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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smartmom and family finally had clean clothing today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that was fun.

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

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

Don’t you love it.

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

So far so good for OSFO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple Hill Farm

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

Applewood Orchards and Winery

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

Dykeman’s Farm

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

Wilkens Fruit and Fir Farm

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

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

Abma’s Farm

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

Silverman’s Farm

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

Terhune Orchard

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

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

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

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

Outhouse Orchard in Westchester County

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

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

Wightman’s Farms in NJ

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

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

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

http://www.wightmansfarms.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Updike wrote: "

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

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

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

Adam Gopik wrote;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smartmom explained.

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

She ain’t Smartmom for nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all.

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