New Media, Old School Style....

a.k.a., how someone came up with the idea of the kindle.

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: His New York His California His Home-Part Three

It had to have been twenty-five years since all three of us were in the same room.

What unfolded was a living moment of the memory I loved the most, a rare one of childhood being happy, almost like the families I saw in picture books at the library.

It was when the whole family was home at the same time, probably a Sunday afternoon.  Florence would be practicing in the other room, billions of music molecules building her cocoon from family life.

The three of us would gather around the Formica folding and extending kitchen table, before us that special maybe once-a-week but probably more like once-a-month bowl of ice milk and potato chips.

Then Dad would start telling jokes and jokes and jokes, as many as the notes pouring out of Florence's fingers.  And we would laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.  Belly grabbing, tears pouring out of our little girl eyes, nose snorting, almost peeing but refusing to go because no one wanted to break the spell with a bathroom break, full-out laughing.

I wanted those jokes and that ice cream to last forever. Like the magical replenishing bowl I once read in a fairytale, I wanted that fun and joy to never end.

At some point Florence would appear in the kitchen door reminding us it was our turn to practice.

Just a couple of days ago, the crisis of care needing to be brought into this place he now calls home, we sat together briefly, less than two hours.  He may not have remembered who had visited him just that morning or if the physical therapist was coming the next day.  But within minutes of us sitting down, just us three, jokes and jokes and jokes poured out and my sister and I, like little girls, laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

***
Related posts:

It Was His California

Sunday Memories: The First Home

Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Sunday Memories: A Tale Of Two Brothers

His New York His California His Home: Part One

His New York His California His Home: Part Two-"One Step At A Time Dammit"

His New York His California His Home: Part Two - "One Step At A Time Dammit"

After the nine loads of clothes not properly washed in years...

"It's ok, I did this for you and Louise when you were little."

 

 "What do I do now? Do I stand up?"

"Let's go, old man...."

 Old friends, donuts and introducing me three times

 

"What do I do now?  Do I wait for dinner?"

The last conversation of the day: 

"Sweet dreams." 

"Don't take any wooden rhetoric." 

"Thanks, Dad." 

"I'm sorry I'm such a trouble to you." 

"You're not.  You're no trouble at all."

***
Related posts:

It Was His California

Sunday Memories: The First Home

Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Sunday Memories: A Tale Of Two Brothers

His New York His California His Home: Part One

His New York His California His Home: Part One

Once again, chirpy accents that tinkle like fairy bells broadcast news there's been another "episode" of old age winning the battle against a desire to do something simple.  Like, get a glass of water or walk to another room.

California sunshine fills even the dankest of hospital rooms and the pissed off roommate is more polite about how pissed he is than I am with good friends who say something stupid. 

My father keeps saying when, when, when do I go home when are we getting out of here when do we leave and I keep saying soon soon soon soon we're getting out of here soon we're going to leave soon we go home.

But soon is no longer an abstract concept that invites patience. It is only the panic of a memory that doesn't remember itself.

And home now becomes ground that shifts and undulates like an earthquake, making haven a questionable place of uncertainty.


***
Related posts:

It Was His California

Sunday Memories: The First Home

Sunday Memories: A Winter Coat

Sunday Memories: A Tale Of Two Brothers

Sunday Memories: Art Number Three

Millions of brush strokes and thousands of visions over the past seventy years make those hands a museum.

Art Number Two

Do you know Bob Dylan, the kid asked us. This is the stoop he sat on for his album cover.  Would you take my picture? 


 

Art Number One

You're Art, I said. What is the name of your painting?

PS 75, he said.  Make sure you get my hair too.

Sunday Memories: Portrait

Portrait

Jutta says it grew from a Matisse portrait of his wife she pondered at through her now dimmed-eyes.

But I remember hours in her kitchen, an old blue sweater covering a life only a twenty-something kid could survive.

Now it hangs in the Spring Salon at the gallery she, with a whole bunch of other artists, made sure became a home to art.

Diving In...

The Rose Reading Room

For a quiet library room, it's effing noisy.

The big, fat wooden chairs with big, fat armrests scrape across the floor and when you have a room filled with hundreds of people hunched over books and computers and papers and ideas, running to the bathroom, shifting in frustration, giving up, going forward, while sneaking sips of water and stuffing illicit food so a few more hours of work can be accomplished, those chairs are constantly moving.

I used to come here when I was a girl and was running away from home.  This was before computers so all you could do was read a book at the tables that stretched as long as a subway car. 

Now, there's plugs all over the place and wireless and the place is brighter and cleaner than the days I had to run away to remember who I was.   And now I don't have to run away to remember who I am. I just have to find a chair, plug in my computer, hide my illicit water bottle and protein bar from the patrolling guards who insist the library be kept clean and respected....

And then, all I have to do is dive in.

Solitude

The night felt like the nights outside Florence's window.

A street, normally filled with drinking teenagers technically old enough to be in a bar but really unprepared for booze, emptied as rain and mist and fog rolled in.

In this unexpected quiet hidden corners, like the ones I grew up peering into wondering what was really going on down there, emerged.

No one went to Florence's neighborhood unless you lived there.

And, even on a Saturday night all the streets felt wide and quiet.

Sunday Memories: In The Happy Cacophony Of A Visit...

Thirty-six years later,  conversation still bubbled forth, not one corner of the universe that didn't invite colliding curiosity.   So, like explorers launching into uncharted territories, we launched into ideas and thoughts, experiences and questions.

Yet, out of nowhere... it wasn't a constellation.  It was more like billions of threads weaving together a tapestry from long ago, and in between words and private thoughts those days reappeared.  Our conversation was the only thing we had left of the L&M diner on the corner of 10th and Second...

...the one where they took their then itty-bitty daughter every Sunday, so much so that when her aunt took her once, the daughter knew exactly what and how to order...

...the one where I, with a 17 year old's knowledge of cooking and the sudden care of an adult life, new to this apartment, that painting on that wall then, retreated daily to the diner's counter and ordered lunch and then again later in the day dinner specials, asking for family and home served in a plate and watching the owner and cook's strong burly arms place food down before me, his faded blue number tattoo dancing before me as we both sought solace.

A Slight Summer Fun Delay of Sunday Memories

Due to a lovely night filled with memories, Sunday Memories will be posted a bit late on Sunday.


Meanwhile, enjoy the new summer look of Jupiter. 

Some say poodle, but we say lion.

Elisabeth's World

It may be a different vista than the one Andrew Wyeth's Christina looked upon.

But Elisabeth's gaze, looking back or looking forward, is the same.  A uncertain wonderment at a landscape that could become many things.

Will the hotel buy the building or will the lease be renewed?  Will the block stay a working block of mom and pops or become another obituary in a vanishing New York? Will the studio survive or will it become another casualty to the diaspora of artists leaving for kinder land?

Will, for just a little bit longer, this stairway still lead us with uncertain wonderment to a landscape that could become many things?

Unconditional Love. Unconditional Everything.

This guy I once dated said libraries were for poor people.  I should have broken up with him then, but fear of loneliness can make one quite stupid.  If only I had gone then to the library and taken out books on self-esteem....

The library was where Florence took us instead of synagogue or church.  It was as cherished as Town Hall or Carnegie.  It was as sacred as the Met Museum.  It was as intimate as home.  

The library was a haven from chaos and a secret passageway to knowing stuff stupid people didn't want us to know.  I learned about where babies came from and where Nazis went to (not on the same day, though).  I listened to music I had to hear but couldn't afford.  And each time I took out a book, I felt like it was Christmas, Chanukah and my birthday all rolled up in one.  I still feel that way.

These days trundling down to my neighborhood library or the one uptown, I see the 95 year old former Rocket still doing high kicks to the check-out guys and then scooping up her weekly stash of books.

I see neighbors from next door and from down the street picking up movies for the weekend.

I see tons of babies and little kids bursting like fireworks because they are headed into story-hour.

I see people who can't afford laptops have access to the world.

I see the elderly have company and a place to go to read the day's paper.

And when I can't bear another wall to my own words, I see a quiet, safe space where I can keep writing.

I see my city, my life and my home.

The library has made sure democracy is for all of us, not just those who can afford an education, a laptop, or literacy.  And yet, a proposed $43 million budget cut is being introduced that would decimate what is already a beleaguered institution.

Click here and fight back. Fight back against stupidity and short-sightedness.  Click here and fight for a world where, no matter how much you have in your pocket, you are entitled to knowledge.

Sunday Memories: The Arrival of Summer From Sears & Roebuck's

I really couldn't tell time for... well ...  like a really long time.  

So, to marked the passing of what I couldn't read, I did like plants do or what my cat does now -- by time, by light, by sound, by wind and, in my case, by the leaves on the trees in Sheriff Park.

As the trees got greener and the smells in the air weren't of radiators and cold, wet wool, I knew, just knew there would be a knock on the door and our version of Santa Claus, the United States Postal Delivery Man would appear with the holy grail of wonderfulness - a Sears & Roebuck box.

And without fail, at the very last possible second of the very last possible day that demanded I wear a sweater and my sturdy, once-a-year oxfords from Kaplan's on Clinton Street, that knock would come.

Behold. Summer and my Sneakers had arrived.


***
Additional postings:

Florence's sneakers walk the talk


Home and the love between Jupiter and Rags (r.i.p)

Another Visit From Another Her New York

Ilona

The Face Beneath The Hat

By Chelsea Dreher

Before an unhappy marriage

Before a baby and two lost

Before a holocaust that would

Erase all hope

Ilona had possibilities.

New York had 34th Street

Ilona had her studio 

Forgotten places

Misplaced people

Tragedy in faded photos

An old woman

Wrapped in a blanket

Holds a piece of cardboard

"Heartbreak-Please Give"

***

Ilona came to New York from Hungary in the late twenties.  As soon as she saw the city from the boat, she wanted to go back to the vineyards and mountains.  She lived in Harlem with her brother, Herman and made paper flowers on the Lower East Side for $4 a week.  This led to a career as a designer with a business card. Heady stuff for an immigrant single lady.  Famous hat makers used her handmade flowers on hats and gowns. She was my mother. 

She married, gave up her 34th Street studio and had me. Our little family moved to the Bronx where there were parks.   I moved to the Village when I was seventeen.

-- Chelsea Dreher

Rain Encore: ... and Dancing in the Rain

Originally posted Thursday, July 30, 2009

 
It wasn't that I had forgotten.  It's just that I hadn't had to remember. But there she was, a little girl jumping and giggling and running and shouting in Wednesday's downpour.

When I was young and it poured humongous cats and dogs, Florence would send me out in maybe rain boots, maybe sneakers to play in the storm.  I'd race around the empty courtchyard and jump and dance and skip and stick my face up into thunder and wind.

As of her decline deepened, the months and months and months turned into years and years, and to pass the time we would watch Singing In The Rain over and over and over again.  The blessing of dementia allowed it to be an exciting revisit, one she didn't realize had just happened the week before.

Today, quickly snapping a picture as I futilely raced against getting soaked and miserably wet, I wondered if her quirky idea of playtime came from that passionate dance Gene Kelly did when he realized he was in love.

Sunday Memories: The Long Road

In memory of Maura who walks the long road a little bit ahead of us.

We all walk the long road
I cannot stay
There's no need to say goodbye

Oh, the friends and family...
All the memories going round
Round, round round...

I have wished for so long...
How I wished for you today

And the wind keeps rollin'
And the sky keeps turning grey
And the sun is setting
The sun will rise another day

I have wished for so long...
How I wish for you today

I have wished for so long...
How I wish for you today
Will I walk the long road?
We all walk the long road

Eddie Vedder with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Special Announcement! A New Blog From Argentina

Gaby, a wonderful photographer and writer who works in television in Buenos Aires recently came to New York for a visit.

There's something exciting and expanding when a visitor observes the intimacy of one's home.  Her postings of her trip can be seen here.  This new blog, La Piel de Las Cosas, will also explore her own wonderful city, the only place I'd live outside of New York, allowing us to see her Buenos Aires and other glimpses of home.