Now here’s your chance to finally read, in its entirety, Moby Dick. It’s the first-ever New York City marathon-style reading of Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby-Dick, Or, the Whale.

The event will span three days, three bookstores, two boroughs, and feature over a hundred readers, including authors Jonathan Ames, Rick Moody, Sarah Vowell, Touré, Mark Kurlansky, Joshua Cohen, Aryn Kyle, David Goodwillie, Will Hermes, Lev Grossman, Eileen Myles, Elissa Schappell and more; joined by booksellers, editors, bloggers, journalists, and other Melvillians. The full crew is listed and updated here.

This epic event will span three days over the weekend of November 16–18, chosen because the book was first published in the United States on November 14, 1851. The event will begin the night of Friday 11/16 at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, where there will be a pre-marathon presentation of the “Etymology” and “Extracts” from 5PM to 6PM, with the event officially starting with the most famous first line in literature “Call me Ishmael”, at 6PM.

The night will be fueled by clam chowder from Littleneck restaurant. The marathon reading will pick back up on the morning of Saturday 11/17 at 10AM Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho.

Around 11:30AM Amy Virginia Buchanan’s Pequod Players will present a dramatic performance of chapters 37–40: Ahab, Starbuck, and Stubb’s monologues and chapter 40, “Midnight, Forecastle.” Saturday will be fueled by more Littleneck chowder before moving back to Brooklyn to continue the night at Molasses Books in Bushwick (4PM–12AM) with clam and flounder chowder from Brooklyn’s Do or Dine. The marathon will finish back at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe on Sunday 11/18 at 10AM, with the chase concluding around 4PM.

“To hear the book read aloud in its entirety is a wonderful way to experience it for the first time or anew—and the perfect opportunity to read Moby-Dick in a single weekend. It’s going to be a great celebration of a canonical New York City writer, and hopefully the inauguration of a New York City literary tradition. Though an urban reading of the book might surprise some, it’s an apt home, as the novel begins in the “insular city of Manhattoes” and the author was born and died here in New York City,” write the organizers Polly Bresnick and Amanda Bullock.

In 2004, Maxcine DeGouttes opened the bricks and mortar fine yarn shop, Stitch Therapy on Lincoln Place in Park Slope. As described on her website, it really was “a busy hive of creativity, inspiration and support for Brooklyn’s community of knitters, crocheters, and weavers.”

Later, Maxcine moved her shop to Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue sharing a storefront with Brooklyn Mercantile, a sewing, craft and home goods store. In early 2012 when the landlord raised the rent, the two small businesses decided to move on. Brooklyn Mercantile is now online only and Maxcine went to the DeKalb Market, a terribly run market that is now, thankfully, closed.

Happily, Maxcine/Stitch Therapy has landed in the front part of Noella Brew Bar, an attractive, brick-walled cafe on Seventh Avenue near Berkeley Place. There you can find her  iridescent hues of kettle-dyed fibers, tweedy wool and hand-painted, hand-spun yarns. Maxcine is also on hand to teach the passion of her life, knitting.

At Noella, Maxcine has replicated the atmosphere of her cozy old store on Lincoln Place. Customers can still benefit from the encouragement and shared knowledge, which Maxcine loves to give. Even better, you can now get a nice cup of tea or coffee and a pastry or sandwich, while you ponder your next knitting project.

I got an email from Park Slope’s Robin Hirsch, who owns the Cornelia Street Cafe, a venerable and delightful restaurant and performance space in the West Village. Robin is also the author of a memoir, Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski: Creating a Life in the Shadow of History and a book of poems, FEG: Ridiculous Stupid Poems for Intelligent Children

When he’s not running a restaurant or writing books, Robin also curates a vibrant calendar of music, theatrical and literary events downstairs at the Cornelia Street Cafe. He wrote to say that a poem he wrote was published in the Metropolitan Diary section of the New York Times. 

“In the old days (e.g., the last time I had something in this column), the Times used to send a bottle of Champagne. Now, malheureusement, one has to make do with ye olde fleeting fame–sans Champagne.”

Who knew they used to send out champagne? Times have changed.

Robin created a piece of found poetry based on the electronic signs in the subway. The poem is a literal transcription of an electronic sign at the Avenue of the Americas-34th Street Downtown subway stop. All spelling, capitalization, line breaks are as found. The only editing that Robin did was to take the first line, capitalize it and make it the title..Here’s the poem, which you can also find in the New York Times, that venerable and delightful daily newspaper.

 ATTEN TO YOUR CHILDREN

Adults hold handrail

attend to your

children avoid the

side of the escalator

ride safely escaator

are for passenger

only never run up or

down no large

packages should be

carried on escalator

step on and off

escalator never push

strollers on escalator

nevr sit on step or

handrail never put

umbrella on escalator

steps children should

hold adults hand not

handrail have a great

day

Will the entire 19-piece Easy Bake Orchestra with singer Saundra Williams fit into Park Slope’s Tea Lounge, gathering hole of local laptop freelancers. Of course they will. It’s a spacious venue, with a full bar and a full selection of caffeinated treats plus snacks.

How to describe the Easy Bake Orchestra? It’s big band jazz infused with Latin, R&B and sumptous soul. A joyous melodic soup with complex harmonies and a sophisticated swing. The talented Saundra Williams (pictured left) s currently touring with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and will sing original songs by Easy Bake’s leader, Josh Shneider.

I saw them in DUMBO not long ago and was impressed. Very.

Tonight at Tea Lounge on Union Street.

Monday is music night at Sweet Wolf’s, a lovely cafe/restaurant on 12th Street in Park Slope. Tonight, the series, run by Red Beat Music, will present  Levon Henry, described by the organizers as “jazzy, singer/songwriter with a touch of folk.”

Sweet Wolf’s is an unexpected cafe/restaurant in an unexpected place. Located on the very residential corner of Sixth Avenue and 12th Street, you may have noticed the building with its gate posts, gargoyles and a small patio out  front.

By day, Forty Weight Coffee serves coffee and pastry items. For lunch and in the evenings, it’s a full-blown restaurant with delicious food.

As a special incentive for Monday Night Music, bottle of wines will be half price! Tasty bar food will be available and Forty Weight Cafe will offer caffeinated beverages. There’s a one-drink minimum, cash only.

This Wednesday at 7PM come to my new, slightly more casual reading and event series called Only the Blog at Two Moon (Fourth Avenue between 2nd and 3rd Streets in Park Slope).

Reasons: adventurous programming, good conversation, food, coffee drinks and wine in Two Moon, a  lovely cafe and art space on Fourth Avenue.

This Wednesday October 10 at 7PM: see/hear author-blogger Emma Koenig, author of F*ck! I’m in my Twenties. Special musical guest is Small Wonder. Special perk: a show of Hugh Crawford’s LARGE photographs on the walls. That’s Emma above with her mom Bobbi Bass pictured in the New York Times.

Great for peeps in their twenties  b/c they can relate

Great for parents of peeps in their twenties: b/c they can relate

Great for those who don’t know peeps in their twenties: so they can learn about what it’s like to be a peep in your twenties. Also to remember and reminisce. Those were the days, my friend. Those were the days.

And Flavorpill wrote :

Emma Koenig, author of the F*uck I’m in My Twenties tumblr and book (and sister of indie-fave Vampire Weekend frontman, Ezra) has immortalized the experience of overeducated, underemployed twentysomethings. Reading from the recent print release of her best LOL-inducing scribbles, graphs, and charts from the blogosphere, the former struggling New Yorker returns from LA to explore the post-grad woes in public.

Movies

Loopers, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Master (now at BAM), Frankenweenie (maybe, it is a Tim Burton film). Plus, there’s a mini-series at BAM called Apocalypse Soon, which includes The Birds, La Jetee, Mad Max, Night of the Comet

Art

Ferdinand Hodler: View to Infinity at the Neue Gallery in Manhattan, brings together his self-portraits; his Symbolist portraits of powerful looking women; his majestic paintings of the Swiss Alpine landscape; and a series of shockingly frank portraits of his lover, Valentine Godé-Darel, documenting her decline and death. Very moving.

Craft

The Kings County Fiber Arts Festival takes place at  the Old Stone House and Washington Park on  Saturday, October 6 from 10AM until 6PM

Books

In addition to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting in downtown Brooklyn, there’s a Jane Austen Pop-up shop at the Atlantic Avenue location of Sterling Place.  The  Pop-up was organized by Honey & Wax Booksellers. 

Dance

Political Mother, a dance piece by Hofesh Shechter at BAM this weekend. “A heart-stopping, explosive assault on the senses, Political Mother invokes an atmosphere of struggle and conflict, where repression is met with resistance and survival is paramount.” A heavy metal rock band accompanies on stage. Part of the Next Wave festival.

Sex, Money and Power in Jane Austen’s Fiction is the theme of this year’s general meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America, which is taking place October 5-7 at the Brooklyn Sheraton and the Brooklyn Marriott.

The scope of the conference, which includes keynotes by Dr. Cornel West and Anna Quindlan, is too vast to elaborate on here, but you can get a full schedule at the Jane Austen Society of North America website. 

In honor of this event, there’s a Jane Austen Pop-up Shop at Sterling Place, an antique store on Atlantic Avenue or as they describe the merchandise: “eclectic curiosities and  essential goods.” Organized by Heather O’Donnell, the special Jane Austen Pop-up Shop will feature rare editions of Jane Austen’s works.

There are free public programs connected with the JASNA event, too:

8:30 PM, Friday October 5th, at The New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, 333 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY

One of the world’s foremost sopranos, Julianne Baird, will create a wonderful artistic encounter for Austen lovers. Her Jane Austen recitals interweave songs from the Austen family collection (as well as other standards of the period) with narrations drawn from Austen’s novels.

and this:

The Vassar College Women’s Chorus
3:30 PM, Sunday, October 7, 2012 at the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, 75 Hicks Street, Brooklyn

The Vassar College Women’s Chorus will perform works based on Jane Austen texts, specially commissioned by Vassar College and the Jane Austen conference from composers, Eleanor Daley and Joelle Wallach. The Chorus has performed in New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia as well as abroad. The concert will be held at the historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, where Abraham Lincoln prayed and where escaped slaves were sheltered on the Underground Railroad.

I wrote this as Smartmom on October 7, 2004 on the original OTBKB, which is now called Third  Street. 

There’s something about a blog that makes a person want, no, need, no, desperately need, some sort of response. It’s a big shout into the universe for attention. A yearning yelp into an echoey tunnel as in: Hello, is anyone there? Does anyone want to play? Is anybody listening? Hello? Hello? Hellooooooooooooooo?

Pathetic, eh?

Actually it’s a little embarrassing. And yet, why write a blog unless someone is going to read it? Isn’t that the whole point of the exercise. And it’s not just Smartmom out there blogging—though her blog is, by all reports, wildly original and fun. There are tens of thousands of blogs at Blogspot alone. Haven’t you ever wondered what that small button on the masthead that says “next blog” means? Try it someday and you’ll see. There’s a whole world of blogs out there, people from all over the world desperate to communicate. When she is supposed to be doing other things, Smartmom has read blogs from Adelaide, Australia; Florence, Italy; Stutgart, Germany; Singapore, Thailand, Lebanon, even New Jersey.

Kind of gets you thinking, doesn’t it. Is all this blogging a cry for help or the proverbial note in the bottle thrown out to the proverbial sea?

Yes, indeed. Blogging has has become one gigundo phenomenon. And Blogspot is probably just one of hundreds of blog-generating sites for those desperate to be heard. In a sense, Blogspot is a global village for the graphomaniacs of the world. Marshall McCluhan could never have imagined such a thing. And he thought television was going to be the big global municipality. Hate to say it, but that is so 20th century, man. Fact is, there are probably millions of blogs out there worldwide. Imagine: a small virtual universe of people striving for connection.

Now that’s really profound, isn’t it? It’s friggin existential. Contemplating it now, Smartmom feels like a tiny, tiny speck in the blog universe. So very small and insignificant. Very, very teeny tiny.

Hello? Is anybody there? Is anybody really listening? Helloooooooooooooooooooooooo…

Over 100 artists, who support the re-election of President Barack Obama are auctioning their work at an art auction tonight in Brooklyn called ArtObama

Auction proceeds will benefit the Obama Victory Fund 2012  as well as ActBlue. Space is limited, and pre-registration for collectors is strongly recommended.

When: October 3, 7 to 9:30 pm (bidding from 7:00 to 8:30 pm) Where: 382 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn,  NY 11217 Entrance fee: $45 at pre-registration or the door. Can’t be there? Proxy bids accepted through Oct 2nd, 8 pm. To make a proxy bid call 718-781-0354.

Hope to see you there. It should be a really fun night. I was there four years ago when ArtObama raised $60,000. An auction like this can be a chance to get art bargains or legitimize the purchase of a wonderful piece of art because it’s for a good cause.

Tonight? Skies the limit. Painting above by Jayne Holsinger. Value: $1,500.

Yesterday I was asked at least five times by different groups of Lubavitch men: “Are you Jewish?” Each time I said “No” and they seemed to believe me. Surprisingly, they didn’t seem to flinch at all when I said: “No.”

As a kid in a secular Jewish family, I loved the idea of Sukkot. I knew what it was even though my Jewish education was somewhat spotty. Building a Sukkah, a make-shift structure, out of branches, leaves, shrubs, and straw seemed so cool. Who wouldn’t want to create a beautiful little playhouse in the courtyard of our apartment building or in Riverside Park.

In Park Slope, you  can spot more than a few sukkahs around the neighborhood. There’s one at Chai Tots on the corner of Prospect Park West and a very architectural one in front of Congregation Beth Elohim (pictured is last year’s sukkah).

The men from an extremely evangelical wing of Hasidic Judaism, the Lubavitch sect, are out in droves in their dark suits trying to pursuade Jews to shake the lulav.

Most of the Jews I know have figured out a usable response to the question from the men on the street. One friend says: “Yes I’m Jewish but I already shook the lulav today.”  Another friend says: “Yeah, I’m Jewish and please leave me alone.”

Lubavitch Hasidism is an international movement with headquarters in Brooklyn. They’re intent on converting other Jews to the Torah way of life and operate an extensive outreach effort to encourage a return to traditional practices. Their Mitzvah Tanks are a frequent sight in New York City.

My “Just Say No” tactic makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t like to deny my heritage or hide who I am. We didn’t survive the holocaust to lie to other Jews on Seventh Avenue about our identities. But it’s a quick and easy way to be left alone. My irritation almost made me forget the way I used to marvel at this holiday. And it got me thinking about what the holiday is all about.

Continue reading All About Sukkot: Stars Should be Visible Through the Roof →

It’s a busy month and it just started. October  includes a good deal of work for Brooklyn Social Media, three readings for Brooklyn Reading Works and Only the  Blog at Two Moon. A little overwhelming, yes. Oh and a wedding in California. Here goes:

October 10 at 7PM: Only the Blog at Two Moon presents  F*ck! I’m in My Twenties. The event has already been blurbed in Flavorpill which I quote here: “Emma Koenig, author of the F*uck I’m in My Twenties tumblr and book (and sister of indie-fave Vampire Weekend frontman, Ezra) has immortalized the experience of overeducated, underemployed twentysomethings. Reading from the recent print release of her best LOL-inducing scribbles, graphs, and charts from the blogosphere, the former struggling New Yorker returns from LA to explore the post-grad woes in public.” Two Moon Art House and Cafe, 315 Fourth Avenue between 3rd and 2nd Streets.

October 18 at 8PM:  Brooklyn Reading Works Presents: Poetry a Cure for the Common curated by poet Pat Smith with Michelle Madigan Somerville, Alex Crowley, Margaret Young and Debbie Deane. The Old Stone House. 336 Third Street between 4th and 5th Avenues in Park Slope

October 23rd at 7PM: Only the Blog at Two Moon Presents: “The Family Thing” with Peter Wheelwright, As It Is On Earth and Leora Skolkin Smith author of Hysteria. Two Moon Art House and Cafe. 315 Fourth Avenue between 3rd and 2nd Streets.

Congregation Beth Elohim and Community Bookstore, two historic Brooklyn institutions, are joining forces to offer a monthly reading and lecture series at Congregation Beth Elohim.

The organizers are calling it Brooklyn by the Book, and are hoping that the events will “provoke discussion, celebrate the life of the mind, and tap into the rich culture of writing and reading in Park Slope and the broader community of Brownstone Brooklyn.” Here’s the schedule.

Wednesday, Oct. 24, 7:30 pm Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Plenty, and Sami Tamimi, co-owner of the Ottolenghi restaurants, were both born in Jerusalem in the same year. The chefs will discuss the great food traditions of Jerusalem with Rozanne Gold, four-time James Beard Award winner.

Thursday, Nov. 1, 7:30 pm

On the occasion of the release of Paul Auster’s latest memoir, Winter’s Journal, and the paperback of Don DeLillo’s short story collection, The Angel Esmeralda, the two writers make a rare public appearance to discuss their work.

Thursday, Nov. 15, 7:30pm

The author of the bestselling biography The Beatles discusses his latest book–an engaging look at the life of one of the most important cooks of all time, Julia Child. Lev Grossman, book critic at TIME, calls the biography “a revelation.”

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 7:30 pm Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame

The author of How Soccer Explains the World and editor of The New Republic talks with co-editor Marc Tracy about their anthology of essays covering the great Jewish sports figures in history.

Thursday, Dec. 6, 7:30 pm Happier at Home

In Happier at Home, the #1 bestselling author of The Happiness Project experiments with making her home a happier place over a single school year.

These events are free for Congregation Beth Elohim members/$10 suggested donation for non-members.