Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

Photographer Tom Martinez is in Honduras as part of an  international human rights accompaniment and observation delegation. In this photo, a  member of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) is seen knocking on doors  in an ongoing effort to collect signatures for a national constituent assembly, which was process begun by President Zelaya, which lead to his removal in a military coup on June 28, 2010.

So far Tom’s group has met with representatives from the International Committee of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), the leadership of the FNRP, and Honduran Platform for Human Rights, who gave a general overview of the events leading up to the coup on June 28 of last year, the human rights situation in Honduras since the coup, and their continued work to reconstruct democracy in Honduras under increasing repression.  This violent repression has continued under the government of Porfirio Lobo, who was named president following a campaign and election process held under the auspices of the de facto coup government in the last half of 2009.

For more information about the delegation and the situation in Honduras go here.

Well, maybe this means that Teen Spirit or Hepcat will finally get a temporary job with the Census Bureau. They aced the test and Hepcat actually did the training but they’ve never been called to do any work.

They hired these bozos instead and look where that got the Census Bureau.

According to the New York Times, about 10,000 census surveys in Brooklyn have to be redone because two managers supposedly filled out many of the household surveys themselves.

The two managers, Alvin Aviles and Sonya Merritt, began using online databases to fill out household surveys instead of collecting the information by knocking on doors. Needless to say, the  two were fired after census officials finally figured out what was going on.

The local census office where they worked was supposed to complete 97,000 household surveys in the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and Greenpoint by July 10. By June 12, 9,000 surveys were still incomplete.

So to speed thing up, these two managers started faking the surveys.

You would have thought they’d be tired. Indeed, the humidity was incredibly high and the family had spent much of the day outside. Smartmom trudged up and down Seventh Avenue for the street fair, the Oh So Feisty One was out with her friends; Hepcat went to see the Red Bull air races in New Jersey.

And Teen Spirit, no fool he, stayed in all day in the air conditioning.

They all came home hot and sweaty: Smartmom took a long nap. OSFO just stood next to the air conditioner and drank a tall glass of cold lemonade.

You would have thought they’d be toast by the time they ate the Smartmom-made Father’s Day dinner: chicken and vegetables in Calcutta Kitchen’s delicious Masala simmering sauce.

You would have thought they’d be ready for bed but someone — Smartmom thinks it was Hepcat — made the suggestion.

And then Smartmom googled it and found out if it was within the realm of possibility.

“It’s playing at 10:05 at the Pavilion,” Smartmom said aloud.

“Let’s go,” OSFO said.

Smartmom and Hepcat eyed each other cautiously. Their 13-year-old daughter, who barely ever wants to be with them, just agreed to do something with them. Silently, they were shocked and thrilled and ever so careful not to mess up this incredible opportunity.

They were about to have a high-quality family experience even if it was 10 o’clock on a school night.

“Let’s call Eastern,” Hepcat said, wasting no time and dialing the ubiquitous car service as Smartmom ordered the tickets online.

Waiting for the car downstairs, Smartmom wondered if she’d make it through the movie. The night air was still thick, and she felt like if she closed her eyes she might fall asleep. She looked at her watch and suddenly felt completely irresponsible. They were taking their 13-year-old to a 10:05 movie on a Sunday.

“This is kind of crazy,” Smartmom told OSFO as they got into the car. OSFO shrugged. She seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. Smartmom wondered if any of her neighbors saw them going out.

Continue reading Echoes of Smartmom’s Life in Toy Story 3 →

Some people think that the only real Brooklynites are the one’s who were born here. Other don’t think that matters a bit. In the Complaint Box on the City Room blog, New York  Times readers are having it out. Here’s an excerpt from a “complaint” written by Ellen Leavitt, a teacher at a Brooklyn high school. Where’s Leon Freilich when you need him?

Brooklyn has become a hipster haven, drawing lots of celebrities and artists and quirky entrepreneurs and parents who use surnames for their children’s proper names. Fine. But many of these recent arrivals — from New Jersey, Iowa, the suburbs, France, all over the place — have now been crowned the Face of Brooklyn.

Ahem, hello, media experts, how about us lifelong Brooklynites? Are we the proverbial chopped liver?

In the 2008 anthology “Brooklyn Was Mine” (Riverhead Books), hardly any of the writers included were born and raised in Kings County. Most are transplants. Doesn’t anyone want to hear from those of us who actually went to kindergarten in Brooklyn, who played stoop ball before it was hip, who lived here during the blackout of 1977? Maybe it’s time to start paying attention to us. And I don’t mean trotting us out as the quaintness factor.

That’s right. The city is NOT closing the Double D Pool on Nevins Street between Douglas and Degraw. Great news for kids and parents. Summer is saved!

Hospitals in Brownstone Brooklyn have lost patients from neighborhoods like Park Slope, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens, according to a statistical analysis by The New York Times of birth trends from 1998 to 2008.

Anecdotally (and from reading Park Slope Parents) I know that for parents in Park Slope OBGYNs and hospitals in Manhattan are the norm not the exception. Yes, plenty of people have their babies at Methodist Hospital but the vast majority of parents choose Manhattan for what are perceived as superior hospitals and doctors. Here’s an excerpt from today’s NY Times:

The four Manhattan hospitals that are increasingly favored by women living in brownstone Brooklyn, especially in Park Slope, are New York University Langone Medical Center, the Roosevelt branch of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Mount Sinai Medical Center, according to The Times’s analysis.

Statistics show that Brooklynites hardly hesitate to use the local hospitals for routine emergency room care, like during the swine flu scare last year, but when it comes to having a baby, neighborhood allegiances break down.

Hospitals in or close to the affluent Brooklyn neighborhoods are not necessarily hurting. Births at New York Methodist Hospital, in the heart of Park Slope, soared by 40 percent in the 10-year period. It ranked among the city’s five hospitals with the most births in 2008, along with Maimonides (which had more births than any other hospital in the state) and Lutheran Medical Centers in Brooklyn, Roosevelt and Mount Sinai.

Yet, the numbers of births at Methodist to mothers from Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens dropped over that time as more chose Manhattan; the hospital’s growth came from the black, West Indian and Lubavitcher neighborhoods in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights; Latino and Satmar neighborhoods in Greenpoint and Williamsburg; and the West Indian, Haitian and blacks neighborhoods in East New York, Flatbush and East Flatbush.

A spokeswoman for Methodist, Lyn S. Hill, said the hospital analyzed its data a little differently, and found that births had remained constant over the last 20 years from the combined neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn and Park Slope. “Our patient population ethnicity closely mirrors that of Brooklyn,” Ms. Hill said.

On the Park Slope Civic Council website there is an interesting and informative FAQ about expanding the Park Slope historic district.

Why expand the Park Slope Historic District?
Landmark designation is the only way to protect the buildings and streetscape that make Park Slope distinctive.  Without this designation, there is nothing to prevent developers or owners from tearing down or drastically altering existing buildings.  Zoning law regulates building height and usage but not exterior appearance or fidelity to the surrounding architectural context. Only historic district designation offers that protection, and only about 25 percent of Park Slope lies within the present district.

Who decides whether the Park Slope Historic District will be expanded?
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), with ratification by the City Council, after an extended period of intensive research to document each building in the proposed expansion.

What part of Park Slope is under consideration, and why isn’t it larger?
The LPC has a small staff and can only conduct research into several hundred buildings at a time. In this first phase, the LPC has agreed to survey more than 700 buildings contiguous to the existing Historic District, but the Park Slope Civic Council is laying the groundwork to have all of Park Slope eventually considered.

Will building owners be part of the process?
Yes. The process includes communication with all building owners and a public hearing.

Would landmark designation lower my property value?
On the contrary, landmarking tends to raise property values because people want to live in neighborhoods protected from radical demolition and development.

Would I be required to restore my property to some prior period in its history?
No.

Continue reading Park Slope Civic Council FAQ About Expanded Landmarking →

Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

At a late night session of the City Council on Thursday night, Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council agreed on a $63 billion budget which will  mean painful job losses in schools and other social services. According to the NY Times, the city will make the 2,000 or so cuts largely by attrition although there will be layoffs.

The deal marks the end of a process that lasted months due to a $5 billion shortfall and a serious recession.

25 fire houses that were marked for closure were saved. That alone preserves the jobs of 400 firefighters at a cost of $37 million. Also spared were caseworkers at the Administration for Children’s Services.

And in good news for city children: all of the city’s swimming pools will remain open for the summer, including the Double D pool on Douglas Street in Park Slope/Gowanus.

There will be no tax increases or fees; tax revenues were higher than expected this year due to gains on Wall Street.

The Shred Services paper shredding truck will be outside of PS 321 on 7th Ave and First Street on June 26th, from 8AM until noon.

Here’s your chance to get rid of your confidential papers securely and conveniently and support the school at the same time! The cost to have a large box of papers shredded is $10 with $5 going to PS 321 PTA.

The effort is part of a campaign called “Make Up The Difference” which was launched recently by the school’s PTA in response to the expected DOE budget cuts.

Subway and bus service changes that may affect your trips are effective this coming Sunday, June 27. Visit the Subway and Bus Route Changes page at http://www.mta.info/nyct/service/RouteChanges/index.html to see if you should update your email and text message alert choices.

On All About Fifth check out the 3-part interview with City Councilmember Brad Lander. To see the first two interviews, check out here (district digs) and here (small business challenges), respectively. Here’s an excerpt from the 3rd part where he talks about Fifth Avenue, sustainablity and local green initiatives:

Brad Lander: I am very committed to the “livable streets” effort. Although I’m in my car a lot, and appreciate the very real and practical need to keep traffic moving, we live in a neighborhood where our quality-of-life is very directly related to the quality of our life-on-the-street. My kids have started to do more walking and biking on their own, and it has given me a new appreciation of how much difference it makes to have safe intersections, so I love the many places where we have new “bulb-outs” or “neck-downs.” While there has certainly been some controversy around them, I value and appreciate the new bike lanes. While I still drive more than I cycle, I think the trade-off is well worth it. I’m also hoping we can do even more to improve our streets: wider sidewalks, more trash cans and recycle bins, drinking fountains, healthier street trees. Our neighborhood has come a long way since the days people were scared to walk down the street – but we could do even more to make people want to.

On June 23rd, a spirited group of Brooklynites gathered to protest cuts to the B71 bus and all the bus lines slated to be restructured or totally eliminated next week.  The B71 is a cross town bus whose route is not duplicated by any Brooklyn train line and connects neighborhoods which have been particularly hard hit by budget cuts this year.

Kids came with signs saying where they take the B71: to schools, to doctors and dentists, to libraries, museums and parks. Representatives of the disabled came to remind the MTA how essential buses are for mobility and workers came who need the B71 to get to their jobs. The rally was attended by residents and organizations from the Columbia Waterfront district, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, City Councilmembers Brad Lander and Letitia James and representatives from Assemblywoman Joan Millman and State Senator Daniel Squadron’s offices who all represent areas served by the B71.

Organizers of the rally also gathered more than 2,700 signatures on paper and online petitions to stop the elimination of the bus.  On Sunday, June 27 there will be another rally against bus cuts at the Smith Street Fair, which will begin at the corner of Union and Smith Streets at 11AM.

Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

Community Rally: Save the B71 Bus!
When: Wednesday, June 23, 5pm
Where: Union and Smith Streets Bus Stop (in Carroll Gardens)

The MTA has declared the Union Street-Eastern Parkway B71 bus over, but our Brooklyn communities say NO!  Show the MTA, Mayor Bloomberg, and Albany how we feel about cutting our VITAL public services.

Old school: NY Shitty

All traces of Sal erased: Pardon Me for Asking

Day care center shut down: Sheepshead Bites

Graffiti clean up: Ditmas Park Blog

Trader Joe’s crew people: Effed in Park Slope

Tickle the ivories on Pier 1: Brooklyn Bugle

Bushwick crack cop gets 15 years: Bushwick, BK

Ghost bikes can stay if well maintained: Free Williamsburg

“City Walls,” an innovative art project that turns construction sites into canvasses for public art, opens on June 30tth. This first-ever construction wall art project in Downtown Brooklyn has transformed visual barriers into visual attractions, replacing blue barriers with art.

Three acclaimed Brooklyn artists – Jessica Angel, Junkhaus and Nelson Rivas – have created large scale murals at three separate construction sites in the MetroTech BID area.  The murals, in styles ranging from abstract Picasso-esque to dramatic cityscapes, have transformed ordinary construction fences into street-front art galleries.

The project is funded by  MetroTech Business Improvement District (BID) and the Brooklyn Arts Council with the Stahl Organization and V3 Hotels.

Additional information about the artists and mock-ups of their “City Walls” pieces are available online at www.brooklynartscouncil.org/documents/152

Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

Yesterday the  Legislature passed a bill  that will give the state the highest cigarette taxes in the United States.

The new law, part of an emergency measure to keep the government running, adds another $1.60 in state taxes to every cigarette pack sold. The new law goes into effect on July 1st bringing the average price of a pack to about $9.20.

But in New York City, cigarettes will be even more expensive! The city imposes its own cigarette taxes, which will bring the cost of a pack to nearly $11 a pack.

$11 a pack! That’s a lot of money to smoke.

I had an interesting encounter today on the F-train (which became an E-train in Manhattan). The fact that I was reading King of the World, David Remnick’s biography of Mohammed Ali seemed to attract the attention of the man sitting across from me.

“Does he mention Chuvalo?” he asked.

“What?

“Does the book mention Chuvalo. He fought Ali in ’68.”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Check the index,” the man said and I did.

“He in there?”

“He’s mentioned on four pages,” I told the man looking down at the index.

“I fought Chuvalo,” he said. “I called Remnick one day and told him that he should write a piece about George Chuvalo and he told me to write it,” he said.

“So did you?”

“Nah. I didn’t want to write it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, Remnick has his own way of doing things. You know Sy Newhouse? Well, he doesn’t touch the editors at the New Yorker. They have their own fiefdom. He can do what he wants,”

“As an editor, you mean,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, I’d love to write for the New Yorker,” I said. At this point I noticed that we were at 53rd Street and Madison Avenue.

“I’m getting out here,” I said.

“So am I,” he said. “What do you do?”

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“Short stories?” he asked.

“Yeah, well…fiction, columnist, blogger. All kinds of stuff,” I said.

“What about you,” I asked this man, who was tall and bald.

“I’m a nihilist,” he said.

“Do you do anything other than be a nihilist?” I said.

“I can’t do anything else,” he said.

“So what’s a nihilist doing on the F-train at 9:30 am in the morning?” I asked.

“I’m going to the dentist,” he said. “When I was a boxer I lost my teeth so I’m being fitted for a new set.”

“You still a boxer?” I said asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I studied the man’s physique. He had big hands, a broad barrel chest and a thick neck. He really did look like a boxer.

“No, I just celebrated by 60th birthday,” he said. “I haven’t boxed in a long time.”

“What are you going to do now that your’re 60?”

“What I always do. Since I was 10 I’ve done what I wanted. I figured out that no one likes anybody and that all the reasons you think you do things don’t matter,”

“Oh,” I was interested in hearing more of his philosophy.

“A school principal, actually a school supervisor, once told me that I should have had peer pressure. That it would’ve helped me in my life…”

“Were you kicked out of school?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know my story with school and classes and teachers,” he said.

The conversation continued on in this same intense manner. We briefly touched on Malcolm Gladwell, Tony Judt, Israeli politics, Israelis and then it was time to part ways.

“Before the dentist, I have to go to Barney’s to pick up some socks,” he said. “Have a very good life.”

We shook hands and I walked east on 6oth Street completely captivated by this strange encounter.

Smart growth bill passes: Atlantic Yards Report

Brutally weird Times’ front page juxtaposition: Noticing New York

Help plan the waterfront: City Room

Answers from a court reporter: City Room

Ready to apply to high school?: Park Slope Parents Blog

Brought to you from the Feldman Family weather tower in Park Slope.

I wrote this a year ago on my first Father’s Day without my dad. This is my second FDWD:

(written June 2009) Smartmom’s first Father’s Day without her dad wasn’t easy. They always did something special on that night. Usually, her dad — aka Groovy Grandpa — and Mima Cat came over for dinner. While Hepcat cooked risotto or lamb, she and her dad would stand in the kitchen, and he’d tell tales of his college days at U.C. Berkeley, or working at Papert, Koenig and Lois, that 1960s advertising firm where he wrote ads for Robert Kennedy’s Senate campaign, Quisp and Quake Cereals and the New York Herald Tribune.

Groovy Grandpa would gingerly sip from Hepcat’s collection of Scotch (some Oban, Balvenie or Laphraiog) and compare them, like the connoisseur he was. He always gave Hepcat a bottle for his birthday.

Smartmom loved those evenings with her dad at the apartment, especially when her father would sit down at the Casio piano and play his free-form jazz. He had no formal training and couldn’t read music, but somehow he managed to bang out tinkly renditions of some of his favorite Cole Porter songs.

For a Father’s Day gift, Smartmom would usually go to the Community Bookstore and buy him a book on one of his favorite topics like philosophy, jazz, bird watching, or horse racing.

He’d immediately start reading it and confirm that it was a very good choice.

“How’d you know I’ve been wanting to read this?” he would ask.

A couple of years ago, Groovy Grandpa told Smartmom that he wasn’t a big fan of the Father’s Day holiday, but he appreciated the fact that she and Diaper Diva made such a big deal about it. Now Smartmom wonders why he wasn’t a big fan. Or maybe he was just kidding.

Last year, Smartmom didn’t write a column about her dad for Father’s Day because when he first got sick, he asked her not to mention his illness in her column. She thought a Father’s Day column would be too maudlin, sad and elegiac.

About a week later, Groovy Grandpa said, “I thought you’d write a ‘Smartmom’ about me for Father’s Day.”

Smartmom was startled and stricken. There was something so poignant about hearing him say that. So this Father’s Day, she kept flashing on that conversation and feeling guilty and sad.

Truth is, she never wanted to admit to him that she knew he was dying. Now Smartmom feels bad about all the conversations they didn’t have. And terrible that she didn’t write about him last Father’s Day.

Not a day goes by when Smartmom doesn’t think of her dad. There’s so much she never got around to saying. That’s life (or death).

But it still doesn’t make her feel any better.

Smartmom found herself feeling low energy on Father’s Day. In the quiet of Sunday morning, while Hepcat and the kids were asleep, Smartmom went through a box of old letters that her lovable and funny dad wrote to his parents just weeks prior to the birth of Smartmom and Diaper Diva in 1958:

Dear Folks,

Birth is expected in a couple of weeks, and I am pretty nervous about it. Up until now, the idea of a baby (babies) has been pretty much taking them to their first ballgame, dressing them in Eton suits and listening to their first gurgles of gratitude.

But now, the day-by-day reality becomes clearer, and I wonder how we’ll handle such things as squalling nights, plastic ducks all over the bathroom and shelves full of those terrible picture books. To say nothing of colic, uninhibited bowel habits and stubborn refusal to eat. In addition, the idea of pacing the hospital waiting room for hours, without knowing what’s happening to Edna, doesn’t strike me as better than going to the movies.

Oh, well, it will all be over soon and the joy of having them will, I suppose, put the doubts away. Did you like me at first, or did it take a few years?

Smartmom wonders how long it took her dad to like her and her sister. From the black-and-white photos, it looks like he was quite fond of his twin newborns quite early on. But who knows?

There is so much children don’t know about the inner lives of their parents. When you’re young, you can’t even imagine them having a life before you were born. Finding letters, notebooks, and journals is such a powerful way to learn more about the parents you think you know.

The night of Smartmom’s first Father’s Day without her dad, there was no standing in the kitchen hearing vintage stories. There was no jazzy tinkling of the plastic Casio keys. There was no tasting of Hepcat’s special Scotch.

But there were memories. Plenty of them. And the letters. They’re no substitute for the man but they offer a coveted insight into what was going on in his head just weeks before he became a dad.

Today at 10AM, there’s a “Save Our Pool” rally to protest the closing of the Double D Pool on Douglas Street between Third Avenue and Nevins Street

What if Park Slope was a gigantic kibbutz? Smartmom laughed at the idea of turning her Brooklyn neighborhood into a Socialist experiment.

But it sure was fun to think about.

Smartmom lived on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in 1980-81 when she was just 23 years old. As a volunteer on this self-contained economic community of 800 members and children, Smartmom worked in the children’s house and in the kitchen.

At that time, kibbutz children did not live with their parents, but in dormitory style “children’s houses.”

Early kibbutzniks believed that trained caregivers and teachers (other kibbutz members) would be better at taking care of the children than parents. It was thought that the parent/child relationship would be healthier if the parents didn’t have to discipline their children.

Now that’s worth thinking about.

More important, the children’s houses would liberate mothers from their traditional roles and bring about gender equality. Instead of childcare, women would be free to work and have more leisure time.

Now that’s downright feministic!

Smartmom enjoyed working in the children’s house but she didn’t really get to know the children because her shift was early in the morning and it was her job to make the beds and clean up after the kids.

She did, however, observe the young kibbutzniks around the kibbutz. She even gave a young boy guitar lessons in the afternoons at his parent’s apartment. She did wonder what it would be like to live without your parents and to be raised by a community. Her young guitar student didn’t know any different. At 23, Smartmom thought that it would be pretty strange.

The children did spend time in their parent’s small kibbutz apartment every day after school and would eat dinner with them in the kibbutz cafeteria.

Continue reading Smartmom: Should Park Slope Become a Kibbutz? →

On Sunday, June 20th at 10 AM, there’s a “Save Our Pool” rally to protest the closing of the Double D Pool on Douglas Street between Third Avenue and Nevins Street