This was a cowardly attack, which has resulted in injury and loss of life.
Our thoughts are with everyone who has been injured, or lost loved
ones. I want to thank the emergency services for the way they have
responded.

Following the al-Qaeda attacks on September 11th in America we
conducted a series of exercises in London in order to be prepared for
just such an attack. One of the exercises undertaken by the government,
my office and the emergency and security services was based on the
possibility of multiple explosions on the transport system during the
Friday rush hour. The plan that came out of that exercise is being
executed today, with remarkable efficiency and courage, and I praise
those staff who are involved.

I’d like to thank Londoners for the calm way in which they have
responded to this cowardly attack and echo the advice of the
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair

On Park Slope Parents, a parent I know posted about organizing a vigil for London. She expressed a desire to connect with Londoners to show solidarity and support.

Here’s what she wrote me after I e-mailed her about the vigil.

I remember reading that — was it Denmark?  or the Netherlands? — I can’t remember… sent us some tens of thousands of tulip bulbs, and that next spring, all the tulips came up all over Grand Army Plaza, and every little park in Brooklyn and Manhattan and elsewhere, reminding us that others were holding us in their hearts.

Do you remember how kind we all were to one another in those first weeks?  Do you remember how we kept our kids away from the television and yet we had to tell them about the parents of their classmates?  "Why do bad guys do that, mom?" and "Can we explain to the bad guys that everyone should watch out for each other, mom?" 

I am sure the parents in London had to do this with the IRA bombers way before innocent blind us in NYC had to think about it at all.  I just wish they could know that we are keeping them in our thoughts somehow.  I remember it meaning something to me.

Another parent wrote:

"Perhaps we can do something on Saturday for those in London, who are living through something like we lived through almost 4 years ago. I remember feeling very heartened by those from all over the world who  made a point of reaching out to us in New York."

If I hear anything more about a vigil for London in Prospect Park or elsewhere, I’ll let you know. If you know something or have ideas about ways to show our support for Londoners leave a comment here.

I feel like I know Sarah Vowell. I hear her on THIS AMERICAN LIFE  most Saturday mornings and enjoy her funny, monotone voice and a hyper-serious, eccentric take on things.  I was surprised to see that she is subbing for Maureen Dowd, the queen of political irony, on the OpEd page of the New York Times. Whoa. Kudos to the Times for  thinking of it. Sarah was also the  voice of Violet, the teenage girl who hid behind her hair in THE INCREDIBLES. I really like this characteristically quirky and profound piece she wrote in Saturday’s Times about her personal reaction to the London bombing.

John is the A train. Robin and the other John are the L. Nicole used to be the 1 and the 9, but ever since they canceled the 9 she’s been just the 1. Geoff and Jen, Joel and Kate, Ted and Scott and, Joan – they are the F. Four months ago, I moved east of Fifth Avenue and became the N and the 6, even though there’s a part of me that will always be the C and the E.

It’s not just the New York subway map I think of as a refrigerator door plastered with loved ones’ snapshots. The Richmond BART line in California is Eli heading home to Berkeley; the orange line on the Washington Metro is Carson, reading her son a bedtime story in Arlington; the purple line in Paris is David, who moved there so he could smoke.

When I woke up on Thursday and turned on the radio to news of the London bus and tube bombings, the announcer said, "Piccadilly Line," but in my head it’s just called "Nick."

I know all that sounds mushy. I get like that when 50 people are murdered, and sappier still when one of them may be the guy I think of as my own private Churchill. (I’m getting used to this selfishness. As with Oklahoma City and New York and the tsunami, my first thought was to hope that my friends and family weren’t among the victims, which is to hope that others’ loved ones were.)

Nick’s alive. But during the four panicky hours it took to hear from him, I was too fidgety to sit on the couch in front of the news. I started pacing back and forth between the TV and a bookcase, where a detective novel set in London by dear old P. D. James caught my eye. Has someone checked on her, by the way? Who on earth would want to blow her up?
 

Continue reading SARAH VOWELL ON THE LONDON SUBWAY BOMBINGS →

It seems that actress Jennifer Connelly has real estate on her mind when choosing the movies she wants to make. First she did THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, the story of a recovering alcoholic whose home is mistakenly seized by the county and sold for back taxes.

And now DARK WATER, a horror film about a woman who is forced to move to Roosevelt Island (not Brooklyn, thank God) because, gasp, she’s been priced out of Manhattan. In her review in Friday’s New York Times, Manohola Dargis writes:

After she separates from her husband, Kyle (Dougray Scott),
who tends to call her "crazy" at every opportunity, Dahlia (Jennifer
Connelly) confronts one of the most brutal truths to face many a New
Yorker: she can’t afford to live in Manhattan. (The more pragmatic
Kyle, meanwhile, has moved to Jersey City.) Bravely steeling herself
against this calamity, she takes her daughter, Ceci (Ariel Gade), by
the hand and hops a tram to Roosevelt Island. As they glide above the
island’s hulking towers and grim-faced hoi polloi, rain falling like
tears, Ceci cries out, "Mommy, that’s not the city!"

Now, I got a lot of grief for my previous posts about Jennifer Connelly, so I’m not going there again. Besides, I’m changing my tune about Jennifer Connelly, a highly intelligent actress who is also extremely beautiful. Plus, she’s a neighbor and it’s fun to have a celebrity like her around. I’ve heard from OTBKB readers that she and Paul frequent the Third Street Playground, ride bicycles in the park, go to Little Things, ride the subway, and take their kids to  school at St. Ann’s  as often as they can.

In other words, she’s Park Slope cool.

That she said a thing or two about feeling like a loser for living in Park Slope, where she grew up, is an old, old story. B-O-R-I-N-G. The truth is, many people feel loser-ish if they don’t move away from their hometown, whether they be from a small town in Idaho or Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In some ways, Jennifer Connelly is so much like us. Like every other New Yorker, she is obsessed with real estate. In interviews, Connelly often tells her own real estate horror stories. We may know more about Connelly’s apartment history than any other actress in history. In recent interviews in
Time Out New York and New York, she’s been happy to reel off battle stories
from the Manhattan apartment wars like this one:

Waking up to the news that there had been yet another terrorist attack, this time in London, I felt the desire to shield my children from the news, wishing that they didn’t have to live in a world where such things were possible.

My son was up early. At 14, he is well attuned to some of the harsh realities of the world. An avid listener to National Public Radio, he has a fairly broad sense of what goes on beyond the confines of his rather idyllic urban existence.

My daughter, however, was still asleep. At 8, her understanding of the geo-political world is still quite vague. Geography is an abstract concept despite the more than 100 globes we have in the apartment (alas, I am a collecter of vintage globes). Far away is Queens or New Jersey where school friends have relocated. Even farther is California where her grandmother lives on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley.

London is where Harry Potter lives. Paris, the home of Madeline. Russia is where her Aunt is adopting a beautiful baby girl.

While my daughter slept, I was reminded of the morning of September 11th when she was just 4. As news of the attacks came across the radio, she wanted to play. I tried to quell my desperate anxiety, my sinking sense that our world was coming undone. I remember polishing her toenails in the kitchen in effort to make things feel normal in that most un-normal of days.

She watched the attacks over and over on the television in our neighbor’s apartment where we gathered that morning (her brother was in his 5th grade classroom at PS 321). The grown-ups were too distraught to even notice that the children were watching it again and again. A few days later, my daughter had a dream that her Barbie doll crashed into a tall building causing a terrible explosion.

Her world had changed even though I didn’t want it to.

When she woke up yesterday,  the radio was airing non-stop reports from London. My anxiety about the world we live in was exacebated. I turned off the radio, didn’t mention anything when I took her to her camp just a few blocks away.

While we can’t necessarily shield our children from the realities of the world, we can hold them close and tell them that they are safe. Because they are: in our love for them. In our love.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

On Friday night, I found a nice e-mail from an OTBKB reader in my in-box:

Tonight I was feeling very sorry for us because we hadn’t bought years ago, and our couch is kind of shabby, and we can’t afford a plasma TV. I decided to check out OTBKB, which a mom friend has been telling me about for weeks, and the piece about the rosebush made my day. I’ve been watching that new yard all week, reading about it and the rosebush made me feel pretty good again.

It made me feel pretty darn good that something I wrote made someone else feel better. That made my day probably as much as the rosebush made hers.

Earlier in the evening, I was talking to my first floor friend/neighbor and we were playing a game called "Envy Toss.’" Not really, I just made that up. But we were having a playful conversation about what’s missing in our lives:

Me: I’ve got brownstone envy.
She: I’m over that now. I’ve got income envy.
Me: What’s that?
She: I’m jealous of my friends who have incomes.
Me: Oh.
She: Y’know, working and getting paid envy (note: she’s a wildly busy
mom, PTA president, church volunteer, graphic designer, artist, etc.)
Me: I’ve got regular paycheck envy.
She: Yeah.
Me: And health insurance envy. We have to pay for our own…

It was actually a fun conversation. Very cathartic. A great way to slay those dragons of envy. Our girls were in the living room falling asleep watching TV. They’d been out in the yard all day and playing in the neighbor’s dragon pool. They were tired and so were we.

Envy toss can take a lot out of you.

Yesterday I decided that I really needed to read THE NEW YORK TRILOGY by Paul Auster. This was before I found out that I’d been accused of being a literary stalker by Curbed.com AND Gawker all because I wrote about watching Auster buy a package of Oscar Meyer bologna and white bread.

I was up on 57th Street in Manhattan, so I went into one of my favorite bookstores: Rizzoli. I have been going to Rizzoli all of my life. As a child, my parents took me there when it was located on Fifth Avenue, a wood paneled store with coffee table books and foreign magazines.

At one time, they had a branch in Soho, which didn’t last very long. And now that Bendel’s has taken over their old location on Fifth, the sole surviving Rizzoli is on 57th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas.

When you shop at Rizzoli, you must call Sixth Avenue the Avenue of the Americas.

I found this little bit of Rizzoli history on their website:

Rizzoli joined such prestigious American institutions as Tiffany’s, Saks, and Cartier when it first opened its doors on Fifth Avenue in 1963. In the following years, its landmark building in New York became the center for the company’s national expansion, adding new bookstores throughout the country and establishing an eminent publishing house renowned for high-quality, illustrated books.

I just love Rizzoli, love any excuse to go into Rizzoli to look at their art, photography, and design books. It’s always such a treat;  my own private New York moment – something I do whenever I happen to be on 57th Street.

So I thought, why not buy the Paul Auster book I’d been blogging about there. It seemed like the perfect thing to do.

I carried a lidded container with a light iced coffee into the store. "You’re not allowed to have that here," the security guard shouted. . "Just like the subway," I muttered. They let me leave it by the door. But I understood: in Rizzoli you must respect the books.

The elevator delivered me to the rather small literature department on the 3rd floor and I went straight to the A-section. And there it was — so I grabbed it and took it downstairs, walking past the CD department, which has an incredible collection of international music heavy on the Charles Aznavour, Nana Mouskouri, and the Cesaria Evoria.

I paid for my Paul Auster and went into the F-station on 57th Street at the Avenue of the Americas. I waited an excruciatingly long time on the hot platform for a train and then, when the train arrived, sat in air-conditioned splendor reading "City of Glass", the compelling  story of Quinn, a mystery book writer and existential loner.

"New York was an inexhaustible space, a labrinth of endless steps, no matter  how far he walked or how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost."

A friend got on at Broadway/Lafayette and I stopped reading the book. We chatted the whole way to Park Slope. When I got off at Seventh Avenue, I had the sensation that I’d left something on the train. Upstairs, I  checked my black purse and Rizzoli shopping bag and found that I had indeed left THE NEW YORK TRILOGY on the F-train.

If anyone sees my book on the F-Train, please take it and get in touch with me by e-mail. It cost over $15 dollars at Rizzoli. And all I’ve got to show for it now is a green Rizzoli shopping bag and a receipt. Besides, I really want to read the book.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen Paul Auster on the street several times. Usually in the morning, I see him on Second Street or walking up Seventh Avenue.

Sometimes he acknowledges me in that way that we acknowledge familiar faces in the Slope. Sometimes not.

I imagine that he’s on his way to his writing studio. Wherever that is. Dark glasses on, he walks in a slow, somber manner. Like he’s thinking really serious thoughts about his writing, no doubt. A handsome man, he’s tall, well-shaped with perfect chiseled features. He’s almost too handsome to be a writer. Which isn’t to say that writers can’t be handsome. They are. It’s just that Paul Auster looks like a movie star.

"Off to create masterful prose," I think to myself when I see him in the mornings. "There he goes, that handsome genuis."

I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I am a literary stalker. No, not at all. It’s just that I am aware of Paul Auster when he’s in my midst. At the Community Bookstore talking to his daughter about an art book. Walking his dogs on Second Street or with his wife, Siri Hustvedt, on Union Street.

On Thanksgiving, I stood behind Auster on the cashier line at Met Food as he bought two packages of Oscar Meyer bologna and white bread (it wasn’t Wonder).

I figured it was some kind of protest against the feast of Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s what  he eats while he’s writing. Maybe he feeds it to his dog. God knows.

It was just interesting. That’s all. Notable.

I have to admit that I’ve never actually read THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (1987), three books which are said to be marvels. I truly enjoyed a recent novel called "THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS" And SMOKE is one of my favorite Brooklyn movies of all time.

It’s no secret that Auster is the totemic male writer of literary Brooklyn. It used to be Mailer. But I don’t think he lives in Brooklyn Heights anymore. The borough, particularly Park Slope, is full to bursting with writers. And it’s not just men. We’ve got Kathryn Harrison, Siri Hustvedt, Elisa Schappel, Tama Janowitz, Jill Eisenstadt, Mary Morris…And those are just the published ones.

Still, seeing Paul Auster in the morning is a big thrill.

"Off to create masterful prose," I think to myself. "There he goes, that handsome genuis."

NOTE: Paul Auster and Celine Curiol, a French writer and journalist, will be reading Thursday June 30th at Barbes. Curiol will be reading in French from her first novel "Voix sans issue" which was just published in France on Actes Sud, and should soon be translated into English. Paul Auster will be reading from his translation of Chateaubriand’s "Memoirs from Beyond the Grave" – aptly re-titled "Memoirs from a Dead Man" by The Book of Illusions’ protagonist. 7:30 p.m. Barbes. 9th Street near Sixth Avenue.