Sixteen years is a long time to be married. Consecutively, that is. It is definitely something worth celebrating; something to make a big deal about. In 1999 when we hit the ten year mark, we started to make a fairly big deal about our anniversary.

Staying at the Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street became our annual ritual.

The first five years at the Paramount were fine. But last year, they told us there were no rooms left (even though we had a reservation) and then proceeded to give us what must’ve been the tiniest room in a hotel full of tiny Phillipe Starck designed rooms. And the crisp white design – white everything except for the gilt-framed artistic headboard – wasn’t so crisp and white anymore. There were cigarette burns on the white carpet and a soft patina of gray everywhere else.

And, to make matters worse, a clock radio went off FULL BLAST in the room next door at 4:30 a.m. Hotel security came upstairs immediately and knocked vigorously on the door until the guest turned it off.

So it wasn’t exactly the perfect night away from the kids that we always fantasize about.

This year we decided to be low key, even blase. Why make such a big deal about it anyway? It’s only 16 years. Plus making a big tadoo arouses expectations and sets you up for disappointment. This year, our pproach was: take it easy, take it slow. Wish each other a Happy Anniversary and have a nice dinner in Brooklyn.

And that’s exactly what we did. At Brooklyn Fish Camp on Fifth Avenue at Warren Street, the chilled bottle of reasonably priced white wine from Australia was all we needed to enjoy the sultry summer night sitting in the restaurant’s large, lovely backyard. We reminisced about our wedding 16 years ago, remembering what we were doing when.

And both of us agreed that this new addition to the Fifth Avenue restaurant scene had the feel of a lobster restaurant in Welfleet, or some other Cape Cod town. We felt like we were close to the ocean, not Fifth Avenue. 

Even though the service was unbelievably slow – the kitchen was extremely backed up during the rush hour of Saturday night dinner – the food was excellent and the wait staff was friendly, attentive, and full of guilt about how long it was taking for the food to come out. Our waitress, April, kept giving us progress reports and assurances us that the food was on the way.

And we didn’t get antsy or annoyed. First off, we were just glad to be out without the kids, away from our apartment. Alone. That in and of itself is special.

And the restaurant’s shortcomings felt appropriate somehow. It was real life, not the fantasy of "the big night out where everything is perfect." Kind of like marriage: full of minor inconveniences and annoyances. It isn’t easy, it isn’t always fun, and sometimes it’s downright frustrating.

Nothing a nice bottle of chilled white wine from Australia can’t fix. That’s just the way it is.

It is 8:30 in the morning and my son is asleep on the couch. The lights are on and a copy of the new Harry Potter book, THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, is open to pages 346-347 face-down on his chest.

He started reading the book at 1:30 a.m. or so, the time we got back from Community Bookstore, which was selling the books at midnight. We waited on a line which stretched from the bookstore up Seventh Avenue to Garfield and then curled around a good ways up Garfield toward Eighth Avenue.

There must have been 200 or more people on line. Few were dressed up as Harry Potter characters but there were the requisite Hermoines, Harrys, Dumbledores, generic wizards, etc. It was an excited group of parents, children, teenagers, college students, and some unescorted adults. Some kids didn’t make it and were asleep in their parents arms. But for the most part, the kids were raring to go.

Hugh Crawford set up his portable portrait studio in front of the bookstore and took portraits of all those who wanted to record themselves on this historic, literary night. To see those pictures, go to HughCrawford.com on Sunday, July 17th for information about getting prints.

Community Bookstore set up a small table in front of the bookstore for cash and credit card transactions. After payment, customers were handed a blue card that could be exchanged for a book inside.

Once inside, the fun really began. The store was decorated in fanciful Harry Potter style. Employees were dressed as various characters and there was lots of Harry Potter-inspired refreshments on a banquet table in the front of the store.

Perhaps the most inspired element was "The Hand." In order to redeem the blue card for a copy of the THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE, you had to give your card to a real disembodied hand that was wiggling its fingers in a puppet like theater – think puppet show with a human hand.

After we got our book from The Hand, we walked to the back of the store where a party was in full swing. We saw lots of familiar second grade faces as well as neighbors and friends. One store employee made a rather convincing Hagrid. We were offered butter beer — a concoction of vanilla ice cream and cider. The kids were offered cups of steaming dry ice that provided plenty of fun.

We left before the traditional reading of the first chapter began; my daughter was extremely tired. Sure enough when we got back to the apartment, she was asleep in two seconds flat and my son lay down on the couch to read the Potter.

Once again, a standing ovation for Community Books, which did a creative and eccentric job of celebrating, for the third time, the release of a Potter book. They deserve to make a lot of money on this one. Barnes and Noble had, someone said, more than a thousand people; a real zoo. Seventh Avenue Books/Seventh Avenue Kids, was very quiet about the midnight release. During the week, I kept checking their window to see if they were going to do something but there was no sign or anything. I figured that they were a little overwhelmed with the move. For the last release, they had a nice party and reading.

Seventh Avenue Books was still open at 1 a.m when we walked past on our way home. I noticed a little sign in the window that said: "They’re Here at Midnight." There were some people in the store, buying the Potter and browsing books.

God knows what time my son was up last night reading. He’s a late-night reader to begin with and he has a general propensity for staying up WAY past his bedtime. I don’t expect him to be awake anytime soon. But when he does get up, he’s sure to start reading again. He needs to finish it before the weekend is out. That’s part of the ritual, too.

It’s a savings plan of sorts. We put our pocket change into El Pico Coffee cans, those bright yellow and red containers that, when new, hold our brand of strong expresso coffee.

The cans fill up quickly placed as they are in strategic locations all over the apartment. Coins spill out of my husband’s black jeans when he throws them on the bedroom floor. I routinely pick them up and put them in the El Pico Jar on the dresser. And my purse, my pants, my jacket pockets are noisy with change from buying coffee, the Times, and all my other various and sundry Seventh Avenue purchases. Into the El Pico Coffee can they go.

We always need quarters for the washing machines in the basement. At five quarters a pop, for the washer and 4 quarters for the dryer, you can never have enough quarters around.
But the pennies, nickles and dimes: they really add up in those El Pico Coffee cans. So yesterday, my daughter and I packed the cans in a tote bag and took them over to the Key Food on Fifth Avenue to put them in their Coin Star machine.

The machine is rarely used and it works like a charm. It’s fun to pour the coins through the slot, though my fingers get quite dirty touching them. The machine automatically rejects foreign coins and any non-coin type objects like marbles, screws, and other detritus that finds its way into the El Pico cans.

We found coins from Russia, Germany, and Holland in the coin return slot and enjoyed watching the screen as it showed a breakdown of how much there was of each type of coin. When it was done, the machine printed out a receipt, which we cashed in at a nearby cashier.

$74 dollars was the total yesterday. Not bad. Pocket change really adds up. Now the El Pico cans are empty again, and it’s time to start saving so we can hurry back to the Key Food for the satisfaction of cashing them all in.

RE: I Saw it on Craig’s List

The job of a lifetime is with Howard Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle. I thought it was for Harold Bloom, emminent intellectual, professor at Yale University, author of such works of literary criticism as The Anxiety of Influence, Kaballah and Criticism, Poetry and Repression, Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, The Book of J, and many more.

A friend of mine studied with Bloom at Yale University and has great Harold Bloom stories.

That’s why I blogged about it. I am absolutely FASCINATED by Harold Bloom. Truth it, I don’t really know who HOWARD Bloom is. Sometimes I misread things. That was an easy one to get wrong. I was just so excited about HAROLD BLOOM putting an ad on Craig’s List. The pay sucked but it was the intellectual adventure of a lifetime.

Okay, okay. Howard Bloom has his own website and wrote a book called: Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. Blurbs on the site include:

“Howard Bloom may just be the new Stephen Hawking, only he’s not interested in science alone; he’s interested in the soul.” Aaron Hicklin–Gear

“A soaring song of songs about the amorous origins of the world, and its almost medieval urge to copulate.” –Wired Magazine

“I have met God, and he lives in Brooklyn. …Howard Bloom is next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Freud, and Buckminster Fuller…he is going to change the way we see ourselves and everything around us.” Richard Metzger, creative director, The Disinformation Company, host of Channel4 TV Britain’s Disinfo Nation

“For those who worry that our ingenuity has upset nature’s equilibrium, Bloom has a message that is both reassuring and sobering. ‘We are nature incarnate,’ he writes. ‘We are tools of her probings and if, indeed, we suffer and we fail, from our lessons she will learn which way in the future not to turn.’–The New Yorker

Well, he sounds interesting too (and egotistical, very) and he lives in Park Slope. Who knew? And he’s got $350 to pay you for the big intellectual adventure of working for him.

I think I’m going to give him a call. Really. I need the dough. Besides, it sounds…dare I say it? Interesting.

I’m actually getting used to it: the new garden on Third Street. Not to say it doesn’t take me by surprise when I walk past.  I was so used to its former concrete modesty. It may not have been the scuzziest yard on Third Street, but it was, for a long time, crying out for improvement. It’s a major adjustment to see it all spiffed up.

Every day I notice something different. How pink the Flagstone tiles are. The lovely droopiness of the skinny new trees. The gray tile used for the walkway to the stoop. The color of the benches.

Nice attention to detail.  It looks like someone really put a lot of thought into the overall design and landscaping. Probably Root Stock or one of the other Park Slope landscapers. Or maybe it was decided by committee: the New Garden on Third Street Committe. Whoever did it, they knew what they were doing.

There’s been quite a bit of buzzing about the new garden. One neighbor calls it "Park Avenue." She asked one of the owners: "What were you thinking? Pink tiles?" I think it was sour grapes. Or joking. Or just stoop envy. And she has one of the best yards on Third Street: the source of much garden envy for years and years by many.

But it’s time to hand over the crown. The prize for most enviable yard on Third Street goes to: the little coop that could. They surprised us all by transforming their concrete jungle into something very posh.

And they’re loving every minute of it.

I just heard about  WE’RE NOT AFRAID, a site that "shows the world we’re not afraid of what happened in London and that the world is a better place without fear."

I hear they’ve already had something like 4 million visitors. And thousands of people of many nationalities have submitted photographs of themselves or artwork that says: We’re Not Afraid.

Add your photo, add your words.  It’s an amazing site.

A highly esteemed intellectual and literary critic is looking for a full time assistant. On Craig’s List, he calls the job the "Intellectual Adventure of a Lifetime." The job requires omnivorous curiosity, computer skills, a tad of web-design, phone skills, and attention to detail. Park Slope Brooklyn resident preferred. Pays very little, but may prove to be the adventure of your life.

Who is he? Send your answers to OTBKB. Also if you are interested, I will forward the Craig’s List info your way.

P.S. This person’s name has never been mentioned on OTBKB. I didn’t even know he lived in Park Slope. Where have I been?

Also, I surf Craig’s List frequently because I am always looking for writing projects, and other interesting work opportunities. If you know of one – PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

It was a slow motion kind of day: what it must be like in Louisanna or Alabama. Mint Julip weather. Lemonade or a tall glass of ice water kind of day. All sultry and sweaty; perfect for swinging on a porch swing in Savannah.

We in Brooklyn know how to slow down. If we have to. It’s funny to be so lazy, so slow, going about the day with such effort.

It was too hot to move. No, you couldn’t go too fast on this kind of day. Heat advisory in effect: stay home if you’re very old. Stay home if you’re very young, or prone to heat exhaustion. Stay hydrated. Being wet is your best bet on this humid, humid day.

No one felt like eating. Dusk found us outside, catching what little breeze there was. I brought out a box of Breyer’s checkerboard ice cream. Chocolate and vanilla and lots of spoons. My daughter and her friend used the dragon pool next door. No one seemed to mind. Everyone was inside – staying air conditioner cool.

Fully clothed, my daughter and her friend splashed and jumped and dived into the dragon pool. My daughter got herself so cold she had to go upstairs for a hot bath. A hot bath on such a steamy day.

Can you imagine?

It was the kind of day that made you feel accomplished for just getting from one place to the next. Drinking cold water. Turning on the air.  A slow motion kind of day. Funny to be so lazy, so slow, going about the day with such effort.

I know it’s not over yet. But the recent news from the Atlantic Yards is starting to feel an awful lot like the feel-good ending of a Frank Capra movie.

Just hours before the deadline, the Extell Development Company entered an 11th-hour proposal to the MTA for their
8.5-acre Atlantic Avenue Rail Yards.

Brooklyn community groups and politicians are greeting the new plan with 

It was my daughter’s idea. She heard about a chess camp and she wanted to do it. So she spent four days last week at "Let’s Play Chess," a small storefront on Fourth Avenue between 8th and
9th Streets. For three intensive hours a day, it was chess, chess, and more chess.   

When we first got there, I didn’t think she’d want to stay. Or if I’d want to leave her there. I’m not sure what I was expecting but Let’s Play Chess’ dreary storefront is a messy room with four tables with three chess sets each. There’s a display case filled haphazardly with chess merchandise and a bulletin board covered with photos of LPC chess teams and clippings from the New York Times, Newdsay, and the Daily news about chess in the schools.

Worse, there were only three other campers and they were all boys. And the teacher wasn’t the one she expected: the adored Tag who teaches at PS 321.

But my daughter was okay with it. She likes chess and this place just reeks of it. The teacher immediately grabbed the kids’ attention standing in the front of the room with a pointer and a large Velcro chess board going over chess basics. She seemed  engrossed enough for me to leave.

When I came to pick her up, she was happy to see me but she didn’t budge from the game she was in the middle of. A good sign. At McDonald’s afterwards she was mezzo-mezzo about the experience: she  liked the chess, but didn’t much like the boys-only atmosphere. Still, she agreed to try it again if I went with her (or found a girl to join).

The second day, I pushed aside the old coffee containers and newspapers on the teachers’ table, and set up my laptop, ready to work while "observing" my daughter’s day at chess camp. I was pleased to see that my daughter really understands chess and is, according to the teacher, very smart about it. She seemed comfortable enough to raise her hand frequently and answer the teacher’s strategy questions.

Overall, the kids seemed very engaged by the teacher’s on-going discussion of famous chess moves, chess history, and strategy. Stopping only for an occasional snack of pretzels and warm Poland Spring water, it was all-chess, all-the-time. The teacher, who also teachers at private schools in Manhattan, clearly lives and breathes chess and knows exactly how to teach young children.

After a while, she let me take a walk and do some errands. From that point on, I knew my daughter would stick out the rest of the week. Especially, since the teacher promised special prizes at week’s end.

On Friday, the promise of prizes propelled the day. The group had come a long way together and they all seemed to be getting along nicely. At the end of the day, the teacher gave my daughter a trophy because "she improved the most of everybody this week." He also gave out Let’s Play Chess t-shirts to all the kids.

This coming week, she’s off to a camp called Kim’s Kids for swimming, hiking, and special trips. She’ll do that three days a week and spend the other two days at a storefront on Fourth Avenue – her idea – playing chess and looking for another trophy, no doubt. Looking for another trophy. 

This was a cowardly attack, which has resulted in injury and loss of life.
Our thoughts are with everyone who has been injured, or lost loved
ones. I want to thank the emergency services for the way they have
responded.

Following the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th in America we
conducted a series of exercises in London in order to be prepared for
just such an attack. One of the exercises undertaken by the government,
my office and the emergency and security services was based on the
possibility of multiple explosions on the transport system during the
Friday rush hour. The plan that came out of that exercise is being
executed today, with remarkable efficiency and courage, and I praise
those staff who are involved.

I’d like to thank Londoners for the calm way in which they have
responded to this cowardly attack and echo the advice of the
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair

On Park Slope Parents, a parent I know posted about organizing a vigil for London. She expressed a desire to connect with Londoners to show solidarity and support.

Here’s what she wrote me after I e-mailed her about the vigil.

I remember reading that — was it Denmark?  or the Netherlands? — I can’t remember… sent us some tens of thousands of tulip bulbs, and that next spring, all the tulips came up all over Grand Army Plaza, and every little park in Brooklyn and Manhattan and elsewhere, reminding us that others were holding us in their hearts.

Do you remember how kind we all were to one another in those first weeks?  Do you remember how we kept our kids away from the television and yet we had to tell them about the parents of their classmates?  "Why do bad guys do that, mom?" and "Can we explain to the bad guys that everyone should watch out for each other, mom?" 

I am sure the parents in London had to do this with the IRA bombers way before innocent blind us in NYC had to think about it at all.  I just wish they could know that we are keeping them in our thoughts somehow.  I remember it meaning something to me.

Another parent wrote:

"Perhaps we can do something on Saturday for those in London, who are living through something like we lived through almost 4 years ago. I remember feeling very heartened by those from all over the world who  made a point of reaching out to us in New York."

If I hear anything more about a vigil for London in Prospect Park or elsewhere, I’ll let you know. If you know something or have ideas about ways to show our support for Londoners leave a comment here.

I feel like I know Sarah Vowell. I hear her on THIS AMERICAN LIFE  most Saturday mornings and enjoy her funny, monotone voice and a hyper-serious, eccentric take on things.  I was surprised to see that she is subbing for Maureen Dowd, the queen of political irony, on the OpEd page of the New York Times. Whoa. Kudos to the Times for  thinking of it. Sarah was also the  voice of Violet, the teenage girl who hid behind her hair in THE INCREDIBLES. I really like this characteristically quirky and profound piece she wrote in Saturday’s Times about her personal reaction to the London bombing.

John is the A train. Robin and the other John are the L. Nicole used to be the 1 and the 9, but ever since they canceled the 9 she’s been just the 1. Geoff and Jen, Joel and Kate, Ted and Scott and, Joan – they are the F. Four months ago, I moved east of Fifth Avenue and became the N and the 6, even though there’s a part of me that will always be the C and the E.

It’s not just the New York subway map I think of as a refrigerator door plastered with loved ones’ snapshots. The Richmond BART line in California is Eli heading home to Berkeley; the orange line on the Washington Metro is Carson, reading her son a bedtime story in Arlington; the purple line in Paris is David, who moved there so he could smoke.

When I woke up on Thursday and turned on the radio to news of the London bus and tube bombings, the announcer said, "Piccadilly Line," but in my head it’s just called "Nick."

I know all that sounds mushy. I get like that when 50 people are murdered, and sappier still when one of them may be the guy I think of as my own private Churchill. (I’m getting used to this selfishness. As with Oklahoma City and New York and the tsunami, my first thought was to hope that my friends and family weren’t among the victims, which is to hope that others’ loved ones were.)

Nick’s alive. But during the four panicky hours it took to hear from him, I was too fidgety to sit on the couch in front of the news. I started pacing back and forth between the TV and a bookcase, where a detective novel set in London by dear old P. D. James caught my eye. Has someone checked on her, by the way? Who on earth would want to blow her up?
 

Continue reading SARAH VOWELL ON THE LONDON SUBWAY BOMBINGS →

It seems that actress Jennifer Connelly has real estate on her mind when choosing the movies she wants to make. First she did THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, the story of a recovering alcoholic whose home is mistakenly seized by the county and sold for back taxes.

And now DARK WATER, a horror film about a woman who is forced to move to Roosevelt Island (not Brooklyn, thank God) because, gasp, she’s been priced out of Manhattan. In her review in Friday’s New York Times, Manohola Dargis writes:

After she separates from her husband, Kyle (Dougray Scott),
who tends to call her "crazy" at every opportunity, Dahlia (Jennifer
Connelly) confronts one of the most brutal truths to face many a New
Yorker: she can’t afford to live in Manhattan. (The more pragmatic
Kyle, meanwhile, has moved to Jersey City.) Bravely steeling herself
against this calamity, she takes her daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade), by
the hand and hops a tram to Roosevelt Island. As they glide above the
island’s hulking towers and grim-faced hoi polloi, rain falling like
tears, Ceci cries out, "Mommy, that’s not the city!"

Now, I got a lot of grief for my previous posts about Jennifer Connelly, so I’m not going there again. Besides, I’m changing my tune about Jennifer Connelly, a highly intelligent actress who is also extremely beautiful. Plus, she’s a neighbor and it’s fun to have a celebrity like her around. I’ve heard from OTBKB readers that she and Paul frequent the Third Street Playground, ride bicycles in the park, go to Little Things, ride the subway, and take their kids to  school at St. Ann’s  as often as they can.

In other words, she’s Park Slope cool.

That she said a thing or two about feeling like a loser for living in Park Slope, where she grew up, is an old, old story. B-O-R-I-N-G. The truth is, many people feel loser-ish if they don’t move away from their hometown, whether they be from a small town in Idaho or Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In some ways, Jennifer Connelly is so much like us. Like every other New Yorker, she is obsessed with real estate. In interviews, Connelly often tells her own real estate horror stories. We may know more about Connelly’s apartment history than any other actress in history. In recent interviews in
Time Out New York and New York, she’s been happy to reel off battle stories
from the Manhattan apartment wars like this one:

Waking up to the news that there had been yet another terrorist attack, this time in London, I felt the desire to shield my children from the news, wishing that they didn’t have to live in a world where such things were possible.

My son was up early. At 14, he is well attuned to some of the harsh realities of the world. An avid listener to National Public Radio, he has a fairly broad sense of what goes on beyond the confines of his rather idyllic urban existence.

My daughter, however, was still asleep. At 8, her understanding of the geo-political world is still quite vague. Geography is an abstract concept despite the more than 100 globes we have in the apartment (alas, I am a collecter of vintage globes). Far away is Queens or New Jersey where school friends have relocated. Even farther is California where her grandmother lives on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley.

London is where Harry Potter lives. Paris, the home of Madeline. Russia is where her Aunt is adopting a beautiful baby girl.

While my daughter slept, I was reminded of the morning of September 11th when she was just 4. As news of the attacks came across the radio, she wanted to play. I tried to quell my desperate anxiety, my sinking sense that our world was coming undone. I remember polishing her toenails in the kitchen in effort to make things feel normal in that most un-normal of days.

She watched the attacks over and over on the television in our neighbor’s apartment where we gathered that morning (her brother was in his 5th grade classroom at PS 321). The grown-ups were too distraught to even notice that the children were watching it again and again. A few days later, my daughter had a dream that her Barbie doll crashed into a tall building causing a terrible explosion.

Her world had changed even though I didn’t want it to.

When she woke up yesterday,  the radio was airing non-stop reports from London. My anxiety about the world we live in was exacebated. I turned off the radio, didn’t mention anything when I took her to her camp just a few blocks away.

While we can’t necessarily shield our children from the realities of the world, we can hold them close and tell them that they are safe. Because they are: in our love for them. In our love.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

On Friday night, I found a nice e-mail from an OTBKB reader in my in-box:

Tonight I was feeling very sorry for us because we hadn’t bought years ago, and our couch is kind of shabby, and we can’t afford a plasma TV. I decided to check out OTBKB, which a mom friend has been telling me about for weeks, and the piece about the rosebush made my day. I’ve been watching that new yard all week, reading about it and the rosebush made me feel pretty good again.

It made me feel pretty darn good that something I wrote made someone else feel better. That made my day probably as much as the rosebush made hers.

Earlier in the evening, I was talking to my first floor friend/neighbor and we were playing a game called "Envy Toss.’" Not really, I just made that up. But we were having a playful conversation about what’s missing in our lives:

Me: I’ve got brownstone envy.
She: I’m over that now. I’ve got income envy.
Me: What’s that?
She: I’m jealous of my friends who have incomes.
Me: Oh.
She: Y’know, working and getting paid envy (note: she’s a wildly busy
mom, PTA president, church volunteer, graphic designer, artist, etc.)
Me: I’ve got regular paycheck envy.
She: Yeah.
Me: And health insurance envy. We have to pay for our own…

It was actually a fun conversation. Very cathartic. A great way to slay those dragons of envy. Our girls were in the living room falling asleep watching TV. They’d been out in the yard all day and playing in the neighbor’s dragon pool. They were tired and so were we.

Envy toss can take a lot out of you.

Yesterday I decided that I really needed to read THE NEW YORK TRILOGY by Paul Auster. This was before I found out that I’d been accused of being a literary stalker by Curbed.com AND Gawker all because I wrote about watching Auster buy a package of Oscar Meyer bologna and white bread.

I was up on 57th Street in Manhattan, so I went into one of my favorite bookstores: Rizzoli. I have been going to Rizzoli all of my life. As a child, my parents took me there when it was located on Fifth Avenue, a wood paneled store with coffee table books and foreign magazines.

At one time, they had a branch in Soho, which didn’t last very long. And now that Bendel’s has taken over their old location on Fifth, the sole surviving Rizzoli is on 57th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas.

When you shop at Rizzoli, you must call Sixth Avenue the Avenue of the Americas.

I found this little bit of Rizzoli history on their website:

Rizzoli joined such prestigious American institutions as Tiffany’s, Saks, and Cartier when it first opened its doors on Fifth Avenue in 1963. In the following years, its landmark building in New York became the center for the company’s national expansion, adding new bookstores throughout the country and establishing an eminent publishing house renowned for high-quality, illustrated books.

I just love Rizzoli, love any excuse to go into Rizzoli to look at their art, photography, and design books. It’s always such a treat;  my own private New York moment – something I do whenever I happen to be on 57th Street.

So I thought, why not buy the Paul Auster book I’d been blogging about there. It seemed like the perfect thing to do.

I carried a lidded container with a light iced coffee into the store. "You’re not allowed to have that here," the security guard shouted. . "Just like the subway," I muttered. They let me leave it by the door. But I understood: in Rizzoli you must respect the books.

The elevator delivered me to the rather small literature department on the 3rd floor and I went straight to the A-section. And there it was — so I grabbed it and took it downstairs, walking past the CD department, which has an incredible collection of international music heavy on the Charles Aznavour, Nana Mouskouri, and the Cesaria Evoria.

I paid for my Paul Auster and went into the F-station on 57th Street at the Avenue of the Americas. I waited an excruciatingly long time on the hot platform for a train and then, when the train arrived, sat in air-conditioned splendor reading "City of Glass", the compelling  story of Quinn, a mystery book writer and existential loner.

"New York was an inexhaustible space, a labrinth of endless steps, no matter  how far he walked or how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost."

A friend got on at Broadway/Lafayette and I stopped reading the book. We chatted the whole way to Park Slope. When I got off at Seventh Avenue, I had the sensation that I’d left something on the train. Upstairs, I  checked my black purse and Rizzoli shopping bag and found that I had indeed left THE NEW YORK TRILOGY on the F-train.

If anyone sees my book on the F-Train, please take it and get in touch with me by e-mail. It cost over $15 dollars at Rizzoli. And all I’ve got to show for it now is a green Rizzoli shopping bag and a receipt. Besides, I really want to read the book.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen Paul Auster on the street several times. Usually in the morning, I see him on Second Street or walking up Seventh Avenue.

Sometimes he acknowledges me in that way that we acknowledge familiar faces in the Slope. Sometimes not.

I imagine that he’s on his way to his writing studio. Wherever that is. Dark glasses on, he walks in a slow, somber manner. Like he’s thinking really serious thoughts about his writing, no doubt. A handsome man, he’s tall, well-shaped with perfect chiseled features. He’s almost too handsome to be a writer. Which isn’t to say that writers can’t be handsome. They are. It’s just that Paul Auster looks like a movie star.

"Off to create masterful prose," I think to myself when I see him in the mornings. "There he goes, that handsome genuis."

I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I am a literary stalker. No, not at all. It’s just that I am aware of Paul Auster when he’s in my midst. At the Community Bookstore talking to his daughter about an art book. Walking his dogs on Second Street or with his wife, Siri Hustvedt, on Union Street.

On Thanksgiving, I stood behind Auster on the cashier line at Met Food as he bought two packages of Oscar Meyer bologna and white bread (it wasn’t Wonder).

I figured it was some kind of protest against the feast of Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s what  he eats while he’s writing. Maybe he feeds it to his dog. God knows.

It was just interesting. That’s all. Notable.

I have to admit that I’ve never actually read THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (1987), three books which are said to be marvels. I truly enjoyed a recent novel called "THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS" And SMOKE is one of my favorite Brooklyn movies of all time.

It’s no secret that Auster is the totemic male writer of literary Brooklyn. It used to be Mailer. But I don’t think he lives in Brooklyn Heights anymore. The borough, particularly Park Slope, is full to bursting with writers. And it’s not just men. We’ve got Kathryn Harrison, Siri Hustvedt, Elisa Schappel, Tama Janowitz, Jill Eisenstadt, Mary Morris…And those are just the published ones.

Still, seeing Paul Auster in the morning is a big thrill.

"Off to create masterful prose," I think to myself. "There he goes, that handsome genuis."

NOTE: Paul Auster and Celine Curiol, a French writer and journalist, will be reading Thursday June 30th at Barbes. Curiol will be reading in French from her first novel "Voix sans issue" which was just published in France on Actes Sud, and should soon be translated into English. Paul Auster will be reading from his translation of Chateaubriand’s "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave" – aptly re-titled "Memoirs from a Dead Man" by The Book of Illusions’ protagonist. 7:30 p.m. Barbes. 9th Street near Sixth Avenue.

While in Red Hook last Saturday to see my son’s band at the Liberty Heights Tap Room. my husband and I walked over to nearby Coffey Park, an old Parks Department baseball field that has been transformed into an organic garden.

We introduced ourselves to Ian Marvy, the Director of Added Value, the group that is responsible for bringing farming and a thriving farmer’s market to Red Hook.

I told Ian that I am Meg Fidler’s first cousin. Meg is executive director of the Petra Foundation, a group dedicated to honoring "unsung
individuals making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy
and dignity of others." Each year, through a national search
and nomination process, the Petra Foundation recognizes such leaders. Petra selected Ian and his partner, Michael Hurwitz, as Petra Fellows in 2004, recognizing their work with youth in Red Hook.

On this unbearably humid Saturday, we watch as a small group of young people shovel dirt, push wheel barrows, and weed in the garden. It was a sight to behold.

According to the website, Added Value’s mission is to promote "the sustainable development of Red Hook by nurturing a new generation of young leaders." They run programs that help kids develop new skills and participate in a  socially responsible urban farming experience.

For the past three years, Added Value has trained more than 50 young people, founded the Red Hook Farmer’s Market, and helped to revitalize Coffey Park. The organization’s sucess is partly due to savvy community organizing and Added Value’s effort to create a Community Advisory Council representing 30 local, regional and national institutions that support ghdif work to improve the neighborhood by creating youth leaders.

Added Value has many components: Herban Solutions, a market gardening business,  Digital Horizons, media literacy and multi-media initiative, and Project R.E.A.L, an environmental justice program.

Participating kids work seventeen hours each week in the gardens, which is right across the street from the pier that will soon be made into an Ikea box store. They learn to nurture plants, sell at the farmer’s market and work on Added Value’s web site. Participants receive a generous stipend while learning invaluable skills.

We spoke with Ian, an open, soft-spoken man, who clearly knows a great deal about farming and organizing successful programs that really address the needs of the Red Hook community. He lives nearby and is quietly passionate about the environment and the people of Red Hook.

Ian showed us around the garden. It really is an amazing thing. Planted  on top of an old Parks’ Department baseball field, they grow "fast crops," that can be harvested several times a year like lettuce and tomatoes. They use  special hoses made out of a porous material that water soaks through. There’s lots of composte and mulched trees mixed into the soil. 

The former baseball field in a rather stark urban setting has that nice/stinky smell of good dirt with compost:  that wholesome, farm-y frangrance you don’t expect to find in Brooklyn.

I always cry on my children’s last day of school. They are quiet tears: quickly-brushed- away-tears, or tears – that – get – stuck – in – the – middle – of – your – throat – tears.

There is something about seeing the teacher coming out of the building with the children he or she has been teaching for the last year that really moves me.

The teachers, too, often look near tears.

When my son was in 1st grade, his teacher, Eve Litwack, was wearing the same floral print dress she wore on the very first day when she was welcoming the children into the class.

That killed me.

Tomorrow I’ll watch my daughter, slightly stooped from her heavy backpack, walk away from her teacher, Ms. Cohen and her classmates – the people that, for the moment, form an important part of her world.

I’m getting teary just thinking about it.

On the last day of school, the children always look a little dazed. Some of them cry, others look scared and uncertain about the future.  They are, of course, tremendously excited to begin summer vacation. Such a mixed blessing this: the end of one thing, the beginning of the next.

After the hugs and the tearful goodbyes, children and parents find out which teacher they have for next year. "Who’d you get?" is a question of great import (the answer is on the last page of the Report Card).

This is a moment of truth. It can mean squeals of delight as children discover that they will be with friends next year. Or it can mean anguished looks of pain and disappointment as a child finds that he or she will not be with a special someone or a group of people she identifies with.

Desperate parents look around asking others: "Is your child in Class __?"

If no-one can be found, the desperation intensifies: "Does anyone know anyone in Class __?"  Sometimes a helpful parent will come up and say: "I think I know someone in Class__." This usually offers some relief.

Walking away from the school on the last day can feel anti-climatic. The emotion of those last moments, the tears, the hugs, the quest to find companions for next year is suddenly replaced with the great expanse of summer vacation.

It’s a snap transition from schoolness to no schoolness and it can feel a little empty, even lonely.

Once home, it helps to read over your child’s report card, to sustain the connection with what you’ve just left behind. In less than an hour, it can all feel pretty far away: the homework, the class trips, the poetry celebrations, the end of year parties, the life that revolves around school.

There is plenty of time to ponder what the summer months will hold. But for those first moments after the good bye, it helps to hold on to the report card, the backpack, the stack of classwork. Like a baby’s security blanket, these transitional objects smooth the way into the next new thing.

My son’s middle school graduation was last Wednesday and the 8th graders have not been back to the building except to pick up their report cards (school has been in session for the 6th and 7th graders).

This transition feels MONUMENTAL. Not only is school out for summer. But elementary school is over and the rest of life BEGINS (high school, that is).

The kids are on the cusp of something big and they look it. My son is taller than last week, his voice is lower, his hair longer. I know, I’m probably just imagining it. But I swear: he’s different.

He’s got friends I don’t really know. I’ve never met their parents, I don’t know their last names. I swore I wouldn’t let this happen. But it did. And quickly. Today I saw him walking down the street with a new friend from school. They waved but walked quickly past on Seventh Avenue.

This evening he called from Starbucks, "I sitting on a big comfy couch with…" I’d never heard the name. And it was a girl.

At least he called. And he was home by 8 pm.

This is an exciting time for him. I can tell. Busy, busy, busy. He has friends, interests, a band he’s proud to be in; the computer purrs with IMs into the night.

Being 14 seems to be all about what goes on when you’re not with your family – even kids who are close with their parents and siblings. When he’s with us he’s not really here: he’s thinking about friends, his band, his music, his life on the outside. That said,  his cranky doppelganger is here big time.  

I remember the summer before high school. I took a pottery course on the Upper West Side where I learned how to "center" clay on a potter’s wheel and to make coiled pots. I did feel betwixt and between. It was a lonely, quiet summer; I wanted to be with friends but no one was around.

My family spent the month of August in rented house on Martha’s Vineyard. I took sailing lessons and developed an unrequited crush on the 18 year old boy, who taught me to capsize in a Sunfish.

It was a limbo between states of being. Everything felt awkward and strange.

14 is about longing: wanting more from every situation; wishing you were someplace else most of the time.

I was impatient for the next thing to happen (even if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted the next thing to be).

For him, I don’t really know. He seems happy in his skin, engaged by what’s around him, excited by the prospect of summer which lies ahead like a blank canvas.

Hot, hot, hot was the temperature this past sultry Saturday, but so was Saturday afternoon’s ROCKIN’ TEENS SHOWCASE at the Liberty Heights Tap Room in Red Hook. Steve Deptula, the show’s producer is truly a hero to the Brooklyn teen rock scene.

First up was my son’s band, Cool and Unusual Punishment, which played a delicious 10-song set.  Queen’s "Another One Bites the Dust," is fast becoming their signature song. The Pixies’ "Where is My Mind," and originals "Cheerful Infinity" and "To My Mother" are also big faves. "To My Mother," penned by the band’s female singer is a blunt and painful message to a less than perfect mom. Kenda manages to balance wrenching  bitterness with a confident vulnerability. An encore was requested by Deptula who whispered to me: "They do have another song, don’t they?" And the band delivered with a surf rock version of the Spider Man theme, that they’d never played publicly before. Cool.

In between acts, the show was emceed by an eighth-grade stand-up comic, Jake Gilford, a funny, funny kid who happens to be the grandson of the late comic actor Jack Gilford.

Next up was, Teenage Jesus, a physically mis-matched duo that was a sight to behold. The electric guitarist and singer was precocious 8th grade Lydia Lunch wanna-be with a decidedly punk/goth fashion sense. The drummer was a pre-growth spurt 8th grader who wore a Brooks Brother shirt, a tie and tidy khaki pants. But musically they rocked.

Virtuosic pianist, Max Coburn, a Berkeley Carroll 8th grader now on his way to Laguardia High School, played an incredible jazz improvisation that had this audience of parents and rockin’ teens in thrall.

He was followed by Jonathan Edelstein, Park Slope’s 14-year-old answer to early Bob Dylan. He’s even got one of those metal harmonica holders. He opened with a  fantastic John Lennon song I’d never heard and followed that with "Talkin’ New York Blues." The kid has great taste in music. With big hands and fingers that seem to totally rule over his Fender acoustic, solo guitar is really Edelstein’s forte.

Steve Deptula deserves a Grammy for supporting Brooklyn’s teen rockers (folkies and jazzers). But you’ll have to wait until the Fall. Liberty Heights Tap Room will be closed all summer for renovations. Deptula says he doesn’t want to pay for air conditioning, the place needs to be fixed up, and he’s got some fishing and beaching to do.  When  the Ikea construction begins across the Street, DiPatula will be busy enough serving lunch to hungry construction workers, working on that big box store. (I hear there could be some major construction delays due to an asbestos problems on the site).

The Tap Room is one of the best neighborhood bars in Brooklyn and a godsend to parents who want to encourage their teenagers to make music and stay out of trouble.

Marian Fontana’s soon-to-be published memoir, Widow’s Walk, received its first review, a starred one, from the Kirkus Reviews.

She sent out an email this morning to friends and family: "I’m THRILLED to have my first review and THANK GOODNESS, SIGH, EXHALE AND WHEW, that it’s a positive one.  Starred, which I don’t really know what that means, but apparently good.  As always, thank you all for your help, love, and support.  I can’t say it enough…"

And here’s the review:

"Fontana tugs at the heartstrings in this engrossing, inspiring 9/11 memoir. The author married firefighter Dave Fontana on September 11th, 1993, and they were supposed to spend their eighth wedding anniversary toddling hand-in-hand through the Whitney Museum. But Dave never made it home that day; he died at Ground Zero. Marian mourned, gave countless interviews to reporters, planned Dave’s wake, wrote his eulogy and conferred with other widows. Gradually, she became a skilled political organizer, founding the 9-11 Widows’ and Victims’ Families Association. She used her newfound media cachet to educate people about the lousy wages firefighters are paid and to weigh in on the debates surrounding compensation to victims’ families. She met with mayors and senators, and she now serves on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s Family Advisory Committee.

Fontana is a good writer, with an ear for phrasing and a focus on small, poignant details: We see her plucking strands of salt-and-pepper hair from Dave’s hairbrush, because she needs a sample of his DNA and brushing her teeth with his toothbrush,"secretly pretend(ing) I was being kissed."

An impassioned, non-manipulative memorial, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of 9/11. (Agent: Susan Golomb/Susan Golomb Agency)."

From the Kirkus Reviews.

I can’t bring myself to look at the newly fixed up yard in the limestone building two buildings west of us. In the last couple of weeks, that coop has done a major renovation of their yard. I did see that they replaced their rough concrete pavement with a smooth pinkish  flagstone.  And in the last few days they’ve added trees and grass. I hear that they’ve even hidden their garbage pails with plants.

Someone said they were assembling the teak benches from Smith and Hawken yesterday.

I just can’t bring myself to look over there. Pure and simple, it’s stoop envy. I’ll be the first to admit that I’d like my children to have a tasteful front yard, one that would impress other people and make me proud.

So in lieu of walking toward Sixth Avenue to investigate the newly fixed up garden, I walked the other way to one of the buildings closer to Seventh Avenue (not a limestone), that has recently fixed up their front yard. It’s a rental building and the tenants on the second floor decided to invest their own money to create a small front garden area.

It happened very quickly. They created a curvy stone walk and put in a bench. They also made a brick planter and planted deep purple and lavender pansies. It is a simple, tasteful design; strictly a seating area with no room for children to play.

A few buildings west of there, there’s a limestone building that for years I considered the lemon of the block. The building was run down and full of a strange collection of tenants, some of whom had probably been there for years. There were always police cars and ambulances pulling up to the building.

About five years ago, a Greek man bought the building and started fixing it up: painting, plumbing, electric; he put in new windows, cleaned the exterior and scraped the paint off the antique front door. The place started to look much better.

Over time, he got rid of some of the more questionable tenants and has been, I’ve heard, charging market-value rents.

The building originally had a make-shift garden of sorts, which had sagging trees and tacky Mexican figurines placed here and there. On the far side of the yard there was a robust rose bush that flowered every June.

A couple of years back, the Greek landlord dug up the yard’s concrete pavement and created two large  rectangular areas for dirt and plantings on either side of the front stoop. Initially he paved over where the rose bush used to be.

The rose bush disappeared completely.

That seemed very cruel to me. But a few days later, he cut out a small circle in his newly poured concrete for the rose bush. The resurrected rose bush was very trembly at first and the landlord had to attach strings on two sides to hold it up. It seems to have stabilized over the years and it still blossoms every June.

Whenever I walk by I admire the brave little rose bush, that demanded a hole in the new concrete to call home.

The landlord made some attempt, not a very professional one, to plant trees and flowers. The garden still has the look and feel of the old victory-style garden. And he’s even left the small statues.

These are the brave little gardens of Third Street. The newly fixed up one at the coop two buildings west is a tad more pretentious. I hear it was designed by the landscape designer at Root Stock, the Slope’s trendy plant shop and nursery. I bet he did a great job; he’s a talented guy. I’m sure it’s nice.

I just can’t bring myself to go look at it. Not yet.

As many of you know, I spent the last two weeks in a Brooklyn criminal courtroom listening to a story unfold. Being
on a jury is all about listening to stories. And it’s the jury’s job to see if there’s evidence to support one story above another.

For days and days, I listened to many people tell their version of the story. We heard from the "victim" and her family, a detective, a cop, and a security representative from a cell phone company .

The defence never called any witnesses. The burden of proof was on the  prosecution to prove that  the defendant was guilty. The defense wanted to keep it simple. He never gave the jury a chance to hear from the defendant.

Soon into the trial, it became clear that this was a complicated story. And we were going to hear many versions of it. Like the Japanese film, Rashomon, there were many ways to look at the same thing.

Like in fiction, we had our unreliable narrators, and those who know how to spin
a tale. We heard from out-and-out liars, and those who tell the whole
truth and nothing but…

Sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. But that was our job: to get as close to the truth as possible.

Veritas.

The lawyera’ closing arguments are truly the grand finale. As the defence attorney hammered away at the prosecution’s case trying to create as much doubt as possible, he was making  eye contact with me constantly.  Overall, his speech was effective,  though there were moments of hyperbole and psychobabble. It may have gone on too long, but it was a passionate plea for the defendant.

The prosecutor was a real diva. She deserves an Academy Award for her performance during the closing arguments. It was that good. She probably knew that she didn’t have the evidence needed for a conviction, so she really had to ham it up and hope for the best.

Was justice served? I think so. I’m still not sure what did and didn’t happen. But the defendent was found to be guilty of endangering the welfare of a child – and there was evidence to prove that. No one seemed happy with the results: not the prosecution, not the defence and surely not the defendant’s family sitting int he courtroom. he truth is complicated, nobody wins.

Being on a jury is an amazing expereince for someone who loves
stories. There’s high drama and the quiet drama of every day life. It’s all about language: exageration, ommission,  hyperbole, and undeniable sincerity.

So many voices, so many words. So may ways to spin a few moments in time.

Last night at the Old Stone House, Brooklyn Reading Works presented three excellent storytellers:
Carlton Schade, Lauren Yaffe and Sophia Romero. Their stories were engrossing, and interesting; beautifully rendered with well constructed sentences, authentic dialogue, inner life.

More the 60 people showed up at this, our third installment of Brooklyn Reading Works. The next reading is July 21.

What a pleasure it is to hear a story told well.

Everyone tells you how boring jury duty is. People feel sorry for you  when you tell them that you are on a trial. "Oh," they say with pity. "You poor thing."

But no one tells you how emotionally involving a trial can be. No one tells you about the surrogate family you form with your fellow jurors as you spend day after day together in a small room. Most of all, no one tells you how incredibly serious it is to decide another person’s fate.

Well, I’m here to tell the tale. While I’m still processing the events of the last few days, I will try to share with you some of the details of my experience. 

Monique, the Court Officer, told us on Tuesday that we might go into deliberations on Wednesday and she was right. The lawyers presented closing arguments in the morning and then the judge gave us his general procedural instructions about deliberations and specifics about the legal issues pertaining to this trial.

Before we went into the courtroom, Monique took our lunch orders because we were being sequestered during lunch. She told us to be very specific about what we wanted. When we got back from the courtroom, there were white paper bags with our numbers on it.

Monique had promised us chips and none arrived. "There are no chips," one of the jurors cried sounding quite upset. "I’m sorry," Monique said. "They usually send chips."

But there was nothing she could do.

We decided before beginning to deliberate, to eat lunch and let the smokers smoke outside (under supervision of a court officer). We were not allowed to discuss anything unless everyone was in the room. If someone was in the bathroom, we couldn’t speak about the trial. If a court officer was in the room: mum’s the word.

The judge asked that the alternates stay on until the verdict, but they were not allowed to listen to our deliberations and had to go into a separate room. 

Once deliberations began, things got very loud and contentious. Dad suggested we speak one at a time and listen to one another with respect.

That turned out to be easier said than done.

I wrote the words: "Quiet Please" on a napkin and pinned it to a bulletin board. Finally, the group let me call on people in an orderly fashion. I made people raise their hands and told them to stop when they interupted one another. That would work for a few minutes until people started shouting again.

Despite the noise level, it turned out that the group was unanimous about some major points. We all agreed that the prosecution’s evidence did not prove their case against the defendant, a hospital police officer who was accused of sexually abusing a minor in her hospital room.

We all came to the conclusion independently that the prosecution’s case didn’t hold water and that the testimony of the girl was, to say the least, extremely fuzzy; we easily agreed to throw out much of her testimony. We all believed that while something may have gone on in that girl’s hospital room, there just wasn’t the evidence to prove it.

So in an orderly fashion, we got rid of the first four counts against the defendent: NOT GUILTY. NOT GUILTY. NOT GUILTY. NOT GUILTY.

There was, however, one point that the evidence proved: the police officer had indeed endangered the welfare of a child. The wording of that particular count was so broad that it was nearly impossible NOT to convict him.

On this point, however, there was some confusion. We sent the judge a note asking that he explain to us once again the meaning of "endangering the welfare of a child."

As a group, we marched into the courtroom and listened to the judge, a smart, good natured man, explain it again. After that, we voted and two people still weren’t sure. A lengthy discussion enused. The fact that two people were uncertain, really forced the rest of us to articulate and clarify our position. Eventually, everyone came to believe that the defendant had indeed endangered the welfare of a child according to the wording of the law.

Quite simply, we could not escape the fact that the defendent was a 25 year old hospital police officer who had acted in an inappropriate and illegal manner toward a minor in a hospital pediatric ward.

When we finally all agreed that the defendant was guilty on that one count, the jury forman gave Monique a note that said: "We have reached a verdict" and we were eventually called to the courtroom.

This is when things got hard. From the jury box, I could see the defendant’s mother, sisters, and pregnant wife sitting behind him crying and praying. I knew what we were going to say would please them to some extent. But it was not the aquittal that the defense had wanted. We still had to convict him on that one count.

The women looked relieved as the foreman declared Not Guilty four times for each of the first four counts. The defendant’s mother held her hands in prayer and looked toward the ceiling. But when the foreman said Guilty to that fifth count, a misdemeanor, they all started sobbing.

It was heart wrenching. In the jury room we’d all been able to put aside our sympathies and our emotional feelings about the two parties. We had acted seriously and responsibly; we had done our job.

But here in the courtroom, there was no denying the sadness of the situation.

This was real life. Right or wrong, this young man was not going to be aquitted on that one count because the evidence proved that he had, in fact, endangered the welfare of a child.

While the defendent was aquitted of some of the other more serious sexual counts, that fact didn’t seem to console the sorrow of the women sitting behind him.

And that was hard to bear. No one tells you that the verdict sits like a rock in your stomach as you attempt to go about your life in the hours after the trial.

The faces of everyone connected with the trail are lingering in my mind. Even as I try to reconnect with my own life, my family, these faces are in my head and heart.

That’s what happens. Being a juror is a serious job. But someone’s got to do it.

  *To read about who was on the jury. Go to the next post: POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE: Who were we?

On Third Street just west of Seventh Avenue, there’s a house that’s been boarded up for as long as I’ve lived here. And that’s 14 years.

What a mystery.

There is rampant curiosity about this house. Years ago, I heard that the house was caught up in a contentious divorce battle.

Then I heard that the owner had died and his heirs were fighting over it.

Then I heard that the owner owed so much in back taxes that he abandoned the house;  the buyer of the house will have to pay back taxes that far exceed the value of the house.

For years, the house attracted riff raff. It was a neighborhood hangout for local teens for a while. Then, the people in the house next door installed a motion detector to discourage nighttime mischief. Derelicts slept in the house until all the floors were removed

Now, the house is a shell without walls and floors, I’ve heard.

In the summer of 2001, construction workers began working on the house. I was told that a developer was turning the house into condos – one or two per floor. That sounded plausible to me. A wooden fence was built and a Do Not Trespass sign went up. Work crews moved debris into dumpsters; it looked like they were readying the house for a major renovation.

After September 11, 2001, all work stopped. No worker ever returned to the building. I imagined that someone connected with the building died at the World Trade Center. Or that the development money was somehow connected with a WTC concern.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Since then, the building has been untouched. During the 2004 election, someone spray-painted on the wooden fence: VOTE FOR KERRY OR DIE, a bit of election grafitti that garnered some attention in the press.

The mystery continues. How in this age of overdevelopment could this house, a four story brownstone on Third Street, remain abandoned. Which, if any, of the many stories I’ve heard is true. I’ve observed many a Sloper walk by the house and confidently explain their theory of why that house is abandoned; their own private fantasy of the mystery house.

No one really knows for sure. Or do you?

Do you think there are any kids named Manhattan in Manhattan? How about Queens?  You can bet there’s no one named Staten Island in Staten Island. Or Bronx in the Bronx.

But there are quite a few kids named Brooklyn in Brooklyn. There are even kids who don’t live in Brooklyn named Brooklyn. In fact, in Andalusia, Alabama, Thousand Oaks, California and Fort Worth, Texas, there are kids named Brooklyn.

Wow. If I lived in Andalusia, Alabama I would want to name my daughter Andalusia.

The filmmaker Jonathan Demme, was the first person I ever heard of to name his child Brooklyn. I thought it was one of those pretentious Hollywood names. Sort of interesting. Sort of strange. Then I heard about the grandson of a family friend who was named Brooklyn.

Turned out my son, now 14, was in elementary school with this Brooklyn. Never in the same class. But I was aware that there was a kid named Brooklyn at PS 321.

Later, when my daughter was a baby, one of the parents in my post-partum exercise class had a daughter named Brooklyn. For some reason, I imagined it was spelled Brook Lynn. She is the best friend of one of my daughter’s friends and it’s interesting to hear the name in common use: Brooklyn and I have a playdate…I’m going to Brooklyn’s house…Brooklyn is coming to my party…

Just another name. But one that is growing in popularity. It might not be up there with Brittany and Taylor. Yet. But in 2004, 3,211 baby girls were named Brookyn in the U.S. And in a ranking of popular names for girls, Brooklyn was listed as #84.

In this week’s City Section, there was a story about those kids. I love what George Hagen wrote about his son’s name:

I developed an elaborate rationale why the name Brooklyn was good, and
it had to do with the fact that Brooklyn is a very auspicious beginning. Lots of people in American began their lives in Brooklyn. It’s sort of
a point where great things begin.

It’s really not all that unusual to name a child after a place. Think of Savannah, Paris, Jasper, Jackson…

If the place holds meaning for you, why not?

Considered one of the best used bookstores in New York City, Seventh Avenue Books has fallen victim to the truly skyrocketing rents on Seventh Avenue. On July 1, the store is moving out of its location on Seventh Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets and joining its sister-store, Park Slope Kids, on Seventh Avenue between 2nd and 3rd Streets.

First a little local bookstore history:

When I first moved to Park Slope in 1991, there were three bookstores on Seventh Avenue: the Community Bookstore and two branches of the now defunct Booklink.

And then came Barnes and Noble.

Prior to B&N’s arrival, the then-owners of the Community Bookstore made significant upgrade to the store in the hopes of fighting off the mighty giant. They renovated, created a cafe, offered discounts, started a website, and enlarged their children’s book section.

Booklink, which was a nice local bookstore, eventually succumbed to market pressures and downsized to one location and then down to none. The store is only a memory now except for the occasional Booklink canvas tote bag you see on oldtime Slopers every now and again.   

In 2001, Catherine Bohne took over the Community Bookstore. In the days and weeks after 9/11, the store became a true community center. It was in front of Community Books that Park Slopers donated goods needed at Ground Zero. The window of the bookstore became a message board about 9/11 related activities, newspaper clippings, poems, and personal and political responses to the tragedy. 

I’m not sure if Community books is thriving economically but it is certainly a lively and essential component of this community. And a great place to buy books.

And then in 2002, came a rash of used bookstores. I watched incredulously as not one but three book stores opened on Seventh Avenue: Seventh Avenue Books, Park Slope Books and Park Slope Kids. I for one was shocked and pleased. Not only had we survived the incursion of B&N, we had defied it. Even Shakespeare and Co. could not survive the B&N that went in on the Upper West Side. But in Park Slope, we did it!

We could have a B&N and eat it too. What a neighborhood.

Sadly, it looks like it hasn’t been an easy ride for Seventh Avenue Books. They are consolidating both stores under one roof in an effort to not go under completely. I salute them for their committment to independent bookselling on Seventh Avenue, a true service to a community that purports to be so literary.

"Even though we’ve had many loyal and wonderful  customers, we have been running the store at a considerable loss," writes Tom Simon, the owner of Seventh Avenue Books. He writes on Park Slope Parents. "Nonetheless, selling books in this community is truly a pleaseure: the quality and variety of books being bought and sold is fantastic, and people are uncommonly supportive of independant booksellers."The new store "will be predominantly books for "the grown-ups" with a significant though compacted selection of childrens books. While there won’t be the same amount of room for parents and kids to read together, there will be, more importantly, a wonderful selection of books to choose from."

The bookstore’s motto: A book is new only if you haven’t read it yet, is available on tote bags, a must-have item for all Slopers in this age of mega bookstores and skyrocketing rents.