NY Mysteries Sept. 28, 2019

I’m going to get a room near the Joyce and have three meals a day at Cafeteria and die happy. 

Last week a friend and I went to Rubberband. It’s ten athletic (aren’t all dancers?) gymnastic, pugilistic, balletic dancers created Victor Quijada’s high-voltage choreography. They invade the stage, bounce off each other and keep up the movement. Breath-taking, stupendous. It’s Montreal-based and many of the dancers are Canadian. Hummm. Better contact ICE. 

 The Joyce is an encyclopedia of what the body can do.  

Ayodele Casel

This week another pal and I saw choreographer/ tap dancer Ayodele Casel and pianist/composer Arturo O’Farrill. Casel is amusing about having first learned about tap dancing from watching Ginger Rogers films. It’s another ballgame. Casel is Black/Latino and infuses energy, dynamism into her work. She is also devoted to encouraging young people, especially girls of color to live authentically and spark joy. O’Farrill is one of those gifted pianists whose fingers are glued to the keyboard. He is as thrilling to watch as the dancers. Casel has a fine troupe of five extraordinary dancers. 

Arturo O’Farrill

 

 

 

 

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 ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NY Mysteries Sept. 20, 2019

 

 The Judson Week End in Deep River, Ct. is a Judson Memorial Church version of a retreat. However, we never stopped talking , drinking, dancing, meditating, skinny dipping, hiking, participating in Pilates, trying facial masks, eating, celebrating present absent members and absent dead members as well as a baptism in the lake. That’s all in two days.

 

Hiking around the Lake
Henco at the keys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Service

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Florida friend visits NYC for six weeks at this time of year. We never stop! This week alone we saw Slave Play, too long and over rated. We went to Caviat on Clinton Street. It  was packed, as usual. Georgia Brown, a dynamo Australian writer and entrepreneur invented Generation Women. It’s a performance by women of generations between twenty and seventy. Georgia presents a theme. This current one was  women’s bodies. The audience hooted and howled over the various adventures presented by each woman, enlightening and embarrassing. Next night we went to a wonderful performance at the Joyce: Rubberband. 

 Don’t forget the Brooklyn Book Fair where some of us will be hawking books. 

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 ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NY Mysteries Sept. 13, 2019

 

I’m going to the Judson Memorial Weekend. It’s been held for years near Ivoryton, Ct. Many years before I knew about Judson, I was an apprentice at the Ivoryton Playhouse. When we sweep past it on our way to the Weekend at Incarnation Center, I’m flooded with memories. Milton Stiefel, his brother Irving and his wife owned and ran the theater. Milton Stiefel had begin his career with David Belasco. 

During the summer at the Playhouse I had motley chores: clean pots for the set designer, smear soap on mirrors so they wouldn’t reflect on stage, clean the restrooms. On rare occasions I’d appear in crowd scenes. I  reported to a Syracuse senior, Jim Hutton, who had a Hollywood career (Where the Boys Are) and was Timothy Hutton’s (Academy Award) father. Of course, this fifteen year old had a crush on Jim. But Jim was more interested in the sexy girls in the Guys and Dolls chorus line. Rudy Vallée sang his last songs in a tiny nightclub across the street from the theater. In those days film and stage stars trekked around to regional theaters. After filming Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando appeared in Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers, anyone?) was his co-star.  Katherine Hepburn’s father was a Hartford doctor and the family had a summer house in nearby Saybrook. I think Ms. Hepburn began her career at Ivoryton. Seeing her in the audience, at intermission I crept near her to gawk. She was petite and dressed in a well cut white linen suit. Petite? you say. Honestly, she was about 5’3”. I know she looks taller in films. Maria Riva starred on  the Ivoryton stage but the real star was her mother, Marlene Dietrich. Every afternoon the crew hung around the box office phone. Like clock work it would ring at 5 p.m. Irving’s wife answering in her version of a classy accent, would hold the phone’s receiver so we could all hear Dietrich’s famous teutonic growl. 

 

Tomatoes, fresh from the garden

 

 

 

 

Flowers and tomatoes from a country garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

NY Mysteries Sept. 6, 2019

What do Mary Higgins Clark, David Brooks and Frank McCourt have in common? They all lived in the sprawling complex on the lower east side known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. It stretches from 14th Street to 23rd Street and is bounded by First Avenue on the west and Avenue C on the east. There are 80 acres of land and over eleven thousand apartments. It was planned and built in the early forties. World War II veterans were given priority. 

The 110 buildings are in a park-like environment of mostly plane trees. I’ve lived here for many years and consider myself very lucky. From my window I look north over the Oval, Stuyvesant Town’s central lawn. To the west I see the Empire State Building. At one time the lawns were sacrosanct, acres of undisturbed grass. Recently, there’s a hands on approach. Pets are allowed and Adirondack chairs dot the Oval lawn. At the center is a magnificent fountain. 

 

A view of the Oval Fountain

 

 

 

 

The Oval Lawn
The Oval Fountain

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 ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?