TAPPED IN

Community Group on Postpartum Depression

B'Nai Jeshurun hosts a community conversation about postpartum depression on Wednesday, October 30, 7 - 8:30 p.m., at 257 West 88th Street. Many women experience mild mood changes during or after the birth of a child. As many as 15 to 20 percent of women experience more significant symptoms of depression or anxiety. Rabbi Felicia Sol and two experts, Sonia Murdock and Dr. Shari I. Lusskin, will speak about identifying and treating postpartum depression. This program is open to the larger community. RSVP is requested, but not required, at www.bj.org.

Macaulay Author Series

The monthly readings at Macaulay Honors College, at 35 W. 67th Street, continue on November 3 at 7 p.m. with a free reading and discussion with Deborah Soloman on her new biography American Mirror: The Life and Work of Norman Rockwell. Solomon and the critic and novelist Daphne Merkin will hold a conversation on "The Wounded Norman Rockwell." With American Mirror, Solomon trains her eye on an American icon whose life and work provided twentieth-century America with a defining and comforting image of itself. But his life was far darker and more complicated than his public realized.

All the council candidates on the West Side bemoan the gentrification of the West Side and the closing of small business. At a recent debate at MNN-TV hosted by the NY League of Women Voters, I criticized my opponent, Helen Rosenthal, Democratic candidate for District 6, for supporting "inclusionary zoning." This policy gives zoning variances to real estate developers to construct even taller high rise luxury residential buildings in exchange for including 20% of its units as "affordable." However the majority of these units are not affordable for working class residents. The result is more gentrification, more congestion, and more stress on the infrastructure and environment. Inclusionary zoning also causes higher commercial rents forcing out "mom and pop" businesses that cannot afford the rents as their leases expire.

Tom Siracuse

Green Party

Candidate for Council District 6