All posts by louise crawford

Smartmom

SMARTMOM’S XMAS TREE

Here this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

It was like Rockefeller Center in Smartmom’s apartment last week.
The Oh So Feisty One kept bringing her friends in and out of the living room to see the tree.

She and her friends just sat on the
green leather couch and stared as if intoxicated by the white lights
and the glittery gold ornaments.

Even Teen Spirit said it was a
nice tree. So did Hepcat. Grudgingly. He was still mourning the fact
that they spent Christmas in Brooklyn for the third year in a row
rather than in California. But he came around.

Here’s how they
got such a great tree: Two Saturdays ago, when it started to snow,
Smartmom, OSFO and Hepcat went out in search of a tree. What a perfect
time to shop. It was 10 pm in the wet, slushy snow.

The
three of them (and Teen Spirit in spirit) sloshed down Seventh Avenue
to browse trees first at the Apple Tree then at the Key Food. They even
went to the Food Co-op to see if those “organic” trees were still
there, but no go.

Back at the Apple Tree on Garfield, OSFO fell
in love with a short, squat tree at and they made a split-second
decision to buy it.

Forty-five dollars later, they were lugging
the tree back to Third Street. Smartmom hoped they wouldn’t run into
any of their Jewish friends — she’d have some explaining to do.

“It’s
our inter-faith Christmas tree, we’ll decorate it with Jewish stars,”
she would have said. But truthfully, Smartmom felt no shame about
having a tree because as an inter-faith family Christmas and Hanukah
are both meaningful.

And since deciding to do Christmas in
Brooklyn, it felt perfectly right to have a tree. Besides, it gave them
somewhere to put the presents.

Once home, they decided to put the
tree in the living room and just admire and inhale its luscious aroma.
They didn’t even decorate it.

Actually Hepcat found it so fragrant, he had to open the window because it was making him cough.

But
it didn’t make Smartmom cough. t made her think of moonlight in
Vermont and the Christmas scene in “Fanny and Alexander” and the Bing
Crosby movies “White Christmas” and “Holiday Inn.”

It made her
think of Christmas on the farm in Northern California where Artsy
Grandma decorates a live tree with timeless ornaments — some homemade,
some vintage glass ones from the 1950s and ’60s.

Smartmom’s
living room seemed so much smaller with the tree in it. She had to
disassemble the Noguchi coffee table and rearrange the furniture. The
tree took over.

Diaper Diva and Ducky came over to help decorate
it. Diaper Diva is a pro at decorating. And so is 3-year-old Ducky, who
delighted in selecting ornaments and finding a spot for them on the
tree. Hepcat strung the lights. OSFO put candy canes everywhere.

When they were done, they all just looked at the tree and sighed. It really was gorgeous.

Smartmom
liked to stare at it as she sat on the green couch in a state of
reverie that really had very little to do with the birth of Jesus and
more to do with how damn pretty that tree looked in her living room.

Truthfully,
it surprised her how much she loved that tree. In the past, her trees
were a cut above Charlie Brown’s. She was sure that Hepcat was
disappointed. But this year’s tree was wonderful — maybe because
Smartmom was finally comfortable with the decision to spend Christmas
in Brooklyn and make their own traditions here.

It looked perfect in their living room because it was theirs.

AU CONTRAIRE: THE OCCASIONAL NOTE FROM PETER LOFFREDO

AU CONTRAIRE: THE OCCASIONAL NOTE FROM PETER LOFFREDO

Is having an affair good or bad for a marriage? Our pal Pete shares his thoughts on his blog,  Full Permission Living. The piece by Jenny Block is also quite interesting.

A few weeks ago, I offered my comments (read them at: http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/) on whether or not having an affair was potentially "good" for a marriage.

I was responding to an article that was in the NY Times on the subject called, "An Odd Turn of Affairs." (http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article2882883.ece)

On the Huffington Post blog this week there was another article on the same subject, taken from Tango Magazine, entitled: "Portrait of an Open Marriage," by Jenny Block. (http://www.tangomag.com/2006130/portrait-of-an-open-marriage-2.html/1).

The piece has this caption under the title: "Jenny Block reveals an unconventional marriage arrangement that worked."

So, I took a look, because I believe that openness is the key to a good marriage, along with the two partners being fully in love with each other, of course.

On my blog (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com) are some samples of what I found in Jenny’s piece, interspersed with my interjections and conclusions. Check it out and offer your own comments.

Civics and Urban Life

NEW YEAR’S EVE AT BARBES

Spend New Year’s Eve with Chicha Libre at Barbes at 10 p.m.

Chicha Libre plays a mixture of latin rhythms, surf music and psychedelic pop inspired by Peruvian music from the Amazon. The Brooklyn-based band mixes up covers of forgotten Chicha classics with French-tinged originals, re-interpretation of 70’s pop classics as well as cumbia versions of pieces by Satie and Ravel.

With Greg Burrows – percussion; Joshua Camp – Hohner Electravox; Olivier Conan – Cuatro & Vocals – Nicholas Cudahy – bass; Vincent Douglas – Guitar – Timothy Quigley – percussion.

Civics and Urban Life

BYSTANDERS CHASE HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER IN BAY RIDGE

This from NY Metro:

Bystanders to a deadly car accident in Brooklyn leaped into action Friday when the driver tried to escape.

A group of witnesses to the hit-and-run crash said they chased the
motorist on foot and in vehicles, grabbed him and stuffed him into a
cab, which returned him to the scene of the crime.

"I was glad we got the bastard," Chris Blake, 41, of Bay Ridge, told
the Daily News. "He killed a guy. He was meant to get caught. He
deserves to go to jail."

The chase began at around 3:30 p.m. after a minivan making an illegal
U-turn struck and killed an elderly Brooklyn man as he carried
groceries across the street in the borough’s Sunset Park section.

   

STUFF AND THINGS

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR NEW YEARS EVE?

!I’m not sure. But I’m thinking of doing this. For more information go to Slope Sports

2007-2008 NEW YEAR’S EVE FUN RUN
presented by
Brooklyn Road Runners Club and Slope Sports

3.3 MILE FUN RUN
Prospect Park, Brooklyn

DATE/TIME
   
Monday, December 31, 2007 —
11:15pm start

START/FINISH
Start/Finish Line is at the Grand Army Plaza entrance of Prospect Park

ENTRY FEE
   
$15 before December 30, 2007 for Brooklyn Road Runners Club members, $20 Non-members
Race Day: BRRC Members $20, $25 Non-members
No refunds and/or exchanges. Race will occur rain, snow or shine.

Civics and Urban Life

FUNERAL IN HER ABSENCE

This from New York 1:

Pakistani Americans are planning to hold a memorial today in honor of
Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed Thursday
during a rally in her home country.

The service will be held today between 1 and 3 p.m. at the Makki
Mosque on Coney Island Avenue between Foster Avenue and Avenue H in
Midwood, Brooklyn.

Organizers are calling it "A Funeral in Her Absence."

Postcard from the Slope

HELPING TO FIX WHAT’S BROKEN IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

Consider making a donation to the Petra Foundation:

       The Petra Foundation was established in 1988 to sustain the trajectory of Petra Tölle Shattuck‘s
life by honoring the kind of people she most admired – unsung
individuals making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy
and dignity of others.

Each year since then, through a national search and nomination process, the Petra Foundation has recognized such leaders as Petra Fellows.

Often
at risk and without the safety net of personal privilege or
institutional support, Petra Fellows fight poverty, discrimination,
environmental degradation and violence. They work in prisons and police
departments, labor unions and migrant worker camps, health clinics,
housing projects, family farms and public schools – wherever people
lack the resources, education, connections or clout to participate
fully in American society. Armed with the fierce passion for justice
that inspired Petra Shattuck, they are fixing what’s broken in American
society.

      

STUFF AND THINGS

ROCKY SULLIVAN’S PUB QUIZ

 
 
Just about every week I get an email about  Rocky Sullivan’s Thursday Night Quiz. This email was really long and fun (and with a great photo) so I decided to include it here. In February they’re doing an event called Quiz Don’t Destroy, an entire evening
dedicated to the battle over Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards
project.  Pit your knowledge against teams from local newspapers,
bloggers and community groups. Watch out if Norm Oder of Atlantic Yards Report is there — he knows everything.

Greetings, Pub-Quiz Ball-Drop Buffs…Tonight’s the last Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz of 2007. Thanks to all of you who’ve made it down to Rocky’s for our Thursday night Quiz, to you who’ve almost made it, and to you who, by gumby, will one of these days.  We’ve been at it every Thursday
since mid-September.  Well, not Thanksgiving night, but all the
others.  We’ve churned out eight rounds every week — questions, photos
and music.  You’ve taken home lots of prizes, except the ones you
fluidically imbibed and left behind at Rocky’s.

A prize is a prize, no matter how long it’s in your pocession. We’re just beginning.  2008 is the Year of the Quiz, according to
the Journal of American Cultural Sciences*.  It’s also the year of the
U.S. presidential election, the Beijing Summer Olympics, and a year planning on leaping for pure joy.
On that last note, 2008’s leap day — February 29th — is the day
after a Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz.  Hence, more February to crow
about your team’s success the previous night.
Oh…2008’s also the year that Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards
project collapses under the weight of community opposition, an unkind
economy, legal beagles shining lights into dark corners, and the
project’s own disconnected hubris.
Further into the future, be sure to mark your calendars for the
Quiz Event of the New Year: January 17, when along with Develop Don’t
Destroy Brooklyn, we present QUIZ DON’T DESTROY — an entire evening
dedicated to the battle over Bruce Ratner’s disastrous Atlantic Yards
project.  Pit your knowledge against teams from local newspapers,
bloggers and community groups.  Arrive early for good seats.
Civics and Urban Life

BILL DE BLASIO IN IOWA

The New York Observer reports that our man Bill de Blasio is in Iowa stumping for Hillary Clinton.

City Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn spent late 2003 and early
2004 traveling to Iowa as a volunteer to help his candidate at the
time, John Edwards, engineer a surprisingly strong showing in the
caucuses there.

Now he’s back in the Hawkeye state, helping fellow New Yorker
Hillary Clinton compete in what has become a tough contest. "I think
folks from Iowa, like people in New Hampshire, they’re used to people
coming in from the outside, probably more so than any other place in
the country," de Blasio told me earlier this week from the city of
Clinton (seriously), just north of Davenport.

"The outsiders are facilitators," he said.

De Blasio, who also managed Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, thinks
Iowa is significant for both New York candidates, but for different
reasons: "This could be a breakthrough moment for Hillary and a death
knell for Rudy.”

Civics and Urban Life

LUNA PARK GAZETTE’S FEAR OF FLYING

I found this on Luna Park Gazette. I hope he had a good flight.

I’m what you might call a fearful flier, a first-class white-knuckle
loon who has left his hand prints in the cushions of a squadron of
passenger jets over the years.

The very thought of getting on to a plane makes my stomach turn upside down and inside out–all at the same time.

The
logical side of my brain tells me all about the statistics of car
crashes versus airline crashes but my neurotic side won’t answer the
door.

I wanted to do something positive, try and rid myself of
this irrational fear that has plagued me since I took my first flight
out to San Francisco nearly 30 years ago.

Civics and Urban Life

JOIN THE ‘GOOD BYE CONEY ISLAND’ FLICKR PAGE

1 Comment

I found this on the Brooklyn Museum blog.

I am very excited that Patrick Amsellem, curator of photography, is working  with us on a web project in conjunction with the Goodbye Coney Island?  exhibition he curated in the Luce Visible Storage-Study Center.  We have created a Goodbye Coney Island? Flickr group
which photographers can join and submit their best photo of Coney
Island. From this pool Patrick will select four photos to feature in
his posts on our blog throughout the run of the show.

This idea came about because the other day I joined Patrick for a discussion of Goodbye Coney Island?
and he spoke about the popularity of Coney Island throughout the years
as a subject for both American and International photographers. I am a
casual photographer, and his comment reminded me how much I enjoy going
to Coney Island to take pictures with my Polaroid, Holga and digital
cameras. Every time I am there I see countless other photographers
strolling the boardwalk in search of the perfect shot to capture the
Coney Island’s essence. What a better way to pay homage to this fabled
part of New York, I thought, than to engage some of the photographers
in our community in conjunction with this exhibition of more than fifty
photographs from the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings that traces its
evolution over the past 125 years. We look forward to seeing the
photographs everyone will choose to post!

To participate please join the Goodbye Coney Island? group on Flickr:  (more…)

Postcard from the Slope

MERRY CHRISTMAS JAKE

I had a nice talk with Jake this evening. Jake is the panhandler who stands in front of Ace Supermarket on Seventh Avenue and Berkeley Place. He has a lovely smile and a pleasant personality. Jake said this is a tough Christmas for him because his 95-year-old mother died a few weeks ago. She lived in South Carolina. That’s where Jake grew up. On a farm. He thinks about going back to South Carolina but he  likes the pace of New York City he said. "It’s too slow down there," he said. "Too slow."

STUFF AND THINGS

YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE:

1 Comment

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I loved it! It is depressing but not as depressing as it sounds — a film about a French man (who was the editor of Elle Magazine) who suffers a stroke and is left with locked-in syndrome. He can’t speak and can only blink one eye to communicate yes or no. Amazingly, he writes a book this way. Directed by Julian Schnabel, it’s an amazing work of art, a great story, too. We saw it at BAM

Richard Grayson

COMMUNITY PUBLISHING PARTY AT VOX POP

Here’s somethng new from author Richard Grayson, one of the Park Slope 100. He’s been busy teachng, like, 7 classes at 4 colleges. And he’s on hs way out of town. But he did take the tme to write about ths interestng gathering at Vox Pop.

Wednesday Evening at Vox Pop: Publish Yourself & Community Publishing Party by Rchard Grayson

On Wednesday evening, I went to Vox Pop, the amazing coffee bar/bookstore/performance space/community center and now instant-publishing center on Cortelyou Road by Stratford Road in America’s most diverse neighborhood, Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park. 

In 1966, when I was 15 I started hanging out around there because of my weekly sessions just up the block with my friendly neighborhood psychiatrist, Dr. Abbott A. Lippman, who got his medical degree from NYU during World War I and who grew orchids and taught me how to swallow pills without water. 

I’ve always loved the neighborhood, even before Sander Hicks brought Vox Pop there and lots of other exciting places lined Cortelyou Road. 

Apparently lots of other people like the neighborhood too.  To celebrate Publish Yourself, Vox Pop’s new community book printing and publishing center around the corner from the coffee bar, they’ve published What I Love About This Neighborhood, a 48-page paperback featuring “a collection of memories” by residents of Ditmas Park/Flatbush and other Brooklynites.

Leading off the collection is contributor Marty Markowitz, whom I first met at Brooklyn College back in the 1970s when he was head of the Graduate Students Organization which had its office where I hung out with other undergrad student government/newspaper/radical types, and who went on to become a community organizer, state senator and Brooklyn Borough President for the past six years.

Marty was on hand for the party, though a bit late because former President Bill Clinton had asked Marty to introduce him at a fundraiser that evening.  His reminiscence of Flatbush and Ditmas Park resonated with me, although I’m kind of shocked that Marty actually managed to eat the dish called “the Kitchen Sink” at the old Jahn’s ice cream parlor on Church off Flatbush back in our day. 

The other contributors to What I Love About This Neighborhood share memories of the neighborhood, which now features groceries and eateries from the far ends of planet earth.  Oldtimers who can recall stores I used to go in during the 1960s and 1970s and newcomers from rural America and even Manhattan all have distinctive voices, and all share their love of Ditmas Park/Flatbush and similar-but-distinct Brooklyn neighborhoods.  I wonder if the Glenn Feingold who describes eating his way through Windsor Terrace (“If you want to eat tofu, go to L.A. and meditate”) is my old friend whom I last recall driving home from Brooklyn College to his parents’ apartment in Bergen Beach in, oh, about 1974. . .

Sander, founder of Soft Skull Press, showed me around the Publish Yourself store.  It’s a print-on-demand micropublisher, and the bookmaster Gabriel Stuart let me watch the magic as he produced a professional-looking paperback with his InstaPrinter machine within a few minutes.

Around the store are many paperbacks published there, and all look as good as the much more expensive small press paperbacks I used to see at our New York Small Press Book Fairs thirty years ago.  If you’re interested in publishing a book, Sander told me his prices are better than those of some of the more established POD firms.  Check out the websitefor more info.

Thanks to Sander, Gabriel, and the other great people associated with Vox Pop and Publish Yourself for a fine evening and a nice little book about Brooklyn.

Now I’m leaving Brooklyn, heading out west for some holiday tofu and meditation

.

Civics and Urban Life

SMARTMOM: HEPCAT LOOKING FORWARD TO REUNION

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

Just the other day Hepcat received an invitation to his 30th college reunion. It left him feeling mighty old, but you can bet that Hepcat wants to be at Bard College to celebrate that milestone.

“The Hudson Valley in spring? What’s not to like?” Hepcat said nostalgically when Smartmom asked if he plans to attend.

Still, it’s hard to believe that Hepcat is old enough to have been out of college for 30 years.

Smartmom should talk. This June, it will be 28 years since the day the great I.F. Stone, that iconoclastic journalist and critic of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the Vietnam War, spoke to her class of 1980 at SUNY Binghamton.

She can’t remember a word he said, but she does remember that his commencement speech was quite long and characteristically controversial, as it elicited boos from some parents in the audience. Their reaction disgusted and embarrassed her.

Smartmom isn’t sure whether she will be attending her 30th reunion in 2010. She keeps in touch with most of the college friends she wants to be in touch with.

Still, it would be interesting to see how the campus has changed and to say hello to some of her professors (if they’re still there), to have a cup of coffee at the Argo coffee shop and to visit the Salvation Army on the south side of town.

One thing’s for sure: Smartmom never wants to fill out one of those “So, what have you been doing since graduation?” questionnaires.

Smartmom thinks that those kinds of questionnaires are such a horrendous exercise in personal reductiveness.

A friend of Smartmom’s actually decided not to attend an important college reunion recently because she took one look at the questionnaire and knew that she was incapable of filling it out.

“I’m having a mid-life crisis,” she told Smartmom. “I wasn’t going to sit there and do it.”

Those kinds of reunion questionnaires invite boasting — about your career, your children and all your creature comforts. People feel like they’ve really got to impress all those people they went to college with.

So what has Smartmom been doing since that day in the Broome County Arena? What fabulous resume can she whip out to impress her peers, what personal biographical detail will just wow them all….

Hmmmm.

Well…

Ahhhh….

Seriously, how does one honestly characterize more than a quarter century of one’s life? Is it all really just a list of degrees, courses, jobs, projects, addresses, and names?

Are we nothing more than our resumes?

What about the interstitial life — the life that goes on between the lines of all the other stuff? The little discoveries we make about ourselves; the conversations we have with our friends and family on the phone; the surprising moments we have with our children on the way to the store; an inside joke told over and over; the words of a wise therapist; getting proposed to at Two Boots Restaurant on Avenue A; an epiphanic walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; stopping at the National Poultry Museum while driving through Kansas; hearing Caetano Veloso at Lincoln Center and Patti Smith at CBGB; a memorable meal in a small Tuscan town or at Al Di La; Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One’s birth and their first words; OSFO practicing the piano, or Teen Spirit’s show last October at the Bowery Poetry Club; the day Hepcat made latkes (or the day he cleaned out the basement).

What of the life we live concurrent to the resume life? The life of our hearts, our minds? Our sensations? Our love and our pain?

Hepcat is actually looking forward to his 30th graduation. And he’s not afraid of those stupid questionnaires.

“Me intimidated? If someone asks me what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years, I’ll just say, ‘Funny you should ask…’”

Civics and Urban Life

AN AFTERNOON AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

It’s easy to forget that we live near one of the great museums in the world what with our busy lives in Brooklyn.

But in the last few months I’ve been spending more time at the Met. Yesterday a friend, an ex-Park Sloper and I, walked around the museum for a few hours. There is, as always, so much to see. I strongly suggest a visit. Saturday night the museum is open until 8:30. Here’s what we saw:

The newly expanded and renovated gallery for 19th and early 20th century paintings is just filled with great work from Prud’hon to Picasso, by way of Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Seurat and others.

The Age of Rembrandt is a knock out exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum’s 228 Dutch paintings (dating mostly from the 1600s).

Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor is an amazing survey of 17th-century European tapestry, a large show, is also quite incredible.

My favorite space in the museum right now is the Greek and Roman sculpture gallery that is in the space where the old cafeteria used to be. It is a glorious space to be in. The sculpture. The light. The feeling of the room.

ENJOY!

Postcard from the Slope

NEXT BLOGADE ROADSHOW: FEBRUARY 10TH

I got this short note from Brooklyn blogger, Creative Times, about the next Brooklyn Blogade Road Show, which is a casual monthly gathering of bloggers in various nabes all over Brooklyn. Created at the 2nd annual Brooklyn Blogfest, the road shows are an attempt to spread the blogging gospel all over Brooklyn.

Hi All –

I am hosting the next blogade in the Carrol Gardens/Cobble Hill area
on Sunday, Feb.10 around 11:00 am.

Hope to see you there!

Eleanor Traubman
Professional Organizer
Inspiration through Organization
etraubman@aol.com
917-499-7395
creativetimes.blogspot.com