On February 5 at 7:30 p.m.  I will be introducing Park Slope's Beth Harpaz at her Park Slope Barnes and Noble reading of  13 Is the New 18 … and other things my children taught me while I was having a nervous breakdown being their mother.  (Published by Crown; available Jan. 27 from booksellers)

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7NduwSTiY

They did it last year and the Brooklyn Library's Dweck Center is doing it again starting on February 7.

It's the free literary discussion series “Cosmopolis: Immigrant
Writers in New York." Three authors join WNYC talk show host Leonard Lopate at the
Brooklyn Public Library for a reading and dialogue about their work.

Let's just take a moment to recognize the great programming at the newish Stevan Dweck Center.

Moment. Sigh. Okay. Here's the lineup for the Cosmopolis series:

Colum McCann, Irish-American author of the novel Zoli
will appear on February 7, 2009 (Saturday) at 4pm

·        
Widely
hailed for its “pitch-perfect control of character and narrative,”
McCann's fourth novel is based loosely on the true story of Gypsy poet Papusza,
who was orphaned by in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia but learned to read and write,
eventually becoming an acclaimed singer and a poet. (Zoli  is
available in paperback from Random House.)

  Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winner and
Australian-American author of His Illegal Self will appear on
March 7, 2009 (Saturday) at 4pm

·        
Set
during the U.S. protest movements of the 60’s and ‘70s, Peter
Carey’s portrait of “the relationship between one benighted woman
and the child who depends on her is exquisite,” said the New York
Times. (His Illegal Self is available in hardcover from Alfred A. Knopf.)

  Lucette Lagnado, Egyptian-American author of The
Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the
New World will appear on April 4, 2009 (Saturday) at 4pm:

·        
Wall St. Journal investigative reporter Lucette Lagnado
“gives us a deeply affecting portrait of her family and its journey from
wartime Cairo to the New World…[conjuring] a vanished world with elegiac
ardor and uncommon grace.” said the New York Times. (The Man in
the Sharkskin Suit is available in paperback from Ecco.)

Each event is open to the general public and tickets are
free.

Each event will take place at the Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Center
for Contemporary Culture, located at the Brooklyn Public Library’s
Central Library, at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn (#2 or #3 train to Eastern
Parkway/Brooklyn Museum).

In keeping with campaign pledges and these eloquent words in his inaugural speech:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety
and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely
imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man,
a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the
world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders directing the CIA to shut Guantanamo within a year.

This is President Obama's first step in REVERSING the policies of Bush. It will require an immediate review of the 245 detainees there to see if they should be  transferred, released or prosecuted.

From Brooklyn Based, an interview with Richar Eagan, an artist who uses Coney Island as both a subject and a material. He currently has a show at Park Slope's 440 Gallery.

His artwork often references Coney Island, the fetishized,
nostalgia-steeped, and now culturally threatened seaside amusement
space not far from his lifelong home. It was under the canopy of
rainbow-tinged metal limbs that Eagan vacationed with his grandfather
as a young boy, partied with his peers as a young man, became involved
in the artistic community and co-founded the Coney Island Hysterical
Society, a group of 12 artists who resuscitated rides and infused
sideshow attractions with art.

The Where and When

Richard Egan

Show open through February 15

440 Gallery

440 6th Avenue

Park Slope

Quite a day already. Caroline Kennedy asked the Gov to take her off the short list of senate contenders for Hillary seat citing personal reasons (Uncle Ted?).

Today is the anniversary of Roe Vs. Wade and there's talk that President Obama will reverse Bush's gag rule, conscience rule and stem cell funding halt!

Later this morning: the Oscar nominations will be announced with loads of buzz about Slumdog Millionaire and Milk  for Best Picture; Kate Winslet vs. Anne Hathaway; and…

Here is the occasional feature from the Center for the Urban Environment (CUE).
In this submission, Fronsy Thurman takes a close look at the history of local
favorite, the Newtown Pippin.

Every Saturday, I make the 20 block trek to our neighborhood farmers
market. Each week is an adventure, depending on what is in season. Lately, on
the walk over, we have been talking apples. My friends adore the Honeycrisp
– a tasty apple with a sweet, almost banana-like flavor, which has become
wildly popular among farmers market shoppers and beyond. I, however, preferring
a good story with my fruit, pledge allegiance to the New York’s own,
Newtown Pippin

The Newtown Pippin originated as a random
seedling, or “pippin” (not a grafted tree) along the swampy banks
of Newtown Creek in the early eighteenth century—along what is now one of
the most polluted waterways in North America. The apples were first picked in
1730 on Gershom Moore’s Newtown farm, right on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
Decades of excessive cutting exhausted the original tree, which reputedly died
in 1805, but its legacy was just beginning.

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson cultivated
the Newtown Pippin. While in Paris, Jefferson wrote to James Madison,
“They have no apple here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.”
Benjamin Franklin imported barrels of them during a stay in London. In 1838, an
American ambassador’s gift of Pippins to Queen Victoria caused such a stir
at the palace that the Queen lifted the tariff on pippin apples. The Newtown
Pippin made its way down to Virginia in the mid 1700s, where the climate and
black loam of the Blue Ridge produced an outstanding apple. It was here that
the apple acquired its other alias, the Albemarle Pippin, named for Albemarle County,
where the first cuttings were distributed. In the 1970s and 80s, retail chains
consolidated and cut back on apple varieties. After many decades of huge
popularity, the Newtown Pippin was eclipsed by more ubiquitous but arguably
blander Granny Smith

Now for the good part: The New town Pippin is a
compact, light green apple with russeted skin. Russeting is a type of apple
skin which is slightly rough with a green-brown to yellow-brown color. The
flavor is complex, nutty and tart, requiring storage to develop properly. It is
one of the best storing apples, reaching its peak of flavor around January or
February

One hundred years ago, several thousand varieties of
apples were being cultivated. Most commercial apples nowadays come from same
five or six parents, including Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonathan, and
McIntosh. The Newtown Pippin is an American heirloom with a rich history and lovely
taste. If you find yourself with the midwinter blues, go down to your local
farmers market and explore the apples, which are as diverse as the city itself

Image source: www.forgotten-ny.com; content
source: David Karp, “It’s Crunch Time for the Venerable
Pippin,” New York Times, October 15, 2008 and http://www.twinleaf.org/articles/pippin.ht

As a
guide to a more sustainable New York City, CUE  is dedicated to educating
individuals about the built and natural environments. For more about our work
visit www.thecue.org.

My Inauguration Day started with texts from my friend Betsy who was in Washington. It was fun to post them as soon as she sent them and it made me feel connected to the crowds in DC.

As the day progressed friends texted and emailed their feelings about the day and it was a pleasure to put them on the blog as well.

We watched the swearing-in and the speech in our living room. My daughter stayed home from school and we broke out the champagne even before Joe Biden took the oath of office.

We poured so much champagne I was tipsy by the time Barack Obama uttered the words, "My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you
have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors…"

Being tipsy didn't stop me from appreciating every word of Obama's well-crafted, brilliant, historically resonant, sobering and at times quite lyrical speech.

By the time he uttered the words:

I was like:  Yes, yes we can have a brilliant and articulate president who understands history, the severity of the situation our country is in, and has a clear vision of what needs to happen.

We toasted, we touched champagne glasses, we cried and we smiled. It was beautiful time in our Third Street living room.

I took to the streets to take the pulse of Seventh Avenue and all was quiet:

–The citizens were in their apartments glued to their television screens

–or at work watching in conference rooms, on the streets of the city, anywhere there was a screen.

— The students of PS 321 vacated the school and were at the homes of classmates watching TV and having lunch.

— Many Slopers were in Washington, DC.

–Some had ventured to BAM where two screening rooms were showing the speech.

I dropped into the Community Bookstore where a crowd gathered to watch streaming video of the ceremony in the back of the store. There was emotion and food a-plenty, wine and champagne flowing…

Back at the apartment, my tipsiness turned to tiredness and I took to my warm bed and slept until I was awakened by the raucous sounds of the inaugural parade on the TV. Luckily I caught sight of Brooklyn's Steppers Marching Band marching down Pennsylvania Avenue…

To be continued….

.

 Looking for something to do in the days after the inauguration? Brooklyn Based's Tip Sheet is always a great place to start. In addition to the above, I noticed this:

At sundown on Inaugrual Day I was still receiving texts, emails, and pictures from friends. At 7 p.m. I took to the streets of Seventh Avenue to take the pulse.

At Miracle Grill there was a Move On party that was packed with people eating, drinking and talking enthusiastically. I did a quick scan to see if I knew anyone and walked out — it was too noisy to hear myself think or even do much eavesdropping.

A middles-aged man in an overcoat, holding a book called 300 Ways to Have Fun and a briefcase stopped me on my way out.

"Leaving so soon?"  he said. "I'm from out of town and I hear there's a party of progressives in there."

"That's right," I said and kept walking.

"Would you like to join me for a drink? I worked on the Obama campaign.. ". .

Out of curiosity, I walked back in and we chatted a bit. He handed me his card and told me he worked on efforts to prevent voter fraud, that he'd just moved to NYC from the Bay area, that he'd actually written that book,"300 Ways to Have Fun."

"I'm off to the Community Bookstore. Have a good night," I said and we shook hands.

A small group was still in the back of the Community Bookstore watching  streaming video of CNN coverage of the day when I got there. Catherine, owner of the bookstore, had the idea that the group should read Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln and she ran to the shelves to find some books. Someone suggested Frederick Douglas and she located a book of his essays, too.

A passage of Frederick Douglass' writing was randomly selected and it was miraculous for its pertinence and power. A vibrant discussion followed about the meaning of the day. The group talked about an article in the New York Times about Obama's reading habits.

"It's incredible to have a president who reads Doris Lessing," someone said.

Champagne was poured, people nibbled on what was left at the food table. When Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6, arrived, Catherine was standing on a chair reading the Declaration of Independence in her soft girlish voice.

The group quietly chanted along with the familiar parts. She read for more than ten minutes and it seemed like exactly the right thing to be doing on this inaugural night. As I left the store Catherine ran over to give me a big hug and whispered something about it being a new day.

"Keep on doing your good work," I said as I walked out into the night.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the
faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation
relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break,
the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a
friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is
the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but
also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides
our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may
be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and
honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and
patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have
been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is
demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now
is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every
American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world,
duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm
in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so
defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

From friend and OTBKB reader Mary Sternbach: