business at this elementary school anymore. Sure, she could hang around at drop off, pick up, watch the parents of younger children as they move through the steps of elementary school. She could even pretend that she has a child going there.

But what would be the point?

Smartmom is no longer part of this place that engaged in her so many ways for 11 years. Without a child there, it is time to move on. Time to catch the bus, as it were, the B67. Hop on the bus, Smartmom.

Next stop: New Voices.

Bay Ridge Talks isn’t exactly a blog. It’s more like a message board, where neighbors can carry on discussions about a variety of topics.

Well, this story takes the cake. And the credit for bringing down a crack house in Bay Ridge. The story was first reported by the Brooklyn Eagle. And the Times in its story has some great quotes. It seems that the DA is happy to take the credit:

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, announced the arrests on Wednesday, praising old-fashioned police work — “a fairly uncomplicated, unsophisticated operation.”

The suspects were identified as three brothers, Joseph Terrone, 54, Michael Terrone, 47, and Ross Terrone, 45, as well as Alan Reilly, 61, and Erica Raffone, 31. All remained jailed on Wednesday. The brothers and Ms. Raffone face conspiracy, drugs and weapons charges, while Mr. Reilly was charged with selling a controlled substance. A sixth suspect remains at large.

But the Times’ seemed to really get that it was the bloggers of Bay Ridge Talks that really delivered the goods.

Mr. Hynes said most of the drug activity occurred inside the house, making it hard for officers to penetrate. “I don’t think anyone recognized it was as expansive as it was,” he said.

But the bloggers seemed to know, sometimes chronicling daily activities in detail, misspellings and all: “Several more crack heads came out of 346 93rd street,” one woman wrote last year, “and one was trying to steal a ladder while i guess another which i could not tell was male or female, who may have lived their claimed ownership to the ladder and they begain to fight.”

This is an incredible story: another positive outcome of the pioneering ways that people are using their blogs in neighborhoods around the city. This from NY 1. The New York Times has the story, too. They called Bay Ridge Talks a blog, but it’s really a message board like the Brooklynian.

Police said Wednesday that they teamed up with neighbors of an alleged Brooklyn drug house to take down the operation.

Prosecutors say three brothers sold crack, heroin and prescription pills and let their customers hang out at adjacent houses on 93rd Street in Bay Ridge.

Police were investigating the ring for years, but could not bust it because they never witnessed any transactions.

Finally, fed-up neighbors brought complaints of related rampant criminal information to their community board.

They were able to share tips with police, which led to arrests.

“We came together through a local web forum and there were many neighbors that were feeling much the same fear and issues that we were already observing,” said area resident Jason Miller. “A lot of people got together and said we have to have a plan.”

“We find it to be very effective, we meet very regularly with the community people affected,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

Five defendants were imprisoned with charges of conspiracy and drug sales. As of Wednesday night, a sixth suspect was still at large.

Yesterday I got this email from Jessica, who works with Rooftop Films, a summer film series dedicated to showing new, independent films in unique outdoor locations in NYC:

This Saturday, June 28, we will be
presenting “Neo-Lounge” on the roof of the Old American Can Factory in
Gowanus, Brooklyn. The night starts at 8:30 with live music from Artanker
Convoy and the film starts at 9:00.

In the aftermath of the SARS outbreak in Beijing, Joanna Vasquez Arong,
the Phillipines-born filmmaker, immerses herself in a small group of
daring and desperate ex-patriots who banded together at the decadent
Neo-Lounge nightclub. This gathering place showcases those who come to
Beijing for a different life—it strays from the “routines” of other
places, and it has a transient nature in which “life is day to day…half
good, half bad.” This film is about people in transition surviving
desperation and confusion in a place marked by transition itself, and it
shows Beijing in a new and unique light through the eyes of two foreigners
in the performance and nightclub scene.
More information about it can be found here:
http://rooftopfilms.bside.com/2008/films/neolounge_rooftopfilms2008

I saw Andy Bachman,rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, at the fifth grade graduation of our children. “This is a great day,” I think he said. We shook hands. I checked his blog to see if he’d written anything about his feelings about the event. Instead I found this. This is an excerpt, go here for more.

One of my kids has taken to calling me Norman, my middle name, for my mother’s late father, a kindly

gentleman of Wisconsin, murdered in 1939 and thereby truncating my own mother’s youth and grandmother’s aspirations for the Wonderful Life.

“Norman, how was Shul?” she’ll ask.

Or, “Norman, how’d the Mets do?”

She refers to Milwaukee’s baseball team as the Brew Crew. God bless her.

She quietly sneaked this new moniker–Norman–into the family lore, here in Brooklyn, intuiting among our clan here that an oral remnant of a bygone era would somehow bind us in ways even we parents weren’t clever enough to figure out.

From the mouths of babes, as they say.

Due to weather the film and fireworks has been CANCELED for tonight. It will be rescheduled for a future date.

COFFEE CIRCLES

I went berserk

At Le Cirque

When out came the bill

A staggering pill

For what I havva,

A cuppa java.

Historians and scholars

Who follow dollars

Please note for the thrifty

The bill said nine-fifty.

A teacup of joe

For that much dough!

Ready to kill,

I chewed up that bill,

I swallowed that bill

Convulsing with rage

In a half-mad stage.

Without missing a beat

Or shifting his feet,

The waiter said, Sir,

I know you’ll concur

There now must be

An extra fee–

Ten dollars is the rate

For the bill you ate.

So was I a jerk

For going berserk?

James Braly, the original edgy husband and dad, opens in Life in a Marital Institution (20 years of monogomy in one terrifying hour) at the SoHo Playhouse at 15 Vandam Street in Manhattan. The show runs from June 26 until August 31.

My forever friend, Anna Becker is the producer and I trust anything she puts her heart and mind behind. The director, Hal Brooks, lives in Brooklyn.

Even the New Yorker Magazine loved the show: “James Braly’s wry hour-long monologue interweaves the story of his twenty-year marriage—a union rife with ‘tantric conflict’—and Braly presents it winningly.

A half-day today and then we’re through. With elementary school, that is. Two children, eleven years at PS 321: so much to remember, so much to cherish about our time there.

And yet, like any rite of passage, it feels right, too. The end of this and the beginning of something else.

So what is that something else?

Middle school for OSFO; and a new school, new parents to know, new projects for Smartmom. It’s the great blank slate now, the future without elementary school.

There were tears at the fifth grade graduation. Speeches by fifth graders pulled at Smartmom’s heart as did the principal’s words (“as people you understand the importance of working together and making each other look good,” she said); the sight of a girl helping to carry an American flag down the aisle and the spiritual the kids sang facing their relatives from their seats.

Marty Markowitz, as always, delighted the children with his speech about eating right and getting exercise. He asked them: Any doctors in the house, any lawyers, any future borough presidents?

And as he has done for years, he ended the speech with a Star Wars style light saber in his hand, “May the force be with you.”

We sat in the balcony. Teen Spirit napped, Hepcat snapped pictures, Smartmom skipped around to empty seats visting friends. It was a long presentation and it was very hot in the steamy auditorium of John Jay.

But it was the end: of something so powerful and sweet that went by in a flash. Why, it seems just yesterday we walked into that building for the very first time flushed, excited, and apprehensive; ready to begin the adventure.

School is just a place and just one of many places where childhood happens. But it consumes so much time and so much energy for the entire family that one is grateful if that experience is something to savor.

And this was, this school, this part of our lives. And so it ends.

Councilmember Bill de Blasio emailed me the following statement about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which will cut projects including 19 subway station renovations. According to de Balsio, the cuts will hit Brooklyn hardest. 15 of the 19 station renovations that will be cut are in Brooklyn: 10 on the D line, 4 on the N line, and 1 (Smith and Ninth Street) on the G and F lines.

“Brooklyn deserves its fair share of transit improvements. How is it that we have millions of dollars to fund major projects like the Second Avenue subway, but can’t find the money to fund Brooklyn’s station renovations? The MTA is talking about raising fares again, but have failed to deliver on their promise of regular, on-time service and stations and platforms that are in decent condition. When the fares went up last March they told us we’d be getting these improvements. The bait and switch game must end. Brooklyn deserves better.”
The current $23.7 billion plan includes spending for new buses and train cars, and major projects like the Second Avenue subway. If the agency raises fares in 2009, it would be only the second time in the 104-year history of the subways that there would be back-to-back fare hikes. The last and only time it happened was in 1980 and 1981.

In December 2007, Councilmember de Blasio proposed a Bill of Rights for all of New York City’s subway riders. The Subway Riders’ Bill of Rights include regular, on-time service provided on trains and platforms that are kept safe and clean, working public address systems in all stations, and immediate and real-time notification of service changes and advisories with accurate information on alternative means of transportation in situations where service is interrupted.

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from tenants and property owners who face eviction to make room for the Atlantic Yards development. Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn had hoped to stop the skyscrapers and new arena for the Nets from moving forward, arguing that the use of eminent domain was unconstitutional. This from DDB:

The United States Supreme Court denied the petition to grant a hearing (cert petition) to eleven property owners and tenants who asked the court to hear their appeal on the Second Circuit Court’s dismissal of their challenge to the use of eminent domain for Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development proposal in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The petition received serious consideration by the Court. In a rare statement accompanying the denial (it’s unusual to have any statment at all when a petition is denied), Justice Alito said he would grant the petition. However, four Justices are required to accept the case.

The petition had asked the Court to address the appropriate constitutional limits on the government’s power to seize private homes for the benefit of powerful real estate developers like Bruce Ratner.

The Court’s denial of the petition in Goldstein et al. v. Pataki et al. does not affirm or deny the plaintiffs’ arguments, and was not a ruling one way or the other on the plaintiffs’ claims. And, it is not the end of the legal road for the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs, fighting to prevent the seizure of their homes and businesses for the benefit of Forest City Ratner, will now pursue their eminent domain challenge in state court under New York State law.

“We are, of course, disappointed that the Court declined our request to hear this important case. This is not, however, a ruling on the merits of our claims. Our claims remain sound. New York State law, and the state constitution, prohibit the government from taking private homes and businesses simply because a powerful developer demands it. Yet, that is what has happened. Recent events have revealed that the public, and the Public Authorities Control Board were sold a bill of goods by Ratner and the Empire State Development Corporation. We now know that Ratner’s project will cost the public much more than it will ever receive,” said lead attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP. “Now we will turn to the state courts to vindicate our rights. We will soon file an action in New York state court under state law as we were expressly permitted to do by the rulings of the federal courts.”

Besides the eleven plaintiffs on Goldstein et al. v. Pataki et al. there are approximately 30 other residents and business owners in the project’s footprint whose properties would be seized for Forest City Ratner’s benefit.

SO WHAT’S NEXT?
Now the plaintiffs will go to the state courts to vindicate their rights. They will soon file an action in New York state court under state law as the federal court rulings permitted them to do.

WAITING FOR LEFTY

McCain or Obama?
Let’s be candid:
The next president
Will be–left-handed.

Though they differ
At the core
Each was born
A strict southpore.

There’s so much coverage of the Mermaid Parade online, you almost didn’t need to be there. Here are some great sources for Mermaid Parade imagery:

Brit in Brooklyn

Gowanus Lounge has video and loads of pix.

This pix and more at Brit in Brooklyn

A JEW FOR NO. 2?

Keep it under your hat
It’s only a rumor
But Obama’s considering
Our own Chuck Schumer.

Two ethnic candidates
In the White House run
The pundits are thinking
May be better than one.