A Hundred Million Miracles Are Happening Everyday

The old staircase seeing the light of day
after 20 years of being boarded up

I always hated 13th Street.  The sidewalk was too narrow.  Since the laundrymat was close to the corner I didn't really have to walk far along it.

One time in 1977 or maybe 78, we had a handsome Dutch visitor and we all took the Radical Walking Tour through the East Village (it was posted in the Village Voice and sounded really fun).

It rained the entire time but we dutifully followed the "tour guide" who really just loved history and gave the $5 a head to the Peace Building War Resistant League on Lafayette and Bleeker.

On 13th Street there was a nice enough building where Emma Goldman once lived.   There was something about her being naked but I don't quite remember.

the program of the Radical Walking Tour seeing the light of day after 37ish years in a folder

Near enough to her doorstep was the hell-hole building and even someone dumb like me knew it was not a nice place and there was no need to walk past it.

Then it got boarded up in the 1990s and that was that.  The pigeons and rats were happy.  The people moving into the condos across the street, I don't know.

One could only assume that boarded-up building would one day house very rich people living in very rich apartments and telling their friends the building used to be an SRO, a crack house, a whore house and very very dangerous.  As if they were the ones walking on the wild side.

So I didn't give the old building much thought.  I still hated walking down 13th Street, but did anyway - a friend lived there and sometimes the Mariner insisted it was shorter than walking home another way.

And then EV Grieve posted something surprising.

That hell-hole wasn't going to the highest bidder.

It was going to become a haven, a safe place, a home for LBGT kids who didn't have a haven, a safe place, a home.  It was going to become the Bea Arthur Residence for LGBT kids.

After so many years watching everything turn into something none of us could afford...

Suddenly 13th Street looked so beautiful.

**
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Emma Goldman: The Most Dangerous Woman in America

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Sunday Memories: Up the Down Escalator

 The old wooden escalator at Macy's still clacking away

Well, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time. 

And looking back over fifty years I very much admire my maybe five, maybe six, possibly seven year old self for thinking oh what the hell, why not. 

Which is why I made a running dash up the Macy's down escalator.  And I think I would have made it to the top if my father hadn't dashed after me and tackled me down and dragged me off. 

There was damage to assess.  Not me.  I was fine.  Pissed I hadn't experienced my own personal Coney Island ride right there in the middle of  Macy's.

No.  The damage was much more serious than my disappointment.  My father, the kind of dandy one becomes when you can finally afford nice clothes after abject poverty, was furious.  The pants of his suit, a very nice one thank you, had gotten ripped on the moving steps.

And getting them carefully rewoven cost mightily and I did not hear the end of it for years.  Especially when we went shopping at Macy's.

My adulthood budget didn't allow for buying much new.   So my visits to Macy's were far and few between.  But recently with gift certificates and wedding money, new towels beckoned. 

And so did my old adventure...

 So tempting, so tempting....


**
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Real to Reel

When my father headed out of New York with hopes for a better life in a different climate,  he left behind an entire life in reel-to-reel tapes - the audio history of the dreams he had kept for Florence and the possibility of her artistry having a stage in this world - and the Beatles recording made off a borrowed record that became my refuge from the failure of those dreams.

The boxes, tucked high away in a cupboard for about thirty years, were finally brought down recently.  Technology could now make them into little bits of bits.

But under all the tapes was a record. 

In those long, long ago days - before digital was in a sci-fi movie, before voice mail was invented, before youtube was youtube and not a tube for you - before all that, if you wanted to send your voice to someone you loved or let the world hear your thoughts, you made a record in a booth in a record store and talked of dreams and hopes for a better life.

Like my father did for his public speaking course.

**
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"Slow Down. Now What Do You See?"

John got all of us to breathe.

He also got us to look.

Then he got us to breathe again.

Then he got us to tell each other what we saw.  (But we had to keep breathing.)

And when that happened we saw things we would have never seen if we had still been rushing by.

Then he sent us off to breathe and look.

And if I hadn't done that, this wouldn't have happened.

Agnes Varda on Sixth Avenue

Of course the minute this happened, I stopped breathing immediately.

Then I babbled incoherently.

Then I went back to John and wept.

**
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Sunday Memories Turn into New Announcements

This is Karla P. skyping from Gdansk, Poland.

This is me taking a picture for Adrian while laughing really hard. 

This is proof that a broken heart years ago could lead to joy today.

Announcing "Fucking Him" as the Grand Prix winner in the found footage category of the 2015 Interference Festival,  Gdansk, Poland.

**
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Traveling at the Speed of Time

Francisco came to visit again, daughter and granddaughters in tow. 

Francisco in 2011

He wanted to show them that spot on 12th Street where his adventure began. 

He wanted to show them the city that had allowed an 18 year old kid, literally fresh off a boat, not knowing a soul, to build a life he had only dreamed of.

Francisco in 2013

He wanted to show them how they became what they became, extraordinary people who spoke several languages and had traveled the world, now working in professions that called forth the greatest of talents and the sharpest of minds.

Francisco in 2014

He wanted to show them... him.

Francisco began here.  And when he returns to where he began...

Francisco in 2015 sitting in an apartment that may have been 

the very apartment he visited that first day in New York in 1947

... he travels at the speed of time.  

***
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Voices From Between The Cracks

The Borreros family has lived on 12th Street since the 1940’s.

Andres' grandmother, his grandfather, his father, his aunt Cecilia…

Andres on the stoop

Working hard, raising kids, doing the best they could.  Their apartment rent protected because the government did something to keep working people working in the city and living in affordable homes.

It was the basement apartment where the windows just peeked over the sidewalk.  Andres and his cousins would watch the feet go by.

That was a long, long time ago.

In those days the only visitors to this neighborhood were people driving fast from west to east and then east to west and in between picking up a blow-job or some heroin or whatever it was they couldn’t get except in this neighborhood.

In those days “online” meant the line outside the bordello of a beat-up old building, all the Con Ed guys and all the Telephone Guys waiting for their turn.

And there was no mouse to click to get into the gambling dens – a mouse was still a small rat and if you wanted to enter anything you had to knock. Or know somebody who knocked.

Between those cracks of lines and doors and fast driving cars were families. Like the laundry mat family and the shoemaker family and Olga’s family and the lady who sold fine straw hats but kept no cash in the store and the Open Pantry. And Andres’ family.

All those families? They made a neighborhood. Sure, it was hard growing up but the kids grew up well and when Andres’ grandmother cooked, she cooked for the whole building.

And then, change seeped in through tiny cracks until the cracks were huge. The drugs went inside, the gambling went online and hooking was something you could order with the click of a mouse that wasn’t a small rat.

But Andres’ family was still there. Only now it wasn’t the bordellos or the drug dealers living in between the cracks of a tough neighborhood. It was Andres and his family living between the cracks of a wealthy neighborhood. In prime real estate. Slightly inconvenient to landlords who conveniently forgot how families like Andres kept the neighborhood a neighborhood as crime swirled around them.

Nonetheless, Aunt Cecilia stayed on, working as a front-desk secretary at an animal medical center for 43 years so she could retired, enjoy herself, live out her life in her own home at her own convenience.

But when shit hits the fan between those cracks, it’s like falling into a moving avalanche. Aunt Cecilia got sick. And the short rehab in one of the “best of the worst” nursing home turned into stage four bedsores, a stroke and poor care.

Aunt Cecilia and her friend at dinner

And when that happened the landlord, always waiting for that crack to swallow up inconvenience, insisted rent was not being paid, tenants were not living where they should and eviction was necessary.

And now from deep inside cracks of running back and forth and fighting with the nursing home to give his aunt enough care so she is well enough to return to her own apartment and working on weekends and being denied medical services, all Andres wants to do is make sure his aunt Cecilia gets to die in her own home at her own convenience.

Andres goes to court on October 5th. He is going to fight falling between the cracks. This is what you do when you grow up in this neighborhood and know the cracks are for other things besides hard working people.


**
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Andres Borreros

Home

Sunday Memories of Rare Friendships: Our Open Pantry, Our Neighborhood

It Was Olga's New York

Sunday Memories of the Millions of BurgersAnd the Millions of Moments

Adrian and Alon came to share another burger with us. 

The millions of burgers, the millions of talks, the million heartbreaks, breakthroughs, wonderment, challenges, and more burgers brought us:

*Unexpected partners
*Living around the world
*Homes built on dreams and home built for dreaming
*Unexpected marriages
and
*story emerging from words and images and video and talking and millions and millions of nows and...

Announcing the acceptance of the Moed/Garcia Gomez collaboration, Fucking Him to the following festivals:

Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland
Interference Festival, Poland
3rd Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition, Ireland
4th International Video Poetry Festival 2015, Athens

**
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In the Morning When You Rise The Sound of Silence Is Waiting

It was never the lack of sound that made quiet.  Quiet was rare space in a corner of the city. 

And there, on a morning corner, was Tom, breakfast in hand, stepping into his own quiet as a city roared around him. 

**
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Photo: D. Shapiro

The John F. Kennedy ferry will soon be retired.  Newer shinier boats will take the place of the old wooden benches, the vinyl floors, the worn boxes holding life-saving equipment.

It was the ferry of childhood escapes and teenage escapades.  It was the refuge from bitter nights and lonely afternoons.  It was the rarest of rare moments when one day in 1977 the captain let a friend and me steer it briefly across the harbor.

The Mariner took many a trip on that old boat to woo and court me.

And for our first journey as a married couple we traveled from this home to another.

Photo: J. Peters

**
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The Walk to Hope Is a Leap of Faith

Once upon a time in 2010, before any of this was possible.

The thing about the walk to hope was that by the time you got to the end and you thought you were about to fall in and drown, your ship came in.

 And, then finally, in 2015...

... you got to take a leap of faith and step onto that ship.

Announcing the marriage of Her New York to the Mariner on the Staten Island Ferry.

**
wedding picture: Joke Peters

Rain Delay of Sunday Memories And Remembering of How It All Began

While recovering from a leap of faith into words never before said, a glance back at the beginning.

Originally posted December 24, 2013

I had met them before.   On a Thursday.

On the same bus.  Avenue A going back up to 14th Street.

Had to run downtown to Florence's.  Stopped to talk with the staff there. Ran into an old friend as I hobbled up the stairs.  Got to the bus stop before the bus got to the bus stop.  Watched them get on at the next stop, clearly miserable in the cold weather, not sure how to get to where they were going, and and bugging the bus driver who finally told them to relax sit down I'll get you there but you gotta let me get there first...

Yeah, I chimed in, you'll be fine -  because travel on the MTA is a group participation activitiy. 

The weekend came.

Had to run downtown to Florence's.  Brought the Mariner with me.  Met with a whole bunch of people. Met a whole bunch of other people last minute.  Visited a neighbor. Stopped by the laundry room to say hi to an old friend, hobbled up the stairs, got to the bus stop before the bus got to the bus stop....

And there they were.  At the next stop.  Definitely enjoying the warmer weather.

We gave them our seats.  And before you know, we're all talking non-stop, yeah they had gotten to New Jersey alright, her former daughter-in-law was in the same anthology series I was, writing about the store her family owned - the one my bubbie used to go into and argue with her distant cousins to give her a better discount, he was a cop in Brooklyn in the 30's, in those days, ok just a short story, but in those days...

...and then of course the question about how long have you been together...

"A year and a half," she said.  "You?"

"Two and a half," we said.

"How?"

"We met online.  You?"

"At the airport."

Both heading home to Florida after some tough family stuff in New York, the plane got delayed, and the only seat left on the plane was next to him.

She sat down and said, "This is the last time I'm ever flying this fucking airline."

He thought, "Wow what spunk."

And she, 'allergic' to short men, glanced at his legs, and thought, "Wow. Tall."

Which made me and the Mariner laugh because on our first date I yelled at him when he asked if he could kiss me.

He says he said, "Ok.  I'll try later."

I don't remember that.  But I did remember thinking, "Wow.  I get to be myself with this guy."

And he remembered thinking, "Wow.  She's honest."

"I was widowed five years ago, wasn't interested in dating at all," the woman said.

"I'm 90," the man said.  She grinned.

We refrained from going, "AWWWWWW!"  After all, we hate it when the 20 somethings say that to us when we stand on line at Trader Joes.

But looking back at that bus ride, the perfect timing of running into that couple out of the blue again, the storytelling, the intersection of family and history, I guess it shouldn't have surprised either of us when in the middle of a messy house, the cats running around, the sink full of dishes and us in our most comfortable nap-time sleepy clothes, the Mariner got down on one knee...


**
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The Marriage Bureau was filled with a billion different kinds of wedding dresses and suits, all moving in six different directions depending on if they had just gotten hitched or were off to get hitched.

And swimming and swirling around the billions of wedding dresses and suits were all the friends and families and babies and children and parents and...

...it was a parade of everyone leaping into faith that love, one way or another, would be happily ever after.

Except this kid.

Who didn't swim or swirl.

  He looked.

Which is much more involved than just watching.

We couldn't take our eyes off of him...

... as he stepped into what he was looking at.  His fearlessness.

His mom finally corralled him back to her, but only briefly. 

He saw my camera and reached for it.

So I handed it to him.

His looking and stepping into suddenly made sense.  The kid was a director.  All that he was missing was a camera. 

"He's deaf," his mom told us.

No, not really, we told her.  The camera is how he hears the world.

House of Mirrors

Another glass building rises.   But old New York shimmers on its windows like a ghost.


**
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He was a real tour guide because every time he started talking and pointing, the crowd of cargo-pants-backpack-wearing-camera-snapping people surrounded him, leaning in to catch every word he said, and then the minute he stopped talking, they started snapping pictures at whatever he had just  pointed to.

And at the corner of 1st and 2nd they were snapping pictures of what was once a gas-station.  A place where thousand taxi-drivers - none of them Robert DeNiro, most of them immigrants, all of them working 12-hour shifts currying millions of us around - took brief moments of rest and refueling.  A clean bathroom, some good coffee, friends to catch up with... luxury.

There were rumors around the neighborhood that the corner would become 50,000 square feet of luxury apartments and 7,000 square feet of luxury shops.

It seemed that tour guide was pointing to East Village antiquity - remnants of moments when luxury meant a place taxi drivers could afford.

**
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Art

Work

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Craft

After-school program

Nature

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Home

Goldie's Dog Days of Summer

Sometimes things get better.

Like finally feeling safe enough to take a nap by the metal sculpture that at 13, I bought Florence with all the money I had just earned as a summer live-in babysitter. 

Indeed, sometimes things get better.

**
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Remembering on Sunday the Ride Home From Summer

Originally posted September 14, 2010














It was on a train back from Coney.

I had been visiting someone half way there and when I got on I could smell the sun and the sea and the sand.

It was a mother and her two daughters and one of the daugher's daughter and that daughter's son. Three generations.

Doing what I had done with my gramma. A day at a beach, bags of wet suits and empty sandwich and cookie containers and just like that little boy, the ride back lulling me to sleep, my head on a warm lap.


**
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Summer Reruns: The Showdown

Originally posted August 18, 2010










That pigeon knew what it was doing. Sort of like the stare across a school lunchroom when you knew there were a couple of teachers in between you and having to prove it.

**
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Summer Reruns: The Promise

Originally posted July 18, 2013

Everybody rushed to the railing to take a picture of the Lady.  Everybody, not just the tourists.

She was still and forever our promise for a fair, an equal, a just life in a fair, an equal, a just country.

A younger than me but older than young woman, dragging her older than me but younger than ancient mother behind her jockeyed their way closer to the view.  Then, in what sounded like Russian, the daughter told her mother to pose with the Lady and quickly snapped several pictures.

Whatever journey that mother and daughter had traveled to that moment,  they now had, from those quiet camera clicks, proof of the promise. 

**
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Summer Reruns of Memories: Home Home Home On The Range

Originally Posted August 2, 2011

**

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.

Summer Reruns: Love Letters from the Most Beautiful Harbor in the World

Originally posted August 25, 2011
























Until I got on the Ferry I had forgotten how the smells and sounds were as intimate with me as Florence's music.

**
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Summer Reruns of Guest Artist, Dana: Bus Drivers and Me

Bits and pieces of Dana are slowly beginning to visit other places.   

Yet, she is like a lighthouse.   

Her brilliant light explodes into clarity and words that change the world.  For What Dana Says is worth pulling close and holding tight. 


From a series of Dana's writing, one of my favorite short stories.  

**


This really happened.

Note to Readers: You gotta know a little bit about the Village, the streets and the buses. If you have any questions, just drop a comment...

"Standing in a downpour on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, I boarded a limited bus that would at least take me to a few blocks near my destination. My hope was to end up on Sixth Avenue and Third Street by dismounting at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. Not great. But doable.

It was 5 p.m. and I needed to be at the movie theater by 5:20. The driver understood my anxiety and simply said, "Sit Down."

When the bus turned left on Eighth Street to Broadway, I was shocked.

It had actually taken me even farther from my destination.

"Last stop!" he announced to all the passengers.

I started to get up when again he said, "Sit Down."

Then he drove south on Broadway and turned right on Houston and right again on Sixth Avenue heading north.

I expected him to sail right past my movie.  I stood up and again he ordered me to "Sit Down."

I gave up, wondering if maybe he was kidnapping me.

Then to my utter disbelief, he stopped illegally at Third and Sixth. He had taken me to a spot across the street from the movie theater!

"Bless you!" I said.

"Bless YOU! he replied. It was the one time he didn't say "Sit Down."

**

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