My cousin Meg Fidler executive director of the Petra Foundation, an organization dedicated to "unsung individuals who are making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy, and dignity of others" sent me information about The Desk Set, a group co-founded by St. Ann’s librarian Maria Falgoust. They are leading an effort to donate books to the A. P. Tureaud Elementary in New Orleans, which was damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Here’s some info from their MySpace page:

The Desk Set is an informal group of librarians, archivists, library science students, and other individuals who love books. The Desk Set gatherings usually entail meeting up at bars in Greenpoint or Williamsburg; and sometimes we go on field trips, have picnics, or book swaps.

We created our profile using nUCLEArcENTURy.COM, and you should too!
Who I’d like to meet:

Librarians (all kinds!), book lovers, writers, illustrators, archivists, publishers, artists, bibliophiles, and people who heart librarians!

An article in School Library Journal had this to say about The Desk Set’s good works.

Located in the 7th Ward, an area devastated by the 2005 hurricanes, A. P. Tureaud is across the street from still-vacant homes and a burned-out church just a few doors down. "Like many neighborhoods throughout the city, the neighborhood is still obviously struggling," says Falgoust, who posted a message on the Desk Set mailing list, as well as several online library school bulletin boards, urging colleagues and friends to purchase books for the school from a wish list she created on Amazon.com

It didn’t take long for the word to spread—and in no time, people from as far away as Vancouver, British Columbia, Vermont, California, and Michigan started buying items on the list. The list, put together by teachers at A. P. Tureaud, consists mostly of multicultural books such as I Love My Hair! (Little, Brown 2001) by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley and illustrated by E. B. Lewis; The Skin I’m in (Jump at the Sun, 1999) by Sharon Flake; and Black and White (Houghton, 1990) by David Macaulay.

The response was "so big and generous that I had to add a bunch of similar books to the wish-list so we could have enough for people to purchase," says Falgoust, a librarian at Saint Ann ‘s School in Brooklyn , NY , where one parent donated more than $300 worth of Barnes & Noble gift cards. And rather than buy Christmas presents this year, Falgoust’s colleague at Saint Ann ‘s, Sarah Mente, and her family decided to donate books in each other’s names.

Until this morning, piles of books were sitting on Bill and Donna Falgoust’s kitchen table awaiting delivery. "My parents’ mail carrier was a bit annoyed to be hauling so many boxes," Falgoust laughs.

This isn’t the first time that the Desk Set—named after the 1957 romantic comedy starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy—has done a good deed. The group, made up of hipster New York librarians, publishers, and archivists in their 20s and 30s, has held book drives for Books Through Bars, which sends books to prisoners all over the country. And Falgoust personally organized a huge benefit for New Orleans—complete with a raffle, T-shirts, and a dinner at Enid’s, a restaurant in Brooklyn where she waitresses part-time. The proceeds raised $8,000 for the nonprofit aid groups Habitat for Humanity and Common Ground in New Orleans .

I guess we all knew it was coming. If you’re picked as the Newspaper of the Year it goes to reason that the editor will be picked as Editor of the Year.

And that’s what happened. The Suburban Newspaper Association’s Newspaper of the Year award went to the Brooklyn Paper and now the honors of Editor of the Year go to our man Gersh, who is so deserves this distinction.

Congratulations, Gersh. You’re one heck of an editor! And the work you’ve done at the Brooklyn Paper is something to be proud of. Here’s an excerpt from the award winning Brooklyn Paper.

The Suburban Newspapers of America, which represents nearly 2,400
daily and weekly newspapers in both urban and suburban markets, cited
Kuntzman as the country’s top weekly editor for providing the “most
focused and sharply written coverage” and for “good exploratory stories
and graphics.”

On hearing the news, Kuntzman, 42, was atypically humble.

“An editor doesn’t win awards like this alone,” he told The Paper’s
staff, which had gathered in the newsroom. “The only reason I was even
nominated is because of the amazing work everyone here is doing. Now,
get back to work.”

.

The Brooklyn Paper has more details about the Sunday night incident, where a 30-year-old emotionally disturbed man terrorized members of his family in a 9th Street brownstone between 7th and 8th Avenues.

Officers from the Emergency Services Unit took up a tactical position on Ninth Street, and the suspect fired off two rounds from the shotgun, though it is unclear if he was firing at the officers.

At that point, cops set up an inner and outer perimeter and called in the hostage negotiation team.

After eight hours of negotiations, the suspect finally surrendered and was taken to Kings County Hospital for a psych evaluation, cops said.

Con-don’ts near the Brooklyn House of Detention: It ain’t happening. (NY Daily News)

Middle school in House of Detention?(Brooklyn Paper)

Suspended construction platform mishap in Bay Ridge (Right in Bay Ridge)

City Council: Recycle cell phones and other electronic gadgets! (NY Metro)

Last days to register for February 5th primary (NY 1)

The Not-So Livable Streets of Chennai, India (Seeing Green)

As reported on OTBKB: one of the muggers from Sunday night’s mugging was arrested when he was identified by the victim in Prospect Park that night. Today Gowanus Lounge reports that the perpetrators of the other incidents in a rash of recent muggings may still be at large.

An email via Park Slope Parents says that a 78th Precinct Detective says the case is still “open.” The email goes on to say that “from what I’ve heard it’s not yet a done deal.” In the meantime, the latest crime statistics from the 78th Precinct actually show only one reported robbery from December 31-January 6. There were 17 during the last 28 days, which is one more than during the same period a year ago

.

An OTBKB reader wants to know:

I told her that I like the one on Sixth Avenue at 5th Street which was immortalized by Mo Willems in his book, the Knuffle Bunny.

Book Description: Trixie steps lively as she goes on an errand with her daddy, down the block, through the park, past the school, to the Laundromat. For the toddler, loading and putting money into the machine invoke wide-eyed pleasure. But, on the return home, she realizes something. Readers will know immediately that her stuffed bunny has been left behind but try as she might, (in hilarious gibberish), she cannot get her father to understand her problem. Despite his plea of “please don’t get fussy,” she gives it her all, bawling and going “boneless.” They both arrive home unhappy. Mom immediately sees that “Knuffle Bunny” is missing and so it’s back to the Laundromat they go. After several tries, dad finds the toy among the wet laundry and reclaims hero status. Yet, this is not simply a lost-and-found tale. The toddler exuberantly exclaims, “Knuffle Bunny!!!” “And those were the first words Trixie ever said.”

Any other suggestions?

Much improved. Much improved. That’s all I can say.

The new PSCC web site has a clean, contemporary web-site look. It’s easy to read, easy to navigate. Well-organized, nicely written. There are nice photographs, too.

Their old web site was seriously insufficient. It’s good that they recognized the power of the web as a way to communicate the vitality of who they are. Indeed, the web is a great way for non-profits and community organizations to communicate what they’re about, disseminate information and brand themselves.

Good work PSCC. Sub-sections include: Who We Are, Nurturing Community, Speaking Up, Grants, Civic News…

Some of the information seems a little buried to me.

It’s in the Speaking Up section where you can read about PSCC’s community based activism: Buy in Brooklyn, Whole Foods, the Atlantic Yards Project, historic district expansion, Grand Army Plaza Coalition, Congestion Pricing.

It’s in the Nurturing Community section that you can read about the House Tours, the Halloween Parade. Seems like there should be reference to these things on the home page.

It could be in the writing. Something like: “From the folks who bring you the Halloween Parade, the House Tours, the yellow umbrellas, etc.” Each item could have a hyper-link.

There’s a whole page about the Buy in Brooklyn initiative. Hey they even mention and link to OTBKB.

This from the New York Times:

The City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill requiring large stores and retail chains to collect and recycle plastic bags they give to shoppers. New York is by far the largest American city to enact so broad a measure to limit the environmental impact of the bags. Altogether, each year the country is estimated to use 86 billion bags, which end up blowing down city streets, or tangled in the stomachs of whales and sea turtles, or buried in landfills where, environmental organizations say, they persist for as long as 1,000 years.

…under the new bill, which had a surprising amount of support from retailers and plastic-bag manufacturers, stores that give the bags to customers must provide recycling bins for the bags in a prominent place in the store. The legislation applies to stores of 5,000 square feet or larger, as well as all branches of chains with more than five locations in the city.

This Saturday from 10 am until noon, the Old Stone House invites you to help develop the concept for the park. They are asking community members to participate in a facilitated session to discuss conceptual plans for renovating the 5th Avenue aspect of JJ Byrne Park.

Don’t you love the smell of mulch in the morning? I love that evergreen smell when I’m running the Prospect Park loop.

Today felt like Spring, a perfect day to run. And the mulch. Oh the mulch.

Marty’s wife thinks he’s gonna run (NY Daily News)

Thanks for sweeping up the garbage. It was GROSS! (Brooklyn Junction)

Another hearing about Coney Island’s future (NY 1)

Extensive reporting on Coney Island hearing (Kinetic Carnival)

This much is CLEAR in Coney Island (Gowanus Lounge)

Wednesday at 7:30 : Brooklyn Was Mine Reading at Slope Barnes and Noble (Brooklyn Based)

How to make the best hot chocolate (Eat, Drink, Memory)

A Successful Weekend of Reuse and Recycling here in Brooklyn (Sustainable Flatbush)

Trouble at Long Island College Hospital? (McBrooklyn)

Looking for a totally civilized, inspiring, and entertaining thing to do next Sunday afternoon? Check this out. I just got this email about event at the Brooklyn Public Library on January 13th at 4 p.m.

Peter Weitzner, is curating a Chamber Music series at the
Brooklyn Public Library’s new auditorium. If you haven’t been there
yet, it’s a great space that’s still Park Slope’s best kept
secret. The programs being offered are pretty impressive. Jonathan
Lethem was there a couple of weeks ago. Russell Banks will be there
on Feb. 1 and there is a complete roster of really great music
happening every weekend.

The first concert in Peter’s series will be next Sunday, January 13
at 4 p.m. It will be a concert of flute and harpsichord music with
artists Susan Rotholz (flute) and Kenneth Cooper (harpsichord), both
world renowned musicians who always have great rapport with their
audiences.

What a great idea Crazy Stable has come up with. Her new blog is called Prospect: A Year in the Park. I am looking forward to reading!

Here’s the deal: I hereby commit to walking or cycling in Brooklyn’s magnificent Prospect Park every day for a year, with as few exceptions as humanly possible, and then showing or telling you at least one cool thing I encountered, through this new blog.

Yeah, so what’s the big deal? Lots of people go to the park every day, right? But I don’t. I look at it outside my windows, and then I slink around my big ol’ house, screen-suck at my computer for work or play, take naps, overeat, watch TV, garden, or chug around Brooklyn in the car doing errands. The few times I visit this pastoral treasure on my doorstep, I enter a sort of urban Narnia where just about anything can happen, even the lifting of anxiety and depression, my little demons. And I swear I will come more often (and, being already a bloggeuse, will tell the world of its wonders)–and then I skulk back inside, for more months of turpitude. An entire life could easily pass this way.

Care Bears on Fire — Park Slope’s leading kid core band, they’re hotter than hot with a new album and a growing following.

And hear The Mighty Handful, Henry Crawford’s cool new band. This is what Jack G. and Henry have been up to since Cool and Unusual broke up.

2 p.m. Saturday. Union Hall. Should be a really great show. See you there.

Union Hall
702 Union Street @ 5th Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718.638.4400

I got this email this morning from a reader of OTBKB.

My wife, daughters and I have been Park Slopers for several years and
are
dedicated to the neighborhood and the community.

My wife was mugged around 8pm on New Year’s Day on 8th Ave and 2nd
Street by
two hooded men. They followed her, held her and grabbed her purse.  She
was
physically unharmed, but very upset and feels deeply violated. It was
very
traumatic for our daughters to see their mother as upset as she was.

The police responded quickly and during the investigation said that
this
has been going on regularly in the neighborhood. It has happened
several
times in the last week and the M.O. is always the same. Two or three
men
with hoods pulled way over their faces or scarves covering them,
sometimes
with knives, after dark, looming in the shadows – especially on 8th Ave
or
PPW. They have chosen their location, they have decided on a method and
most
disturbingly they have picked their victim: women walking by themselves
after dark.

I wondered if you could help inform the community about this to help
avoid
any more women being mugged and violated in this neighborhood so loved
for
it’s safety and civility. In print, on line and/or as e-mail, anything
and
everything that spreads the word in the community would be a help.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb about Brooklyn Was Mine, a collection of nonfiction pieces by celebrated authors. The book is in stores NOW. Some proceeds go to Develop Don’t Destroy.

Of all the urban landscapes in America, perhaps none has so thoroughly infused and nurtured modern literature as Brooklyn. Though its literary history runs deep-Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer are just a few of its storied inhabitants-in recent years the borough has seen a growing concentration of bestselling novelists, memoirists, poets, and journalists. It has become what Greenwich Village once was for an earlier generation: a wellspring of inspiration and artistic expression.

Brooklyn Was Mine gives some of today’s best writers an opportunity to pay tribute to the borough they love in 20 original essays that draw on past and present to create a mosaic that brilliantly captures the quality and diversity of a unique, literary landscape.

Contributors include: Emily Barton, Susan Choi, Rachel Cline, Philip Dray, Jennifer Egan, Colin Harrison, Joanna Hershon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, Elizabeth Gaffney, Lara Vapnyar, Lawrence Osborne, Katie Roiphe, John Burnham Schwartz, Vijay Seshadri, Darcey Steinke, Darin Strauss, Alexandra Styron, Robert Sullivan, Michael Thomas

About the editors:
Chris Knutsen, a senior editor at Vogue who’s also worked at GQ, The New Yorker, and Riverhead Books, is the co-editor of Committed: Men Tell Their Stories of Love, Commitment, and Marriage.

Valerie Steiker, author of The Leopard Hat, is a senior editor at Vogue and has worked at Artforum and The New Yorker

BROOKLYN WAS MINE
Edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker
Riverhead Trade Paperback Original; January 2, 2008
978-1-59448-282-3; $15.00

Two Readings are coming up:

JANUARY 9, 7:30 PM
Park Slope Barnes and Noble (267 7th Avenue at 6th Street)
Authors:
Jennifer Egan
Susan Choi
Darin Strauss

JANUARY 15, 7:00 PM
BookCourt (163 Court Street near Pacific Street)
Authors:
Emily Barton
Darcey Steinke
Alexandra Styron

Last night, our upstair’s neighbor asked us where we get our guitars fixed. For his benefit, here is a list of two places sort of nearby where he can take his guitar.

Mazzotti Music is the first and only female-operated full service music store in all of New York City!

Here’s their blurb: “Mazzotti Music deals in fairly-priced used and vintage gear, expert full service and on-site repairs, guitar and bass lessons for all experience levels from professional musicians, consignments, buying/trading, and an inviting no-hassle atmosphere!”

284 Third Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-715-1420

Jalopy

Jalopy provides repair service for banjo, basses, guitars, ukuleles, and whatever you bring in. From a quick set up to a fret job, they can fix any of your instrument troubles.
Jalopy
315 Columbia Street
Brooklyn, NY

READING: January 17th at 8 p.m. A reading of SIDE STREET, a new play by Rosemary Moore. It’s a really interesting play about a woman who discovers that her dead mother has been living in a studio apartment on the Upper East Side for 30 years. And she’s still the same age she was when she died. The mother and daughter, both 45, spend an interesting day together.

WORKSHOP: Saturday, January 12th from 10 am until 5 p.m. Regina McBride, author of The Nature of Water and Air and The Marriage Bed, leads one of her INNER LIVES, DEVELOPING CHARACTERS intensive workshops for writers at all levels. A great day of writing, a great way to get in touch with a character you want to write about. For more information email Regina at: nightsea21@nyc.rr.com

READING: January 31st at 8 p.m. WORD GIRLS. A reading by four poets published by Word Tech. Barbara Crooker, Erin Murphy, Kim Garcia, Meredith Davies Hadaway

For more information about both readings go to Brooklyn Reading Works

The Old Stone House
Fifth Avenue and 3rd Street in Park Slope. For information and directions go here.

The Mulchfest in Prospect Park needs volunteers.
Saturday, January 5 & Sunday, January 6
10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

At this annual event, community members bring their holiday trees to
one of
two locations in the Park to be recycled into mulch.  The trees are
passed
through a wood chipper, creating mulch which is used in the Park as
well as
distributed to the public free of charge.

Volunteers assist by:

*        Assisting Park staff as they drive around collecting discarded
holiday trees

*        Removing decorations from trees and wreaths

*        Unloading trees from trucks in preparation for chipping

*        Spreading mulch in designated locations in the Park

*        Distributing free mulch to the public

*        Staffing the information table

Mulchfest takes place at:

*        Park Circle entrance at Parkside Avenue & Prospect Park
Southwest 

(Accessible by F train to Fort Hamilton Parkway)

*        Third Street entrance at Third Street & Prospect Park West 

(Accessible by F train to 9th Street or 2, 3 train to Grand Army Plaza)

To volunteer or for more information

call (718) 965-8960 or email  <mailto:volunteers@prospectpark.org>
volunteers@prospectpark.org.

Like every year there are things to like and things not to like. Especially as you get older, stuff happens. People get sick. People die. There are personal and professional disappointments, as well as terrible world events (war in Iraq, Virginia Tech massacre, Benazir Bhutto’s assasination, the monks in Myanmar, wild fires…)

Life can be scary and sad.

Luckily there are always a few things to remember that make you feel good about things, our community and the world we live in. Ever since I started this blog, I make this list. Here’s 2004, 2005, and 2006.

–Wonderful family and friends

–OSFO’s new piano

–Trip to Opera Boston to hear Amy Burton in Mahagonny

—Writers at the Beach in Rehoboth, Maryland

—The Brooklyn Blogfest (and the subsequent Brooklyn Blogade)

—Weight Watchers meetings at the Montauk Club

–The planning of and the actual  Stoopendous Celebration on the summer solstice

—Cracker Barrel 2.0 by Greg Beyer in the New York Times

–Two weeks on Block Island at the Sea Breeze

–Dinners with The Moms

–Teens for Darfur at the Old Stone House

–Sag Harbor

–Louis and Capathia at the Metropolitan Room

–August in Tracy, California

-_Ducky’s 3rd birthday party

–Weekly meditation with Charlotte

—Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House

—Institute for Collaborative Education

–The nice doctors and nurses at Mt. Sinai Hospital

–Teen Spirit at the Bowery Poetry Club

—Tupelo Press

—The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ratatouille, Once, the Hoax, Across the Universe…

–Running the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving

–More nice doctors and nurses at Mt. Sinai Hospital

–Shopping for Teen Spirit’s ukulele at Rudy’s Music Stop with Groovy Grandpa

–Buying a beautiful vintage 4-string banjo at Jalopy

–Returning the banjo at Jalopy (wrong kind of banjo)

—Fun Run on New Year’s Eve in Prospect Park (planned)

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.

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.

   

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."

Green Brooklyn has  a great list of places where you can donate your money, including the FIfth Avenue Committee, Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, and more.

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.”

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.

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…)

Park Slope Parents posted some great holiday activities to know about for Sunday, December 23, 2007:

Prospect Park. Ice Skating at Wollman Rink

Grand Central Holiday Train Show

The Station At Citigroup Center

Christmas Trees For Sale By Local Boy Scouts in JJ Byrne Park

Prospect Park – Lefferts Historic House Quilt Exhibit & Workshops
&
More!

The Red Balloon & White Main At BAM: 1 p.m. daily.

Prospect Park Audubon Center – Discover Tours

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…’”