I read The World Without You and liked it very much. Maybe I’m dense, but I didn’t realize that the the journalist-son who died in Iraq was based on Daniel Pearl. So it was interesting to read this review by Adam Kirsch in Tablet.

That said, The World Without you is a very good read. It’s thought provoking, emotionally gripping, beautifully written and filled with characters who are rendered so specifically and precisely that you feel like you just might know them. This engrossing novel is about parents, children, siblings and the disparate ways that people process grief and attempt to move on after loss.

Henkin is the author of the novels Matrimony, a New York Times Notable Book, and Swimming Across the Hudson, a Los Angeles Times Notable Book.  He lives in Brooklyn, and directs the MFA program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College. Here is an excerpt from the review in Tablet:

There’s nothing like a novel set in the recent past to remind you of how quickly things change. In 2005, if a novelist had published a book that hinged on the murder of a Jewish American journalist by Islamic terrorists in Iraq, it would have been read as a political novel, a war novel, a post-9/11 novel—and, of course, a roman a clef about Daniel Pearl, who died in 2002 in Pakistan. Seven years later, Joshua Henkin has published just such a book in The World Without You, which is set in 2005 on the anniversary of the murder of Leo Frankel, whose story closely mirrors Pearl’s. The story takes place entirely on the Fourth of July weekend—an invitation to reflect on the state of the nation if ever there was one.

Yet the passage of time has made it possible for Henkin to turn this headline-news premise into a book that is quiet, inward-turning, and largely apolitical. Leo Frankel’s death is alluded to but never actually described; the particular reasons for his murder matter less than the void it has left in the lives of his family: That void, not Iraq or terrorism or anti-Semitism, is Henkin’s real subject. It has brought Leo’s parents, the long and happily married David and Marilyn, to the brink of divorce; it has deepened the divisions among his three sisters, Clarissa, Lily, and Noelle; and it has left his widow, Thisbe, with the terrifying freedom to start a new life.

The World Without You follows these characters as they gather in the Frankels’ summer house in Lenox, Mass., for the unveiling of Leo’s grave. Henkin proceeds by means of dialogues and meditations, with hardly a set-piece or dramatic eruption to be found. Even the memorial service, which promises to be the climax of the weekend and the novel, and around which so many emotions are swirling, is spared the fate of becoming a denouement or a symbol. Instead, it is just another one of the evenly narrated events of the weekend, where nothing especially dramatic happens. Instead, there is the typical small change of a summer weekend in the Berkshires: a bicycle ride, a swim in the lake, a drive into town, a game of tennis.

A friend on Facebook put this story up. I see it was written by my old next door neighbor at my office space in Park Slope. The pictures are amazing. And so is the story. Here’s an excerpt from the blog, Mercedes the Kitten.

So, here’s the story about Mercedes the kitten.

We’re driving along Ocean Parkway, headed to Brighton Beach for a morning at the beach. Sometime while we’re driving (I’m in the passenger seat) I hear what sounds like a cat crying. I don’t pay it that much mind as I figure we’re passing by some alley cats or something. Then, a little later when we hit a stoplight, I hear the sound again. This time I think that we have a cat in our car. I look out behind me and out the window and in the adjacent lane I see a Mercedes s550 with its left front turn signal light missing from the housing. In this housing is the little face of a kitten crying.

Whoa! I open the window and wave at the woman driving the car. I grab her attention and point to the front of her car. “You have a cat inside your car!” I yell. She rolls down her window and I yell at her again. “What should I do? Is it dead?” she says. “No, pull over there,” I yell back.

I don’t think she’d want me to blog her age so I won’t.

Suffice it to say that she is as beautiful today as she was in this photograph from 1955. She is the best mom in the whole wide world and I love her with all my heart.

Today my sister is having a brunch party for my mom and we’ll all be there. It will be a great way to celebrate her with her grandchildren, her sons-in-law and her daughters.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Last July, Clara Heyworth, 28, the marketing director of Verso Books, died after being hit by a car in Brooklyn. Verso posted the following on their site soon after her tragic death:

The loss to Verso is immeasurable. Clara was a young woman with many qualities. She first came to us as Office Manager and Publicist in the London office in 2006, delighting everyone with her enthusiasm and intelligence, a knowledge of our publishing history and a no-nonsense approach to everyone, including senior staff. While her primary interest was in publicity she had very strong editorial views and intervened forcefully whenever she felt that by taking on an inappropriate manuscript Verso’s standards would be diluted.

A young life so meaninglessly and prematurely truncated pains us all, but we will not forget her or her bright-eyed smile that so often lit an entire office.  Our condolences go out to all those who knew her and worked with her and will miss her presence, but primarily to the two people who meant the most to her. Her mother whom she adored not just as a parent, but as a friend and mentor and to her husband, Jacob Stevens, Verso’s Managing Director.

According to Transportation Alternatives, the facts of Clara Heyworth’s death will never be known “because the NYPD botched the investigation into the crash. Clara’s death in July 2011 is a tragedy. The police department’s handling of the case is an injustice.”

What is known is this: She was killed at the hands of a driver who may have been drunk, may have been speeding, and definitely did not have a driver’s license.

There is a rally on the steps of City Hall on Monday, June 11 at 9AM to raise awareness of the failure of the City’s traffic crash investigation policy.

Check out next week’s Northside Music, Art, Film and Entreprenuership Festival.

It’s  vast. It’s all over Williamsburg. It’s ambitious as heck. It’s sounds overwhelming and FUN. Maybe.

This year they added Entrepreneurship to what was previously a music, art and film festival. Since Brooklyn is now considered the go-to place for just about everything, the addition of Entrepreneurship seems like a great way to showcase the next generation of culture and technology. Click here to see a list of festival panelists.

Northside has transformed 40,000 sq. ft. factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, into a conference center, filled with over 40 panels about innovation, design, software development, music, and films. They’re featuring a mixture of established business leaders. with the next generation of innovators. The 20,000 sq. ft. trade show floor will showcase the latest technology from NYC’s hottest start-ups and feature the inaugural Social Cinema Exhibition.

In January a federal judge ordered New York State to move its primary elections for Congressional races to June from September.

So get ready everybody: there’s a primary on Tuesday, June 26th.

This primary has nothing to do with the presidential race. But it will determine who will be on the ballot for the congressional race this coming November.

We’re talking the Congress here. The House of Representatives. Important stuff.

Nydia Valazquez, the first Puerto Rican woman in Congress, has been the 12th district’s representative for 2o years. She is currently serving her tenth term. In the 112th Congress, she is the Ranking Member of the House Small Business Committee and a senior member of the Financial Services Committee.With this election she will have real senoirity. But clearly some people in Brooklyn want her out.

This year, three Democrats are fighting for her seat. According to Friend-In-The-Know, this is the race to watch. AND VOTE IN.

There’s City Council Member Erik Martin Dilan, who is endorsed by Vito Lopez (Kings County Democratic Party Leader and a true Kingmaker in Kings County), newbie Dan O’Connor, a Libertarian running out of an office in Chinatown; he speaks Mandarin Chinese, and George Martinez, an Occupy Wall Street candidate running on the Bum Rush platform. He writes on his website: “Our goal is to create an open-source, crowd-sourced DIY campaign.”

The 7th and 12th congressional districts have recently been redrawn. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the re-mapping added ground to Nydia’s district in Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan’s Chinatown, as well as wide chunks of Woodhaven and heavily Hasidic South Williamsburg.

Valazquez was recently endorsed by Sen. Charles Schumer, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Bob and Judi’s Coolectibles is closing?

What?

That antique store with its funky furniture, old photographs, salt and pepper shakers and  vintage odds and ends, has been on Fifth Avenue since before it was Fifth Avenue.

I mean, they’ve been on the street for, like, 15 years. That’s before Al Di La, Eidolan, Scaredy Kat and Blue Ribbon. It’s been there since before the gentrification of Fifth Avenue.

They were also on the first Park Slope 100:

BOB AND JUDI, owners of Bob and Judi’s Coolectibles, because of their unswerving dedication to Fifth Avenue.

Judi was the founder of the Fifth Avenue Merchants Association and is, with Irene LoRe, the co-president of the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District. Because of her efforts, the Avenue is the thriving metropolis it is today.

She told Park Slope Patch: “I’d have to say, the Barclays Center has changed the neighborhood. It’s a lot of development and it’s now not the Brooklyn that we came here for.”

She and her hubby are off to California. After fifteen years on Fifth Avenue they are ready for something new. Seems to me there should be a plaque in their honor because they are two people who made a difference to this community.

They’re closing up shop on July 31. We at OTBKB wish them well.

Su Friedrich is a name I remember from my days as an afficianado of experimental film back in the day. Which isn’t to say that she’s old. But she has been making films for a long time.

She’s accomplished and the recipient of many awards.

On Friday June 8 and Sunday June 10, the Brooklyn Film Festival will screen Gut Renovation, Su Friedrich’s epic personal film charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, Friedrich was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving industries, working-class families, and artists.

Filmed over the course of many years, Gut Renovation is, according to the festival blurb: “a scathing portrait of one neighborhood’s demolition and transformation.”

Yes, I was fool enough to drive in Manhattan. Don’t ask what posessed me, but I drove OSFO to an appointment on East 67th Street. Actually, that wasn’t too bad. The Brooklyn Bridge and the FDR were not very crowded at 11 o’clock in the morning.

But as the day progressed…

It was nightmarish. I had a miserable trip crosstown at 65th Street, a miserable crosstown trip at 86th Street. Hellish traffic on Park, Lexington, Second Avenue and lower Broadway. Yellow cabs zigging and zagging, trucks, lunatic drivers…And tour buses. All those tour buses on Lower Broadway.

Finally, at around 4PM I got back on the Brooklyn Bridge and arrived in Brooklyn. Glory be. OSFO and I stopped at a relatively quiet Starbucks on Court Street and then drove on Dean Street to Park Slope.

Dean Street was almost traffic-free. The streets were quiet, the trees were green, the architecture beautiful, and the light perfect. No doubt about it Brooklyn is more pleasant than Manhattan. No wonder I take trains everywhere. Underground, you’re barely aware of the insanity going on on the streets of Manhattan. I so much prefer riding a train and reading a book to the aggravation of driving in Manhattan.

N’est ce pas?

A woman and a child were seriously injured this afternoon when a security gate at the Fifth Avenue Cat Clinic in Park Slope fell on them. The gate crashed down on the woman’s head and on the child’s foot.

You may have been wondering why a helicopter was flying over Park Slope earlier this evening. The two were rushed to Lutheran Hospital in Sunset Park. It is not the closest hospital (that would be Methodist) but it is the one with the best trauma department in the area.

Photo and more story at Park Slope Patch.

Guess who’s turning 100?

On Sunday, June 10th, the Prospect Park Alliance will celebrate the 100th birthday of the Carousel with free rides, children’s activities and cake! Festivities will begin at noon with free rides on the Carousel all day (until 5 p.m.). At 1 p.m, people will gather to sing Happy Birthday to the Carousel and enjoy a special cake in its honor.

A carousel cake? My son had his fifth brithday party at the carousel and we got a carousel cake made at the Cup Cake Cafe in Manhattan. That was such a fun party.

Located in the Park’s “Children’s Corner,” the Carousel features 53 carved horses, a lion, a giraffe, a deer, and two dragon-pulled chariots.

The animals were carved in 1912 by Charles Carmel, who was trained in the art of carousel horses in Coney Island. The carousel was originally in Coney Island but moved to its current location in 1952.

The carousel was open from 1952 until 1983 but closed because it needed repairs and there was money to do it. Thanks to the Prospect Park Alliance, it reopened in 1990 after an extensive restoration. It was the first capital project taken on by the PPA.

On Sunday June 10th, from noon to 4 p.m. there will be free activities for children both around the Carousel and at Lefferts Historic House.

Look what they’ve got planned:

Stick Horse Relay:
An obstacle course for kids to go through with our colorful stick horses.

Colorful Carousel Craft:
Each child will receive a miniature wooden carousel cut out to decorate.

Horseshoe Toss:
There will be plastic horseshoes and stakes for the kids!

You can get it if you really want.

Tonight, you can hear Jimmy Cliff play something like fifty years of hits live at  Celebrate Brooklyn at the Prospect Park Bandshell (doors open at 6:30) or via live streaming on NPR or WFUV (90.7). They will be broadcasting it live.

It’ll be 105 years before it happens again. So you better get some of these special solar glasses and look at the sky tonight.

Why?

Venus will cross paths between the sun and the Earth, and for several hours you should be able to see a tiny dot on the surface of the sun.

Here’s some advice from the Washington Post: “Look west Tuesday evening, June 5, Venus begins to cross the sun at 6:04 p.m. EDT Tuesday evening, as a notch in the sun. By 6:22 p.m., from our perspective, Venus becomes a black dot moving across the solar disc.”

Well, you probably don’t want to stare right at it. You’ll need to get some solar glasses from a Planetarium. “Hello Rose Planetarium Gift Shop, do you still sun glasses in stock?” Maybe they have some at Little Things.

I have just learned via Park Slope Stoop and Twitter that the  newish owners of Park Slope’s venerable and independent Community Bookstore, are looking for a new home for “Karthus, the Bearded Dragon” aka the lizard that lives in the back of the bookstore.

Looks like the new wood floor was just the beginning of the bookstore’s attempt at a reinvention. And I’m all for it. The store is definitely cleaning up its act and getting rid of Karthus is part and parcel of that.

Which isn’t to say that the Community Bookstore has lost its edge. It’s just doing a damn good job of being a bookstore. Perhaps their children’s section will be a little less eccentric without Karthus. And local kids may miss the bearded dragon.

But it’s a new era at the store. And it’s time to move on, Karthus. All good things must come to an end. If anyone is interested in providing a nice home for Karthus where he can get loads of love and attention let the bookstore know via Twitter  @CommunityBkStr or in person.

The lovely Instagram of the lizard is by Read and Breathe

There’s a new blog on the block and it’s called Park Slope Stoop. Roll out the welcome wagon and take a look at the new place. It was started by Liena Zigara, who founded Ditmas Park Blog (which is now AOL’s  Ditmas Park Patch). In addition to Park Slope Stoop, she also recently rolled out Ditmas Park Corner.

The Park Slope Stoop blog is edited by Rachel Sugar (pictured to the left). Welcome to the neighborhood PSS and best of luck to ya. And here’s how they describe this new addition to the local blogosphere.

This site is for and about Park Slope, Brooklyn. We think you know whether you live here.

The Stoop is like catching up with your neighbors on your apartment steps, if your apartment steps were digital. You meet new faces, learn something you did not know, remark on a cute animal passing by, do something to make the neighborhood better.

I’ve been driving OSFO to school lately, which means retrieving the car from its far- flung parking space around 7am, picking up breakfast from the Seventh Avenue newstand (toasted bagel and butter, coffee, a small carton of no pulp Tropicana) and waiting in front of the building for OSFO to come down.

And waiting.

Sometimes it  takes her forever to finish her make up. It’s the eyeliner, I think, that is so time consuming.

When she finally appears, we’re off and driving. Up Prospect Park West to the Pavilion traffic circle, across Prospect Park Southwest to the other traffic circle and up Coney Island Avenue to Avenue L.

Coney Island Avenue deserves its own post but I will say it’s a kooky, busy, action-packed strip in the morning, a cacophony of school buses, car services, SUV drivers, contractors picking up supplies, trucks, and pedestrians zigging and zagging. Listening to the Elvis Duran Morning Show on C-100 makes the drive go quickly. This morning talk show with Elvis, Froggy, Skeery, Greg T, Carolina and Danielle is a caffeine jolt of pop culture, music, phone hacking, call-ins, silly jokes, laughing people.

Did you know the Avenues are in alphabetical order? Albermarle, Beverly, Church, Cortelyou, Ditmas…

Turn left at Avenue L, aka the Pomegranate Supermarket, over to East 18th Street, home of Edward R. Murrow High School.

B-R-E-A-T-H-E.

The Jewish Daily Forward has a heart warming story today about two of my favorite Park Slope religious institutions. Both have seen their ceilings collapse in recent years. They have also come together to help one another.

After Beth Elohim’s ceiling collapsed in 2009, Old First Reformed Church, offered the congregation use of  their church for the high holy days. And when Old First Church’s ceiling collapsed in 2011, Beth Elohim offered Old First use of their sanctuary for their Christmas and Easter services.

Such reciprocity.

Last week, Beth Elohim was the recipient of a $250,000 renovation grant for much needed renovation of their sanctuary. Needless to say, Old First is also in need of an expensive renovation. And guess what? Beth Elohim is giving the church $15,000 of that money towards much needed repairs.

Such reciprocity.

The photo of Pastor Daniel Meeter and Rabbi Andy Bachman is from the Brooklyn Paper in 2007.

My friend Gina Barreca is one smart and funny woman. She is an English professor at the University of Connecticut and a feminist scholar who has written eight books, including They Used to Call Me Snow White, But Then I Drifted. A columnist at the Hartford Courant, she is also editor of Make Mine a Double (Why Women Like Us Like to Drink), an anthology that features an essay by moi.

Today she has a column about female friendship that I thought was especially interesting. She ponders why women are so eager to share bad news with their friends but less likely to gush. In it she writes:

“Women expect our best friends to be there in times of misery. We want to be able to contact our friends 24 hours a day, as if they were the fire department or QVC.

“We expect our pals to soothe, comfort and heal; basically, good friends are Neosporin for the soul.

“They’ll respond when we break up with somebody, when a kid asks for bail or when a beloved pet dies. They don’t shrug it off, tsk-tsk, or say they’ll ring back later. They show up with wine, cash or a shovel.

“So why is it that we don’t always trust our best friends with good news? Why is it often harder to announce, “I got a fabulous raise!” than it is to confess, “I took a cut in pay!”

“Why is it that women lead conversations, even (or perhaps especially) with those closest to us by rattling off our current insecurities and vulnerabilities?

“If you want to get into argument with a woman, just tell her she looks good, because she’s going to explain to you for the next 45 minutes why you’re wrong. She will contradict you if you give a compliment. She might actually punch you in the jaw if you say something genuinely flattering about one of her achievements.”

Read more here.

Apropos of yesterday’s post about Betty’s (Little Basement) Garden, a Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn is making news because he has come out in favor of medical marijuana.

As always, Brooklyn ahead of the curve.

Judge Gustin Reichbach, 65, has admitted to smoking medical marijuana while being treated for pancreatic cancer. And he wrote about it in an op-ed in the New York Times.

He says in that article:

“Inhaled marijuana is the only medicine that gives me some relief from nausea, stimulates my appetite, and makes it easier to fall asleep. The oral synthetic substitute, Marinol, prescribed by my doctors, was useless. Rather than watch the agony of my suffering, friends have chosen, at some personal risk, to provide the substance. I find a few puffs of marijuana before dinner gives me ammunition in the battle to eat. A few more puffs at bedtime permits desperately needed sleep.”

Wow.

In the new novel by Laurel Dewey, an acclaimed mystery writer and proponent of alternative health, the protagonist slowly begins to open her mind to the idea of medical marijuana and in the process embarks on a bold path as a cannabis grower and caregiver. Dewey’s novel, out  June 12 from Story Plant, raises awareness of this hot-button issue.

illustration from Toke of the Town by Reality Catcher