Walking with OSFO to Hollywood Video, we noticed the lights. "What is that?" OSFO asked. Those are lights where the World Trade Center used to be.

Cool, she said. Can people see it all over the city?

Yes.

One of the best views may be from the corner of Third Street on Fifth Avenue. It is easy to see above JJ Byrne Park, the Old Stone House. The Gate, the local pseudo-divey bar with the outdoor seating is an ideal place to see: The Lights.

One year, on the night of the 11th, I saw a local widow (her husband was at a meeting at Windows the morning of 9/11). She was creating an artful mosaic of old dishware in bright colors on a lampost in front of her building, a tribute to her husband. The lights were shooting up over the buildings on Carroll Street. She worked alone.

Those lights look like a hole in the sky, OSFO said. I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Some of you may remember the strange case of the missing plaque.

A plaque for Lt. Dave Fontana, a Squad 1 firefighter who died on 9/11, was stolen. No one could believe it. Why would someone want to steal Dave’s plaque?

On September 11, 2006, Dave’s fourth Street neighbors are putting up a new plaque. There will be a ceremony and dedication at 5 p.m. Here’s the story from last year.

A memorial plaque in honor of Lt. David Fontana, one of the
firefighters from Squad 1 in Park Slope who died on 9/11 at the World
Trade Center, has been stolen. 

It was placed there in 2002 by friends and neighbors on the tree in
front of the Fourth Street brownstone where David, Marian, and Aidan
Fontana used to live. There was a small dedication ceremony around
Christmas of that year. "We invited Squad 1 over for a little
dedication. Some kids from my son’s chorus at MS51 stood on the stoop
and sang a couple of song. songs," writes Sarah Greene in an e-mail to
OTBKB. "My husband, Bill,  talked about how we planted that tree a few
years before, and when he watered it some mornings, Dave would come out
and they’d chat. So we thought of it as ‘Dave’s tree’."

The plaque, which reads, "In Memory of Firefighter Dave Fontana –
Beloved Husband, Father, Neighbor, Artist, Hero," was discovered
missing on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 13th. "It was there in
the morning because my husband watered the tree around 10 a.m," writes
Greene.  "But Liz O’Connell noticed it was missing in the afternoon."

The missing plaque has been reported to the police. "But somehow I
doubt they will put a detective on the case," writes Sarah. She and her
neighbors are putting up signs this weekend offering a $100 reward for
its return. The value was placed at $800.00 but Greene thinks that it
will cost close to $1000. to replace it.

No one can quite figure out why someone would steal the plaque which
honors a local Park Slope hero. Perhaps someone wanted a 9/11 souvenir.
The theft could be connected to the publicity surrounding the
publication of Marian Fontana’s just-published memoir: "A Widow’s Walk:
A Memoir of 9/11." Or it might have been a school prank – there are two
schools near the location of the plaque. The principals of both schools
were notified of the missing plaque

This piece from Gay City News by Duncan Osborne about the tight race in the 11th Congressional District, the race everyone is watching.

In one of the final debates among the Democratic contenders for
Brooklyn’s 11th Congressional District, the candidates offered voters a
choice among four supporters of gay marriage and other goals sought by
the lesbian and gay community.

“After
September 12 we will no longer have four candidates,” said Gary Parker,
president of Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), referring to the date
of the primary election. “We will have one, but we know that that one
candidate will support marriage equality.”

While
the race has largely been without rancor, one point of tension has been
that it was only at the end of last year when City Councilman David
Yassky, the sole white candidate, moved into the district, which
includes portions of Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope but has its
greatest number of voters in Flatbush, Crown Heights, and East New York.

Democrat
Major Owens has represented the district since 1982 and in some parts
of the district the seat is seen as an African- and Caribbean-American
one, having been represented by a black Democrat since the late Shirley
Chisholm was first elected in 1968. In 2004, Owens announced he would
not seek re-election this year. With only Democrats in the running, the
September 12 primary will decide the winner.

While
not directly attacking Yassky at the August 30 event, the three black
candidates made remarks that were clearly directed at him.

“There
are candidates here who have been rooted in the community,” said Chris
Owens, the son of Major Owens, during his closing remarks. “I’m
somebody who lives here.”

During their
opening remarks, state Senator Carl Andrews and City Councilwoman
Yvette Clarke both noted that they also were born and raised in the
district.

“As a state senator, I
believe I’ve done a good job of representing the constituents of the
20th senatorial district,” said Andrews who has held his seat for 14
years.

With the four largely in
agreement on many issues, including those of import to the queer
community, the candidates each emphasized things they had achieved for
the New York City and the gay community while also putting forward
their progressive credentials.

Clarke,
who has been in the City Council for just under five years, noted her
support for city money to battle methamphetamine and her efforts on
behalf of queer kids.

“We created new
funding streams to open up new places in response to Covenant House’s
failure for LGBT youth,” said Clarke, regarding efforts to providing
shelter for homeless young people. Clarke is endorsed by the Stonewall
Democratic Club of New York City, a gay political group.

Yassky,
like Clarke also first elected in 2001, talked about his work battling
guns and violence. He attacked the Republican-controlled Congress.

“I
am running because I believe that this Congress is a disaster for us,
for this community, for this city, for this country,” he said during
the event held at Park Slope’s Montauk Club. “I am running for Congress
because I believe that I have a record of accomplishment, of
achievement.”

Owens, who briefly served on a community school board, focused his opening remarks on the Iraq war and its impact on America.

“The
greatest challenge we face today as a nation is the Iraq War,” said
Owens who is endorsed by LID and Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, an out
lesbian who represents the West Village. “We cannot deal with
healthcare, we cannot deal with housing… So many of our resources are
being drained by this war.”

Andrews said that healthcare and housing were suffering and took a poke at President George W. Bush.

“This
administration has declared war on the middle class, the working
class,” he said. “The war we should be fighting is the war on poverty.”

The sole major disagreement among the
four is the Atlantic Yards, a major and controversial development
project that is slated for downtown Brooklyn near the terminus of the
Long Island Railroad at Flatbush Avenue. Only Owens opposes the
project, which has pitted those fearing the enormous scope of the
development against Brooklynites eager for the jobs the project will
generate and the building of a stadium for the Nets, a pro basketball
team currently in New Jersey.

The event
drew roughly 50 people and was sponsored by LID, Stonewall, the Out
People of Color Political Action Club, a citywide group, and the Human
Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay lobbying organization.

I love this picture in this week’s Brooklyn Papers.

Gowanus Lounge put this up on his site. Thanks, GL.

Check out the The Brooklyn Papers handy guide to the "primary election smackdown." It links to articles on all the key local races.

No Land Grab also offers up its endorsements–dividing candidates into "the good, the bad and the ugly"–and informational guides. Check them out here. NLG prefers Chris Owens in CD10, Charles Barron in CD11, in addition to Batson in the Assembly race and Montgomery
in the State Senate contest.

Whatever your point of view, be sure to get over to John Jay, PS 321, the church on 8th Street, or wherever you vote. Engaging in the democratic process is very important this year (as always).

Bake the Vote at PS 321 is always a fun stop on the way to voting at PS 321 — lots of impressive, homemade goodies.

Here’s another piece from 2004. We still use the Seriously Nice Equadorian Laundry. This week, like the week this piece was written, was one of those weeks when we had to beg Hepcat to bring the laundry over there because as Teen Spirit said, "I don’t have any clean jeans." Some things never change.

Smartmom and family finally had clean clothing today.

That sentence was not intended as a jab at Hepcat, whose job it is to take the laundry bag to THE SERIOUSLY NICE EQUADORIAN LAUNDRY on Sixth Avenue and Fifth Street. But it is a fact that the family was without their favorite clothing for too long.

You’re probably wondering why Smartmom and Hepcat don’t just do their own laundry in the laundry room in the basement of their apartment building, where there are plenty of perfectly functional coin-operated washing machines and dryers. And that, dear reader, would be an excellent question.

It all started back in ’91 when Teen Spirit was born. Smartmom worked full-time in Manhattan as a video producer. She would leave the apartment early in the morning and return after 7 p.m. It could be said that Smartmom never really mastered the work/family conumdrum. She loved her work (and her young family needed the income AND her health insurance plan). But she was miserable about the time away from her beautiful child. Laundry was one of the first household chores to go for two reasons: Smart Mama was exhausted and the time was better spent cherishing the bebe.

After the birth of OSFO in ’97, Smartmom switched to a more family-friendly career as a freelance writer with an office in Brooklyn.  But Smartmom was still loyal to THE SERIOUSLY NICE EQUADORIAN LAUNDRY, the very one immortalized in "Knuffle Bunny" a children’s book by Brookyn writer and cartoonist Mo Willems. Sending it there was a tough habit to break.

Y’know. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Every week, Smartmom, Hepcat, Teen Spirit, and OSFO fill the rattan hamper with their dirty clothes. Then, Hepcat stuffs the red laundry bag and takes it to the laundry. Ages ago, Hepcat christened the bag, The Laundry Baby, because he used to roll the thirty-pounder in OSFO’s McClaren stroller. But ever since the stroller broke more than three years ago, Hepcat has carried The Laundry Baby the two-and-a-half blocks looking like Atlas with the world on his back.

Over at THE SERIOUSLY NICE EQUADORIAN LAUNDRY, the family’s clothing is washed, cleaned, and FOLDED. And the fact that it is FOLDED is probably why Smartmom is so passionately devoted. That and the fact that the seriously nice Equadoiran family who own the place are like family now and the woman calls at 9 p.m. to say, "Laundry. Your husband, send him over to get laundry."

And while this has been the family’s laundry routine for the past 13 years, sometimes the process gets snagged. Smartmom tries not to be unpleasant, but often she has to, well, encourage Hepcat to carry The Laundry Baby to the laundry and back again. .

Sad to say, this week was one of those, "Will you please bring The Laundry Baby over to the laundry, already!" weeks. And finally, finally, Hepcat to around to doing it. And for that everyone was grateful.

OSFO’s first day of school went without a hitch. She said it was "a perfect day." Her teachers are lovely – two pretty young women with big, warm smiles What could be better

On the first day, the led the class in a team building activity that involved wrapping a team member like a mummy with toilet papers.

Now that was fun.

Best of all, an old friend from pre-school is in her class. They were best friends and classmates in kindergarten and first grade, too: together again after a two year hiatus.

Today OSFO’s teachers gave out a "Tool Kit for a Fabulous Year" which included a paper clip ("we need to stick together"), a rubber band ("to remind us to be flexible") a bandaid ("for the bumps along the way), an eraser ("everyone makes mistakes"), a Hershey’s Kiss ("a hug to remind us to be kind and gentle with one another"), a pen ("a wise person once said that the pen is mightier than the sword").

Don’t you love it.

The teachers are obviously very organized and they sent home lots of informative notes and forms.

So far so good for OSFO.

Today is Teen Spirit’s first day. That’s him pictured last year on his first day of high school. Now he begins tenth grade and will be dressed, according to his school’s dress code, in a white shirt, tie, black chinos, and suede lace ups. Will his lace up shoes even fit? He’s gotten so much bigger than last year. Nearly six feet tall.

All summer he’s been so nocturnal. I just hope we can rouse him to get to school on time. He went to bed early…

I think I’m going to give him "A Toolkit for a Fabulous Year" too with a paper clip ("we need to stick together"), a rubber band ("to remind
us to be flexible") a bandaid ("for the bumps along the way), an eraser
("everyone makes mistakes"), a Hershey’s Kiss ("a hug to remind us to
be kind and gentle with one another"), a pen ("a wise person once said
that the pen is mightier than the sword"). It works for a high schooler, too.

High hopes for the new school year, Teen Spirit. We love you.

This week’s Village Voice has a really interesting story by Bernice Yeung about Phyllis Rodriguez, who lost her son at the World Trade Center and her unlikely friendship with Aicha
el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui. The photo of the two of them pictured right is by Yeung. Here’s an excerpt:

  The Rodriguezes’ mementos of Greg are subtle but
omnipresent. On their right wrists, both Rodriguez and her husband wear
silver bracelets engraved with Greg’s name, a parting gift, of sorts,
from Cantor Fitzgerald. Photos of Greg posing on a hiking trail or in a
snowy forest are arranged in the study and on the refrigerators of both
their White Plains home and their summer retreat.

And in nearly equal number, there are pictures of Aicha
el-Wafi: one tacked to the refrigerator, a framed photo on a bookshelf,
a snapshot of the two women together in New York that serves as the
background to Rodriguez’s computer screen.

The photos of Greg can be harder to look at for Phyllis
Rodriguez. In contrast, the photos of el-Wafi are like a shield from
grief, a reminder that Rodriguez has tried, in the name of her son, to
always do better and to push the limits of grace and generosity.

"How do you accept death when you don’t believe there’s a
heaven or an afterlife?" Rodriguez says. "It’s a fact of life. It’s an
end. It’s a loss. The only thing I feel I can do is to not succumb to
the tragedy and define myself through it and always be the long-suffering
mother. The loss will always be there. But I’m not miserable. As a
matter of fact, the more good I can do that can come out of it, the
better: by helping Aicha, by speaking out for more understanding
between people, by trying to understand what makes people who do
extremist acts arrive at that point. What can we do to eliminate some
of the conditions that make people so angry?"

A woman on Park Slope Parents was nice enough to compile a list of apple and pumpkin picking places in the metropolitan area. Take a look. There’s a whole lotta apple pickin’ out there.  Excuse the weird formatting. I cut and pasted this right off of Park Slope Parents.

Apple Hill Farm

141 Rte 32 South, New Paltz, NY, Ulster County
845.255.0917
applehillfarm.com
Apple Hill Farm overlooks the Shawangunk and Catskill Mountains. Stop
by the
restored 1859 barn full of homegrown quality fruit; enjoy a hayride,
get fresh
pressed apple cider and apple cider donuts. Pick your own pumpkins and
gourds
right from the patch, or off their many displays around the farmstand.

Applewood Orchards and Winery

82 Four Corners Rd., Warwick, NY, Orange County
845.986.1684
applewoodorchards.com
Within an hour of the city, this farm has the usual apple (seven
varieties) and
pumpkin pickings, wagon rides and puppet shows, but also boasts its own
winery.

Dykeman’s Farm

231 West Dover Road, Pawling, Dutchess County
845.832.6068
www.bestcorn.com
Take a hayride into the pumpkin fields and pick from a large selection.
Door
prizes, refreshments and face painting.

Wilkens Fruit and Fir Farm

1313 White Hill Road, Yorktown Heights, NY, Westchester County
914.245.5111
www.wilkensfarm.com
A wide variety of apples and pumpkins are available—all of which you
can pick
yourself. Two farm markets sell everything from cider to freshly baked
pies and
doughnuts. Go back in a couple of months to pick your own Christmas
tree!

For more on New York pick-your-own farms and apple festivals, go to
nyapplecountry.com.

Abma’s Farm

700 Lawlin’s Road, Wyckoff, NJ
201.891.0278
www.abmasfarm.com
Only 30 minutes from the George Washington Bridge, this farm offers a
small
petting zoo, pony rides, and hayrides to a large pumpkin patch. Stop by
their
unique 1700’s barn where they sell fresh produce, eggs, poultry and
specialty
products.

Silverman’s Farm

451 Sport Hill Road, Easton, CT, Fairfield County
203.261.3306
www.silvermansfarm.com
Find a pumpkin patch full of 20 different varieties and fall squashes,
gourds,
sunflowers, straw bales, cornstalks, scarecrows and mums. Watch as
fresh apples
are pressed into cider at their cider mill. Petting farm includes
buffalo,
llamas, sheep, goats, fallow deer, emus, longhorn cattle, pigs and
exotic birds.
The farm market offers 18 varieties of freshly baked pies, New England
farm-style preserves, jams, jellies, honeys and syrups.

Terhune Orchard

located in Princeton, New Jersey
(terhuneorchards.com).
They are
opened year round, but I suspect their biggest month is October. They
have
berry picking
throughout the summer as well as apple picking and pumpkin picking in
October. You can get a variety of apple products there as well as picnic
lunch, candy/caramel apples, and pumpkin ice cream sandwiches. Toddler
friendly activities include:
Hay Ride
Pumpkin Patch Ride
Area for riding toddler sized John Deere’s
Large tractors to sit on
Feeding geese and chickens/roosters
Seeing sheep, a goat, a rabbit, and a donkey
Pony Rides
Painting Pumpkins
Photo ops in pictures of animals with the faces cut out
Local country band

I think all of the activities are free too aside from paying 10 cents
for a handful of corn to feed the animals and buying the produce, food, and
products. Perhaps I’m just too used to consumerism or am just
inexperienced with orchard activity life, but I was so pleasantly surprised with
the lack of a cover charge or having to pay for the various activities.

Demarest Farm (www.demarestfarms.com) in NJ.

It was fairly easy to get to (probably took a little
longer
than to drive to the Bronx Zoo), they have a Hamptons-esque deli and
BBQ which
offered lots of eating options, as well as an ice cream stand, hay maze
and
bounce house for the kids. There was a tractor-pulled hayride to the
orchard
and you can pick other fruits and vegetables as well (incl. pumpkins,
although
the official season begins next month). I understand it gets pretty
crowded as
the season kicks into gear, though. All-in-all, though, it was a
pleasant way
to spend the day outdoors.

Outhouse Orchard in Westchester County

Despite the unappealing name, it was a GREAT place and only about a 70
minute drive from Park Slope. They had apple picking — right now is
good time for MacIntosh apples, but they also had some pears. They have some
trees with very low branches, so little kids can reach them. They also
have a hay ride, farm animals, and a little mini-playground for kids,
and a store with delicious produce, pumpkins, maple butter, apple-related
products, etc.

I don’t have the phone number on me right now, but it’s Outhouse
Orchard on Hardscrabble Road in Croton Falls, NY. If you Google it, I think they
have
a website. Have fun!

Wightman’s Farms in NJ

for hay rides and
other fruits (including pumpkins) you can pick.

Also-an excellent farm stand with cider and
donuts, preserves, etc..

In the fall they have a corn maze and a
small hay maze for the kids. They also have picnic tables around if
you want to hang around and eat something there:

http://www.wightmansfarms.com/

Remember the black cover of the New Yorker that came out the week after 9/11 (it is dated September 24, 2001).

That cover, titled 9/11/01, by Art Spigelman was so moving. I hold it in my hand as I write this. If you hold it to the light you can see the after image of two towers.

I am so glad to have this issue in my collection of 9/11 books on the bookshelf in the dining room. So grateful to have saved this piece of New York history and by extension my history; I remember reading it on the day it arrived in our mailbox.

As I leaf through the magazine, I find it hard to believe there was even a "Goings On About Town" section. There were theater openings, movies, opera, art exhibitions, and other events. How was that possible? Did anyone go? Did life really "move on" so quickly.

As I remember it, we stood still for months afterward—frozen in fear, grief and incredulity. But the truth is we did do things. The kids went to school. We attended a Yom Kippur service in a Ft. Greene Church. Mostly we huddled together with our family and friends.

I am looking now at the miraculous Talk of the Town section, where a collection of writers (Hertzberg, Updike, Frantzen, Johnson, Angell, Appelfield, Rebecca Mead, Sontag, Antrim) wrote  hurried, dazed reactions to the events.

What could anyone really say? And yet there was so much to say.

John Updike wrote: "

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness. From the viewpoint of a tenth-floor apartment in Brooklyn Heights, where I happened to be visiting, the destruction of the twin towers had the false intimacy of televison, on a day of perfect reception.

Susan’s Sontag’s sharp words were painful to read on that week. We were tender,  vulnerable in a way we’d never known (our city, our country, ourselves) Nearly 3000 of our fellow New Yorkers were dead and the city was hurting deeply. I knew there was truth to what she had to say but it pierced, it hurt along with everything else. Yet, her insight and intelligence were a vital part of that week, too.

"The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV comentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantalize the public. Where is the acknowlegement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or liberty or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed super power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? "

Adam Gopik wrote;

"On the beautiful morning of the day they did it, the city was as beautiful as it had ever been. Central Park had never seemed so gleaming and luxuriant—the leaves just beginning to fall, and the light on the leaves left on the trees somehow making them at once golden and bright green…

"Our Lady of the Suways, New York as it is. It is the symbolic city that draws us here, and the real city that keeps us here. It seems hard but important to believe that that city will go on, because we now know what it would be like to lose it, and it feels like losing life itself."

For the fifth Anniversary issue, dated Monday September 11, 2006, there is a white cover with a tightrope figure (it is, of course, Phillipe Petit, who walked from one tower to the other in the late 1970’s) walking across a white landscape.

There is also, for the first time ever, another cover underneath the white one. The under-cover shows the tightrope figure walking on an invisible rope above lower Manhattan. We see the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and many buildings. But on the ground there are the footprint of the missing World Trade Center.

Side by side, the 2001 and the 2006 covers tell a story. I don’t know what it is. And that’s okay.

I see that September 18th was the day I started the original Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. It was a Saturday. The writing was very chatty, very ‘what I did today’ at first. I didn’t know what it was going to Morph into. I see that I was already using Teen Spirit and Smartmom. Hepcat’s full name was Hepcat Daddy-O back then. I don’t know why I thought anyone would be interested in what I did on a busy Saturday. But I was finding my way. We started No Words_Daily Pix few weeks later. So September 18th is OTBKB’s official anniversary. I’ll be running these old posts leading up to the big day…

This morning, Smartmom took care of some recent "kitchen problems." The
old man who fixes stoves came by to fix the oven which hasn’t been
working in weeks. Later, the cheerful exterminator stopped by. Smartmom
told him about the wheat moth problem but he said there’s nothing he
can do about it — he specializes in roaches and mice. "You got to go
to the sauce," he said. Smartmom thought he meant that there was some
sauce that is especially delicious to wheat moths. Actually, he was
saying THE SOURCE in thick Brooklynese and pointed to a box of rice,
and other boxes of grains. "If you see nests in there, they gotta go in
the garbage," he said. Note: Smartmom had already thrown out ALL open
boxes of grain and had emptied and scrubbed the cabinet. She’s also
using Pantry Pest traps bought at the PARK SLOPE FOOD COOP.

Speaking
of unpleasant insects, a downstairs neighbor came up to say that his
son has Lice and that the 7-year-old Oh So Feisty One, may have it too
because she played with his son the other day. Oh Joy. "Have you been
physical with Zack downstairs?" Smartmom asked the Oh So Feisty One.
"Not really," she answered, "But he did put his fingers through my
hair." Yeesh. Smartmom and the Oh So Feisty One may be takin’ EASTERN
CAR SERVICE to see the go-to Orthodox Jewish lady in Boro Park with 10
children who is NYC’s de-facto lice expert—she’s even been profiled in
THE NEW YORKER. Now how’s that for credentials?

The Oh So Feisty
One and 13 year old Teen Spirit (TS), managed to get along so well
today that Teen Spirit actually invited her to join him on a trip to
7th Avenue. That meant big fun: reading Manja books at Barnes and
Noble, eating glazed donuts at the MOJO CAFE, browsing video games at
Game Stop and looking for the latest Bare Naked Ladies at SOUND TRACK
(only local stores get all caps. Not mega brands.)

Meanwhile,
Smartmom raced to get her eyes checked at VISIONS on Lincoln Place. The
optometrist thinks her middle vision is going a bit. But he’s not sure
if she needs to start wearing corrective lenses and told her to think
about it. Huh? Smartmom had a quick lunch at OSHIMA, the tasty sushi
place on 7th Avenue between Berkeley and Lincoln that used to be a Zen
Palatte type of place. The new owners are super friendly—they have an
adorable little boy who hangs out there most days when he is not at
school.

Hepcat Daddy met Smartmom at OSHIMA on his way to
VISIONS, thoughtfully schlepping out in the rain to get TS’s broken eye
glasses fixed (because Smartmom forgot to bring them and TS says he’s
blind without them.) Hepcat Daddy-o didn’t bother to tell Smartmom that
her eyes had huge brown and yellow circles around them from the eye
drops the optometrist put in there. Oh well. The nice Japanese people
didn’t say anything either. More on that later.

After VISIONS,
Smartmom and Hepcat Daddy-o stopped at the COMMUNITY BOOKSTORE which
smelled of clove incense. Hepcat Daddy-o skimmed Art Spiegelman’s new
"In the Shawdow of No Towers," and Smartmom bought a a book by poet
Louise Gluck. She stepped on the owner’s dog, who was sleeping in the
fiction aisle. Love the homey feeling in that bookstore. CYNTHIA OZICK
will be doing a reading there on October 19th.

Smartmom picked
up a bottle of Merlot at SHAWNS, the liquor store on 7th between
Garfield and Carroll. The blue haired girl who works behind the counter
wasn’t there today. Smartmom ran into a neighbor from the building next
store who said, "What did you do to your eyes?’ The neighbor looked
truly alarmed.

Smartmom explained.

The Oh So Feisty One
(OSFO) and TS were already back from their 7th Avenue sojourn when
Smartmom got him home. He: finishing the Ramen noodle soup he prepared
for himself (and spilled all over the kitchen) She: listening to a CD
of her favorite music that Teen Spirit created for her this morning.
B-52’s Rock Lobster, Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson, and the
Ramones are the high points. Dance Dance Revolution and Hilary Duff are
there too. After a bit, OSFO and TS decided to hit Seventh Avenue again
which gave Smartmom time to read her first subscription copy of THE
NATION. She also had the wherewithal to take a nap.

She ain’t Smartmom for nothing.

TS,
OSFO, and Best Buddy (TF’s best friend) are in TS’s tiny bedroom being
rambuctious. Grumpy Hepcat Daddy-o is cooking up some Italian turkey
sausage from the COOP and making a delicious spaghetti dinner (recipe
to come). Hepcat Daddy-o has never gotten used to the elevated sound
level of children. Just a minute ago, TS went out again to PARK SLOPE
BOOKS around the corner looking for a used art book with a picture of
"The Last Supper" in it—he’s reading "The Da Vinci Code." We should
have a picture of "The Last Supper" around here. Yeesh.

Just got this PRESS RELEASE from Develop Don’t Destroy urging the public NOT TO ATTEND HEARING BUT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ELECTORAL PROCESS.

BROOKLYN, NY—Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) calls on the public to engage in the primary day electoral process and skip an Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) hearing on Forest City Ratner’s "Atlantic Yards" scheduled for the same September 12th date.

First the ESDC gave only 66 days for public response to the 4,000-page "Atlantic Yards"Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS).  Then the ESDC "ran" a public hearing on August 23rd that was a fiasco from any vantage point. That hearing was so poorly run that after eight hours only 100 people out of 500 wishing to speak were able to do so. With about 400 speakers left to speak the ESDC continues to schedule only four hours for its hearings.

"We urge and encourage the public not to go to the September 12th ESDC ‘Atlantic Yards’ hearing but rather engage in the political process as voters, campaign and poll workers," said DDDB spokesperson Daniel Goldstein. "The ESDC’s scheduling of a public hearing on primary day is just the latest in a series of insults to the public by the public agency that views itself as Forest City Ratner’s partner. It is unacceptable for the State of New York to schedule an important public hearing on the largest single-source development proposal in the history of New York City coinciding with primary day. It is especially unacceptable and unconscionable considering that the last hearing required an eight hour commitment just to have a chance to testify. We’ve asked the ESDC to change the problematic hearing date but they have not budged."

The 66 day timeframe for public response to the "Atlantic Yards" DEIS is about half of the time given to the much smaller Yankee Stadium plan.

"Rather than giving up the electoral process for a fiasco of a hearing, we do strongly encourage and urge the public to attend the ESDC hearing scheduled for September 18th. And of course the public should submit written comment up to the current September 29th deadline," Goldstein concluded.

That’s all.

Just don’t go thinking today is Monday. Monday was a holiday.  That can make the week feel very discombobulated, I find.

Today is the first day of school and we’re ready. On Labor Day, OSFO and I went to Save on Fifth and bought everything on the list that her teacher’s sent during the summer. TS’s school doesn’t start until Thursday.

4 marble notebooks
4 folders (red for math, blue for reading, yellow for social studies and green for word study)
Crayons
Markers
Black Sharpies
Colored pencils
Ticonderoga pencils (they didn’t specifiy but they’re the best)!
Elmer’s Glue
Post-its
Kleenex
Paper towels
Liquid anti-bacterial soap

In case you didn’t know, public school parents must always buy classroom supplies like Kleenex, paper towels, sharpies, markers, soap, etc. The schools don’t have money for it and at some schools the teachers have to use their own money to get it.

We had so much fun shopping for supplies. It’s a rite of passage. A special day every year. OSFO’s outfit is ready for tomorrow (pink and navy striped polo shirt, I’m not sure if she’s wearing jeans or a skort). Her only worry is that some boy she doesn’t like will be in her class and that she won’t like her teacher. She’s looking forward to seeing one of her teachers from last year. In other words: she’s good to go.

On Monday night, she spent a couple of hours decorating the marble notebook, which will be her "Writer’s  Notebook." She put pictures of Ducky, Teen Spirit, Hepcat, Diaper Diva, and her best friend on the book…

She forced herself to go to sleep early so she’d be well rested for tomorrow. I hope she has a really great day.

My friend is back from Burning Man. We got worried because she was going to drop her special Burning Man bikes off at HC’s mother’s house in Northern California and didn’t. Then she wasn’t home when we thought she was supposed to be home.

She’s exhausted.
She surely has a lot to share.
She’s going to write everything down.
She couldn’t get her Internet to work at Burning Man even though there was wireless a go go.
She’s sorry she couldn’t send us any posts about the festival.
We’re glad she’s home safe and sound.

My friend who went to Burning Man with her daughter never sent even one email about her days there. She promised me a daily diary that I would publish to satisfy the curiosity of OTBKB readers. Well, she didn’t come through. Nothing. Nada.

We still know as little as we did before about Burning Man, the week-long counter-culture, arts festival for 40,000 in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Hopefully, she’ll have lots to tell when she gets back tomorrow. And pictures. A t-shirt. Something. Nu?

Anyone else from Park Slope who reads OTBKB go to Burning Man?

When do bloggers blog? Do they do it in the middle of the night? The previous day? Do they sleep?  It’s just amazing: I wake up in the morning and there they are: Gowanus Lounge, Atlantic Yards Report, No Land Grab, Brooklyn Record, A Brooklyn Life, Sunset Parker

Reliable as rain.

Then there’s No Words_Daily Pix. Sometimes he doesn’t get his picture up until early afternoon. What’s up with that?

Truth is, NWDP puts a lot of thought and time into his choice of daily pix. It’s not like he’ll put just anything up. He likes to read the blog and respond to what’s in there. He likes to make connections. He’s a very, very thoughtful guy.  Some days he actually takes the picture like the picture yesterday of the fallen tree on Second Street. Some days I’ll say, hey can you run out and take a picture?

He’s very obliging. It’s fun to have a photographer around.

Some bloggers don’t blog on weekends, some do. I miss the one’s that don’t and appreciate the one’s that do.

I tend to write my blog around 10:00 p.m. after the kids go to sleep (Hah). I put posts up around 11 p.m. or so. And the next day I do more. All day. So it’s worthwhile to keep checking in.

People ask me all the time: how much time do you spend on your blog? It varies. If the muse strikes I do a lot of writing, which can take a few hours. If I am just linking and putting up excepts, it’ll take up considerably less time. Truly, it’s a labor of love and it doesn’t feel like any time at all.

Early September will the the two year anniversary of Third Street (Originally called OTBKB but changed when I went more public and moved over to Typepad). It was originally on Blogger; Smartmom began there. 

In February of 2005, I started this version of OTBKB. I originally envisioned it as a cross between the Village Voice and the SoHo Weekly News for Park Slope. It kind of morphed into its own thing. And now there are so many other Brooklyn blogs – we all have our special niches, our special areas of coverage, our unique tone and voice.

I can’t believe I’ve been blogging for two years. The time just flew. And yet so much has happened. There are so many Brooklyn blogs now – we’re a real community. Strength in numbers and all that: bloggers working day and night to keep this community informed and entertained.

It’s a pleasure.

"The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It" sounds like an interesting read (Hello, Community Books, can you hold a copy for me).

I know these two smart Park Slope writers and mothers of teenage children and I can’t wait to read what they have to say. I hope the book will get a lot of attention and homework will be abolished forever.

At bookstores now (or soon, very soon).

I’m enjoying a brand new book called I FEEL EARTHQUAKES MORE OFTEN THAN THEY HAPPEN by Amy Wilentz (Hello, Community Books, can you order Amy Wilentz’s new book).

Full disclosure: I ordered the book because it was written by a friend from high school’s wife, who happens to be a stellar journalist/memoirist. She’s won a ton of prizes for her first book, "The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier" and was bureau chief of the New Yorker’s Jerusalem bureau. She also writes for the Nation, Vogue, and other magazines.

Credentials a go go.

A true New Yorker, Wilentz was less than thrilled about moving out to LA. But it did provide her with one hell of a socio/historic/personal topic for a memoir – so she can’t be too pissed off.

The subject matter: New Yorker moves to California holds great interest for me since we nearly moved out to Northern California a few years ago and we go out there twice a year.

Wilentz and family moved out to LA soon after 9/11 and just before the Governator became governor. So the sub-title of the book is: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger.

She moves to California hoping to escape New York post 9/11, a landscape layered in grief and imminent disaster. Arriving in LA, she realizes she has escaped terrorist catastrophe for natural disaster—earthquakes, mudslides and heavy rains—and political tumult.

"I had arrived in L.A. hoping to avoid catastrophe, only to find that I was living in its capital. My new friends advised me: Cash and water in your car (Tampax too). Full tank, always. Slippers or flip-flops next to each bed (for walking on the inevitable broken glass). Flashlights everywhere, especially in night tables; make sure the batteries are live. Emergency lights. Hand-cranked radio. This all was beginning to sound too familiar. And don’t forget: The safest spot is still in a door frame or under a sturdy table; outside is dangerous until the shaking has stopped; door frames without doors are better because doors can swing and knock you out. Bolt all your bookcases to the walls."

The book is written in a speedy, funny, hyper-verbal, visual, ultra-smart style full of great observations about life in LA and loads of research, including initiations to lots of high-end parties with notable LA democrats and celebrities.

She is one smart writer this Wilentz and I look forward to reading her first book, "The Rainy Season" about two years she spent in Haiti.

I especially enjoyed the passage where she compares LA’s Bel Air with Haiti’s Bel Air:

Still I miss the streets of my old Bel Air as I drive, in a sort of a criminal’s crouch down Bellagio across Copa de Oro to Saint Pierre. It seems sad to live in a place so bereft of life, so immune to real life’s little inroads, so regally, resolutely detached. Money will do that to you. Here there is no stench of sewage to remind you of the human condition, no neighbor to make a meal for your sick mother if you have to go away, no grandmother living in the lean-to or the other room, if there is another room, no humble straw pallet on the floor for the cousins, no clicking of the dominoes to fall asleep to, no storyteller on a roof going on and on toward midnight for the benefit of the whole neighborhood, no cockfights in the secret arena back behind your brother’s House, no radio blasting merengue, no drummer practicing down the street out in back, no friends popping in unannounced at the any time of day or night, no babies sitting on the sidewalk with their big sisters, no one fixing tires with tar on the street corner or rewiring the electricity with paper clips; just the hired help serving you day in and day out, the cook and the nanny, and the charming Vietnamese Au pair, the driver, brunches at the Hotel Bel-Air in the pretty open air dining room above the pond…

Here’s a letter from Daniel Goldstein and Shabnam Merchant urging all to Vote against the "Atlantic Yards" proposal on Sept 12th.

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you because, you – like me – oppose the proposed Ratner arena/highrise project. In our opposition to that project, there is something very key and timely we can do.

IF WE CAN GET THE WORD OUT VIA EMAIL TO EVERYONE WE KNOW,
THEN BILL BATSON WILL WIN THE 57th ASSEMBLY DISTRICT RACE ON SEPT 12.

This assembly race has greater impact on the Atlantic Yards fight than any other race this year. Other politicians and most importantly Sheldon Silver will have to listen to Bill as the District’s rep, when he is making his decisions about the project.

Please forward this email to every single person you know who is opposed to the Ratner project, and ask them to forward it to everyone they know.

That way this will get to as many people as possible in the 57th Assembly District.

There are 5 things we each need to do

1) PRIMARY DAY
Take the day off from work on Primary Day, Sept 12 to volunteer with the Batson campaign.

2) VOLUNTEER
Between now and election day the campaign needs volunteers to help do door-to-door canvassing for Batson and phone calling for Batson to secure voters. If you can only give a few days or hours September 9, 10, 11 are key days. (You will not be sent out alone; and if you can’t handle canvassing, then make phone-calls).

Please – please let’s each put in at least 4 hours before primary day ; Bill does not have money for "paid volunteers" to do this.

3) VOTE
Come out and vote on Sept 12 for Batson and the candidates listed below, and urge everyone you know to do the same

4) DONATE NOW
This coming Tuesday Councilwoman Letitia James will endorse Bill Batson at a press conference!!

If the Batson campaign can do a mailing about this, it will seal the deal!

But they can’t send a mailing unless they can raise an additional 4 – 6K

If you, like us, believe that Councilwoman Tish James’ endorsement can make the difference, then donate now!!

Visit www.batsonforbrooklyn.com to make an online donation and get the word out about the endorsement.

5) SPREAD THE WORD
Forward this email and ask your friends to do the same

To VOLUNTEER contact:
Batson For Brooklyn
Abeni J. Crooms, Deputy Campaign Manager
767 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
917-609-6700 phone
abenicrooms@gmail.com

PS – other candidates who oppose the Atlantic Yards proposal are:
Chris Owens for Congress (11th Congressional District)
Ken Diamondstone for State Senate (25th Senate District)
Charles Barron for Congress (10th Congressional District)
—
Your friends, Daniel Goldstein and Shabnam Merchant

New Yorkers are switching to public transportation in record numbers. That’s good news for the environment; good news for the country’s energy consumption except that most of the  country is so car-dependent and underserved by public transportation…

This from the NY Times:

A growing number of New Yorkers are deciding that if the trip to work takes more than a half-hour, then someone else can do the driving, a new survey by the Census Bureau shows.

In the metropolitan region, which for years has been home to the nation’s longest average commute, tens of thousands of workers have stopped driving to their jobs and switched to riding subways, trains, buses and ferries, according to an analysis of the data released this week by demographers at Queens College.

More than 2.5 million residents of the region — about 2 of every 7 commuters — regularly rode some form of public transportation to work in 2005, up from about 2.2 million in 2000. The share of commuters driving themselves or riding in private cars fell, a trend that could bode well for America’s energy consumption if only it were taking hold nationally.

Despite rising gasoline prices, nearly 9 of every 10 workers nationwide still travel to work by private car, said Phillip A. Salopek, a demographer at the Census Bureau. That number has been stuck at about 88 percent since 2000, Mr. Salopek said.

The latest figures reinforce just how unusual New York is in its reliance on public transportation. No other American city makes half as much use of mass transit. Of the 6.2 million transit riders in the country, more than 40 percent live in the metropolitan region, which, by the federal government’s definition, includes the city and 18 surrounding counties in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Thanks to Wendy Zarganis of  About Brooklyn for all this information about the West Indian Day Parade.  Check out About Brooklyn for more events this Saturday and Sunday.

On Monday, Labor Day:The 39th annual West Indian Day Parade features floats, food, music and lively entertainment and colorful costumes. 

Ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 am. Parade begins at on Eastern Parkway and Rochester Avenue, continues up
Eastern Parkway to Grand Army Plaza, then continues down Flatbush
Avenue to Ocean Avenue. 10am-6pm

And on Sunday, Sept. 3rd: The West Indian
American Day Carnival Association presents "A Majestic Evening of
Caribbean Artistry and Music," featuring soca, calypso, and steelpan
performances. $30. 7 pm. Brooklyn Museum grounds, 200 Eastern Parkway
at Washington Avenue. For more information on any of the above events,
call (718) 467-1797

We love our new Krups toaster.  You have never seen a family so excited about a new toaster. OSFO toasted something like 16 slices of toast the other day. That’s how excited she is. Even TS loves it. It’s the perfect toaster.

Our new Krups takes big, thick items like bagels. and has a button to turn off the elements so that you only toast one side of the bagel (AKA the bagel button).  It can eject toasted items out of the toaster no matter how small. As OSFO said, the toast comes out "golden" not burned.

HC now informs me that our toaster is  made by the same company that made the world’s largest gun (Big Bertha) for the Nazis. Maybe it’s not the world’s most perfect toaster…

Pre-Krups we had a Proctor-Silex 4-slice that stopped working about a month after we got it. It was so frustrating/ HC thinks that the computer was pocessed, which caused it to randomly barely warm or completely incinerate baked goods. It had a computer designed to toast bread to a desired color of the toasted item which meant that it would barely warm a slice of pumpernickel and white bread would burst into flames.  We threw out that toaster last week.

Prior to the Proctor-Silex we had a stainless steel dye-cast aluminum, built to last forever Dualit, the classic, restaurant supply toaster. We got it for $75 dollars at a Pottery Barn outlet. Amazing. They usually cost $340 dollars or more. Sadly, we had a couple of toaster fires and I threw it out but HC thinks he could have fixed it. We’ll never know.  It’s gone.

Luckily, he loves the new Krups. Which is amazing because he usually has nothing but complaints about the appliances and electronics that I buy. But the Krups has won his heart, too despite its past as a Nazi collaborator (see Gunter Grass).

Thanks to Gowanus Lounge, I just discovered What Are We Eating,  described as a bricolage of food. A socio-political archive. A guide to global gastronomy. I don’t know. Send us a photo of what you’re eating for dinner: whatrweeating@gmail.com

It’s really cool. People send pictures of what they are eating – from all over the world. The above is a shot of "the expansive beach at Besant Nagar in Chennai, India."

Alive during the cooler hours of early morning and late evening, everyone comes here to eat fried food, play a carnival game, and enjoy the ocean breeze. Vendors sell chaat, fried hot peppers and – my favorite – roasted corn on the cob sprinkled with lime and chili powder.

A small hand-cranked bellows fuels the charcoal stove where they hold the corn by its pulled down husk and, once darkness falls, you can see the sparks stretch downwind like a migrating flock of angels. It is here that the tsunami wave swept over the sands in December 2004.

This from New York 1:

Those who oppose the new Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn now have some extra time to voice their concerns.

At a public hearing last week, many of the people who oppose the
project said they didn’t have enough time to review the 4,000 page
proposal.

The Empire State Development Corporation announced Thursday that
the public comment period will be extended an extra week to September
29th.

After the public comment period ends, the plan will go before the
Development Corporation for a vote before going to the Public Authority
Control Board, the same board that killed the proposed West Side
stadium plan.

The $4.2-billion project would redevelop 22 acres over and around
the MTA rail yards in Brooklyn, including a new basketball arena for
the New Jersey Nets.

Our friend Henry Lowengard turned 50 yesterday. We celebrated with him over the weekend but now I’d like to take a moment to appreciate all that is Henry.

–His kids call him Dadu
–He’s one heck of a husband
–He remembers everything you ever tell him
–He has a great heart
–He is a wonderful artist: go here to see his work
–He makes hilarious and masterful comics
–He is a human encyclopedia
–He’s brilliant (but everyone knows that)
–He’s soooo funny and fun to be around
–He’s lovable
–He’s adorable
–He’s a terrific friend
–He has a player piano and plays the autoharp
–He knows so many great songs
–He loves the songs of Burt Bacharach (and so many others)
–He’s performed at the Loser’s Lounge
–He’s a mainstay at WFMU
–He’s non-pareil, unlike anyone else you will ever know
–He makes the world a better place because he’s in it

From Hepcat: It’s not so much I don’t know where to start, it’s I wouldn’t know when to stop.

Here is something I found on his website; an artist’s statement, if you will, about his vapor paint work.

A river is not so much water as a shape that water makes. The geometry of the river changes the pressure of the water which flows through it, which in turn changes the shape of the banks of the river. The same applies to rivers of ice, air and earth. That which has one nature at rest may have another nature in motion.

This is the philosophical basis of my art: that gestures in time are not the same as gestures held, but there can be an expression of time in stasis by either providing multiple images of gestures in time or combining an amount of time into a single image or both.

This should stress out the city’s fifth and eighth grade parents, who are already stressed out because they have to go through the hideous process of getting their kids into public middle and high schools this year. They need those stupid test scores for applications. I wish they’d just throw all those standardized tests away. This from New York 1, my source for some Brooklyn news:

City students are heading back to school next week, but they still
haven’t seen the results of the tests they took last school year.

The Daily News says results from reading and math standardized
tests for students in third through eighth grades have not been
released yet.

The tests were taken in January and March, but officials say the scores won’t be available until September 14th at the earliest.

Education officials say since this is the first time the state
administered the tests under the federal "No Child Left Behind" law,
they don’t want to risk mistakes by rushing the grading process.

But critics say they delay could be harmful because some children who should be held back could be moved to the next grade.

Sweet Melissa’s on Seventh Avenue between First and Second Streets looks like it is ready to open SOON. Really soon. It looks so pretty in there. And I hear it will seat fifty people. They did a gorgeous renovation — what I could see through the paper.

Park Slope awaits SWEET MELISSA. OSFO is planning on having her lunches there (she can go out to lunch this year).

Those who don’t feel like the low benches of ConnMuffCo might consider the indoor seating at Melissa’s. If it’s anything like the Cobble Hill branch, Sweet Melissa’s is somewhat more formal, more feminine, more of a  ‘let’s have tea’ kind of place.

Still, I think they’re gonna grab some of the first coffee of the morning action. They open at 6 a.m. I hear. And they have the most elegant and delicious pastries.

Seventh Avenue really needs a bakery. Sweet Melissa’s is so the right thing to be going in across from PS 321.

We are thrilled…

Join Cocktail Angst for a post-labor day, back-to-school, end of corn and
watermelon and start of martinis and cheese gig at M Bar on Wednesday
September 6th! 7pm to 10pm.

The usual nicey-nice type time with me and
you and Keith and maybe Danton. Also, Cocktail Angst will be playing at
Joe’s Pub on September 8th at 11:30pm. Blackberry or datebook it or put
a post-it on your fridge and more details will come later.

Wed. September 6th
7pm to 10pm
M Bar at The Mansfield Hotel (www.mansfieldhotel.com)
12 W. 44th St. (between 5th and 6th avenues)
no cover

Continue reading COCKTAIL ANGST →