Referring to Thursday’s tornado, Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim started out his sermon at the Kol Nidre service of Yom Kippur with the words “We almost died.”

Here is an excerpt from his sermon which included a prop. You can read the full text of his sermon at his blog, Water Over Rocks.

On the 8th Avenue sidewalk near Union Street I saw a satellite TV dish (Direct TV, RCA) that had blown off someone’s roof in the tornado and lay, neglected, on the ground.  In a moment of inspiration I picked it up and realized that I had a prop to begin the sermon.  I immediately ran into my in-laws, who remarked that they had seen it, too–I think if not blown off the roof it served to symbolize for many who walked past it in the storm’s aftermath as a kind of metaphor for our time–the dynamic between the human need for continual connectivity and God or Nature’s powerful potential to call the shots and “connect” at will…

Here’s Park Slope has many photos of the damaged trees in Park Slope called The Great Tree Reckoning. Here is an excerpt. Go to the blog to see the pix:

Walking outside after yesterday’s tornado (technically a “gust front” but I think we can all agree to call it a tornado) was like emerging after a snowstorm: it was nearly impossible to not stop and look around in wonder. Leaves and branches covered nearly every inch of street and sidewalk, and it seemed as if every block had a downed tree or destruction of some sort. Here are some photos of the aftermath, as well as a few from this morning.

Sunday in Park Slope, the streets are filled with stoop sales and fallen branches from Thursday’s tornado. There’s much to do and see today and tonight, including this film and discussion at  Zora’s Space at 7:30 PM: Border crossing and migration are issues that confront societies worldwide, both rich and poor. Author and professor Behzad Yaghmaian (Embracing the Infidel) leads a program of film and discussion on the topic. And for other events…

Continue reading The Sunday List: Sept 19 →

Lefty Lucy won the annual Miss Coney Island 2010 Burlesque competition.

The Thumbs of Somes

“All thumbs” has become high praise.

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, just wrote to say that if you have storm related damage, report it to the City by calling 311. Here’s his note:

Thankfully yesterday’s storm did not take a greater toll on human life, but its impact on our neighborhood’s trees is another story altogether.  If you suffered any storm-related damage, please take a minute to report it to the City by calling it in to 311.  Please encourage your friends and neighbors to do so as well.  The more accurately the City can report the extent of the damage, the more likely we will qualify for resources to help make our communities whole again…

And here’s the message from the City:

Friday, September 17, 2010 – Report Home and Business Damage to 311

Call 311 to report any damage to your home or business sustained from last night’s storm. In order to qualify for disaster relief assistance, New York City must estimate the storm’s total effect on city residents and employees. Be prepared to answer questions about the extent of your property’s damage.

Like many good things, Park(ing) Day, an annual event that inspires city dwellers to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good, started in San Francisco.

The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco design studio, turned a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco.

Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals creating new forms of public space in urban settings.

The reason: to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat … at least until the meter runs out!

Today there’s a space in Park Slope on Seventh Avenue between 1st and 2nd Street. There are benches (donated by Tarzian) and plants. You can just sit there for a few minutes if you wish.

There’s also a space in Ditmas Park on Cortelyou Road. Report back if you know of any others.

Yesterday a friend, whose 8th grade daughter is applying to public high schools, called in a panic because she’d heard a rumor that the students who score into the specialized high schools (Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, etc.) get their pick of the other high schools and the rest of the students get their left-overs.

My friend’s daughter isn’t planning on taking the specialized test because she isn’t interested in attending Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Latin, etc. Still, my friend was concerned that not taking the test would put her at a disadvantage for getting into the high school of her choice.

I knew it couldn’t be true that kids who didn’t take the test were in this way penalized so I called Joyce Szuflita of NYC School Help, who is something of a public high school admissions guru in these parts. We spoke on the phone for an hour and then she said she’d do a blog post on the subject. I was relieved because my notes were a mess and I was a little confused about the whole thing anyway — all the talk of algorirthms, etc. Here is an excerpt from her very informative blog post called, “Don’t shout “algorithm conspiracy!” in crowded middle school.”

It has been brought to my attention that there is a belief among 8^th grade parents that the students who score into the specialized HS get their pick of the high schools and the rest of the students get their left-overs.

To the best of my knowledge this is untrue. I have been chasing the details of this process for years, and here is what I understand from talking to the people who understand the algorithm, the timing of the running of the algorithm and the people at the DOE who work in the secret magic cave where the computers do their work.

First, just to throw a trickle of water on this fire, the DOE can be accused of a lot of things but no one can doubt that they go to crazy lengths to try to be fair and whether they succeed or not (and often they don’t), the conspiracy theorists can calm themselves knowing that this is one of the DOE’s first mandates…

Read more at NYC School Help.

Here’s the latest from the Brooklyn Bridge Rehabilitation Project on Brooklyn Bridge closures (Note: “contraflow” means the re-routing of eastbound, or Brooklyn-bound, traffic onto the north–normally Manhattan-bound–side of the Bridge):

Friday, September 17th [and early morning Saturday, September 18] will be the last eastbound contraflow operation for approximately three weeks. Ongoing work will occur on two of the three lanes of the south roadway, but one lane will remain open for Brooklyn-bound traffic. Manhattan-bound traffic will be on the north roadway, as it was pre-construction, and will not be diverted to the Manhattan Bridge.

The eastbound contraflow is happening tonight [Thursday, September 16 and Friday morning, September 17] (11:00 pm to 6:00 am) and tomorrow night (12:01 am Sat until 7:00 am Sat), and then will stop completely on weekends and weeknights for approximately three weeks. There will still be some lane closures on the bridge, but the eastbound contraflow will not occur.

The National Weather Service still doesn’t know whether to classify last night’s storm, which spread through Brooklyn and Queens killing one woman whose car was hit by a tree, as a tornado.

Those of us who were on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when the storm twisted through the neighborhood and wreaked havoc, have no doubt. And the damage, according to the NY Times, “bore many of the hallmarks of a tornado, with the tops of countless trees sheared off and roofs blown off houses, but National Weather Service were still analyzing data to determine whether it should be classified as one.”

One thing is for sure:  those winds of 60 to 80 miles an hour caused widespread damage, including downed trees, smashed vehicles, homes and power failures in Brooklyn and Queens.

It looked like a tornado, it felt like a tornado, t acted like a tornado, it damaged like a tornado

Sounds like a tornado.

We’d love to know.

By 6PM, the  tornado that twisted through Park Slope was over and the wind and rain had ceased, but the storm left much damage in its wake.

The front windows of Brooklyn Industries on 7th Avenue and 9th Street blew out, as did the shop’s front door. The shop itself was water soaked.

Street after street there were downed trees, crushed vehicles, and damage to homes and shops.

On 10th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, a tree fell on two cars. There were many branches and parts of trees in the street and on the sidewalks of that block.

On 5th Street between 6th and 5th Avenues, a fire truck blocked the street to cars because a tree crushed a car on that street preventing traffic to go through.

Awnings, windows, chairs, tables: all kinds of things went flying during the intense storm earlier this evening.

My daughter reports that the sky was green before the onset of the storm, which is a sure sign of a tornado. She was in Pino’s Pizza when the tornado hit. “The windows were shaking and rattling. A woman tried to come in through the door but she couldn’t get it open. When it finally opened, it pushed her against the wall,” she told me.

Susan Fox of Park Slope Parents watched the tornado from her apartment windows and told me that a friend of hers claims to have seen a cone/funnel shape in the sky.

At 5:35 PM a tornado twisted through Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was on 7th Avenue in Dashing Diva (getting a pedicure) when the sky darkened like night and rain came pouring down in wild zig zag sheets. Suddenly wind was banging against the windows and blowing the glass doors of the nail shop violently open and shut. The employees were terrified and one customer said aloud: “Should we go into the basement?”

One of the manicurists locked the doors just as we heard glass falling on the sidewalk. Turns out a window from the House of Whimsy, a decrepit corner building on 2nd Street and 7th Avenue, came crashing onto the street.

By 6PM the wind had stopped beating and the rain subsided a bit. From the salon I could hear the sound of shopkeepers sweeping glass off of the sidewalk. Seventh Avenue was filled with rain water and water was pouring into the basement of Met Food, a grocery store on Seventh.

Adults and children came out of their homes to discuss what they’d just seen and heard from their homes. Many described the tornado as frightening.

“I opened my window because there was so much banging I thought it would break,” one neighbor told me. “Wait until you see the damage on Third Street. The pine tree in front of C’s building is down,” she said.

Walking home to Third Street between 7th and 6th Avenues I saw many, many tree branches and parts of trees lying on the sidewalk. My daughter just called to say that a whole tree was down in the turf field behind the Old Stone House, a historic museum near Fourth Avenue.

My sister was in Prospect Park with her daughter attending a PS 321 class picnic that started at 5PM. At approximately 5:35,  the rain began and the parents and children started to leave the park. “As we walked out of the par torrential rains drenched us and panicked the people we were with. Everyone was screaming. No one could see in front of them. A tree fell right in front of us. There was an apocalyptic feeling. People had abandoned their strollers to run out of the park. I saw strollers turned over and abandoned backpacks. I ended up  carrying a stroller (with the baby in it) for one of the babysitters to get out of the park. We went into the lobby of a building on Prospect Park Park and 3rd Street. Children were crying. While we were walking home we saw a tipped over mail storage box. It was really scary. I was terrified,” my sister, Caroline Ghertler, told me.

Photo: the photo was sent into Twit Pic and I saw it at the City Room blog. It’s 6:56PM and No Words Daily Pix is getting his camera and running out to take pictures.

Where can you see…

–a three-dimensional map of the lower Manhattan skyline made of a Jell-O-like material by Liz Hickok
–an anxiety map of the five boroughs lit by sweat-powered batteries by Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robinson
–a “Loneliness Map” from Craigslist’s Missed Connections by Ingrid Burrington
–a scratch-and-sniff map of New Yorkers’ smell preferences by Nicola Twilley
–a cemetery map of Polish ancestors’ graves by Kim Baranowski
–an installation constructed from city ephemera by Pratt faculty member Robbin Ami Silverberg
–personal maps created from a call for submissions by the Hand Drawn Map Association including works by Tony Dowler, Will Haughery, Janine Nichols, Yumi Roth, Gowri Savoor, Rob Servo, Krista Shaffer, Kees Touw, Dean Valadez, and Shane Watt
–a series of mapped reflections on the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the ascendancy of the rock dove by Miranda Maher
–a New York subway map in Urdu by Pakistani artist Asma Ahmed Shikoh

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Pratt Manhattan Gallery will present “You Are Here → Mapping the Psychogeography of New York City,” an exhibition of work by a selection of contemporary artists that will map the emotional terrain of the world’s most famous and influential urban center, New York City, and explore the effect of the city’s powerful moods on those who live and work here. “You Are Here” will run from September 24 through November 6, 2010, and will be celebrated with an opening reception on Thursday, September 23 from 6–8 PM. The exhibition and opening reception are free and open to the public.

The mayor and members of the City Council are proposing smoke free parks (and other public areas) in New York City. What do you think?