From June 18 through August 30th, the Brooklyn Public Library will feature an exhibition of Nate Kensinger’s photographs called “Twilight on the Waterfront: Brooklyn’s Vanishing Industrial Heritage.”

This exhibit documents off-limits industrial sites along Brooklyn’s waterfront, shedding light on what Brooklyn has lost to development over the last five years. The photos in the exhibit are drawn from a long-term project documenting Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront. “Twilight on the Waterfront” will be on display at the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza.

Kensinger is also a documentary filmmaker.

Just discovered what I think is a fairly new blog on the New York Times’ website. Measure for Measure: How to Write a Song and Other Mysteries is cool. I loved reading Suzanne Vega’s story of the song, Luka. The authors of the blog are Suzanne Vega, Roseanne Cash, Andrew Bird, and Darrell Brown.

With music now available with a single, offhand click, it’s easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. In the coming weeks, the contributors to this blog — all accomplished songwriters — will pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on a songs in the making.

You like blogs. You read blogs. You have a blog???? Come to the Brooklyn Blogade a fun gathering of Brooklyn bloggers today at noon.

Have some first rate coffee. Have some breakfast/brunch. Meet host and photographer extraordinaire, Brit in Brooklyn, who will discuss photo blogging. Meet other bloggers and blog readers and other Brooklyn folks.

Root Hill, the new cafe on Fourth Avenue at Carroll Street. Be there. I will.

I took the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island and returned on the ferry.

In between I enjoyed hours and hours at Art By the Ferry in the St. George neighborhood, drinking beer, listening to the music of Pupa Santiago and his incredible band and Queen Tipsy, a bluesy rock singer named Phyllis. I also saw rooms and rooms of art including a devastating installation of photographs taken in Iraq, as well as the work of master printmakers and painters. Brooklyn photographer Tom Martinez’s photographs of a hawks were also a high point. Martinez, the pastor of the All Souls Bethlehem Church in Kensington, Brooklyn, frequently shows his remarkable photographs as part of his church services. “I feel compelled to witness the beauty of creation. In that spirit, I’ve photographed the hawks who were recently relocated from Prospect Park to Greenwood Cemetery,” he writes.

Much of the artwork was located at 120 Stuyvesant Place,where there were 18 group exhibitions including: “Battlespace;” “Bunkin, Tango, Arcia, Grabel;” “The Collagraph Circle;” “Alan, Joanne, Barbara, and Janine;” “Wagner Sculpture Group;” “Creative Photographers’ Guild;” “Unique Art;” “DMBZ Group;” “Bogaert Group;” “ArtLab;” “Staten Island Camera Club;” “ArtLab Printmakers;” “Photographers Group;” “Wagner People;” “McCormack Family;” “Snug Harbor Studio Artists,” “Unaffiliated Group;” and “Independent Artist.”

Indeed, Staten Island, which has its own Philharmonic Orchestra, ballet, and a host of cultural institutions, is full of the arts. My reading at the St. George Library was great fun. I mostly read from my Smartmom column and talked a little bit about blogging.

Credit goes to Joyce Goldstein, who with the help of her husband Ira and a group called, Staten Island Creative Community organized this ambitious and well-organized three-day community arts event. As anyone who has ever organized a special event knows, it takes a very determined, creative, and dedicated group to put on an event of this magnitude. Props to all who were involved.

Clearly, Joyce is the unofficial mayor of Staten Island with a deep and abiding love for the arts and people of her borough. Did you know that artist Romare Bearden and his wife, Nanette, a choreographer were residents of the island?

Joyce told me.

“The ride on the ferry at night is magical,” she told us as she and Ira drove me and another Broolynite to the ferry. “The view of the city; it’s like Oz,” she said with unflappable enthusiasm and awe.

She described the plethora of artists on the island. “There’s a lot of talent here. I really think it’s going to be the next Williamsburg,” she told us.

“Look, that’s going to be the new lighthouse museum in that space near the ferry,” she pointed out the car window at what will soon be the new National Lighthouse Museum.

Saturday, the third and final day of Art By The Ferry, was a gorgeous blue sky day to roam around the St. George section, inhale views of the Hudson River and Manhattan, and take in the mixed-bag architectural landscape that is Staten Island.

Talk of doing it next year was in the air as were ideas about how to get more tourists—and people from the other boroughs—who ride the ferry to get off the ferry in Staten Island and enjoy some of the bounty that the borough has to offer. The ferry ride is one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City.

The St. George Ferry Terminal is no longer the drab, depressing place it was when I last rode the ferry too many years ago. Completed in 2005, it has been transformed into welcoming space with large windows, views of the harbor and high ceilings to provide a well lit, open and inviting environment.

It was a surprise to see that there are two 8-foot tall, 1,600-gallon fish tanks in the waiting area of the terminal. The tanks, which were introduced in February 2008, each hold 200 tropical fish and will be maintained by the Staten Island Zoo. Watching the fish is a great way to while away a wait for the ferry.

The ferry ride is free of charge and lasts about 25 minutes. It may be one of the greatest shows in tow. Wind in your face, the water below, subway style drummers banging sheet rock pails, the Statue of Lady passing by, Manhattan, like Oz, in the distance, a ride on the ferry is the quintessential New York experience recapitulating the immigrant’s arrival experience again and again.

Last night as I was walking in the Staten Island Ferry on Whitehall Street I noticed lines from the poem Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay on the wall of the terminal.

Strangely OTBKB verse responder, Leon Freilich was also in terminal last night. We didn’t run into each other but he did send me this note in response to my post about Art By The Ferry.

I passed the Staten Island Ferry terminal in lower Manhattan last night and noticed the first line of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s memorable–what else?–“Recuerdo” written in letters about three feet high along the eastern windows of the building. But when I walked to the other side, I couldn’t find the second line, which refers to the S.I. ferry.

Does anyone know where that is?

Quite a coincidence. I didn’t go inside the building. My wife Rose and I were taking a fascinating Appalachian Mountain Club walking tour of lower Manhattan. Highlights:

The Wall St. heliport. A hidden flowered plaza on West St. Three or four sets of what look like concrete tiles in Bowling Green park that play musical notes (as in “Big”). An arched metal stairway outside Battery Park City that mirrors the contour of the Statue of Liberty. The Ritz-Carlton’s 14th floor penthouse bar with its view of the harbor. A hidden memorial pool dedicated to NYC policemen who died with donuts in their hand–I mean, in the line of duty. All the new cafes along the BPC

By the way you might want to mention the annual Smith Street Festival, which begins soon, rain or shine. I’ll be Food-Coop recruiting, along with two others, from 10:15 to noon. Lots of clothing buys from Central America; and of course a huge selection of luncheries.

And here is the lovely poem. Part of it is on the wall of the ferry terminal. Somewhere.

RECUERDO
We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry–
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Thankfully, Richard Grayson, author of Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens and I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and many other books, participated in Brooklyn’s Fifth Annual Children of Abraham Peace Walk, and wrote about it for his blog. Thank you Richard for this excerpt, Go to his blog to see pictures. I saw no coverage of this amazing event, which was on June 12th. On the walk, Jews, Christians, and Muslims walk for peace from the Flatbush Dutch Reformed to Congregation Beth Emeth to the Albanian American Islamic Center. The walk included tours of each house, music, song and food at the mosque.

We were a bit tardy on June 12th for the 6 p.m. start of Brooklyn’s Fifth Annual Children of Abraham Peace Walk, which got started at the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church on the corner of Church and Flatbush Avenues, on whose steps we used to hang out as junior high students (next door was a tiny bookstore, The Bookworm, where we got out under-a-dollar paperbacks of Franny and Zooey, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and The Crying of Lot 49). Blame the B48 and B41 buses for the long trip from Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg.

We hadn’t been inside the church since about 1968, when we attended one Sunday service as our 17-year-old self decided to explore the borough’s various congregations before choosing atheism. Throughout the evening the crowd on the Children of Abraham Peace Walk ranged from about 150 to 200. We’d missed the words of welcome from Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, the much-admired Debbie Almontaser, Carol Horowitz and Rev. Tom Martinez, and found ourselves listening to Dr. Kurt Johnson, scientist and co-founder of the Coalition for One Voice, who discussed a recent meeting with the Dalai Lama and his call for the biggest movement in world history, to go beyond interfaith cooperation to achieve “the essence of religious experience, love.”

The ActorCor Chorus, “New York’s only choir of 100% actors” (maybe some are 95%?), sang prayers in English, Hebrew and Arabic, and then the church’s pastor gave a brief history of the church. Built in 1796, it is the successor to a church that was built in 1702 and which in turn is successor to a church that was built in 1654 by special order of Gov. Peter Stuyvesant, back when Flatbush was farms and wilderness.

George Washington marched by just before the Battle of Brooklyn (he should have stopped in to pray and maybe would have done better). The cemetery in the back is one of the area’s oldest. We also learned about the history of the Dutch Reformed Church in general and its successor church. Today the congregation are mostly of West Indian and West African descent and they stopped holding services in Dutch about a zillion years ago.

After acknowledging the help of Deputy Inspector Ralph Monteforte, Commanding Officer of the 70th Precinct, Detective Nasser and other members of the NYPD, the walk began after we lined up, water bottles and lime-colored flyers in hand, behind a large banner held up by half a dozen little kids. The banner had the Children of Abraham Peace Walk logo with three colorful doves, “peace” written on each in Hebrew, Arabic and Latin (English on the bottom of the banner).

We marched on the south side of Church Avenue west, past the great West Indian fruit stores and other emporiums and the Brighton line Q/B station (M/D in our youth). The last time we marched for peace by the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church was on October 15, 1969, for the Vietnam Moratorium.

As we walked, an evangelical truck slowly made its way following us. We assume it was an uninvited guest, since its calypso music was loudly proselytizing. At Temple Beth Emeth on the corner of Marlborough Road at the start of Prospect Park South’s Victorian homes, all of us sat in the pews and listened to a talented singer and guitarist and heard a talk from Brooklyn Borough Historian Ron Schweiger, a member of the congregation on the history of Beth Emeth.

The synagogue got started in 1911 and moved to the present location three years later; in the 1990s, after many of the area’s Jewish residents had moved (along with us) to what Mr. Schweiger called “that new New York City suburb, South Florida,” Beth Emeth merged with two other nearby Reform temples and now has about 100 families and a very long official name.

As in the church, a rabbi explained the basics of the congregation’s mode of worship. Interestingly, the churchlike stained glass panels featuring Moses and David are not traditionally Jewish practice, but they did serve as backdrops to episodes of such TV shows as “Law and Order” and Richard Dreyfuss’s short-lived “Education of Max Bedford.”

Behind a police officer and the kids with the banner, we all marched south the one block of Marlborough Road (some purple-robed Buddhist monks waved to us from their house) and west on Albemarle Road to the Albanian American Islamic Center at the corner of Rugby Road.

Taking off our shoes and leaving them on the porch, we all went inside to the mosque, where we learned that the Albanian American Islamic Center started in 1963 and bought the house here in 1971. Naji Almontaser introduced an imam who discussed some of the basics of Muslim worship and the way in which Islam mixes faith with practice in dealing with others. He also discussed Islam as a global religion, with the Albanian Americans being of European descent while others are not only Arab but African, South Asian, East Asian and people all over the globe.

Thanks were given to many people who worked on the march, including other clergy members of all three faiths, as well as Mohammad Ravi, director of the Council of People’s Organizations (COPO), which has done such good work since 9/11 in the community here, especially with the businesses on what the New York Times called Brooklyn’s “highway of tolerance,” Coney Island Avenue.

After assembling on the porch for some delicious food and thanking everyone for the Peace Walk, we walked on Albemarle Road toward Coney Island Avenue, passing the home and office of our friendly neighborhood child psychiatrist from the mid-1960s, Dr. Abbott A. Lippman, M.D., F.A.C.P., whose faded sign is still up on the office attached to the once-grand dwelling that housed his collections of African masks and rare orchids. For some reason, the site of our adolescent encounters with Freud is in horrendous state of disrepair. We know the rabbi talked about tikkun olam – “repairing the world” – but someone’s fixing up 929 Albemarle Road would be a good start.

However, as we made out way to the F train, we were really glad we went on the night’s Children of Abraham Peace Walk. Isn’t life wonderful!

Brooklyn Beat is enjoying the natural beauty of his neighborhood, Fiske Terrace.

The unique and brilliant plumage of birds is only surpassed by the remarkable diversity of their song. The homes in Flatbush, especially in Fiske Terrace and Midwood Park, are nestled in their own wooded and verdant enclave. In the early morning now, as I get up early to start the coffee, empty the dishwasher, and basically set everyone in our home in motion for the final weeks of school, the tree canopy of Flatbush is filled with the tweats, twitters and percussive caws of birds birds birds.

Each year, birds migrate and make their way through Brooklyn, on brief stopovers in the evergreens, elms, maples, oaks, birch, spruces, catalpa, cherry, gingko, apple, fig and other varieties that fill the Flatbush forests. It is a concert, combining bird call and response, jazz and scat singing, blues, anthems, and doo wop, a wild mix of bird songs from the mesozoic to the present day. Each year I look forward to, and savor, the few fleeting months of early summer, when I can hang out on the deck in early morning, sipping a home made macchiato, Guinevere the Corgi at my feet who also seems to listen with a huge grin, listening to the wild and crazy birdsong in the Flatbush forest, before I need to get dressed and ready and deal with civilization and its discontents

Is it Red Hot or a different Chinese restaurant on 10th Street and 7th Avenue???? An OTBKB reader sent this tip:

I noticed today when I came home from work that a new awning had appeared on Red Hot and the door was open, allowing one to see that they were sanding the floors and had new lighting fixtures installed and freshly painted walls. Looks like there will be cause for jubilation in the Slope soon.

Here are two Polaroids from 1994 and 1995 of the Mermaid Parade by Jamie Livingston

If you’re thinking of being in the parade, register TODAY at 10 AM, Rain or Shine! Marchers and Push Pull Floats should register at West 10th Street. Antique Cars should register at West 15th Street. Motorized Floats should register at West 16th Street.

$10 per adult, $5 per kid, $10 for a push pull float, $25 for a motorized float, $25 for an antique car, $100 for a flatbed truck. Here’s the blurbage from Coney Island USA.

The parade is completely original creation of Coney Island USA, the Mermaid Parade is the nation’s largest art parade and one of New York City’s greatest summer events. The parade is proud to have some incredible sponsors. Click here for answers to common questions.

Founded in 1983 by Coney Island USA, the not-for-profit arts organization that also produces the Coney island Circus Sideshow, the Mermaid Parade pays homage to Coney Island’s forgotten Mardi Gras which lasted from 1903 to 1954, and draws from a host of other sources resulting in a wonderful and wacky event that is unique to Coney Island.

The Mermaid Parade celebrates the sand, the sea, the salt air and the beginning of summer, as well as the history and mythology of Coney Island, Coney Island pride, and artistic self-expression. The Parade is characterized by participants dressed in hand-made costumes as Mermaids, Neptunes, various sea creatures, the occasional wandering lighthouse, Coney Island post card or amusement ride, as well as antique cars, marching bands, drill teams, and the odd yacht pulled on flatbed.

Each year, a different celebrity King Neptune and Queen Mermaid rule over the proceedings, riding in the Parade and assisting in the opening of the Ocean for the summer swimming season by marching down the Beach from the Boardwalk, cutting through Ribbons representing the seasons, and tossing fruit into the Atlantic to appease the Sea Gods. In the past, David Byrne, Queen Latifah, Ron Kuby, Curtis Sliwa, Moby, and David Johansen have graced our shores, presiding over the assembled masses.

The Parade is followed by the Mermaid Parade Ball, a post-parade gathering where costumed parade participants can get together with each other and parade spectators to listen to live music, purchase raffle tickets, and watch burlesque and sideshow acts performed by some of New York City’s hottest burlesque stars

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I found this picture of the Mermaid Parade in the 1990’s on Jamie Livingston’s Photo-of-the-Day website.

THE BEAST IS YET TO COME

Optimists think for pessimists

The glass is half-empty in any weather

Yet every pessimist insists

The glass is empty altogether.

Here’s fellow scribe, Leon Freilich, on last night’s opera in Prospect Park.

Gheorghiu on my mind Alagna husband Roberto were indeed magnificent. Opera’s first superstar couple.

If the ecstatic crowd–I heard an estimate of 25,000–failed to reach Peter Gelb’s prediction of 150,000, two reasons are possible. Gelb scared off music lovers who feared chaos-in-the-park; or we’re still Backwater Brooklyn. Yes, pre-yuppies, the mere mention of Brooklyn anywhere in the country evoked titters. I was here and I remember.

In any case, three cheers for the Met’s greatest-ever director, Gelb, and for the reviled yuppies who gave us arrugula, balsamic vinegar and an entree into the 21st century

This morning on Park Slope Parents I read about this incident on Sixth Avenue and Lincoln Place. Read on…

I just read about this and don’t remember seeing it posted here and I
thought it would be helpful for us all to know this happened and do be
alert in general. Below is a message from brooklynian.com about a
random attack on 6th avenue on Lincoln. The comments suggest that it
wasn’t actually a butcher knife but it was a violent attack and that
the victim is now fine. Apologies if people are already aware of this
and I am just a day late.

hi all

i got the following email from a coworker. this happened to her friend
on wednesday, and i haven’t found any other info about it here or
elsewhere online. not to cause unnecessary alarm, but i thought i
would pass along the warning. stay safe.

Subject: park slope attack

A good friend’s girlfriend was attacked by a mentally ill man with a
butcher knife on Wednesday walking along 6th Ave in Park Slope. She’s
going to survive, but it was bad. My friend asked me to warn anyone I
know around Park Slope because they think he’s still in the
neighborhood. She was just walking along the street talking on her
cell phone and he attacked her without a word. I think the police
have an idea who he is and that he’s extremely ill. They say he’s
probably under 30, slender, about 5’9″, and was wearing checkered
shorts, a white tshirt and gray sweatshirt. And they think he’s
latino, but I never trust them to get

that right.

Richard Grayson, the author of Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens, was in Prospect Park on Friday night for the opera. He is currently running for Congress in Phoenix in a Republican primary: http://republican-grayson.blogspot.com.

We left Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg well after 7 p.m. last night and so were a little worried about getting to the Met’s only summer concert in the park this year, with the magnificent Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. The Times had suggested the crowd might be over 100,000. But the G and F trains got us to Bartel Pritchard Square and the park entrance by 7:50 p.m. with a whole lot of other folks. Police were everywhere from the subway platform to every few feet in the park. As we got to the meadow, we could hear the bombastic voice of our friend Borough President Marty Markowitz, and we knew he’d speak long enough for us to find a place to put down our blanket before the music started.

Back in the 1970s, when we lived in our childhood home, we attended the summer Met performances at nearby Marine Park. Our friends the literary agent Linda Konner and the sculptor David Devrishian would arrive with a picnic basket filled with Zabar’s goodies. It was in our old neighborhood that we learned about opera from Joe the barber on Avenue O and East 55th Street, where we got our Beatles haircuts and listened to Puccini, Verdi and Rossetti. We didn’t find out opera was a gay thing till much later. Still, our knowledge of opera is pretty limited; we just know what we like.

Anyway, a friend estimated the crowd at 30,000, far from what was expected, though we don’t know how he reckoned this. Still, lots of people there: kids running around, old people in wheelchairs, young couples and friends with munchies and wine, at least one guy selling marijuana, and a number of women who resembled Ruth Messinger. It was a beautiful night, and summer had just begun at 7:59 p.m. We could really see only on the two giant video screens but we could make out people onstage.

Conductor Ion Marin and the orchestra began the concert with the overture to Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino, and then the married team of soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna came out and did their magic. We knew a couple of the pieces they sang, individually and together, but mostly they were unfamiliar to us barbarians. But they were all beautiful, especially for us Gheorghiu’s rendition of that desperate aria from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Roberto Algana doing an aria from his brother David Alagna’s Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné. The Met’s Chorus sang that thing from Verdi’s Il Trovatore that we know from the Marx Brothers movie. And in the encore we got “O Sole Mio” plus “It’s Now Or Never”! And lots, lots more good music. We and thousands of others left Prospect Park in a great mood. Isn’t life wonderful!

What’s Opera, Doc? the great Warner Brothers cartoon with Bugs Bunny, came to mind as my sister was telling me about the crowds beginning to pour into the park at 5:30.

The show starts at 8 p.m. and the police are expecting a great many people. Diaper Diva took this picture of a police tower with her iPhone. Well, they’re saying that it may be the Metropolitan Opera’s largest outdoor concerts in company history.

Here are the ‘tails:

Two of opera’s biggest stars, soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna, will perform together on the Long Meadow Ballfields on June 20 at 8 p.m., together with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. This year’s Prospect Park concert is anticipated to be one of the Metropolitan Opera’s largest outdoor concerts in company history.

The performance will be broadcast live on WQXR-FM (96.3 FM), and streamed live on the Met’s website, www.metopera.org.

The married star couple of Gheorghiu and Alagna will sing popular arias and duets by Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Massenet, and others, conducted by Ion Marin. Gheorghiu and Alagna will perform on a larger-than-normal stage, surrounded by six jumbo video screens that will be strategically placed throughout the area to maximize the viewing experience.

The concert begins at 8 p.m.; the rain date is scheduled for Saturday, June 21, also at 8 p.m. For more information on Met Summer Concert: Live in Prospect Park please call (212) 362-6000 or visit www.metopera.org/park.

My frequent Prospect Park tipster, Eugene Patron, just wrote to say that on June 26th, the Parks Department is showing Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extra-Terrestrial in Prospect Park.

It’s a perfect last day of school activity for the public school kids and just a fun thing to do for EVERYBODY.

Here are the ‘tails: Long Meadow. June 26th. 8:30 p.m.

Says Eugene:  "Start your summer off right by enjoying a free feature film + fireworks in
Prospect Park. Sponsored by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Enter
the Prospect Park Long Meadow between Grand Army Plaza and Third Street. Free."

Nice. Thanks, Eugene.

Last night, the film For the Bible Tells Me So, was scheduled to be
screened at the St. Augustine Parish on Sterling Place and Sixth
Avenue. At the last minute the screening had to be moved to the home of
a church member. Michele Madigan Somerville, an active member of the
church’s Gay Ministry explains why.

The movie, For the Bible Tells Me So, which several members of the Gay MInsitry had seen, me included, has nothing in it that in any way goes against church teaching.

There has been a flier outside the church advertising the event for about a month. Some guy — we think (I don’t know for sure) NOT a member of St. Augustine Parish, called the Brooklyn Queens Diocese office and spoke with one of the priests in the Bishop DeMarzio’s office.

That priest contacted our pastor, who is in the middle of moving (to another parish and out of his quarters in the parish house — this for reasons having only to do with his (normal) 12 years at one parish being up — so he was not able to stop to look at the movie in the interest of addressing the concerns.

    The homophobic complainant threatened to call the Nuncio.

    The members of the Gay ministry decided to hold the screening in a home.

    This decision was made for our protection, I think, and in order to preserve the peace. We’ve got a new head priest coming next week at ST. A, and though we have no reason to imagine he will not support this ministry, we want the transition to be as painless and peaceful as possible. That thinking affected decision-making.

    The group met at one of the member’s homes. We imagine that people from the community trying to attend the screening may have been discouraged –which I feel bad about,

    Some people at the screening — which turned into a soiree-meeting — were angry. Some were not.

    Three Brooklyn RC parishes and one from Manhattan — St, Francis Xavier in Manhattan — where they have a 15 year old Roman Catholic Gay Ministry, so it is clear that the homophobe complainant shall not be successful in stopping this particular train to glory!

    I’ll be writing about this later on on www.whydogod.com.

The Center for the Urban Environment is happy to announce that you can cruise the Gowanus Canal once. They look forward to the opportunity to introduce newcomers and old fans alike to the secrets of this now legendary
waterway.

Those who have been on the cruise before come back to see the
changes as the canal and its neighborhood experience a renaissance.

Tour guide Dan Wiley will guide us through the cruise with tales of the
area’s environment, history and industrial architecture. Check-in will
take place at 9:30 am with the vessel departing promptly at 10 am. Meet at Fulton Ferry Landing at the foot of Old Fulton Street opposite the River Cafe on Sunday 6/22. The cruise runs from 9:30 am until noon. A pre-payment is required. $50.0 for non-members, $40. for members, seniors and students. Book early: 718-788-8500, ext. 217.             

The dad of a child at MS 51, a Park Slope middle school wrote in about yesterday’s armed bank robbery…

The incident was on 6/19/08. The school was locked down from 12:30-1:30 so the kids did not change classes for the 6th period. We were advised no one entered the school but police were running down Fifth Avenue and the park next to the school with drawn guns.