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Family Dinner

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville

My kids put the “din” in dinner.  I don’t mind the cacophony, most of the time. Being a city girl, I’ve always found the sound of silence deeply unsettling and if I had to choose, I’d opt for a vibrant racket over a tense, quiet meal any day. Of course, if there were a middle-of-the-road option, a little-light-conversation-peppered-with-soft-chuckling option, I’d go with that.

But when you have three firecracker children—aged eight, six, and one—and one high-strung Italian grandmother—aged eighty-three—any family gathering is likely to be loud. Particularly when this gathering happens at your grandmother’s one bedroom apartment, which it does, in our case, two or three times a week.

My grandmother, Nonny, could out-cook Mario Batali. Stick the two of them in front of a hard surface with fire, water, flour, and tomatoes and she’d have him begging for tricks of the trade within the hour. When you pair her skill in the kitchen with her indefatigable work ethic and a post-retirement lack of work, what you end up with is an open invitation to dinner.  I like to think it’s a win-win situation—that she benefits from the arrangement by seeing her great-grandkids and feeling purposeful—but really it’s me who wins twice, being able to give my kids a home-cooked meal without having to cook any of it myself. And the only price I have to pay is a raging headache.

Nonny sets the volume level for dinner and her lowest setting is “blaring.” This is not because she is hard of hearing—she can perceive a child’s sniffle from fifty feet away: “I TOLE you to put a schweater on dat baby!”—it is just because she, like every other member of my family, only knows how to communicate via shouting.

“WAT KINDA PASTA YOU WANT?” she bellows to my eight-year-old son, affectionately known as Primo, who is doing his cursive homework at the coffee table.

You’d think this kind of yelling would be impossible to ignore, but Primo’s accustomed to it by now and does just that.

“Primo!” I call from the couch, where I’m attempting to change the baby’s diaper, “Primo! PRIMO!”

Finally, I extend my foot and nudge him, which gets his attention.  “Yes?” he inquires casually, as if we haven’t been shouting his name for three minutes.

“YOU WANNA RAVIOLI OR TORTELLINI?” Nonny repeats.

“Tortellini! Tortelllni! Tortellini!” my six-year-old, aka Seconda, chants as she tears through the living room.

“But I want ravioli!” Primo protests.

“BUT RAVIOLI MAKE ME NAUSEOUS!”

“BUT SHE GOT TO CHOOSE LAST TIME!”

“EE-AI-EE-AI-OOOOO!” yells the baby, Terza, not be outdone just because she lacks all vocabulary. She is frantically trying to roll off the couch to escape the crushing indignity of having a fresh diaper put on.

In the middle of the debate, Nonny’s home phone rings, so loudly it surely wakes at least a couple of dead people over at Green-Wood.

“WHERE’S DA PHONE??” Nonny shouts. I’ve tried to get her to screen her calls, have tried to demonstrate that the answering machine will take a message, but she is not comfortable with this laissez-faire approach. As soon as the phone rings, she drops everything to find it—no small feat considering that Terza’s life’s mission is to hide the handset. Once she tossed it in the garbage. Once, in the freezer. Usually, though, it’s behind the couch.

“GET OFFA DA COUCH!” Nonny orders, “I GOTTA MOVA DA COUCH!”

Which she does, despite me yelling, “You’re going to break a hip!” She locates the handset, just as the answering machine picks up, which means we get to hear her conversation on speakerphone.

“OH MARIA!” she shouts, “CIAO BELLA!  CHE ME DICI?”

“OH VERA! INDOVINA CHE E SUCCESSO CON QUELLO FIGLIO DI PUTANA!” her best friend Maria shouts back, at which point I hit the off button on the machine.

Ten minutes later, the pasta is ready (ravioli—we had tortellini the night before), the places are set, Nonnie’s deeply entrenched in the story of Maria’s good-for-nothing son-in-law who had an affair with a younger woman, and also, it is suspected, has a gambling problem. My husband, David, walks through the front door as I’m strapping the baby in her high chair and pulling her over to the crowded kitchen table, which seats three comfortably but is forced to seat six.

Primo is sitting to my right, providing Ein Klein Nachtmusik.

“Just a city boy,” he croons, “born and raised in SOUTH DETROOOIT—”

“Its MY turn to sing!” Seconda runs up to the table and furrows her brow to form her patented Hell-Hath-No-Fury-Like-A-Little-Sister-Skipped-Over face.

“It goes ON and ON and ON—“

“Someday you’ll FIND it,” she bellows louder than one might think possible for a child with her size lungs, “The RAIN-bow con-NECT-tion—”

“MAKE HER STOP! SHE’S ANNOYING ME ON PURPOSE!”

“NO, HE’S ANNOYING ME!”

The baby lets forth a barbaric yawp which I take to mean, “Dude, they are BOTH annoying me,” and frankly, I could not agree more.

“NO SINGING!” I proclaim, “NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO SING!” Then, envisioning the kids relaying these words to their therapists in fifteen years, I hasten to add, ‘Until further notice!”

“MADONNA!” Nonnie shrieks, the phone cradled under her ear as she sprinkles Parmigiano on the ravioli: “She should spit in his face! She should throw him in the street like an animal!”

So much for a little light dinner conversation.

“So, kids,” I say, taking a deep breath and channeling the spirit of June Cleaver, “what’d you do in school?”

Then the singing is replaced with talking. From the way the words pour of my children, you’d think it was the first words they’d spoken after taking a year-long vow of silence.

“No, no, Horrorland is a series he developed much later. This is something TOTALLY different. I am talking about Night of the Living Dummy which is a Goosebumps classic. I can’t believe you never read that Dad, I just can’t believe you never heard of Slappy the dummy!!”

“Disgraziata! Stronzo che non e altro!”

“It was a COCKROACH!!!! I am NOT kidding you! Right in the middle of Center Time! Well, it’s really called a ‘water bug,’ actually, that’s what my teacher said. And then all the kids starting screaming like this: AAHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“AHHHHHHHHHH!” parrots the baby. This much, she can say.

“The baby’s interrupting me!” Seconda protests,  “And that is VERY rude.”

Somehow, even with all this talking, the children manage to eat, though I can’t say the same for myself, since I’m refilling plates of pasta and forcing people to eat their spinach and wiping up juice spills and handing out napkin after napkin. Oh, and feeding the baby.

Terza, a year old, is not a big fan of food: At every bite, she clamps her mouth shut, arches her back, and shakes her head violently back and forth like a person having an exorcism. it sometimes feels like she is in the clutches of  a paranoid delusion that I am trying to poison her food. If she could talk, I am fairly certain she’d say: “Do you think I’m BLIND? I saw you sprinkle arsenic on these beans—and don’t you even TRY to tell me it was salt! I may be a baby but I am no moron!”

In order to feed her, David and I have to, literally, put on a show. With puppets.  With one hand I make funny little gestures with the wizard puppet, and then when she’s laughing I shove a spoonful of spinach in her mouth with the other hand. Half the time she’ll be outraged and spit the spinach out right in my face, but half the time she’ll chew it suspiciously, agree to swallow, realize she is ravenous and beg frantically for more. Even if the kids weren’t hogging the dinner conversation, I couldn’t take part since I’m focused on tricking the baby into not starving to death.

Feeding the baby is not just stressful but messy, since in her fight-to-the-finish she hurls large handfuls of pasta and spinach and fruit all over the kitchen/living room. Including in my hair.

“MOMMY!” laughs Primo, “You have [chortle chortle] BANANA [chortle chortle] in your HAIR!”
Seconda throws her head back and laughs, too. The report of it sounds vaguely like a shotgun.
“HA HA, ha, HA HA, ha, ha ha, HA!”

The baby’s not sure what the joke is, but she’s always up for a good guffaw, so she crinkles her nose up and laughs, a little tinny giggle.

Everyone is laughing in a loud, discordant chorus, even David and I. Only Nonny abstains and that is because she is too busy yelling expletives, which are thankfully in Italian: “PUTANA! VAGABONDO!”

The children are quiet when eating dessert, so I use this opportunity to shovel as much food as I can into my maw as quickly as possible because it’s getting late and if I don’t toss these kids into bed soon the threadbare fabric of my sanity will rip to shreds.

Then I make a show of putting some dishes in the dishwasher and Nonny yells: “PUT DA DISHES DOWN! I tole you I don’t lika da way you do it! Please just letta me do it!” So instead, I pester the kids into collecting their homework and headbands and My Little Ponies and beloved comic books that don’t seem so terribly beloved when they are abandoned on the floor by the bathroom.

Dinner is over. It was delicious—I think. Really, I’m guessing because I didn’t taste much as it shot down my gullet. Regardless, we spent precious time together. Yelling about whose turn it was to talk mostly, and listening to Nonny advise her friend on retribution tactics, but still, together, all of us. Side by side. Breaking bread.

If I could lower the volume a few notches or dial down the chaos, I would. But then, I’d probably miss it too. Not the ulcer I’m likely developing, but the fullness of it all. Full mouths, full stomachs, full hearts.

Read more of Nicole’s adventures in Mommyland—all of them loud—on her blog A Mom Amok at amomamok.com.

The Case For Coffee

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Coffee Culture

There’s a case for coffee and it’s making its argument with visual boxes, giving shelf space to edibles —sweet and savory—leaving no dispute that their company is a welcomed food compliment to coffee. Within the coffee district of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, and Prospect Heights, a few specialty coffee shops are just as concerned with creating a beautiful cup of coffee as they are with displaying what locals have with their coffee. This case for coffee highlights local spaces buoyed by area food artisans, chefs, and bakers. Peer closely, it’s not stones being thrown, but smells of savory and sweet.

Hungry Ghost

Hungry Ghost
253 Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Heights

The now one-year-old location in Prospect Heights is an American-Italian inspired space conceived by owner Murat Llyarog. And the Brooklyn king of Hungry Ghost’s food program is Chef Pete Solomita, a neighborhood local in the business for fourteen years and of Little Buddy Biscuit Company fame.

“He has one hundred percent freedom to create whatever he wants—pastries, muffins, biscuits—which has to be as important as coffee,” said Llyarog.

The importance given to food begins when customers enter the cafe front off the Flatbush thoroughfare. The space flows from window seats: tables for two, a communal table, Stumptown by way of a La Marzocco GB5, and then the counter’s main attraction—a double glass case with stainless steel connections holds all the food glory that accompanies the Stumptown coffee program.

“I want you to be able to look in, if you want to. I want you to see what’s in the case before the register and associate pastries with your coffee.”

Chef Solomita’s pastries tower delicately revealing options such as gluten-free muffins, maple walnut scones, cheddar and black pepper biscuits, quiche, and vegan goods. Baked daily in small batches, the flavors gathering around the Christian Hooker custom cabinets and tables inspire one to echo Llyarog’s sentiment, “I’m hungry to keep this place just the way it is.”

Southside Coffee

Southside Coffee
652 6th Avenue, South Slope

The five-year-old local space is a true spot for the simple things—great coffee, great treats.  Joshua Sidis and Ben are its co-owners who convinced one of their regulars, Jen Shelbo—formerly of  Tudors, Gramercy Tavern, and Per Se fame to name a few—to be their in-house purveyor of things non-coffee.  Because of her connection to the kitchen at nearby Lot 2 where she also cooks, she is “able to have high quality produce and ingredients here at a reasonable cost for customers.”

Shelbo’s decision on what customers would like is determined by what’s in season, what’s popular with patrons, and what’s reasonable for the space.  “I think a pastry is such a personal thing, so you should eat what makes you happy. For example, if it’s a muffin, then I’m trying to give you the best muffin, something textural and flavorful—a muffin that you can rely on,” said Shelbo.

It’s no wonder that the whimsy of Shelbo’s passion lends to a combination of far-reaching seasonal flavors and goods like the Lemon Ricotta Poppy Seed Scone, the Candied Ginger Cocoa Nib, a can’t-keep-in-the-case quiche, a homemade biscuit with ham from Brooklyn Cured with caramelized onion jam, Bacon Cheddar Buns on Sunday, and everyday jam bars.

Such a diaspora of goods makes for a perfect marriage with Southside’s coffee program, which remains a Park Slope staple whose consistency remains the same amid an evolving seasonal food landscape.

Lark Cafe
1007 Church Avenue, Windsor Terrace

Newcomer to the specialty coffee shop scene, Lark Cafe is a one-stop space for all the things that any man, woman, or child could desire. “I was drawn to having a space that was a gathering place,” said co-owner Kari Browne upon arriving to the area with a new baby and craving new connections.

The space plays between adult sophistication and childlike simplicity.  The duality works as rounded edges and benches bring kid-friendly design to minimalist functionality evidence in concrete floors that whisper it’s okay to let one’s inner child come out to play.

Eyes will goggle too as they meet a case atop a Cesar stone counter supported by a chevron wood base made by a local woodworker.  At thirty-six inches long, fourteen inches tall, and fourteen inches deep, Lark’s case is the distillation of some of Brooklyn’s finest food creators including doughnuts from Dough, jam from Anarachy in a Jar, magpies from Maggie Magpies, vegan salted chocolate chip cookies from Ovenly, pies from Four & Twenty Blackbirds, bagels from Terrace Bagels, and quiche from Colson’s Patisserie.

“We sampled food and treats from all over and there’s a really amazing food revolution going on in this borough.   It was a conscious effort to choose proprietors that were locally based,” said Browne.
Addressing such a collective palette, it’s indubitable that Browne should answer the oft-asked question, “Who is your customer?” with “Everybody.”

Root Hill Café

Root Hill Café
262 Carroll Street, Gowanus

Occupying space at the border of Gowanus and Park Slope, the half-decade-old space is far from being old at all. A rehabbed space and a full kitchen with Mississippi chef Josh Burnett at its helm, the café is sprouting on some solid gastronomical ground.

The background of Root Hill Café’s owners—Italian and Lebanese—aspired to have a menu indicative of the neighborhood.  “We’re letting the roots of Root Hill and the neighborhood tell us where we should go,” said Burnett.

To that end, their food case is a glass behemoth of options. Inset into a raised counter that greets one as they immediately walk up a slightly tilted ramp, it stands at four feet, six-and-a-half inches by two feet.  Inside the wonder-food-land, one can choose from homemade sausage and buttermilk biscuits topped by strawberry, a chess pie made of cornmeal with white vinegar, and a savory tartlet shell.  Atop the case sit muffins, cookies, and croissants baked fresh daily.

A coup for Root Hill Cafe’s redesigned space is that it now has the space and ability to cook its meats in house and provide old school deli options. For many a post-noon and mid-evening visitor, the case is clear that the café is listening and providing options its patrons want.

“We want to stick to our roots while keeping an eye on the roots of the neighborhood as they change,” said Bartnett.

Two Moon Art House and Cafe

Two Moon Art House And Cafe
315 4th Avenue, Park Slope

Danielle Mazzeo and Joyce Pisarello are a sweet food-de-force in their umbrella space along Fourth Avenue.  Two Moon is an event/coffee shop space, with an ongoing roster of artists creating a cultural microcosm.

“We are not formal, but we are creating a holistic experience.  Whether you need to be here to work, for a midday sing-a-long or are an artist performing, you’ve just walked into our living room, stay as long as you need,” said Mazzeo.

In an effort to fuel their patrons creativity, Mazzeo and Pisarello have chosen an unencumbered food program—goods encased in glass dishes, sartorial packaging for others—all baked by either of the ladies.   Along with the home baked goods, a coffee program by 40 Weight Coffee buoys their minimalist format, and it works.

The home-inspired treats include muffins, cookies, brownies, shortbread, and frosted cupcakes. With such focus, there’s no two ways about Mazzeo’s summary of Two Moon: “It’s a Brooklyn experience, a gathering, a place where you can sit for two hours and just have a cookie.” A good cookie, one might add.

Cyclone Tickets Giveaway

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Uncategorized

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

Watch the Brooklyn Cyclones knock it out of the park this summer in the comfort of Park Slope Reader’s box — right behind the team dugout!

We’ve got four pairs of tickets for August 6, 7, 8 & 9th and they could be yours.

To Enter:

Visit and “like” our Facebook page between now and July 30th and you will automatically be entered to win. Winners will be randomly selected on July 31st and will be announced by 4 p.m. on our Facebook wall.

Visit us on Facebook

Unusual Creatures from an Unusual Brain

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Local Literature

Michael Hearst’s Unique Approach to Children’s Nonfiction

Michael Hearst’s book for children—a collection of profiles of odd animals—is as unique as its title suggests. The format, Hearst says, is a less dry form of the mail order Safari Cards sold on TV when he was a kid. Each profile tells us the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species of the animal, the geographical location, and just what makes it so unusual.  For example, the Hammer-headed is a loud-mouth and has a honk that rivals most car alarms. While Unusual Creatures is loaded with information, Hearst’s writing style is clear and easy to understand. It’s perfect for a young audience, and yet if you read the other essays he’s written for grown-ups, you’ll see that he hasn’t really changed his natural voice all that much. There’s no condescension, but there are plenty of jokes—fart jokes, poop jokes, vomit jokes, all the requisites for nine year olds.

But none of the joking around gets in the way of all the cool information. Despite his insatiable creative urge, and his editor’s initial reluctance, Hearst had no interest in making anything up. The truth was far too interesting. “I don’t want to make up a fake animal. I don’t want to have a real animal and make up fake information about it. That’s just not cool!” He promised his editor that a purely factual book, presented imaginatively, would be far more interesting. And he was right.

Unusual Creatures is fun nonfiction, which is in high demand right now. Its release this past fall was perfectly timed with the implementation of the Common Core Curriculum in New York. I’m sure lots of people will approach the book with this in mind. But after meeting Michael Hearst over coffee at Red Horse Café, I felt that considering this book merely in light of the newest education trend is missing the point. Michael Hearst is an unusual thinker. A creative thinker.

According to Hearst, growing into his imagination wasn’t always easy.  When he was in High School his attention started to drift and he was having trouble in school. “My parents sent me to a therapist and they put me on Ritalin,” says Hearst. “I was constantly drawing in my notebooks instead of paying attention in class. After I started taking Ritalin my drawings became much more elaborate. That’s just what I wanted to be doing!” You can stick a kid in the classroom, but you cannot make him think about what is on the board. But in Michael Hearst’s case, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Hearst did not illustrate his book, despite the drawing anecdote. He is known for being a composer, musician and a founding member of the band One Ring Zero, the house band for McSweeney’s, whose albums include As Smart As We Are and Songs for Ice Cream Trucks. He’s also written and published essays and articles in addition to his book Unusual Creatures. He draws mostly for fun.

“You’re creatively omnivorous.”  I said.

“Yeah, that’s my curse.”

It’s clear from Hearst’s description of his childhood that his parents were very engaged. They didn’t let their son slack off.  But it seems like they also understood him.  Several times as we spoke he indicated that his mother “forced” him to do one thing or another:  take piano lessons, go to college….But he said it gratefully—glad that he wasn’t left to succumb to his own lack of will or inclination.

He was eventually allowed to stop taking piano lessons, but the damage was done. Two years of piano was enough to plant the seeds for a lifetime of making strange and beautiful sounds.  Piano led to guitar which eventually returned to piano when he studied composition in college. After college Hearst started to branch out even more. While working at Hohner as a harmonica technician he was introduced to the Claviola, a strange, short-lived take on the accordion. This odd instrument, along with many others such as a theremin, glass harmonica, stylophone, Daxophone, LEMURbots, polyphonia,  bass harmonica, and toy piano comprise the Unusual Creatures sounds.

Michael Hearst’s Unusual Creatures project is a convergence of his varied interests. Perpetually fascinated by Camille St. Saens’s Carnival of animals, Hearst had long wanted to create his own musical menagerie.  “[St. Saens’s Suite] wasn’t really meant for kids, but kids love it. I love Program Music…the idea of music representing something else.” But where St. Saens covered the familiar members of the animal kingdom, Hearst wanted to celebrate some of its unsung heroes. He started with the Blue Footed Booby who, Hearst says, does a funny mating dance that looks “kind of like the hora.” While The Weddell Seal makes an appearance on the album, a lot of these animals don’t even have known vocalizations. It’s fun to close your eyes and imagine the animals in concert with their themes. “I love They Might Be Giants and I love Dan Zanes. What they do is great. But I wanted to do instrumental music. And kids have imaginations! They can use them!” He points to the scene at the beginning of Moonlight Kingdom where the kids are lying around listening to Prokofiev and St. Saens on a little record player. “That’s what I grew up listening to.”

But Hearst’s fascination did not end with the music. The book came next: a fresh take on a retro schoolbook format—distinct, nostalgic and… unusual.  There are jokes, quizzes, and sidebars to break up all the information and, as I’ve mentioned, there’s plenty of information. Hearst’s website has videos of interviews and presentations that further expand on his Unusual world.  The varied media gives his audience multiple ways into his subjects. A child may hear a piece from the CD and say, “Whoa, what made that noise?” and discover more about a Polyphonia. Or he may read a profile and wonder “How slow is a Slow Loris?” then look for video online.  At schools and other venues, Hearst does what he describes as a TED talk for kids “I play video of the animal, I talk about the animal. But then I’ll show them a Theremin and say ‘this is an instrument invented by Leon Theremin.’” Then he plays and even lets the kids try out the instrument. No one has to force this kind of lesson on a kid.

From here a child may want to invent his own instrument or create an Unusual Creature profile and, indeed, Hearst receives lots of fan mail along these lines. The reader/listener’s knowledge grows web-like, organically. So, the effect of the project on its audience mirrors the way it was created—the magical combination of following one’s natural inclinations and being forced to stay with certain pursuits. It was only completed with so much care and infectious energy because Hearst remained interested, and his interest branched out in new and sometimes unexpected directions.

In reference to his earliest misadventures with piano, Hearst says, “I guess as a parent you sometimes have to….force.” It’s true. But sometimes you also have to know when not to force, and let a kid follow his imagination.

Envious in Park Slope

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac

Dear Hypocrite,

I know you’re not a therapist. I’ve been reading your column for six years and every time you answer a letter you restate that you do not have any professional credentials. I thought I’d go ahead and get that out of the way for you. I so happen to be a therapist—I work with families dealing with physical and emotional abuse. I envy that you’re able to offer advice without the weight of accountability. If I imagined a career like yours before I went to grad school, I think I would’ve taken a different road. But, as you’ll see when I get to my reason for writing, I’m quick to envy the lives of others.

First, let me give you some background.  I’m a single mom, though I share custody of my two kids with my ex.  I live in North Slope on the second floor of a brownstone just off Flatbush Avenue.  It’s a big one bedroom.  I let my kids have the bedroom and I sleep on the foldout couch in the living room.   It’s a warm, cheery home.  We feel very safe and have a good relationship with our landlord. 

The problem?  I spend an inordinate amount of time, like most Park Slope parents, pushing a stroller around the neighborhood.  And for the past year or so, as I walk the sidewalks, I invariably begin to obsess over real estate.  I study every house and building I pass, imagining the carefree lives of those homeowners inside. Surrounded by the vast amount of keepsakes that their spacious abodes allow, they sip tea from cups passed down from their grandmothers and are content knowing that they are living in an investment.  I picture them up in their attics searching for holiday decorations or old photos of the family.  In the spring, I visualize them going down into the basement to bring up the bikes for their first park ride of the season.  All of this creative imagery has left me feeling very resentful towards my neighbors who own.  It’s gotten to the point where I ignore them when I pass them on the street.  It’s juvenile, I know.  But I can’t help myself.

There’s more.  I agonize over squandered opportunities to buy in the ‘90s. Why didn’t we buy that duplex on Carlton?  We could’ve found the money for that three bedroom on Eighth Avenue.  At bedtime, I tell my kids stories of traveling back in time to fight alongside knights and cast spells with sorceresses.  When my kids fall asleep, I tell myself stories about going back to the early 1900s to buy the building that is now the Society of Ethical Culture when it was up for sale.  (Did you know it was originally a single-family home owned by William Childs, inventor of Bon Ami Cleaning Powder?) I bet I could’ve nabbed it for eight bucks.

It’s affecting my job.  Between the appointments and paperwork, I slide down the wormholes that are Trulia and Zillow.  On the weekends, I drag the kids by the real estate office windows on Seventh Avenue in order to stay current with the listings.  I feel confident in saying that I know every property available within a fifteen-block radius of the Park Slope Food Coop.  

I need help.  This obsession is taking up time and energy and is making me feel ashamed and miserable.  I haven’t brought it up with my own therapist because she owns a home in Park Slope.  She’s going to want to discuss how I feel about her, and I’d rather not.  (I resent her, of course.)

Signed,
Green Monster in North Slope

Dear Green,

Some thanks are in order.  Thanks for getting my non-therapist disclaimer out of the way.  It really is a burden for us uncertified, free of charge, hypocritical life coaches.   Sometimes I think it’s all I do all day —tell people that I’m not a therapist.  And thanks for referring to what I do as a career.  That made me feel good.  And six years?  Have I been hacking out this column that long?  Good grief.  Well, thanks for reading.  I hope what I’m about to say helps you.

First of all, you are not a terrible person.  From my vantage point, you are a very decent person.  You sleep on the sofa, for crying out loud.  And you do good work by helping people who can’t help themselves.  You will surely get a choice condo in heaven.  But in the meantime, there’s no need to feel ashamed of your problem.  I’m big on envy.  It keeps the blood pumping.  Personally, I envy people who know how to dress, have good hair, have a healthy relationship with alcohol, and have parents who are spry and able to babysit.  My, I just disclosed a great deal of information about myself.  Let’s quickly move on.

Everyone has or has had an online obsession:  Facebook, Twitter, Gawker, Geneology.com, Reddit, Xtube, you name it.  Your obsession is founded on your desire for permanence and is completely understandable.  You want a cave your kids will inherit when you get picked apart by vultures.  You’re not the only one who feels this primal urge to own.   Because your neighborhood is stupid expensive, I imagine real estate obsession is pretty common in your parts.  So, it’s time to stop beating yourself up.

As I see it, you have two choices.  Which one you choose depends on the feasibility factor.  Are you really in a financial position to own at this time,or are you indulging in fantasy? If you think you could fork over a robust down payment, then choose option one.   If you’re worried about how to pay the babysitter, then look into option two.

Option one: Get practical about it. Form a relationship with a realtor and tell all—what you’re looking for, how much you can afford, where you want to live.  And then pour yourself a glass of pinot, pick up a novel, and let your realtor do the obsessing.  When you finish the novel, pay a visit to your bank and get a mortgage pre-approval letter.   It’s not as easy as it used to be, but so what? You need to know if you’re being realistic about this dream of yours, or if you’ve been getting high from the second-hand ganja smoke you’ve been inhaling walking behind the high school kids on your way home.

Option two:  If you know there’s no way you can afford a place in your neighborhood, quit this obsession cold turkey.  Don’t look at another listing.  Stop being a slave to “what if?” and move on to “what now?”  (Ooooo, that’s good.  Watch out Suze Orman!)  There are lots of tricks that can help in breaking compulsive habits.  Some involve snapping rubber bands on the wrist, journaling, or enlisting friends and coworkers to help you.  Be wary of replacing one obsession with another.  Giving up cigarettes for ice cream produces a whole other set of problems.  (Ooooo, nicotine-infused ice cream… Look out, Ben and Jerry!) Once you do give up your real estate obsession, you will find yourself with more time and energy, and it’s important to find healthy ways to spend them.  Reconnect with old friends.  Take a class.  Plan a trip.  Do what makes you feel good—only you know what that is.  And while you might not be able to afford a new place to live, you can make some changes to your current home.  Buy your dream couch or paint your living room a new color.  If you can’t lose the weight, at least get a good haircut, right?  I would never do any of this, but you should.

Green, I hear you.  I’m sorry that you’re going through this.  But let me offer a little perspective.  I once traveled to Turkey on my own for a month.  One night, I ate dinner with a man who worked in a souvenir shop near my hotel.  At the end of the meal, I told him I would visit him the following afternoon.  Early the next morning, I got some news that resulted in me having to leave immediately.  I went to say goodbye, but his shop was closed.  I asked a man sweeping nearby, and he pointed to a bungalow behind the building.  I walked down the alley and entered the bungalow, where I found my friend sleeping in a queen-sized bed with five of his brothers.  Six spooning, grown men in one bed.  We often compare ourselves to our neighbors, but the world is filled with people who live in many different ways.  Try comparing yourself to people not as fortunate as you, and you will be humbled.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s completely natural to want more out of life.  I can guarantee you that those neighbors drinking tea out of their grandmas’ cups want more too.  Maybe they don’t want bigger brownstones, but maybe they want their grandmas back.  Green, stay in the moment and appreciate what you do have.  And things will change if you work hard to make owning a reality.  In five years, you could be paying your mortgage instead of your rent.  I sincerely believe that with sixty-five percent of my heart.  So, until then, quit obsessing about what you don’t have, and enjoy your kids.  They grow up so fast. One day your home will be too big.

 

Food With Friends

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: The Reader On Food

Emerging from their homes, ex-hibernators in Brooklyn have many options to choose from when it comes to gathering with their friends and family and enjoying the long days of spring and summer. The new additions to our neighborhood strive to promote innovations in food, community, and—most importantly—having fun. Butter and Scotch promises to provide all the best things in life under one roof at their dessert-meets-cocktail bar, while Nightingale 9 and Fletcher’s serve up innovative updates on Vietnamese cuisine and barbecue.

Butter and Scotch

Allison Kave and Keavy Blueher were following parallel paths before ever meeting each other and teaming up to create their boozy baking business, Butter and Scotch. As Blueher was working towards her degree in Illustration from Parson’s School of Design, she was working in bakeries and restaurants. “My unhealthy obsession with creating the perfect cupcake developed during this time,” she says. What started as a hobby wound up taking over her spare time, and she began to sell her creations at markets like Artists & Fleas and Brooklyn Flea. The Kumquat Cupcakery was born. Meanwhile, Kave was reevaluating her career as the recession hit the art world hard. Throughout her years spent as a gallery director, curator, and writer, she found herself growing increasingly fixated with the food scene in the city. And it’s no surprise, since it seems to run in the family; her mom owns Roni-Sue’s Chocolates, and her brother is a chef. She had been spending Sundays baking pies and experimenting with recipes for fun, and a year after she found herself out of a job, she ended up winning first prize at the inaugural Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off Benefit. Kave started selling her first prize pies at her mom’s shop and in markets.

Blueher was introduced to Kave the same way we all were—by trying a bunch of Kave’s pies at Smorgasburg last Spring and becoming obsessed with them. She hit a lull with Kumquat Cupcakery and imagined opening a place where people could enjoy cupcakes, pies, and wine in one setting—a more grown-up version of the traditional bakery. She approached Kave with the idea of teaming up to open a brick-and-mortar space, and Kave was immediately on board. “I ran with her initial concept of desserts and wine and added on craft cocktails, house-made bitters, and even artisanal jello shots,” says Kave. “It’s all about using great, seasonal ingredients in both the desserts and the drinks, but above all, we want people to come in and have fun.” Blueher agrees. “While we plan to serve expertly-crafted drinks and sweets, we’re not interested in intimidating or overwhelming our clients. Our style is rustic, and above all, fun.”

Their quirky creations come from a variety of sources of inspiration. Many of their ideas come from looking at classic desserts and dishes and finding new ways to play with them. For example, their PB&J Three Ways is a trio of desserts inspired by the sandwich, including a slice of pie, a mini cupcake, and a sundae. They will also turn their cravings into new recipes. Blueher explains, “I’ll say something like, ‘I really want something with sesame.’ And then Allison will say ‘Oh yeah, and I bet that would go well with port!’ And then all of a sudden we have a Tahini Thumbprint Cookie with sesame seeds and port jelly.” Their friends’ and familys’ cravings and tastes work their way into Kave and Keavy’s creations as well. The Mary Ellen, which is a dry vodka martini paired with a hot fudge sundae, is inspired by Blueher’s grandmother.

Butter and Scotch will primarily focus on their dessert and liquor pairings, but will be open throughout the day to serve coffee, pastries, and sandwiches. Other items to look forward to are homemade ice cream for floats, shakes, and sundaes, as well as killer cocktails. A selection of savory snacks will also be available to balance out the sweets. As of press time, Butter and Scotch has not finalized a location, but they have been scouting Franklin Avenue in hopes to be a part of the burgeoning community come late summer. Check out www.butterandscotch.com for their updates and more information.

Nightingale 9

Having already earned the love of Carroll Gardens residents with his southern-inspired restaurant, Seersucker, and his café, Smith Canteen, Chef Robert Newton has expanded his repertoire to celebrate his love of Vietnamese food with Nightingale 9 (345 Smith Street). Last year, Newton ate his way through Vietnam, diving into the food culture through street food, home cooking, and restaurants meals. He met chefs, farmers, artists, and business owners all across the country from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, discovering the diversity and regional influences of the expansive Vietnamese cuisine. A particular favorite was Da Lat, a town in the Central Highlands with a heavy French influence to its cuisine and a big focus on vegetable farming.
Newton incorporates inspiration from all around the country in the dishes at Nightingale 9 and always stays true to the principles of sourcing good ingredients—the chicken, duck, beef, and pork are all from New York. The foundation is the soups—such as a beef and rice-noodle soup—with rich, complex broths as the cornerstone of the menu. Smaller dishes include Pork Rolls, Crab and Mushroom Turnovers and, of course, updated takes on banh mi, while entrees offer takes on traditional Vietnamese fish dishes such as Catfish with Dill. For something sweet and refreshing, try the condensed milk ice cream desserts, or the house-made sugar cane juice.  With communal seating, salvaged wood, and reclaimed items, the environment is warm and inviting, a perfect place to get away.

Fletcher’s

A barbecue boom has come to Brooklyn, and thank god for it. One of the latest and most exciting additions to the scene is Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbeque in Gowanus (433 3rd Avenue). They had originally planned to open the day Sandy blew through, but they managed to avoid any damages and by opening a few days later. “We were unsure if it was the right thing to do,” says Bill Fletcher, the owner of Fletcher’s. “But the neighborhood welcomed us openly. It ended up being a place where people could come together and find some comfort.” In turn, Fletcher’s gave back to their new community by participating in Operation BBQ Relief, providing food for those hit hardest by the storm.

Now, settled in after their dramatic beginnings, Fletcher’s has become an anchor in the developing foodie enclave of Gowanus. Fletcher works together with Matt Fisher, pitmaster and chef, to develop their niche, which they refer to as Brooklyn barbeque. “I grew up in the Northeast. I don’t want to lay claim to any existing barbeque. Barbeque is a religion. People believe the only true barbeque is the one they grew up with. So, we’re here to make it our own.” Originally from an advertising background, Fletcher started entering barbeque competitions for fun and ended up meeting Fisher at Grillin’ on the Bay, the Brooklyn barbeque competition that Fisher had helped found. Now they have teamed up to create an innovative twist on the classics.
Far beyond the burgers and dogs most associated with barbeque in the North, Fletcher’s serves rotating specials like pork belly, lamb shank, and hoisin duck, as well as the usual ribs, brisket, and pork. Slow-cooked over an open-fire red oak and maple pit, their meat has an unexpected complexity compared to those coming from other commercial kitchens. They also stand out for their commitment to using locally-sourced, humanely-raised meats free from antibiotics and hormones. Their sides. like the Pit-Smoked Baked Beans, Mac’ and Cheese, and Pickles, also use seasonal, local ingredients when possible. Even their drinks are locally-sourced, mixed with spirits from King’s County Distillery and Breuckelen Distillery, which is only a few blocks away.

“When you think about what ties all of the regional styles of barbeque together, it’s not really about the food. It’s more about people coming together and enjoying themselves, relaxing,” Fletcher says, and the atmosphere of Fletcher’s holds true to the heart of barbecue. With family-style seating, everyone picks out their food at a counter from the rotating menu displayed on a blackboard, piles it directly onto paper-lined trays, and gathers around picnic tables. With the true feeling of a neighborhood spot, Fletcher’s is a welcome addition to Third Avenue.

Voici la Situation

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Local Literature

At the risk of being a traitor to my generation, I have to say: even as we have tried harder than any of our ancestors to mentor, please, and encourage our kids, we have completely lost control of them, and in the process we’ve lost control of our own lives as well.

I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, quite possibly the world headquarters of helicopter parents, but I have a pretty good hunch it’s happening in nearly everys middle-class neighborhood nationwide, urban or otherwise. There’s a mindset in these parts that children should be treated like adults, with all of their tastes and distastes respected.

Having grown up with twelve siblings and roughly zero of my tastes and distastes even acknowledged—“respect” was generally uttered only in the context of what the small residents of the house should have for the taller inhabitants—this sounded sweet to me. Kids are people too, after all—short, often totally unreasonable people, but people nonetheless. In practice, however, this notion was a lot less quaint.

My suspicions were realized on an early fall evening when my French friend Lucie came to dinner with her husband and two children. The Durand kids were obedient, respectful, and, when told to be, quiet. They didn’t seem to require cajoling or lengthy explanations when asked to set the table. They simply did what they were told. If they didn’t want a certain dish at dinner, they didn’t eat it, but they also were not offered a myriad of other choices. Not a single cheese stick was proffered.

After dinner, we parents were sitting around the dining room table, finishing a bottle of wine, while the kids played in the living room. A mom could get used to this, I thought, reclining—reclining!—in my chair. But the sweet, slightly inebriated reverie did not last long.

Soon enough, my younger daughter, Daphne, wanted my attention, so she did as she usually does: Namely, she started to act bananas, screaming and yelling for me.
By this point, I’d been exposed to the well-oiled Durand machine for about four hours, more than enough time to soak up some deep wisdom. So instead of doing what I usually did—tending immediately to Daphne’s (loud) calls—I looked to Lucie for advice. She leaned across the table, put a strong, steady hand on my arm, and offered an adage she told me her Parisian mother had often employed: “If there is no blood, don’t get up.”

So simple—and so excellent. Of course!

I didn’t get up. Things were loud for a little bit, and Daphne was irate at my lack of bustle on her behalf. And then, as fast as her wails had started, they stopped, and she resumed playing with the other kids.

Soon, whenever things spun out of hand in my own home, I found myself wondering: What Would Lucie Durand Do? Swallowing my pride, along with plenty of the kids’ uneaten dinners, I took things a bit further and started asking Lucie, point-blank, for advice. For instance, when Daphne decorated the length of our rather long hallway with crayon, my husband and I were unsure how to react. Time-out? Stern warning? Daph was just shy of three years old, so taking away privileges or toys wouldn’t really register much with her.

When I asked Lucie what they might do in France with this type of toddler misdemeanor, she didn’t hesitate: “You go to the kitchen and get a sponge with soap and water. Sit her on a stool and have her scrub.” I was incredulous. Scrub it all off? My husband had tried and couldn’t erase so much as a single scrawl. Then Lucie assured me that I only needed to make Daphne wash the wall for a minute so that she had a chance to understand the consequences of her action—and to see how damn hard it is to get crayon off a wall.

Often Lucie has a strategy or phrase that does wonders for any given standoff between my kids and me, but, more than that, she has a refreshing attitude: There shouldn’t be any standoffs. “After all, Catherine,” she often reminds me, “you are the chief.”

The chief—has a nice ring to it, no?

For me, Lucie is a gold mine of great advice, but she’s made it very clear that her way of parenting is natural for practically everyone in France. Here in the States, we’ve been talking and talking and talking about our kids’ feelings. Meanwhile, over there, French children don’t talk back!

Excerpted from French Twist by Catherine Crawford Copyright © 2013 by Catherine Crawford. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Sleeping with the Fishes

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville

Spring! The season of new life and rebirth! Unless, of course you’re a goldfish in our home, in which case spring is a time of death, plain and simple. Last spring, the death knell rang for the pet we’d come to know ironically as Survivor-Fish, as he joined his brethren on the other side. The good and bad news is that there were a lot of brethren to join—at least four fish from our house alone.

It’s not that we don’t take good care of our goldfish. Our fish are exceptionally well-maintained; their bellies are kept full, their water is changed regularly and the landscape of their tank is designed to please, with shells and rocks and ceramic scuba divers. Our house is a marine life paradise…except for the occasional, but fatal, close encounters engineered by our daughter.

Seconda likes to sleep with the fishes. Literally.

Let me clarify up front that Seconda, who is five now, hasn’t slept with a fish in years. The fish-out-of-water missions were executed way back in the days of yore when she was three, and thus, a raving lunatic. Also in her defense, her acts, though fatal, were motivated by good. She thought her pets might like a cuddle.

See, Seconda loves animals. I don’t mean that in a generic sense, like she casually enjoys them or finds them amusing. I mean that she feels a profound affinity for them, even more than what she feels for human beings. Her love of animals does not discriminate on the basis of species either. One summer afternoon at the Mermaid Day Parade, I turned to find Seconda’s tiny shoulders draped with a gigantic, green-and-black snake. Not a stuffed toy but a real, live black mamba or anaconda or some such terrifying viper. My husband, David, was snapping a picture of Sec’s smiling face while the animal’s owner, who was holding a bucket full of snakes (not, I’m guessing, the approved way to transport your serpents in public), gave my daughter instructions. He was probably telling her something along the lines of, “That’s great, perfect . . . just don’t make any sudden movements or he’ll shoot you full of deadly venom faster than you can say ‘Coney Island Freak Show.’”

Another time, I took Seconda with me to pick Primo up from a friend’s house, and I found her sitting criss-cross-applesauce next to an empty cage as two pet rats—big, gray, beady-eyed—darted up and down her arms. I watched aghast as she leaned over and kissed one of them on his furry head.

“Can we get a rat, Mommy?” she asked, her blue eyes full of optimism,

“Pleeeeeeease?”

Since she was old enough to speak, the child has pined for a pet; she craves a furball sidekick, some loyal, adoring, non-verbal companion. Of course, I want to fulfill this dream of my daughter’s. But part of being a good parent is knowing your limits, and I know that having to feed and clean and hold another living creature—to say nothing of walking it and collecting its poop in little baggies—would put me over the edge of sanity.

Which is how we ended up with fish.

It wasn’t my idea to adopt Swimmy the goldfish; he was produced out of a magician’s hat at my son Primo’s fifth birthday party. But, I did agree to keep him, mostly because I had no choice. It ended up being a moot point, because within three days, Swimmy was, well, no longer swimming. His replacement, Bandana, was belly-up within a few days too. Beethoven, the beta fish, made it almost a week.
“What the hell are we doing wrong?” David, my husband, lamented after we’d conducted our third burial at sea via the toilet bowl.

“They are goldfish,” I replied. “They’re not known for their longevity.”

“Well, I can’t stand idly by as all these fish die,” David said. “It’s hard on me. It’s demoralizing.”

The next day, David went back to the pet shop and brought home a state-of-the-art aquarium filter and two new fish.

“I think the others might have been dying of loneliness,” he explained as he poured them from the plastic bags into pre-treated tank water.

He might have been right. Mr. Black, so named by Primo because of the cluster of dark scales near his fin, and Mr. Orange, so named by Seconda because he had no distinguishing characteristics whosoever, lived one whole week, then two, then a month. David waxed romantic about the value of companionship. I figured it was the filter. Three-year-old Seconda checked on her pets every morning before nursery school and every afternoon when she came home. She fed them, with David’s supervision, every night.

“Just a little pinch,” David reminded her, lifting her up to reach the uncovered tank which we kept on a high dresser in the kids’ bedroom, “Remember, if you feed the fish too much, they can die.”

Two months passed, then four, then six, and Misters Black and Orange thrived—which is to say, did not die.

Then, one afternoon when Seconda was about three-and-a-half, I noticed that I hadn’t seen or heard from her in awhile. Usually she was impossible to ignore, tearing through the apartment with a baseball bat or drawing on the furniture with Magic Marker. But on this particular afternoon, she’d been quiet. Too quiet.

I got up from my computer, and walked past Primo playing Legos in the kitchen, into the kids’ bedroom. Nearing the bunk beds, I slipped on a puddle of water.

“Seconda?” I ventured uneasily.

A blanket-covered lump on the bottom bunk shifted.

“Seconda,” I repeated, pulling the blanket to reveal my daughter, knees drawn to her chest, with no clothes on. “Where are your clothes?”

“They got wet,” she replied.

“How did they get wet?” I asked, getting shrill.

“Promise you won’t get mad?” came her reply.

Never words that bode well.

“He’s just such a cutiepie and I just wanted to cuddle him!” she said in a rush, “So I—I—I put him on my pillow.”

I strode over to the tank and there, floating belly up, deader than a doornail, was Mr. Black.

“Seconda!” I cried, trying to keep from shouting, “Why? Why did you take him out of the tank?”

“The thing is,” she took a deep breath, “Mr. Black is so shiny and cute and I really, really, really wanted to feel what his scales felt like and I just thought it would be so nice for him to snuggle with me in my bed so I climbed on top of the toy chest and then I climbed on top of the dresser and then I just scooped him up with my hand and guess what? Fish are really slimy. I didn’t know that. Did you know that? So then I put him on my pillow and we snuggled and it was so fun and he really liked it. You know how I know that? Because he did a little dance! Like this—”

She threw herself on the floor, made her body rigid, and flopped around in an impressive impersonation of a fish gasping for breath.

“And then I heard you coming so very fast I threw him back in the tank but then he stopped swimming. Maybe he doesn’t like the water anymore. Maybe he wants to stay on my pillow.”

“Seconda,” I said slowly, “Mr. Black is dead.”

She ran to the tank and cried: “No he’s not!”

“I know it’s upsetting, but yes,” I replied firmly, “he is.”

“No, Mommy, he’s not!”

“Would you just listen to Mommy?” I snapped. “The fish is dead. For good.”

“But Mommy!” Seconda cried, “He’s swimming!”
I looked up at the tank to find Mr. Black, indeed, swimming. Not very energetically and with sporadic upside down visits to the surface, but still, definitely alive.

“It’s a miracle,” I gasped.

I sat Seconda down right then and there and explained to her as clearly as I could that fish can not live outside of water. I told her that she must never, ever take the fish out again. I had her repeat back what I’d said to be sure she understood.

“I must never take the fish out of the water or they will die,” she intoned solemnly. It was very convincing. Hell, she probably really meant it at the time. But a few weeks later, I was putting laundry away in the kids’ dresser and noticed that Mr. Black was belly-up again.

“SECONDA!!!” I shouted.

“I DIDN’T MEAN TO!” she shouted back over her shoulder as she ran to hide under my bed.

“You killed the fish!” I shrieked, “AGAIN!”

I pulled her by her hand to the tank so she could face the consequences of her actions. And as we stood there, silently watching Mr. Black float on the surface of the water, something unexpected happened. The fish flicked his tail.

“He’s alive!” she shrieked jubilantly. “He came back to life again!”

That’s when we started calling him Survivor-Fish.

Despite his apparent possession of superpowers, David and I knew Mr. Black wouldn’t make it through another close encounter. So that night, David gave Seconda a stern talking-to, and afterwards he told me, “It’s OK, she gets it. She won’t do it again.”

Which made him very surprised when she did a week later. This time, it wasn’t Mr. Black but Mr. Orange who was floating at the surface. I stood there waiting for Mr. Orange to spin over, flick his tail, make his little fish belly expand, but there was nary a movement to be seen. I waited a good five minutes before pronouncing the time of death. This time, there’d be no resurrection. This time, dead was dead.

We had a ceremony for Mr. Orange in the bathroom. David wiped away tears as he flushed the toilet.

Seconda was silent as she watched the fish spiral down out of sight.

Then she said: “But how will he get back into his tank?”

It was at that moment that I realized the kid was only three years old. No amount of explanation would make her understand the sequence of events leading to Mr. Orange’s untimely demise. So, after the funeral, David and I moved the fish tank into the living room, where Mr. Black, who appeared forlorn and had taken to playing dead (we think as a survival strategy), could be monitored. Then we bought a nice, sturdy lid which snapped tightly over the top. And like magic, Mr. Black lived for another two years, until last March when he finally met his maker, through no fault of Seconda.

David maintains Survivor-Fish died because of complications resulting from his adventures on land, but I like to think it was of old age. I like to think Mr. Black has been reunited with his old, dear friend Mr. Orange in Fish Paradise and that right now they’re regaling the other fish—Swimmy, Bandana and Beethoven included—with wild, wonderful stories of life with Seconda

“And I was just like, ‘HEY, EINSTEIN! MOVE THE TANK!’ But you know humans, they’re just so dense,” Mr. Black is probably saying. “Ah, what are you gonna do? Kids will be kids, right?”

To read more of Nicole’s adventures in Mommyland, visit her blog, A Mom Amok, at amomamok.com.

Play Ball

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Sports

When it comes to sports, New York is a baseball city.  A paced game like baseball offers relief to a metropolitan area that can grind and aggress us at times.  We have thirty-five championships in baseball alone.  To put that in terms of bragging rights, that’s one more ring than Boston, the next championed city, has in the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB combined.  Some of the game’s best players made their names among the bright lights and concrete.  But funny enough, per capita, not many native New Yorkers make it to the big leagues compared to players from the rest of the country.

What’s the culprit?  Is it a lack of facilities, a shortage of youth programs, or an excess of hoop dreams?  “It’s just the time that you put in,” says Adam Ottavino, Major League pitcher for the Colorado Rockies and Park Slope native.  At the age of four, Adam moved to the neighborhood from Greenwich Village and describes the Slope of his childhood as a little more “quiet” than what it’s transformed in to.  “The F train is still there.  The park is still the same.  All the pizza joints I used to go to after games are all still there, like Smiling and Roma’s.  It’s definitely still Park Slope.”

So pizza survives gentrification, but what about this myth that New Yorkers don’t usually make it into the big leagues?  “There’s quite a few of us,” Adam defends.  “Pedro Beato, Dellin Betances on the Yankees, Chris Manno—” Adam rattles off a few more names before talking about the camaraderie inherent in a shared birthplace.  “I definitely see those guys around.  Sometimes we train together in Garden City, and Dellin and I have thrown around in the Park Slope Armory during the off-season a few times.”  He touches on how much the city has to offer by way of distractions, and how that might discourage some youths from taking their game to the next level.  Sacrificing the weekend for a bus ride to an away game instead of exploring or causing mischief is not every city kid’s idea of a good time, but it has clearly paid off for Adam.

Adam as a youngster playing in the local 78th Precinct Youth Council baseball program.

He was drafted thirtieth overall by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006 with great expectations after putting up some crushing numbers at Northeastern University.  His first start came in 2010 when he was called up from AAA Memphis Redbirds, but living out the lifelong dream was bittersweet.  “I was so excited to be called up, but it was difficult because I wasn’t 100% healthy, but I wanted to step up and pitch well anyway.”  Like a true gamer Adam battled through it, and after his 2012 trade to the Rockies he is set to play a bigger role out of the bullpen.  “I’m definitely looking forward to more innings.”

Between spring training, AAA, and the regular season, Adam has played pretty much everywhere, and when asked how the rest of the USA stacks up to Park Slope, he jokingly blurts “They’re terrible.” “Don’t get me wrong,” he continues, “there are a lot of nice parts, but I feel like Park Slope is one of the best neighborhoods in the country.  Traveling around definitely made me realize that.”  He mentions Pork Slope and Fonda as some eateries he frequents when he’s back on the block, but his fondest memories were made in Prospect Park.  “I’ve played on every field in the city, pretty much, but the park is special. I would play catch for hours with my Dad down there.”

The grind of the city certainly helped Adam make it to the major league mound.  People hustle nonstop just to live in this city, and with only few days off in the world of professional baseball, this lesson in patience is invaluable.  “I remember double, triple headers in the park after school.  We were out there because we loved the game.  I still love it, obviously, but it’s just different.”

Adam clearly has pride on his side.  He recalls the old Sinatra lyric about “making it here” and his matter-of-fact tone makes his level of determination and hustle sound natural for a kid with a dream, but clearly that’s not the case.  When I press him to name a mentor that he could credit with his success, he mentions his Dad and a few coaches, but makes it clear that it comes from within.  “Coaches can be good or bad, and the facilities in other parts of the country are insane compared to here, but mainly it’s just the time that people put in with me and other kids back then.  That’s what was most important to me.  The time adults spent with us as kids.”  You can’t play catch with yourself and you can’t make it to the Rockies without starting up a slope.

What Do I Do With My Head?

By Leave a Comment Filed Under: Yoga

Yoga is a complex practice.  That is its beauty and its benefit.  For a creature as elaborate as a human being, yoga offers a movement vocabulary to challenge and ease our bodies and a philosophy to corral our wild minds.  Yet for a discipline meant to knit mind and body—yoga means union—there is one zone where yoga instruction seems to be struggling:  How to guide students to use the head and neck.  That is, after all, where the brain meets the body.

Looking around in any yoga class, I see this question hanging in the air:  What do I do with my head?  Lift it?  Drop it?  Hold it in the right position, whatever that is?  Let it lead or let it trail?

At the 2012 Yoga Journal Conference in New York City, I witnessed this conundrum in class, as master teachers noticed their students’ necks straining and offered options.  An Ashtanga Vinyasa teacher suggested, as we rose from low lunge to high, that we let the head come up last, trailing the body.  An Iyengar yoga teacher suggested, in triangle pose, “Let your head move back and look up.”  Responding to the tendency to strain your neck as you return to stand from extended side angle, a powerful muscle maven told us to put a hand under the head to cradle it as the body rises.  Every other fiber and sinew may be working overtime, but the poor little neck (with eighteen muscles of its own) needs a hand to get the head where it’s going.
These teachers, and so many others, try valiantly to help their students move well.  And in the weekly yoga classes I take in Brooklyn, I hear more creative cues:  “Bring your throat back.” “Keep your eyes on the horizon as you twist.” “Imagine a luminous palate.”  Or, simply, “Lengthen the back of your neck.”  Each of these can be helpful, but there’s a missing ingredient that is central to the Alexander Technique:  the concept of the primary control.

The relationship between the head and the neck is primary in human movement.  Actually, it is primary in all animal movement.  Like a prairie dog poking out of its hole, each of us needs a free neck and lightly poised head to see, hear, respond, and survive.  Where’s the food?  What’s that sound?  Is the hawk up there after me?  When we’re scared, we clench and withdraw like a turtle into its shell.  Poke a paramecium and it will contract.  Our body’s instinctive response to real danger, honed over eons, is adaptive.  But we don’t need a charging lion or swooping predator to elicit our body’s stress response.  Non-lethal stimuli can get us just as nervous—a crowded subway, even an admonition, or performance anxiety as we strive to do a yoga pose.  These can develop into unconscious habits; without realizing it, our contracted response becomes a habit, a clench that won’t quit.

Frederick Mathias Alexander came to understand how the habit of tensing the neck interferes with the body’s ideal functioning.  As a young Shakespearean orator at the turn of the twentieth century, he lost his voice.  When a physician couldn’t help him restore it, Alexander studied his own movement in a full-length three-way mirror and saw that whenever he began to recite the Bard’s immortal words, he pulled his head what he called “back and down.”  It’s hard to imagine the stentorian style of the time, but in fact, many contemporary actors throw their heads back for dramatic effect in just this way.

As he paid close attention to his customary way of vocalizing, Alexander saw that this habit had a litany of undesirable results.  The downward pressure of his head compressed his spine, constricted his breathing, and constrained his voice.  Even his feet contracted.  Over years of self-observation and experiment, he taught himself to catch this habit, let that excess neck tension go, and allow his body to work as a whole.  When he did, he found that his spine naturally lengthened, his breathing deepened, and his voice opened to its full dynamic range.  It wasn’t exactly relaxation; he wasn’t dropping his head.  He trained himself to use his head dynamically—noticing his tendency, releasing that habitual overwork, and envisioning a rotational direction, a slight internal forward movement of the head.  This natural motion guides movement throughout the rest of the body.  It’s a kind of spooling action that enlivens and lengthens the spine.

As a cellist tunes her instrument from the top down, she turns the pegs to achieve the appropriate degree of tautness and listens for the correct pitch as it vibrates through the body of the instrument.  She aims to have each string harmonize with the others.  Our tuning process is similar, though far more complex and internal.  When we release the muscles at the base of the skull, the head tips slightly forward and elicits a lengthening in the spine, a postural reflex.  This slight movement has a profound influence on our movement, breath, degree of tension and overall resiliency.  Rather than compression, we get expansion and freedom, minimizing strain and encouraging the body’s channels to open—breath, voice, limbs, thought.

Here’s the beauty of marshalling the primary control:  the quality of the relationship between your head and your neck determines the quality and sensation of everything you do.  Your life of movement, even if it’s sitting at a desk, can be influenced for the better by engaging the natural traction that results from that freedom.  Alexander understood and clarified the distinction between freedom and laxity.  Laxity is letting your head trail—a fine thing to do, and a skill among others.  But when you need something stronger, a kind of power steering, the head can be both free and masterful, leading your spine into length as you move.

As we approach the rich variety of poses in yoga, rather than adjusting separate parts—Where should my pelvis be?  Are my shoulders in the right place?—freeing the neck allows us to organize the whole.  When we learn how to manage that slight rotation at the top of the spine as we move from one pose to another, the torso becomes springy and responsive.  It’s a bit different from the musician’s motion as she adjusts the pegs.  When we tune our own instrument, the body, we can employ the power of thought.  Alexander discovered that visualizing the body’s internal oppositional flows could be a more effective way to function than direct muscular action.  When we envision rather than exert, our legs flow down into the earth and the torso expands toward the sky with more subtlety and ease.  We can determine the appropriate tone by visualizing and letting the body take care of the details.  Simple thoughts can have complex results: shoulders, ribs and pelvis align naturally and freely shift in transitions. Then, like the cellist, we listen.

With all my affection for the many disciplines now sparkling in the bodywork firmament, when it comes to the crucial balance of the head on the spine, I believe that the Alexander Technique offers the most reliable guide.  We can learn to free, not drop, the neck in activity.  Using the primary control, we can direct energy through the natural upward thrust of the torso to support the neck, to let the head lead and fulfill each bodily gesture.

As I watch my students encounter yoga’s many challenges, I see how their primary control influences their practice.  It’s a bit like their own window to integrated movement.  For those at any level, whether in forward bend, one of the warriors, a twist or a cobra, the head’s dynamic balance—or lack of it—can compress or release the spine.  When I lightly guide a student to open that window right under the skull, there’s a fresh breath of air, limbs flow away from the body’s center and the pose finds its full flower.

 

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