The small and large ways that people look out for one another in a big city sometimes go unnoticed. But these efforts save lives and help make our city feel like a realy community.

Case in point. In a co-op apartment building in Park Slope,  a 77-year old man I’ll call Mike, lives in a small rent-controlled apartment, which he has occupied for 40 years.

Mike has diabetes and in the last year his health has taken a turn for the worse. My friend who lives in the building, noticed the way his shoulders looked bony and sharp through his shirt and asked him  if he was okay. "They don’t know what’s the matter with me," he told her. "But I can’t eat. Sometimes I go over to Methodist and have lunch in their cafeteria."

For a few days my friend brought him plates of roast chicken and spagetti. "Don’t bring too much," he said. "My refrigerator is broken."

My friend then decided to contact Meals on Wheels. Mike now gets one hot meal a day delivered Monday through Friday.

The Department of the Aged, which administers Meals on Wheels, assigned Mike’s case to the Prospect Hill Senior Center (PHSC) on Prospect Avenue. 

Last week, the case supervisor from PHSC called my friend to say that Mike wasn’t answering his door when his food was delivered.  "Is there a problem with him?" she said. "Why don’t you knock on his door."

My friend went upstairs and knocked on his door but there was no answer. She left a note that said "I’ve got your food."

The next day the note was still on the door. She asked the super if he had Mike’s keys but he didn’t. He did have the keys to the apartment two floors below Mike’s and climbed up to his apartment on the fire escape in a teeming rain.

Mike wasn’t there.

My friend called the case worker at the Prospect Hill Senior Center, who suggested that she call the local hospitals. "Don’t call the police yet," she advised. "If they don’t have a key they will just break the door down. And Mike doesn’t need that on top of everything else."

A call to Methodist Hospital revealed that Mike was there. However, he didn’t have  phone service in the room. My friend was unable to find out how he got there and why.

Another man in the building who I’ll call Dave has also been looking out for Mike. He put a up a note near the elevator in the lobby that said:

Concerned neighbors: Mike is at Methodist Hospital. He would appreciate visitors. He likes his coffee light with Sweet and Low.

Dave later informed my friend that Mike had taken a fall and had a gash on his head. Another neighbor had taken him to the hosptial and waited with him there for six hours. My friend recognized that there needed to be more communication between the people in the building who were making efforts on behalf of Mike.

Mike is back home. But he’d probably still appreciate visitors. And he likes his coffee light with Sweet and Low.

Today I saw two movie actors at the Third Street Playground. And I have to say they looked like incredibly nice and normal people.

Period.

They were sitting on the side of the sandbox just like all the other parents who sit on the side of the sandbox, watching their child play in the sand.

Period.

The guy, who is incredibly tall, looked like any Sunday morning dad, enjoying time with his son.

The woman, is every bit as beautiful  as she is in the movies. In fact, seeing her made me realize what a natural beauty she is. She glows. But she doesn’t look particularly glamorous or celebrity-like.

She looks like a real person. A real person with really nice causual clothes. Great boots, a cool down vest, cashmere sweater, perfectly fitting jeans.

Period.

The other night, I watched "Requium for a Dream," the movie version of the Hubert Selby Coney Island novel. It’s an intense and devestating movie. A really hopeless sad story told with an inordinate amount of style.

She is just incredible in the movie. So very real. I believed her completely as the character.

I think she’s a teriffic actress. And he in  "A Beautiful Mind" is just magical.  They both were.

What a pair.

I for one am proud that they live in Park Slope and can go to the Third Street Playground without anyone making a fuss.

Yeah, I know I’m writing about it. And that’s kinda making a fuss. I thought about that as I tried to keep my eyes off of them. I can’t lie: I did observe them. Not in a stalkerish way. But in a — "I just saw you yesterday in a movie I rented from Netflix and now you’re in the sandbox at the playground…"

Truly, though. I think they’re cool. They can afford to live anywhere in the world and they choose to live her. This is a nice place to make a life.

Even if you’re a movie star.

Only the Blog Knows How to Admit that She’s Wrong. I stand corrected. I want to thank Eric Richmond, owner of the Brooklyn Lyceum, for  clueing me in on what’s been going on at the Lyceum. I have attended a couple of events there — a Polygraph Lounge show (and auction for MS51) and a fabu dance party. I love the space and love to hear that it is alive and well.  I apologize for saying that the space was underutilized. I don’t know a whole lot about what’s been going on there. Here’s what Richmond had to say:

come on guys…

it appears that this "blogdoesntknow" and that the"blogdoesntresearch".

a cursory review of the events at the lyceum at the bizarre name of brooklynlyceum.com probably wouldnt turn up much.

not.. the brooklyn underground film festival
not…mum
not…cyro bptista(two runs)
not…the circus of vices and virtues(docuumentary on the bbc)
not…duck baker and marc ribot
not…dance theater workshop
not…the polyphonic spree
not…asbury shorts of new york
not…cmj music festival (2002 & 2005)
not…marshall arisman exhibt for 3 months
not…several weddings
not…fundraisers for a number of groups and schools.
not..the improv summit where the best improv groups in the city perform
not..the 6 month run of too much light makes the baby go blind.
not…the 500 people who visited it during open house new york 2005
not…posters for shows that have at times laminated park slope and ft greene and williamsburg.

maybe a perusal of one link on the brooklynlyceum.com website such as http://www.brooklynlyceum.com/before  might shed some light

maybe a perusal of another link http://www.brooklynlyceum.com/RE/photos

maybe  a litsearch on nytimes.com for "brooklyn lyceum" or "public bath #7"

maybe read one of the banners or signs or posters on the exterior of the building.

as for the scaffolding, until such time as we get a good
contractor/architect combo up to the task, it will remain in place. a
bit of an eyesore, but get a grip folks. of all the things in life to
have an opinion on, isn’t that a pretty superficial one. to come up
with all that negative conjecture without ever visiting the buiding or
its website and denigrating its based on its exterior and having no
clue that it is a theater that has been attended by over 100,000
patrons in the last five years is pretty pathetic.

maybe the folks running the lyceum(me plus one other person) have
figured out that the glib brooklyn faux-journalists are not the target
market. the lyceum has been open for 5 years and has had over 75
productions and over 500 nights of events. and it is still here.

think about it. the tough marketing-phobic skin that park slopers
have precludes many different experiences. a friend of mine nailed it
several years ago when we were discussing the differences betwen new
york and chicago. Chicago is a theater town, new york is a fashion
town. paraphrased, chicagoans enjoy the hunt for art, new yorkers
refuse to hunt. that is changing as new york is invaded with the rest
of america, but not in time for you.

reviews and listings in the times, new york magazine, time out new
york, the new yorker, the voice and others have completely passed
beyond your view. more likely is that without a million dollar ad
capaign to search you out you are completely unable to navigate culture
at the sub-broadway, non bar-band levels.

i always find it humorous when i get european tourists who visit because they have seen footage of it on the bbc.

the lyceum is a wonderful building and a cultural resource in a
resource starved region. too bad you missed it, you might enjoy it. but
more likely those who supplant you in brooklyn will.

Day after day, I see the same people on Seventh Avenue. They are not really strangers and certainly not friends; I don’t really know them but they pass through the same spaces I do. We trade smiles and sometimes say hello. Sometimes, we even have short conversations.

There’s the guy who introduced himself to my sister and me at the Mojo. He overheard us talking about "The Catcher in the Rye," and told us that it was his favorite book. Months later, I bought a shelf unit from him at a stoop sale. Recently, he told me about his plans to become a veterinarian.

Then there are the people that seem to keep the same schedule as me. Those I run into every time I go out. It can be embarassing to say "hi again," again and again. But I do.

Some of these "strangers" make me curious like the handsome PS 321 dad who looks like a gray haired Christopher Reeves. And the interesting woman some call "Skirt Lady:" she wears a hand-sewn black skirt and a white t-shirt most of the time. Her style could be described as minimalist/Amish. 

Then there are the ones I sort of know: the parents I see at drop-off and pick-up day after day, or run into at the Mojo; who I know through the PTA; whose children have been in classes with mine; those I see at the co-op, the playground, or running around the park.

Over the years, I have developed an easy familiarity with the people who work in the stores on Seventh Avenue: the helpful women at the Clay Pot, who cheerfully check the prices of jewelry I can’t afford. The friendly woman at Cousin John’s who always remembers how I like my coffee, the man at Sound Track who asks my opinion of the music I am buying.

To make a list of all these people would be impossible. First of all, I don’t know their names. Secondly, if I did know, the list would be very long.

These are the people in my daily landscape, who make up the community that I am part of. Not really strangers, not really friends, they are the in-between people who people our lives as we walk to the places we are going; who show up at the same events we do; who happen to be on the street when we are.

There should be a word for it. Frangers. A cross between stranger and friend.

Quite a few times a day I feel little wisps of guilt about things I probably shouldn’t feel guilty about but I do.

I feel guilty every time I pass the panhandler who often stands in front of the Ace Supermarket on Seventh Avenue at Berkeley. He always looks at me so expectantly. That’s probably because I once gave him $10 dollars.

He pissed me off, though. About an hour later he hit me up for more money.
"I just gave you $10 dollars," I said. "That’s right. Excuse me. Sorry,
miss."

I read an article about him once in Stay Free Magazine and found out that he needs $20 dollars a day to pay for his room in a flop house somewhere in Brooklyn. He’s got a handsome face; a winning smile. I feel guilty every time I don’t give him some money. But I also want to disabuse him of the idea that I’m good for $10 dollars.

I feel guilty every time I walk past the coffee cart on Eighth Avenue at Lincoln Place holding a cup of coffee from Cousin John’s. He’s such a nice man and when I do buy coffee he always jokes: "You want it for here or to go?" I laugh and say, "I’ll take it at the cafe table over there pointing to the sidewalk.

Sometimes I cross the street diagonally so that he won’t see me. If I walk right by his truck, I try to hide my coffee under my coat.

I also feel bad not buying the New York Times from the nice man who stands on the corner near the coffee cart selling papers to the morning rush hour crowd. "I mostly read the Times on the Internet," I think guiltily. Sometimes I have to stop myself from blurting that out loud – revealing my patent disrespect for printed matter.

During Pledge Week on WNYC, I feel guilty the longer I put off actually making a pledge to my favorite radio station. Especially when they say stuff like "$100 dollars is what you might spend on a trip to the grocery, or a meal at a good restaurant." WNYC is on in our house practically all day – from Morning Edition to the BBC after 9 p.m. It really does make a qualitative difference in our lives. It is our main source of news and media entertainment. Yet, I always procastinate, waiting until near the end of the pledge drive to actually call in

Similarly, I feel guilty every time I pass the Candy Sale sign in front of PS 321 knowing that I missed  the deadline for orders. As one of the biggest PTA fundraisers, it brings a lot of money and programs into the school. Still, I was unable to motivate myself to find anything in there worth buying. Actually, I did make a list of things like magazines subsciptions and wrapping paper that seemed okay. But the order sheet is still in a pile of papers in the dining room.

Guilt is such an overused word. Is it guilt that I am feeling or just a kind of discomfort about these things. The word guilt is from the old English word: gylt, which means crime. In dictionary.com it is described as: "culpability for a crime or lesser breach of regulations that carries a legal penalty." It’s not a crime to walk past the panhandler, buy the kind of coffee I like, read the Times’ on the Internet, procrastinate about making a contribution to WNYC, or decide to ignore the Candy Sale. it’s more like a self-reproach; I feel bad but not bad enough to do it differently.

Tomorrow I am going to buy my coffee where I want to. I will walk without guilt past the coffee man. If he wants my business, he’s going to have to use a better brand of coffe. And that’s final. 

My daughter took it upon herself to decorate our building, an 8-unit limestone, with handmade Halloween decorations.

The first week of October, she made numerous drawings — wonderful ghouls, howling dogs, witches, and devils — and taped them on the walls of  the public hallway.

Earlier this week at Little Things, we found a soft Dracula candy holder she couldn’t live without. I picked up some candy corn and Halloween signs at Save-on-Fifth. And the Food Coop had some of the most beautifully patterned gourds I have ever seen.

Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.  (that’s the sound of an old fashioned cash register).

Last night, everything came together: we made a make-shift table out of grocery boxes and used a sparkly silver fabric as a tablecloth. We put it in the hallway by our front door and filled Dracula with candy corn and M&Ms, and little plastic pumpkins.

Voila. I think we’re done. For now.

The sweet sweetness of the candy corn is already getting to me. The chaps for my daughter’s cowgirl costume are at the dry cleaners getting hemmed. My son hasn’t even mentioned his pirate costume (I guess at 14 you don’t need to involve your parents anymore). We’ve got a heinously busy weekend planned.

Take a deep breath and get ready for Halloween.

What’s with the F-train? The fact that the Coney Island bound trains were running expess only from Jay Street to Church Avenue this past weekend certainly made weekend travel a nightmare. No trains from Jay Street all the way to Church Avenue.

So much for Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, the South Slope, Seventh Avenue, Windsor Terrace, Kensington and beyond…

In the Times’ City Section on Sunday, Sewell Chan wrote: "Weekend service diversions – in which trains are rerouted, schedules
altered and riders befuddled, all because of construction or repair
work – have become a pervasive element of the subway-riding experience.
Over the weekend, all 19 regular lines had at least one departure from
their regular service pattern. (There are a total of 26 lines. The
three shuttles had no diversions, and the B, V, W and Z trains do not
run on weekends.)"

It’s really getting to the point where I think twice about taking a quick zip into Manhattan. What should be a 40 minute ride can take much, much longer. It just isn’t much fun. Besides, there’s so much to do in Brooklyn these days who needs Manhattan?

Well sometimes you do. Today I had a lunch meeting in Manhattan. My friend arrived late because the F-train turned into a D-train and went up 8th Avenue line when she needed to be near Sixth Avenue. After the lunch meeting, I waited about a half hour for an F at Rockefeller Center. I finally got on the V train which only goes to Second Avenue and waited there for ten minutes. Finally a D-train came along that was making F-train stops.

The F-train. We used to call it the Fun Train. Now it’s the dysFunctional train.

My daughter started thinking about Halloween 2005 on November 1, 2004. In the spring, there were causal musings about what she wanted to be.  By summer, she had narrowed her choices to three or four possibilities.

After Labor Day, when those Halloween catalog arrived in the mail, the urgency began: "When are we going to order my costume, Mom?" She circled everything in the catalog that she liked. But there was a double circle and stars around the costume she really coveted.

The cowgirl costume.

I have to say I respected her choice. Cowgirls are cool. And a nice contrast from last year’s Snow Queen (which was lovely, I might add, with its sparkly white fabric and long cape).

But being a cowgirl is EXPENSIVE. I said "yes" before I realized just how expensive it was going to be. The a la carte style of pricing in that Halloween catalog can be a bit misleading.

Still. We needed to place our order in time for pre-Halloween delivery.

We ordered the brown hat, simulated cow hide chaps, suede fringed vest, suede gloves, and a bandanna. That ran us about $75.00 including shipping. There were other items like a pair of leather cow boy boots that were just too outrageous.

If it sounds frivolous to spend that much on a costume it is a frivolousness born of experience and lots of it. I have been doing Halloween costumes since 1993. A child’s ontentment with his or her costume is key to an angst-free Halloween season. And that’s worth a bunch. We’ve made many of our own costumes, some of which were quite impressive. But homemade costumes involve lots of materials and can be quite pricey, too.

I think the most "creative" and cost-effective costume we ever did was the year my son wanted to be "A Boy Caught in a Rainstorm." My husband took a black umbrella and attached long pieces of blue and silver string. Wearing a yellow slicker and boots, my son looked great. Just like a boy….

My son, who is now 14, was big on obscure and unexpected Halloween costumes. He actually liked it when people would say, "Who are you?" That happened when he went as TinTin one year and Thompson and Thompson the next from the Belgium comic book, "TinTin." In subsequent years he went as characters from "Alice In Wonderland." Two years ago he went as Quisp, the bright green 1960’s breakfast cereal mascot.

At the Halloween parade, a few baby boomers recognized him and shouted : "I loved Quisp and Quake." or "Omigod, Quisp was my favorite breakfast cereal." But for the most part, he got blank stares. He liked it that way.

This year he and all of his friends are going as pirates. I think his costume may be a homage to Johnny Depp as Captain Jack (in "Pirates of the Carribean) by way of Keith Richards. It should be fun.

On Saturday, my daughter and I bought the finishing touches for her cowgirl costume: cowboy boots at Payless ($9.99) and blue jeans and a white button down shirt at the Children’s Place ($26.00). I don’t even want to add it all up this morning.

It’s too much. But Halloween always is.

At 9:45 this morning, my daughter and I found ourselves in Junior’s Restaurant taking shelter from the rain. We were  waiting for the Fulton Galleria Mall, which is next door, to open at 10 a.m. On a mission to buy a Tamogotchi, a wrist watch sized virtual pet that my daughter has been pining for, we were up and out early. I ordered a cup of coffee,  my daughter declined to eat — so we stood in Junior’s taking in the ambiance.

A visit to Juniors is a brush with Brooklyn history. The walls are covered with old photographs and the bakery display cases are filled with with a colorful multiplicity of desserts. The Baskin-Robbins of cheesecake, Junior’s offers quite a selection:  Plain, Chocolate Mountain, Cherry Crumb, Brownie Marble Swirl, Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Swirl (pictured), Black Forest, Raspberry Swirl, and Sugar Free Low Carb.

The restaurant , with it’s bright orange and white striped decor, is enormous and serves a diverse cross section of the people who make up the 4th largest city in America. The menu is a big glossy affair – a selection of Jewish delicacies, diner favorites, and multi-ethnic entrees.

Junior’s is a throw back to another Brooklyn: the Brooklyn of the Dodgers, the cyclone, the parachute jump. Yet, it is a Brooklyn that still resonates with us – not just nostalgically but symbolically. The borough of ambition, of community, of diversity, of creativity, of  spirit. That borough spirit is a mysterious thing  – but it overtakes people and makes them feel proud to be part of this place.

Like Brooklyn, Junior’s can be a joyous place. And their website, I discovered, is the source for cheesecake on-line and find out some interesting Brooklyn facts like…

In 1900: Brooklyn candy store owner Louis Auster invents the Egg Cream. Any relation to Paul Auster?

In 1928: The Cyclone roller coaster opens on Coney Island

In 1941: The Parachute Jump moves from the Lifesaver’s Exhibit at New York World’s Fair to Coney Island.

1950: Junior owner, Harry Rosen, perfects his famous cheese cake recipe.

1955: The Dodger’s win the World Series.

1957: The Dodger’s last season before they move to Los Angeles.

1970’s: Junior’s cheese cake voted Best Cheese cake in New York by New York Magazine. Crowds flock to Juniors.

1981: A fire blazes through Junior’s and customers line the sidewalks crying, ?Save the cheesecake!? The badly damaged restaurant closes for nine months.

1982: Junior’s Re-opens.

1983: The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Celebration.

1993: Presidential nominee Bill Clinton takes a detour from his campaign trail to visit Junior’s and taste the cheesecake. 

I can’t believe I only ordered a cup of coffee. My daughter was eager to get to Toys-R-Us to pick up the Tomogotchi I promised her. She better make sure that her little animated gnome is taken care of properly. Otherwise he’ll die and we’ll have a Tomogotchi funeral on our hands.

The coffee was quite good. I can’t believe we didn’t get something to-go. A cheese cake or something.

I just read Daphne Merkin’s piece in the Times’ Magazine about Diane Keaton, one of my idols.

I surprise myself by writing that. And yet, really she is.

She is such a cool lady who encompasses so much: talent — both comedic and dramatic; always deep. Style: visionary and way out there but pretty stunning just the same.And she’s got creativity, brains and a real point of view. A stance, she might call it.

I once saw her waiting to get into the Performance Garage on Green Street in Soho and she looked ravishing and weird in an oversized bright orange spring coat. I think she was with a well-known photography dealer. And the fact that she was waiting to see a a play directed by the great avant-gardest Richard Forman…

Well, that’s exactly what I mean. She’s an interesting and unpredictable package with a history of cool choices: loving Al Pacino, photographing hotel lobbies, making a documentary film about heaven, appreciating mid-centruy architecture, adopting two children after 50. Merkin reports that Keaton is a loving and involved single-parent.

Of her relationship with Woody she says, "For a short period. He was the only one who would live with me while walking on eggshells, as he claimed I forced him to do." A little later in the article she admits that she’s glad she didn’t have children with any of the men she was involved with.

I think it’s probably the way she wears her insecurity on her sleeve that  makes her both real and awe inspiring. Her unmet quest for a great love in her life, her uncertaintly about her own beauty, her sense that she should have taken more risks – been less inside of herself – speaks to something in all of us.

Like us all, she has regrets, a deep well of psychological baggage, and a laundry list of reasons why she is the way she is. As she says in the article: "I’ve been talking my life away about deep conflicts that don’t go away," Keaton says of therapy. "I’m never leaving. It’s like going to church. Whether I’m helped or not is not the issue. It’s about trying to understand more about why something is the way it is, about my own participation in a problem."

It’s been a week of too much wine and too little sleep. In other words, I had a lot of fun. But the way I felt in the mornings just may not be worth the frivolity.

Last Friday a friend invited us to celebrate her birthday ( a big one) at The Social Club on Smith Street. I started the night with a  Cosmopolitan and switched to a shot of Limonella courtesy of the bartender and a Diet Coke. I actually didn’t feel too bad the next day so I forced myself to run in Prospect Park for the first time since August. 

Tuesday night after Writer’s Group, some of us went out to Blue Ribbon for drinks and conversation. We ordered a good bottle of red wine (a Montepulciano, I think) and drank and talked until after mid-night.

The next morning I overslept and felt a heaviness in my head for hours. Starting the day like that is awful: pure and simple. I’ve decided to swear off red wine. It’s just not worth oversleeping, getting my daughter to school late, buying an Oscar Meyer Lunchable at Met Food for her lunch, racing to the line up in the backyard…

Not worth the stress and the heavy feeling in my head. The pounding, pounding. Like Fiona Apple on her piano.

Last night at Brooklyn Reading Works at The Old Stone House, I drank two small paper cups of white wine at the event. It was nervous drinking. Being the hostess drinking, having to converse with a crowd drinking, speaking in front of an audience drinking.

At dinner at Belleville afterwards with writers Regina McBride and Nancy Graham, my sister, and my husband, I drank two glasses of a really excellent Chardonney.

I had no trouble waking up but I did feel unbelievably exhausted all day. I’m pretty sure it had  to do with staying up late catching up with Nancy combined with those four glasses of white wine.

Luckily there’s a couch in my office. If my head keeps hitting the keyboard, I just lie down on the couch with the lights out and catch some mid-work zzzzz’s. That happened twice today: I literally could not keep my eyes open

At the 7:00 p.m. screening of "Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Ware Rabbit" at the Pavilion, I could not keep my eyes open during what seemed to be a really good movie. My daughter poked me once or twice but she gave up after a while.

I guess I am reaching an age where I need to be more careful about what I put into my body. I need more rest and daily exercise. Probably need to limit my wine intake to two glasses at most. Three or four knocks me right out.

My bed sounds like a really, really good place to be right about now…

Good night and good luck.

The Daily Slope has the SCOOP on something interesting that’s going on at the Park Slope Food Coop. Get this: they will be switching to 100%
wind-generated electricity from New York and Pennsylvania. The co-op
board voted 66-0 in favor of the switch.

This is the largest private purchase of wind power in Brooklyn to
date. You can find out more about purchasing wind at Daily Slope, which is full of information.

GO THERE. NOW. READ ALL ABOUT THE NABE. BECOME A KNOW IT ALL. IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS.