The Fencing Beekeeper

Mike Barrett opens the closet door and brings out a loose white jacket and a hat with a veil. When he zips himself into this outfit, he looks like an astronaut. He’s not going into outer space. He’s only going onto the roof of his house. He climbs the closet’s metal ladder then, using a rope, hauls up a large bucket that’s the color of a construction cone. It’s filled with equipment. He sets it down by the hatch door. Toward the center of the roof, there’s a…

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The Stand-Up Nanny

On the kitchen countertop, there’s a sliver-slim volume. will tell us everything we need to know about Jenn Wehrung. She’s happily married with four kids, two dogs, four kittens and two cats (the gerbil didn’t make it). She has — let’s make that “had” — a booming fashion business. Before that, she was a dancer with a best-seller tucked under her tutu. She just taught her son to play piano. “But I don’t even play piano!” she complains. Gotcha.…

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The Meetup Master

The century-old glass-front door opens, and there stands Mr. D with Friday, the 77-pound pit bull/pointer bruiser who howled his head off when the bell rang. “Are you afraid of dogs or kids?” It’s a moot question; Friday’s nosing around, and the kids — 10-year-old Ian and 6-year-old Willow — are bound to be bounding down the stairs any moment. James A. DeSoucey Jr. is a squat muscle-bound square with laughing baby blues. The kids he coaches on Willow’s first-grade…

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The Man in Transit

You can get mad. You can get sad. You can get even. Or, like Clif Militello, you can do all three. By writing a book. Of fiction (wink, wink). Clif is many things — art director, cartoonist, caricaturist, inventor, lecturer and proud mustachioed bald man — but he’s the first to admit that author is not one of them. Still, when he lost his job as an art director for MTA-NYC Transit on Sept. 17, 2010 during a “workforce reduction,” he decided to pen, a who-might-do-it…

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