FROM BROOKLYN SPEAKS:

Forest City Ratner plans to demolish two entire city blocks – including historic buildings that should be reused like the Ward Bakery – to create enormous “temporary” surface parking lots for over 1400 cars that would blight Brooklyn for decades.

These parking lots will also encourage more people to drive, leading to worse traffic, worse air quality, and worse quality of life for those living in the surrounding neighborhoods. And they simply aren’t needed. No other large-scale development in the city has required the demolition of two city blocks for parking.

We need to send Eliot Spitzer and Mike Bloomberg a simple message: New Yorkers deserve better. Please join BrooklynSpeaks.net to rally against demolition for parking. There will be passionate speeches and great music – the Lafayette Inspirational Gospel Choir and singer Dave Hall will be performing.

When
Sunday, April 15th, 2007 2:00 pm
Where
Pacific Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt Avenues
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
More Info
BrooklynSpeaks

I just stopped in at Outside.in, that’s right, outside dot in, Steven Berlin Johnson’s national directory of neighborhood blogging by zipcode and it looks cooler than ever. It says it is currently tracking 3,243 neighborhoods.

On February 27th they rolled out a whole bunch of new features and it’s pretty impressive and a big boost for neighborhood blogging.

“As you can see, we’ve rolled out a ton of new features this morning, along with a significant streamlining of the design. We’re going to walk through some of the changes on the blog in the next day or so, but for now the most important thing to understand are the basic new categories we’ve added that now form the underlying architecture of the site: Neighbors, Places, Stories, and Comments. We’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do with these different variables, but we think you’ll see why they’re going to be a lot of fun to explore.”

I read this on Park Slope Parents this evening:

Word from the employees at D’Ag (a big supermarket on 7th Ave and 6th
Street) is that the company is closing the location on April 28.

Does anybody know what is planned for that giant space, or how we can
find out? (Anyone wanna go in for a giant playspace? A new preschool?)

Or where else to get a whole store-cooked Murray’s organic chicken for 4.99 (with points)?

This from 1010 Wins:

NEW YORK (AP) — New York
City produces nearly 1 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the
nation, equal to the level of countries including Ireland and Portugal,
officials said Tuesday after releasing a study of the city’s output.

The report found that the buildings, subways, buses and cars and the
decomposition of waste in America’s biggest city produced a net
emission of 58.3 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2005. It
said the U.S. total was 7.26 billion metric tons for that year.

Carbon dioxide, methane and other gases essentially trap energy from
the sun, which warms the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere. Human
activity that increases those gases is believed to be changing the
climate of the planet.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations
network of 2,000 scientists, warned last week in a global warming
report of possible catastrophic risks such as floods, disease, food
shortages, species extinction and human suffering throughout the world.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is limited to two terms and leaves
office at the end of 2009, ordered the study of the city’s emissions
because he needed a benchmark for his goal of a 30 percent emissions
reduction by 2030. The study was conducted by the mayor’s Office of
Long-term Planning and Sustainability.

"You have to have a real baseline or we’re just talking past each
other as to what works and what doesn’t work — we won’t ever know
whether we really made a difference,” Bloomberg said.

Considering the city’s share of the U.S. population — 8.2 million
of 300 million — the levels could be much worse. And there is good
news: The average city resident contributes less than a third of the
emissions generated by a typical American.

LITTLE SCHOOL OF MOVING PICTURES: SPRING CLAY ANIMATION CLASSES FOR KIDS

Here’s the first draft of the Blogger Code of Conduct developed by Tim O’Reilly and posted on his blog: Radar.

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and
open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of
civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it
helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and
constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not
post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
– is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
– is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
– infringes upon a copyright or trademark
– violates an obligation of confidentiality
– violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a
case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list.
If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We
reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the
blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the
person(s) involved–or find an intermediary who can do so–before we
publish any posts or comments about the issue.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are
offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible–see above) and
ask them to publicly make amends.
If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the
perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with
law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they
can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an
alias, rather than their real name.

6. We ignore the trolls.

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as
long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding
the trolls only encourages them–"Never wrestle with a pig. You both
get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the
best way to contain them.

We also decided we needed an "anything goes" badge for sites that want
to warn possible commenters that they are entering a free-for-all zone.
The text to accompany that badge might go something like this:

This is an open, uncensored forum. We are not responsible
for the comments of any poster, and when discussions get heated, crude
language, insults and other "off color" comments may be encountered.
Participate in this site at your own risk.

RUNNING COMMENTARY NO. 4
Written by Scott Adkins
Directed by Kenn Watt

Developed in the SoHo Writer/Director Lab

Presented at:
The Atlantic Theater: Studio A
330 West 16th Street
Wednesday April 11 at 8 pm

Running Commentary No. 4 is a play of nostalgia for the past and a
delusional future. Stories emerge from songs, lucid dreams, and letters
between a very old woman and a young paranoid man. The line dividing reality
and fantasy is eaten by a water snake; what follows is the forgotten
(forbidden?) planet, which happens to be in your backyard.

Read by:
Kate Benson
Tanya Calamoneri
Kelly Copper*
Danyon Davis
Marian Fontana
Nina Hellman
Deborah Knox
Pavol Liska*
Danny Manley
Jen Morris
Molly Powell
Peter Richards
Heidi Schreck
James Scruggs
Paul Willis

Did anyone see the story in Monday’s New York Times about a blogger’s code of conduct? Last week on the Brian Lehrer’s show I called in and said I was against regulating behavior in the Blogsphere. But now I am rethinking my original reaction. I actually like the idea of a carefully worded set of principles and guidelines. Not everyone has to agree. But if you come to my place, I’m allowed to set some standard of civil behavior. Nu?

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The
conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere
can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures
in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the
quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a
conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the
term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal
online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape
online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is
that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to
their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments
without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of
antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to
change the level of expectations that people have about what’s
acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary
recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Park Slope actor, Charlotte Maier, plays Mrs. Krebs in the Broadway revival of  Inherit the Wind opening Thursday night at the Lyceum Theater on West 45th Street in Manhattan.

OSFO, Hepcat and I went to a preview Monday night and really enjoyed the show. Christopher Plummber plays the Clarence Darrow character and Brian Dennehy plays the character based on William Jennings Bryan. Dennis O’Hare is teriffic in the role based on H.L. Mencken. The following is from Wikipedia’s entry on the play:

Inherit the Wind is a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, which opened on Broadway in January 1955, and a 1960 Hollywood film based on the play. It is currently being brought back onto Broadway in a revival. The play’s title comes from Proverbs 11:29, which in the King James Bible reads:

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:

and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart

Inherit the Wind is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Trial (the "Monkey" Trial), which resulted in Scopes‘ conviction for teaching Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution to a high school science class, contrary to a Tennessee state law that mandated the teaching of a form of creationism.
The fictional characters of Matthew Harrison Brady, Henry Drummond,
Bertram Cates and E. K. Hornbeck correspond to the historical figures
of William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, John Scopes, and H.L. Mencken, respectively.

Despite numerous similarities between the play and history, the play was not intended as a documentary-drama about the Scopes trial, but as a warning about the evils of McCarthyism, which some see as one of the darkest moments in American history. The play has been hailed as one of the great American plays of the 20th century, and its themes of religious belief, religious tolerance, and freedom of thought resonate down to the present day.

Brooklyn Review
Tonight, a new installment of BCAT’s bi-monthly news magazine Brooklyn Review
premieres. The show, produced by Brooklyn Independent Television,
explores the fight over Coney Island and a new public-school program
promoting healthy eating.

Other segments feature the creators of C is for Cupid, a dating website for cancer survivors, as well as the HIV/AIDS outreach group that served as the basis for the HBO film Life Support.
9pm. Time Warner 56, Cablevision 69.

There’s an article in the City Section of the New York Times’ by Jake Mooney about the Gowanus neighborhood.

TEN years ago, the idea of worrying about the future of the land around the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn would have seemed a little strange, especially in hot weather. An underground tunnel designed to circulate the canal’s water had been out of service for decades, and as a result, sewage from nearby houses and storm drains overflowed regularly into the canal, emitting a formidable stench.

An OTBKB reader sent work of this:

A Toxic Apple: The Story of the Williamsburg Greepoint Corridor is a VBS produced film premiering April 9th on VBS.tv

Preview information available at
myspace.com/thetoxicapple

FROM STREETSBLOG:

Gowanus Lounge reports on the debate over DOT’s 9th Street redesign plan at last night’s Park Slope Civic Council meeting. The Civic Council voted overwhelmingly to “table” a plan that would provide the neighborhood with improved pedestrian safety on one of the most hazardous streets in the area, enhanced cyclist safety along a key access route to Prospect Park and Red Hook, and traffic-calming along an overly broad street with low vehicle counts and a serious speeding problem.

Note to Livable Streets advocates: If you don’t join civic groups and show up to community meetings, you lose.

Note to DOT: I am sure that you could have won over most of this 9th Street crowd if you had included them in the planning process.

Note to Mayor Bloomberg: You need to say that projects like these are critical to the future of New York City. We need a mandate.

Hepcat and I were having Greek salad for lunch at home when the phone rang.

Ring. Ring.

"Did you call yesterday to complain about construction noise?" a man with an adorably New Yawk accent said to me on the phone

"No, I think you have the wrong number," I said.

"Ahhhh, let me check," he said.
"Hey, did you make a noise complaint?" I said to Hepcat who was eating some lettuce. 
"Yeah. That was me," he said as he grabbed the phone.
I was more than a little surprised.

But then again Hepcat is a man of few word (they don’t call him No Words_Daily Pix for nothing and I guess this didn’t warrant a mention when I asked him how his day was yesterday.

"How was your day, honey?" I asked. "Fine." was his simple reply."
Here’s a more detailed version of what Hepcat told the guy on the phone.

HEPCAT’S ACCOUNT OF YESTERDAY’S INCIDENT

Yesterday there was a DEP crew on Sixth Avenue at the intersection of Third Street jackhammering the pavement away from a manhole cover.
Rather than the usual jackhammer as loud as a jackhammer, it was the jackhammer as loud as a jackhammer in your very own bathroom while you have a hangover.
In other words much much louder than normal jackhammers that we all know and love. So as I walked by on my way to  UHaul, I noticed that the jackhammer didn’t have the so-called muffler that they’re required to have in New York City. If you haven’t noticed, most jackhammers have a gadget that looks like a small lawn mower muffler sticking out of them or are wrapped up in a little blanket much like a newborn baby.
These are required by the city because they cut the noise considerably.
So I stopped and asked the work crew why didn’t their jackhammer have the New York City required swaddling?
"You’re supposed to have a muffler on that, why don’t you?  I said fully expecting the converation to go along the lines of:
THEM: "We have no idea what you’re talking about."
ME: "Tell your supervisior to give you the right equipment. It’s making too much noise."
THEM: "Thanks, buddy." 
Basic good samaritan stuff.
Instead, a crew member said:  "So you want to make something of it? Why don’t you call 311?" interspersed with colorful Anglo Saxon construction terms of art.
So I said: "I’ll do just that!" And I took my handy cell phone out of my pocket and one of the crew members started waving a shovel over my head and made various threats.
One of the others tried to reason with the guy: "Put that down," he said.
The shovel-guy chased me west on Third Street and finally was stopped by one of the other crew members.
Phew.
Shaken up, I continued walking toward Fifth Avenue. When I finally calmed down, I called 311 and started telling them the whole thing. When we got to the shovel waving portion of the account, they switched me to the 911 operator because of threats and assault by shovel. But, I don’t know, it seemed like the door was opening into a weeks-long Kafkaesque episode I didn’t want to be part of.
"So I told the 911 people I didn’t want to press charges and all that. I finished talking to the nice people at 311 who were very professional and that was that until the phone call we just got
It was  than 24 hours later. Some of the city employees are doing a very nice job and some of them…."

END OF HEPCAT’S ACCOUNT.

So when was Hepcat going to tell me that he nearly got hit on the head with a shovel? 

Streetsblog has the proposal the DOT gave to Brooklyn’s Community
Board 6 on March 29th regarding safety improvements at Grand Army
Plaza. The plan’s highlights include:
   

• Three new concrete islands (5,900 square feet)
• 2,300 square feet of new landscaping
• Removing a travel lane on Eastern Parkway
• Providing a Class 1 bike facility through Grand Army Plaza
• Five new crosswalks providing access to Prospect Park and the Arch
• Eliminating auto lane east of the arch.

I thought this was a very interesting exchange between two OTBKB readers. One happens to be my dear sister, Diaper Diva (AKA Caroline Ghertler).

“Here’s a very educated guess (as both a parent and psychotherapist in Park Slope): if you’re using “taking care of kids and trying to do your own work” as an excuse for finding “very little time for self-care,” chances are you’re also neglecting your love/sex life as well. Truth is, nothing will get rid of that frumpiness like some romance and passion, and the even better news is nothing is better for kids than having a couple of adults in their lives who are fulfilled in the love-Eros-sex departments. For the emotional health and well-being of your kids, and for a real make-over that counts, get a babysitter and get a life!”

Posted by: Peter Loffredo | Apr 4, 2007 12:37:23 PM

“good advice. but perhaps it could be said in a gentler fashion? ouch.”

Posted by: caroline ghertler | Apr 4, 2007 12:41:35 PM

“You’re right, Caroline. I could have been gentler. Sorry. I tend to be very… passionate… about this subject. Too many adults think being a good parent means neglecting themselves, and in particular, neglecting the Eros side of the married-with-children equation, and that is absolutely the worse thing for the kids. Nonetheless, I will try to better mind my bedside manners.”

This is from Red Eft’s blog, Oswegatchie:

I applaud San Francisco for pushing biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable plastic bags.

But really, can’t we learn to bring our own canvas bags when we go shopping or baskets woven from the native grasses of our front yards? I’m no model of alertness, and I’ve made it a habit.

Forgot your bag? Here, we’ll sell you a canvas one, at cost. And more discounts for people who bring them, as some places do now.

I can’t believe I’m talking about plastic bags while bigger fish like the Iraq supplemental are swimming through Congress, but there are better essayists out there on that one.

“I can’t do it!” I blurted today while driving with my husband. “I cannot go on buying bread in plastic bags. Let’s buy all our bread loaves at Bread Alone from now on, and bring ’em home in our own bags.”

Talking of plastic bags, recycling and so forth, I was at the playground with my children yesterday and my foot fell upon some pale film protruding from the mulch. “What’s this, a baggie?” I thought, toeing it. A condom. “Gross. But really, who has sex at the playground next to a busy thoroughfare?” (People who aren’t allowed to have sex at home? I won’t pursue that line of thinking just now.) Later, I got to thinking about condoms as garbage. All the strange places I have seen them. On asphalt, on grass, hanging from chain link fences…do Canada geese choke on them?

“Why am I obsessing about condoms as litter?” I had to ask myself. Condoms contribute to safer sex and zero population growth. As the biggest polluters on the planet, Americans in particular should use lots and lots of condoms, that’s a good thing, even if they don’t biodegrade (the condoms I mean, not the people. At least people still biodegrade!)

The guy who dropped his baggie full of fertilizer in the mulch is, at least, working to reduce. But what about composting and condoms? Seems there’s some disagreement about whether latex ones, best for preventing STDs, help grow seeds after spilling some. More good reading on this from EcoChick.

Today was a day for Poetry. Panda poetry that  is.

For the sixth year in a row, I took PS 321’s poetry magazine, Pandamonium, to the printer. We always have to get it there the first week of April so that it will be printed and delivered to the school by the first week of May.

It’s always a relief when I (with one of my co-editors) take the file to the printer.
Phew. It signals the end of a very laborious process.
Pandamonium, a parent/teacher/student collaboration, is a 64-page, 11-by-17 inch magazine that features one poem from every child in the school.

That’s nearly 1,300 poems.
The poems are written by the kids during the monnth of May, which is poetry month at PS 321. During the following summer, the poems are typed by twelve or more parent-typists.
In the fall, parent-graphic designers work on the layout. Later, parents are enlisted to proof read and scan artwork.

For printing, we use JNB Printing and Litho, a commercial printing shop in Sunset Park. John, the ownerm has obviously been in the printing business for ages. A real perfectionist, he has an amazing eye and a great memory. He has seen the business change a great deal over the years as computers took over but he’s managed to stay in the game. He’s been printing Pandamonium for as long as it’s been professionally printed.

It was good to see John today.

JNB is located at 141 West 32nd Street (718-965-4700). The woman in charge of pre-press is Robin and she is just fantastic to work with. She seems to enjoy working on this project and treats it with tender loving care. What a big help that is!! I always show up with a variety of CDs and files and fonts and scans and…
It can be a bit confusing. "What version of Quark are you using "Quark 7. We don’t use 7…"
Today it only took an hour to get everything loaded on Robin’s computer and ready for the pre-press process.
What a relief.

This year, as always, we had a top-notch production crew. Elizabeth Reagh of Good Form Design was our lead design and layout person and she is such a talented pro. Antony O’Hara contributed a great deal of time, expertise and creativity to Panda’s new artwork centerfold, as well as other sections. And as we speak, Debby Albenda, an art director at Nick Magazine is hard at work on the cover and the credits page.
The co-editor of this epic project is Susan Buchsbaum and she’s just amazingly energetic and smart. The list of typists, scanners, and proofreaders is too numerous to mention but thanks to all.

But today, I want to salute the effort and energy of Robin, John and the staff at JNB Printing in Sunset Park. Thank you so much for all your work. 

When we were driving around Red Hook the other day, on our way home from Teen Spirit’s gig at the Liberty Heights Tap Room, I noticed that Chelsea Garden Center is going in right down the block from Fairway. They are opening April 23rd. We also drove by the newly re-located Gowanus Nursery at 45 Summit Street between Van Brunt and Columbia.

Chelsea Garden Center in Red Hook?

Gowanus Nursery in Red Hook? (check out A Brooklyn Life’s gorgeous pictures).

Location. Location. Location.

Scott Adkins, playwright and founder of the Brooklyn Writers Space is putting on a show
or to be more exact, The Atlantic Theater is developing his most recent play. 
Come to a reading. Here's what he had to say: 

Friends-
Hope you can make it to a reading of my most recent play, Running
Commentary No. 4. I've had the awesome experience of developing it over the last six months in the SoHo Writer/Director Lab.

Kenn Watt is directing and we'll present at:

The Atlantic Theater: Studio A
330 West 16th Street
Wednesday April 11 at 8 pm

See below the complete schedule of the lab participants, they're all
amazing!

Best-

Scott

Monday April 16 at 7 pm
WHITE HOT
by Tommy Smith
Directed by May Adrales

Monday April 23 at 7pm
NOCTURAMA
by Annie Baker
Directed By Debbie Saivetz

Sunday May 13 at 7pm
THE MELTING POINT
by Kristen Palmer
directed by Awoye Timpo

Sunday May 20 at 7 pm
DO NOT DO THIS EVER AGAIN
by Karinne Keithley
directed by Maria Goyanes

Monday June 11 at 7 pm
MARIA/STUART
by Jason Grote
directed by Brooke O'Harra

Katie
Adams is the Producer of THE GOOD THIEF; Artistic Director, Brian
Avers; Tom Wojtunik directs; Production Design by Travis Walker;
Costume Design by Isabelle Fields; Dramaturgy by Marcie Bramucci;
Myvonwynn Hopton is Assistant Director/Production Stage Manager;
Starring Kit Wannen; Music by Ben Carroll and Corey Mustin. 

The Access Theatre is located at 380 Broadway, 4th Fl, New York, NY,
two block south of Canal at the corner of White Street. THE GOOD THIEF
contains strong language and graphic subject matter. It is not
recommended for children under 12 years old.

Novelist Regina McBride, author of The Nature of Water and Air, The Land of Women, and The Marriage Bed, will offer a special one-day workshop in Park Slope on April 21 from 10:30 until 5 p.m.

Register now to reserve a place in this workshop that is designed for writers of all levels. The cost is $125.

NOTE FRM OTBKB: I have studied with Regina McBride
since 1998 and I recommend her classes to all writers wherever you are
in your process. Using relaxation and sense memory, her technique is
wonderful whether you are just beginning to write, embarking on a novel
or memoir, or very experienced and in the midst of a novel or short
story.

For inspiration, character development and incredible writing
exercises, Regina’s course has been vital to my development as a writer
as it always propels me to my  best writing. Especially great when your
work needs a little jump start.

If you are interested, please email nightsea21@nyc.rr.com

Inner Lives: Developing Characters

An Intensive Workshop with the Focus on the Fictional Character

With Regina McBride

Using relaxation, sense memory, and emotional memory (Stanislavski
acting techniques transformed for the writer) a variety of exercises
will be offered to enable the student to find a deeper, richer
connection to the character he or she is creating.

Exercises will be followed by writing periods, and opportunities for
people to read and share their work. The atmosphere will be safe, with
the focus on exploration. The class is designed to help the student
break into new territory with the character, and with the story itself.

You can even download the ringtones that Yassky considers "palatable". "We wanted one of them to be Bobby DeNiro’s monologue from Taxi Driver
— ‘You talkin’ to me?’ — but we couldn’t get the rights," says Yassky. Here’s a little April Fools fun from  WEEKEND EDITION.

If there’s one thing you can’t get in New York City, it’s silence.

But some legislators think that New York has heard too much of one sound in particular: cell phone ringtones.

The
city’s Center for Reduction of Noise Pollution issued a public call to
action last month, citing an increased number of confrontations spawned
by a new phenomenon: It’s called "ring rage," and it involves strangers
getting into fights over obnoxious cell phone ringtones.

David
Yassky, a member of the New York City Council for the 33rd District in
Brooklyn, has proposed a bill to regulate cell phone rings.

Distracting
ringtones in the workplace cost the economy more than $1.2 billion each
year, says Yassky. His bill mandates that New York residents choose
between four more palatable rings, custom-made by the city.

"We
wanted one of them to be Bobby DeNiro’s monologue from Taxi Driver —
‘You talkin’ to me?’ — but we couldn’t get the rights," says Yassky.

Many
New Yorkers have been outraged at the possibility of being told what
rings they can and cannot use, especially since anyone caught using an
unauthorized tone will be subject to heavy fines.

Yassky speaks with Liane Hansen about the measure, which he says would be strictly enforced by the police.

An OTBKB reader writes:

Hello: I live on President, between 7th and 8th; across the street from
me are two brownstones the owners of which leave several outdoor lights
on 24 hours a day. After observing this for weeks and weeks, and
pondering whether I should send letters reminding them of the wasted
energy and money and general waste, I finally yesterday approached one
owner while she was standing outside her home. I introduced myself, and
politely asked if she was aware that the lights were always on. She
replied thusly: Yes, we know, we tried a timer but it doesn’t work, and
with nannies and other people in and out all the time, and since I
don’t want to come home late at night to darkness, we just leave them
on.

I thanked here for her time and came back home. That was on a
sunny, bright afternoon. The lights remained on that day, and are
burning brightly as I type. I give up, but am amazed that people are so
wasteful.

Any tips out there about getting people to understand that wasting energy is a bad idea?

Diaper Diva’s friend, Allyn Howard, has a really neat on-line shop called the Blip Blop Shop, where she sells fun animal paintings, prints and t-shirts for kids. The prints are reasonably priced and terrific for kid’s rooms. Have a look. Isn’t the bunny cute?

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is moving to the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott. Yeah, that’s the tournament that was immortalized in the documentary film, Wordplay.

Directed by the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Editor, Will Shortz,  this is the nation’s oldest and largest crossword competition. Solvers
tackle eight original crosswords created and edited specially for this
event. Scoring is based on accuracy and speed. Prizes are awarded in
more than 20 categories, including a $5,000 grand prize. Evening games,
guest speakers, and a wine and cheese reception allow solvers to meet
each other in a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere.

Next year’s tournament is February 29-March 2, 2008. For more information, go to crosswordtournament.com

I love this post I saw on Park Slope Parents today. It’s so honest and real. I don’t feel like a frump but sometimes I want to revamp my look and do something different. Eye shadow. Mascara. New shoes.

Any suggestions for this woman who posted: "How Did I Get To Be Such a Frump?" So far she’s heard about MYR and Lulei for make-up and personal shoppers at Bergdorf’s, Bloomies, Lord and Taylor, and Macy’s…

I just turned 50, and am in desperate need of a makeover.  I've been a
stay-at-home mom, can I blame it on that?  My makeup and hairstyle is
from 10 years ago, and my wardrobe consists of 8 pairs of black
elastic-waist pants, and different colors of the same Lands End shirt.  I wish
I was joking.
 
I could use some help to look more polished and pulled-together. Where
can I go to get makeup advice geared towards a middle-aged woman?  I
don't want to go to a trendy young place.   
 
And hair color and style advice, from someone who understands graying
hair and middle-aged (but still hip) styles?

And clothes, on a not very svelt body?

Alternate side parking regulations will be suspended on Tuesday through
Friday, April 3-6, and Monday and Tuesday, April 9-10 for holiday
observance. All other regulations, including parking meters, remain in
effect.

The 2007 Alternate Side Parking Regulations Suspension Calendar is 
available
on the DOT Web site, along with other alternate side parking 
information, at
www.nyc.gov/dot/a