NYMysteries – Nov. 24

 

Forget about Jeff Bezos owning Long Island City. Thanks to old and new friends,  on Thanksgiving we dined at the Dumbo House in Brooklyn. Dumbo House is part of the London Soho chain, launched in 1995. It’s a club for the creative. You can spend the day at the Dumbo House wrapped around your camera, computer, choreography, art or film. Delicious food is served all day long in a perfect buffet style setting. On Thanksgiving  I had delicious shrimp and oysters followed by ham and all the fixings and my favorite, pumpkin pie. From the windows you can track visitors on the Brooklyn Bridge. From our table, we saw that for once the bridge wasn’t crowded. I took out my iPhone and was asked to put it away. I looked around at the bustling scene. Not an iPhone or camera in

In addition to standing on tables, our hostess is also a beekeeper.
Vinegar Hillybilly Honey
Our host, who is seated, and another guest.

sight.  People were talking to each other. Imagine, a club that’s glamorous and respects your privacy. Our generous host had a surprise for us. After dinner we walked through Dumbo to a hotel overlooking the East River. We took the elevator to the fifth floor where we entered a charming bedroom complete with champagne, wine and a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge and Williamsburg Bridge. We had a marvelous time talking about old and new adventures.

Only the best Thanksgiving ever! 

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old  and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

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: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NYMysteries – Nov. 17

NYMysteries  Nov. 17

Remember I Love Lucy ? I lived it the night of the Friday blizzard. I guess Mayor DeBlasio and Governor Cuomo were so busy giving Long Island City to Jeff Bezos that they didn’t have time to prepare NYC or NY state for the blizzard.  

 At around 4 pm in Friday I caught a crosstown bus to 2nd Avenue and 57th Street. There, I waited for 100 hours with about 100 people in the rising storm at the bus stop. Finally, one came. We clambered on. I got a seat! The bus moved slowly. Who cared? It was going south. You couldn’t see out the windows because of the mixture of snow, sleet and rain. At 47th Street the bus came to a stop and the driver announced that the bus was not safe to drive in these conditions. We had to get out. The bus driver stood in the middle of 2nd Avenue, arms outstretched to make sure we got from his bus, across the avenue to the ice ladened sidewalk.The cars were playing ring-around-the-rosie. They didn’t obey the traffic lights. No wonder the bus driver made his tough call BUT now what? I figured I had to walk from 47th Street to 14th Street.  I got moving slowly. There were mothers wheeling children. I saw a father holding on to three young children. People were crowded into bus stops. I didn’t join them because I figured the busses weren’t running. Who knew what was going on? When I got to 30th Street I saw a man getting out of a taxi. I speeded up and begged the driver to take me home. “Sorry. My meter’s not working,” he said. I assured him I didn’t care and told him I’d pay him $40. He took me home. When I got into my apartment, the toilet was overflowing. Water outside. Water inside. After cleaning up and after a g&t or two, I went to bed.  The blizzard roared outside. The wind’s force swept through my bedroom window and slammed shut my bedroom door. It was 2:15 am. I got up and pulled on the bedroom door’s knob. The door wouldn’t open. A plastic exercise band which lives on the knob had caught in the door, sealing it shut. I looked around my bedroom, now a cage, now a cell. All right. I’m exaggerating but it had been a tough day. At least I wasn’t locked in the closet. I emailed a wonderful neighbor who has my keys explaining my predicament and asking her to rescue me in the morning. Of course, she couldn’t, I realized. I had put on the front door’s chain. There’s nothing like fear and a need to go to the bathroom to motivate you. I tore at that exercise band. The door opened, finally.

A busy week. I was at the Frick Collection last Sunday for The Quartetto di Cremona. The musicians played their violins, viola and cello on the “Paganini Quartet” set of instruments by Stradivarious. On Wednesday a friend and I went to Curator Xavier F. Salomon’s talk about Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth-Century Rome. Valadier, the son of French parents who emigrated to Rome, lived and died in that city, committing suicide because of debts. I suggest you go to the Frick website and watch on Youtube, Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth Century Rome. It’s breathtaking. After that, you have to go to the Frick to savor this extraordinary exhibit.

On Wednesday, my birthday present to a friend was going to the Cloisters and lunch at New Leaf. The weather behaved, brisk and sunny. We wandered from quiet gallery to quiet gallery, garden to garden. A lovely experience and only a subway ride from Manhattan chaos.

 

 

 

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a 

An Angel
The Cloisters
The Unicorn Tapestry,
The Cloisters
A Cloister
The Cloister

dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

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: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NYMysteries  Nov. 10

Yesterday I went to a book launching at the Mysterious Bookshop. Nancy A. Hughes, a fellow Mystery Writers of America writer was introducing her fourth book, Vanished. Because of the torrential rain, there was a small crowd. Nancy was her usual charming, upbeat self. She read from a section of Vanished, Book Three in the Trust series. Kingsley, the mother of the kidnapped baby, has had a tumultuous life in the previous Trust mysteries. In this one I hope

Bedouin Camp

she escapes with her life.  The cover  leads you into the story. Nancy said that each of her covers includes a clue. 

Brief recap: Martin Randall Tours sponsored Palestine, Past & Present, October 15-23. Our leader was Curator Felicity Cobbing who’s excavated throughout the Middle East and who has written extensively about the history and archaeology of the Levant. As I’ve mentioned, we stayed in Bethlehem, Jericho and Jerusalem, exploring the three cities and their environs. 

We were in Jericho for two days. On arrival we took the cable car to a 13th-century Greek-Orthodox monastery. Afterwards we had lunch at a Bedouin camp. We sat on soft cushions in a large tent while the men in the camp laid the table and brought in food. We had glimpses of very small children and several pregnant women but were not introduced to them.The lunch was tasty and ample. There were different kinds of chicken, falafel, hummus, pickled vegetables and pomegranates. Nearby was the Bedouins herd of goats. These Bedouin have been informed by the Israeli government that their camp will be shut down.

The next morning, dressed chastely, we went to Qumran caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, then on to a Muslim site of pilgrimage, Nebi Musa. The coach took us to a baptismal site on the Jordan River. I’ve attended Baptist baptisms in Ivoryton, Ct. They were remarkably similar.

Baptismal Site Regulations

We then went to Nablus, the small community of the Samaritans.  The ancient Samaritan synagogue is still in use. A young woman and a young man explained their religion and its ties to Judaism. They also explained that there were about 800 Samaritans, fewer women than men. Ukraine women are brought into their community like war brides to marry the young men. The young man took us to the Teper Nacle, a  ceiling design of

Jordan River Baptism

different fruits.

Demonstrating the building of the Teper Nacle
The Samaritan Teper Nacle

 

We went to Jerusalem and stayed at the American Colony Hotel for two nights. It’s a charming hotel at 1 Louis Vincent Street, built over 100 years ago by a group of Swedes and Americans.

 

 

 

 

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

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: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NYMysteries Nov. 3

 

 

I’m basking in the memories of my recent trip to Palestine. Brief recap: Martin Randall Tours sponsored Palestine, Past & Present, October 15-23. Our leader was Curator Felicity Cobbing who’s excavated throughout the Middle East and who has written extensively about the history and archaeology of the Levant. We stayed in Bethlehem, Jericho and Jerusalem, exploring in the three cities and their environs. 

On our fourth day in Palestine, we had an all day excursion to Jerusalem. We walked on the Ramparts from Jaffa Gate to Damascus Gate. Jerusalem is a cauldron of history, religion, politics and architecture.  It is exciting and chaotic to see so many people celebrating their beliefs:Jews with untrimmed beard and pe’ot, Midwesterners with Jesus written across their t-shirts, Catholic nuns in traditional habits, groups marching and singing religious chants. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it had the enchantment of the Lexington Avenue subway at rush hour. Once again, the most fascinating spectacle for me was watching people embrace their religious beliefs.  Women lay prostrate on what is deemed Jesus’s empty tomb. We, along with everybody else in the universe, including their motorcycles, walked along the Via Dolorosa to the Ecce Homo Convent where there is a portion of a Hadrian arch. Like King Herod, Hadrian was a great builder (Remember the Pantheon?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerusalem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking down from the Jerusalem ramparts
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

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: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?