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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Brooklyn Heights Promenade” by Henrik Krogius

February 17, 2012

Brooklyn Heights residents are justly proud of our Promenade overlooking New York Harbor. Cantilevered over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, it offers stunning views of the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Manhattan skyline, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. But the origins of the Promenade are somewhat murky, and Henrik Krogius has devoted a great deal of time over the years to interviewing participants and reviewing articles, meeting notes, and hearing transcripts. He brings his efforts together in this slim book, which synthesizes years of research and reprints a selection of articles from the Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News dating back to 1976. The book is illustrated with dozens of photographs, documenting the construction of the BQE, the cityscape before the road existed, and the Promenade.

Many people had a hand in the development of the highway, but surprisingly few of them were willing to claim credit for the Promenade. The road was originally intended to be built at one level, like most highways, and to cut through Brooklyn Heights. Robert Moses gets the blame for that proposal, which the Brooklyn Heights Association fought; eventually, the Furman Street route was settled on. The idea of a double decker highway was in the air for quite a while, as the Furman Street route cut through the back gardens of the houses on Columbia Heights.

Krogius describes the development and construction of the cantilevers, and discusses the shape of the supports and their additional function of reflecting sound away from the docs on Furman Street. He eventually concludes about the highway:

Ernest J. Clark, the project’s chief engineer, insisted that the design had been arrived at through trial and error by the team’s collaborative effort. Different ways of supporting the roadoways had been considered and their stresses and looks tested. As Clark recounted it, the cantilever design had evolved.

Krogius uncovers plenty of interesting information along the way. One example: the Promenade was ready and opened before the highway. It’s hard to imagine events happening in that order now. Curiously, no one claims credit for the idea of the Promenade, although there are several candidates, including the owners of the back gardens, and even, though he denied it, Robert Moses. Perhaps that is because, like the idea for the cantilevered highway itself, the Promenade was a good idea that also evolved. As Steven Johnson describes it in his book “Where Good Ideas Come From” some of the conditions needed for creativity are dense networks of people creating and overlapping, exposure to ideas and sharing of information, and the time that ideas or hunches need to mature. All of these factors were present in the years of planning and building the Promenade and the BQE, and the idea developed from a lot of suggestions until it was right there, seemingly obvious, to everyone. The Promenade belongs to all of us, and it is a nice thought that its origin belongs, in some sense, to the residents who preceded us.

Henrik Krogius will be speaking about his book at 6:00 pm on Thursday, March 1, at the Brooklyn  Women’s Exchange, 55 Pierrepont Street. The event is free.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here, and have a post about Mr. Johnson’s book here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Discovery of Slowness” by Sten Nadolny

February 10, 2012

Constant connection and instant communication have embedded speed in our lives. Sten Nadolny’s wonderful novel, “The Discovery of Slowness,” translated by Ralph Freedman, celebrates the opposite: the value of taking one’s time, of stopping to think before you act or speak.

“The Discovery of Slowness,” a historical novel, tells the story of John Franklin, a 19th century Englishman who arose from humble beginnings to become an Arctic explorer and the author of two best-sellers about his trips. Reviled and bullied as a child, John also paid close attention, perfecting an ability to stand or sit still for long hours. He used those hours for thinking things through, trying to understand the perspective of others. (I had to wonder whether he would be treated as autistic, or perhaps Aspergian, if he had lived more recently.) A sympathetic schoolmaster helped him achieve his dream of joining the Navy. As Nadolny tells it, eventually Franklin rose to the rank of captain, survived a first trip to the Arctic, and became governor of the penal colony Van Dieman’s Land. He died, of a stroke, during a return trip to the Arctic.

Nadolny puts the reader inside his character’s brain for much of the novel, and Franklin puts his unusual characteristics to good use. He learned to plan for the unforeseen, and his skill at putting himself in the place of others helped when he was negotiating with Inuits during his Arctic trips. His ability to anticipate orders was uncanny, and saved his ships from rash decisions by more senior officers on several occasions. Nadolny describes his thought process, and the impatience of those around him, in exquisite, tension-inducing detail. Here’s a moment when a party is disoriented in the Arctic:

John ordered the men to build an emergency shelter out of ice plates. Reid made no bones of the fact that he would have preferred to go on simply at a right angle to where they had been walking.

“We’ll stay warm that way, and we’ve got to arrive somewhere.”

“I take my time before I make mistakes,” Franklin countered amiably. He ordered them all to wrap themselves up as warmly as possible and sit around the oil lamp. The muskets were carefully loaded in case a polar bear might drop by.

John crouched and reflected. Whatever the other put forward–proposals, theories, questions–he only nodded and thought some more.

. . . But John still wasn’t ready. There was no reason to end his reflections prematurely, even if death was at the door. Finally he got up. . . . “fire a musket every three minutes, thirty times all told. After that, fire every ten minutes for three hours; after that, once an hour for two days. Please repeat.”

“Won’t we be dead by then, sir?”

“Possibly. But until then we fire. Please confirm.” . . . Just as nobody counted any more on getting an explanation, John said: “The entire ice field is turning around. It’s the only solution . . . “ Four hours later they heard a faint shot in the fog, and then again and again answers to their own shots . . .

This Franklin developed into a gifted leader of men, particularly during the ravages of an Arctic winter. He was also a humane governor of Van Dieman’s Land, ensuring that what was a hierarchical penal colony could begin to transform itself into the Australian state of Tasmania. This is a book that amply repays the reader who takes the time to read, think about, and absorb it.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” by Nathan Englander

February 7, 2012

For many Jews, the world is and remains a fragile place. Israel is surrounded by enemies, many of whom have vowed her destruction. Intermarriage and secular life have diminished traditional Jewish culture. The Holocaust survivors are dying of old age, and the sense of righteousness their story conveys is in danger of dying with them. The growth of Arab and Haredi populations threatens what many Jews – American and Israeli – think of as Israel’s identity as a modern, secular state.

This uncertainty raises many questions for Nathan Englander, such as: might it ever acceptable for Holocaust survivors to use vigilante justice? Have Jews learned to organize resistance when they need to? What does Jewish guilt mean in a place where a peep show costs $1? What does society owe someone who lost his entire family, and then had to fight to survive? Englander uses the stories in his accomplished new collection “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” to illuminate these questions and possible answers to them.

In “Sister Hills” two families settle in the austere but beautiful part of the West Bank known during biblical times as Samaria. In the story, the army takes a father, then a son, then another. Settlers take land. A mother takes a daughter. What happens when we make promises we have no intention of keeping? Englander’s answer is a lot of unintended consequences: a family is torn apart, an ancient olive tree is harmed, a country lives with a deeply resentful minority. In its symmetry “Sister Hills” is a near inversion of “The Gift of the Magi,” except that instead of giving, its characters take.

In the title story, recently published also in The New Yorker, two couples, one secular and living in the United States, one Chasidic and living in Israel, reunite in the secular couple’s Florida home. A stilted reunion becomes a jovial discussion ranging from how to manage life with a house full of daughters (Israelis) or one son (the Americans). The couples get high together, and run outside into a Florida rainstorm. Most crucially, the couples play what they call the Anne Frank game, the Righteous Gentile game: who will hide us if the need arises? And before they know it, the day has veered into dangerous marital territory. We read what we need to into the Frank family’s story because, just as we do when we talk about love, what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank is love, and trust, and life itself.

The other stories in the collection, published today, are similarly thought-provoking. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics  – for people who hate numbers – here.

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Events

Missed Connections at NY Transit Museum on Valentine’s Day

February 3, 2012

Find your Missed Connection at the NY Transit Museum on Valentine’s Day!

*Free admission to Love-in-Transit Party for all would-be romantics
*NY Times Metro writer Alan Feuer reads poems based on Craigslist Missed Connections posts
*Artist Sophie Blackall has a slideshow and will sign copies of her book Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found
*Snap a photo in the token booth
*Food (Brooklyn Brewery) and Music (You Bred Raptors?)

Where: NY Transit Museum, Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn Heights

When: Tuesday, February 14, 6-8 pm

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Stranger’s Child” by Alan Hollinghurst

February 3, 2012

Every once in a while I read a book that is so good I cannot bear to put it down, but at the same time I cannot bear to finish it because then it will be done and I will never be in suspense again. “The Stranger’s Child,” a new book by Alan Hollinghurst, is one of these books.

The book tells the story, in five parts spanning nearly a century, of two families, the Sawles and the Valances, and two houses, the Sawles’ suburban home Two Acres, and the aristocratic Valances’ country pile Corley Court. Cecil Valance visits the Sawles at Two Acres, where two of the family’s three children, Daphne and George, have fallen in love with him. He writes a poem in Daphne’s autograph book; the poem, a paean to rural England, long outlives him, as Cecil is killed in the Great War. Each of the book’s parts centers around a love affair, or several, and the four later parts consider mysteries spawned in the first.

The book is a comedy of manners, with many telling details—a character is put down because he attended a red brick university; a memoir with a hand-written dedication is discovered 30 years later in a second-hand bookstore; a Victorian trophy house becomes a later generation’s hideous pile, broken up into rooms to let, its gardens subdivided for tract houses. Characters peer out from the closet, sometimes but not always retreating into it and firmly slamming the door. A minor event, glancingly mentioned in a letter or memoir, is interpreted as the key to a character by a later generation.

The two houses keep reappearing. So does the shade of Cecil Valance, which wreathes through the lives of all the other characters. Paul Bryant, introduced in the third part, becomes Cecil’s unlikely literary biographer. But in writing about Cecil, Paul upends all the family myths and threatens to unearth family secrets. Paul forgets that his subjects are people, not characters, so he gets everything all wrong–or does he?

“The Stranger’s Child” is exquisite, complex without being cumbersome. The Sawle and Valance families grow together into a large vine, the roots deep and the leaves blurring the outlines of the structure beneath. The younger characters try to untangle the history, while the elders prefer to keep their histories to themselves. Everyone’s efforts give the book its charm, and whether anyone succeeds gives the story its suspense. The book leaves a lot up to the reader, which is part of its appeal. Let us know your interpretation in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson

January 27, 2012

Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933. In that same year, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as President of the United States, and in due course he appointed a new United States Ambassador to Germany. After several false starts—it was clearly going to be a difficult post, given the world financial turmoil and German political upheaval—the position went to William Dodd, a chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago and biographer (and friend) of Woodrow Wilson. Using diaries and letters, Erik Larson relates the experiences of Dodd and his family, primarily his daughter, Martha, during Dodd’s 1933-1937 tenure.

Those were tumultuous years indeed in Germany. Once in power, the Nazis reneged on the Versailles Treaty’s onerous war repayment provisions; rebuilt the country’s armed forces; and passed laws limiting and ultimately denying citizenship rights of Jewish citizens. The Night of the Long Knives occurred during the Dodds’ stay in Germany, and that’s essentially where the story ends. Larson makes no bones about what he is doing. In his introduction, he says, “I made no effort in these pages to write another grand history of the age.” Instead, he tells of drives in the country and dinner parties, diplomatic receptions and Nazi Party rallies.

Although both Dodd children (they were already adults in their 20s) moved to Germany with their parents, Larson focuses on William Dodd, the ambassador, and his daughter, Martha. I suspect this is because both of them left substantial amounts of documentary material, unlike the mother and son. (Confusingly, both children were named after their parents. Larson refers to the son, who barely appears in the book, as Billy, and the mother, who is mostly a cipher, though one with an evident backbone, as Mattie.) At first the family was enchanted with the evident prosperity and lovely countryside of Germany. As time passed, evidence of Nazi brutality became impossible to ignore; early in their stay, the two Dodd children witnessed the thuggish humiliation of a German woman engaged to a Jew.

Dodd was one of the few US diplomats to urge that the world engage, rather than ignore or appease, Hitler. Unlike most other members of the diplomatic service at the time, he was not independently wealthy, and he tried to live within his salary as US Ambassador. These acts did nothing to endear him to his superiors at home, or to his staff at the embassy. At the same time, both his children flirted with Soviet communism, and Martha had a long affair with an NKVD operative. Both children’s lives were dominated, in the end, by their actions in Germany during these years. Martha and her husband later fled the US rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Billy’s activities had also drawn the attention of HUAC; in the 1940s he was declared “unfit” for employment by the federal government, when he was working for the Federal Communications Committee.

This is a difficult story, which Larson tells well, as far as he goes. Larson spends 90% of the book on the Dodds’ first year in Berlin, finishing up the next three and a half years in a handful of pages. It’s not clear whether he petered out or his sources did. But that first year of Nazi power comes alive in vivid and often grotesque detail. It makes for an entertaining read, but will leave the enquiring reader curious to know more. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

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Events

Transit Museum Introduces New Discussion Series “Problem Solvers” with guest Sarah Kaufman

January 23, 2012

The New York Transit Museum has announced the start of an informal discussion series, Problem Solvers, hosted by Ben Kabak, founder of the blog Second Avenue Sagas. The free series begins on Wednesday, February 1 at 6:30 pm and will take an intimate look at the most interesting people working behind-the-scenes to operate the city’s century-old transit system.

Mr. Kabak’s first guest is Sarah Kaufman, who led the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s open data program. As an innovative and pragmatic leader within the MTA, Ms. Kaufman worked to put the agency on the fast track to the digital age, collaborating with third-party software developers to improve public access to transit data. Ms. Kaufman recently joined NYU Wagner’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management. The hour-long program includes audience Q & A.

Problem Solvers continues on April 25th when Mr. Kabak, dubbed “The Transit Authority” by the Village Voice, will engage a second interviewee in informal conversation at the Transit Museum.

Doors open at 6 pm; program begins at 6:30. Guests are invited to explore the Museum prior to the start of the program. Light refreshments will be served.

What: Free! Problem Solvers discussion series debut

Who: Host Ben Kabak (Second Ave. Sagas) with guest Sarah Kaufman

When: Wednesday, February 1, 6:30 pm (doors open at 6 pm)

Where: New York Transit Museum, inside the subway station at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn. General information (718) 694-1600 or click on this link.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Thorn and the Blossom” by Theodora Goss

January 20, 2012

Brendan and Evelyn meet as young students. Evelyn, an American studying at Oxford, is taking a week’s vacation in Cornwall before she heads home. Brendan is also at Oxford, but lets Evelyn think he is merely a local. The two, both misfits in their own families, start to fall in love after spending the better part of a week together. Their love of a Cornish myth (a local Gawain and the Green Knight predecessor) unites them, yet each keeps a secret, and soon they go their separate ways. They meet again many years later. Oh, and they might possibly be the reincarnated version of the lovers in the myth.

This romance is published as an accordion book, with Brendan’s story told at one end, and, when you turn the book around, Evelyn’s from the other. An accordion book telling a story from two characters’ points of view poses a conundrum for the reader: whose side to read first? After reading the first side, the reader has to wonder: will reading the other side resolve the mysteries or even add anything to the story? This slight book by Theodora Goss succeeds in the first but I must admit I did not find the story so interesting that I was excited about reading it again. A gap of a few days made a difference.

Accordion books are more common in other cultures (here’s a Burmese astrology handbook) and I was at first concerned that the binding was a gimmick intended to cover a weak structure. The story works, and there’s a nice parallel to the Cornish myth, with a love triangle that reverberates down the centuries. This is a very short book, less than 100 pages for both characters, so don’t plan for it to take you through an airplane trip. It is beautifully illustrated by Scott McKowen and comes in a beautiful, uncluttered box.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. And check out my metrics blog.

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Events

Transit Museum Plans Day for Special Needs Kids January 22

January 17, 2012

The New York Transit Museum and Extreme Kids & Crew invite families with children who have special needs to visit the Transit Museum on Sunday, January 22 for a Special Day for Special Kids. Families with special needs kids receive free admission to the Museum between 10 am and 11 am, with a 50% discount thereafter when the Museum opens to the general public.

A variety of transit-themed activities are scheduled throughout the day including an art project using old metrocards, a scavenger hunt on the Museum’s platform level and a musical performance by the Brooklyn-based M Shanghai String Band. In addition, a “Quiet Room” for special needs families will be available from 10 am to 2 pm as a place to take a break from the excitement.

The Transit Museum offers a number of programs for special needs children, including guided programs for school and camp groups, travel training to learn independent travel on the subways, and the Subway Sleuths Afterschool Program where children on the autism spectrum practice social skills while working together on projects about subway history. Extreme Kids & Crew is a parent-run, non-profit organization that provides a safe sensory space where Brooklyn’s kids with disabilities and their families can gather to play, teach, learn, sing, sprawl and be.

The New York Transit Museum is located at the corner of Boerum Place & Schermerhorn Streets in Brooklyn. For general information, call  (718) 694-1600  or visit the website.

 

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke” by Timothy Snyder

January 13, 2012

Before they became independent countries in the 20th century, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and parts of Poland and Ukraine were territories, or provinces, or sometimes principalities, of the Habsburg empire. The Habsburg family was large and connected, all the more so because cousins often married. (A Habsburg sits on the throne of Spain today.) Habsburg Archdukes governed the various provinces under the Emperor. This book tells the story of one scion of the branch that governed Poland, or tried to. Wilhelm, born in 1895, rejected his father’s efforts to make him and his siblings Polish, and threw his lot in with the Ukrainians.

This was not a simple thing to do, given the complexities of 20th century central-European politics. It was a Habsburg Archduke who was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. Wilhelm served in the Habsburg army during that war, then became involved in Ukrainian politics, hoping to become king of an independent Ukraine. The war ended the Habsburg empire, and Wilhelm spent the interwar years in France, until he was forced to leave after a scandal, and then Austria. He flirted with fascism, and ultimately took up the cause of Ukrainian nationalism once again. After the war, once the Soviets moved in, he was arrested in Vienna and died in Soviet custody.

Snyder traces the development and clashes of nationalism, imperial ambition, religion and ethnicity, showing how they played out in Europe through the century. He makes a confusing and complex history extremely clear. Snyder suggests it is not far-fetched to think of modern Europe as fulfilling Habsburg ideas. Indeed, Otto von Habsburg, whose father was the last Habsburg emperor, was a member of the European Parliament for 20 years. He died in 2011, at the age of 98. The Central and Eastern European history before World War II was something of a blank for me, and this book does an admirable job of filling it in. Snyder’s most recent book is called “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.”

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog here about metrics.

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