The Red Hook Fairway
opens today, a 52,000-square-foot store is biggest in the
four-location empire.
Fairway Comes to Red Hook [Gothamist]
Fairway Opens in Red Hook [NY Sun]

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was interviewed by Luke Crisell, a very likable English writer for New York Magazine. He e-mailed me that he was going to be in the neighborhood and that he wanted to talk to me about PAUL BETTANY.

He actually came all the way to Third Street from Cobble Hill and we sat on the green plastic chairs at the green metal table and talked. And he’d really done your homework. "You were quoted in the New York Observer saying that ‘Park Slopers are very protective of their celebrities,’ what did you mean?"

We talked. He didn’t know where the JenPaul mansion was and I didn’t tell him – trying to respect the boundaries of my neighbors. But from looking at the story he seemed to have found it anyway.

As he left, he asked me not to say a thing on the blog about the piece and I obliged. I enjoyed our conversation. When he left, my neighbors ran up to me exictedly, "Who were you talking to?"

The house that Paul Bettany shares with his wife, Jennifer Connelly, their 2-year-old son, Stellan, and Connelly’s 8-year-old boy, Kai (from her previous relationship with photographer David Dougan), is one of the most beautiful in all of Park Slope. Nestled on a shady corner opposite Prospect Park, it is distinguished without being ostentatious. Its Ionic columns and great arched windows seem typical rather than showy. The garden—the disrepair of which was once, Park Slope blogger Louise Crawford tells me, a cause of consternation for some neighbors—is now a well-maintained torrent of tulips in varying shades of oxblood, peach, and white. If Brooklyn isn’t so much the new Manhattan as the new Los Angeles—with soundstages and backyards, Heath and Michelle—then Paul and Jennifer are the Park Slope equivalent of Hollywood royalty: attractive, connubial, and (that most compulsory of qualities among the borough’s celebrity contingent) reserved without being recluses…

and later in the piece:

“We’re proud they’ve chosen to live here,” says Crawford. “She’s the
beautiful Brooklyn girl [Connelly was raised in Brooklyn Heights] made
good who bought the nicest house on the hill, and he’s . . . well, a
signpost of blond, gorgeous Englishness.” They’re the kind of couple
that would rather go to their son’s school play than Bungalow 8—poster
parents for this brave and weird new world of Brooklyn stardom.
“Listen, if I turn up to a premiere, it’s because I’m in it or my
wife’s in it, and I smile and have pictures taken and do the whole
show-business thing. But that’s it: We aren’t courting attention. I
don’t feel like if you become an actor you sign some Faustian pact
where you give up your private life.”

To read the rest of the article click here…

Continue reading MY QUOTE AND THE GORGEOUS PAUL BETTANY IN NEW YORK MAG →

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers

Last week, Hepcat woke Smartmom at midnight.

“Opal’s dead,” he said, his voice thick with incredulity and pain. We weren’t expecting it. “You never expect these kind of things,” he said.

Opal Abu Opalina was a beautiful white rabbit with random black spots. Smartmom and Teen Spirit bought her four years ago at Petland Discount on Fifth Avenue near 12th Street. They were in search of a guinea pig to replace Serena, Teen Spirit’s beloved pet, who died under mysterious circumstances while the family was vacationing in Cape Cod.

In the back of the pet shop, Teen Spirit became enamored of a dwarf rabbit, so before she knew it, Smartmom was flipping her MasterCard and purchasing a rabbit, a cage, rabbit bedding, food, rabbit vitamins…

Once home, Smartmom did an Internet search on “rabbits as children’s pets” and found this rather disconcerting information on rabbits.org:

“Many people are surprised and disappointed to find that rabbits rarely conform to the cute-n-cuddly stereotype in children’s stories. Baby bunnies (and many young adult rabbits) are too busy dashing madly about, squeezing behind furniture, and chewing baseboards and rugs to be held.”

It was too late. Teen Spirit named her Opal and the Oh So Feisty One added Abu and Opalina. Within an hour, Opal was an established member of their household.

But rabbit.org proved to be an oracle. Opal was cute, certainly, but not cuddly. In the first year, she was an anxious rabbit capable of scratching those who were foolish enough to try to hold her.

Eventually, she settled down. A bit. By day, she was Zen-like, calmly sitting in her cage, or drinking from her water bottle. But at night, she’d run from one end of her cage to the other — punctuated by an occasional flip. In the city that never sleeps, Opal didn’t either.
And then she was gone. In the hours after Opal’s death, Hepcat and Smartmom lay in bed talking. “Do you think she was happy?” Smartmom asked Hepcat.

“Well, it’s not like she wrote a blog or anything. But I think she was happy,” he said.

Smartmom told him how sad and scared she felt. Hepcat sighed a lot.

“Growing up on a farm you’re probably used to this kind of thing,” Smartmom said.

“You never get used to this kind of thing,” he replied. But he did fall asleep fairly quickly.

Smartmom lay awake wondering how to tell Teen Spirit and OSFO. She knew “closure” was important when a pet dies and that
something like this could unleash an onslaught of questions about mortality and the fragility of life.

When Smartmom told Teen Spirit about Opal’s death the next morning, he pulled the quilt over his head and refused to come out, saying, “I don’t want to go to school. I want to stay home and sleep and be sad.”

When The Oh So Feisty One heard the news, she marched right into the living room “Why are her eyes open?” she asked. Smartmom was amazed how fearlessly she stared into the dead rabbit’s cage.

“She’s in a better place now,” she said.

Later she made a makeshift memorial and placed a sprig of lilac next to the cage. “Do you think we took good enough care of her?” she asked.

In the meantime, Teen Spirit was distant and blue. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. And when Beautiful Smile (the babysitterandsomuchmore) called to console him, he refused to speak.

Teen Spirit and Hepcat both withdraw when they are feeling emotional. Conversely, OSFO, like Smartmom, tends to express what she is feeling — even when she doesn’t know exactly it is that she feels.

When he got home from the Edgy Startup, Hepcat and OSFO took Opal down to the backyard (more like an alleyway, a place they rarely go). “We buried her with her food and her alfalfa bedding,” OSFO told Smartmom. “She should be very comfortable down there.”

Probably the person most affected by Opal’s death was Hepcat, who enjoyed her companionship late at night when he was working at his computer in the living room. She’d jump up like a puppy when he entered the room and thrust her snout toward him for petting. Days after her death, Smartmom noticed a far away look in his eyes from time to time. While he didn’t say a thing, she knew he was thinking about Opal.

Then she remembered what he said the night she died. “You never get used to this kind of thing.” You never really do.

These kind words from my friend, Mary Warren.

Mothers… this love is for you who should be celebrated every day.

I want to wish you all a warm and wonderful Mother’s Day.  I don’t know of any group of women who deserves to pat themselves on the back more than you do, ladies.  Every single day you are in the trenches, doing for your kids what they can’t do for themselves, sacrificing so that their needs are met, and, in general, kissing the boo-boos and making them all better, and keeping the bogeyman at bay.

This is not an easy task that we mothers must undertake.  Oh, no. The instruction manuals were conveniently tossed out when our adorable packages arrived in the delivery room.  What we got were crying, needy and hungry babies who grew into sweet-faced tikes with potty mouths, and tyrannical teenagers (some of us even have annoying adult children who still won’t do what we tell them to).  But they were our kids and like Play-doh, we got to shape them into whatever we wanted.  Of course, that didn’t always take, but who’s stopped trying, right.

And let’s face it, kids are selfish. It’s what they do. I know.  I’m a kid.  My mother has had to put up with my nonsense for some time now.  I am sure she would be delighted if I’d grow up and quit causing so much ruckus.  Some day I plan to grant her that wish.

The fact is my mother — just like you and just like me — wouldn’t have it any other way.  She  loves me from the tip of my flawed head to my toes.  And I am the better person for it.  I have learned so much about goodness and truth from my mother; I only hope that i am one-tenth of the mother to my son that she has been to me.  If so, my son will be one lucky kid.

A mother has to wear so many hats and they all have to look good, d*mnit.  A mother is chief cook and bottle washer.  She is a medic, a banker and a handyman.  A mother is a mechanic, an artist, a technician and a teacher.  She is a fixer-upper, a picker-upper and a giddy-upper.  What can’t a mother do?

You, ladies, my friends, my sisters, my mothers, you are all that and a bag of chips.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I love you all.  I’m proud to be one of your club.  And I hereby commend you for doing your duty, doing it well, and doing it with love in your hearts and smiles on your faces. You’re the best.

–Mary Warren

Lots of letters, including one from Alan Berger, Director of the Brooklyn Free School, to the editor of the New York Times City Section.

To the Editor:

"I’d build a free school everywhere,"
replied several students to the morning circle question at Brooklyn
Free School. One wonders why they would want such a thing after reading
"Land of the Free" (May 7). Your article missed the joy and investment
that all Brooklyn Free School members have in this learning community.

You depicted a school where students seemed bored and unhappy, parents
were nervous and critical, and only students from "well-educated"
families thrive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Students
wake their parents up to go to school and are cajoled into leaving come
dismissal. Parents are brought to tears knowing their children are
finally appreciated for who they are, and are happy and empowered.
Students of all ages, abilities and backgrounds live and learn together
with a real stake in their own education and community. Students have
the gift of time; no bells or tests limit the studies they pursue or
the freedom to ask "why?"

Alan P. Berger
Director, Brooklyn Free School
Park Slope, Brooklyn
This letter was also signed by the other staff members of the Brooklyn Free School.

•

To the Editor:

We have an 11-year-old daughter at the Brooklyn
Free School and a 14-year-old son applying for the fall. One important
factor never mentioned in your article "Land of the Free" is the
spirit-crushing state of education offered by every other school in the
city.

After years of watching our children become increasingly
bored, disillusioned and overworked, all for test prep and busy work,
we’re delighted to see our daughter come home from school excited about
learning, feeling powerful and in charge, and finally having time to be
a child rather than a future middle manager.

Sara Bennett
Joseph Holmes
Park Slope, Brooklyn

•

To the Editor:

In your article about the Brooklyn Free School,
the founder, Alan Berger, gets it right: "If you learn how to learn,
you can always pick up the content later." Mr. Berger gets several
other things right by allowing students to take ownership of their
curriculum and to allow them to teach one another.

In my
practice as an instructor in a graduate program for teachers, I have
been known to say, "If I ran a school, there would be no classes, no
tests and no grades." This leads into a discussion, often heated, about
many current edu-speak buzzwords: alternative assessment,
child-centered curriculum, project-based learning and the like. In Mr.
Berger’s vision, we see the seemingly impossible: a school with none of
the standard-issue approaches to assessment. I applaud his efforts.

Al Doyle
Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn

•

To the Editor:

Engaged students can and should take a leading
role in both the form and the content of our education. Yet the
Brooklyn Free School takes this goal to an extreme, sacrificing
practical skills and knowledge in the process.

The school I attend, Bard High School Early College, provides a more realistic compromise.

It
offers several seminar-style classes in which, at the start of each new
text, portions of the readings are divided up among the students and
each of us then takes on the responsibility of presenting our reading
to the class, taking the text in whatever direction we desire.

Give
students engaging subject matter and place them in charge of where they
want to take it. An engaged student body need not come at the expense
of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Stephen Kahn Bonnett
Park Slope, Brooklyn

•

To the Editor:

As a parent of a student at the Brooklyn Free
School, I have a very simple way of evaluating how well the school is
working for my daughter.

I work out of my home, and every
morning at 9 my daughter drags me out of the house with excitement and
enthusiasm so that she won’t be late for the morning meeting.

How many parents can say that about their children?

Blake Holden
Park Slope, Brooklyn

Also from DOPE ON THE SLOPE. WHY IS RATNER AFRAID OF BLOGGERS?

Norm Oder, the most thorough and perhaps the most thoughtful
journalist covering the Atlantic Yards project was barred from a press
conference this morning where Frank Gehry was to unveil another
iteration of his "design" for the instant neighborhood that Forest City
Ratner wants to install on top of Prospect Heights.

Why was his presence unwelcome? Superficially, it appears that he
was barred due to the fact that he’s a blogger. As Norm himself writes
at Atlantic Yards Report:

The FCR press release hinted that a journalist who writes a blog wouldn’t be welcome:
Please
note that this press conference is open to reporters with valid press
credentials. If you do not have press credentials, we require a request
from the publication that you will be representing. The request on
letterhead should be faxed to 212.981.5449.

What’s a valid
credential? And what’s a letterhead? I faxed a request on my own
letterhead, but that wasn’t enough for Ratner. Jeffrey Lerner, a Dan Klores Communications Senior Account Executive, politely but firmly told me "the decision is final."

And is a blogger a journalist? Well, not everyone, but journalists who write blogs are still journalists. And, as Matt Welch wrote
in 2003 in the Columbia Journalism Review, bloggers contribute
"personality, eyewitness testimony, editorial filtering, and uncounted
gigabytes of new knowledge."

I am so sorry that Frank Gehry compared his building to a bride. Talk about a comment that’s going to come back and bite you in the ass. "When we were studying Brooklyn, we happened upon a wedding, a real Brooklyn wedding," he told the crowd at the high-security press conference on Thursday. “And we decided that Miss Brooklyn was a bride.”

I don’t think he did himself any favors with that metaphor. (Brooklyn wants a divorce from Ratner, the marriage is annulled, the honeymoon is over…)

Gehry showed off the latest renderings in a large third-floor space in the Atlantic Center.
       
Miss Brooklyn is a curvy aluminum-clad
        tower, with a 120-foot glass-walled atrium called “the Urban Room,” a hotel, office space and condos will occupy the rest of the building.
       
"She’s a bride with flowing veils," Gehry said. He admitted that maybe he was getting carried away. "But I fell in love with her.” he added.

Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of Frank Gehry’s work. He is an architect I truly admire. In fact, years ago my father and I drove around Venice, California in search of all the  Gehry-designed houses. We were on the lookout for chain link fencing – that was always a clue – and Gehry’s own house (above). We particularly loved the beach house he designed for a writer that looks like a lifeguard’s perch (pictured left). I even ate dinner at Rebecca’s, the restaurant he designed in Santa Moncia, with the huge fish mobiles that were inspired by the gefilte fish his grandmother used to make.

When he introduced his "Easy Edges" furniture made out of hockey stick material. I  convinced my mother to buy one of the cool glass tables with the bentwood legs.

And Bilbao, I was blown away by that vision in titanium. My husband’s mother and sister even made a pilgrammage to that small Spanish city to see the Gehry-designed Guggenheim there.

Closer to home, Hepcat and I toured the Richard B. Fisher Performing Arts Center at Hepcat’s alma mater, Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson,  devouring all the interesting details of that building.

So you can imagine that I was excited to hear Gehry was going to be designing a building in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn. As a big Gehry fan, I was thrilled.

But then…

…I began to comprehend what Forest City Ratner had in mind — a basketball stadium, 17 high rise office buildings and condos, a development that  would threaten to change the character of Brooklyn and create enormous traffic problems, I  began to think that Ratner was  using Frank Gehry’s reputation as a way to get people like me to support the project. Ratner, whose first development in Brooklyn — the Atlantic Mall — is an eyesore, has very little credibility in the architecture department. So pulling the Frank Gehry card was inspired, to say the least.

Much as I love Frank Gehry and much as I’d love a Frank Gehry building in Brooklyn, I am not unconditionally in favor of anything Gehry does. A stadium? That’s not the Frank Gehry building I was hoping for.

What I am hoping — perhaps too optimistically — is that the building pressure from the citizens of Brooklyn and groups like Develop Don’t Enjoy and No Land Grab, etc. will force Forest City  to modify their ridiculously bloated project into something a lot more appropriate, a lot more contextual.

It sounds like Gehry may be responding to some of the criticism of his project. "The original designs got a little carried away," he admitted at the press conference. But the buildings do have a connection to the texture of the existing buildings."

Then he added: "Yes, the buildings will exist, but we are going to create usable spaces, not awful plazas, [that reflect] the body language of Brooklyn."

I really, really respect the guy. Clearly this is a project close to his heart. What architect doesn’t dream about creating a city from scratch. The trouble is: Brooklyn doesn’t need a city within a city, a skylline within a skyline. It already is a city filled with landmark architecture and one-of-a-kind beauty. It’s just not the right blank canvas for Frank Gehry.

Something has to happen over by the Atlantic Yards. It is a blighted stretch that deserves to be enhanced. But not with a development plan, Gehry or no Gehry, that threatens to harm the quality of life in Brooklyn.

A documentary about Frank Gehry opens today in NYC

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Directed by Sydney Pollack;
directors of photography, George Tiffin, Claudio Rocha and Marcus
Birsel; edited by Karen Schmeer; music by Sorman & Nystrom;
produced by Ultan Guilfoyle; released by Sony Pictures Classics.
Running time: 83 minutes. This film is not rated.

In the days after the wedding, Callalillie did some pretty awesome blogging. Here she reflects about the 20 minutes before her wedding when she watched from above as the wedding guests trickled in. Here I go again: voyeuristically gazing at strangers. But I feel like I know them from her blog. And they are such a cute couple.  MAZEL TOV CALLALILLIE AND LEXI.

It is pretty amazing to watch this. I had never thought about it
before, but it is. In those twenty minutes, I felt as though I was
watching a gently shaken snow globe of our life. In groups, pairs, and
one by one, pieces of our lives mingled and then took their seats and
from above it was like viewing each of our histories swirl softly about
like petals in the wind. Old friends and family members who had not
seen one another in years embraced. Those who did not know one another
shook hands and smiled. No matter who each guest was, they were there
for one reason– Alexis and me. From the room up above, this suddenly
clicked and my anxiety was gone, replaced by a different kind of
exhilaration– pride. On that day, at that hour, I was surer of our
marriage than anything else I had ever encountered in my life.