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.