Sounds like an odd combination: pickles and oranges but the two child-oriented stores seem to be co-existing quite well on Lincoln Place along with Stitch Therapy.

Come check out the new store and celebrate Orange Blossom’s first anniversary. Saturday April 21 all day.

Lincoln Place just east of Seventh Avenue.

From Wikipedia:

The term "nor’easter" comes to American English by way of British
English and the points of the compass and wind or sailing direction.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the first
recorded use in the English language of the term "nore" ("north") in
association with the points of the compass and wind direction is by
Dekker in 1612 ("How blowes the winde Syr?" "Wynde! is
Nore-Nore-West."), with similar uses occurring in 1688 (". . . Nore and
Nore-West . . .") and in 1718 (". . . Nore-west or Nore-nore-west.").
These recorded uses are predated by use of the term "noreast," first
recorded as used by Davis in 1594 ("Noreast by North raiseth a degree
in sayling 24 leagues."). Thus, the manner of pronouncing from memory
the 32 points of the compass, known in maritime training as "boxing the
compass," is described by Ansted (A Dictionary of Sea Terms,
Brown Son & Ferguson, Glasgow, 1933) with pronunciations "Nor’east
(or west)," "Nor’ Nor’-east (or west)," "Nor’east b’ east (or west),"
and so forth. According to the OED, the first recorded use of the term
"nor’easter" occurs in 1836 in a translation of Aristophanes. The term
"nor’easter" naturally developed from the historical spellings and
pronunciations of the compass points and the direction of wind or
sailing.

As noted in a January 2006 editorial by William Sisson, editor of Soundings
magazine, use of "nor’easter" to describe the storm system is common
along the U.S. East Coast. Yet it has been asserted by some that
"nor’easter" as a contraction for "northeaster" has no basis in
regional New England dialect and is a "fake" word, which is a parochial
view that neglects the little-known etymology and the historical
maritime usage described above.

Common coastal New England pronunciation (both seafaring and not)
for "nor’easter" is “naw-EE-stuh” (like "LOB-stah" for "lobster"). Off
the coast (Vermont), the pronunciation is closer to "noar-eastuh".
According to a handful of 20th-century Maine-based authors, Downeast
mariners historically pronounced the compass point "north northeast" as
"no’nuth-east," and so on. For decades, Edgar Comee, of Brunswick, Maine,
waged a determined battle against use of the term "nor’easter" by the
press, which usage he considered “a pretentious and altogether
lamentable affectation” and “the odious, even loathsome, practice of
landlubbers who would be seen as salty as the sea itself”. His efforts,
which included mailing hundreds of postcards, were profiled, just
before his death at the age of 88, in The New Yorker.^[1]

Despite the efforts of Mr. Comee and others, use of the term continues by the press. According to Boston Globe writer Jan Freeman,
“from 1975 to 1980, journalists used the nor’easter spelling only once
in five mentions of such storms; in the past year (2003), more than 80
percent of northeasters were spelled nor’easter”.^[2]

University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman has pointed out that while the OED
cites examples dating back to 1837, they represent the contributions of
a handful of non-New England poets and writers. Liberman posits that
"nor’easter" may have originally been a literary affectation, akin to
"e’en" for "even" and "th’only" for "the only", which is an indication
in spelling that two syllables count for only one position in metered
verse, with no implications for actual pronunciation.^[3]

Today is the 60th anniversary of the day Brooklyn Dodger’s player no. 42 walked out onto the field at Ebbets Field and became the first black player in major league baseball. Here is the essay Jackie Robinson wrote in 1951 for Edward R. Murrow’s radio show, “This I Believe.”

“Whatever obstacles I found made me fight all the harder. But it would have been impossible for me to fight at all, except that I was sustained by the personal and deep-rooted belief that my fight had a chance. It had a chance because it took place in a free society. Not once was I forced to face and fight an immovable object. Not once was the situation so cast-iron rigid that I had no chance at all. Free minds and human hearts were at work all around me; and so there was the probability of improvement. I look at my children now, and know that I must still prepare them to meet obstacles and prejudices.

“But I can tell them, too, that they will never face some of these prejudices because other people have gone before them. And to myself I can say that, because progress is unalterable, many of today’s dogmas will have vanished by the time they grow into adults. I can say to my children: There is a chance for you. No guarantee, but a chance.

“And this chance has come to be, because there is nothing static with free people. There is no Middle Ages logic so strong that it can stop the human tide from flowing forward. I do not believe that every person, in every walk of life, can succeed in spite of any handicap. That would be perfection. But I do believe — and with every fiber in me — that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us (no matter how slowly) the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps find the greatness of tomorrow.

“I believe in the human race. I believe in the warm heart. I believe in man’s integrity. I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that the society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it — and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist.

“My fight was against the barriers that kept Negroes out of baseball. This was the area where I found imperfection, and where I was best able to fight. And I fought because I knew it was not doomed to be a losing fight. It couldn’t be a losing fight-not when it took place in a free society.

“And in the largest sense, I believe that what I did was done for me — that it was my faith in God that sustained me in my fight. And that what was done for me must and will be done for others.”

The City section has an article about the proposed new "supportive" housing unit pegged for 16th Street and Fifth Avenue for low income and mentally ill patients. The building would have social services on the premises.
The project has been met, no surprise, with some opposition from a small group of neighbors who claim that such housing poses a risk to children and may cause their property values to drop.

Oh come on. I’m sorry. Misinformation and fear can pose a risk to children, too.

According to Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, social services will be offered at the building five days a week, along with additional 24-hour phone support, 24-hour front desk security and a live-in superintendent. An extensive screening for potential tenants will include psychiatric evaluations, reviews of their housing histories and criminal background checks, she added, and they will have to have incomes of under $30,000.
“A handful of people are unfortunately misinformed,” Ms. de la Uz said of the neighborhood opponents. “They have some very legitimate questions and concerns, which we have answered. But a lot of their fears are based on a misunderstanding of who the tenant population will be.”

Smartmom called her friend Charlotte Maier early this morning. Oops. She woke them up. She knew they were up late at the opening night party of Inherit the Wind in which Charlotte plays Mrs. Krebs. But she couldn’t wait to hear how it went. The show opened Thursday night the Lyceum Theater (on Broadway not the Brooklyn Lyceum). How glamorous, how fun: partying down at the Bryant Park Grill with the cast and crew of the show, including Christopher Plummer, who will always be known and loved as Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."

"So how’d it go?" Smartmom asked Charlotte.

"Great. Joan Rivers was in the audience," she told Smartmom.

"How were the reviews?"

Charlotte groaned. Seems that the Times pretty much panned the show. But Variety gave it a rave and New York Magazine seems to have liked it very much as did Smartmom (Hepcat and OSFO, too).

Okay, so everyone’s excited about Christopher Plummer. But for those in Park Slope, the big news is that Charlotte Maier is in the show and she’s wonderful to watch.

Here’s what New York Magazine had to say:

Christopher Plummer s giving the kind of
performance you’ll one day brag about having seen. As Henry Drummond,
the Clarence Darrow–esque lawyer in Inherit the Wind, he makes
every snap of his suspenders ring true. He walks a little stiffly, with
a stoop, and tosses away some lines. But note the wicked twinkle in his
eye: He’s just playing rope-a-dope. At the climax of this dramatized
version of the Scopes Monkey Trial, when Drummond calls the
Bible-thumping attorney Matthew Harrison Brady to the stand, Plummer
gives his lines an acid bite, and moves with the kind of
can’t-look-away ­charisma that mortals don’t possess. He skips from
aggressive to playful to grave, but never when you expect him to,
making this one of the rare performances you love to watch because
there’s no telling where it might go next. I’ve seen plenty of
first-class acting, and flashes of greatness now and then, but I’ve
never seen anything quite like this.

When
Plummer really gets going, as in the speech where Drummond acknowledges
that progress comes at a price—“You may conquer the air, but the birds
will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline”—he makes
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee sound like much, much better
playwrights than they were. So, for the most part, does director Doug
Hughes. He’s not usually an auteur type: Getting extraordinary work out
of his actors, like Cherry Jones and Brían F. O’Byrne in Doubt,
or Plummer and Byron Jennings, who’s scarily fierce as the town
preacher here, is usually his forte. But he goes a little conceptual on
this one.

If you want to be technical, you’d say he’s taken a folksy
expressionist approach, using white light and spare staging to replace
the play’s mid-century realism with a Thornton Wilder vibe. If you
don’t want to be technical, you’d say he’s not screwing around. All the
extra stagecraft he’s thrown at the script—a bluegrass band that warms
up the crowd, audience members who sit in what look like two jury boxes
onstage—is designed to cut through its fussy, dated qualities, making
this ninth-grade-English-class favorite feel as direct and pressing as
breaking news.

Smartmom disagrees with what Jeremy McCarter has to say about the direction. She enjoyed the so-called "folksy" approach, especially the bluegrass band.

This from Gersh at the Brooklyn Paper:

"Hillary Clinton cannot be elected president of the United States.
Too many people hate her. And many of the people who support her do so
out of a sense of obligation or desire to re-fight — and this time win
— some old battles that are probably better left unfought (unless Gore
gets into the race, then I say, “Fight away!”).

"The good news, of
course, is that if the Hillary Express is to be derailed, it will
happen in Brooklyn. Just ask the hungry activists behind Brooklyn for
Barack — the suddenly everywhere grassroots effort to defeat Clinton
and put Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on top of the Democratic ticket.

"The
other night, I attended one of the group’s first gatherings at Soda,
the Vanderbilt Avenue bar, where I found myself impressed by the
budding Obamanics — and not just because they had their information
meeting during Happy Hour (which was a nice touch).

"Full
disclosure: I don’t often find myself impressed when it comes to
political activists. Either they’re too naïve (“C’mon, everyone! If we
can create a movement, we can beat the machine!”) or too stridently
partisan (“President Bush must be impeached for replacing the White
House coffee with Folgers Instant." read more Gersh at the Brooklyn Paper.

The next Brooklyn for Barack meeting will be on Thursday, April 26 at a location to be announced (check www.brooklynforbarack.org
for information). A fundraiser, “Art for Obama,” will be April 19 at
the Brooklyn Artists Gym (168 Seventh St. at Third Avenue). Visit www.artforobama.com for information. And of course, the citywide “Obamathon” is May 12.

Gowanus Lounge reports that Bank of America is going into the D’Agostino space. They’re opening a ginormous full service bank. The Gothic Cabinet Shop is also closing to make way for this banking behometh.

Bank of America has not exactly ingratiated itself to the community with its messy ATM storefronts on Seventh Avenue and Union Street and on the block between 9th and 10th Streets. They don’t clean up often enough and there are usually mountains of receipts on the floor.

D’Agostino, which has been in the neighborhood for more than 16 years is going out April 28th. Even then it was considered the most expensive grocery option compared to the Food Coop and Key Food. I’m wondering if Fresh Direct really cut into their business, not to mention the Fairway in Red Hook.

It’s usually pretty empty in there except in the early evening, when there’s a rush to pick up supper.

Seems awfully sudden. No doubt their lease was up and the rent probably went sky high. So high only a bank can afford to be there, I guess.

Quite a few of the employees have been there for many years. I’m thinking of one woman in particular who has always been exceedingly nice and very helpful. I will be sorry to see them go. I won’t, however, miss overspending there. That’s never been a great feeling.

Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill – Brooklyn Indie Market (www.brooklynindiemarket.com) is a collective of Brooklyn based emerging designers and is bursting onto the shopping scene of the chic and fashionable neighborhood of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Starting Saturday May 5th 11 am to 7 pm, over 20 of the areas rising design talent in fashion, accessories, bath and beauty, petgear, home-goods, paper goods and more will converge under the tents and kiosks on the corner of Smith and Union Street, just next to the Carroll Street station F train stop and Carroll Park.

Brooklyn Indie Market will begin offering the wares of unique fashion and product designs to
shoppers eager for fresh fashions every Saturday and Sunday throughout the year starting May 5th.

As founding partner, Kathy Malone has said, ”We are thrilled to have a regular marketplace. I am very proud of the talent, strength and mutual support of our online community, now everyone has the opportunity to meet us and vice versa!”

Johanna of Daisyhead and partner says, “Kathy and I have been talking about this spot since the day we met. This is my neighborhood; it’s full of craftspeople and those who support them. We’re excited to be doing this for our designer friends and the community!”

Kicking off the rotating roster of maverick designers are:

• Items of Anymore- Indian, hand-carved print block children’s wear and paper goods www.itemsofanymore.com
• Bon Bon Oiseau- Romantic, poetic, narrative jewelry www.bobonoiseau.com
• Reiter8-Unique totes from reclaimed sailboats www.reiter8.com
• Gowanus Nursery (our plant partner) –Specializing in unusual annuals, perennials, & shrubs www.gowanusnursery.com

For more info on the market, directions, and offerings, visit this website: www.brooklynindiemarket.com or call 347-407-1187, take the F train to the Carroll station stop.