Please join me at Two Moon Art House and Cafe for Writers Who Sing, Singers Who Write, a Sandy Fundraiser and performance presented by Only the Blog at Two Moon.

The event is free but we’ll be collecting money. We’ll donate whatever you give to the OSH PSP Brooklyn Neighbors Hurricane Relief Fund or another appropriate charity helping locals recover from Sandy. There will also be a RAFFLE of a photo by Hugh Crawford, CDs by Mila Drumke and a book by Peter Silsbee.

TEAR IT DOWN by Jack Gilbert (1925-2012)

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body

The current Department of Education proposal to rezone parts of District 15 is expected to affect kindergarten aged students for school year 2013-2014 in PS10, PS39, PS107, and PS321.

A new zone map will be proposed that will include some of the same blocks that were proposed last month, but will also include some blocks that hadn’t been proposed previously.

There’s a meeting TONIGHT, TUESDAY, 11/13, 2012 from 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Sign up for public comment 6-6:30pm

Please limit your comment to 2-3 minutes

It’s happening at the John Jay Educational Campus,  237 Seventh Avenue (between 4th and 5th Avenues), Subway: D, R to 9th Street, F, G, to 7th Avenue, Bus: B61, B63, and B67.

The DUMBO Rebuild Fundraiser is on for tomorrow, November 14, 2012.

In the aftermath of Sandy, there is a concerted effort in DUMBO to work together to support the many small businesses that make the neighborhood so unique. As many half a dozen businesses are still completely closed after the storm, and many more are still a long way from being back to normal.

Some of my favorite Brooklyn spaces were damaged by the storm. Impacted businesses include Galapagos Art Space, Governor, One Girl Cookies, Aegir Board Works, 66 Water Street, Almondine, powerHouse Arena, Punto Bianco, Smack Mellon, Ignazio’s, 7 Old Fulton, Rabbit Hole Studios, Brooklyn Roasting and more…

Despite heavy flood damage, Galapagos, an art space/bar in the neighborhood re-opened November 3rd with help from lots of neighbors doing cleanup and they are hosting the Dumbo Improvement Districts fundraiser tomorrow night.

In addition, they just announced an awesome raffle—the winner gets Mary Markowitz to record their voicemail message!

Help DUMBO Rebuild Fundraiser (more details here: http://dumbo.is/blog_posts/donate-now-to-help-dumbo-businesses)

When: Wednesday, November 14, 6:00 p.m.

Where: Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main St., DUMBO

Why: More than a dozen of your favorite DUMBO spots suffered significant damage during Sandy (including our amazing host, the indefatigable Galapagos Art Space!!!). In the coming weeks and months, they will struggle put their pieces back together.

Who: Impacted businesses and art spaces

Two Boots Brooklyn and Old First have officially moved their recovery operation to Old First Reformed Church, at 729 Carroll street.

There they are preparing delicious food for those without all over Brooklyn

If anyone would like to volunteer with them, they need help after 10AM. Show up there and ask for Sara. She’ll put you to work!

CG CORD (Carroll Gardens Coalition for Respectful Development) forwarded this letter from the Environmental Protection Agecny about cleaning up the Gowanus Area after Hurricane Sandy.

November 2, 2012

On October 29, 2012, during Hurricane Sandy, a portion of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York overtopped its banks, causing the flooding of some area residences and businesses. The water receded after the storm. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency immediately conducted a visual inspection of the length of the canal and the surrounding area and did not observe sediment on the streets. The EPA also collected samples of standing water from several buildings and will make the results public as soon as they are available.

The Gowanus Canal is contaminated by PCBs, coal tar waste, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds and bacteria from many years of industrial discharges, spills, storm water runoff and combined sewer overflows. The site was added to the federal EPA Superfund list of the nation’s most contaminated sites in March 2010.

If you live near the Gowanus Canal and experienced flooding from the canal during the storm, there are simple steps to follow in cleaning up:

Remove or pump out standing water.

Use bleach to kill germs

Wear rubber boots, rubber gloves and goggles.

Open windows and doors to get fresh air when you use bleach.

Clean hard things with soap and water. Then clean with a mix of 1 cup of household liquid bleach in 5 gallons of water. Use bleach that does not have an added scent (like lemon). Scrub rough surfaces with a stiff brush and air dry.

If you don’t have household liquid bleach, use soap and water.

NEVER mix bleach with ammonia or other cleaners.

Wash clothes worn during cleanups in hot water and detergent. These clothes should be washed separately than uncontaminated clothes.

The Huffington Posts’ Daniel Marens reports that there’s a humanitarian crisis in Coney Island two weeks after Hurricane Sandy.

The situation in public housing projects in Coney Island, Brooklyn remains a “humanitarian crisis” in which the government and the Red Cross have been nearly completely absent, according to Eric Moed, a volunteer aid worker with Occupy Sandy.

Friday is Moed’s fifth day volunteering with Occupy Sandy, an ad hoc hurricane relief group formed by former Occupy Wall Street activists. Moed, an architect from Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, goes door to door in the 30-40 public housing buildings in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn to distribute food, water and supplies, and help address sanitation and medical needs. The projects in Coney Island remain without power, and often without water and necessities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Accounts of these conditions have been corroborated in theNew York Daily News.

 

Old First Dutch Reformed Church (pictured left in 1666) posted on Facebook the Dutch Prayer for New York that was prayed in his cousin’s church in the Netherlands on Sunday.

Mensen hebben mensen nodig

om elkaar te dragen,

om elkaar tot leven te brengen

Mensen hebben mensen nodig

om voor elkaar op te komen,

om samen te werken aan welzijn en geluk.

Mensen hebben mensen nodig

om te laten zien wie U bent,

God van Liefde, God van gerechtigheid.

Wek dan die kracht in ons.

Doe de liefde in ons ontvlammen,

die ons omkeert naar elkaar,

die ons doet zorgen voor elkaar.

Dat wij U liefhebben.

Dat wij onze naasten beminnen.

Dat wij onszelf kunnen beminnen.

Pastor Meeter writes: “This prayer conveys the essence of being a Christian” and means something close to what is below, which is the auto-translation from Facebook:

People need people to come together, to work together to well-being and happiness.

People need people to show who you are,

God of Love, God of righteousness.

Do the love in our ignite, which reverses us to each other, which makes us concerned for each other.

That we love you.

That we love our neighbors.

That we can love ourselves.

Brooklyn is redefining what it means to be a rare bookseller. In fact, the borough is turning into a haven for indie rare and antiquarian dealers who are reaching out to a different kind of collector, one who understands the value of the book at a time when its future is in doubt.

On December 1, 2012 from noon to 6PM, The Old Stone House and Honey and Wax Booksellers are presenting the VERY FIRST Brooklyn Holiday Book Fair featuring rare and extraordinary books, a feast for collectors and those who just love uncommon, beautiful books.

I think it’s going to be a very cool event, the first of its kind with booksellers from Park Slope, Bushwick,Williamsburg, Dumbo, and Cobble Hill.

Heather O’Donnell, who is organizing the fair along with Kim Maier of The Old Stone House, is shaping up to be something of a leader of this indie rare books scene in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn’s love affair with the literary continues. A highlight of the event will be a reading of a rare first edition copy of The Gift of the Magi, the classic Christmas tale by O’Henry, read by a surprise Brooklyn lit notable. 

Who will it be? Who will it be?

This group of  independent Brooklyn booksellers with a shared interest in print history will fill the Old Stone House with some of their favorite rare, vintage, and out-of-print books. Get to know your local booksellers, and be surprised and inspired by books you didn’t even know you wanted!

Participants include:

Book Thug Nation, Williamsburg, est. 2009

Freebird Books, Cobble Hill, est. 2004

Honey & Wax Booksellers, Park Slope, est. 2012, www.honeyandwaxbooks.com

Human Relations, Bushwick, est. 2012, www.humanrelationsbooks.com

Open Air Modern, Williamsburg, est. 2009, www.openairmodern.com

P.S. Bookshop, DUMBO, est. 2006, www.psbnyc.com

Singularity & Co., DUMBO, est. 2012, www.savethescifi.com

Unnameable Books, Prospect Heights, est. 2006, www.unnameablebooks.net

Also for sale: antiquarian maps and prints of Brooklyn, offered by Prints Charming.

Full disclosure: Honey & Wax is a client of Louise’s firm Brooklyn Social Media.

The devastation caused by Sandy in the New York and New Jersey area cannot be overstated. Homeland Security head Janet Nepolitano estimated that the area affected is the size of Europe.

That really is staggering.

In Brooklyn, Gowanus and Red Hook Houses were still without electricity until Saturday and some apartments may still be without power. The clean up in Red Hook, Coney Island and elsewhere is massive. Many businesses in Dumbo, including the beloved River Cafe, were badly damaged.

This is just a calamity that keeps unfolding.

Look to the helpers as Fred Rogers (PBS’s Mr. Rogers) used to say. That’s what gives people hope because in the face of nature’s wrath, it is comforting to know that first responders, firefighters, police officers and regular citizens are willing to risk their lives for others.

The organizing efforts of Occupy Sandy have also been heartening. In Brooklyn the St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park has become mission control for vast, well-organized and on-going Sandy relief efforts.

That said, help has not come fast enough for some communities and going forward City officials must construct ways to provide relief after a storm of this magnitude.

If you’re looking for a way to help, Park Slope Parents has a great list of what’s going on and what you can do. 

From Moveon.org this morning, a list of seven shocking facts about veterans:

1. One third of the adult homeless are vets. 2. 70% of these suffer from substance abuse problems. 3. 45% suffer from mental illness. 5. There are an estimated 196,000 homeless vets on any given night. 6. 3-11% of homeless vets are female. 7. The current unemployment rate for vets is 12% while the general population is 9.1%.

The US Goverment states that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the leading cause of homelessness among veterans.

But that’s just part of the story. In honor of Veterans Day, an important event celebrating veterans who write and offer insight—through fiction, memoir and poetry—about what it means to be a soldier in the 21st century. On Nov. 15 at 8PM at the Old Stone House. $5 suggested donation includes wine and refreshments.

Brooklyn Reading Works presents Writing War: Fiction, Memoir and Poetry by Vets curated by Peter Catapano of the New York Times.

Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead and a new memoir Hotels, Hospitals and Jails will be on hand, as well as Maurice Decaul, Matt Gallagher, Philip Klay, Mariette Kalinowski and Roy Scranton

When: Thursday, November 15 at 8PM:

Where: The Old Stone House (336 Third Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215 between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, 718-768-9135 or 718-288-4290) site of the very bloody Battle of Brooklyn, the first and largest conflict of the Revolution.

As you probably know, Fairway Market in Red Hook was seriously damaged during Hurricane Sandy. The store is closed temporarily.

In the picture to the left, Fairway staff disposes of food ruined by Sandy.

The store has been working  with vendors and donating truckloads of food, water and other staples to local food banks, emergency relief shelters, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the areas in and around the city.

The company has been working with the Borough President’s Office, the Mayor, City Council, and other elected officials to ensure that the food, meals and merchandise are going where they are most needed.

The Red Hook store will remain closed until a total cleanup and renovation are complete, which is expected to take about two to three months.

Improvements to the store are planned: a full-scale restaurant on the second floor of the historic building overlooking the Statue of Liberty, with a menu prepared by Chef Mitchel London.

I received this email from Andrew Wandzilak, who works at Two Boots Brooklyn, about the relief efforts the restaurant andOld First Dutch Reformed Church are doing together for victims of Sandy.

Good Morning. Today we expand our operation into the Old First Reformed Church kitchen on Carroll Street and 7th Avenue. We will be making hot food to be delivered throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Many thanks to Rev. Daniel Meeter and the entire congregation of Old First.

We are working with City Council Member Brad Lander to provide meals to over 300 nursing home evacuees at the Park Slope Armory on 15th Street Saturday night.

Baltimore Radio station 101.9 lite FM and WJZ-TV 13 are collecting supplies for the effort! They will be delivering to Two Boots Sunday. Truckloads of donations are coming from Washington DC, Albany, NY and Rutland, VT. Thanks to all of our friends from out of state.

We need:

Blankets, blankets and more blankets

Batteries of all sorts

Juice boxes

Pet Food

Cleaning supplies

Garbage bags

Bleach

Paper Towels

Breathing Masks

Bulk food donations

We will be collecting supplies this weekend at Two Boots Brooklyn this weekend.

We still need volunteers at Two Boots and Old First to help sort and package supplies and prepare and portion food. If you’d like to volunteer, call @Lina Canney at 718 499 3253.

A representative from CG CORD, Carroll Gardens Coalition for Respectful Development, sent me a link to this compelling—and disturbing—video taken as the Superfunded Gowanus Canal overflowed into the neighborhoods surrounding the Gowanus during Hurricane Sandy.

These videos depict both the force, and the wide extent of the flooding waters, especially along Bond Street at the crossings of Second Street, Carroll Street and Unions Street.

Many residents and businesses were left with this same water and toxic and a toxic sludge sitting in their basements after Hurricane Sandy. Others had to remove debris left by the Gowanus Canal on sidewalks, roadways, and yards.

Many report not knowing how to safely clean up after the Superfund water reached them. This is scary stuff.

On Thursday Mayor Bloomberg signed an executive order permitting odd/even gas rationing starting today.

Drivers who have a license plate that ends in an odd number, or ends in a letter or other character, will be able to buy gas or diesel on odd-numbered days.

Those with license plates that end in an even number or the number zero will be able to buy gas or diesel only on even-numbered days.

This makes so much sense.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been incredibly effective in the coordination of volunteers and supplies. In Brooklyn, Occupy Sandy has been coordinating volunteer recovery efforts from St. Jacobi Evangelical Luteran Church in Sunset Park  (5406 Fourth Avenue).

Here’s how the group describes itself on interoccupy.net:  “Occupy Sandy is a coordinated relief effort to help distribute resources and volunteers to help neighborhoods and people affected by Hurricane Sandy. We are a coalition of people and organizations who are dedicated to implementing aid and establishing hubs for neighborhood resource distribution. Members of this coalition are from Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, recovers.org, InterOccupy.net and many individual volunteers.”

From what I understand, the church basically handed itself over to the Occupy volunteers who were ready to donate time, energy and hard work to the relief effort, in the days after Hurricane Sandy. “All those days out in Zucotti Park with no heat and electricity prepared them for times like this – they are experts in how to feed large numbers of people, how to run generators off vegetable oil and how to provide medical care to those in need,” Pastor Ann Kanfield of Greenpoint Reformed Church writes in an email.

If you are interested in volunteering, St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park and Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew are Occupy Sandy’s primary training and distribution centers. For more information about Occupy Sandy go here.

The Old Stone House Park Slope Neighbors Brooklyn Neighbors Hurricane Relief group has been busy. To date volunteers have purchased more than $22,000 worth of cleaning supplies, bedding, clothing, backpacks and school supplies for our neighbors displaced by the storm, and delivered car loads of donated supplies.

There’s still so much more work to be done and the OSH PSP Brooklyn Neighbors Hurricane Relief Group is still going strong.

And while the House, park and playground came through the storm unscathed, Leon Reid IV’s much loved Hundred Story House, which was installed at JJ Byrne Playground in September and had just left on October 28, was destroyed when it was submerged in the flood at Leon’s Newtown Creek-side studio at 99 Commercial Street, in Brooklyn. We hope you’ll support Leon’s rebuilding efforts through his website!

For more information about ways you can contribute to relief efforts go to The Old Stone House website. 

This was read on NPR this evening. The reporter was reminded of it last night during President Obama’s acceptance speech when he said: “Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.”While at the The New Yorker, E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, wrote this letter to the Writer’s War Board, in 1943.

Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

So what is a Nor’easter?

Here in the Eastern U.S.A. they can occur anytime from October and April when there’s plenty of moisture and cold air. Like tonight, they bring heavy rain and snow and sometimes hurricane-force winds and rough surf that can cause coastal flooding.

It is named for winds that blow in from the northeast and send the storm up the gulf stream.

Park Slope Parents has a very good list of ways you can help victims of Sandy by donating supplies and/or volunteering.

Ways to Help Post Hurricane Sandy (Updated Sunday)

Yesterday when I was voting, a local mom I know told me that there was an outbreak of a Norovirus at the John Jay High School Complex  Hurricane Sandy Evacuation Center and at two other Brooklyn high schools. The building is now quarantined and the schools in that building will not be able to resume until this serious health issue has been resolved.

According to the Daily News, 13 children who were living in the shelter contracted the extremely contagious norovirus, which causes vomiting, diarrhea and gastrointestinal distress.