August 6, 2022
One of the rewards of summer is the Sunday fruit, vegetable, fish and flower market we have in Stuyvesant Town. In addition to stocking up on homemade and fresh food, it’s an opportunity to chat with vendors and neighbors. Many a recipe is exchanged.
July 29, 2022
I’ve had an exciting week. Tuesday, a friend and I went to Dormeshia Tap Collective at the Joyce. I go on about the wonderful dancers at the Joyce but I don’t mention too often how inventive, clever, cool, whimsical the settings are. Dormeshia’s mis en scene was sexy and backlit. It suggested a cool nightclub. The musicians, Noah Garabedian (Bass), Chris McCarthy (Piano), Shirazette Tinnen (drums) were placed across the back of the stage. Garabedian and Dormeshia composed the original music.
Dormeshia was joined by Melissa Almaguer, Christina Carminucci, and Amanda Castro. To quote my friend, it was intense. The four women were front stage and never stopped moving to the driving, thrilling music. They honor tap’s form and history and keep pushing it forward.
Thursday, three other Judsonites and I went to the Iglesia Sants Cruz at 179 Street to celebrate overdose prevention centers in NYC. It was a moving evening. People who have been through the drug wringer spoke about how essential the centers are to recovering drug addicts. They also mourned their dying and dead friends. Usually, once a week for over ten years, Kim Kelly has set up Judson’s sessions at which volunteers prepare overdose prevention packets.
July 22, 2022
President Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East was a disappointment. He dismissed the Palestinians as if there were flies. The Palestinians are natives to that land. I visited it in 2018. and witnessed the shameful, barbaric treatment metered out to the Palestinians.
The country is beautiful. The air is gentle. The light is clear but not bright. These photographs were taken in 2018. For obvious reasons I did not identify Palestinians.
July 16, 2022
The Joyce on 8th Avenue and 19th Street is my favorite theater. The dance programs are unique, serious, playful. I attended MOMIX twice this week. Saturday matinee I saw MOMIX:ALICE. The theater was packed: young, old, children. How lucky those children were to witness magic with six year old eyes. It was a wonderful, spirited event with exceptional dancing and extraordinary scenery.
Saturday evening I attended the Joyce and again saw MOMIX:ALICE. It was a different night time experience or do I think that because it was my second time around. I preferred the second sitting because I could anticipate what was coming. Alice in Wonderland is a story embedded in my childhood memory.
July 9, 2022
Yesterday was a perfect day. Friends and I went to the Winslow Homer exhibit, Crosscurrents, at the Met. Everything worked: the NYC weather mixed sun and rain, the Met’s a.c. was just right and best of all the exhibit was staggering. One person – one man – created all this heavenly art. Have no fear. I will say no more.
Instead, I’m including Bart Boehlert’s superb article about the exhibit. Winslow Homer and the Invention of American Art
The exhibit closes at the end of this month.
NYMYSTERIES.CO
In the sweltering heat I attended Judson’s Pride Sunday. It was glorious. Henco Espag did his usual piano magic. Jason Tseng’s wonderful queer saints’ portraits circled the room. After the service and lunch, there was a walk with the queer saints portraits to Foley Square, followed by the Pride Day March. Exhausted, yet?
The following day, a friend and I attended Frick’s Pride Day. As you know, the Frick mansion on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street is being renovated. The Collection is being shown temporarily in the former Whitney Museum building on Madison and 75th Street. Bright, extravagant floral arrangements decked Frick Madison’s front portals. Once inside a gleaming bar had replaced the book & pamphlets counter. Downstairs stood four formally dressed servers, each offering on a tray a different liquor. We selected champagne – what else? – mingled with the crowd on the cement terrance and, in the background, there was a jazz quartet and Madison Avenue traffic. A few champagnes later, we took the elevator to the wonderful art work such as Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, Titian’s Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap.
Recovering the next day, we went to see Elvis. My friend and I like big, noisy, American trash movies. Elvis fits the bill. Austin Butler who plays Elvis looks like a Brown University sophomore. That’s Elvis? Where are Elvis’s early days with Jerry Lee Louis? Yes, I know he married his thirteen year old cousin and, on occasion, played the piano with his feet. So what? There was a gaiety and sense of naughty fun when he and Elvis made GREAT young music together. Tom Hanks stole the show. He was perfect as the Colonel. He wielded a cane, softly and menacingly. He had a quiet cruel smile and gentle cruel eyes.
Elvis is watching a great actor surrounded by kids still learning their stuff.
Last but certainly not least, I have a short story on purplewallstories.com. “My Letter to Martha” is about a ghastly NYC bus ride during a blizzard. Please (I beg) read it and if you like it vote for it.
June 25, 2022
I’ve put the Stuytown green market to one side along with my visit to the Met’s Winslow Homer exhibit.
I want to honor a woman, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and an organization, The Alliance of Baptists, that give me hope. Anyone who knows me knows I’m deeply critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Along with the Zionists I’m lumping the Supreme Court justices who have conservative Catholic beliefs that they’ve turned into law.
Back story: I’m a religious shopper. I was raised Catholic, drifted into the Friends, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Bahai faith.
June 17, 2022
Celebrating Juneteenth.
Before I could celebrate Juneteenth, I had to find out the significance of that awkward word. Here goes. It combines June and nineteenth. It’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th. From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States .
Opal Lee, a Black retired school teacher from Texas campaigned to have the day when slavery was declared illegal a national holiday. June 19, 2022 is the second anniversary of that historic occasion.
Here’s Miss Lee being introduced to President Biden as he signs the proclamation making Juneteenth an official holiday.
June 11, 2022
Some June Dates
On June 3, 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest L. Thayer was first published, in the San Francisco Examiner. It came to sum up America’s growing love for baseball, with its drama of high hopes and crushing disappointments.
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.
On June 24, forty-five minutes before sunrise we can see, by looking east, a line up of five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
June 4, 2022
I got to the New Museum the second to last day of a Faith Ringgold exhibit. The 91-year old artist has been creating all types of art for over fifty years. She was born in Harlem and was raised in a loving and supportive family. She attributes her development in large part to her early environment.
I also saw Daniel Lee’s instillation, Unnamed Entities. What a glorious New Museum-filled day.
