Remember Love American Style, that television sitcom from a few decades ago? The theme song was sung by The Cowsills. Well, fugetaboutit. This story is about love (or getting over it) Italian American style.

Last Saturday night I drove up to Bay Ridge, dropped my daughter and her friend off at Century 21 on 86th Street, and stopped by The Book Mark Shoppe to hear Rachel Russo read from her new book How to Get Over Your Ex: A Step by Step Guide to Mend a Broken Heart Italian American Style. 

Now, how could I resist such a title?

I walked to the back of the bookstore and found an attractive dark haired woman with extremely long legs and high stiletto heels sitting on a chair in the children’s section surrounded by a huge crowd of friends, family, fans, and local media.

Rachel Russo is, to put it succinctly, a how-to rock star.

For starters, she’s a dating, relationship and image expert with her own boutique coaching business. She’s also a matchmaker with a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and a BA in psychology.  She’s got the goods.

Indeed, Rachel is a strong, empathic, frank, and funny gal. In her talk, she mentioned that she’d had a very rough breakup and that’s what motivated the writing of this book, which provides readers with a solid strategy for getting over your ex as efficiently and wholeheartedly as possible.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom.

Russo has a very direct, self-help approach but she also celebrates Italian-American culture and enjoys talking about her loving parents, Sunday night dinners at home in Bay Ridge, and being stubborn. She writes in the chapter titled: “Make a Case for Stubborness: Have a Head Like a Rock.”

“If you didn’t settle for any old job, you shouldn’t settle for any old relationship. You should be way too proud to go back to your  ex. Ideally, you’d be just as proud as the Italian American bella who’d tell a stunad to “go eff himself” and believe it with every fiber of her being. I know your ex and the breakup may have messed with your self-esteem…and you may not be super-confident. Whatevs. You can “fake it ’til you make it”.

In the book, Russo offers tips on being single and loving it, encountering your ex, action steps to take care of your body, mind and spirit, how to attract a better match, and what to do if a Mama’s Boy crosses your path(“your sex life may resemble that of a teenager”).

As you can imagine the book is a fun read. But it’s also practical and realistic. At the reading, Russo reminded everyone that getting over an ex takes time and a strong belief in the power of faith, family, food and fathers:

Father figures are an incredible source of wisdom. A father many not coddle you the way a mother would. He may not want to hear all of the details of the breakup but he can give you some unbiased advice. Since many men can be less emotional and more objective, they can really help you heal post breakup. You’ve already experienced enough emotion. If you want to see things from a more rational lens, go to your father. Chances are, he will tell it like its is.

In Russo’s opinion, the biggest threat to your emotional availability is an attachment to your ex. That’s why thinking you will never meet someone as special as your ex again is a no-no. “Sorry, your ex isn’t that special,” Russo writes.

I must say, I enjoyed Russo’s no nonsence style and her frank, in-your-face way of expressing herself. She doesn’t mince words in person or in the book. Here’s from the first chapter:

“Full Disclosure: How to Get Over Your Ex, does not provide an overnight miracle cure. Anyone who tell syou that you can get over a relationship faster than a New York minute is a liar or has never been in love.”

That said, Russo give readers a lot to hope for.

“The path to emotional availability starts with a commitment to seeking the truth about who you have been and who you want to be in your love life. You just have to be willing to go a little deeper to find the truth, as there is a deep reason why your relationship didn’t work out. If you look within and around to heal yourself, the answers will be revealed to you.”

Brooklyn Reading Works presents the 4th annual “Holiday In Reality” Poetry Blast, with an all-star line-up of New York poet-heroes: legendary Edwin Torres, powerful Morgan Parker, brand new mom Julia Guez and Brooklyn bon vivant Pat Smith. Oct. 16, 8 p.m., at Park Slope’s Old Stone House, 336 3rd St. Suggested donation of ten bucks at the door for beer, wine, snacks and the delicious thrill of poetry on the tongue!
“And I taste at the root of the tongue the unreal of what is real.” Wallace Stevens,Holiday in Reality

Illustration by http://www.alice-wellinger.com/Life-courage

Lots to do today at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Aside from the endlessly fascinating marketplace where established, indie and emerging publishers of all stripes display their wares, there’s an amazing array of authors and thinkers on panels and readings. Below I offer a taste. There’s so much more. Check out the schedule at the Brooklyn Book Festival website

Unbound: Daniel Kehlmann with Zadie Smith, presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore.
Borough Hall Courtroom
September 21, 2014
11:00am

My friend and neighbor Bernette Rudolph has been teaching art classes for children for many years. My niece Sonya took her class when she was younger and learned a great deal about painting, collage and sculpture. It was a really fun and playful experience and I know she enjoyed it a great deal.

Bernette is the real deal: a working artist who has lived in the Slope for many years. She has a masters of fine arts and has been an exhibiting artist, art teacher and art therapist for over forty years.

What can I say, if my kids weren’t so darn old they’d be taking art classes with Bernette. I can’t recommend her highly enough. About her own artistic practice she writes:

I work in my studio with music or silence depending on what I am creating. I close the door in my studio, which leads to my living quarters; I am alone with my work. I have worked this way for over fifty years.

The current inspiration for my work is the people I see on the streets and subways of New York City. My camera never leaves my side. I shoot without a flash or a camera click. I am rarely noticed, people are to busy with their own agenda to be aware of me. Occasionally I will ask someone if I can take their photo, some are flattered others object. I respect the wishes of my subjects.

Bernette will be participating in the Gowanus Open Studios Tour on October 18-19. At that time, feel free to visit her studio at 457 Third Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. That’s also where she teaches.

Here are the details about her art classes: 

Small art classes for children ages five and up.
Classes follow the school calendar.
Classes meet on Tuesdays 3:30 to 4:30.

Class fee is $30 per class paid one month in advance.
When the month has four weeks the fee is $120.
When the month has five weeks the fee is $ 130.
There is a $50 material fee paid once for the term paid the first month.
Basic mediums and skills will be explored thru varied Art materials.

Your child is invited to a trail class for $30.
If the child joins the class the fee will be added on to your first month.
Classes meet in the Art Studio/Gallery of Bernette Rudolph. You can reach her by email her at bernette@earthlink.net

This is a photo of my mother on the right, age 88, and my Aunt Rhoda, age 92, taken just a few days ago on the roof of Aunt Rhoda’s apartment building in White Plains.

We had a wonderful day eating, talking, sharing news. So wonderful to see both sisters, Brooklyn born and bred, in their striped shirts, enjoying a special day.

Brooklyn Reading Works at The Old Stone House presents Hot and Bothered: Writers on Fire,  a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event. On September 16 at 8PM, acclaimed authors Lisa Gornick, Beth Bosworth and Marian Fontana come together to explore just what makes fire irresistible to us as writers, readers, and human beings. Gornicks’ Tinderbox speaks to the power of unearthing old secrets, and lighting a match to engulf a family in its own dark past. Marian Fontana’s memoir A Widow’s Walk addresses her marriage to a New York City firefighter. Beth Bosworth, author of The Source of Water and Other Stories, will read an excerpt from , “Sequoia,” about how a fire destroys one home and brings about another.

Each author will read from their work. There will be a panel discussion that touches on fire as subject, metaphor and literary device.

Painting by Wayne Visser

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Beth Bosworth’s latest book The Source of Life and Other Stories was the 2012 winner of the Heinz Drue Award. She has a story coming out in Agni in 2014. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, CUNY’S NYC Technical College, and for many years at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, where she is also founding editor of the Saint Ann’s Review. Her publications include a novel, Tunneling, and a collection of short stories, A Burden of Earth. Her stories have appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Seneca Review, Forward, IMAGE, Hanging Loose, Guernica, and elsewhere.

Lisa Gornick is the author of two novels: Tinderbox (Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Picador) and A Private Sorcery, (Algonquin). Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and The Sun, and have received many awards, including Distinguished Story by the Best American Short Stories. She holds a B.A. from Princeton, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale, and is a graduate of the writing program at N.Y.U. and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia. A collection of linked stories, Louisa Meets Bear, will be published June 2015, also with Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Marian Fontana has been a writer and performer for over twenty-five years. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and more. Her memoir, A Widows Walk was published by Simon and Schuster and was in the Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 by People magazine and the Washington Post’s Book Raves of 2005. She is currently on the board of the New York Writers Coalition, a not-for-profit that offers creative writing classes to some of the most underserved populations.

Click here to see more photography by Tom Martinez

I ran into Marlene Weisman on the bus the other day and she told me about her show of collage, painting and assemblage  at The Brooklyn Public Library on view through September 21, 2014.

I met Marlene years ago at the Fifth Avenue Fair, when she was selling these cool make-up bags that said Greetings from Park Slope. I thought that was so great back then because nobody was using Park Slope or even Brooklyn on t-shirts or other accessories. The type was vintage-y and I think there was a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge—I still have it around here somewhere.

We encountered each other a few years later through my blog. She was also a regular at the PS 321 Holiday Crafts Fair where I’d annually buy a box or jewelry item with her signature surrealist/vintage style of collage.

Her show at the Brooklyn Public Library is beautifully titled: Making the Mundane Marvelous: Transformation in Mixed Media. I  plan to get over there soon to enjoy her unique and humorous way of reconstructing reality from pictures from old magazines, supermarket circulars, and other detritus from popular culture.

In her description of the show on the Brooklyn Public Library website, Marlene writes: “My work explores the roles of modern women today in an increasingly demanding world. My life experience as an artist, career person and mother has provided me with a great deal of subject matter for my art. I find inspiration in the everyday material of the past and present. By incorporating these ephemeral elements into my mixed media pieces, they serve as symbols that communicate what I am expressing.”

The show includes pieces from her great While I Was Stuck in the Supermarket: Homage Series. I love the one pictured below featuring author Zadie Smith. “The idea for the series came to me while waiting on line at the 9th Street C-Town supermarket. I wondered how women—or anyone, in fact—are able to achieve the balance between seriously important creative pursuits and the mundane chores of daily life. To honor the achievements of the iconic women I am inspired by, I decided to create the “Homage” series by using supermarket circulars as a base,” she writes.

Marlene Weisman began her career designing promotional graphics for the music industry. Her interest in pop culture led her to the NBC art department. From 1988 to 1995, she created on-air graphics, logos, and props for Saturday Night Live (for which her team earned an Emmy in 1993), Late Night with David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Since 2009, she has worked out of her Brooklyn art studio, creating a variety of mixed media artwork that includes her current explorations in collage.

I wrote this in September 2008 a few days after my dad died. 

So many people ask me to describe my dad. For those who weren’t at the funeral I say, read the eulogy. Yet, with each passing day, I come up with dozens of memories that were not included (I mean, it couldn’t be THAT long a eulogy).

Sometimes I feel like I say the same thing over and over:

He was a brilliant, intellectual man with a great sense of humor.

He skipped out on his college graduation at UC Berkeley to see a famous race horse run (Citation).

He wrote great concepts, copy and headlines when he was in the advertising business from the mid-1950′s to the late 1980′s (Aunt Jamima, what took you so long? Who Says a Newspaper Has To Be Dull? Quaker Oats: The Cereal Shot From Guns, Do It The French Way, Step up to Dutch Masters and smile brother smile, Quisp and Quake, Get Your Daily Dose of Dallas…to name a few).

He wrote a screenplay about the night Henry David Thoreau spent in jail, a Thoreau calendar, an opera based on Nixon’s Checkers speech, a suite of songs which can be heard on a terrific album by Bob Dorough called This Is A Recording of Pop Art Songs with lyrics based on a weather report, a Brooks Brothers collection bill, a traffic ticket, a laundry ticket and the Webster’s dictionary definition of love. There was also the bestselling book he co-authored called The Couple.

He loved to birdwatch, to read, and to look at his view of the lower Manhattan skyline.

He studied the New Yorker listings for art, theater, music, and films he wanted to see.

He loved his house in rural East Greenwich, New York. It was his 40 acres and a lake not too far from Saratoga Race Track.

He watched the towers fall on 9/11 and told me: “What was once the most beautiful view in the world is now the ugliest.”

He told fantastic stories. My son has them memorized but I will miss the way he told them.

He was a funny, funny man who had a magnetic personality. He was a tough critic and a great person to walk through a museum with though it could be intimidating. He loved the opera,  Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Sidney Bechet; he collected jazz and classical LP’s.

He was a loving and protective dad; I  remember he called the morning of Hurricane Gloria back in 1986 and told me to stay home and I did.

He reached for my hand when I crossed the street until I was well past 30; he almost didn’t let me go on a bike trip with two girlfriends from North Carolina to West Virgina when I was 16. Finally he relented; he wouldn’t let me take a semester off from college afraid I’d never return; he visited me every day when I was in the hospital with pre-term labor with Henry…

I cherished every word he wrote me in birthday cards. I especially loved his doodles of elephants and airplanes.

It was easy to take care of him the way we did at the end. Our love for him abundant and overflowing.

I wrote this post in September 2008 soon after my father died. Since then I have read Middlemarch and it is one of my favorite books. Happy Father’s Day Dad. 

My father, always a constant reader, was reading Middlemarch by George Eliot, in the weeks before he died. He took it with him to his recent chemo therapy sessions and even to the emergency room on August 25th.

A huge book collector, my father always had a good selection of books out from the public library in Brooklyn or Glen Falls (depending on where he was spending his time). Middlemarch was a library book, which he took out from the Cadman Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

On Thursday I saw Middlemarch on the wine rack near the front door in his apartment and immediately knew that I wanted to take it back to the library. I even thought about reading it before returning it as a sort of homage to my dad.

I thought about that Raymond Carver story about the baker who is livid because a woman doesn’t pick up the birthday cake for her son, who is killed in a car accident. Unknowingly, the baker keeps calling the mother to come get it…

On Friday, I decided to drop the book off at the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Library. I told the woman at the desk that I was returning it for my father. She said that there was a $4 fine on the book and another $3 outstanding fine (maybe another book still out?). She didn’t ask me to pay—I guess because I said I was returning it for my dad.

I wanted to tell her that my father died on September 7th. But I didn’t. Initially, I thought I would tell them to stop his library card just the way I stopped his AARP supplemental insurance and other things, too. On the phone, people offer their condolences and then take care of business. But to do it in person, it seemed too hard.

Besides, it felt too final to stop his card; he’s had a library card his entire life and I want that library card to go on forever.

There will always be an open library card for my dad. Why not?

We are encouraging donations in my father’s name, Monte Ghertler, to his favorite library in Glen Falls, NY:

Crandall Public Library,
251 Glen Street, Glens Falls
New York 12801

 Joanna Clapps Herman, author of No Longer and Not Yet and Esther Cohen author of Book Doctor will read at Book Culture on June 3rd at 7PM. Classical Singing in New York in June will be in attendance. They might even sing.

Come listen, schmooze, drink wine and enjoy the wit, wisdom, literary smarts and chutzpah of these tow acclaimed authors. Wine and refreshments will be served Books will be sold.  Located at Book Culture, 536 West 112th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

Books at Babeland presents Sexy Edgy Moms on May 16 at 7PM. Provocative writing about sex, moms, marriage and Mad Men (and women) with poet/philosopher JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT, author of Stay: The History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It; LYNN LURIE, author of Quick Kills, personal essayist KAREN RITTER, poet JENNY DOUGLAS, who runs the Brooklyn Cottage, LISA LEVY, performance artist and host.

Babeland Brooklyn, 462 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. 2,3 trains to Bergen Street. Any train to Barclays Center/Atlantic Center.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, historian, and commentator. She is the author of seven books, including three award-winning books of poetry. Most recent of these is Who Said, just out with Copper Canyon. Publisher’s Weekly called her second poetry book, Funny (Wisconsin, 2005), “One of the most original and entertaining books of the year.” Hecht’s history and philosophy books include the bestseller Doubt: A History (Harper); and her most recent book, an argument against suicide, is Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, just out with Yale. She’s published in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and has been a guest on Hardball and other television, and on a lot of NPR and BBC. She lives in Brooklyn. Mother of Jessie and Max.

Lynn Lurie is the author of two novels, Corner of the Dead (2008), winner of the Juniper Prize, and Quick Kills (Etruscan Press, October 14), which Brian Evenson describes as “filled with quiet menace.” Her short fiction has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn. She lives in New York.

Karen Ritter has squandered decades in advertising, writing for clients as diverse as Dunkin’ Donuts and Weight Watchers. Persuading some people to gain weight and others to lose it eventually drove her to fiction. She is at work on a novel, The Other Ingrid Bergman. Karen has a 21-year-old son and is the edgy owner of a puppy. She feels as inadequate as a dog owner as she once did as a new mother: recently, a woman pointed out that her nine-week old was gnawing on a cigarette butt. Karen’s first humor piece is being published this month.

Jenny Douglas is the founder and curator of The Brooklyn Cottage, an arts salon that champions the unleashing of our most radically unique selves–through storytelling evenings, meditation gatherings, cooking classes, art receptions and workshops of all kinds. A commitment by Jenny to pen a haiku a day for all of 2014 led to the unplanned eruption of a “haiku memoir,” now slated for publication by Saddle Road Press in early 2016. Born in Montreal and raised in Tokyo, Jenny is a longtime liver and lover of Brooklyn–and shares a Prospect Heights brownstone with two teen daughters, an aging dog and cat, and the various friends and travelers who pass her way. Jenny really likes Babeland.

On May 8, 2014 at 8PM Brooklyn Reading Works Presents EDGY MOMS 2014: Provocative Writing about Mothers and Motherhood with hosts Louise Crawford and Sophia Romero

This year’s Edgy Moms are: Joanna Clapps Herman, author of No Longer and Not Yet; Michele Zackheim, author of Last Train to Paris; Nicole Caccavo Kear, author of Now I See You; Karen Ritter, humorist; poet/essayist Marietta Abrams Brill; poet Alex Beers,  and Laura Elizabeth Nelson, author of “A Bright Eyes Song Ended My Marriage,” published on XO Jane.

May 8. 2014 at 8PM at The Old Stone House, 336 Third Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 11215, 718-768-9135. F train to Fourth Avenue, R Train to Union Street.  A $5 donation includes wine, refreshments and gift bags from Babeland and The Modern Chemist.

Tonight at Barbes at 8PM Romanian-born Sanda Weigl sings gypsy songs with musicians playing Romanian flute, fiddle, accordion and bass. Weigl has had a tumultuous—and fascinating—career, first as a singer for the popular east-german rock band Team 4, then as an imprisoned dissident and finally as a New York -based musician who has collaborated with such luminaries as Robert Wilson and (the late) Pina Baush.

Her latest album, Gypsy in a Tree, is dedicated to the Romanian Gypsy songs of her childhood. Don’t miss Weigl in one of her rare Brooklyn performances at Barbes located at 379 Ninth Street at 6th Avenue.

In his dual career as a minister and photographer, Reverend Tom Martinez is drawn to images that reflect New York’s interfaith diversity, its unexpected natural habitats, and the spirit of protest and volunteerism that’s all around. He also documents art on the ever-changing canvas of the City’s streets and walls.

The Soul of the World is an exhibition of his photography at the James Memorial Chapel at Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway at 121st Street, and it will run through May 5, 2014.

Tom is no stranger to readers of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Since 2007, I have been proud to publish his work on this blog. His photographs of Brooklyn after Hurricane Sandy, are especially powerful, as are his shots of Occupy Wall Street, Coney Island, Red Hook, his Kensington neighborhood and the Children of Abraham March, an annual  interfaith walk for peace in Brooklyn.

At the core of his work is a deep sense of humanity and an appreciation for those who seek to fix what is broken in the world. The photograph above was taken in the weeks after Sandy, when Occupy Sandy was running a relief center in  The Church of St. Matthew, St. Luke’s, an Episcopal church in Bed Stuy. About those weeks after Sandy, Martinez writes,

“Shooting its aftermath reminded me of being in New Orleans after Katrina. It was also a reminder of the powerful resilience of the human spirit, evidenced in the way the Occupy Wall Street movement morphed into Occupy Sandy.  Having successfully survived “off the grid” during the Wall Street protest—bringing in food and generating energy—after the hurricane, Occupy activists seamlessly re-directed the flow of resources outward to those most in need, setting up distribution hubs wherever they could.”

Martinez’s photographs of nature, particularly his virtuosic shots of hawks flying over Green-Wood Cemetery and Prospect Park, convey an innate comfort and connection to the natural world and a true sense of wonder.

In 2003 Martinez became minister of All Souls Bethlehem Church in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood, an unusual house church with a diverse congregation. Tom graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 2000 and subsequently completed a three-year stint at Christ Church in Summit, NJ. With the Christian Peacemaker Teams, he spent two weeks in Baghdad in an effort to promote a human connection with the Iraqi people and alternatives to war. He is the author of the book, Confessions of a Seminarian: Searching for Soul in the Shadow of Empire.  He is the co-founder of Switch to Manual, which offers camera workshops and photo walks. His photographs have been published in the Staten Island Advance, the Brooklyn Paper, Tikkun, and, of course on this blog.

The Soul of the World: Photographs by Rev. Tom Martinez

Union Theological Seminary

3041 Broadway at 121st Street

NY NY 10027

The show will be up through May 5th.