Global Entry: Trusted Traveler Program
Have you arrived at Kennedy tired and tipsy from your flight and then wended your way with ten million others through customs? Wait no more! Maybe.
Online I filled in a long Global Entry: Trusted Traveler Program form and paid $100. A few weeks later, I was instructed to report to the U. S. Custom House at Bowling Green at 3 p.m. sharp. If you’re late, you are advised you’ll have to go through the whole process again. The government’s office is housed in the Museum of the American Indian, a mammoth building perched at the southern tip of Manhattan. You check into the building as if you were in an airport. Well, it is a government program. You go to the third floor and read a sign that says, Sit Here. You sit on a cushioned bench outside a door with a U. S. government agency printed on the door. It has nothing to do with you. Within 15 minutes, an official appears and asks you your name and takes your passport and drivers license. You are taken to the fourth floor where you sit some more. After a few minutes you are called to an open bank where an official asks you your birthdate and email. That’s the interview. You’re told you’ll receive Your Global Entry membership card within 10-15 business days. You’re also given written instructions about how to access your membership. It’s loaded with admonitions about what not to do. See you in line.
The Boys in the Band
A friend and I had dinner at Joe Allen’s. Over some good grub and wine, we traded accounts of NYC in the seventies. We then went to the Booth Theater to see Boys in the Band. More memory lane. I went to the Booth years ago. Beatrice Lillie, anyone? The old darling, the Booth, shows its age. It was built in 1913 and reeks of memories. So does the 1968 production. Imagine. Pre-Aids. Boys in the Band was written by a Catholic, southern gay man, Mart Crowley. His dialogue is terrific: witty, biting and harkens back to the time when gays were tormented about being gay and being found out. Is there any recording of the audiences response back then? Now, we all know, it’s cool to appreciate all things gay so the audience laughed knowingly and was silently respectful during the tear jerking moments. Loved the production and the wit.
Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned a 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?
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.