A Special Sunday's Vows: First In The Eyes Of God And Now In The Eyes Of New York

Doug and Shawn got married.



Friends asked if they could play music for the party.



We all couldn't stop hugging them...



and hugging them...



...and hugging them...



It was a celebration of what America was and could be.

For where else, Rev. Sparks asked us, could a Baptist preacher marry two Jewish men in a bar on the Lower East Side of New York.

And after they cut the cake....



...all that remained at the end of the night was love, honored by friends and family and now, finally, protected by the laws of the land. At least in New York State.



Altar photo: Celeste McClain

The Playground

Me and Rags hang out at the benches both watching all the other dogs play. I get extra big friendly with the other dog owners so that maybe their dogs will play with Rags or maybe they'll make their dogs play with Rags. Which I don't think works with dogs. (It also doesn't work with kids but nobody really wants to cop to that.)

Eventually Rags barks at the gate and we leave and I remind myself repeatedly it's not my childhood, it's just a dog park.

Special Announcement: ITCH #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT Includes The Writing On The Wall

itch, an evolving artist forum cum journal/zine included The Writing On The Wall in their issue, #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT.

One of the few hard-copy journals surviving in these challenging times, itch servces the community of dancers and other artists in Los Angeles and beyond. Check out their website and take them up on their invitation to grow with them!

Sunday Memories: Mamalochen

"I'm goin' ta Coney," I tell Dana.

"Why?" she asks.

"'cause this Master's student is doing a documentary on home and New York and nostalgia and stuff and she asked if we could go to Coney to shoot some video."

"Oh. You're going to your Mamalochen."

And when I see these three after their morning-beach-sit I remember my mother tongue and the heart that goes with it.

This Is Pat and Rags' New York

Pat and I have lived next door to one another since 1976. Rags moved in much later. She was Stephen's.

Pat's the real thing.

Grew up in the Bronx, worked the newspapers when newspapers were still newspapers and journalists were still journalists. Knows everybody who's anybody who made New York reporting the kind of reporting they make movies about, including all those tough guys that actors imitate when they have to play a "real" reporter.

Jupiter is still in love with Rags but completely confused about it ever since Rags stopped ignoring him and started visiting us. So now Rags runs into the apartment, Jupiter runs away, Rags sniffs all the rooms, Jupiter runs after him, Rags eats all Jupiter's food, Jupiter watches, Rags runs out, Jupiter follows and then after Rags goes home or to the park, Jupiter sits at her door and sniffs for about an hour.

This is home and this is our New York.

Home Home Home On The Range

At Queensboro Plaza getting the N or the Q because the 7 isn't going into Manhattan on the weekend

The same MTA guy there when I got on the 7 to Main Street three hours earlier, still there on my way back still shouting into the megaphone...

"I'm just delivering the information they can receive it or not" but admitting 9 hours of this well he was just going to have to pray and give it to God when he sang in church the next day...

...and the gaggle of boys, speaking something I thought at first Korean but one gets sassy with me thought I'd be too nervous to tell him yes his hair cut was very attractive...

...and when I tell him I had the same cut in the 1980s including the shade in the back he figures out I was born in the 60's...

"I'm good at math, I'm Asian" they're headed to a party, they're from Tibet, they're arguing about which stop to get off, there will be girls there and they keep asking me which of them I thought was cute ...

...he seems like a good looking kid" and the kid going "I'm 19!" and I go "I'm old enough to be your grandmother, you're a kid"...

...and them all laughing and pushing and fixing their many different hair cuts trying not to look too fussy, I say to the sassy kid "you want to know how to get a girl interested in you? Listen to her" and him nodding but hoping he doesn't have to do much more to get her to kiss him...

...and then after the boys rush out to somewhere in Queens finally on the home stretch a family - the mom, the older sister who looked just like the mom, the fierce little brother, and the middle sister who had asked the screaming MTA guy for directions because her mother didn't speak enough English...

They sit down and I knit another pair of socks and the girl asks me what I'm doing and who I'm giving them for and the older sister takes out their new pet, a beta fish they got at the 99 cent store but it cost $7 they named her Vanessa...

...and that little girl smiles and I tell her about my fishes Esmerelda, Harold and Skuzy and her fierce little brother comes over because he wants to listen and they all get off at 34th waving good-byes and I miss them already...

It's all home as I go home.

Sunday Memories: The Last Time We Met We Used Pen And Paper

Twenty-five years ago, we were all in China together. We wrote on thin pieces of paper mailed in pretty envelopes with rarely seen stamps to friends and family who got our news maybe two weeks later and by that time the homesick may have past, a heart may have been broken after notes of hope read, and new adventures had in a foreign language.

The Aftermath Dedicated To Florence

Florence always said "sitting down is half the battle."

I never really thought she was sharing, just instructing. Giving me another piece of artist theory like the sight singing she drilled me in or the ear training we did every day until I was a teenager with too much fury to cooperate.

But she wasn't just talking to me. She was talking to herself, cooing at her own terrors and reminding them that once that butt hit the chair the rest would show up. All she had to do was sit down.

"Half the battle is sitting down," I'd murmur to myself as I ran through the city day after day, too frightened to face packed pages while there were friends still awake and meals to eat and second-hand furniture to consider.

Sitting down then came deep in the night when the air was cooler, the streets were quieter and the desperation to not go a day without writing stronger than the desperation to run away. And once the butt hit the chair the rest showed up pouring out of moving fingers while piles of life were discarded or pushed away for other times when sitting was not such a joy.

Sitting and sitting and sitting and one night, deep and late, something was finally finished.

Special Announcement and Alert from Chelsea Hotel Blog

Living with Legends: The Hotel Chelsea Blog, one of the most important blogs in New York City, contacted me this morning and asked for help in spreading the word on their recent posting.

The Hotel Chelsea, during its years as a true haven for artists and their friends, would often accept art work in lieu of rent. The recent looting speaks of something much deeper than paintings being taken off walls by new management. How a society responds to looting is significant of how civilized it is. Just as how "the greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals" (Mahatma Gandhi). Both are expressions of our hearts and souls and our respect for expression and life.

Thieves and butchers only work well in darkness and secrecy. So please help spread this post. To friends, neighbors, fellow artists, family, blogs and bloggers.

*photo by Hotel Chelsea Blog

Sunday Memories: Nina

Baby Nina

Oh it was exciting when Nina arrived.

The announcement didn't leave the refrigerator until she was deep into grade school and the stains threatened to eat up Bob and Carola's faces.

During toddler years, her finding the volume control on the remote meant any minute we'd hear a blast of 'Talking Heads' or some TV show. "YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF..." always reminds me of her. Just those words. At full volume.

Sax lessons were sweet to listen to. She had some swing. Then she switched to piano. Her recital at Third Street Music I kvelled the whole piece through.

Woman Nina

Now, while her folks are at a wedding, we hang out and watch PARENTHOOD, drink beer, eat Chinese food and talk about Lautrec and biology and having kids and gossip about the actors and the transferring of credit and all the while cliches whirled in my head and occasionally leaked out making me sound like every old lady on the lower east side.

I remember you when you were just this big

You have time you're young.

Oy.

There Is So Little Here That Didn't Travel Through Time And Space...

...to come together and make a home.

The chairs from Florence the table Dad made the lamp a gift from someone moving the sofa offered up for free the shower curtains from a now-closed store the plants from neighbors the Buddha from hope

In The Dog Days Of Summer...

...the Cat stays cooooooool. Just like a cooooooool cat does.

Sunday Memories: Otis's Ladder

It was left in the apartment early on, I think in the 70's. Otis brought it up to fix something or maybe I borrowed it. But it remained after he left.

A hulking presence - like a six year old boy who didn't understand why he was 6'8" when all the other kids in kindergarten were kids size - this ladder moved from corner to corner in the odd shaped hall, never quite blending into the wall, but still becoming part of the scenary.

However, its height was necessary in an old apartment of ceilings beyond reach and so it hulked about. At some point its rungs held the excessive number of shopping bags I felt were too pretty to throw away, but too pretty to use.

It was used maybe a couple of times a year when a bulb had to be replaced or the even rarer event of changing a light fixture. It didn't matter what you were using it for. The minute you stepped on it it wobbled and swayed, even if you were on the lowest rung. Only Joni had the presence of balance to meander about on the very top.

As space within and without opened and an old home cleared for new welcomes, this ladder, covered with history from before I moved in 35 years ago, was quietly taken to a storage closet, my name now taped to it. No one, but me, would remember it had once been Otis's.

They Don't Have Real Food Where She Lives

Cuz Patty needed deli and she only had a few days in New York.

Deli is in her blood. She comes from the same grandparents I come from, the ones on the Lower East Side surviving diaspora and poverty, domestic violence and disease.

Where she lives now, pastrami comes in plastic and is served with mayo on white bread. And the only blintzes in a ten mile radius is frozen and made of tofu.

So in 100 degree weather, we trekked to the Second Avenue Deli which used to be on 10th and 2nd but the landlord raised the rent and now it's on 33rd and 3rd and the minute we walked in we smelled the smells of food we knew like we knew the names of our ancestors.

2:17 pm


2:23 pm

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles....

...sometimes begins with a couple of words.

Other times it begins with a couple of feet and some really cute shoes.

My team who have walked with me into all our new lands.

Sunday Memories Encore aka it is too hot to write: WHAT WE DID ON OUR SUMMER VACATION

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Florence, Atlantic City, 196something


Vacations were for other people.  For us, summer was a stand-off between our need to have something to do during the day and our parents’ need to not have to think about it. Everything really worked much better when we were at school.  He was at work and she was at the piano.

Time stops for no man or pianist for that matter and neither do the seasons. Summer came. Repeatedly.

I am not sure when it started and when it ended - it didn’t last long - but for a couple of years, Atlantic City became our Riviera. And with the recent purchase of a car needed to get my father to his job out on Long Island, it was suddenly accessible.

The exotic motel we stayed at had an ice machine - the push of a lever and a cascade of perfectly formed ice cubes tumbled down - not the bitterly small, thin ones we made in aluminum trays.  And right below our small balcony was a real swimming pool -  not the huge ocean of Pitt Street Pool, but small and shallow enough to paddle across and splash about.  It even had a fancy swirling shape.   It was DESIGNED like from out of a Jacque Tati movie.

Those few days in such a luxurious setting - whatever was or wasn’t happening in this family didn’t matter -  there were things to delight in - the beautifulness of the old boarding houses and cheap motels pushing the battered boardwalk into the sea, all the salt-water taffy stands in every flavor in the world, all the magic peelers transforming radishes into flowers. 

The beaches were  clean like the Beatle’s movie HELP, not a cigarette or empty beer bottle in sight.  And the wonderful waves didn’t smell bad.  And the big seafood restaurant had fancy chowder crackers in beautiful little seashell shapes.  Beat the penny pretzel we got on Delancey Street any day, hands down.

The four of us in one room, two beds, no memory of how my sister and I negotiated sudden close space but we slept not missing the familiar rumble of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Time stops for no man and no family either.  We all moved out to other worlds, leaving Florence behind in the former home of the family.  Not sure what my sister or my father did for their summer vacation, but Florence’s became day trips to Coney and, in between shit jobs, I worked for room and board in a fancy commune upstate. 

And soon after, Atlantic City got torn down and shiny casino hotels we could have never afforded took the place of those old motels and boarding houses.

Still, there was an unexpected silver lining.  Searching for eager gamblers who didn’t drive, the casinos sent buses to the Lower East Side with an offer hard to refuse - take our free bus to our fancy shiny casino hotel and we’ll give you $10 to gamble.

Surrounded by shabby men of all sizes, religions, races and cigarette brands, Florence, bathing suit under her jeans, beach towel in hand, grabbed that free trip to Atlantic City  - $10 to splurge on a cold beer and a sandwich she didn’t have to cook?  Now that was a vacation.

GUEST NEW BLOG: EN-LIGHTEN UP!

FROM OUR NEW BLOGGER, MIMI

What drives people to examine their society and question the status quo?

As events in France brought the French Revolution to its climax, many people, particularly members of the Church, the Monarchy and the Aristocracy, blamed the ideas of the Enlightenment on the turbulent events.

But our very own Republic, the United States of America, emerged in the last quarter of the 18th century because of Enlightenment ideas.

So what were these “powerful” ideas that coalesced over a century of trans-national discussions and debates? When Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” the fact was nothing could have been less evident. This idea would have been as foreign to the man standing behind the plow as to the man who called himself a lord or duke.

Jefferson was sending up a test balloon within his 18th century society. Given the current events in the United States, the hostility, the polarization and anger… I wonder whether Jefferson’s test balloon would have survived long. Today American policy often seems confused. So let’s review some of the key ideas from which modern European and American society emerged. It’s time for Americans to En-lighten-up!



And what better place to start than with a 17th century Dutch masterpiece, painted in 1650, by Emanuel de Witte. As the title indicates “Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft,” it portrays the interior of an old church, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. The scene celebrates Holland’s new-found freedom from Spain and Catholic rule. The bigger picture reveals that the Dutch had begun to define society in terms of the individual, and human achievement on earth. The emphasis was placed on science and commerce. It was now incumbent on each citizen to educate him or her self, and to participate in local politic. The Dutch participated in their society as equals.

Three separate scenes in this painting celebrate this spirit. First, this is a church yet there seems to be no opulent ceremonies. The space has been transformed into a town square. Two boys scribble graffiti on a column. Two men are engrossed in conversation, while a woman with a small child, holding a straw baskets, stops to greet a man. All the while, a dog is running and barking while the other dog stops, raises his leg near a column base and pees.

How does this scene encapsulate Enlightenment principles? Because, first and foremost, the focus is on the individual, individuals (men and woman) who were meeting together as equals, to discuss earthly matters. Information and education were now essential. Following these principles, the Dutch championed the free exchange of ideas within a State that was separate from the Church and became known for their freedom of speech and press. This, for the United Provinces and the first Republic on the continent was a golden time.

And so followed such a time for the United States of America and for France... and perhaps now for all countries throughout the world.

***
WHO IS MIMI?


My parents were swept up in the events during the 1950's that led to Algerian independence from France. I was born in Paris in the late 1960’s.

My childhood was spent in Algiers during a time of great optimism when the country played host to all major third-world independence movements, including the Black Panthers from Oakland, California, and when there was faith that colonialism would end, poverty and racism would end, and that peoples all over the world would hold their destinies in their own hands.

A Brooklyn girl since teenagehood, I have a Master’s in Art History and a Master's in Modern European History with a special focus on understanding the ideas that brought about the French Revolution, the mother of all Revolutions.

A CAROL BURNETT FUN AND JOY BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR DOUG!!!

DOUG RAISED $146 FOR THE SALK INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH!!!!!

From Doug:

Dear Friends at The Salk Institute,

Last night, I hosted a party for my birthday and, in lieu of presents, we asked for donations to The Salk Institute in memory of Carrie Hamilton. We love Carol Burnett, whose humor has helped us through the best and most challenging parts of our lives. We're choosing to show our gratitude to her by sending this contribution to your institute, which took such good care of her daughter. Thank you for all you do.

Have a well-lived day,

Doug

***
Happy Birthday, Doug!!! And thank you so so so much for joining the world-wide movement to say thank you to Carol Burnett, raise money for organizations Ms. Burnett supports and have fun and joy at a party!!!!!!


Click on any highlighted word and learn more about Doug and about the Fun and Joy Movement!

***

Doug's Official Website

Sunday Memories: A CowGrrl Grows In Brooklyn

She is the rare bright moment in a long, bad memory.

Florence had just gotten sick and days and weeks were scrambled into bloody battles of panic and fear that felt like driving down a treacherous mountain road in a hurricane with your eyes closed.

Somehow in the midst of our lives shattering, I got out for a free evening. I remembered I wore something pretty and even took a pretty handbag. I was determined to reclaim some part of something called 'hope' or 'I do have a life' or anything but what I did day in and day out.

There was a barbecue/fundraiser for some radical literary magazine in the backyard of some one's 20-something street studio apartment. The old school of writers were there and many were old. I knew no one except one person and she was busy either panicking about the reading or honing in potential sources of nourishment both living and dead.

In my rush to wear different clothes than the ones I wore taking care of Florence, I had forgotten how much I hated parties and how painfully inept I was at speaking to strangers.

I grabbed a soda and out of the corner of my eye saw a woman so open and self-confident, she seriously had it going on. I thought "she's the coolest person here." But couldn't ever imagine getting to know her. She was, in friends-ville, out of my league.

I decided to be zen-like in the hell I suddenly found myself in. I sat down on a rock in the tiny backyard and pretended to just be. How or why she sat down next to me I don't know but sometimes the universe is kind.

It wasn't just the flattery that she knew my work or even liked it. It wasn't just the delight in finding a writer who could carry on a conversation about writing with enthusiasm and clarity. It wasn't just the surprise of hearing interesting ideas about cowboys and westerns and all that American stuff I was clueless about. It was the delight and joy of finding unexpected connection in a time nothing connected.

Years later, she had a barbecue in her own backyard. All the worst things that could have happened since that day have happened. But one or two really wonderful things have happened as well.

Meet Bucko.

His Ten Year Love Affair With A Keyboard

Tom


Even though we all knew Tom worked for the telephone company, he was a writer like the rest of the tenants in the building. Mostly rock and political criticism.

Then he retired from his day job. Dreams of writing all day instead of working all day floated before his eyes. "I had this plan," he said. "But things came up."

Like any writer facing any clock that counts seconds, hours, days and years, the desperation to finish something, anything was stronger than any interruptions.

Somehow, over ten years in between...

*family demands
*political upheaval
*political action
*the ebb and flow of laundry and shopping
*maybe in the evening
*sometimes in the morning
*when one of the kids moved back in
*when the kid moved back out
*with a few secretive trips to Ohio and Pittsburgh thrown in
*and skillful deflections of investigations from children and spouse concerned that a reenactment of The Shining was occurring in the little room off the kitchen,

....fingers found the keyboards to one of those big bulky computers and then to a laptop. And then a book got written.

But that's how it is in this building filled with writers, some with day jobs, some without, but all with fingers demanding keyboards no matter what the interruption. Like Tom said, "Here, you feel you're doing the norm by sitting and writing."

Tom's book, An Inconvenient Amish Zombie Left Behind The Da Vinci Diet Code Truth is now in the world. And in this building, a book is up there with a kitten being adopted and a baby being born.

***

An Inconvenient Amish Zombie Left Behind The Da Vinci Diet Code Truth

Goya? Bad Diets? Mud Hens? The Rapture? The War of 1812? Global Warming? Political Conspiracy? Violence on our borders? The lost history of Soft Rock?

Follow the non-stop action from the museums and cafes of Paris to the fast food rest stops and motels of swing state Ohio, as past and future collide to creat an apocalyptical present where people from all walks of life are pulled into a conflict that will determine the fate of the planet.

An Inconvenient Amish Zombie Left Behind The Da Vinci Diet Code Truth is a full length novel mash-up social justice response to the Left Behind series and pop culture critique of The Da Vinci Code with one eye on global warming and the other eye on every social trend and best seller in the last twenty years.


Amazon Kindle ($4.34)

Barnes and Noble Nook ($4.34)

iTunes for the iPad etc ($4.99)

McNally Jackson Bookstore ($16)

Amazon paperback ($16)


***

Tom Smucker is a retired telephone Central Office Technician who has written for over four decades about pop culture and politics. See www.tomsmucker.net for a sampling. He served for many years on the board of Deacons and Elders of his church, and remains active in his union. This is his first novel.

His collection of poetry, Story Poems and Polemics, will be published in the fall.

When One Door Closes And You're Headed Toward The Next Door Opening...

... sometimes the hallway in between isn't that bad.

SPECIAL ENCORE FOR A SPECIAL PRIDE DAY: The Lionesses Rule The Pride

Posted while Florence was declining, I was in touch with the woman she had been in love with, involved with and in war with since they were teenagers. Today, with gay marriage now legalized, I wonder what their life would have been like if only the world had loved their love as they had.

**


1982
All the other gay seniors rode. In the convertible, on the bus, in wheelchairs.

But not Florence.

She walked.

She was in her 60s. She had waited her entire life to walk down a street as who she really was. And she wasn't going to give up that walk for anybody or anything.

Sunday Memories: Reading, Writing and Arithmatic

Middle row, third from the left.



Yvon went to some school in Queens. I went to PS 110. We both can read and write, but I can't spell. Sometimes I can add. Subtraction, a bit more iffy.

Hanging out one windy afternoon on the benches by St. Marks Church, him sick of everyone on the MTA, me sick of my writing block, and both of us sick of his smoking, we started chatting with the occupant on the next bench over.

She went from school to school, teaching teachers to teach which meant kids were being taught. When did learning become fun?, I wondered. How come they didn't teach us that way? Why couldn't I go back in time and learn to learn all over again? All I remember was dread and well, more dread.

Except one time.

Mrs. Fass, who lived in the neighborhood, was my first grade teacher. I was out sick the day the first-graders got the first grade readers. Everyone started reading that day. When I came back to school, unable to decipher the words in this new book, I dove straight into misery and got more and more lost. Finally, Mrs. Fass sat with me and, other than the word 'squirrel', unlocked the mystery of reading to me.

For the next week, every day after school ended, I would walk up to Mrs. Fass's desk and thank her for teaching me to read.

Following In Florence's Footsteps

It's rarely a thrill to notice you have become just like your parents.

Usually it's during one of those not-so-flattering moments when you hear yourself say something or watch yourself do something and remember once upon a time you swore, swore, swore you'd never be like them but here you are be-ing just like them...

But how about those other moments when you notice you have become just like your parents?

I remember one day years and years and years ago during a visit to Florence - she was in her late sixties - watching her, as she held a little notebook filled with instructive notes, mesmerize me with tapping I didn't know lived in her feet. Growing up in Fred and Ginger movies, she had always wanted to tap. She alluded that it was a challenge to go to that class - maybe because she was older than everyone, maybe because she was reclaiming a dream too late. But she went until she couldn't anymore.

Facing the rest of my fifties, I decided to do what I had always wanted to do. It wasn't Fred and Ginger I wanted in my feet, but salsa music, what I heard all my life drifting onto Broome Street from the tenements, filling the neighborhood's bodegas, or blasting out of big cars zipping under the Williamsburg Bridge.

So I started taking a weekly free salsa lesson in the neighborhood. I may be old enough to be the other students' mother, and yeah sometimes sitting and watching the guys ask elegant, beautiful, young women to dance feels like I'm back in a junior high school nightmare.

But I am like my mother. Gotta dance.

Some Like It Hot. Others Not So Much.

It isn't even that hot but the cat has already left to summer in his favorite spot.

Sunday Memories: New Appassionata

Ludwig comes to life! in Nancy's living room



The thing about growing up under a Steinway is that the music is as intimate as the air you breathe or the punches you exchange with any given sibling. It's just life.

But I didn't like that life that much and took much delight as a young adult corrupting any beloved piece of either parents by inverting its key. This meant a sober, sad sounding piece would at the turn of a single note become a happy beer-drinking polka, and the trolloping joy of a sonata or symphony would just as easy become a funeral dirge. This elicited rage and reprimands from both parents who revered the great works and the great composers. Such responses of course only elicited more delight from me.

However, at some point it's just not nice to piss off an old person, especially one you are related to. So I stopped messing with their music, and other than an occasional indulgence of PDQ Bach's play by play of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony I moved on to disco, funk, salsa and rock.

If only I had known there were others like me. Luckily, like almost all things in life, it is never too late to find kindred souls. One perfect sunny, windy, beautiful day, friends and strangers crowded into the small theater of Nancy's living room for a dress rehearsal and went on a wild ride with Ludwig van Beethoven as he attempted to right wrongs, settle the score with Mozart and terrorize a stage manager into being a cast of thousands.

LUDWIG LIVE!
June 30 to August 30

at the Seven Hills Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts

This Used To Be Normal

3 A.M.


I heard male laughter in between meandering banter, but unlike the party kids who wandered below my window these voice didn't go away. Then the cat thought it was time to play or feed him or do something vertical. That's when I realized there was unusual activity happening on the corner.

The oblong plastic shape at first looked like a body bag, but there was no police tape wrapped around the scene and the cops were way too relaxed. Then a head at the end of the oblong shape popped up and began arguing with the cops. People coming home from the 24 hour grocery store or back from a bar stepped around the trussed up man, trying really hard to be nonchalant, but dying to check out something they heard used to happen this neighborhood all the time years ago, but now only seen on crime drama tv shows.

In Honor of and with Gratitude for: The Carol Burnett Fun and Joy Project

I wanted to say thank you to Carol Burnett for everything I had gotten watching her show and singing along with the soundtrack from Once Upon A Mattress.

I told everyone: "She has been my role model (along with Madame Curie who died from radiation poisoning and Captain Kirk who is a fictional character)."

I also wanted to lighten the load of what we artists, every day, go through. Writing, auditioning, risking, attempting, and facing rejection over and over again, wears and tears. Every so often, we need to recharge and rejuvenate our spirit.

So I came up with the Carol Burnett Fun and Joy Party for Writers and Other Miserable Artist.

I put together a tea party and invited a bunch of friends to join me in some fun and joy and a chance to say thank you to Carol Burnett.

On Sunday, we gathered for the first one. No one really knew anyone except Yuki and Dizery but within minutes of dishing food and dishing dish we were all laughing and talking, sharing and learning, and eating tons of delicious foods we had all contributed to the table.

The best part was showing Dizery, who had never seen Carol Burnett's variety show, clips from the show, and laughing hard, describing to her and each other what the show meant to us.

Gathering together and sharing fun and joy was wonderful. I also asked that we all say thank you to Carol Burnett in a very easy, simple way.

Carol Burnett's daughter, Carrie Hamilton died of cancer. A theater space in the Pasadena Playhouse is named after her and the Playhouse has a program dedicated to at-risk youths. I asked that each one of us send IN THE AMOUNT OF OUR LAST TAKE OUT OR ORDER UP OR WHAT WE SPENT FOR THE TEA a check to:

The Pasadena Playhouse

or

The Salk Institute

and put on our checks "In honor of Carol Burnett/ Carrie Hamilton".

And now I ask all of you, dear readers, to do what I did.

• Gather your friends who know or don't know one another

• fill with wonderful fun food a table or a picnic blanket or any other place a potluck or meal could happen
  

• laugh and share and connect to what brings joy into your life

• At the end of your gathering, IN THE AMOUNT OF YOUR LAST TAKE OUT OR ORDER UP OR WHAT YOU SPENT FOR THE GATHERING write a check to:
  

Salk Institute for Biological Studies
10010 North Torrey Pines Road,
La Jolla, CA 92037

Pasadena Playhouse
Campaign Manager
Pasadena Playhouse
39 S. El Molino Ave
Pasadena, CA 91101

And after your own gathering ask each person there if they would go home to their friends and family and put on their own celebration and send their own donations to Salk or Pasadena.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if from table to table across the land, we said thank you to someone who shared her fun and her joy and lightened our load as we went through the wear and tear of our days?

Pass it forward and then send me a picture of your table or your friends or anything you want to share from your own gathering.

Sunday Memories: The Door

I didn't know the youth center was named after a verse in the new testament. When, in 1972, I called their hot-line off a card someone had handed me, all I knew was I had a bottle of aspirin in my hand and was thinking that if I took all of them, something would give.

Once there, all I knew was that from 4 or 5 in the afternoon until 10 at night it was the best hangout in the world - cute guys from every neighborhood in the city, plus runaways from like other states none of us New Yorkers knew anything about, but who cared because did I mention those boys were cute? For a thirteen year old girl from the Lower East Side, it was heaven. Only in hindsight, years later, did I understand how this youth center kept me out of serious trouble, both from myself and from others.

The youth center got bigger and moved from 12th Street and Fifth Avenue (now Gotham Bar and Grill) to 18th Street and Sixth Avenue (now Bed, Bath & Beyond) and from there to Broome Street. By that time I had aged out.

Still, before I turned 22, it was this place that made sure I stayed healthy with free medical, got fed dinner four nights a week after I was on my own but didn't know how to cook and more important than anything, made sure that when my landlady tried to illegally evict me, I got legal help and was able to keep my lease and my home.

Thirty-nine years later, I get to walk through my door now because there was a Door to walk through then.

"...Just Like I Pictured It"

In another state of mind and place, a little glass snapshot of New York was packed up and sent back to the view from whence it came. Its creator was leaving the center of the country and returning to her original home where new views await.

True Love Takes Wing

See, I thought that camera lens meant there must be someone really famous nearby. So I asked who it was.

It was the most important celebrity in the world and he lived right across the street.

"Why do you do this?" I asked the photographer.

"Love," he answered.

Sunday Memories: Encore: In The Still Of The Night The Sound Of Silence Revisited

original post: Tuesday, August 17, 2010



It started as an unconscious homage to Florence.

During the hot days, she, like many of our neighbors, would prop open her front door and let whatever breeze existed waft in from the stairwell's window.

With so many opened doors our different lives would also drift up and down the stairs, the sounds and smells and conversations, the T.V. going, all weaving in and out making a village out of thirty-five apartments.

One night, decades later in a much smaller apartment building, I opened the door during a non-stop heat wave, and a breeze blew in and as it came in, the cat ran out, the cool of 100 year old marble floors and walls too much to resist.

And soon that door, like Florence's, stayed open as the cat and I, wandering the stairs in the middle of the night, listened to our neighbors sleep, hummed along with all the air conditioners in the air shaft and sat in the still and the silence.

I miss the normalcy of open doors during hot days and sleepless nights, and when my door is closed because the neighbors are awake, I miss my mother.

Another Escape

When the night got too hot Florence or Seymour or their neighbors or friends or the whole neighborhood would escape to the roof or the fire escape or even the park and sleep. I know they dragged the mattresses onto the fire escape and sometimes the roof, but how did they sleep in the park? Or did the cool breeze mitigate the concrete ground?

These days, parks close before midnight, roofs are locked and alarmed and it's against the law to be on a fire escape unless of course you are escaping a fire. Quiet cool escape becomes creative. Like for instance the gym of the university Seymour went to because it was one of the few that would accept Jewish students. There, an hour before it closes, and empty of healthy young people who don't fume at a lack of stomach muscles, escape beckons on fancy machines that make heated worries of the day steam off.

After The One Hour Of Spring...

...it was summer.


And toes emerging from coverlets coaxed the cat out from behind the toilet.

Sunday Memories: It Takes A City To Build A Village

Over the last couple of weekends, Bill began the gentle process of emptying The Flower Stall. Any reasonable donation offered for any plant would be given to Seneca Village, a project Cornell loved and supported. A steady stream of neighbors and strangers came stopped by the beloved old shop, as plants were adopted and checks were written.

Other offerings were made as well. Memories, copies of blog postings, and this photo, taken December 23, 1967.

***

The Flower Stall is usually open on Saturday, but Bill is there on and off during the week as well. Please stop by with your checkbook or money order made out to The Seneca Village and take home one of Cornell's beautiful plants.

THE FLOWER STALL
143 East 13th Street
NYC

Mishpocheh Across Time And Place

Antiquity in the Metropolitan Museum, 2011



Mimi's hair is like that on the Roman lady statutes she teaches us about and Leilani easily gets cute young men to take pictures of us together. We wander through centuries of worlds, from China to Africa, from Rome to many parts of America.

Later, over hot dogs and pretzels in Central Park, we wander through now and then, musing about our younger days, pondering our present lives, and cooing over adorable dogs rescued by now-adoring owners.

If We Dug A Hole Deep Enough, Would We Be Able To Return To Our Twenties?

It had been 25 years since we all met in China.

Guangzhou 1986



Mimi and me from New York City with attitude to match, and Leilani from Hawaii and England and Australia and Indonesia and other places who floated through each country with a graceful elegance any New York girl would have killed for.

Coney 2011


And now each one of us searches the other's face, wondering where the hell the proof of those 25 years hides. Maybe we are more mature, happier, kinder, smarter, confident, but we look exactly the same to one another.

Sunday Memories: On The Cusp Of Marilyn

China
1986



Nixon went to China in 1972.

The City College Study Exchange went in 1986.

When we left the Guangzhou University Campus for a sight-seeing excursion, we were stared at, touched, followed and talked about (in Chinese) because we were often the first Westerns ever seen. I decided at some point it was just practice for when I was a superstar. (The internet hadn't been invented yet so writers were still revered.)

The streets were still filled with bicycles and very few cars and taxis that went even too fast for me. Crates of dogs were for sale, snakes were killed and cooked and served right then and there, and road side late dinner got served while sitting on wooden benches or crates. Hand holding between males and females was frowned upon until the sun came down. So during the day, it was normal to see men soldiers walking hand in hand.

If there was more than one western-like hotel in the city, I don't remember. The White Swan, an understated Vegas-like explosion on the idea of fancy luxury, had a waterfall or big fountain in the lobby. More importantly it had a western style all-you-can-eat brunch buffet on the weekends. We would bring big bags on the couple of occasions we'd splurge on homesickness and food.

On Halloween, we watched the university students dance in circles, the boys with the boys holding hands and the girls with the girls holding hands. I don't remember the music one of the exchange students had brought, but the Chinese students were lit up, liberated by a rock and roll beat. I had come as Marilyn Monroe and when I asked one of the students if he recognized who I was dressed as, he said, "Yourself?"

Of course, these days China is not like that at all. And now anything you see here in the United States that looks like Marilyn Monroe probably has been made in China.

New York Underground: Millenium Style

14th Street
11:20 pm

Another Monday Night With Eighth Avenue

10:48 pm