Park Slope Reader

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The Endless Summer: Camps!

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

With summer quickly approaching, bringing waves of sunny days and no school, many parents and families look to summer camps to help their kids stay active and make new friends. Luckily for park slope residents, and New Yorkers in general, camp options are countless and provide an array of opportunities for children to cultivate new skills, practice old ones, and foster their curiosity while building meaningful relationships.

Camp is a productive way to engage a child in their interests while also allowing them to unplug from phones and television in favor of connecting in positive social situations. Summer camp can be an incredibly meaningful period of time for some. 

Best friends Marissa Roer and Kate Elliot, two Brooklyn residents, frequented camp throughout their childhoods and have maintained a friendship of ten years since first meeting at an arts conservatory camp. “I would endure the year and think about camp,” Marissa mused as Kate laughed. “Summer camp was when I learned about female dynamics. It was a good thing for me to experience while growing up,” Kate added. “I eventually ended up going to high school with two of the girls I bunked with.” Though their days of camp are long over, Marissa and Kate make a point of seeing each other once a week over Saturday yoga and brunch and frequently catch up with other camp peers, one whose wedding they will be attending in the fall of this year.    

In the spirit of Marissa and Kate’s friendship, cultivated from years of camp, here is a definitive list of potential summer camps that will make any kid hope this summer really is endless. 

 

For the big thinkers out there, there are plenty of camp options to satisfy even the most curious of minds. Located in Windsor Terrace, The Tiny Scientist summer program offers weekly sessions dedicated to in-depth explorations in topics ranging from chemistry experiments to sports science to the study of dinosaurs. Engineering For Kids is another great option that introduces 4-14 year olds to STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) in a hands-on way. Their website offers an easy-to-use class filter so you can sort through their breadth of programs, like scratch programming, electronic game design, 3D printing, and LEGO-based robotics. For ‘girls who wanna have fun’, Curious Jane is a no-brainer and provides girls entering 3rd-6th grades to explore and create among other inquisitive girls. Curious Jane also publishes a quarterly magazine so girls can DIY projects at home—perfect for the girls who couldn’t get enough of the summer program. 

 

For the adventurers itching to get out and let out some energy, SKATEYOGI helps the aspiring shredder learn to skate safely. Programs allow children ages 6-12 to experience skateboarding outdoors in Prospect Park as well as in an air-conditioned, indoor space. Parents are included in the fun and receive daily pictures of skateboarding adventures around the city. Brooklyn Boulders offers summer sessions that teach kids boldness, creativity, strength, and fine motor skills through climbing. The team and instructors behind Brooklyn Boulders are “strong believers that attitude is everything, and believe in the value of failing gracefully”. A Park Slope favorite, Kim’s Kids Club allows children to take everyday adventures in their very own city. Flexible scheduling allows families on a budget or with summer plans to choose a camp experience that works for them. Activities include playground hopping around the city, visiting the Bronx Zoo, and swimming at Riis Beach (accompanied by Kim’s Kids very own lifeguards). 

 

For The Budding Prodigies waiting to unleash their creativity, Gowanus Music Club gives kids the chance to hone their musical abilities by learning to play instruments. Supported by staff who themselves are musicians and the friends they make in their bands, rockers are given the opportunity to play live shows and showcase their talents to family and friends. For more stage opportunities, Brooklyn Acting Lab provides multiple sessions and a “play in a day” program. Each summer BAL also mounts one big musical to be performed at the end of the summer. This summer rising 3rd-8th graders will spend four weeks rehearsing Shrek The Musical Jr. with the session starting July 9 and running through August 3. Automatic Studios offers two different levels of classes for both the amateur filmmaker and the more serious auteur. The weeklong session packs the experience of making a movie into five days of fun and ends with a wrap party to celebrate their accomplishments. The two-week master class boasts a similar model, but offering a bit more time for budding directors to hone their craft through preproduction, shooting, and animation. BKLYN Clay offers affordable classes teaching the basics of hand building and wheel throwing techniques, while students get creative with the clay. At Brooklyn Sewcial kids are given one week to finish a unique project in a small classroom environment that motivates creativity and imagination. Spoke the Hub provides a Camp Gowanee Multi-Arts Summer Program for children ages 7-12 featuring an impressive lineup of master teachers. This summer artists such as Sachiyo Ito, a Japanese dance master and elder, and Iliana Quander, a well-known Brooklyn fashion designer will be joining the ranks of Spoke the Hub. 

 

For The Tiny Chefs who want to take control of what’s on their plate, Food Art For Kids introduces the importance of fresh produce and how to integrate that into a meal. Sessions include weekly visits to Brooklyn Heights’ Green Market where fresh produce is picked out for the cooking projects of the week. Kids engage in cooking healthy meals and on Fridays treat themselves to a homemade pizza party. A farm-to-table summer camp, Butter Beans Kitchen offers wholesome culinary expeditions for children ages 6-10. At Butter Beans Kitchen, kids are given unique opportunities to engage with the environment in the city around them, like farming in urban gardens, beekeeping on rooftops, and catching fish in Central Park. Children make their lunches every day, and learn to cultivate a close relationship between the food they pick and what they will ultimately end up feeding themselves. 

 

The traditional summer camp is usually sleep-away, which, although daunting at first, can be a child’s first steps towards independence and nurturing self-confidence in a safe environment. For those ready to take the plunge and find a home away from home, Windsor Mountain welcomes children into a co-ed, non-competitive sleep-away summer camp in Windsor, New Hampshire. Windsor Mountain’s hallmark is ‘directed free-choice’, which means campers have a say in all the activities they participate in and have staff and counselors at their disposal to help figure out how best to enjoy their summer at the mountain. With amenities like a farm, garden, forest, tree house, and ropes course, boredom is never an option. For those who want to get away but aren’t quite ready to tackle nights away from home, Deer Mountain Day Camp in Rockland County, NY offers day sessions for kids of all age groups with the traditional camp structure. Located on a mountainside next to a spring-fed lake, this 25-acre camp encourages outdoor play and exploration. Stony Creek Farmstead in Walton, NY offers children the opportunity to live on an organic farmstead and interact with animals and the environment in a sustainable, respectful way. The camp is offered in weekly sessions and provides distinctive activities like milking cows, foraging for wild food, and working on art projects. 

 

As a 23-year-old with no children of my own and no real camp experience, I was pretty astounded by the sheer number of camps nestled away in Brooklyn. As a kid my parents would, by default, send me to summer school so I wouldn’t sit alone coloring in the living room for weeks on end. Although summer school held nothing of the richness of camps I’ve come to learn about, it did offer flexibility in electives, so I was lucky enough to be able to choose an area of art I was interested in and also attend a school that had some funding for this. In the first grade I chose to take the drama elective during summer school and although it was the most casual of experiences and I had the smallest of roles, I ended up harboring a secret flame for drama that never quite extinguished. I knew from that point on that I enjoyed theater, but was never given another opportunity to pursue it as I was stacked with my pre-existing extracurricular activities. Many years passed before I performed again. 

In middle school it was customary for the 8th graders to put on a play before graduation and that year we put on Fiddler on the Roof Jr. I ultimately got one of the lead roles, and with the ecstasy of real stage time under my belt. I entered high school with a mission. At 3:01 on my first day of 9th grade I rushed to the performing arts center to sign up for auditions for the Theater Conservatory. The small flame that I had kept quietly within myself ended up defining my high school career and, eventually, my college career as well. Then, with a tad more acting knowledge than I had possessed in the first grade, I moved to New York City from my hometown of Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. 

Looking back on the journey that I’ve taken with the greatest passion I have in my life, I wish I had had more time to nurture the love for acting that I had within me. 

Camps and summer programs teach leadership, interpersonal skills, courage, and creativity. More than anything, they allow kids to try new things alongside others who may have similar interests and ideas as them. It’s extremely important to encourage interests and hobbies at a young age. These experiences coalesce and inform a person deeply. And who knows? They may just stumble across a spark that fuels them for the rest of their lives!  k

 

 

 

Spring Reading

By Filed Under: Books Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Spring has sprung, which means it’s time to head to the park for an afternoon—or several of them—of outdoor reading. Below, our recommendations for the best new books to read under a Prospect Park tree:

 

1. The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Urrea (The Devil’s Highway) comes a multigenerational saga of loss, love and the borderlands between cultures. The family of Miguel de La Cruz, or “Big Angel,” has gathered to celebrate the dying patriarch’s final birthday, when, unexpectedly, Big Angel’s elderly mother passes away. As the weekend unfolds and the Mexican-American clan recounts its family legends, Big Angel’s half-brother, “Little Angel,” wrestles with his half-Mexican, half-gringo identity. Urrea, whose brother was dying of cancer when his own mother passed, has said the sprawling narrative is based on true experiences.

 

2. The Chandelier

by Clarice Lispector

This sophomore novel of literary giantess Lispector is available in English now for the first time. Initially published in Portuguese in 1946, The Chandelier is a stream-of-consciousness account of the life, loves and densely worded thoughts of our protagonist, Virginia. We follow Virginia through her childhood with her brother and best friend, Daniel; across the years with a group of aesthetes; and as her heart breaks when Daniel becomes engaged. Lispector would go on to write such classics as The Passion According to G.H., and to be remembered by American author Benjamin Moser as the most important Jewish writer in the world since Kafka.

 

3. The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

When ambitious Greer Kadetsky lands her dream job at the foundation of her feminist icon, Faith Frank, her future could not seem brighter. But as time passes and Kadetsky is forced to contend with twists and tragedies, her understanding of Frank the woman, as well as what it means to be a woman at all, changes. Wolitzer’s first book for adults since her 2013 hit The Interestings tackles the female zeitgeist with, according to TIME, “a gimlet eye.” 

 

4. Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

A coming-of-age novel set in Britain just after WWII, Warlight tells the story of Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, who, as children, were left by their mother to the care of a mysterious man named “the Moth.” They soon learn their mother lied to them when she gave her reason for leaving. Years later, Nathaniel pieces together all that he failed to understand as a child, taking us along for the unconventionally written ride through recollections, facts and speculation. Ondaatgje previously won the Booker Prize for the romance, The English Patient. 

 

5. Islandborn

by Junot Diaz

The acclaimed author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes his first foray into children’s literature with the picture book, Islandborn. Everyone in Lola’s class is from somewhere else. When their teacher asks that they draw “the country you were originally from,” Lola becomes anxious. She knows she’s from “The Island,” but she doesn’t remember the place. Soon she’s embarking on a quest to understand her heritage, interviewing family, friends and neighbors, who describe a beautiful, vibrant land, which was yet rife with fear and turmoil. Questions of belonging and collective memory give this slim book, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, novelistic heft.

 

6. Tomorrow Will Be Different

by Sarah McBride

McBride may be only 27, but the eventful life she has led to date more than justifies this publication of her memoirs. For those who can’t place the name, McBride is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign as well as the first transgender person to speak at a national convention. Tomorrow Will Be Different chronicles her struggle to come out while acting as American University student-body president, her political fights for equal rights, and her relationship with the transgender man who would become her husband before tragically dying of cancer. Alternately political and personal, Tomorrow Will Be Different is a stirring account of one remarkable woman’s life and loves.

 

7. The Recovering

by Leslie Jamison

The author of The Empathy Exams returns with this nonfiction examination of her journey toward sobriety. Interwoven among autobiographical accounts are reflections on famous alcoholic writers, including John Berryman and Raymond Carver, as well as works of reportage and literary criticism. The book’s erudition and, yes, empathy, have earned the writer, who has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, high praise.

 

8. Not That Bad

Edited by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist’s Roxane Gay edits this anthology of essays—some previously published, others issued here for the first time—on rape and sexual assault. Writer-contributors include actors Gabrielle Union and Ally Sheedy and authors like Amy Jo Burns and Bob Shacochis. Not That Bad is an unflinching examination of a world in which women who speak out are, in the words of Gay, “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied.”

 

9. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

by Zora Neale Hurston

A remarkable literary achievement, Barracoon is Zora Neale Hurston’s nonfiction account of American slavery, based on her interviews with one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. The author of Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of elderly Cudjo Lewis, whom she met in 1927, and who was abducted from Africa before being taken to the United States 50 years after the U.S. officially abolished the slave trade. From his childhood in Africa, to the horrors of abduction and The Middle Passage, to life in America and the founding of an African-centric community in Alabama, Cudjo’s story is told in Hurston’s inimitably compassionate style.

 

10.  The Opposite of Hate

by Sally Kohn

With this book, CNN commentator—and Park Slope resident!—Sally Kohn has set herself a difficult task: “to discover why we hate and how [we] can stop it.” She speaks with researchers and scientists in an effort to learn about the cultural and evolutionary roots of hate, travels around the world, from Rwanda to the Middle East and around the United States, profiling people commonly associated with notions of hatred: white supremacists, terrorists and Twitter trolls, to name a few. And she probes several shameful moments from her own past, when she failed to do what, with this book, she hopes to help others do: wander out from “this wilderness of hate.”

YOGA: The Four Noble Truths

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga), Yoga Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What is it about the cold months in Park Slope that make Brooklyn stand out like a Charles Dickens village? With all the chaos and commotion of our city, our world and our speck in the universe, it is Brooklyn that remains unchanged. Even with new renovations, new neighbors, new schools, hospitals and restaurants, the true heart of winter lives and thrives on the streets of Brooklyn. Some of this has to do with the deep roots of our borough, the history of Park Slope and it’s surrounding neighborhoods. But, some of it also has to do with Yoga. 

Yoga has become a phenomenon in western culture. Brooklyn is no exception. This is nothing new. As human beings our attachment to the affects of yoga are great. Also, let’s face it; aside from the benefits we enjoy the community. It is in a yoga class where people find they can be alone. It is also in a yoga class that most people find they are not at all alone. So how great is our suffering during this season? How much time have we spent on our own hearts between the cool rush of holiday shopping and New Year’s promises? Winter in Brooklyn gives us the opportunity to deepen our practice in an open and more vulnerable way.

[pullquote]The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. [/pullquote]The true heart of winter resides somewhere between Windsor Terrace and Prospect Heights. I mean to say that if one walks through all of the neighborhoods that relate to these two places, there will be an abundance of coffee shops, a plethora of bars and a vast array of yoga studios. In the coffee shop laptops and frothy cappuccinos prepare us for our daily grinds by serving the daily grind. The bar allows us to unwind from the stressful perimeters of our work, family and home life. But it is inside the yoga studio where we may enter, remove our shoes and respect where we are in the moment. We do not try to escape the cold. Instead, we seek refuge and our own bodies feed us the warmth of our tired souls.

There are four noble truths that can be incorporated into these long months of winter; four noble truths seem to follow us on our paths to the heart. These truths ignite the cold months with a fiery reality. What we might find at the coffee shop, the bar or the yoga studio throughout the year is dukkha. Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism and it roughly translates to “life is suffering”. I know, it sounds depressing right? Although this sounds awful it actually should have the opposite affect. It is a teaching that enriches the idea of impermanence. Our happiest moments can be considered dukkha because they too will end, and so we can say that our saddest moments are also dukkha. They will not last. Dukkha is significant in winter because the cold season too will end. Flowers will bloom again and so we can carry the first noble truth in our mind’s eye as a compass and as a means of letting go.

The second noble truth is tanha. Some translate this word as “craving”. This has to do with our human attachment to the things we desire, or just desire in general. Our need to attach ourselves to material objects, ideas and people create chaos within our hearts and minds. This truth has been realized on yoga mats all over the world. In Brooklyn throughout the cold months and the buying frenzies tahna sticks its tongue out at us and dares us to enjoy our lives as they are. Tahna asks us not to try and change anything but to see everything with a third eye as if we are hovering over ourselves without judgment but with a greater awakening of the spirit. It asks us not to hold on.

Nirhodha is the third noble truth and it is also an instruction on the end of suffering. It sounds so simple: just let go, stop craving things, stop attaching to things. But, I really want my cappuccino! This truth arrives at a slow pace. Through our yoga practice and meditation it comes. The need to grasp dissipates. We may awaken. We may stay asleep. But we practice. This is our path, which then leads us into the final and fourth noble truth.

The fourth truth, magga is our path. It is often referred to as the eightfold path because it is comprised of different areas and aspects of our lives and instructs us on how to walk our own path. In a nutshell it is a mindful way of living. The first three noble truths cannot exist or be realized without this one. The magga is like a sacred duty we have to ourselves and to the world around us.

The heart of winter in Brooklyn can be brutal. Or maybe I’ve just attached myself to that idea. But where there is a lull in the season, there is an opportunity to awaken on the yoga mat. The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. When we walk past the coffee shop, skip the bar and take off our socks at the yoga studio in order to look at our own feet, the ugliness, the beauty, the impermanence and the silent possibility of our own wonder.

 

Art by Heather Heckel

Park Slope Reading: Our Winter Reading List

By Filed Under: Books, Local Literature Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The weather outside is frightful–and we couldn’t be happier for the excuse to stay inside and read. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Books with which to hibernate this winter. 

 

Eat the Apple

by Matt Young 

This formally inventive memoir by ex-Marine Young comes specially recommended by Community Bookstore’s Ezra Goldstein. Young had only recently graduated from high school when he joined the Marines back in 2005, a decision that would, as Publishers Weekly describes it, change him into a “dangerous and damaged man.” Sections written in the third person, in the second person, as screenplay, and as imagined dialogues, as well as with a host of other techniques, give this account from an ex-grunt-turned-creative-writing-professor a singular power.

 

What Are We Doing Here?

By Marilynne Robinson

A favorite of Community Bookstore’s Stephanie Valdez, Marilynne Robinson returns this winter with a collection of essays on the little things in life, such as culture, history, and human decency. Among other topics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author writes eloquently on our political climate and the “human capacity for grandeur.” For those who like their ideas as deep as they are expansive.

 

Feel Free: Essays

by Zadie Smith

‘Tis the season for lady authors with formidable intelligences. This second collection of essays from celeb (one who is celebrated as well as a celebrity) author Smith includes her thoughts on cultural touchstones from Facebook to global warming. It is divided into five sections—In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free—and is certain not to disappoint her numerous fans.

 

Sunburn

by Laura Lipmann

This highly anticipated novel is no. 23 from the bestselling Lippman. A former reporter and author of the popular series about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan, Lippman has written Sunburn as a noir in the vein of James M. Cain (of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity fame). A young mother up and leaves her husband and daughter while on a beach vacation. Who she is and just how many skeletons she is hiding in that closet of hers filled with items to complement her sexy red hair are just two of the questions that drive the twisty plot.

 

Madness is Better Than Defeat

by Ned Beauman

A Hollywood crew intending to shoot a film on the location and members of a New York corporation who want to ship it back to the U.S. simultaneously descend upon a Mayan ruin in 1930’s Honduras. Twenty years later, they’re all still there. This raucously comic novel from the Man Booker-nominated Beauman (for 2012’s The Teleportation Accident) is filled with the author’s trademark wit and features a host of colorful characters, incident, and a wrestling match with an octopus.

 

The Man of Mokha

by Dave Eggers

This is the sort of true tale for which the phrase “stranger than fiction” was invented. Eggers’ nonfiction story centers on Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an American raised by Yemeni immigrants in San Francisco. At 24 and unable to afford college, Alkhanshali was working as a doorman when he learned that coffee originated in his native Yemen. He traveled to the country determined to revitalize its coffee industry—and was still there when civil war broke out, leaving him unable to return home. A real-life hero’s journey.

 

The Children of Blood and Bone

by Tomi Adeyemi

This 600-page fantasy novel earned Adeyemi a hefty payday that included seven figures and a movie deal. Not too bad for a 23-year-old debut author. In this first installment of a planned trilogy we meet 17-year-old Zélie. She embarks upon a quest to retrieve the magic that has been banished from her homeland by an evil king. The Nigerian-American Adeyemi draws heavily upon the West African mythology she studied in Brazil after graduating from Harvard, and speaks to timely issues of race, power and oppression.

 

Jagannath

by Karin Tidbeck

WIRED calls this first collection of English-language short stories from the Swedish Tidbeck “weird in all the right ways.” Her influences range from Jorge Luis Borges and Ursula Le Guin to H.P. Lovecraft. Strange creatures lurking in the Swedish countryside, strange reproductive facilities operating inside the belly of an aircraft, strange happenings between sisters and the fairylike beings they encounter…For those who like their literature to transport them far off the beaten path.

 

Extraordinary People

by Michael Hearst

This latest from Park Slope local Hearst includes mini profiles of 50 fascinating and fairly off-kilter individuals. Curious about the man who agreed to jump Niagara Falls for a whopping $75? How about the woman who walked to the North Pole solo, or the guy who MacGyvered his own personal version of Up using helium balloons and a lawn chair? For the full effect, purchase the book-and-CD (called Songs for Extraordinary People) combo.

 

Unraveling Rose

by Brian Wray

In this children’s book by Wray of Windsor Terrace, a stuffed bunny named Rose loses interest in all the things she once loved when a tiny loose thread dangling from her arm becomes all that she can think about. The author hopes his book can help parents and teachers discuss with children the effects of obsessive thoughts, as well as be a helpful tool for kids who suffer from anxiety disorders. A charming and timely offering.