Crazy Stable

I have indeed spackled--not just a skim coat, but filling in big lacunae underneath with "Structo-Lite," this fluffy cement-hard stuff for really big missing chunks...but before I tackle the deeper spackling issues next week, time for some plugs. I haven't tried theamazing purple spackle referred to below by my lovely second-cousin-in-law and style guru, Rena Tom, but you can see the results this weekend in her gorgeous new little jewel box of a shop in the south Slope: Rare Device at 453 Seventh Ave. near 16th Street. A jewel box, literally--Rena is a wonderful jewelry designer and also features work of some talented colleagues...but there are also strange cool Brooklyn shirts, soap made in Brooklyn in unusual fragrances that actually smell wonderful instead of odd, and fabulous bags for all you bag enthusiasts. That end of the Slope--which used to have tumbleweed rolling down the middle of Seventh Avenue back in the day, when Spouse and I briefly lived there as carefree newlyweds--is becoming a nexus for design-y goodies that are hip and still affordable. While you're there, check out the best wine store in Brooklyn, run by my pals Patty and Bob, Slope Cellars...Patty has a genius for describing wine with perfect acumen, even for a wine ignoramus like me, and never sounding like Robin Williams doing his oenophile routine ("Hm, a presumptious little Bordeaux...impudent, yet flaccid!") It's a talent shared to some degree by everyone in the store who's ever waited on me--total lack of pretension and a 100% track record on recommendations. (And in back, lots of crates of wine marked "Cheap and Tasty," always true on both counts.) So get off the F train at the 7th Ave. or 15th St. stop, have brunch, and have a ball.

This weekend we will be hosting the Goat Eggs clan here in the Stable. After my assurance that October is the very best weather for visiting NYC, they will see us in rain...but that is why God created planetariums and put lasers in the firmament of the skies!

How's this for a tonic for that pre-house-guest inferiority complex about the falling plaster over the door to the guest room?: (This was sung by our glorious church choir to a setting by Gerald Near)

Christ, He requires still, wheresoe'er He comes,

To feed or lodge, to have the best of rooms:

Give Him the choice; grant Him the nobler part

Of all the house: the best of all's the heart.

--Robert Herrick, Christ's Part (1647)