Got an email from Mark Dicus of the Church Avenue Business Improvement District, who writes:

...Yes the current MTA financial crisis isn’t helping matters. However, I did have a meeting with the MTA with Assembly Member Rhoda Jacobs last week and my understanding is that something is being worked on. I couldn’t get any details, but we’ll keep pressing.

We'll see.

Well, let's just say it's two steps forward and one step back. Bella woke us up last night, at 2 am, and Yasmin was unable to go back to sleep. (I was having a dream about performing with Ornette Coleman, strangely more concerned about the seats in the auditorium than the music. Interpretations?) I delivered Bella to camp this morning and she was a little clingy; she didn't cry, but was feeling out of sorts. Luckily, Zeb, the teenager that works there as a counselor, picked her up and held her as I was leaving. I love that kid.

So, speaking of change we can believe in, here's some change that we can debate about. I mentioned earlier that the area around Maple Street is gentrifying. Over the past five years, many young professionals have moved into the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, and bought and renovated houses. (Not us, we're down the road a spell.) Lincoln Road, with a new cafe, Mexican Restaurant, and Maple Street School is in some sense a meeting ground for the newcomers and longtime residents of the area; the dynamics of that convergence are being played out on that one-block strip. Article idea. Bgoing!!

Anyway, big-time development is following. Next to Maple Street is a vacant lot on which is being developed a 23-story condo building. As I understand it, this is not a done deal, and several neighborhood groups are fighting it, including Community Board 9. What effect this will have on the functioning of the school (noise, dust) is unclear. I found this video-debate by two Brooklyn bloggers below. Check it out:



I want to keep things real as much as the next white liberal. But one thing that bugs me is that in these debates over gentrification, journalists too often fail to ask the older residents of the community what they think (or even to consider that many of them might stand to benefit from development). It's always a preservationist, or a professional neighborhood rabble-rouser versus a capitalist. There are (many) other sides, too. What about the working-class property owners in the area, of which there are MANY. This is a Caribbean neighborhood, after all, in which the goal is to "Buy house!" What do some of them think?

Maple Street is located right next to the Prospect Park subway stop, which is a destination of the now famous S train, the little train that can. Click on the link to see why.

So, as I mentioned earlier, Bella has been doing great at camp. She's been roundly praised by her teachers as being social, outgoing, and attentive. Didn't cry once. She's been sleeping well too, with the aid of a couple Teletubby dolls, which is especially impressive to me as she's in new digs with strangers. I'm also convinced camp has boosted her development: she's acting more like a kid and less like a baby. She's drinking fewer bottles (babas), eating a bag lunch by herself - you should see her mix the wasabi, ginger, and soy with chopsticks (kidding) -, going to sleep earlier. Last night she slept through, which she hasn't done in 3 or 4 months. Usually she wakes up crying at about 3 a.m. and asks for a bottle, which I prepare and bring to her. Other times she'll wake up, get out of bed, amble down the hallway, and throw open our door like a gunslinger with a blanky entering a saloon, and hop into bed with us. A few times I've woken up in the dead of night to see her face an inch from mine as she stood next to our bed. Freaky.

But I digress. Camp is great because the kids are actively exploring Prospect Park. Bella's 2s group is called "The Wanderers" which makes me chuckle because that's the name of a seminal 1979 movie about an Italian gang in the Bronx in the early 1960s . Her first street gang. They go swimming. They go to the Botanical Garden. They go to the Zoo. Today they went to the Audubon Center and learned about the bugs and worms that live in the soil.

I got a chance today to speak with Jennifer Smith, the director of the camp, and the author of its curriculum.

"I have always worked in early childhood education," said Smith, who taught previously in housing projects in Washington D.C., and at theEthical Culture Fieldston School, in Riverdale. "A few years ago I took a break to help a friend open a wine store, but I needed to be creative and I couldn't be creative doing the books. I was bored out of my mind. The curriculum during the summer is really different from the usual school year. In the summer we have kids from all over for a short amount of time. In the school year the curriculum is more child-led," she said, referring to Maple Street's philosophy of tailoring subject matter to its childrens' interests. "The summer camp is for a limited time so its fun to go with a theme. Kids over the last few years have been into pirates and spies, so we set those themes for this summer. We stress recycling so we do art projects with recycled materials, we do an 'Earth Week.'" Smith stressed some key words: "Outside, fun, water, walking. As much nature as possible. I grew up in the country so I try to pretend we're there."

I'm enrolling.

Money Runs Underground

Interesting to consider how the state of subway stations, like school districts, tend to correspond to the affluence of those that live above them. Take the B/Q lines for example. In Brooklyn the Atlantic Center stop (admittedly a hub - Nostrand too - so maybe they should be left out of the discussion) and 7th Avenue stops are well kept, paint clings unfrayed to the walls, plaster stands stolidly intact. By the time you get to to my neighborhood, though, things change. The Parkside Avenue and Church Avenue stops look like bombed-out Balkan train stations from WWII. Filthy, wall-skin peeling away, they beg for renovation. And then mysteriously, as you proceed to Cortelyou and Newkirk, conditions improve.
Seeing how the MTA's doing, renovations don't seem likely any time soon. (At my end of Church Avenue, the attendant is frequently missing, and I have to wait for exiting riders to open the security door for me to enter with Bella in her stroller; a few times I've had to lift her in the stroller, over the turn-styles.)
Marc Dicus, Director of the Church Avenue Business Improvement District, and a key player in local Brooklyn politics, spearheaded a a push to get the MTA to renovate the Church Station last August, when he and several officials did a walk-through of the station. As of last Novemeber he had received no news from the MTA. I emailed State Senator Eric Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat, last year and received this reply on August 25, 2007:

I too believe the Church Avenue station is in need of repairs. I met with several community groups to see how we can compel the MTA to include the station in their capital improvement agenda. The last word I received, we may have been successful in accomplishing this task. I will keep you updated as we move along.

I have calls in to Eric and Mark's offices for an update. Stay tuned.

A palate-cleanser

While I try and get it together (we have been battling a killer tummy virus at Chez Waltzer), a palate-cleanser. This is not my daughter.

New Surroundings

New Surroundings
Originally uploaded by benwaltzer