Thank goodness Richard Grayson, author of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz, And To Think He Kissed Him on Lorimar Street, and With Hitler in New York, was at the Fort Greene Literary Festival on Saturday so that OTBKB readers have this detailed account of what sounds like an incredible day. Photograph by Desiree Addison

Fort Greene has been home to giants of American literature like Marianne Moore (on Cumberland Street) and Richard Wright (on Carlton Avenue).  An earlier resident of the neighborhood, Walt Whitman wrote a Brooklyn Eagle editorial calling for the construction of a local park, "[as] the inhabitants there are not so wealthy nor so well situated as those on the heights…we have a desire that these, and the generations after them, should have such a place of recreation…"

Late Saturday afternoon, several hundred New Yorkers flocked to that place, Fort Greene Park, for the third annual Fort Greene Summer Literary Festival, presented by Akashic Books, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, the New York Writers Coalition (NYWC) and others.

Gathered on a hill overlooking the lush foliage of the park, audience members sat on folding chairs or on picnic blankets or just stood listening to five established writers of poetry and fiction and about a dozen young Brooklyn residents, aged 8 to 16, who read work composed in Saturday creative writing workshops taught by NYWC members.

Laurie Cumbo, executive director and founder of the nearby Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), served as a genial and charming MC, gracefully overcoming any jet lag she may have felt from a plane trip from South Africa the night before.  Cumbo kept an event-filled program moving briskly, and her introductions and appreciations of everyone who came up to the rather rickety-looking raised platform to read or perform were both informative and enthusiastic – though she did have a tendency to give all the women and even little girls the honorific “Mrs.”

First up was a non-literary treat that proved the platform wasn’t as fragile as it appeared, as it stood up to the dynamic exertions of stepping provided by The P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. Club Steppers in their I (HEART) BX” T-shirts.  I’ve seen some fine stepping at the North Florida universities where I worked, but this group proved graceful and energetic as well as engagingly sweet.  When they brought some of the young kids onstage to show them the moves, it was both funny and compelling.

In a serious moment, one member of the group talked about his time as a Bloods member and in lockup and how stepping with P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. turned his life around.  If you haven’t experienced a stepping performance or know it only from films like “Stomp the Yard,” you should try to catch one of this Bronx-based group’s live performances around the city.

Next up was the highlight of the festival, as it was last year: the kids from the park’s NWAC writing workshops reciting their poems, stories and essays.  First the 8-12 group – Samuel and David Adames, Nathan and Mahera Josephat, Christopher and Aleisha Small, Paul and Joseph Francois, Najaya Royal, Anjelika Amog, Rachel George, Jediael Fraser and Annelise Treitmeier-McCarthy – recited their work, often with amazing poise.

The little kids presented delightful poems about magic and the third eye, superhero stories, riddling rhymes and Najaya’s tale – read on WBAI last Thursday – of how a tidy neighborhood cat used bleach to clean out the heart of Mrs. Poopyhead, a woman so mean she’d eaten her own husband one Halloween night.  I was impressed with many of the poems, especially Christopher’s “Hands,” Jediael’s “Magic Address” (“It’s not on Pitkin Avenue”) and Aleisha’s invoking the “NYC Sights” one can see on “the A-to-Z train from New Lots to Nevins Street.”

Up next were the teen writers from the NWAC Saturday workshops in the park: Shaquana Cole’s odes to her African heritage and the music of Etta James and the O’Jays; Caitlin Garcia, back for the third year (“Writing is so amazing!”) with her Ashberyesque “Caramel” and “Nefertiti”; Dmitriy Vovchok’s exhortation to his literary “comrades” – specifically including bloggers, I have to note sheepishly – not to “go on and on” but to “destroy their work without pity” (OK, Dmitriy, next year I won’t mention you); and Jessica Irizari’s “Emotion Sickness” with its sophisticated use of enjambment and half-rhymes.

At the end of this segment, MC Laurie Combo, who’d worked beautifully with the kids, brought them all onstage for a huge round of applause.  Then, after a reprise of the P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. stepping magic, five acclaimed literary writers, all with Brooklyn connections, probably knew they had some hard acts to follow but read and performed some amazing material:

Staceyann Chin, famous for her one-woman shows and appearance in “Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam,” read some of her fiery, angry and very funny poetical rants with her usual passion and artistry.  As always, attention must be paid – and it was on Saturday – to Chin’s takes on economic injustice, gender and racial issues and the unexpected grace that plops unbidden into our lives.  Her exploration of being a dog owner (“How strange it is to love something that needs you to be clean”) was thoughtful and moving.

Roger Bonair-Agard, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, came on saying, “What’s up, Brooklyn?” and performed from memory, affecting a more pronounced Caribbean accent, a long and vibrant performance piece about the ever-present conflict between the pull of his native land and the “hot kitchen in Brooklyn” that the artist in exile finds himself.  Then he read from his new book of poems about and not really about the game of cricket a remarkable longpoem about his guaybera-wearing elegantly-named grandfather that recursively maneuvered back to the poet’s dilemma of how to achieve dignity out of “the nothing of which we sometimes thought we were made.”

Jennifer Egan, a Fort Greene resident, read a tour de force of an early chapter of her acclaimed bestseller, The Keep, in which two cousins reunite many years after a troubled past to renovate an Eastern European castle into a hotel.  Egan is one of the few writers I know who can deftly blend the technique and practice of metafiction into narratives so realistic that readers suspend their belief of disbelief.  I’ve read the whole book and know that the story of Danny and Howie is profoundly moving because of, not despite, the magical manipulations of the author and her literary surrogate.

Chris Abani began not with a literary performance but a shockingly adept turn on the saxophone.  Who knew this award-winning Nigerian poet and novelist was also a terrific musician?  Well, maybe Johnny Temple of Brooklyn’s Akashic Books, Abani’s publisher, rocking an infant on the sidelines, as the author read from Song for Night, to be published next month.  The novella is the story of a West African boy soldier in a brutal war.  The nameless protagonist is part of a platoon that clears land mines; all the boys’ vocal chords have been cut to keep from them from distracting others with their screams when they are blown up.  Haunting and lyrical, Abani’s spare first-person narrative kept the crowd hushed as afternoon turned into evening.

It had been a long day by then, but Gloria Naylor – whose phenomenal The Women of Brewster Place, written as a Brooklyn College undergraduate and famously made into an Oprah Winfrey miniseries – proved up to the task of keeping everyone’s attention riveted with a chapter from a work in progress, a novel combining the stories of two newcomers to Charleston in the early 1800s – a man who emigrates from Norway and a woman from Senegal coming to America on a slave ship.

Naylor read a first person account of the woman’s infancy, when she is abandoned and found by Ancient Man, leader of the Diallo clan, who overcomes his family’s fear that the baby is a djinn who bring them disaster and gives the child to his youngest son’s junior wife, who’s recently lost her own baby, to nurse.  Naylor’s story, obviously carefully researched and narrated with a stately dignity, kept nearly all of the crowd in their seats despite the late hour as darkness fell.
Finally, after she received a tremendous round of applause – as had all the authors – MC Laurie Cumbo thanked the festival sponsors, performers and audience.  I ‘m already looking forward to next year’s event in Fort Greene ParK.

–Richard Grayson

Another great post from guest blogger, Brooklyn Beat, who spent a summer weekend with Frost/Nixon on Broadway and the National Comic Show.

THESPIAN HEAVEN: Weekend vacation plans having gone awry, we ended up at Frost Nixon on Broadway the other night, which was a fascinating performance by Tony award winner Frank Langella and Michael Sheen. It is closing this weekend and will be turned into a film by Ron Howard. Alternatively gripping and comic, Langella totally inhabits the persona of the shamed and scorned ex-President. While ultimately not presenting a redemptive Nixon , the play by Peter Morgan manages to find some room for compassion and a fleeting glimpse of the humanity behind the cartoonish mask that history continues to associate with TrickyDick. Michael Sheen explores the character of talk show host David Frost who early on struggled to balance his penchant for lightweight celebrity journalism with the demands for uncovering some semblance of the truth somewhere in the opportunity to interview the former President that that he had engineered.

Tourist-style, we lingered after the show and were thrilled to say hello and get autographs from Langella and Sheen, the co-stars, who were very gracious to the gathered fans. Also by the stage door, I said hey to actor Austin Pendeleton who has a long list of film and theatre credits. He mentioned that he had seen the play before but was here after the performance “To see Frank” which was cool. Michael Sheen also lingered long and patiently, chatting with the crowd, before disappearing into the night….

TO THE LOWEST RUNGS OF CELEBRITY HELL: Recently, my son and I visited the National Comic Show at Penn Plaza over the weekend. He is a comic fan, I am more of the occasional graphic novel snob. My favorite comics growing up were Classics Illustrated, and Superman from time to time.

We scouted through the boxes of comics, toys, junk and ephemera for a few hours. We finally made it to the “celebrity” area which was a total awakening. Lines of folks ready and willing to plunk down cold, hard, mazuma for an autograph by comic book artists I’d never heard of or one of the other assorted celebs on hand. First to catch my eye was Larry Storch, Corporal Agarn of F Troop fame. He was sitting there in his F trooper hat, looking a bit long in the tooth, reading the NY Post with a publicist nearby. To get a poster autographed by Larry: twenty bucks. Not many takers… If I had a decent camera with me I would have taken a photo of him and tried to sell it to the Post. But even Larry boy might be not a prime marketing image for them.

Opposite Larry was Golden Globe winner Paul LeMat. I really wanted to say hello, and tell him how much I enjoyed him in American Grafitti but especially Melvin and Howard, but I could not get over my discomfort with the economic exchange here. I didn’t want to pay him for an autograph, but I felt that the point of him being there, besides his appearing on a panel, was to make a few extra bucks pocket change for his effort. Paul was there, chatting with a publicist or comic show aide, totally ignored. I wanted to tell him that he was the most interesting thing about the comic show. But how could I do it and not feel like I needed to fork over money for a poster. I thought I would feel like a shnorrer if I tried to take a photo of him without paying. Paul looked good, but was showing his years (aren’t we all) with that dyed reddish hair and leathery tanned skin showing the signs no doubt of a half century of sun-and-surf. My son scoffed at my reluctance. I thought of George Constanza’s remark on Seinfeld about paying for sex or parking: why pay when, if you apply yourself a little, with a little effort, you might be able to get it for free?

Anyway, my son thinks like George Costanza and charged over to David Harris, an obscure thespian whose major claim to fame here was his appearance in Walter Hill’s film version of the Sol Yurik book “The Warriors”.

My son started chatting with him, deftly changing the subject and using non-sequitars to avoid buying the DVDs and posters the obscure thespian was selling. After awhile, an aide came over to assist the actor who was clearly having a hard time closing the sale here with my son, but junior turned on his heel before they could do a used-car salesmen number on him. However, when my son came back to me, he comented that the actor had made a partially audible but rude remark about his unwillingness to spend any money after the exchange. “That’s why you didn’t wanna talk to the other guy, right?” My son was hyped up and hopeful because at a prior convention he had gotten autographs from director John Landis, actor Gary Coleman, and Stuart Copeland of the Police for nothing. But here in the lowest rungs of celebrity hell, it was clearly pay to play.

-Brooklyn Beat

WHAT NOW?

NY 1 reports that the Health Department is cracking down on the popular food vendors in Red Hook Park.

ENOUGH ALREADY.

What a lousy summer it’s been for these popular vendors, who’ve been selling their delicacies every weekend for 30 years.

The Parks Department has been on their case all summer, too. It wants to put their permits out for competitive bidding, a very unpopular move on the Parks Department’s part.

The city says that the current permits expire on Labor Day. And let the protests begin…

This from Richard Grayson, who’s piece about "Bonnie and Clyde" at the McCarren Pool was picked up by New York Magazine’s blog yesterday. Grayson is the author of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and To Think He Kissed Him on Lorimar Street among quite a few other publications.

The Martin Luther King Jr. concert series has been going on in Brooklyn for 25 years, almost as long as Celebrate Brooklyn!  Last week Lauryn Hill appeared, and on Monday night I saw Anita Baker.

The concerts are held in Wingate Field, just north of Kings County Hospital and next to Wingate High School, which opened in 1955 – its then-modernistic banjo-shaped building facilitated ditching classes, graduates have told me – and closed last year, broken up into four small schools.  It’s easily accessible by the 2 or 5 train and several bus lines; I got there easily from Williamsburg.

Baker put on a terrific show; as she said when she came out (after Marty Markowitz read an endless list of names of politicos, community leaders and businesses), “I didn’t bring anything but a bunch of old love songs.”  That’s all she needed for her several thousand fans there.  My favorite Anita Baker song is “Sweet Love”; yours might be "Fairy Tales," some "You Bring Me Joy" and she sang most of them.  Her enthusiasm, and the crowd’s, was palpable.

I was surprised to see very few other Caucasians there.  I know Anita Baker has many white fans, so perhaps some of them worry about their safety at Wingate Field.  Everyone gets patted down before entering (the security guard who checked me out made me take out my eyeglass case to make sure it wasn’t a weapon) and there’s no alcohol allowed.  The police presence was very large, both by the field and on the way to subway and bus stops.  I don’t think it’s just because I grew up around there that I felt perfectly safe.

The shows at Wingate Field are for everyone in Brooklyn.

He wasn’t born in Brooklyn; New Land, North Carolina is the town that claims his birth. But the great bebop jazz drummer and innovator, Max Roach, grew up in Bed Stuy, studied piano in a Brooklyn Baptist Church, went to Boys High and by the time he was a teenager was playing with Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker.

Music critic, Peter Keepnews, writes in the New York Times’:

Layering rhythms on top of rhythms, he paid as much attention to a
song’s melody as to its beat. He developed, as the jazz critic Burt
Korall put it, “a highly responsive, contrapuntal style,” engaging his
fellow musicians in an open-ended conversation while maintaining a
rock-solid pulse. His approach “initially mystified and thoroughly
challenged other drummers,” Mr. Korall wrote, but it quickly earned the
respect of his peers and established a new standard for the instrument.

…For all his accomplishments, Mr. Roach often said that he was proudest
of the role he played in raising the profile of his instrument. “I
always resented the role of a drummer as nothing more than a
subservient figure,” he said in a 1988 interview with the writer Mike
Zwerin. “The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical
potential of the instrument.

There was one in Bushwick yesterday. Wonder if Bushwick BK was at Bloomberg’s press conference.
(Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)

Graffiti, bad smells, noise, bad garbage, potholes and other infractions: the city is dispatching 15 adorable golf cart type thingys driven by inspectors with nifty GPS-wired Blackeberry devices hooked into the city’s 311 call center.

They’re called NYC Scouts and they’re pretty adorable.

The City says they’ll be on every street once a month and generate 1,000-3,000 repors a day. Huh? That’s a lot.  The Daily News reports that Bloomberg had this to say:

"We want a system that is responsive to the public. Being
responsive to the people you work for is the hallmark of any successful
organization and I think for too long government has been able to hide
the problems and not have everybody see the real data and make sure
they respond," he said.

Dang. You gotta love this mayor for a myriad of reasons. Here’s how these cute golf carts take 311 one step further.

"It is easy for you to a report a problem but you shouldn’t
have to do that. We’d love to have you do it. But it is government’s
responsibility to find the problems and fix them. Not to sit there and
say ‘Duh! We didn’t know.’ That’s not what good government is all
about."

Here’s the last installment of Brooklyn Beat’s memories of the Summer of Love in Brooklyn and the head shop in Windsor Terrace.

Well, as incredulous as we were about the Head Shoppe’s appearance in
the neighborhood (remember, back then one would have to take the subway
into Mahattan to pay 50 cents or a buck for a copy of the Village Voice
at a newsstand ),  like something from outer space, it proved to be a
will o’ the wisp, as ephemeral as the 60s themselves would prove to be
in some regards.  Possibly a day or two after it opened, we passed it
to see that someone had thrown a garbage can through the window of the
Head Shop. And, while my memory may be fuzzy, I think it was one of
those heavy street corner Department of Sanitation trash cans.  And, if
I recall correctly, the shop quickly closed and never reopened..   

But the Summer of Love to me at twelve years of age in Brooklyn was a
brand, a distant concept, almost a vision, something to aspire to
as I got older, as though, perhaps, with time, and movement out of my
parents’ home and sphere of influence, I too could dare to step into
this new world of music, excitement and Love…

Speak memory…

Join Councilmember Bill de Blasio

and talk about the future of Carroll Gardens.

WHAT: This is a town hall meeting to share thoughts and ideas regarding the city’s commitment to down zone Carroll Gardens. We are also requesting community input about extending the landmark district of Carroll Gardens.

WHEN: August 23rd 6:30-8:30

WHERE:  Scotto Funeral Home 106 1st Place, Brooklyn, NY 11231

Sometimes a family vacation just clicks and that seems to be the case out here in California. For much of the summer, we’ve all been running around in different directions and it’s fun to be together in this magical house, the house of Hepcat’s youth.

Hepcat’s mother is an artist, who makes beautiful ceramic work. She has a large studio with a potter’s wheel. OSFO has been pining to throw pots on a wheel every since she was away at camp.

Voila. The electric wheel in the corner of the studio works perfectly and OSFO is learning froma pro how to center a pot.

Tres tres difficile. But OSFO is hooked on the goopy, sensual feeling of the cold, wet clay on her fingers.

Teen Spirit has been reading a lot; he just finished Factotum by Charles Bukowski and is halfway through the great Slaughterhouse Five. He’s playing his songs for his grandmother and figuring out new songs on the piano.

OSFO is hooked on diving into the swimming pool and wants me to judge every dive. No perfect 10 yet, but she is really starting to get good.

Hepcat is, of course, fiddling with the Little Orange Car, the Porsche that belonged to his Uncle. He’s been restoring it over the last few years. When he can drag himself away from the car, he takes his 1950’s underwater camera housing into the pool and shoots some pix of OSFO and Teen Spirit underwater…

I find myself excited by the creative energy around me. Piano, potter’s wheel, cars, tools, swimming pool, books, underwater camera…

I am full of love for my family and happy to be in this beautiful part of the world.