This from Metro NYC

Flight delays at the region’s three major airports outpaced those in the rest of the nation, hurting the city’s economic competitiveness, said a report released yesterday by Comptroller William Thompson.
If the trend is not reversed, Thompson warned, the airports might be forced to impose flight caps or implement a congestion-pricing charge, with landing fees based on the time of day.

“The situation is urgent,” he said. “The much larger declines in on-time performance could discourage employers from locating new jobs and facilities in New York and lead some firms to relocate jobs elsewhere.

This from New York 1:

Brooklyn row house that may have been a stop on the famous Underground Railroad will escape demolition, although other homes may still be torn down.

Following community pressure and a lawsuit this past summer, the city agreed Saturday not to use eminent domain to condemn a house on Duffield Street.

The house was slated to come down as part of the massive Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan, but some preservationists argued the home was a stop for slaves escaping the South before the Civil War. The fate of six other nearby homes has yet to be decided

Both events are at the Community Bookstore. Seventh Avenue between Carroll and President in Park Slope.

Thursday, December 6th @ 8:00 p.m.
Book release party for Jezra Kaye’s new book of poetry, Kicking: Love Poems.
Kicking: Love Poems was 40 years in the making. From 1960s communes to 1980s corporations to the wilds of contemporary, middle-aged marriage, these fresh, poignant poems chronicle one woman’s grapple with the ever-changing face of love.

Please join communication/ speaker coach Jezra Kaye for a party and reading to celebrate the release of her book Kicking: Love Poems.

Friday, December 7th @ 7:30 p.m.
Why is it that with everything women have accomplished, we still struggle with our feelings about our bodies? Perhaps it’s because, in our society, body image has become a loaded term.

In FOR KEEPS: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, twenty-seven gifted authors write personal essays about how body image has colored, changed or enriched their lives…or how life’s events have changed their body image.

With Masha Hamilton, Ellie McGrath, Christine O’Hagan, Abby Frucht, Leora Skolkin-Smith, Sally Terrell, Susanne Dunlap, and Victoria Zackheim

PS I Love You, the Park Slope column penned by OTBKB friend and fave Wendy Ponte in the Brooklyn Paper, has the the story behind the story of Sweet Melissa’s victory at the Edible Ornaments Tournament on the Food Channel. Here’s a taste and go here to read more.

Melissa Murphy, owner of Sweet Melissa, a Seventh Avenue pastry and
luncheon venue, might indeed be sweet — but judging from her recent
adventure on the “Food Network Challenge: Edible Ornaments”
competition, she’s more like Tough Melissa.

Sure, Murphy (pictured) is  young, attractive and savvy with energy to spare and far-reaching plans (damn her!).

But
she is also a renowned chef and is on the advisory board of the French
Culinary Institute in Manhattan, where she herself went to school. This
year, the Zagat Marketplace gave her stores the award for “Best Tarts
and Pies” in New York.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the award-winning Brooklyn Paper.

The night before Thanksgiving, Smartmom registered for the Turkey Trot, the annual five-mile race sponsored by the Park Slope Track Club.

In the basement of Jack Rabbit, she was given her race number, an electronic running chip, and plastic ties to attach it to her running shoes. Unfortunately, they’d run out of Turkey Trot black backpacks and special booty.

“We were expecting 1,000 runners but many more registered,” an organizer told her.

Out on Seventh Avenue, Smartmom checked her number, 1610 (the ages of her two children, Smartmom realized). It also said, “Female, age 49.”

“Nice,” she thought. “Do they have to make it so friggin’ obvious?”

It’s not that Smartmom wants to hide the fact that she’s 49. She just doesn’t like to broadcast it to all of Park Slope.

Why not just publish it in the newspaper while they’re at it?

When she got home, Smartmom didn’t tell Hepcat that she was going to trot the Trot. She didn’t even mention it to Teen Spirit or the Oh So Feisty One. It’s not that she wanted to be the stealth runner. Or it was some kind secret. She just didn’t want to make a big deal about it.

No “Go Mom” signs or familial cheerleading squads for Smartmom. Not that she would have to worry about that. The likelihood of Teen Spirit and OSFO standing on the sidelines of Prospect Park with a “Go Mom” sign at 9 am on Thanksgiving morning was close to nil.

And that was fine by Smartmom, because she wanted to do the race Greta Garbo style. In other words, she vanted to be alone (with more than 1,000 strangers, that is).

The Turkey Trot was something Smartmom always wanted to do and this year seemed as good a year as any. For one thing, their family Thanksgiving didn’t begin until 6 pm and it was in a restaurant in Manhattan.
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

No muss, no fuss.

Also, Smartmom has been running the 3.3-mile loop around the park a few times a week. And being 15 pounds lighter, she’s feeling quite fit and sprightly.

And it’s not like Smartmom hasn’t run a race before. She ran the Brooklyn half-marathon in March, 2005. That’s 13 miles from the Coney Island Boardwalk to the loops of Prospect Park. Impressed?

So, Smartmom figured why not? She especially liked the idea of running off the Thanksgiving turkey (stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie) even before she’d eaten it.

Is it possible to lose weight on Thanksgiving?

The weather on Thanksgiving morning couldn’t have been better. Unseasonably warm and sunny, it was the kind of morning that makes you want to sing Handel’s “Messiah” or at least “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night.

And talk about reasons to be thankful: Smartmom wanted to give thanks to Kirsten at Slope Sports for recommending the snazzy blue and silver Saucony running shoes on her feet.

She wanted to thank her high school principal, Phineas Anderson, who coached the Walden girl’s track team and taught her how to run. She wanted to thank her legs, which have held her up all these years.

Most of all, she wanted to thank the universe for making this a Thanksgiving without worries (for the time being) about homework, middle school, money, getting a book published before she’s 50, family illness, and marital squabbles about basement clean ups.

It was a day to run, and Smartmom was going to go for it.

On Thanksgiving morning, Smartmom tiptoed out of the bedroom so as not to wake her sleeping giant of a husband. She quietly passed Teen Spirit’s bedroom so as not to wake her sleeping giant of a teenage son (wait a minute, he’s not even in his bedroom…where is that boy?).

Smartmom arrived on the north side of Prospect Park at 8:45 and at exactly 9, there was a gunshot and 1,200 runners were off and running (at various speeds).

All sizes, all shapes, all colors, all abilities, all genders, the Turkey Trot is the perfect Brooklyn race.

Most of all, Smartmom loved the bystanders who seemed to take great pleasure in cheering runners they didn’t even know.

“Looking good.” “Way to go.” “You can do it.”

Smartmom took the race nice and slow. A solid 11-minute miler, she actually enjoyed the run and didn’t even struggle going up the famous hill at Battle Pass. After mile four, she did develop a stitch, but belly breathing helped her control the pain and in the last minute of the race, she actually sprinted to the end, finishing in just over 55 minutes.

Walking back to Third Street, Smartmom kept checking her iPhone to see if anyone was wondering where she was. Maybe OSFO woke up and thought to call. How about Hepcat? Wasn’t he wondering why half the bed was EMPTY?

Smartmom wanted to tell someone, anyone: “I just ran the Turkey Trot. Yea for me.”

But that wasn’t the point. She could have told her family about the race. She could have asked her kids or Diaper Diva to be there.

So why did she feel the need to do it Greta Garbo style?

Could it be that Smartmom is afraid of being the center of attention around her children?

While she is eager to carve out a slice of her life for herself, she’s ambivalent about doing it in front of Hepcat and the kids.

Buddha knows, she needs to get in touch with her own body and her own thoughts and for that she needs to go solo.

While still being a devoted mother and wife, Smartmom vants to be an independent self and sometimes that means running alone.

Shifting just $100 of your shopping budget to local shops is a tremendous benefit to the local economy!

Many of the shops on Fifth and Seventh Avenues will be open until 10 p.m. on December 13th for a Buy in Brooklyn festive shopping even sponsored by the folks who brought you the yellow umbrellas (the Park Slope Civic Council, the Community Bookstore and others).

Wine. Refreshments. Entertainment. It’s all part of the fun. Make it a great night to do holiday shopping and support local merchants, entrepreneurs and artisans.

Click on the poster to make it larger.

I saw a For Lease sign on the window but I guess I wanted to pretend that I didn’t see it. But it’s true, the Tempo Presto on Seventh Avenue is closing.

I for one LOVE the place so I called the restaurant right away to see what’s going on.

"Our winter over there was too slow. The rent is too high," Jose Diaz, one of the managers of the Fifth Avenue Tempo Presto, told me. "It’s due to the rent because it is just too, too high. Our other location on Fifth Avenue will stay open."

Diaz suggested that I call one of the owners, Michael Elliott, to get more information. Elliott was more than willing to share with me his disappointment about this turn of events. "Tempo Presto just wasn’t doing the volume on Seventh Avenue we needed to pay the rent," he told me.

"The volume isn’t there. It’s a Manhattan-size rent in Park Slope. Very expensive. And this is still just a neighborhood. As you know the commercial rents have gone through the roof," Elliott told me. "Pretty soon it will just be big retailers that can afford the spot over here."

Elliott isn’t exactly sure when Tempo Presto will close. It depends on when they find another business to take over the lease. Fortunately, the Fifth Avenue Tempo Presto and Tempo, the restaurant, are staying open. "The Seventh Avenue exposure definitely built exposure for the Tempo Presto concept. The neighborhood loves us."

And what is the Tempo Presto concept exactly? In my mind it’s delicious and fast breakfast, lunch, gelato, and take-out in a cool and colorful modern interior. "It’s a franchise concept. A good concept. But you have to get into the right market if you’re going to pay this kind of rent. If the rent was a third  what it is it would work. You can’t work it for this price point. We took a real hit." Elliott told me.

What about Fifth Avenue, I asked Elliott. Are the rents really cheaper over there?  "Fifth Avenue is just as expensive. But Fifth has a more vibrant scene. After dark, Seventh Avenue dries up," Elliott told me. "On Fifth you get a lot of younger people coming out in the evening."

On Seventh, lunch and after-school were profitable.  "But there are too many points of
the day when there is nobody in the place or just one or two people. You can have that if
you’re a Starbucks. But not for a company like this."  Elliott said. 

Elliot and his two partners hold the lease to the space on Seventh Avenue and they’re looking for the right tenant. He tells me that they have had interest from at least two national retailers. No decision has been made as yet. Says Elliott: "There needs to be a fit for the landlord, as well as us.

Opening the Seventh Avenue Tempo Presto was clearly a labor love for Elliott. "It is disappointing when you try to grow a concept. It is what it is. A learning experience. The idea didn’t fit this particular space." 

Elliott says that Park Slope is unlike any other neighborhood he’s worked in. "It’s not only seasonally sensitive but it’s also very weather sensitive. When it’s too cold, too rainy, too hot nobody goes out. This goes for the restaurants on Fifth. We all feel it when the weather is affected it puts a strain on the business.

Elliott admits that he like many retailers in Park Slope would like to see more support from the neighborhood. He hopes the local Buy in Brooklyn initiative proves to be a success.

Pastor Meeter prefers the Ginko. I think the golden leaves are beautiful. But have issues with the Ginko because of the way the berries smell. I call them stinkleberries and there are loads of them on the stoop at the Montauk Club from a Ginko tree. The Japanese make a soup out of Ginko berries. They boil them endlessly I would guess. I think they have spiritual/holistic/health properties. Here’s an excerpt from the Old First Blog.

Outside my window, across the street, next to the fence of Prospect Park, is a ginko tree. It shades the bench where Melody and I sometimes sit.

Last Wednesday, it still had all its leaves, though most of them had turned. We went to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. When we got back on Friday all its leaves were down. Suddenly, like that.

And there was a beautiful carpet of yellow gold, with touches of green, around our bench. The sidewalk was covered, and the carpet was clean and fresh. In a day or two its lustre would be gone.

The ailanthus is on our side of the street, right against our building. It seems to have dropped its leaves just as suddenly. But they were scattered, and on the street. And it dropped its stems as well, the long leaf stems on which its leaflets grow, and they now litter the corner like straw.

I do not love thee, ailanthus, as I love the ginko. You have come here from China too, but you are lower class, and you have no lovely bark, and your branches break, and people call you messy.

Brooklyn Reading Works presents author Jason Weiss and jazz/spoken word artist, Roy Nathanson on November 13th at 8 p.m. This should be quite a show. Hope to see you there.

The Old Stone House is located in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue and Third Street.

JASON WEISS will read from a new novel, Faces By the Wayside. He is the author of Conversations with Steve Lacy and Writing At Risk: Interviews in Paris with Uncommon Writers (University of Iowa Press, 1991).

ROY NATHANSON has a varied career as a saxophonist, composer, band-leader, actor and teacher. He is leader and principal composer of the Jazz Passengers, a six piece group that he founded with Curtis Fowlkes in 1987. They have toured Europe many times and played at major festivals in Finland, Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland—as wll as the J.V.C. Festival in New York, the De Maurier Festival In Canada and in clubs and concerts throughout the U.S. and Canada. The band has also recorded eight albums.

.

Just got this shout out in my email:

With more than 100 cutting-edge presses from the US and abroad exhibiting some of the most innovative books in contemporary literature, the Book Fair is one of the most notable independent publishing events of the year. Admission to the Fair is free and open to the public, although a suggested donation of $1 is encouraged.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Over 100 acclaimed Indie Presses

Q&A with Fugazi founder Ian MacKaye

Panel Discussions and Readings Featuring: Amiri Baraka, Hattie Gossett, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Katha Pollitt, Katharine Sands, Tama Janowitz, Amy Scholder, Sinan Antoon, Arthur Nersesian, Aaron Petrovich, Slava Mogutin, and Glen E. Friedman.

WHERE:
The New York Center for Independent Publishing
The Landmark General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Building
20 West 44th Street, New York City

WHEN:
Saturday, December 1, 10:00AM – 6:00PM
Sunday, December 2, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

CONTACT:
Christopher de la Torre, Assistant Director
212-764-7021, christopher@nycip.org

Have you seen the ad? It’s a very low tech shot of a 12-year-old girl playing the guitar and singing. There’s a blue background and the girl has brown hair. A title comes up that says: Learn Three Chords. You’ll Know 1,000 Songs.

At the end of the ad, the Converse logo fades up.

She’s one of the girls from Park Slope’s own, Care Bears on Fire.

Got this in an email from my friend, Kathy Malone, of the Brooklyn Indie Market. What a great gift:

Imagine a friend gave you a box filled with delicious-smelling skinnyskinny soap, ingenious holders for soft-boiled eggs called Egg Pants, gorgeous handmade jewelry by wabisabi brooklyn, a striking holiday letterpress card by Jezebel, clever buttons and magnets from Kate Black, and a cool card holder made from the sails of sail boats by Reiter8.

Nice friend right?

Now imagine that you also got at least 6 (6!) of the following in this box:

–A beautiful tote bag with avalove’s hand-lithographed designs
–a candy-colored diamond acrylic ring from by:AMT
–copper and sterling jewelry by Joanne Tracy
–a silkscreened notepad and collaged card by Fisk and Fern
–a book of fabulous artwork by Robert Mars
—a silkscreened onesie by hey punkin!
–a colorful kid’s skirt made by Fofolle
—handmade cards that double as portraiture prints by Desira Pesta
–keychains (made either by RePlayGround, 31 Corn Lane, or This is Swigg)
–crocheted goods, like an Ezra’s Cousin scarflette or Alicia Kachmar’s adorable mitten ornaments
–a fantastic denim clutch, bag or cuff by Wanett Clyde
–pretty letterpress postcards by Erin Fae
–a wire and gemstone ring from Kimmchi
–illustration jewelry and prints by Tilly Bloom

No, you can’t pick which of those six items you get. But you know for
sure you’re getting 11 awesome things… And don’t you like to be
surprised? How fantastic is this friend of yours?

Now here’s the kicker: all of these items are made or designed here in Brooklyn,
by artists, designers and crafters who hail from Bed-Stuy, Carroll
Gardens, Cobble Hill, Ditmas Park, East New York, Fort Greene,
Greenpoint, Kensington, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park,
Williamsburg, and Windsor Terrace, and whose work is available at
fabulous boutiques like Spring in Dumbo, Rare Device in Park Slope, the Brooklyn Indie Market, or online at that one-stop-shop for handmade goods, Etsy. (To learn more about every contributor, download this or click on every item mentioned above.)

This box is so Brooklyn, it’s even wrapped in Brooklyn maps and lined with The Brooklyn PaperBrooklyn Greenway (there’s also a map of the future  and a Zagat’s guide to BK restos inside).

Here’s the other kicker: It’s $20 (plus shipping), an incredible value for one-of-a-kind work made by your gifted neighbors, curated by Brooklyn Based, and sold by The Sampler,
a San Francisco company whose founder Marie Kare came up with this
brilliant idea of mailing boxes filled with the wares of indie
businesses to spread the word about their work. This month they began a
series of Samplers called City Samplers, packed with goods native to
one place. It launched with their hometown, and Brooklyn Based happened
to call at the right moment and propose a box filled with goodies made
by Brooklynites.

The fruit of our collaboration will go on sale this Saturday at 10 am PST, or 1 our time, online at  homeofthesampler.com.
If you’d like an email reminder when they go on sale, drop me a note at
brooklynbased at gmail.com. Because there is one problem with these
Brooklyn Samplers: there are only 100 of them.

Gowanus Lounge has this to say:

Yesterday, we posted about the new Brooklyn Bean that is opening at Fourth Avenue and Carroll Street. Brownstoner posted about it too, noting that it is an offshoot of Cuppa Cuppa in the East Village and has nothing to do with Brookyn Bean & Tea Company
on Atlantic Avenue. Of course, we had assumed that the new Brooklyn
Bean was an offshoot of the Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn Bean. Wrong. We
got an email yesterday afternoon from the owner of (the Atlantic
Avenue) Brooklyn Bean & Tea Company pointing out that the two
Brooklyn Beans have nothing to do with each other. The email from Jeremy Lugo simply said:

Velvet Sea had this to say about the new coffee place. VS even has pictures, including the one above.

Brooklyn Bean replaces Family Car Service- relocated to the rear of the
building. They will have some coffee competition, as there is El Cafetin
in the Lyceum and McDonald’s with it’s "69 cents any coffee any size"
diagonally across the street in either direction as well as Ozzie’s and
Trois Pommesth Ave, which serves Gorilla Coffee just up the block on Fifth Avenue.

Just got an email about this discussion called Lofty Pursuits on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8 pm at the Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue at 2nd Street): Sounds interesting. Here are the details:

Twenty-five years ago, Sharon Zukin published Loft Living: Culture 
and Capital in Urban Change, her landmark work on the transformation 
of SoHo from manufacturing space to cultural locus to residential 
lofts.

Shortly thereafter, the Two Trees corporation began their own project of transformation, changing Brooklyn’s waterfront into the residential neighborhood known today as DUMBO.

In conjunction with the Artists Space exhibition On Being: An Exhibition, CUP is pleased to present Lofty Pursuits, a live talk show featuring sociologist Sharon Zukin and Jed Walentas, vice-president of Two Trees.

Zukin and Walentas will discuss culture, capital, and real estate from SoHo to 
DUMBO. This special edition of People and Buildings will be filmed as a live talk show.

Don’t miss the chance to be part of the tudio audience.

Sharon Zukin teaches sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at Brooklyn College. Zukin’s previous books include The Cultures of Cities, and Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disneyland, which won the C. Wright M. Mills Award.

Jed Walentas started his real estate career with the Trump Organization in 1996. Jed left for Two Trees after the Giuliani administration agreed to rezone the DUMBO 
neighborhood.

In the ten years since its arrival, Two Trees has done $2 billion in work, building 759 luxury condominiums, 500 rental apartments, and transforming millions of square feet of industrial buildings into office space.

LOFTY PURSUITS
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 at 8 pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
F/V to 2nd Ave
New York, NY

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

On Saturday afternoon, Smartmom was in a quandary: the Oh So Feisty One had a temperature of 100.7, her head was pounding, and she said that it hurt to swallow.

There were other telltale signs that the OSFO was sick: Her eyes were glassy, she was uncharacteristically droopy, and she just wanted to sleeeeeeeeeeeep (yes, with that many e’s!).

Smartmom knew that OSFO was down for the count. But Smartmom had longstanding plans on Sunday to attend “Later the Same Evening,” an opera based on the paintings of Edward Hopper, composed by her friend John Musto at the University of Maryland more than four hours away.

That meant that she’d have to leave the house on Sunday at 9 am and wouldn’t be home before 11 pm.

Smartmom was stressing. She knew that OSFO would want her to stay home. She’d already made that perfectly clear: “You’d go to an opera rather than stay with me?”

But Hepcat was urging her to go. “We’ll be fine,” he said, and Smartmom knew it was true.

He’d be home all day Sunday. So would Teen Spirit. Even Beautiful Smile, their babysitter of 16 years, had called to say that she wanted to sit with OSFO, too.

Still, Smartmom was stressing. On first glance, it was a no-brainer. Of course a mother should stay home with her sick child. That’s part of the job description.

Smartmom has luminous childhood memories of being sick and lying on the low couch in the living room of her family’s Riverside Drive apartment watching “Father Knows Best,” “I Love Lucy,” and “Leave it to Beaver” (re-runs! Please, she’s not that old).

Her mother, Manhattan Granny, would bring Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast on a tray, fluff her pillows, and pay extra special attention to Smartmom (because her twin, Diaper Diva, was at school).

When Teen Spirit and OSFO are sick, Smartmom tries to emulate her mom. She even has a special tray that she uses to serve Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup and cinnamon toast.

Now you can understand why Smartmom couldn’t make up her mind about the opera. Her friend had already bought the $200 round-trip train tickets and a day of gab and gossip on a train with her best high school gal friends would be a gas (despite the expense of the Amtrak fare. Smartmom admits that she blanched at the cost. Why is train travel so expensive in this country? Do they want us all to drive?)

The delightful train ride and opera was countered by a different image: OSFO lying in her bed with four fluffed pillows, a tray of chicken noodle soup, but no mommy.

So for a few moments, Smartmom was back to staying in Park Slope, keeping an eye on her sick little OSFO, who seemed to take an inordinate pleasure in ringing a blue bell to summon her mother and calling “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Ring. Ring. Ring. That ringing was getting on Smartmom nerves. If that OSFO has the energy to ring that thing so vigorously, she doesn’t need Smartmom to stay home from the opera. And if her throat hurts so much, why is she SCREAMING?

Besides, Smartmom loves Musto’s music and is a huge fan of Edward Hopper.
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

Smartmom didn’t know what to do and decided to take a wait-and-see approach. When OSFO popped out of bed, on Sunday morning, Smartmom decided that she was well enough for Smartmom to go. Then she took her temperature, which was still hovering around 100.

“Just go,” Hepcat counseled and Smartmom did.

When Smartmom and her friends met up at Penn Station, they found out that there was a power outage on the lines between New York and New Jersey. Every arrival and departure was delayed by more than an hour and no one seemed to know when the lines would be fixed.

Smartmom knew the decision had been made for her. Even when her friends decided to get a car and drive down to Maryland, Smartmom knew she wouldn’t be going.

By 11:15 am, Smartmom was back in the apartment on Third Street. She ran into OSFO’s room, “I’m here,” she cried feeling very heroic and maternal.

OSFO couldn’t hear her. She was wearing headphones and watching something on YouTube. When she finally looked up she seemed mildly pleased that Smartmom had returned and then went back to her YouTube video.

No matter. Smartmom was home. Exactly where she wanted to be.

“Hey, you want some cinnamon toast?”

Here’s our pal Pete’s take on an article on the Timesonline website ("An Odd Turn of Affairs"), which asks, Is Infidelity Good for a Marriage?" The article suggests that some marriages benefit from the shake-up caused by an affair:

So, here’s my weigh-in on the subject. Get rid of dogmatic words like "commitment" and "fidelity," first of all, so you can honestly look at your situation.

Like most things I write about regarding relationships, intention is everything. People in a marriage can be "committed" and "faithful" for reasons that clearly crush the passion in a relationship – i.e. – fear of being alone, fear of losing financial stability, insecurity about one’s physical appearance and attractiveness, etc. These are love-Eros-sex killers.

However, on the other side, again, let’s can the dogma. Very often, adults claiming to have "open marriages," arrangements in which extramarital sex is allowed under certain conditions (like "don’t ask/don’t tell" policies), more often than not have intimacy issues and similar insecurities, and as a result, their relationships are neither open nor a marriage. (If you and your partner are so open about sex, why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?)

So, what is to be gleaned from the statistical "turn of affairs" in Mr. Marshall’s article?

Simply this – If you love someone, set them free. Let go of your vice grip on your partner. Stop clinging, get a life, actualize yourself, be interesting and attractive to yourself. What I call "spontaneous monogamy" – monogamy that develops when two people are so in love that they want to experience their sexuality like a laser, through that one person only – is the greatest, deepest, most intense experience one can have as a human adult.

But forced monogamy, which most married couples contract for, is not rooted in love or lust, and basically consists of one partner saying to another: "Even if you no longer are in love with me one day, you still have to stay with me." Mmmm… how attractive is that?

Having an affair as a solution? Hardly.

While it can wake a couple up to the stagnation in their marriage, and therefore can have productive results, why wait until it gets to such a messy point? Shake your marriage up now. Go for couples counseling, that  really challenges your emotional laziness.

Stop taking all of your medications to go to sleep and get it up.

Stop leaning on your kids for meaning in life.

Stop obsessing about money.

And see the new movie coming, The Bucket List, a new film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and ask yourself how you would want to live if you knew you only had a little time left. You never know – you might rediscover the Eros in your marriage.

Peter Loffredo (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/)

I don’t know about you, but I am loving Clever Doc’s posts. Clever Doc is my friend and family member, Linda Hawes Clever. She is one smart lady with an MD and a specialty in occupational health. She started an organization called Renew, which you just might want to check out. Here is the ninth question she is posing to readers of OTBKB. If you  missed the others here they are.

Do You Laugh Enough?
Are You Still Learning?
How Angry Are You?
Do You Feel Trapped?
Do You Talk to People?
Are You Eating Right?
Are You Taking Risks?
Are You Refreshing Your Body and Spirit

Here is a question that gets surprising, even hilarious answers: What can you control? One woman backed down when she suggested, “Your children” and received a chorus of hoots. She revised her comment to, “Alright, alright, you can control where you place a two-month old.”

As much as we would like to, we can’t control the weather, our boss (or just about anybody else), traffic, or prices. We can certainly influence them and we should try to do so, but that’s not the same as control.

Realistically, we can control only ourselves. On a good day. If we’re healthy, well-slept, well-informed, well-nourished, and well-mentally, we can control our behavior, our attitude*, and our aspirations. ( Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”)

Not every day is a good day, of course. A string of bad days may call for learning something new or may call for medical, spiritual, or financial help. But on a good day, and with allies and information, we can be in charge of our own bodies, spirits and attitudes. (How did you do on question: Are You Refreshing Your Body and Spirit?).

We are also in charge of our hopes and dreams. That is, our aspirations. Knowing them keeps us pointed forward.

9.  How often do consider your own aspirations when you make decisions?
Huh? (0 points)
Rarely (1 points)
Sometimes (2 points)
Frequently (3 points)
Always (4 points)

I love getting these BREAKING NEWS emails from the Brooklyn Paper. It’s very cool. Yesterday they dug into the story of the Coney Island information meeting that was cancelled. Here’s an excerpt from Adam F. Hutton’s piece, which focuses on Senator Carl Kruger of Bensonhurt. Read more, of course, at the BP.

A state senator who opposes Mayor Bloomberg’s Coney Island redevelopment plan claimed victory at the first public hearing on the proposal Monday night, boasting that he was able to shut down the meeting by bussing in hundreds of people to the event.

“Score one for the good guys,” state Sen. Carl Kruger (D–Bensonhurst) shouted to his supporters after the Coney Island Development Corporation hastily canceled the meeting. “We won the ground war. You made a point tonight, and that is that Bloomberg isn’t going to push his Manhattan plans on Brooklyn without hearing from Brighton Beach, Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay.”

More than 150 people had RSVP’d to attend the scheduled meeting at Coney Island Hospital, where officials from the City Hall-run CIDC planned to show off Bloomberg’s proposal to residents for the first time.

But Kruger was ready. Days before the meeting, he said Bloomberg’s vision was similar to “many failed plans” to revitalize Coney Island considered over the last 50 years and predicted it was “headed for the file cabinet.”

He also raised the central question many are wondering about the mayor’s proposal: How much will it cost to buy out developer Joe Sitt, whose Thor Equities has spent somewhere between $100 and $200 million to buy land in Coney’s amusement zone — land that the mayor now wants to buy, rezone as parkland, and have an outside theme park operator develop as an all-year attraction.

Got an email this morning from Erin McHugh, author of The Portable Queer. There’s a reading on November 27th

I was pointed your way — or towards Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn — by Samantha, the events person at the Barnes & Noble on Park Slope. I’m reading there on Tuesday night, November 27, at 7:30 p.m. and when I told her I had few friends in the neighborhood, her first words were, “Get on the blog, babe!”

So let me tell you just a bit about my books, THE PORTABLE QUEER, and perhaps you’ll toss in a mention of my B&N reading — I would be most grateful. In fact, they’ll be appearing in th Holiday Gift Guide in TimeOutNewYork this week, so they’re getting some great attention.

THE PORTABLE QUEER is a trio of smart gay gift books: one is a book of quotes, one vignettes of gay history, and the third full of biographical sketches. They’re $12.95 each, and you can take a look at them on Amazon (they recently reached #1 in the category’s hot new releases) or bn.com in all their glory. I was featured on Larry Flick’s show on Sirius Radio the other morning, too, for those of our friends who were driving around looking for a parking space!

EDGEnewyork.com, a terrific gay site, called them “A great choice for the upcoming holiday season” in a fabulous review last week:

Somewhat postcard sized with brightly colored covers sporting what could easily become the new queer crest (think Hogwarts!), The Portable Queer is a collection of very concise coffee table (or pocket, or Christmas stockings) books that contains a clever and didactic compilation of data that you should already know but of course don’t because you have been too busy “reading” PerezHilton.com.

The series, put together by Erin McHugh, balances a great deal of information both from the annals of history and from the more mundane stocks of pop culture, you know, all the stuff we gays are made of. Many of the phrases or characters presented here you have probably already run across at some point of your varying-degree of rainbow colored life, but it is great to have our own version of Cliff notes in such a fun, bite-size way.

McHugh creates the perfect middle ground for both the bookworm and the tabloid fan, with all the variations of queer readers in between, but the biggest merit of The Portable Queer is how useful it can be to introduce friends and foes, fag hags and gay bashers to queer culture.

Got this quick note from Josh Millstein at the Community Bookstore, organizer of many of their incredibly interesting sounding book clubs. Don’t let the names scare you, you don’t need an MA or be a member of the MLA to understand what’s going on. These groups are for EVERYONE.

This is just a quick reminder that the MODERNIST LITERATURE BOOK CLUB will be meeting next Wednesday, Nov. 28th, at 7:30pm. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, now’s your chance! Stop in and pick up a copy from the store today, just in time to read it over the holiday.

We love new faces, so don’t be afraid to come out! Hope all is well.

Thanks for your time,
Josh Milstein
Community Bookstore

The Park Slope 100 will be rolled out on December 6th. So if you have any nominees, send them in now. This year’s list has a different feel from last year’s.

Last year’s was foundational. It had all the "obvious" choices—ZuZu’s Petals, David Yassky, the Dinnersteins, Paul Auster, Chris Altman, Debbie Almontasser, Al Di La, Pastor Meeter, Rabbi Bachman, Susan Fox, Kim Maier, Daniel McEnney, Daniel Goldstein, etc. —with some interesting "unknowns" thrown in for good measure.

Last year, I called the list a highly opinionated, inherently flawed, subjective, obviously controversial list of talented, energetic, ambitious, creative
individuals with vision in the Greater Park Slope area who reach
outward toward the larger community and the world to lead, to help, to create, to teach, to
improve, to enhance, to inform, to network, to make change.

The people chosen for last year’s list were community
activists, entrepreneurs, volunteers, spiritual leaders, publishers,
bloggers, leaders of organizations, social workers, therapists,
artists, writers,
educators, politicians, chefs and restaurant owners and whatever else
I’ve left out.

This year’s list is just as far reaching and just as interesting. To me, it feels more topical—many of the people on the list have been mentioned on OTBKB.

Last year’s list may have included a disproportionate number of people connected with education and/or parenting. Last year, there were a lot of bloggers, activists, and politicians.

When all is said and done, I don’t know how it will play out but I know it’s going to be a great list with great people and great stories.  If you have nominees please send them in ASAP.

Best of all, the Park Slope 100 now has a spiffy logo designed by Elizabeth Reagh of Good Form Design.

The Written Nerd works at an independent bookstore in New
York City’s SoHo neighborhood and hopes to someday own a bookstore of her own.

TWN loves reading books, talking about books, and "being
where literature hits the streets." She lives in Park Slope with her ALP (Adorably Literate
Partner). She publishes these great Brooklyn Lit Life interviews. Friday, she posted an interview with Edwidge Danticat. Here’s an excerpt. Read the rest at the Written Nerd.

Why do you think Brooklyn has such a
dense population of writers? Is there something particularly literary
about Brooklyn?

Brooklyn
lacks the craziness of having to be all business all the time
publishing wise, plus it offers a community. I think that’s very
appealing to writers.

Despite the excruciatingly painful treatments that Toby Pannone’s is receiving for the neroblastoma, a relatively rare and fierce cancer that has taken over his body, Toby is still able to enjoy the few days when he is not in the hospital. Recently he enjoyed time in Prospect Park and at the Brookyn Children’s Museum.

He and his parents, Mooki and Stephen are managing to stay strong and hopeful despite the living hell that they inhabit. Mooki’s writes, "Living with neuroblastoma is so singular, isolating and overwhelming,
that I feel like my words don’t even come close to describing what is
really going on in Toby’s life."

Recently Toby started a painful—but potentially helpful—treatment called 3F8, which is described here by Toby’s mom, Mooki on the family’s blog.

3F8 is mouse derived monoclonal antibody that is injected into the
bloodstream where it finds neuroblastoma cells, attaches to them and
then signals the patient’s own white blood cells to kill the
neuroblastoma. The white cells are boosted into “killer” cells through
daily injections of GM-CSF. With time, as Toby’s own immune system
recovers from chemo and becomes stronger, the 3F8 treatments may help
his body learn to fight tumors on its own. The aim is to give repeated
3F8s for up to two years, on a cycle of one week on, two to three weeks
off.

The main side effect of 3F8 is pain because it also attaches to a
marker on nerve cells. And the pain is excruciating. I can barely
describe it. And that’s the real reason why I haven’t been able to
write in two weeks. All I wanted to do by Friday was crawl into a dark,
quiet place, and not relive the experience by putting pain into words

It’s always an honor to have Richard Grayson’s columns on OTBKB. An English and composition instructor in numerous colleges around the city, Grayson is author of "With Hitler in New York" and "I Brake for Delmore Schwartz," as well as other books.

This column is about the annual celebration of Dutch culture in New York City. He wrote me, referring to my recent column about cleaning out the basement, "Of course you’ve been ‘sweeping memories away’ but we need to hold on to some stuff, too, I hope."

Sunday was the last day of “5 Dutch Days, 5 Boroughs” – the  annual celebration of Dutch culture in New York City.  The day’s events included a morning service at the Old First Reformed Church on Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue as done in its congregation 300 years ago, using the Netherlands Liturgy of 1619, and an afternoon family exhibit at the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House in Ridgewood to show kids what life was like for young people in the early years of the city.

Four centuries ago, of course, Brooklyn was part of the great Dutch commercial world empire, but traces of Dutch Brooklyn have all but vanished in my lifetime along with the dirt roads like Mill Lane I used to walk and the wooden planks that preceded sidewalks in my little corner of what had been Nieuw Amersfoort.

When I was born, about 70 Dutch-American farmhouses stood in Brooklyn.  Today only 14 are left.

On Sunday afternoon, I was at the Lefferts Homestead for “Disappearing Dutch Brooklyn – Where Have All the Houses Gone?” — a presentation by anthropologist and archaeologist Christopher Ricciardi, who showed slides from his dig at an old house I know well, the Hendrick I. Lott House on East 36th Street, down the block from my friend Ken Falk’s house in Marine Park not far from where I grew up.

Living in this Dutch Colonial farmhouse from 1720 until 1989, members of the prominent Lott family participated in the Revolutionary War, supported abolition – freeing their slaves as early as 1801 and then hiring them as paid servants – and may have later used the house as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In 2001 Ricciardi and his colleagues from the Brooklyn College Archaeological Research Center discovered the slave quarters, a windowless, cramped garret room roughly ten feet square.  A tiny space – a closet within a closet, its door hidden behind coat hooks that would have held a curtain of garments – may have been a way station for escaping slaves.

Ricciardi acknowledged that just as many 18th century houses claim that George Washington slept there, most pre-Civil War houses in the North claim to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.

But two different descendants of the Lott family, who didn’t know each other, both remembered the same story when given tours of the old homestead. “They said this was where they kept their runaway slaves,” Ricciardi said.

Although southern Brooklyn Dutch farmers were quite wealthy, Ricciardi noted, apparently they were not materialists like their equally rich counterparts in Manhattan and what is today brownstone Brooklyn, who had more opulent homes.

The dig proved that the Lotts lived frugally, with plain dishes, glasses and pipes and no fancy materials in the construction of their house.

The Lott House is one of four Brooklyn sites owned by the Historic House Trust of New York City, along with the Lefferts Historic House Museum (c. 1783), the Old Stone House (1699), and the oldest structure in New York City, one I can recall my first girlfriend’s mother, an East Flatbush community planning board member, fighting to save in the late 1960s: the original portion of the Pieter Classen Wyckoff House on Clarendon Road and East 58th Street, which dates from 1652.
The Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum now looks a lot better than the old dump with a caved-in roof sporting a crooked TV antenna I remember from that day in August 1970, when Mayor Lindsay presided over a ceremony marking the start of its restoration.

In a fascinating Q&A session following his presentation, Chris Ricciardi said that it’s hard to get New Yorkers interested in southern Brooklyn’s old Dutch farmhouses because they’re a bit out of the way. But, he concluded, it’s important to respect our borough’s past and preserve our common heritage.

Second Avenue Sagas sent this in:

The sports bar/pool hall at 7th Ave and Park Place right at
the subway stop is roped off with police tape this morning [Saturday].

Local business owners are saying that there was a shooting in the bar late
last night/early this morning. That’s all I know

From: Second Avenue Sagas
Blogging the Subway from A to J/M/Z

I can post using my iPhone. Wow.