DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

I'm putting all of my writing energy into finishing a new novel, due April 1st. I promise I'll be back soon...

My daughter Sasha and I walked the dog together last Monday night after dark. This would not be newsworthy but for the fact that it was the first time we’d done so in nearly six weeks.

My family lives in Harlem, on Sugar Hill, on the same block where our local serial rapist, who was finally caught on Sunday night, sexually assaulted and robbed his fourth and latest victim, by crawling through her bathroom window via a fire escape. That attack, aside from his weapon of choice, a knife, was an anomaly for our rapist. Normally he simply overpowered his victims as they were entering the front doors of their buildings. (more…)

Okay, it's here, thanks to my old friend Maria Giacchino, of Little Jacket Video Productions. Here, take down her email address: littlejacket@mac.com. You never know when you'll need the most awesomest (not a word, I know) video gal on the planet.

For now, you can check it out in the left hand column of this blog, but if you're reading this any time after, say, October of 2009, god only knows where it will be, blogwise. (I know, also not a word, but shouldn't it be?)

Also, a shout out to my mom. It's her birthday. The first she's celebrating without my dad. Happy Birthday, Mom! And L'Shana Tova. May this year be much better than the last.

Prefer to read this on Huffington Post? Click here.

Last Monday, according to this report on the Smoking Gun, Roger Stephens, 61, went to a Walmart in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and slapped Paige Matthews, 2, for crying. Not to dismiss the injustice of the average, workaday abused child, but I think it's important to note here that Ms. Matthews was not in Mr. Stephens care at the time. In fact, before she came into that Walmart with her mother and incited her batterer with her incessant tears, young Paige and Mr. Stephens had never met.

To be fair, Mr. Stephens did fire a warning shot before (more…)

In lieu of writing my own post today, I'll reprint the following post from The Smoking Gun without commentary since, as you'll see, none is needed.

SEPTEMBER 2--Meet Roger Stephens. The Georgia man, 61, was shopping Monday morning at a Walmart in Stone Mountain when he crossed paths with Sonya Matthews and her two-year-old daughter Paige. The child was crying, which apparently greatly perturbed Matthews. "If you don't shut that baby up I will shut her up for you," Stephens warned Matthews, according to a Gwinnett County Police Department report. Moments later, Stephens acted on his threat, slapping Paige "across the face approximately four or five times." Though the child "started crying and screaming" (more…)

New links for your time-wasting enjoyment:

An interview I did with Mothertalkers.com. And here's their review of the new book.

Still on vacation, which has been nice but hard, since last year when the extended family was here together in Bethany Beach, my father had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now he's gone, and though the house is full, it feels empty.

I wasn't going to post while on vacation, but today's interaction deserves a short mention.

The scene: I'm sitting on the beach this morning next to my daughter. The two of us are reading. Just behind us, near the dune fence, my three year old is lazing in a giant hole my brother-in-law has dug for him. He is happy as a proverbial clam, playing with sticks, talking to shells, digging with a shovel, singing to himself, etc. Not that clams necessarily sing to themselves, but you know what I mean.

Along comes a jogger, a woman, maybe 30 or 35 years old, definitely a mother, (more…)

Running off in a few hours to catch a train to visit my mother and spend some much-needed downtime with my family, but wanted to post the Today Show segment here for those of my friends and family who slept in this morning. Hi, friends. Hi, family. Hi, other strangers reading this (and thanks for your visit. I'd offer you lemonade, but like I said, there's a train to catch.) I'll see you all after Labor Day.

Oh, wait. One more thing before I go. I should make this very clear: my book, despite the way it's presented in this segment, is not a how-to parenting book. In fact, far be it from me to tell you how to parent. (14 years later, I'm still learning myself.) Rather, it's a bunch of comic essays, or as my publisher likes to put it, think Erma Bombeck on a Vespa. Which is a line I should have used on air, had I been thinking more clearly. At least I didn't pull a Cindy Brady. I wonder how many people are old enough to get that reference?

Oy, the train, the train! Bye!

(Want to read this on the Huffington Post instead? Click here.)

"So, Harlem?" a friend said to me recently, when we ran into one another near our sons' Upper East Side high school. She was referring to my family's recent move to Saint Nicholas Avenue and 146th Street, officially Sugar Hill, a once wealthy African American enclave immortalized in Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train" and home to such Harlem Renaissance luminaries as Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, and W. E. B. Du Bois. "Good for you."

I tried to parse the meaning of the compliment, which I knew, because I love this friend, was paved with the best intentions. Good for me because she knew we'd been hit hard by the recession, and we needed to move to a cheaper neighborhood, so we moved? Or good for me because we'd been squeezing three children into a two bedroom apartment and now, for significantly less rent every month, we have three bedrooms, an office, and a deck? Or good for me because I'm now a white denizen of a predominantly black neighborhood, and that, along with a black man in the White House, is a sign of progress? (more…)

Eighteen years ago, I clipped the front page of a USA Today from August of 1991, which I've been storing in a file drawer ever since. Not because I shot the lead photo but because I am the lead photo, the lone woman in the crowd who dared to jump up on a tank, argue with its driver, and take a stand against communist hardliners. Except as any of you who've read Shutterbabe might remember, the caption is completely false. I was no Russian hero. I was just short, and American, and a coup was taking place, and I couldn't see a damned thing. In honor of the anniversary of the Soviet coup (which is really next week, but I'll be on vacation) and of misinformation everywhere, I finally made a scan of that newspaper clipping this morning before it and I crumble into dust. Check out the image on the left.