Mayor Bloomberg has declared today, May 7, 2006, Sigmund Freud Day, in honor of Freud’s 150th birthday. Happy Birthday Sigmund: you were one helluva an important guy.

Collage by ReHuxley

I told Teen Spirit about Opal’s death when he woke up. He pulled his quilt over his head and refused to come out. Later he called me in. "I don’t want to go to school, I want to stay home and sleep and be sad."

When I told The Oh So Fiesty One, she marched into the living room to look in Opal’s cage. "Why are her eyes open," she asked. I was amazed how fearless she was looking at the dead rabbit.

As the morning progressed, she tried on a variety of responses to the situation. "She’s in a better place," she said. Later she seemed excited: "Now we can get a puppy." Next I noticed her drawing a picture of a rabbit and these words: Opal. May 4, 2006.

OSFO found a drawing of Opal by our friend Nancy and created a make shift memorial. She place a sprig of lillac next to the cage. Later she whispered, "Do you think we took good care of her?"

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

OSFO, in an effort to comfort Teen Spirit, said: "She’s going to see Serena." Serena was Teen Spirit’s guinea pig, who died when he was 6.

Walking to school she wondered what we were going to do with the body. "Daddy can figure that out," she reasoned.

Hepcat covered the cage with a green tablecloth. When he came home from work, he and OSFO took Opal down to the backyard (more like an alleyway, a place we rarely go) and buried her. "We buried her with her food and her cage bedding," OSFO said. Teen Spirit missed the actual burial because he was missing in action until about 8 p.m. tonight. Hepcat will probably take him downstairs tomorrow to see the burial site.

In the flurry of the day, I sometimes forgot that Opal was dead. But when I remembered it made me feel sad. I got the chills when I thought of her lying dead in her cage underneath the green tablecloth. I was relieved when Hepcat buried her downstairs.

Rest in peace, little rabbit.

Hepcat woke me up at midnight. "Opal’s dead." My eyes were closed so I could really hear the sadness, the sense of incredulity in his voice. We weren’t expecting it. "You never expect these kind of things," he said.

Opal Abu Opalina Crawford was a beautiful white rabbit with random black spots on her back and face. We bought her four years ago at the Petland Discount store on Fifth Avenue near 12th Street. Teen Spirit and I had gone out in search of a guinea pig like Serena, his beloved pet who died when he was 6 while we were vacationing in Cape Cod. It was meant to be an exploratory mission.

In the back of the pet shop, Teen Spirit became transfixed by a white rabbit. A buxom young woman who worked at the shop took her out of the cage and showed Teen Spirit how to hold her. "This is a very gentle rabbit," she said. "He will make a good pet," she said knowledgably.

Teen Spirit held the dwarf rabbit on his chest, over his heart, and they both looked very, very peaceful. The rabbit was, on that particular day, easy to hold, happy to be in the arms of a little boy.

Next thing I know, we’re buying a cage, rabbit bedding, food, rabbit vitamins. And we’re travelling by car service with a rabbit in a box.

Once home, I googled ‘rabbits as children’s pets’ and found this 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. Also, rabbits are
physically delicate animals which means they can be hurt by children picking
them up. Because rabbits feel frightened when people pick them up, they kick
and struggle which means children can also get hurt Rabbits are also built to
react to sudden changes which means they may either run away or try to bite
when approached too quickly and too loudly. Stress-related illnesses are
common.

I worried that we had made a grave mistake impulsively buying a rabbit. Especially since we’d done absolutely no research in advance. Rabbit.org cautioned that a home with a lot of electrcal cords and wires would not be a good thing for a pet rabbit and Chez OTBKB is nothing if not flush with computer wires, cords and such. But it was already too late. Teen Spirit named her Opal and the Oh So Feisty One added Abu and Opalina to her long name. Within an hour, they were already attached to their pet rabbit.

It was true that she didn’t like to be held. In the first year, she was an anxious rabbit capable of scratching those who were fool hardy enough to lift her the wrong way. She just didn’t like to be in anyone’s arms. It was a while before she’d let Teen Spirit hold her the way he had at the pet store. And frisky, too. When we’d exercise her in the living room she’d scurry about trying out various surfaces: floor, rug, couch.

For the first few years, she led a very active life in her cage. Sometimes it sounded like she was doing gymnastics in there. We used to wonder if she ever slept. At night, she seemed to run from one end of her cage to the other punctuated by an occasional flip. We never saw her sleep.

The secret life of Opal, what she did while we slept was a subject of acute fascination.

We learned to respect her needs, learned to give her what she needed. Over time she became a much calmer rabbit, a Zen rabbit. She spent most of her day drinking water from her water bottle or sharpening her teeth on the metal bars of her cage. Lately, she was much stiller, much more tentative when she left the cage. She’d stay close by almost as if she was waiting to get back in.

It took me a while to bond with Opal. We were "slow to warm" around each other. I think her early hyperactivity put me off. While the rest of the family seemed to think of her as another member of the family, I was always a little more remote. For some reason, I used to refer to her as a he, which drove my kids crazy. "She’s a she," they’d say. "Why do you always call her a he?"

In the last two years, I found myself becoming more attuned to her, even grateful for her presence in our living room. I changed her water frequently and filled her bowl with her food. When we put up a wall in the living room so that Hepcat could have an office/studio in there, Opal’s cage was on the floor opposite the couch like a mantle, the focal point of the room. I stared at her frequently and enjoyed her noble, sometimes serious presence.

Opal and Hepcat had a special relationship. I enjoyed the way she got excited when he came into the room. She would point her face in his direction and wait for him to pet her. I used to joke that I was jealous of their relationship, of their special time together late at night when Hepcat was printing pictures.

Our voices were soft as we lay in bed together talking about Opal. "Do you think she was happy?" I asked Hepcat. "Well, it’s not like I read her blog or anything. But I think she was," he said. I told him how sad and scared I felt. He sighed a lot. I know. I know, he said. "Growing up on a farm you’re probably used to this kind of thing," I said. "You never get used to this kind of thing," he replied.

We discussed what we should do in the morning. "This is going to be really hard," I said. "We should probably have some kind of ceremony. There are going to be a lot of questions," I tried to prepare myself for the anticipated curiosity and fear about mortality, the fragility of life.

I wondered if we should cover the cage with fabric, that would it be too much of a shock for Teen Spirit and OSFO to see Opal lying down. But covered up, it might be even scarier. Better not to hide it, I reasoned. We’ll tell them first and see what they want to do.

"Teen Spirit is going to be very upset," I said. "He’s still sad about Serena."

When Hepcat was on the verge of sleep, I asked one last question. "What should we do with here body?’  He was too sleepy to answer. The question just hung over me in the dark of our small bedroom. No longer sleepy, feeling restless, but fearful of seeing the rabbit laying on her side, I lay beside Hepcat listening to him breathe.

Molly Koon filed this report with NY1:

What the fire left standing, demolition crews brought down. The old
Greenpoint Terminal Market was reduced to a smoldering shell as fire
fighters doused it with water to stamp out the last stubborn flames.
The FDNY says it will be a long operation.

"We still have a lot of free standing walls, a lot of debris that’s
buried, a lot of unstable conditions," said FDNY Chief Edward Killduff.
"We’re going to move very slowly."

The slow demolition process will also slow down the investigation into what or who set the buildings ablaze.

"We have to work our way down Noble Street clearing debris,
clearing off the buildings. When we get down to the scene of the fire,
we’ll probably have to demolish most of that building before they have
access to the actual scene of the fire," said Killduff.

Meanwhile, the community’s anger over the loss of the historic building is red hot.

"It was a tragic loss for Greenpoint," said Ward Dennis of the
Waterfront Preservation Alliance. "This building has been a major
factor in the history of Greenpoint throughout the 20th century."

Before the building went up like matchsticks Tuesday, many in the
community wanted it to get landmark status to retain its late 19th
century historic integrity.

But owner Joshua Guttman had permits to demolish parts of the
structure and had put in applications to destroy the rest– all to make
way for residential and commercial development.
His attorney, Joseph Kosofsky, tells NY1 that his client had the
appropriate permits and were in the process of building the new
development.

This isn’t the first time one of Guttman’s buildings went up in
flames. A property of his on Water Street that he wanted to turn into
luxury housing burned down two years ago after the community board said
it wouldn’t approve the plan. Fire investigators never determined a
cause.

Fire investigators say the flames spread so quickly in Tuesday’s
fire because of all the flammable materials inside, but they would not
confirm reports that they found accelerant had been used in several
spots to get the fire going so intensely.

Guttman’s attorney disputes that his client had anything to do with
the 10-alarm fire, saying, "this doesn’t help us. This hurts us."

– Molly Kroon

At 4:15 on Tuesday, students from the middle and high schools in the old John Jay High School building on Seventh Avenue between 4th and 5th street in Park Slope staged a peaceful and exuberant march against the recent cell phone ban in public high schools.

Handmade signs saying "It’s not just cell phones, it’s racism," "We’re Students and We Have Rights" were held high as the kids walked past dozens of police officers assembled in front of the Miracle Grill on Seventh Avenue.

The kids walked down Third Street right past Chez OTBKB and seemed cheerful but determined to get their message across. Neighbors who were in front of their houses cheered them on and showed their support.

There were quite a few adults in the crowd. When asked where they were going the kids shouted:  "To Livingston Street." 

I assume the Department of Education is located on Livingston Street. The kids are protesting the banning of cell phones. If a student is found to have a cell phone on two occasions, the cell phone is confiscated. The students feel this is an assault on their private property. The schools are conducting random metal detector searches, which according to a high school principal friend of OTBKB, results in a very hostile atmosphere.  They can also confiscate cell phones at will.

The POV of the DOE is this: some kids are using text messaging on cell phones to cheat on texts. Others are using them to call in gang members to arrange fights after school. The woman who shared this information said that the vast majority of kids are not using cell phones for these kinds of activities and they don’t deserve to be penalized for the action of the few. While she agrees that cell phone usage shouldn’t be allowed during the school day, she disagrees that they should be randomly confiscated.

One friend standing in front of OTBKB’s building said, "They are learning democracy first hand. This is democracy in action."

The kids looked excited and bolstered by the support that was shown to them on Third Street.

I can’t imagine what Keith Richards was doing on top of a coconut tree in Fiji. And why did he have to travel immediately afterward by jet ski?

Scouring the news reports, haven’t found a single reason for why he was in the tree in the first place.

As usual, I turned to the very wise and sensible Hepcat who was standing in the kitchen sipping coffee in front of our  non-working new stove. He offered up these possible explanations.

"Oh that’s easy. He was probably telling his companions, ‘Y’know, they used to train monkeys to harvest coconuts by climbing up these trees. Here, let me show you how they did it.’"

Or he was saying to his fellow travellers, ‘Hey, where’s that other island we’re supposed to be going to? I bet I can see it from the top of this palm tree.’

Maybe it went something like: ‘You know my cell phone isn’t working very well, let me climb to the top of this tree. The reception is probably better up there.’

Perhaps it was something simple like, ‘Hey, I can’t find the keys to my jet ski. Do you think I left them in the tree?’"

Hepcat went back to sipping his coffee but still seemed to be formulating new theories.

"How about: ‘I hear they’re worried about this island being flooded if there’s global warming and we’ll all have to learn how to climb trees. Let’s practice now." he said.

Then, Hepcat came up with this one: "Keith, in an effort to emulate Mick Jagger’s new television show, "Let’s Rob Mick Jagger" was shooting a network pilot for a new reality show, "Let’s Get Keith Richards Out of the Tree."

Hepcat, as usual, shed a great deal of light on the situation. But I still wasn’t sure if he’d nailed it. And then I remembered that during their Pacific tour, the Rolling Stones are under strict orders from Mick Jagger to conduct daily Tsunami emergency drills. Maybe that’s what Keith  was doing climbing to the top of the palm tree.

If you, readers of OTBKB, have alternative scenarios to offer please feel free to leave them in the comments. I’m just dying to know.

We’ve been without a stove for almost two weeks. My friend Wendy smelled gas on Easter so I called Keyspan.

Gas Leak!

The Keyspan lady says a mouse ate a hole through some sort of pipe…The stove repairman declares: "this thing can’t be fixed…"

Cut to: A trip to J&R Appliances on Seventh Avenue. I pick out a GE stove with big metal burners. It’s plated with stainless steel and is one cool looking stove.

J&R promises to deliver the stove on Saturday ("It’s air conditioner season, Miss, we’re really booked up").

I get a call on my cell phone while on retreat — "Is anyone home, we want to deliver your stove…" I call from my private room at the lodge. "Deliver the stove! Someone is waiting in the apartment…"

I’d neglected to give them my home number.

I call Keyspan Monday morning to turn the gas back on…"We’ll be there between 8 a.m. and noon on Tuesday…"

So tomorrow’s the day. Tonight was, ostensibly, our last night of take out for a while. We’ve pretty much done it all: pizza, sushi from the fish store, salads, Indian from Kinara, Chinese, Los Politos, Coco Roco, Grand Canyon. Sometimes a combination of places at one meal…

We’ve been around the globe — with take out.

If all goes well, we’ll have some HOME COOKING tomorrow!!! It’s terrible to be without a stove.

Picture by Elezde  That’s not our kitchen.

Blogging is a form of selective voyeurism – a peeking into the window of someone else’s life. A strange and wonderful thing, blogging is great for the exhitionist and the nosy alike.

As someone who LOVES to peek into windows – to see empty rooms, furniture, plants, cats, women staring out – and loves to eavesdrop on the subway, in restaurants, in the park, reading blogs is a great way to satisfy my need to explore the world.

And it’s so much more polite. No craning my neck to see, no staring, no opening of medicine cabinet doors, or peeking at a diary left open on a chair.

So when I saw that Callalillie and Lex had a pre-wedding parade in Red Hook complete with a marching band and costumed friends, I studied their photos with fascination. But that’s okay, right? They put it out there for me (and many others) to see. So I looked…

A lovely celebration it was. Congratulations to the obviously happy couple.

Teen Spirit said he wanted a buritto for dinner so I said I’d stop at Rachel’s Taqueria on Fifth Avenue…CLOSED IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE MARCH…said the sign on the door. Of course, I thought, that makes sense. I’ll get him his buritto at Mezcals…CLOSED…no sign on the door but it was pretty obvious.

"You picked the wrong day for Mexican food," I told Teen Spirit on the cell phone. "It’s a day without Immigrants and you won’t be able to get a buritto," I said. "How about California Taqueria?" he said. "That’s gonna be closed, too."

No burittos today, Teen Spirit. No burittos. (Photo by e-liz).

Monday was called "A Day Without Immigrants," as undocumented workers nationwide were urged to boycott work, school, and shopping as part of a nationwide protest of legislation passed in Congress that would make being an illegal immigrant a felony.

Instead of heading to work, thousands of people lined the streets of Jackson Heights, Queens, as well as other points all across the five boroughs.

Protestors locked arms, forming human chains at 12:16 p.m., symbolizing December 16, 2005, the when the U.S. House of Representatives voted for the bill.

Hundreds of protestors also gathered in Battery Park and lined the sidewalks, forming their own human chain.

"I’m a public school teacher and I took off today because most of my students, 90 percent are immigrants. They’re parents are illegal, and I’m here with my daughter and she also took off and we’re here to represent the community, which is very concerned about this people," said one protestor.

"I am here because I want to support my community. I have most of my family here so why not," added another.

"All over the world there are Americans, Latin America, the coffee shops, Sears, JCPenney, Wal-Mart. It’s OK for them to go and get very wealthy over there, oh but God forbid somebody crosses the border to pick up some onions," said a third.

While many protestors might face consequences for skipping work and school, they say that’s not nearly as important as the message they are trying to get across.

"I know I’m going to lose my money today, but it’s really not important, it doesn’t mean anything for me," said a protestor. "I think this is a very, very important thing and we all have to work together and we have to do something about this."

—New York 1

Today, immigrant workers will form a human chain at 12:16 p.m. from Little Italy to Union Square to  commemorate December 16th, 2005, when Congress passed a bill that
seeks to make illegal immigrants felons. This from New York 1:

Immigrant activists across the nation and in New York City are gearing
up for a boycott called "A Day Without Immigrants" tomorrow to display
the importance of immigrant workers to the U.S. economy.

Protest organizers are asking immigrants across the country to skip work, school, and even shopping Monday.

Others say if they have to work, they’ll ask for time to attend a protest or wear a white T-shirt as a show of support.

"I think this is just a start, to show the government, to show U.S.
corporations that we are important, that we are the base of the
economy, and this government needs to support that base,” Javier
Gallardo of the Latin American Workers Project said at a press
conference Friday.

Organizers say they will march from Little Italy to Union Square.
Another group says it will form a human chain at 12:16 in the afternoon
to commemorate December 16th, 2005, when Congress passed a bill that
seeks to make illegal immigrants felons.

Again, thanks to my friend Adam who reads Toronto
newspapers and sites on-line. He sent me this interesting remembrance
of Jane Jacobs from Saturday’s Toronto Globe.    I LOVE THIS STORY – even if it wasn’t about JANE JACOBS.

When urban guru Jane Jacobs passed away this week, much was made of her grand vision. But CATHERINE GILDINER remembers her kindness most of all

It was May in 1981. I had just given birth to the largest identical twins ever born at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital the previous month.

I already had a two-year-old at home. Well, home was a stretch. We lived above a store three doors south of Honest Ed’s on Bathurst Street. My husband and I were students at the time. In order to pay the rent, he had gone to Inuvik to earn isolation pay.

The twins cried all night every night for the first month of their life and my two-year-old son was unhappy with the new additions to the family. Finally one night, no longer able to take the crying any more, I put the two babies in a carriage and balanced the third on the handle, (this was obviously before safety had been invented) and headed to the park at 5:30 in the morning.

When I arrived, no one was there except for one woman reading a book. She was in her 50s or 60s. The babies were screaming, both wanting to be fed, but I could feed only one at a time. The lady didn’t say anything — she never asked if I needed help. She could probably tell I was the type who would have said no. She just took one of the babies and walked around with him until he stopped crying. This gave me the chance to feed the other in the first experience of peace I’d had in days. I remember the velvet sound of that silence.

For some unknown reason, my two-year-old, Jamey, travelled everywhere with a stack of hockey cards. Some kids had a teddy bear or a blanket. He had hockey cards. He looked at them all the time and shuffled the deck in some meaningful way.

He was angry that I could pay so little attention to him. I couldn’t push him on the swing. I could barely focus on him at all since the twins were only a few weeks old. He began screaming about his hockey cards and how I didn’t care about them. (What a mind reader.)

The woman picked up the cards and began reading all the statistics about each player. My son sat in rapt attention. She asked him all kinds of questions. Things I could never have come up with such as "Why with that many assists did Bryan Trottier have so few goals?"

Jamey would make up elaborate answers to these questions and smiled for the first time since I’d brought home the twins. She had paid attention to the hockey cards as though they were important and really tried to understand them. My son picked up on her sincerity and her engagement.

As the woman and I sat on the park bench, we watched the sun come up and all the children were content. We heard the first birds of spring and saw the dew on the still-closed daffodils as they shone as yellow fists in the new sunlight.

As she spoke, I picked up a New York accent and she picked up my Buffalo one. She said we were lucky we could both walk only a block to a park in our neighbourhood and could help each other out. She said she’d been a mother too. She said knew how hard it was to be locked in an apartment alone. My eyes filled with tears as I said that I never needed help more than I had needed it that day. I held Sam; she held Dave; and Jamey lined up all of his hockey cards in order. All felt calm in the world.

About a year later, I was walking down Bloor Street. The twins were now in a double stroller, Jamey was perched on my husband’s shoulders and I saw the woman who had helped me on the opposite side of the street. I pointed her out and my husband said, "That is Jane Jacobs. She is probably the most famous city planner that ever lived."

Continue reading THE GRAND DAME OF URBAN PLANNING WAS A NICE LADY, TOO →

Last week, Callalillie and Lexi found a pile of negatives, postcards and other memorabilia on the streets of Red Hook that belonged to an unknown man named Arthur. She has begun a magical mystery tour of sorts trying to figure out who this man was. I wonder what will they find? Wouldn’t it be incredible if someone discovered these photographs on-line and could identify the people pictured in them?

For the first time, Photoshop has really felt like a darkroom. I
have been scanning negatives like a fiend, trying to piece together a
puzzle of images. We’re never quite sure what scene might appear when I
hit "invert" or pull the levels, revealing a ghostly outline, when a
figure or a tree. Even when the photograph emerges, I am unsure of what
I am seeing.

Who were you, Arthur, and how in the world did these fractions of your life wind up beneath my scanner bed?