Brooklyn Heights Blog

Today Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham kicked off the eighth year of the ‘Take Your Man To The Doctor” health care campaign. There are 400,ooo Brooklynites without health insurance, men being twice as likely as women to be uninsured.

Markowitz asked Brooklynites to take the men in their life, whether straight, gay, or multiple partners, to have an annual check- up and develop a relationship with their health care providers.

Brooklyn reality TV stars Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen (“The Real Housewives of New York City”) revealed Mr. van Kempen had a heart scare a few months ago and has since quit smoking. Read more »

The acrid odor of smoke in the area this morning is wafting in from a three-alarm fire in a vacant building in Long Island City.  Lots of people in our area, however, are calling the Fire Department, hence the cacophony of sirens.  No major conflagrations here, though.

While waiting to have his tongue stitched back together, Urban Sketcher Jason Das jotted down these impressions of the LICH emergency room.

Read all the details about Sunday’’s big Bastille Day bash on Smith Street at Cobble Hill Blog.

Borough President Marty Markowitz today said he is “deeply disappointed” by Long Island College Hospital’s closure of four school-based clinics that serve students from six schools in the downtown Brooklyn area. “It’s unfortunate,” he said, “that innovative ideas and funding mechanisms that would have kept the doors of these vital clinics open could not be found.”

The importance of these school-based clinics cannot be underestimated. They serve as the first line of defense when we face health threats such as MRSA and the H1N1 flu. In addition, research and evaluations have demonstrated that school-based health centers represent cost-effective investments of public resources by reducing inappropriate emergency use, reducing hospitalization and increasing school attendance. Also, students who have access to these services can better manage their personal health and are more informed about health issues overall.

As was pointed out last year when my office and other advocates fought to save LICH, it would be one thing if neighborhoods served by LICH and these school-based clinics were facing significant population declines, but let’s face it, all you have to do is walk down Court Street, Smith Street or Atlantic Avenue and count the strollers, or see the small children crowding area parks, or check out the number of students overfilling neighborhood schools to know that there is an exploding population of young families in great need of school-based medical services. Not only that, this community is expected to grow by 15 to 20 thousand residents in the years ahead.

If you’ve been by any of Brooklyn Heights finer wine shops lately, you’ve probably noticed a growing selection of New York wines.  The push to “drink local” is gaining ground, and fortunately for Brooklyn folk, New York has fine wine shipped in daily from the North Fork of Long Island, the Finger Lakes, and Hudson Valley.

Brooklyn Heights blogger and fledgling wine video producer Mark Joyella made a day trip to Millbrook, New York (straight up the Taconic) and dropped in on the Millbrook Vineyards and Winery, makers of hand-crafted New York wines that have won awards and earned a local following even on this side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The winery’s known for its crisp, dry summer whites and full-bodied reds, and also for its laid-back atmosphere;  a winery that encourages folks to pack a lunch, buy a bottle of wine and spend the afternoon soaking up the atmosphere at the vineyard.

Vinitrek Visits: Millbrook Winery, Hudson County, NY from Mark Joyella on Vimeo.

For more on Millbrook, visit Vinitrek, Mark Joyella’s not-yet-officially launched wine and travel website.  You can also find Millbrook wine (along with wine from other New York wine regions) at Heights wine shops like Michael Towne.

Borough President Marty Markowitz joined Department of Transporation employees yesterday to fill potholes on Bergen Street between Bond and Hoyt Streets.

It is probably one of our most complicated relationships; fraught with love, fear, jealousy and joy.  No other bond is as strong or as long-lasting.  We read about it in Greek mythology, Freudian psychology and literature.  Yet we still for the most part have to navigate it alone— our relationship with our own mother.  We love them, we hate them, we miss them profoundly when they are gone.  They are as axiomatic as the sun, the moon and the stars.  Read details at Cobble Hill Blog.

After last year’s controversy over the plan by Continuum Health Partners, the consortium that manages Long Island College Hospital, to close LICH’s obstetrics and pediatrics practices, Continuum’s threat to shut down LICH if that plan that was rejected, and the State Department of Health’s disapproval of Continuum’s application to terminate the practices, LICH’s interim president, Dominick Stanzione told a group of “over 100 friends, supporters [of] and donors” to LICH at a reception honoring the hospital’s 150th anniversary that it “is at an important juncture.” However, rather than predicting doom, he stressed “enhancements to LICH’s major clinical services, such as Therapeutic Hypothermia for heart attack victims and the new ‘Volcano’ Intravascular ultrasound system.”

“Decisions made now,” Stanzione said, “are improving the future physician and patient experience at LICH.”

From Cobble Hill Blog:  We weren’t sure if we were being Punk’d today when an email from Cobble Hillbilly/The Real Housewives of New York City star Simon Van Kempen arrived in the CHB Inbox. The dispatch from Van Kempen not only turned out to be real but it led to a neighborly invite to their recently renovated townhouse to check out their recent improvements and to take in tonight’s episode of RHNYC. Read more at CHB