Uh Oh

Clyde's first word is "uh oh!" She says it all the time, but especially when she hears us say it. She also is SO into her reading. If she has a book turned upside down, and Ingrid points that out, she turns the book right-side up. We think she's going to be a good reader!

The Norma Rae of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

I've been joking that I'm going to become the Norma Rae of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, regarding Clyde's education. Our biggest issue with our house is that we are zoned for Public School 38, which is 2 blocks away from our house, but it is considered an "underperforming school," everything from "in transition" to just plain "not good enough" for people we have talked to to send their kids. We live next to a housing project, and most of the kids from the project go to PS 38 (ranging from K through 5th grade). As well, a lot of very upper middle-class families are moving to the neighborhoood (the house two doors down from us, same layout, sold for a million dollars, and the buyers are a young, pregnant couple who are gutting the house and renovating it). All of this is to say that there are a lot of class differences involved with the families zoned for PS 38.

We love where we live--love the neighborhood, love how close we are to Smith Street and 5th Avenue in Park Slope and Atlantic Avenue, and love how we've met all of these new families with kids around Clyde's age, since we've moved here. Our biggest concern, though, is how Clyde will be educated. We can't afford private school (that costs roughly $25K a year from kindergarten on), and we certainly can't afford private school for more than one child, in case we want to have a bigger family. And so our options are to send Clyde to PS 38, to apply to private school, or to go through numerous bureaucratic petitions to try to get her into a different public school.

In past years, parental communities have gotten involved to get schools to improve. It happened in Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, apparently, the best schools in Brooklyn. So Ingrid and I thought, why not in Boerum Hill, and why couldn't it start with us?

We decided to start with a tour of PS 38. I called the parent liaison, this lovely young man named Mr. Hassan, who gave us a great tour of the school. They have a very diverse student population, a new principal in the last two years, and a gifted and talented program, and a very diverse roster of after-school cultural activities, from Israeli dancing to painting to karate.

Ing's and my biggest concern after that tour was this: if your child tests into the gifted and talented program (she has to take a written test of 160 questions as a kindergartner!), she has the option to go to the gifted program in any school in the district that has a gifted program, but has to win acceptance by lottery. If she doesn't win acceptance, she is automatically admitted into the gifted program at the school she is zoned for (38, in our case). But then we discovered that the gifted program takes those kids out of the classroom of the other kids for five days a week--they only share time with the general population for lunch and recess and gym. We didn't like the idea of the gifted kids being segregated out so completely. We left there with a big question mark.

Then, we went to a stoop sale this past weekend, at a public school in Park Slope, and met someone who was a teacher at PS 38 last year. She told us she had lovely students, but that there were some behavioral problems, and that she spent so much time disciplining the kids that she didn't get to fully, effectively teach. Ingrid and I wanted to know exactly what "discipline problems" meant, and this teacher gave us an example: 1st graders calling their peers "crackhead ho's." Hm. She also said, off the record, that the new principal is black and that she sensed some racial tension with her, in that she sensed that the principal didn't feel that the white teachers really identified with her nor the student body.

We've got a challenge ahead of us. (That teacher, incidentally, left the school and is teaching at another school in Brooklyn, now, and loves it.)

Our friend from college is a Broadway star!

Last night I went to see Boeing Boeing, this play on Broadway starring Bradley Whitford from The West Wing, Gina Gershon (deelish in Bound), Christine Baranski and, drum roll, our friend Kathryn Hahn (and my onetime roommate) from Northwestern. Kathryn is probably the most successful theater grad from our years at NU, unless you count Greg Berlanti, who created Everwood and Brothers and Sisters, and is a writer/director, not an actor. But Kathryn was on Crossing Jordan for years, and has been in a bunch of movies, including How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. She lives in LA but is here for the run of the show, and she's part of a fantastic ensemble cast, and she has a great, scene-stealing role.

The show is a farce--honestly not my favorite kind of theater, but that said, it is really great if you do like farce. All the performances are spot-on, especially Kathryn's. Mary MacCormack was nominated for a Tony. My friend Brekke and I went backstage after the show to see Kathryn, and it was just thrilling. Neither of us had ever been backstage at a Broadway production. We had to wait a few minutes, then we were let up by the security guard, and we passed Bradley Whitford's, and then Gina Gershon's, and Christine Baranski's, and Mary MacCormack's dressing rooms, and finally, we arrived at Kathryn's little dressing room. It was all so thrilling. She had a congratulatory note from David Hyde Pierce!

Kathryn, we are all so proud of you. You were always a brilliant performer and bound to be a star. (Oh and an amazing mother of a beautiful 18-month-old, Leonard, to boot!

Anyway Kathryn introduced us to Mary, her next-door neighbor in the dressing room line, and she was gorgeous and gracious. She had a bunch of bottles of Pinot Grigio in her dressing room, and we laughed about that, and she told me she loved my (cherry-tomato-red vintage) jacket. It is pretty great.

Mary was nominated for a Tony for best featured actress in a play. Good luck!

Lucky Girl

I have a new job at Lucky, as Deputy Editor. Basically, it's my dream job, at my dream company Conde Nast (where I worked 10 years ago as the assistant to the Managing Editor of Vogue, my first job in NYC). The cafeteria is beyond. It was designed by Frank Gehry. Pas mal.

Clyde is Immortalized

Clyde is in a New York artist's painting. Our friend Trista's friend Delia Brown is a painter who has been featured in W magazine, among others. She paints portraits of conflicted desire, featuring her friends and herself as her subjects. This series is called "Precious," and it is about women in their late 30s who are not mothers, and the ambivalent feelings therein. Interesting concept, for sure, and quite relevant to so many women we know in NYC. If you are in NYC, and read this, go see Delia's work at D'Amelio Terras Gallery. If not, google Delia Brown and learn more about her. She's fierce.

So Saturday night was the opening. We were invited because Clyde was one of the subjects in the paintings, posing with our friend Trista, who doesn't have children (yet?). There was a soft opening, on Wednesday, for subjects, including kids, with cupcakes and champagne. Saturday was the actual opening, for grownups, and there was a dinner afterward for the friends and subjects, at the gallery. Gribeca Pediatrics doctor Michel Cohen was there, and Cynthia Rowley's kids were in the show too. That's when I realized we were in good company.

Then there were drinks at the Beatrice Inn, this fancy lounge in the West Village where apparently celebrities hang out. It was awesome. There was a downstairs lounge where we had these fancy drinks, called "the West 12ths" that were mojitos made with vodka. Yum. Delia asked me to get her champagne and the bartender poured it from a little half bottle of champagne that was so adorable that I asked him if I could have the whole thing. He gave it to me, and I wanted to impress Delia, so I brought the bottle and two glasses to her table (her parents were sitting next to her) and I put one of the glasses into my cleavage and had her pour the champagne into the glass and sip it out of its nestling in my cleavage. It was good times, good times.