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?

"...that God is able to....

... to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace."*































*Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eulogy for the Martyred Children
September 18, 1963. Birmingham, Ala.

Sweet Taste of Freedom
A Celebration of Dr. King's Birthday
2010 Boston

TRAVEL DELAY - SPECIAL MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DAY POSTING

TUESDAY AFTERNOON - STAY TUNED!

Before heading off to Harvard Divinity, Josslyn held her last Los Angeles Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.

Today she held her first East Coast-Boston Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Posting to come!

Sunday Memories: Soon To Be A Memory

Ottendorfer Library
Greg showed me his kindle. A thin tablet easily held in ones hand or slipped into the side pocket of a shoulder bag, it looked like something Captain Kirk used on the bridge as he explored a dangerous decision.

There were a dozen books in this thin rectangle. Perfect for the many long trips Greg and his wife took around the world. Always something to read without heavy bags or less space for an extra shirt.

But even with this new ease, Greg shook his heads. "I love the smell of books."

However tempting lighter bags and more reading material sounded, I wondered what would become of my favorite corners in the world, away from problems and burdens, comforted in silence, welcomed into new worlds.

He Was Her Grandson

What does it mean to be a New Yorker?

I can go anywhere without driving.

What do you remember about Florence?

Her being there when she didn't have to be.

Your favorite New York experience?

I'd say moving to Jersey. But I don't live in Jersey.


***
He wouldn't let me tell the rat story.