Sunday Memories: Zing Zing Zing Went My Heartstrings

This was before video games. This was before the internet. This was even before James T. Kirk appeared in the horizon on the Starship Enterprise.

And since we didn't have a television, excitement had to be found where ever we could find it and what better place than public transportation. The subway had that front car window, as good as any Coney Island ride. But if you were on a bus, you had both the window and the chance to pull the bell. A ride with sound effects! Couldn't be beat.

Then somewhere along the line they modernized the buses and those long cords begging to be yanked so the bells pealed like a Sunday church disappeared. Now most buses had subtle strips that only rang on the first request, thus sparing the bus driver from going batty from constant dinging all day.

And then today in the middle of a lovely meandering down Fifth Avenue on the M5, I looked up from my window seat only to see a cord. With a little sign:

Pull
Cord
To
Signal
For
Stop

The Primary Reason We Are A Democracy

"Most people don't vote in the primary," the young candidate observed. "Candidates win with only a small group of people voting."

And yet in a crowded room filled with a medly of New Yorkers, plans were made to change all that, person to person, word to word, handshake to handshake.











previous posts on Reshma Saujani: Stepping out and Then Stepping Into

Reshma Saujani
http://www.reshma2010.com/

Poetry In Motion Without Getting On The Train

Her poem 'nocturne' adorns my door, confronting me every morning before I leap from my safety into the world outside to give up my bullshit and attempt the integrity Florence died in vain for.


nocturne

only in the greatest need of peace
will you be able to resist
those whose motives lack beauty

our island is punished by winter:
beneath the snowfall we linger, our tongues buried in silence

There's a kind of suffering that requires a stage,
a play,
a monotonous soliloquy
about extravagant vices;
finally in act five, scene one
Truth enters disguised as Manipulation

in the absence of contentment
this world can not continue
and the end will not be
some great crash
(or some great class)
but a mute isolation of spirit

to heal ourselves
we will repair another's wounds

slumber in darkness
until a dream opens
your eyes
your bed was covered with shame once
but now it is quilted
with a passion for empathy

- Susan Scutti
octoberbabies.wordpress.com

Sunday Memories: Ode to Food - Part 2

I didn't know where Florence kept the sugar in our house. And there certainly wasn't any honey. She had been once again ahead of her time, and during the golden era of sugar, fat, and pre-packaged everything we were forced to eat fruit and vegetables and other G-d awful healthy food. Soda and any kind of cake was relegated to Friday night at Gramma Sophie's house in Knickerbocker Village.

But with all my sneaking into friends' homes and oogling the forbidden fruit in their cupboards or at their tables, I fell in love with that little honey bear. It was a toy, it was a bear, it was sweet. It was all the things I yearned for rolled up in one.

Even now, I'd rather have that bear than a pot of organic honey made by bees who each had their own name.

Ode To Food

Before it arrived, Florence shopped at the Essex Street Market until it was impossible to do so. Then she switched over to the Fruit Man, Chinatown and the expensive organic place, Commodies but only for the olive oil. Her fridge was filled with pots of healthy salt-free food she hated eating.

I didn't shop at all. My fridge was filled with order-up cartons and very little food resembed anything close to how it started out in this world .

Then Trader Joe's opened. A weekly offering of organic bananas to Florence began along with other exciting little things that for a while made food exciting to her again.

And soon after that I was figuring out how to heat things up without burning down the building and trying out different spreads and sauces on semi-burnt food.

These days, there's rarely any take-out containers in my fridge and most of the food looks like how it arrived on this earth.

And there's always organic bananas.

Class Trip

The teachers were snapping pictures. The firefighters were snapping pictures. Passer-byers were snapping pictures. And the kids just grinned and grinned and grinned.

I thought as I walked away their class trip was way better than the one we took in first grade to the police station on Delancey and Clinton. There they showed us the cells and gave us stern warnings.

Sunday Memories: Flotsum and Jetsom

It was one thing for Florence to throw out two shopping bags filled with the letters of the woman who had loved her for four decades, or for me and Adrian to chuck into a private garbage truck two huge boxes of shoes and tapes and baby pictures and books left after an ignoble departure by my then-boyfriend.

These banishings offered an illusion that the time it took to heal was somehow faster and lighter.

But what never quite got thrown out were all those other things collected when part of a duo.

* How a good cup of coffee is made.

* Why Frebreze is bad.

* Who's in 'Who's Who's In America'.

* What is needed to shoot a documentary in Uranium City. In winter.

These virtual knick-knacks faded into the background until something, an errant comment or mundane moment illuminated the clutter from past relationships.

At the end, Florence couldn't remember who that woman was. The name meant nothing. But in a desperate attempt to be there for her and with her, the woman sent a little guitar keychain that played little electronic songs until the battery died. At that point Florence just strummed and soon after that, just clutched it, along with the keys to a home she no longer understood.

The insistence that art no matter what must live once again thwarts the belief that Theater Is Dead.



Because if a quiet lonely empty big bar on a Saturday afternoons doesn't call for someone to put a play on in it, then I don't know what does.

Visit the Dramatic Question Theater's facebook page to find out more about their Bar Series.

Stepping Out And Then Stepping Into

Other than the rare night when the world suddenly changed, recent news and politics and idealism lived in wireless waves. Perhaps it was my electronic version of Florence's life long love affair with the New York Times, but I sought information alone in front of a variety of screens.

Not sure how this happened, but several phone calls by young, earnest sounding people urged me out of my home and into an apartment on St. Marks place to meet a candidate running for something or other.

I couldn't catch the name and honestly didn't care but the adventure of seeing a stranger's apartment was tempting. Of course it also didn't stop me from considering that I might be walking into a dangerous situation so wearing boots I could fight or run in I headed out with just I.D. on me. Old school habits die slow.

There in a new building that piped Michael Jackson in the elevator, in an apartment with no windows because it was sub-subterranean (and I hope discounted heavily in the rent), a young woman in a fierce black but tailored pants suit told a small group of residents that she was running for Congress and wanted our support.

Reshima Saujani either answered questions bursting with concern (the younger ones) or listened to criticism tinged with nostalgia for the days when demonstrating meant something (the older ones). I offered condolences.

But win, lose or draw, to step out of one's comfort zone and into the fray - be it a stranger's apartment, love or politics - requires strength and courage. And for that, gratitude and thanks for leadership by example is offered.

http://www.reshma2010.com/

Sunday Memories: Two! Two! Two Memories In One!

When terribly young there was Dana as a beacon.

And when life required strength there was Veselka's Ukrainian Borscht.

How lucky I am that these days I have both.


***

Dana's profile and other short pieces are:

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
"If I Bring Forth What Is Inside Me, What I Bring Forth Will Save Me"

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"One Day I Wrote A Sentence"

Thursday, June 25, 2009
GUEST ARTIST: DANA - The Sad Little Crone

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2009
GUEST ARTIST: DANA - Wisdom of the Ages

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Perhaps walking down the street or sitting in a diner no one would think we all had great plans and important dreams. After all, all four of us are over 50. We were supposed to have accomplished everything already or given up and been content with what we had.

But that's utter bullshit and stepping out of two hours of committed work to continue our dreams the possibilities were endless.

"She's A Native New Yorker"

Yuki's bag

We literally met on international ground.

Even though she was being just as polite as everyone else, there was something about her that felt very familiar. I, on the other hand, was not just a fish out of water.I was a big fish out of water and a bull in a teeny tiny china shop - pick two - and it was all I could do to sit still and keep my mouth shut so I wouldn't get fired on my first day of work.

But rushing down a sweeping corridor filled with priceless art and important people, out of nowhere she said, "Have you noticed everyone here is so fucking polite?!"

To which all I could say in a flood of relief was, "Oh Thank God. You're a fucking New Yorker!"

Sunday Memories: Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night ...Until Suddenly...

None of us really understood that things were changing for Florence.   She seemed as she always had been.

Teaching cooking walking arguing fuming eating investigating practicing devouring life intrepidly…sallying forth into the world as the force of nature that she was.

The rare cracks were easy to ignore.  More often than not they looked like the mishaps and mistakes we all make.

Until suddenly…

This was the first crack I wanted to ignore.

On the corner of 6th Street and Avenue A.  Heading home after teaching a piano student.  Between her and the curb a pile of snow dumped high from the recent storm.

Suddenly she couldn't traverse it. Suddenly she didn't know what to do.

Suddenly she was old.

And then suddenly some young men came up behind her, picked her up, carried her over the mound and gently placed her on solid sidewalk before vanishing into the crowd.

Telling me this on the phone after, she laughed and laughed and laughed about it because the joy of that sudden flight erased the sudden reality she could not longer climb her own mountains.

In The Still Of The Night

"Welcome to my place...."

Just like those long ago days when Florence brought in a crowd to her living room to try new things test old work play just play because it was all that matter...

...here in a walk-up apartment on the upper West Side, chairs were put out...



...food was devoured



...neighbors, friends, strangers gathered...



...and the host welcomed us to a night of music.



Then the singer began to sing...



...all those songs Florence listened to during dissolving afternoons and that very last night.

For a brief moment I was home. Back in Her New York.

Sunday Memories: Stairway to Heaven

This was the stairway to friends' homes. This was the stairway to where art was attempted. This was the stairway to normal get-togethers. This was the stairways to places that sold what we needed to buy to accomplish what we were attempting to accomplish. This was the stairway to what we all struggled to accomplish. This was the stairway that was normal to climb to wherever we were going.

In Search Of Great Hotels

City Of Strangers returned to Hotel 17 and those days of home and haven that had a texture now rarely found in most neighborhoods.

Several weeks ago, walking back from a job I never thought I'd excel at, I saw where I had once hoped to live.

It was called the Pioneer. It didn't look this good then.

My father bought a car when we were teenagers so he could keep his job which had been transfered to Long Island, a place people moved to but didn't work in.

Occassionally we used the car for family outings which produced as much dread as staying home. As the car would bump across Broome Street toward some portal out of Manhattan I'd stare at the Pioneer Hotel sign wondering if I could run away there. Close enough to home that I could escape to the hotel by foot but offering a promise of my own portal out of one place and into hope.

Thank You East Village Corner!

Because of a barrage of spammers I created moderator approval on all comments. I still received comments but made sure they weren't offering to do different things to different body parts I didn't have.

I'm not sure how, but within the last week or so "post a comment" was removed entirely. Melanie of East Village Corner pointed this out to me which explained the total silence and did relieved me a bit of the fear I had grown stale and boring. Perhaps there might be some truth in that, but the lack of comments was due to a technical glitch.

I've corrected this so please feel free to comment, say hello, muse, reminisce, or say nothing at all. And I shall go back to worrying about everything I write and do.

Times Square On Valentine's Day

Everyone was snapping pictures.









Trying, like me, to capture smoke in their hands.

Sunday Memories: The Hand That Fed

Thirty years ago I met Morgan. She wasn't from New York but she moved through my city as its eyes, a witness to its private corners and secret worlds and painful revolution that soon became joyous mainstream. Her hands danced a ballet with her cameras and when decades later I got up enough nerve to pick up a camera my hands danced as hers did. After all, her hands had, for a long long time, been the only role models I ever had.

Backlands

Like Florence, I was never very comfortable with shiny lobbies and pretty marble granite stone fronts. They always felt like an insincere compliment from someone who didn't even care enough to really dislike me. Instead, in the back, admidst the sculpture of fire escapes, air ducts and bare brick was the relief of being told the truth.

The Picture I Could Take, The Pictures I Couldn't

The children looked old enough to be grandparents but each face was a younger mirror of the elderly person clinging to their arm. There was no way I could ask to take a picture ...

...the tall patrician woman with her equally independent mother,no matter how she tried, now unable to walk a few steps without help,

...the man, still looking like an eight year old, but now encased in middle aged weight and wear and tear, his mother now tinier, more frightened than he ever was sitting next to each other her feet not touching the floor.

... the man, sitting alone, maybe didn't have children or did but they didn't know that thousand of miles away his comfort was the hellos of the nursing staff who knew him well and asked how his day was as he waited to be seen.

Sunday Memories: Memory Lane

Old enough to be her mother, I watched the illusion of being cutting edge and all the booze being sold for too much money, while listening to many decades of my life in her smug self-loathing and complaints of life having passed her by at age 24.

A Day In The Life

morning


another surprise another loss


men meet in afternoon hallways


brief breath at end of day


evening parking strategies



home


five New Yorker waiting for dinner


deep morning

Guest Artist Dana: The Gift That Kept On Giving

PLEASE NOTE: A dress cost $25 in 1949.

***

An old friend sent my husband a holiday gift of two somber neckties from Sulka, the prestigious menswear store on Park Avenue. George wouldn’t wear either of them, even to a funeral, for fear of looking like the chief pall bearer.

So I decided to return them and cash them in. But Sulka, gracious to accept the return, would not give me cash. “We do not handle cash, Madame, just credit cards,” they explained. Instead, they gave me a gift certificate for $60.

I gave George the gift certificate and suggested he visit Sulka himself and choose something else.

“You choose,” he said. So I tried.

But polo shirts were $80 each and other items were equally above the value of the certificate. Then we decided to give the gift certificate to my father on his 55th birthday. He was flattered, but he in turn gave it to my brother on his 35th birthday.

When George’s birthday came around, the next September – lo and behold – my brother sent him the Sulka certificate, by now a bit ragged from age. One certificate had solved everyone’s gift problem.

So once again, I went back to Sulka’s and only had to add $20 to the certificate to buy my husband two pairs of woollen socks from Scotland. They were by far the most beautiful luxurious and warm socks he would ever own.

That is, until the moths got into them. The moths had good taste.

***

Other short works by Dana:

Wisdom of the Ages

Sunday Memories - Of Men and Mice... Part Three*

We went to the bathroom in the subway.

None of them looked like this.

Toilet paper was at a premium so it helped that Florence saved all the napkins from Nedicks. Sometimes there were doors. Other times there wasn't. And it didn't matter that there was a person in there that was talking to the wall or to someone next to the wall we just couldn't see.

Even if we didn't know their name or the name of whoever they were talking to, they were our neighbor. After all, we were all using the same bathroom.

*and now for the joke
MAN ONE: Are you a man or a mouse?
MAN TWO: Put a piece of cheese down and find out!

Of Men and Mice...Part One

Of Men and Mice...Part Two

Untitled Puzzlement

Watching a dedicated amateur pianist in an under-heated recital hall in the basement of an institution that somehow has become less important and much less funded that watching over-muscled men bash each other into early dementia and Parkinson while the whole world cheers them on.

Rain Delay on Thursday Post

Stay tune for afternoon post.

OK, So He's From New Jersey And Lives In Vermont. But He Still Rocks The Kazbar.

This is Ben.


Reprinted without permission from the Burlington Free Press:
BY SAM HEMINGWAY

Judge Ben Joseph said Monday he has decided to retire after 12 years serving as a jurist in courts in northern Vermont.

“It’s time to move on,” said Joseph, 67. “I’ve lost friends along the way. Life’s a short trolley ride and I want to retire while I still have a fair amount of energy.”

Joseph said he informed Vermont Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Reiber, and Administrative Judge Amy Davenport last month of his decision to leave the bench in June. He is currently working in the Grand Isle and Franklin County court circuits.

“It’s a tough job but it’s been very rewarding,” Joseph said. Known for his array of eye-catching hats, Joseph said he looks forward to spending more time working in his vegetable gardener and playing the violin.

The disclosure of his retirement plans comes just as Judge Christina Reiss leaves the Vermont bench to become a federal judge and Judge Howard VanBenthuysen heads off for deployment to Afghanistan as a member of the Vermont National Guard.

Patricia Gabel, a spokeswoman for the Vermont Supreme Court, said late Monday it is unclear when Joseph’s post will be filled.

“We haven’t heard of anything along the lines of the position being filled,” Gabel said. She said the judiciary has been under intense pressure to keep costs down. Under law judges are appointed by the governor with the advise and consent of the Vermont Legislature.

Joseph said he hoped cost reasons would not be used to delay a decision on his replacement.

“The judiciary accounts for 3 percent of the state’s budget,” he said. “The idea that there is fat in the judiciary budget is not supported by the facts.”

Joseph in the past has voiced criticism of proposed plans to close the courts in Grand Isle and Essex counties as a cost-saving measure.

“The fact that we don’t have enough days and enough resources to devote to disputes is really scandalous.” he told lawyers during a Grand Isle court proceeding in October, according to “Save Our Vermont Courts” blog item on the Internet he confirmed was accurate. “This court surely should not be closed down.”

Joseph’s judicial career has included involvement in a number of high-profile cases over the years, including 16 homicides filed at Vermont District Court in Burlington.

Joseph also presided over cases that led to guilty pleas for two suspects accused in a 2005 double murder in Montgomery.

He drew headlines in 2007 when he rejected a plea deal that called for no jail time for a teenager accused of shooting a farmer sitting in his tractor cab during hunting season. The case was later tried —twice — and resulted in a guilty plea on a manslaughter charge and a 1-5 year prison sentence.

Joseph also oversaw the first of a number of clerical sexual abuse trials held at Chittenden Superior Court in Burlington. Twice, lawyers for the state’s Roman Catholic diocese tried unsuccessfully to get Joseph removed as the presiding judge.

Joseph said he is particularly proud of a program he’s nurtured at criminal court in Burlington to have youths charged with drug and alcohol infractions to undergo treatment as a condition of release, prior to resolution of the criminal case that brought them to court.

Sunday Memories: When We Were Young*

It was our Christmas. And for us it happened twice a year because whoever's birthday it wasn't still got a couple of presents.

a troll doll
a guitar

The rustling of packages being snuck into the house, the sneaking around the closets

a real doll baby
an owl bank

figuring out ways to open the presents without leaving a trace, the desperate wait on the eve of turning older, the early morning rush into the living room or the kitchen to

books
books
books

the pile, the pile, the wonderful wonderful pile of presents, everything we could of wanted or hoped for or wished for and even if it wasn't it was thrilling a day where abundance showered upon us.

a real bra
a tin rolling fish
a microscope

There was no other time during the year this kind and delicious and rich.



*A.A. Milne

Compare And Despair Except When It Comes To Boston

All their subway ads were for medical experiments seeking human subjects and they had fewer lines than there were primary colors.

And everyone wore the same two styles of boots- professor LL Beanish outdoorsey ankle boots, or snow boots that looked like the Michelin Man's legs.

So what if the subway information guys were really nice and made sure I got the right metro card and went through the right gate. What's nice when you got cars full of style and panache and more ways to get where you're going than there are shades of pink in a paint store?