BROOKLYN WEATHER: It’s gonna be a sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. Not a negative word to be heard from the people passing by. High temperature: 40 degrees.

BIG NEWS:  A RARE STRAIN OF H.I.V. that is highly resistant to virtually all
anti-retroviral drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS
was detected in a New York City man last week, city health officials
announced on Friday.

This is the first time a strain of H.I.V. showed resistance to multiple drugs and led to
AIDS so quickly, the officials said. While the extent of the disease’s
spread is unknown, officials called a news conference to say that the
situation is alarming.

ARTHUR MILLER, author of "Death of a Salesman" "The Crucible" and "View from the Bridge," died on Friday.

CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE’S Gates are a thing of beauty and joy.

DAILY DISC: Sidney Bechet, The Best of Sidney Bechet (Blue Note Records)

GOOD EATIN’: Best brunch in Park Slope if you like your eggs
with a Cuban accent and pancakes with caramel sauce. And the cafe con
leche… Beso. 210 Fifth Avenue near Union.

Miracle Grill is OPEN. Seventh Avenue at Third Street. Brunch is their forte, at least it is in the East Village.

NEW SNEAKERS: Registration for the Brooklyn Half-marathon on March 19th is now open.

The 10th Annual Cherry Tree 10-mile
race is on Saturday February 19th at 10 a.m.  To register stop by Slope
Sports. Seventh Avenue between Berkeley and St. Johns.

THIS SOUNDS COOL: Laurie Anderson performs her one woman with
violin show,  "The Song of the Moon" at BAM 2/22 – 3/1. "Anderson
weaves stories, music, songs, and words into epic portraits of American
culture."  Get your tickets here.

SUNDAY:  Find out about the 52 new high schools set to open this fall at
the New School Information Fair at the Brooklyn School for the Arts. 345 Dean Street. 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

SILVER SCREEN:  The Merchant of Venice at the BAM Rose Cinema. 

BE YOUR OWN VALENTINE: Free portrait sittings by photographer
Hugh Crawford. Party and pictures at Fou Le Chakra. Seventh Avenue
between 13th and 14th Streets. 6:30 until 9:30.

MORE VALENTINE’S DAY FUN: At Barbes. 276 Ninth Street at Sixth Avenue. 2/14 at 9:30. A Yiddishe Valentine – Lehavdl! with KLEZMER CABARET – This all star Klezmer ensemble mixes up klezmer and greek music with a touch of musette. 

HERE/SAY:  "Dancing is the hidden language of the soul." Martha Graham

BROOKLYN WEATHER:  7500 fabric gates by Christo and Jeanne Claude will unfurl today and there’s a chance of SNOW. Oh Glory Be.

BIG NEWS:  Arthur Miller, author of "Death of a Salesman" "The Crucible" and "View from the Bridge," died on Friday.

DAILY DISC: Damien Rice, "O"

GOOD EATIN’: Best brunch in Park Slope if you like your eggs with a Cuban accent and pancakes with caramel sauce. And the cafe con leche… Beso. 210 Fifth Avenue near Union.

NEW SNEAKERS: Registration for the Brooklyn Half-marathon on March 19th is now open.

The Race for the Hardcore is the 10th Annual Cherry Tree 10-mile race on Saturday February 19th at 10 a.m.  To register stop by Slope Sports.

THIS SOUNDS COOL: Laurie Anderson performs her one woman with violin show,  "The Song of the Moon" at BAM 2/22 – 3/1. "Anderson weaves stories, music, songs, and words into epic portraits of American culture."  Get your tickets here.

TODAY:  Find out about the 52 new high schools set to open this fall at
the New School Information Fair at the Brooklyn School for the Arts on
Dean Street. 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

SILVER SCREEN:  The Merchant of Venice at the BAM Rose Cinema. 

BE YOUR OWN VALENTINE: Free portrait sittings by photographer Hugh Crawford. Party and pictures at Fou Le Chakra. Seventh Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets. 6:30 until 9:30.

MORE VALENTINE’S DAY FUN: At Barbes. 276 Ninth Street at Sixth Avenue. 2/14 at 9:30. A Yiddishe Valentine – Lehavdl! with KLEZMER CABARET – This all star Klezmer ensemble mixes up klezmer and greek music with a touch of musette. 

HERE/SAY: "If I have any justification for having lived it’s
simply, I’m nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to
make a good pair of shoes. There’s some value in that."Arthur Miller

"Every year it seems that our golf game gets worse. But this year we’re playing like next year." Dick Luria, photographer and cousin who died last Monday.

REMINDER: Time to send a secret valentine to someone you love.

BROOKLYN WEATHER: There’s gonna be clouds. There’s gonna be sun. The temp is maxing out at 39 degrees.

PARKING: Alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations suspended today. See NYCDOT link in BROOKLYN ESSENTIALS on the right sidebar. 

BIG NEWS:  Lawyer Lynne Stewart, 65, a left-wing activist
known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on
the New York legal scene was convicted Thursday of smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients – a
radical Egyptian sheik – to his terrorist disciples on the outside. Read more about it.

BLOGTIP:

GOOD EATIN’: Surreal Cafe, 79 Fifth Avenue at Prospect Place is a corner eatery with huge windows that let the sun shine in. Easy going and tasty, it has an artsy ambiance with an organic menu and much for the veggies in the crowd.

GRACE NOTES: The Moonlighters, a Hawaiian steel guitar swing band at  Barbes on 2/18. 376 Ninth Street. 10 p.m. Plan to be there for mellifluous music. 

THIS SOUNDS COOL:  At The Whitney Museum, a mid-career retrospective of the artist Tim Hawkinson. "Bring the kids, they’ll have a ball," says Times critic. Michael Kimmelman. "The show is like a mad scientists’ fair of screwball contraptions, sprawling in no
obvious order across the museum’s fourth floor, hopscotches from one
dexterous tour-de-force to the next." Madison Avenue and 76th Street. Just opened.

TONIGHT: As part of PS 321’s Free Friday’s, Rod Rodgers Dance companies performs works inspired by Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Rosa Park, and Harriet Tubman. Seventh Avenue between 1st and 2nd Street. 7 p.m.

THIS WEEKEND: Find out about the 52 new high schools opening this fall at the New Schools Information Fair at the Brooklyn School of the Arts on Dean Street.  Friday and Saturday 2/12 – 2/13. 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

VALENTINE PHOTO DAY: Be Your Own Valentine. V-Day party and FREE portrait sittings with photographer Hugh Crawford. Have a portrait done of you or someone or something you love at Fou Le Chakra. Seventh Avenue between 13th and 14th Street. Monday 2/14, 6:30 – 9:30.

MORE VALENTINE’S DAY FUN: A Yiddishe Valentine – Lehavdl! with KLEZMER CABARET – This all star Klezmer ensemble mixes up klezmer and greek music with a touch of musette. For this Valentine day, they will delve deep into the Yiddish saudade with songs of libe-shmertsn (heartaches), farshpilte libe (played-out love), & nice Jewish girls gone bad in Buenos Aires – with Jeff Perlman (clarinet), Ben Holmes (trumpet), Reuben Radding (bass) & Jeanette Lewicki (accordion) Pete Rushevsky (tsimbl) & Timothy Quigley (percussion) and Max & Minka with their Accordion Love Act.

HEAR/SAY:  "The mark of a city worth living in is that there are never enough places to park." Adam Gopnick in The New Yorker

BROOKLYN WEATHER: Rain, even some snow later. Dang. What happened to that phoney spring?

BIG NEWS: Prince Charles to marry his longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles. Read what the British are saying here!

LOCAL BEAT: Yesterday, on Ash Wednesday, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced the biggest round of school closings of Catholic schools in the history of the city’s Catholic education system. Read more about it here.

ALERT: Kids wearing I-pods are getting mugged at knifepoint  in front of MS 51. WORD TO THE WISE:  Take off the I-Pods!

DAILY DISC:  The Incredible String Band, Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter (Electra)

BLOG TIPS: Check out this literary magazine. The senior editor lives in Brooklyn.

GOOD EATIN’:  Try the newest addition to the Blue Ribbon empire: Blue Ribbon Knish.  276 Fifth Avenue (between 1st Street & Garfield Place)
                         
(718( 840-0404.
                         
                         
 

THIS SOUNDS COOL: The New Museum of Contemporary Art presents: East Village USA, a retrospective of that "renegade art scene that flourished in the East Village in the 1980’s. Covering the stylistic gamut from grafitti art to punk expressionism to new geo and appropriation.  526 West 22nd Street. Through March 19th.

TODAY: Emily Roboteau, author of the novel "The Professor’s Daughter," reads at The Community Bookstore. 2/10, 7:30. Seventh Avenue between Garfield and President.

HEADS UP: Rod Rogers Dance Company in a Free Fridays program at PS 321 perform work inspired by Duke Ellington, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman.

DON’T FORGET: Learn about the 52 new small high schools opening in September at the New Schools Information Fair. 2/12 – 2/13. The Brooklyn High School for the Arts. Dean Street. 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

HEAR/SAY: "There was a sense of the future, of coming up in the world. We lived on the 10th floor, and we felt our view was getting larger.
We could even see a piece of the ocean." Donald Marguiles, author of the new play "Brooklyn Boy," on growing up in a 23-story apartment building  in Coney Island.

HEAR/SAY 2: "There are no official opening events. There are no invitations. There are no tickets. This work of art is FREE for all to enjoy." Christo and Jeanne Claude

The gates will be unfurled on Saturday February 12th. Join the crowds.

BROOKLYN WEATHER:  A mix of sun and clouds but still a warmish 49 degrees.  There’s talk of snow for Thursday.

BIG NEWS: In a summit at the Egyptian town of Sharm El Sheik, Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged
an end to the violence that has persisted for the past four years. Read all about it here.

DAILIY DISC: Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love (Rounder)

BLOGTIP: My Urban Dig

SILVER SCREEN: Propect Heights’ resident Elliot Greenebaum’s film, Assisted Living, is showing at  Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street, a treasure in its own right.

THIS SOUNDS COOL: Chinatown Lunar New Year Firecracker Ceremony  on 2/9. A traditional Lunar New Year practice believed to scare away evil
spirits. After opening ceremonies, a dozen dance troupes of lions,
dragons and unicorns march down the main streets of Chinatown (Mott,
Bowery, East Broadway, Bayard, Elizabeth, Pell) to ring in the New
Year. Firecracker detonations take place at Mott St. and Bayard St. at
12:00PM and at Market St. and East Broadway at 2:00PM. Stages at both
intersections feature performances by traditional and contemporary
Asian and Asian American singers and dancers.
Firecrackers at 12:00PM at the intersection of Mott St. & Bayard St.
Firecrackers at 2:00PM at the intersection of Market St. & E. Broadway
Visit www.ExploreChinatown.com for more information.
 
   
 

TODAY: Frank McCourt reads old and new work. 7 p.m. at MS 51. A meet-the-author reception follows:  ten bucks gets you in (twenty  if you stay for the reception).

HEADS UP:  Rod Rogers Dance Company in a performance inspired by Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Duke Ellington and others. Free Fridays at PS 321. 7 p.m.

AND DON’T FORGET: New School Information Fair. Find out about the 52 new high schools
being opened in September 2005.  2/12 – 2/13 at Brooklyn School for the
Arts. 345 Dean Street. 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.for more info, go to Inside Schools.

SOMETHING TO BE EXCITED ABOUT: The Gates in Central Park February 12th through the end of February  by Christo and Jeanne Claude (see No Words above).

HEAR/SAY: " Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time.  What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for its increased hatred." Mahatma Gandhi.

BROOKLYN WEATHER:  Birds chirping, sun shining, it’s going up to 50 degrees today. Enjoy it while it lasts. Viva la weather!

NEWS: This’ll make you feel like Parent-of-the-Year: Read: Ma Nabbed in Gem Slay

DAILY DISC: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Sings Handel

BLOGTIP: Oswegatchie

THIS SOUNDS COOL:  Dharma & Meditation for Children & Their Parents/Caretakers with Jensine Andresen, PhD. This
three part class introduces children (ages 6-10) in an easy and fun way to the
basic teachings of the Buddha and offers an introduction to simple
meditation techniques. Three Saturdays: 2/26, 3/12, 4/2. This course is a co-production of The New York Open Center and Tibet House.   There’s more info here.

HEADS UP: "Angela Ashes" author Frank McCourt will be reading from his new book about teaching at Stuyvesant High School at a MS 51
fundraiser on 2/9 at 7 p.m. Fifth Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets. A
meet-the-author
reception follows at the Old Stone House in the Third Street and Fifth
Avenue park.

AND DON’T FORGET: New School Information Fair. Find out about the 52 new high schools
being opened in September 2005.  2/12 – 2/13 at Brooklyn School for the
Arts. 345 Dean Street. 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.for more info, check out: Inside Schools 

HEAR/SAY: "I’m not going to vacuum ’til Sears makes one you can ride on." – Roseanne