READING: Olympia Dukakis, who you know from such films as Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias, will be at Barnes & Noble tonight. She'll be reading from a brand spakin' new edition of Bertolt Brecht’s play Mother Courage and Her Children. She recently put down the Oscar and picked up a pen to write the forward to the antiwar classic. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [1972 Broadway] // Free EVENT: Tonight the Raw Word Reading hits Galapagos,......

- Bloomberg is worried because the State has promised better pension plans than the City can deliver. - That's nice of him: The former nurse who admitted to killing 29 of his patients has given a kidney to the brother of a former girlfriend. - After four more cyclists are killed in the past ten days bike-owners are feeling deflated. - An off-duty corrections officer busted selling crack to to an undercover cop. Crack?......

Bertolt Brecht is having quite a month on New York stages. First there’s the Jean Cocteau Repertory’s production of Mother Courage, in a never-before-seen translation by Marc Blitzstein – see our review of this excellent show, which will jar you in a good way, after the jump. Then there’s Ralph Lee’s adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which is playing at the Garden of St. John the Divine. Lee is a puppet artist, so......