brooklyn (and this blog!) needs her libraries

cheeky, perhaps, but we call the Cortelyou Library “the Prison for Books” because of the way the brick building squats on its corner lot, formidable with slits for windows, a sealed off book drop and the stabbing metal beams of public art in a bundle before the door.  Inside, the middle-aged women at the desks look harried by the kids from the half dozen nearby schools and dulled by the bad lights.  The long tables and hard chairs do not encourage a leisurely stay; the immediately available selection of adult reading is so-so.

despite its uninviting façade, the Cortelyou Library is a workhorse in our community and the unsung hero of this little blog.  You can order books from not only the Brooklyn system but also libraries across the country through Interlibrary Loan.  The books arrive like magic for pick-up and reading in the blissful comfort of your own quarters or that crusty, comfy corner café, Vox Pop, or further afield in the sunlight of Prospect Park’s Long Meadow.  That’s infinite volumes at your beck and call.  For free.

for the Radical Muffin, that has meant half a dozen books on container gardening, all of Marcella Hazan’s books published after More Classic Italian Cooking, a fresh batch of baking manifestos, and Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food. Those are the titles in hand for May alone.  Believe me when I say you wouldn’t get half of the delectable information in this blog without the library.  And the Brooklyn Public Library is in jeopardy.

Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) faces a $20.6 million cut in city funding.  As a result of this cut: 16 branch libraries would close, weekend hours would be severely limited, essential materials and important services would be drastically cut, and hundreds of staff members would be laid off.  Library staff and supporters have been hustling this month especially to raise private donations and publically challenge the cuts.  You can help.

right now, visit the Brooklyn Public Library website to send a message to City Council and make a donation: http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/

then the second weekend in June, come participate in the 24-hour We Will Not Be Shushed Read-In: “Together we can save our libraries and keep our library staff behind the desk where they belong.”

readers and library workers from all three tri-library systems, with the full endorsement of Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library administration, are gathering on the steps of the BPL Central Library at Grand Army Plaza to rally and read for 24-hours from Saturday, June 12 at 5pm until Sunday at 5pm, with Sunday morning devoted to children’s stories.  The organizers are looking for readers over the 24-hour period, and need supporters to come out and help out at the event.

i’ll be there with snacks, based on recipes from cookbooks greedily gathered through the library system.   Maybe we could raise enough money for all the branches to be as inviting as the main hub.

The Eastern Corridor Bus Service and the Great American Media Perversion

I thought I had been to the pinnacle of bus-trapped insanity last summer, when I sat pinioned between adolescent girls popping jewel like jelly candies and chattering on cell phones about big city shopping shopping shopping, half drowning out the Chinese dubbed Tom & Jerry cartoons with Japanese subtitles but not the little butterball boy pin-balling up and down the aisle, burning off the giant soda and fries mama fed him at the rest stop.  Oh yes, and oh—only to be topped by my most recent trip, coming home to Brooklyn breezes after an ill-timed vacation into the sweltering swamp that is our nation’s capitol in August.

I bought a ticket with a new company for some hope of not watching a movie, because the passengers vote whether or not to have one.  I enjoy bus trips, even long ones, especially long ones, except for two things: the bad manners of fellow riders and forced media.  I typically bring earplugs, but sometimes I forget and sometimes they’re inadequate.  I’ve yet to acquire any nifty music playing/earphone device.  So, I am compelled to at least listen which leads to watching whatever Hollywood swill they foist upon me.

As we’re departing, the bus is only three quarters full.  There is a salt and pepper haired, tattooed dyke a row ahead of me, who delves immediately into her book.  A Caribbean family with several small children make their way to the back.  The white guy across the aisle helps me figure out how to work the seats and offers me a Ritz cracker before wrapping himself in wires and hunkering down behind his laptop.

Overall, the passengers vote to watch a movie.

“Tyranny of the majority,” I mutter.

I cannot remember the options now, but the group also voted for A Bronx Tale.  “Good choice,” the bus driver approves.  “It’s good for kids,” he adds.  “There’s some swearing.  And some violence.  But no sex.”

And pops in the cd.

Some swearing, apparently, means the F-word as punctuation.  And the N-word as an integral part of dialogue.  This is a Robert De Niro film, and the violence is graphic.  Mafia-style shootings.  Threats and bullying.  Racist brutality.

Excellent, edifying movies for children, no?

This is the great American perversion.  Creation and tolerance of visceral violent imagery alongside puritanical veiling of sexuality.

Oh my God!  Breasts!  Cover the children’s eyes!

What would have been the same audience’s reaction had the driver shown, say, Boys on the Side or Philadelphia?  I’ll admit it would probably be very uncomfortable to watch Shortbus or Fire with my busmates.  Given the types of special gentlemen who often seat themselves beside me, it would be awkward at best.

What about Bend It Like Beckham?  Wasn’t that rated G?  I’d be fine to be trapped with a G movie to accommodate the most sensitive audience members.  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Akeelah and the Bee—bring them on.

Really, though, can’t we all just read a book or something?  Here are some good ones for your last long rides at the end of vacation season:

• Ultimate Gay Erotica 2009 by Jesse Grant (Editor)
• Baby Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing‎ by Michelle Tea
• The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters (not about sex, but in my opinion, very sexy and what I was reading or trying to read on this trip!)

art is good for everyone – go see some

at the coffee shop, under the watch of the statue of liberty chained outside in the grey, inside, ‘gypsy woman’ plays its tail end, repeating and repeating the phrase, fade out. I eat the frosting, yellow as my legal pad and lemony, off the edge of the wrapper. There’s fine lime green sugar glitter on the naked cake. The art is beautiful, fantastic.

Three pieces are made with compiled circular stacks of scrap paper. Topical relief maps of circumscribed, decontextualized, sliced pieces of images and ideas: tickets; documents; receipts; doodles; magazine pages; reports; letters.

In the centre of the wall display, a huge sweeping carp in fierce black etching on pink glass.

She has a lily pad green, jelly belly green head, and is orange & fuchsia with turquoise spots along the body, with feather-like, frond-like tail and fins. She begins at the tip of the tail at the halfway point up the left-hand side of the frame then curves along down into the corner along the bottom edge and up the right-hand side with the tip of the fin curving up over her head, curving in filigree delicacy at the halfway point of the top silver edge. She has stars and butterflies in her body. Glamour fish taking up the entire frame.

To her right: light boxes. Wooden frames backlighting monochromatic canvases in cerulean, kelly, and canary.

Then—the piece de résistance of wit—ink drawings of radical animal pairings. A grizzly bear embraces a great white along her great belly, and says: I love you Eloise. A shriek mouthed baboon, braced on her hands with her ass in the air, faces a motley pack of beasts, including a bear, jackrabbit, mongoose, and great heron. She says, I am woman enough for all of you. The bawdy mongoose and penguin you have to see for yourself.

The man beside me is happily doing a crossword. It’s gloomy out, he excuses himself over the phone. I am disgusted with CNN, he adds.

It is just the same story over and over again, you wait for something new to come on and it never does. Pause. I hate that show. All they do is talk about what they are going to show you.

The shop’s paper guide to this art show, Brooklyn Art Movement, identifies the papers in the constructed art as recycled bills and the titles: Debt Consolidation, United States of Debt, and Original Debt (I think then the shape of this piece is an apple).

The Fish: Sexual Freedom. She’s made with spray paint over marks in glass made by Edder Muniz. One of the women working described him as the beautiful guy with dreds who comes in all the time. He’s so beautiful that if he was a woman he’d still be beautiful.

The light boxes are titled Enthusiasm, Shoji, and Tokonama. They are by Julie Renee Williams. She also has a richly pink one—Naked Faith. Naked faith was tucked around the corner.

The bawdy beasties are by Mike Freiheit.

The whole collection –the other woman at the counter says—not to be obvious, but it is so Spring, with all these colors.

And light & wit. Amen.

he said

broadcast on npr, rudy giuliani just said:

the best way to achieve peace is through overwhelming strength.

go ahead, laugh until you cry until you laugh.

(ummm, i don’t want to link to them but check out: w w  w .   peace through strength pac.com/Home.aspx)