Two trusted sources have confirmed that Jennifer Jones Austin, the Park Slope woman stricken with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, has found an umbilical stem cell donor.
Thanks to this match, Austin, a legal advocate, wife and mother, has seriously improved her chances of survival. Prior to finding this donor, Austin’s prognosis was very dire.
The very potent and stem cell rich blood found in the umbilical cord has proven effective in treating the type of Leukemia that Austin has.
More good news: umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants are less prone to rejection than either bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells because the cells have not yet developed the features that can be recognized and attacked by the recipient’s immune system.
Umbilical cord blood lacks well-developed immune cells, there is less chance that the transplanted cells will attack the recipient’s body, a problem called graft versus host disease.
Austin is not out of the woods yet as there is a long road ahead in the transplant process. But thanks to this donor match, this extraordinary woman is likely to survive a terrible isease.
Martin Scorsese is known as an auteur with a signature style. Shutter Island may be a genre picture, but it is a completely new aesthetic for Scorsese.
The movie takes place on an island of no escape and this claustrophobic atmosphere is reminiscent of the director’s “man in a room” movies such as Taxi Driver and Bringing Out The Dead. And there are stylistic links to classic film noir and the American masters of the director’s youth. Films like T-Men and Shock Corridor (playing at the Film Forum April 30) come to mind. These are expected reference points from Scorsese, whose encyclopedia knowledge of classic American cinema is often evident in his own work , however they’re handled completely differently here as stylistic cousins rather than direct references.
While the classic noir narrative is at work, Shutter Island also has a dreamlike quality to it that likens it more to a contemporary European aesthetic. The way reality bleeds into fantasy through time-shifting nightmarish, hallucinatory flashbacks, brings to mind something more like The Diving Bell And The Butterfly or La Vie En Rose. Interestingly, the contemporary European and the classic noir aesthetic both have distinct perspectives on World War II and this Dennis Lehane adaptation with the trauma of war at its core somehow incorporates both of these perspectives. There’s also an element of the what’s-going-on layered twists increasing popular in thrillers post-Sixth Sense, and it is perfectly applied here.
I stood in line for the movie with what was basically the Jersey Shore cast, so I expected, as is the norm for movies in my local multiplex, the yells at the screen to only be paused long enough to send and receive texts, but the audience was completely silent, riveted the entire time.
This is what Scorsese has done for years – entertain audiences while providing something intellectually challenging and with great visual and thematic depth. Shutter Island, a film I would not likely have known to be by the filmmaker or his regular crew, including editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Robert Richardson. It is proof that Scorsese has new ways of doing what he has always done so masterfully.
Word has clearly gotten out that I’m desperate for dinner party guests.
This morning a friend generously offered to supply me with a vetted crew of entertaining guests – “insta-guests” guaranteed to have a good time.
“I’ve got a group of friends who get together for dinner parties already. I’m sure they’d be happy to come to yours,” she said. “They’re a fun bunch.”
Although I’d love to meet her friends, I’m happy to announce that my friends have re-worked their priorities and responded favorably to my dinner invitation. On top of that, my daughters’ music teacher Mr. Di Franco (and his significant other) has agreed to be our not-so-mystery guest.
I’m excited about the eclectic mix of guests — if everyone shows up, we’ll have a professional photographer, a musician, a writer and cook, a blogger, a film critic, a web marketer and other interesting folks. Hopefully, they’ll all get along — and if they don’t, that will be interesting too.
But now I have the opposite problem — too many people are coming to my dinner party.
The idea was to host an intimate gathering of eight (including me and Avo), which means six guests. Since I panicked that nobody would come, I ended up inviting ten people, rather than six. Two people have declined the invitation, and I haven’t yet heard from OTBKB’s own Louise Crawford and her hubby. But at this point, the other eight are planning to come. So it will be dinner for ten — or twelve.
Unfortunately, even when it’s folded out to its largest size, our dinner table only sits eight. So it will be a very intimate dinner indeed!
No more reservations are being accepted at Casa Undomesticated Me. I promise I’ll have you over for dinner — some other time.
It saved writer/dancer Maria Finn, who will be reading from her new memoir, Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home on Thursday February 25, at 6:30 PM at the The Meat Hook/Brooklyn Kitchen Labs (100 Frost Street).
There will also be a tango lesson, wine tasting and Argentinean snacks.
How’s that for a great way to promote a book?
When Finn discovered that her husband was cheating, she threw him out. Then she cried. Then she signed up for tango lessons.
It turns out that tango has a lot to teach about understanding love and loss, about learning how to follow and how to lead, how to live with style and flair, take risks, and sort out what it is you really want. As Maria’s world begins to revolve around the friendships she makes in dance class and the milongas (social dances) she attends regularly in New York City, we discover with her the fascinating culture, history, music, moves, and beauty of the Argentine tango.
With each new dance step she learns the embrace, the walk, the sweep, the exitóshe is one step closer to returning to the world of the living.
Eventually Maria travels to Buenos Aires, the birthplace of tango, and finds the confidence to try romance again.
The Salem witch-hunts and trials will come alive in Park Slope when Brooklyn’s Brave New World Repertory Theatre presents a two-week run of Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible, March 4-14.
The site-specific production will take place in The Old Stone House, originally constructed in 1699, seven years after the Salem hangings. The production will be lit entirely using candlelight lanterns (no electric lights) to deepen the dramatic impact of the play and its subject matter.
Rather than change scenery, Brave New World (BNW) will invite the audience to move after intermission—from the setting (the Parris and Proctor homes) on the ground floor for Acts One and Two, to a larger room upstairs (the courthouse and jail) for Acts Three and Four.
The evening will commence with a prologue in the front yard seen through the parlor windows. (Complete dates/ticket information below)
Brave New World Repertory has garnered attention over the past five years for its site-specific productions around the borough, including To Kill a Mockingbird on the front porches of a tree-lined Ditmas Park street, On The Waterfront on a Brooklyn barge that toured the waterfronts of New York Bay,and The Tempest on the beach and boardwalk in Coney Island.
This production of The Crucible got its start as a highly popular reading during Brave New World’s 2009 Salon Series of Play Readings, also at the Old Stone House. Based in Brooklyn, Brave New World Repertory has been a featured favorite of Celebrate Brooklyn at the Prospect Park band shell, presenting acclaimed productions of Fahrenheit 451, The Great White Hope and Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, based on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.Continue reading The Crucible by Candlelight at the Old Stone House→
This is the second in a series of interviews with Brooklyn women artists at their favorite bars by Sarah Deming. This week, she met modern dancer Julie Worden for a delicious martini at the magical Clover Club in Carroll Gardens. Julie has been dancing with the Mark Morris Dance Group since 1994.
You can catch Julie and the Mark Morris Dancers at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week on Tuesday the 23rd and Thursday the 25th through Saturday the 27th. The program features the world premiere of “Socrates” to music by Erik Satie. For online ticketing, go here.
Sarah: Tell me about your childhood and when you knew you wanted to be a dancer.
Julie: I grew up in the small town of Naples, Florida, where all the little girls took dance. We performed at the Swamp Buggy Parade, the Moose Lodge, and the local mall. I was incredibly shy. I think I liked the idea of being able to communicate nonverbally, by getting inside of something that already existed and expressing it from the inside out. I was fourteen when I left home to go to the North Carolina School of the Arts.
Sarah: That’s a very rigorous program. Looking back, do you think the strictness was helpful?
Julie: They tried to break you down, to see if you had a backbone. I was lucky in that I had a strong family and sense of self. I suppose it’s good to weed out the people who won’t make it. Better to learn the truth early on than after 25 years of dance classes.
Sarah: What attracted you to Mark Morris’s work?
Julie: I met Mark when I was fifteen and I knew I had to work with him. I told my teachers that and they said, “He’ll never make it; he’s the bad boy of dance.” But the next year they were showing us the BBC documentary on him! I consider Mark a cultural father, not only in dance but in music and art. I see music better through his dances, through the things he pulls out of it.
Sarah: Is there room in the choreography for your own individual expression?
Julie: With Mark’s work, yes. The choreography comes from him, but each dancer represents a different part of humanity. Together we convey a more well-rounded expression of each particular move, and he wants that spread of personalities.
Sarah: What is your favorite piece to dance?
Julie: Lately it’s been “All Fours.”
Sarah: I love that one! To Bartok’s Fourth String Quartet.
Julie: The amazing thing about Mark is that he takes pieces that are technically “undanceable” and makes them sound like pop music. Two smalltown girls in California told me they loved that piece and called it “the hip hop number.” Mark assigned two dancers to each string part and broke down the piece bar by bar. Sometimes we took two hours to work through two bars of music because it’s so complex. It has these very tense, spare, Orwellian moments that to me are about suppression and control of emotion, and it has pizzicato movements where it’s like the floor is opening beneath you. Mark shows the audience the structure and the rhythm so clearly.
Sarah: Tell me more about rhythm. Do you think it’s innate or can it be taught?
Julie: I don’t think rhythm can be taught. It’s something outside of yourself that you have to just exhale and open into. Overly intellectual artists sometimes have difficulty with this, because there is a striving, a kind of reaching in advance of the beat. But rhythm is about being almost late. It’s about the bottom. Sometimes when the company is most fatigued, that’s when we’re the most together. We’re all together – the dancers, the musicians in the pit, the audience. It’s a huge and beautiful thing, because Mark’s work is based on folk traditions. It’s like opening into a huge vibration.
Sarah: Where do you think the vibration comes from?
Julie: The earth? The ocean? I don’t really know.
Sarah: I think dance is the most fleeting of all the arts.
Julie: It’s the saddest thing in the world. Once you get something figured out, it’s over. The older you get and the deeper you become, the more your cartilage wears out. Maybe that’s what makes it so beautiful: The fact that it could be taken from you any second.
Sarah: How do you want to be remembered as a dancer?
Julie: As someone with a pure and clear intent, who meant everything she did. I want people to look at me and see the music. I want them to sit back in their seats and think, “I’m in good hands.”
RECIPE: GIN BLOSSOM
This delicate and delicious recipe comes courtesy of the Clover Club’s Julie Reiner, who says that when she opened her bar she wanted to create a cocktail that would be Clover’s house martini.
1 1/2 ounces Plymouth Gin 1 1/2 ounces Martini and Rossi Bianco Vermouth 3/4 ounce Apricot Eau de Vie 2 dashes orange bitters
Stir all ingredients very well over ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist. Drink while discussing deep things.
Friday’s Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3 50th birthday show at The Lakeside Lounge found Steve and The Miracle 3 at the top of their game. Although I lost my camera and the pictures I took their right after the show, Bill Holtzheimer of South Jersey Taper has graciously permitted me to post some of his photos which you can see here.
And now for something completely different. Every year the South By Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) posts mp3s from many of the bands playing their. 646 of them have been put together in one massive file and it is available for download via Bittorrent. Now I’ve Heard Everything has a link to that download here and even instructions on how to use Bittorent technology here.
It’s a New York story: growing up with friends in an apartment building.
That’s how it was for me. My best friend lived in 9B, we lived in 9A right next door. That is, until the family moved to the 3rd floor.
What a trauma. But we adjusted.
But even when she moved to 3B it seemed we were constantly in and out of eachother’s apartments. We baked together and put on shows. We loved to perform scenes from “Hair”, “Cabaret” and “Fidler on the Roof” lip synching and dancing our own original choreography for an audience of only parents.
When I was younger, we played endlessly with the kids in 8C. We ate with them, bathed with them, watched TV with them, even spent the Blackout of 1965 with them.
It was 5:28 PM on November 9 when the city went dark. My mother, sister and I were in 8C, our downstairs’ neighbors apartment. The fathers were at the office in mid-town and the women and children were on their own. Candles were lit and, after the initial panic, it was the adventure of a lifetime.
Dinner in the dark, spooky games, looking out the window and seeing an unilluminated city, staying up well past bedtime. Ah what a night that was.
Members of a group called Carroll Gardens CORD (Coalition for Respectful Development) are irate that the Hannah Senesh School, wants to expand their new school building by developing their front garden. The letter mentions Richard Butts, a surveyor in the 19th Century, who carefully designed the garden enhanced blocks of that Brooklyn neighborhood.
The recent request of the Hannah Senesh School to make an exception to our 160 year old law protecting our public, front gardens, in order for them to expand their new school building by developing the front garden on First Place and Smith Street, is an absolutely AWFUL idea for Carroll Gardens.
Such a development would destroy yet another signature, front garden block in Carroll Gardens, stand kitty corner to one of the very few streets in Carroll Gardens in our historical district, and set a very dangerous precedent for more of the same in our future!
Our front gardens, which are public, have been protected from development for all these years for a very good reason!
Carroll Gardens’ sense of ‘sunny, airy, openess’ is a direct result of the far-sighted planning of Richard Butts, a surveyor in the 19th Century who carefully designed the blocks we now inhabit. His work and the legacy he left us in Carroll Gardens must be protected, for it is this legacy that sets us apart from being just another brownstone neighborhood. Carroll Gardens is UNIQUE!
Granting Hannah Senesh their wish would set a very dangerous precedent for the future of our community in Carroll Gardens, diminsihing its appeal and value as a one of a kind historical, front-garden, architecutural treasure that can not be found anywhere else in NYC or the USA! We must defend ourselves against inititiatives which are not in the best interests or our own neighborhood.
We need to stop this now! And, we ask for your help!
It is also imperative that we let our Councilman, Brad Lander, know that we need to protect our unique history and heritage and that our front gardens can NOT be developed and destroyed. Period!
Yesterday our old downstairs’ neighbors dropped by for a visit. It was a blast from the past, a trip down memory lane…
Who can forget the day the F’s moved into our building. It must have been around 1995 or so.
Kathy and Jay had two children at the time, Eddie and Mary. They’d lived in Park Slope before Eddie was born. And they stayed until Eddie was 1 or 2. When Kathy got pregnant with Mary, they moved to New Rochelle, but they never adjusted to suburban life.
So they came back to the Slope, to Third Street, to regain what they’d lost. Life in a big city small town.
Teen Spirit was thrilled when he found out that a little boy was moving into the building; he could hardly wait for the day when they would move into the apartment right below us.
On the day they moved in, I remember telling Teen Spirit to wait until they’d been in the apartment for at least an hour before going down for a play date.
Finally I told Teen Spirit he could go downstairs and introduce himself and from that moment on, 5-year-old Teen Spirit and 6-year-old Eddie were the very best of friends. And Mary, who must have been about 4 at the time, was always on hand because wherever Eddie went Mary was close behind.
Mary was very quiet at the time with the world’s biggest, darkest and most inquisitive eyes, but she just loved to watch Teen Spirit and Eddie play.
“I’m going down to Eddie’s,” became Teen Spirit’s constant refrain. If Teen Spirit was home he wanted to be with Eddie and visa versa. And Mary was never far behind.
Action figures, video games, board games, imaginary games. Eddie, Mary and Teen Spirit played and played. It was a childhood’s worth of playing. And a childhood’s worth of fun.
Indoors. Outdoors. In the front yard. In Prospect Park. The families even vacationed together one July, quite by accident, in Wellfleet, Mass. Unbeknownst to the other, both families made plans to spend the same week in the same town.
“What a coincidence,” I said when the accidental vacation was discovered.
“We really can’t get away from each other,” Jay said mostly in jest.
Understandably the kids were ecstatic about going on a vacation with their apartment building friends and they boogie boarded at the ocean, swam at the bay, played mini-golf and barbecued burgers in rented backyards.
In general the kids got along unusually well, as did the parents. Sure there were disagreements, some rocky moments, it wouldn’t be a friendship without that.
One time Teen Spirit had to write, “I will not put my hands around Mary’s neck” 100 times on a piece of paper.
Mostly it was easy, seamless, a god-send to have such good friends in the building…
When you belong to a community you should, ideally, feel as comfortable in its houses of worship as you do on its streets, its schools, its stores, parks and restaurants.
Which isn’t to say that one has to be polytheistic. It’s just that visiting a community’s religious spaces is a meaningful way to learn about your neighbors and friends as they engage in the spiritual side of their lives.
Indeed, to see people at church, synagogue, mosque or Buddhist temple is to see a very private side of them. But it’s public, too. It can feel intrusive to walk in on a religious group that is not your own. But it can also be highly instructive and even enlightening.
To see people in their house of worship is to observe them at their most quiet, their most thoughtful and inwardly focused.
Last week I went to Sunday services at Park Slope’s Old First Dutch Reformed Church. I went, partially, because the title of Pastor Meeter’s sermon, “Passionate Physicality,” intrigued me.
Later the title was changed to “Passionate Spirituality” but I still decided to check out what he had to say.
He even quoted me in the sermon:
“Passionate Physicality.” The context of that sermon title is my preaching theme for the last few months: “Passionate Spirituality.” I posted that sermon title, and it was seen by a friend of mine, not from this church, who didn’t know the context, and she asked me what I would be preaching about with “passionate physicality.” Well, sex, I guess! There’s a mystery. What are our bodies for? What is their glory? Where do we get passionate?
We have these bodies. It’s in our bodies that we carry our emotions and our histories, our talents and our characters. I’d like to be a great musician, but I just don’t have it in my body. I’d like to be good in sports, or relaxed and easy-going, or warm and fuzzy, but I don’t have it in my body. If I had grown up differently, I might have become a decent dancer, but it’s too late now, not with my history.
Would you like to be different than you are? Would you like to be transformed? Do you consider it desirable? Do you believe it’s possible? Do you believe that people can be changed? So often in pre-marital counseling I have given the warning that people do not change. “If you think he’s going to change after you get married, you’re in for it. You’re not going to change him.”
We know that cultures change. We know that civilizations change. We know that nations can be transformed. Indeed, the Bible considers it the will of God that the ethics of the Torah and the Gospel should gradually transform the nations. But what about individuals? What about you?
Smartmom spent Valentine’s Day 1991 in Lenox Hill Hospital five months pregnant with Teen Spirit, suffering from symptoms of pre-term labor. She stayed in the hospital for a month so that her baby wouldn’t be born four months early.
His due date was June 12.
By Valentine’s Day, Smartmom had already been in the hospital two weeks since the night she hemorrhaged in their East Village apartment and raced over to the hospital terrified that her baby was no longer alive.
When she got to the prenatal ward, a sonogram revealed, thankfully, that the baby’s heart was still beating; she was told that she was having early contractions. If the baby was born, he would never survive: his lungs were too small. She was given massive doses of Terbutaline, a drug that relaxes the uterus, in order to stabilize the contractions.
Smartmom was under strict orders to remain calm. “Don’t laugh or cry,” her obstetrician told her in his thick Romanian accent. “Anything can cause contractions.” She wasn’t allowed to get out of bed and had to use a bedpan. It was pretty awful. But staying calm was hardest of all.
CALM? How can you be calm in a situation like that?
Feb 20 at 8:30 PM: Jewish Music Cafe Ayreh Kunstler Band, The Aboriginals, Aural Law
Also Feb 20 at 8PM: Andy Statman, Klezmer genuis at Barbes
Feb 21 at 5PM at the Bell House: Several local record collectors (including Billy Miller of Norton Records and Michael McMahon of Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co., more to be named later) have agreed to share the sounds contained within their favorite 78s at this event, which will be hosted by Phast Phreddie the Boogaloo Omnibus (The Wang Dang Doodle, Subway Soul Club).
Her name is Marion McCleneghan and she’s been “missing” since Februray 6th. Fliers have gone up on lamp posts all over Park Slope and her relatives and police are frantically trying to track her down.
How does someone disappear?
Was she murdered? ? Abducted? Amnesia? Did she do herself in? These are the questions that come up again in again in conversations around the Slope.
People go missing every day of the week in a big city like New York. But in Park Slope it’s a rare occurrence so people are, of course, taking heartfelt notice.
Who can ignore those lamp post pictures of the beautiful woman with her dog?
Rumors, information, a jumble of both abound: She was at a party the night she disappeared in the South Slope (on 14th Street to be exact). She was drinking. She was fighting with her boyfriend. She told someone: “You won’t be seeing me anymore.” Her journals and computer are missing…
Rumors. Hearsay. The curiosity thickens as the days pass. With magical thinking, optimism I surmise: maybe she decided to change her life, to move somewhere new, to start over, to reinvent herself.
Hasn’t everyone had that fantasy more than once?
In darker moments I see her on the Staten Island Ferry taking the leap unable to go on in this life, the pain and desperation too much to bear.
In darkness I see her as the victim of an unspeakable crime…
Then there are the things I can’t even imagine.
Her name is Marion McCleneghan. People go missing every day of the week but not in the Slope.
Where oh where can you be?
If anyone has seen or has information about Marion please contact the 78th Detective Squad at 718-636-6483, Case #109, Complaint #445, Detective Gibbons assigned.
Todd, my brother-in-law in San Francisco, called today and asked: “Have you guys ever heard of the Crossroads Cafe?”
Sheepishly, I had to admit that, no, I’d never heard of it.
So we googled it and now know that the Crossroads Cafe is located next to the Ft. Hamilton F Train Station.
Seems that Todd knows the brother of one of the owners of the cafe. He is a customer at On the Go Expresso, Todd’s coffee cart business in San Francisco that is permanently parked in the courtyard of an building near the Embarcadero. On the Go Expresso has been called “the Cheers of coffee stands” by one Yelper and generally gets excellent reviews.
Small world.
Known for their fresh high quality products baked daily and good, speedy service, owners Yasmin Gur and Suzanne Meehann have two locations. The “flagship” store is in the Kensington neighborhood and a smaller branch called Crossroads to Go is near Borough Hall.
So, if you’re in San Francisco, say hello to Todd at On the Go Expresso. Tell him you heard about him on OTBKB.
Feb 20 at 8:30 PM: Jewish Music Cafe Ayreh Kunstler Band, The Aboriginals, Aural Law
Also Feb 29 at 8PM: Andy Statman, Klezmer genuis at Barbes
Feb 21 at 5PM at the Bell House: Several local record collectors (including Billy Miller of Norton Records and Michael McMahon of Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co., more to be named later) have agreed to share the sounds contained within their favorite 78s at this event, which will be hosted by Phast Phreddie the Boogaloo Omnibus (The Wang Dang Doodle, Subway Soul Club).
I just got this interesting email Cindy Hwang at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in reaction to an article in this month’s Atlantic:
In this month’s Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan condemns school gardens as “cultivating failure” with the claim that learning to grow crops doesn’t teach kids how to pass tests – the only path to success and health according to Caitlin.
The Children’s Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has been doing a pretty good job of raising crops of vegetables and good kids for 96 years… it’s the world very first children’s garden and the prototype for all the others around the world, operating uninterruptedly since 1914 – almost as long as the Brooklyn Botanic Garden itself, now celebrating its centennial year.
So, relaxMs. Flanagan. Below are some pix of New York kids who’ve gardened at the Brooklyn Botanic – some who’ve even learned a little math and science along the way.
Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3 are the best rock n roll band that I know (and I know a fair number of them). They’ll be playing a set at The Lakeside Lounge tonight as part of Steve’s 50th birthday celebration. That should be enough encouragement to get you down to Avenue B and 10th Street, but if you still need more convincing, how about this: in addition to his current band, Steve has been a part of The Dream Syndicate, Danny & Dusty, Gutterball and is also currently part of The Baseball Project. He’s also coming off what is probably the ten most musically prolific years of his life as I noted when he became Now I’ve Heard Everything’s Artist of the Decade.
Remember when Whole Foods was going to build on Third Street and Third Avenue in the Park Slope/Gowanus area. ? Well, a whole lot has changed since then, including possible Superfund status for the Gowanus Canal.
But aren’t you still curious how Whole Foods views the situation and what they plan to do in the future with that site?
Answers may be forthcoming.
The public is welcome to attend the Feb 22 6:30 PM meeting of Community Board 6’s Public Safety/Environmental Protection/Permits/Licenses Committee, which will feature representatives for Whole Foods on the resumption of environmental remediation activities at 210-230 3rd Street and 370-384 3rd Avenue (southeast corner 3rd Street/3rd Avenue).
Other items on the agenda: Presentation and consideration of a letter of support for an application for a Gowanus Watershed Initiative grant that proposes various Combined Sewer Overflow reduction measures for the Gowanus Canal.
PS 32 Auditorium
317 Hoyt Street
(between Union & President Sts)
Brooklyn NY 11231
6:30 PM
