Guest Artist: Rob - Sunday Memories - The Look Of Love

While my private coney pictures is on the road this week, Rob Pappagallo will Guest Artist It Was Her New York with occasional writings from mpc. Thank you, Rob!!!

Robert Pappagallo is a native New Yorker who goes around shooting his city.


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This photo may not be used without permission from Robert Pappagallo

Guest Artist: Rob - Perseverance

While my private coney pictures is on the road this week, Rob Pappagallo will Guest Artist It Was Her New York with occasional writings from mpc. Thank you, Rob!!!

Robert Pappagallo is a native New Yorker who goes around shooting his city.

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This photo may not be used without permission from Robert Pappagallo

Guest Artist: Rob - Proof That There Is...

While my private coney pictures is on the road this week, Rob Pappagallo will Guest Artist It Was Her New York with occasional writings from mpc. Thank you, Rob!!!

Robert Pappagallo is a native New Yorker who goes around shooting his city.


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This photo may not be used without permission from Robert Pappagallo

Sunday Memories: The Greatest Gift Of All

We met when we were young but thought we were old, me 28, him 31, both of us going through the throes of what we thought were world-weary adulthood-ness like divorce and break-ups and love and children and responsibility and dreams and writing. Always writing.

We managed to stay friends even though the sentence he heard most from me was "you're wrong". Being a black belt in karate, he was grounded and sane and very much at peace so he'd just smile, laugh and go "Ok". That's what black belt karate guys do - they shrug you off because they don't need to prove how many different ways they can kick your ass in.

But it wasn't just his gentle acceptance of my furious little Lower East Side verbal fists that just had to be punching something. It was his gentle welcome into his life and thus life itself, asking me to stand witness to new marriages and new homes and then one day new life itself.

I got to watch that rare moment that happens a billion times a day but when you're watching it is the only time it ever happened ever. I got to witness the birth of his daughter. I got to see that moment when that little being appeared and I suddenly knew her, knew her fully as a person, there was a perfect, full person inside that itty bitty baby body.

I carry that moment around as a talisman, like the words of a song by Iron and Wine that paints in words the moment our heart opens - "like babies want God's love". Even as a Buddhist these words are the only ones that could possible describe the second we met.

And here years later over tea and a noticeable decrease of me telling him he's wrong, I watch him talk to that perfect girl, now 15 and dressing in clothes from the worst era of all fashion, the 1980s and I hear song words in my head of a gift, just like babies that want God's love.

The Writer Cat

He has become a bit too big to jump up on the desk so now I have to pick him. He is on a diet even if he doesn't know it.

However, once there he does what he always has done since he moved in.

Makes himself comfortable.

Long Day's Journey Into The Week

Sunday Memories: "I...I will begin again..."*

My father, me and Florence on New Year's Day at Coney Island

Was going to Coney Island on New Year's Day a regular tradition? I can't quite remember, but I remember this one in particular. I was in fifth grade and had broken my arm. So only one arm was in the coat sleeve. The other was stuffed inside my coat.

We took the F train from either Delancey Street or East Broadway and rode the hour out to Coney Island.

It was brutal cold. There were definitely other people out on the boardwalk. But the picture Louise took captured only us. Braving the elements the way we each hoped to brave the new year.


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*New Year's Day/ U2

All is quiet on New Year's day
A world in white gets underway
I want to be with you, be with you, night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's day
On New Year's day

I will be with you again
I will be with you again

Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered, black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspapers says, says
Say it's true, it's true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one

I, I will begin again
I, I will begin again

Ah, maybe the time is right
Oh, maybe tonight

I will be with you again
I will be with you again

And so we're told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's day
On New Year's day
On New Year's day

Eating Out

Near the Fulton Mall

After flinging thousands of sweaters and shirts in every color and fabric up against our faces to find the perfect one for only $4.99, cheaper if we had gone on Thursday Customer Appreciation Day 25% off, Mimi and I ended up at the one place that offered a real grilled cheese sandwich with cheese that might not have been so real, but we didn't care, they made them with tomatoes and they had Lipton's Tea. We were starving and sitting down was like coming home only better because everything always tasted good after tough shopping on a cold day. And besides, you didn't have to do the dishes, the plates were plastic.

No tables, just counters and fierce Greek between the guys behind the counter and a couple customers on the red stools. One after another kids came in asking for change of a dollar, they all needed four quarters for the parking meters outside.

Shake Shack just opened nearby and some of the nicer chains are moving in on the small, tough stores that weathered everything because when you are always living flat-broke, the economy never changes and your customers can just about afford you. Mimi thinks soon those grilled cheese and souvlaki joints will be a thing of the past, the kids of these guys having better things to do than flip cheese sandwiches and slice shwarma off the grill. I think the quarter-meters aren't going to last much longer either, my street now filled with computers that take electronic change.

Still, I pointed out we would have had to stand on line to Shake Shack which probably wouldn't have had a good cup of tea. And besides how can you beat a grilled cheese sandwich made on a real grill.

Perfect Timing

Right before it all happened

The frame was too high on Dana's new bed. Getting up was like rock climbing and getting down was the Giant Salom but without the snow.

So we ordered a new one, thinking it would arrive in a couple of days.

But then the new computer system didn't work. So the frame arrived a week later.

We thought oh so we'll come down on that day.

But then Dana asked we come the next day.

I promised we'd be there at such and such a time, but of course we got there almost an hour later.

Then the Mariner couldn't get the frame to line up and I didn't help by insisting that one side was longer than the other when in fact it was just angled more like a trapezoid and he was trying to re-angle it in between me whipping out a 12 inch ruler once used in PS 110 by Dana's son to prove that in fact that side of the bed frame was longer.

Finally the bed fit perfectly and Dana could sit down on it without any athletic training.

She insisted we stay for lunch and have tea and kaiser rolls, herring and lox, cream cheese and butter, and lots and lots of rugelach. The apple pie we passed on.

There was no way we could use the frame that was too high. It was pointless to keep it. But it was a really good frame and no one wanted to throw it out. So the Mariner taped up and stuck a piece of paper on it that said "free bed frame! new!"

Before we headed down to the communal recycling room, Polly the cat needed love. "I want a picture of that!" Dana said. So the Mariner rummaged through my crowded bag of screwdrivers and shopping bags, found the camera case, pulled out the camera and took a picture. The second after he clicked the shutter, Polly had enough love and jumped down.

I forgot the right elevator was the shabbos elevator, stopping on every floor from 1 to 20. So we got off on the 14th floor and waited for the not-for-shabbos left elevator. The numbers let us know whoever had gotten on at the 12th floor was being detoured up to us.

We stepped in with our almost brand new but too high bed frame and there was an almost coordinated, neatly dressed, middle aged couple, laundry stuff in hands, annoyed their trip down had been interrupted with a brief trip up.

Until they saw the frame.

"Are you giving it away?" they both asked.

"Yes! Do you want it?" asked the Mariner.

"Yes! We need one!" and without much ado, he handed the couple the barely used, month old, too high bed frame.

Sunday Memories: Letting There Be Light

From the miracle of lighting the oil in the temple...



...to the lighting the candle on the eve...



...shared moments became new memories.

The Festival of Lights

Unexpectedly, the Miracle Of Lights can appear.

Sorta like love.

Just Another Manic Monday

Sunday Lingering Memories: Widower's Walk

Every day since Rags died, Jupiter has waited.

The Road To Damascus

Where Florence and all of us once lived

This path once led to home. Then it led to sorrow. Now it leads to another person's life where joy and much better cooking happens.

Special Announcement: Wanna Be A TV Writer? Wanna Actually Have A Good Teacher?

My friend Joel Thompson once again is inspiring students from around the country and the world to leap into writing one-hour TV dramas. You can take his workshop at UCLA Extension. So if you are in Los Angeles or thinking of visiting Los Angeles and changing your life, check out it out!

(FYI-His students adore him and often take him out after the course ends to fete him. In the world of writing/teaching THAT is quite rare.)

The Art The Brooklyn Museum Didn't Know It Was Exhibiting

Sunday Memories: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future

Another annual gathering.


Delighting in visits longer than brief moments carved out in elevators...


... running past one another through lobby doors...

or chasing errant cats in stairwells.


Then we stopped. And after an Italian song of love and rest...



... we laughed hard, sharing stories of Rags who won 4th place for most misbehaved in the American Mutt Show...


...could jump six feet straight up...


... twirl 360 degrees because she was going out for a walk...


...and remind us what total joy could look like stuffed in four feet.

What encouragement to go forward with hope.

Special Announcement: Leo the East River Barge Cat Needs A Home

EV Grieve is posting the announcement for Leo the cat that was rescued from an East River barge. Pass it forward if you can't take him yourself!

R.I.P. RAGS, OUR BELOVED NEIGHBOR, OUR DEAREST FRIEND

An old girl, Rags went quickly.

Ann Marie had found Pat's door open, which rarely, if ever, happens. So she went to make sure Pat was OK.

Ann Marie then got John who was on maintenance duty who told me as I walked in from my trip to Astoria. I joined him, Pat and Ann Marie and we all tended to "Pet", Pat's nickname for Rags.

After, in between Pat's family calling from around the country, Pat and Ann Marie drank wine, I had whiskey and we talked of our New York and writing and journalists who were household-names and old friends of Pat's and great actresses who were household-names and old friends of Pat's and whose Lady MacBeth Ann Marie saw in the 60's and about the days when cigarette smoking was normal and how Carola gave me whiskey after Florence's memorial.

Jupiter wandered in and out of Pat's, but only after Constance, the mom of Jackson came downstairs to get her cat Scarf from my apartment which he got into because my front door was open as I ran back and forth to put up the notices that Rags had died.

I don't know much about other buildings but here we gather in small and tender ways, our faces intimate and familiar to one another as only they can be when traveling together for so long. We recount one another's history. We bear witness when life happens on life's terms. We keep company when company is needed.

We are at home in our building, And we are neighbors.

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Originally posted August 4, 2011

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.

Monday Monday