Isn’t Mermaid Inn a charming name? The restaurant is on Second Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets. In Portland, Or. Happy Hour is a tradition. Between the hours of 5 and 7 food and drink are reasonably priced. The Mermaid Inn, NYC has its take on Happy Hour: Dollar oysters, $5 beers. It’s lively and fun. The wait staff is efficient and very pleasant. Sitting inside is cozy. Sitting outside is breezy. You choose.

On the way home I stopped in at the Community Garden between First Ave. and Ave. A. Why do semi-tamed urban gardens make me think of the nineteenth century? The gardening volunteer and her adorable dog allowed me to roam around.

The dog followed me. The volunteer thought her dog liked me. I explained that I had some of Russo’s sausage in my bag. So much for love.

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.