February 17- February 24

A friend and I celebrated her birthday by going to Butter, Chef Alex Guarnaschelli’s large and bustling restaurant on 45 Street and 6th Avenue. It was my second visit and the food, service and setting are still nonpareil. The raspberry beignets are worth the trip alone.

Jack Kleinsinger’s Highlights in Jazz has been rolling along for 46 years. Thursday night featured Bucky Pizzarelli and his two sons, Martin on bass and John on guitar. They were joined by another guitarist, Russell Malone and accompanied by the fine pianist, Russell Kasoff. It was wonderful. They swung through lots of standards like Tangerine and other golden oldies from the American songbook. The Manhattan Community College’s auditorium was filled with an appreciative audience.

Pizzarelli Night at Highlights in Jazz

 

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

February 11 – February 17

“Turn on your television right now, you’re going to see scenes of children running for their lives.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) castigated his Senate colleagues for having failed to legislate stricter gun laws as reports emerged of a mass school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Murphy, who dealt with the Newtown massacre firsthand, said, “What looks to be the 19th school shooting in this country and we have not even hit March. Let me just note once again for my colleagues: this happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter. This scourge of school shooting after school shooting. It only happens here, not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction. We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else.”

The Frick Sunday concert featured Julius Berger, cello and Christoph Hammer, piano. They played four chorale preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach, fine examples of German protestant liturgy. We were also teated to Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major. A very heady evening.

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

February 4 – February 10

The perfect restaurant: Gene’s on 11th Street. Imagine a place that has the serenity of soft lighting, no music and perfect, unobtrusive service by trained waiters. Gene’s has been around a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemon at one of the side tables.

I didn’t make it to Third Street Music School to meet Carlina Rivera. My bad! Carlina Rivera is the councilwoman for the second district of the New York City Council. GVSHP, The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, sponsored a recent meet and greet with Rivera. She supports protecting historic districts. Go, Rivera!

Instead, I scooted down the street to Second Avenue and Second Street To Anthology Film Archives to attend OBSERVING THE AVANT-GARDE: PETER MOORE & THE 1960s: A SLIDE LECTURE BY BARBARA MOORE. Judson Dance  was featured.  Lots of performances on stage and off were photographed by Peter Moore. Anthology Film Archives is devoted to left wing causes across the globe. It was the perfect place to see turbulent scenes from the 1960s. Afterwards, the Judson gang went to Huertas on First Avenue for great tapas.

A friend and I slept through Phantom Plot. I mean Phantom Thread.

Juilliard Jazz Orchestra gave a short (50 minutes) but vibrant performance honoring Mary Lou Williams.

Friday evening we sat in the nineteenth century parlor of the Merchant’s House, interested and a little anxious to be cast under the spell of mentalist Kent Axell. He explained that the Tredwells, the original owners of the house, might have explored psychic events. Spiritualism, the belief that the living can talk to the dead, was a popular form of parlor entertainment. Axell was energetic, involved the audience and performed some eerily accurate stunts such as answering sealed questions and reading minds. He has a big personality and advertises himself on his website as “Liar for Hire”. The evening was lots of fun.

 

Juilliard Jazz Orchestra honoring Mary Lou Williams

 

 

 

 

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

January 29 – February 4

January 30:  State of the Union address. President Trump preened and applauded himself. It reminded me of a recording I heard of Stalin speaking to the masses. When Stalin finished speaking there was tumultuous applause. It went on and on.  People were afraid to stop clapping because the secret police kept an eye on the crowd.
Ravi Ragbir, the director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, and his wife Amy Gottlieb, an immigrant rights activist and attorney, were at the State of the Union address. They were the guests of N. Y. Democratic members of Congress. When Trump did his number with his chosen immigrant guests, he did not acknowledge other immigrants present. Surprise?
A Jericho Walk is a prayer walk. The New Sanctuary holds a Jericho Walk at Federal Plaza every Thursday at 11 a.m.
My weekly blog encourages me to be up and about. If not, what will I write about? This past week I was felled by the flu so I’ve been going through bits and pieces I’ve saved to use when I haven’t been able to go to events.
This list was borrowed from The Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation. It lists various cultural firsts in the Village.
Greenwich Village is the site of: The first woman candidate for President, Julia Ward Howe, who lived on Bond Street
The first Rocky Horror Picture Show Midnight Showing, at the Waverly Theater
Jane Jacobs:  her first book, the Death of Life of Great American Cities, and her leading the first defeat of Robert Moses and of an “urban renewal” plan, all while living in the Village, and the first (and only) development she had a hand in designing, West Village Houses
The first public meeting of the NAACP, at Cooper Union
The first African-American Studies and the first Women’s Studies classes ever taught, at The New School
The Founder of the first Birth Control Clinic, Margaret Sanger, who lived in Greenwich Village
The “Father of the American Revolution,” Thomas Paine, who lived and died in Greenwich Village

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.