SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT! Save St. Mark's (Again)

FROM JEREMIAH'S VANISHING NEW YORK.
THANK YOU, JEREMIAH!!!

Save St. Mark's (Again)

Save St. Mark's (Again)

After tens of thousands of petition signatures, after protests, letters to Cooper Union, visits from Michael Moore, banner book-buying weekends, and celebrations of great success, St. Mark's Bookshop is back on the ropes.



Reports Publishers Weekly today:

"'We’re hanging in there, barely,' says co-owner Bob Contant. 'It’s a difficult April. Traffic is down. Without an increase, we can’t rebuild our inventory. We’re 20% short of where we need to be.' The store is on hold with a number of publishers, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Perseus, for relatively small sums between $500 and $2,5000. "It’s a catch 22," says Contant. 'We can’t buy more books. Up until this month we thought we were out of the woods.'

A few landlords have come forward offering the store lower rent, but moving would be costly and the store’s business credit cards are already maxed out. 'We would like to stay where we are, even at the high rent,' says Contant, 'unless an angel comes along.'

What would help, he says, is if everyone who signed the petition came in or called in and bought a book."




We've had two great "Buy A Book" weekends, and I encourage you all to visit the store again this weekend to buy some books--and keep buying books. But in this anti-book era, in this iZombie culture, what St. Mark's Bookshop needs most is a powerful new business plan--something that will sustain them in the long run, something that will keep attracting book buyers, day after day.

In Brooklyn, bookstores like Word and Greenlight are thriving in this e-book economy. What's their secret? I'm calling on them to step forward and offer their assistance and know-how to St. Mark's Books. I'm calling on the owners of St. Mark's Bookshop to follow their example and make the vital changes necessary to stay afloat. I'm calling on successful authors to show up with donations in hand.

We need St. Mark's Bookshop--now and for years to come. But it's going to take a village.

*UPDATE: #cashmob St. Mark's Bookshop, Sunday April 15, at 1:00 pm. Spend $15 on a book. Spend your tax refund! Then go drink at Bar 82 (136 2nd Ave.) Please re-tweet...spread the word.

The Walls Started Talking

I only knew that address as where that woman used to live, it was early 1980s, I thought she only wanted to dance with me which made me nervous I was interested in someone else and then I found she wanted to dance with anyone where there was a possibility to be loved. I last saw her running up Third Avenue with some guy, both lit more from alcohol than any good intentions.

Now, what's left of a place where I knew someone lived are these walls. Someone picked out that wallpaper. Someone else picked out those colors. That green, those patterns - they were part of a safety called home, who knows maybe that woman who danced with a lot of people.

It Only Hurts A Little

And with that promise (or lie depending on who's talking and who's listening) I managed to get the cat into the box with a couple of gentle shoves to his butt and carry all his 17 pounds down to the vet.

He was no dummy.

And when it was over and I let him out of the box into the hallway while I searched for my keys, he ran straight to the front door and meowed loud and clear that he had had enough he wanted to be home and there better be chicken because yes, it did hurt.

Sunday Memories: The Iceman Cometh

Florence's ice trays circa 1960-something

It's quite hard to find ice trays like these anymore.

I had already broken the plastic ones I had. So when the new tenants moved into Florence's new refrigerator and kitchen, I moved these out.

Of all the smattering of items I took from Florence's, these hid unexpected memories.

With so few treats allowed except on Friday nights, ice was as treasured as candy. And with the suspicion of doctors and the fear of hospitals, it was also as important as aspirin.

With such promises of refreshment and restoration, those trays were not to be trifled with.

The trays' handle would be pulled back like a slingshot and if all went well, the ice would crackle and break into cubes. This never happened. Tap water and a couple to many bangs of the tray on the stove loosened the frozen water enough to be enjoyed like ice cream during the summer or placed in a bowl of soup too hot to eat.

If the trays were being deployed for medical emergencies, such as a broken arm or spinal meningitis, the ice bag, the kind you'd see in comic strips like Andy Capp, would be brought out with full and firm belief that once filled from the trays, all maladies would vanish. On the rare occasions they didn't, a surrender would be hurriedly made in a taxi rushing to the emergency room, usually right before it was too late.

Now, refrigerators make ice and preemptive doctor visits make more sense.

And ice bags, needed for healing body parts, come so equipped, they make my old ice trays look like pencil and paper compared to a NASA computer.

The cat thinks the machine is the vacuum cleaner's baby, and thus the spawn of the devil. It is ravenous for ice, which has the Mariner running so frequently to the bodega for ice at all hours of the day and night, that the minute he rushes in the guys automatically ring up two bags of already made, perfectly cubed ice.

Memories may be made from time spent healing, but none will be found in cubes of such perfection. So when this is all over, those trays will be filled again with stories from Her New York.

Encore: Leaving Egypt on Maundy Thursday

As this week begins Exodus and welcomes Resurrection, an encore of the journey

Originally posted April 9, 2009

(picture by Adrian Garcia)

At Sedar we were always urged to leave behind the personal Egypt that enslaved us, be it bad habits or unhappy circumstances. And as we did, to remember all the people in the world struggling to leave whatever Egypt they inhabited, for we could not be free if someone else was still enslaved.

At His last supper, also a sedar, Christ asked the Apostles to love others as He loved them, and He washed their feet as an act of love and service.

Eleven years ago at Riverside's Maundy Thursday, it dawned on me I could forgive someone who had hurt me and, in doing so, leave an Egypt of shame, bitterness, and blame. When I left the unhappiness I had lived in for so long, I found Buddhism.

Every day since has offer freedom and liberation even when that seemed furthest from the truth. But it never was furthest from what I sought. Ever. Like the steps the Hebrews took through the desert and the feet Christ washed that night, each moment brought me closer to a promised land. And, as I stumbled forward, I remembered all those struggling and, as I grew closer to freedom, love became the bigger land within my heart.

The road to the banks of the River Jordan was made with sorrow and disappointment but traveled with hope and heart.  On this auspicious anniversary, oh, is the view just so beautiful.

Leaving Egypt On The Promise Of A Healed Knee

As this week begins Exodus and welcomes Resurrection, a look at both.

What was it about not going to doctors when something was wrong? It was like not fixing anything when it broke.

I asked Yeudi what it was. When did physical pain become normal, and doctor visits become pointless? We both puzzled over parents forged by the bitter scarcity of The Great Depression and what they insisted upon (dentists and the New York Times) and what they didn't (sometimes everything else).

Florence once kept up a full teaching/working schedule with walking pneumonia. When I yelled at her that she was supposed to be in bed, she yelled back, "It's WALKING pneumonia."

Her unique approach, in fact, practically demolished that thin cushion between health and chronic illness.

Years of pain and never really thinking much could be done also demolished that thin cushion between my constant walking on a cranky knee and barely hobbling like how the old ladies did on Grand Street.

So, after trying everything, a five minute doctor visit explains outpatient surgery and I take the 80 to 20 odds I might actually walk a bit longer without such a long-standing familiar pain.