Category Archives: Uncategorized

NYMysteries: May 20 —  May 26

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

Catholic clothes at the Metropolitan Museum

 

One Size Fits All

Aside from one incredibly rude guard who would be at home torturing Riker inmates, it was a lovely visit. In the Anna Wintour – What a giggle – Costume Center, Catholicism displayed its visual strength through gorgeous costumes and stunning jewelry. Hushed, like a church, people gazed or frowned at the jewel infested crowns, some muttering about how many poor people the cost of that crown would feed. Catholic hierarchy understood how beautiful architecture, sculpture, paintings, seep into an innocent’s subconscious, establishing an eternal bond. The wily Jesuits claimed that if they got you by seven, you were theirs for life. Seventeenth century popes, Urban VIII and Alexander VII, were forerunners of today’s CEOs. To counter the reformation, in addition to the Inquisition, they worked Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s pious fingers to the bone. I took this photo at Villa D’Este, a sixteenth century summer palace for one of the Estes family.  It’s Bernini’s Oval Fountain, set against a rustic shrine dedicated to a nymph. Among his many masterpieces, Bernini is known for The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Apollo and Daphne as well as his work on St. Peter’s and the Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Navona.  

 

 

Bernini’s Oval Fountain, Villa D’Este

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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: 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? 

nymysteries May 14 —  May 18

 

I met Ginny and Lenny Fox at Judson Memorial Church. Ginny died the day after Mother’s Day. She hadn’t eaten in years. She drank some stuff that sustained her physically. Intellectually and emotionally, she sustained the rest of us. She and Lenny, her late husband, traveled. He carried her supply of  canned nourishment and they had a ball. At different times, they and I had stayed at the Pensione Accademia in Venice. She and I enjoyed talking about the pensione and Venice (duh). Ginny and I were supposed to have gone to the Remnick-Comy New Yorker interview at Town Hall but she had returned from Greece the day of the event, not well. Her impeccable manners reigned. She emailed me, suggesting I ask someone else. Her daughter posted heartfelt news about her mother who had hospice care at home. This poems will be read at Ginny’s memorial. I looked up Laistrygonians on Wikipedia. They were man-eating giants who ate most of Odysseus’s crew. 

Entrance to Pensione Accademia
A quiet niche at Pensione Accademia
The one and only Ginny Fox

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

 

 

 

 

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: 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? 

NYMysteries May 6 – May 12

@Generation Women shared secrets on April 25. It was  story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant had seven minutes  to tell her secret and the fun began at 7 pm. It was at the Caveat Theatre, a  New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. 

See my performance on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/-NejHvdUcOE

Read it here.

Generation Women  is an organization founded and run by Georgia Clark.

April 25 My Biggest Secret performed at Caveat 

There are those secrets we tell our ten best friends. For example: I just signed with an agent. Please don’t tell anyone.(Dear Reader, This is a figment of my imagination.)  Or, after a glass of wine or two, Did I ever tell you about the times I went to Plato’s Retreat?  Plato’s Retreat was a 1970’s sex club. When I submitted what I thought was my final draft of My Biggest Secret to Georgia Clark, she assumed it was a partial draft. Oh, yeah? Our Georgia wants details about Plato’s Retreat. Those Australians… all sex crazed. Dropping the Plato’s Retreat name among the elderly is a fun secret that makes your friends envious of your long ago dissolute life. How innocent my boyfriend Seymour and I were. In the late seventies he phoned Plato’s Retreat, landline, and asked if we should bring bathing suits. A guy with a very NY accent snickered and said, “Well, if you want.” So we arrived at the Ansonia Hotel located between West 73rd and West 74th Streets and went to Plato’s Retreat in the basement. This was the late Seventies. Something called gay cancer was spreading through the city. My neighbor, a gay man, had purple blotches on his face. 47 year old Conductor Thomas Schippers died after a brief and mysterious illness. Seymour and I were unaware of how deadly this plague was. It was later called AIDS.  

Meanwhile, in order to seem hip and not reveal our nervousness at entering Plato’s Retreat, Seymour had fortified himself with a little booze and a lot of pot. I had fortified myself with a lot of booze and a little pot. Did you know that sex clubs, at least this one, were very quiet? Aside from moaning, groaning and women having a loudest orgasm competition, the place was silent. Somewhere there was the dripping of water from the waterfalls but who cared. We didn’t wear our bathing suits.

But my biggest secret is in the shame and anger and embarrassment category. 

I avoid the word, family. My secret is I don’t have a family. The word I hate is mother. I didn’t have one. I had a younger or older sister, depending on the mood of the woman who gave birth to me. She hated and was afraid of other people. That included her three sisters and two brothers all of whom died alone. Therefore, there was no family creation. My father died when I was two. My mother never mentioned him. I never saw my mother kiss or hold hands with another man.  My father had worked on the New Orleans paper, the Times Picayune, moved east to work with Dorothy Day and in World War II his merchant marine ship was torpedoed. Every year I make a pilgrimage to the Merchant Mariners’ Memorial in Battery Park. My father died at 37 in 1942. He was a socialist and my mother was a social climber. I’m a combination of the two.     

You know how it is: when you don’t have something, it’s always there. If you’re poor you hear only the word, money. If you’re hungry, it’s the word, food. It’s the same thing with the word, family. I don’t hate Paul Ryan because he’s a Republican. I envy him because he’s surrounded by family. 

Every day remarks such as, “My kids keep me posted about Facebook. I never go on it myself.” Swamp me with visions of successful, beautiful/ handsome millennials texting mom.  Another example is, “I had to fly home. We had an intervention for my cousin who’s in and out of drug rehab.” How cool is that? An intervention, relatives with the same last name all in the same room.

I created a fantasy family following literary protagonists who have no family such as the early Harry Bosch, Cornelia in the PD James mysteries and Sneaky Pete. 

Sub-secret Number 1: I was going to include more literary names, racking my brain for the lack of family in Virginia Woolf or Zadie Smith. Any way to get away from my shameful secret, the longing for a family. 

I have written two police procedurals. My lead detective, Steve Kulchek, has a shaky family life: one beloved daughter, one divorced wife and his uncle in Florida, a retired cop. I enjoy writing from a man’s point of view. Maybe it’s because I can make him the guy I want. 

Secrets are the heart beat of most mysteries. They are cause and effect in fiction and in life. Do secrets breed phobias or vice versa? 

Sub-secret number 2: Since childhood I was afraid of being trapped in an elevator and no one would rescue me. Living in NYC and in Rome it was a problem for me and a nuisance for others. I’d watch a stranger go into an elevator or come out of one and I’d feel a chill. Being alone in a moving box? Worse still, what if it stops? Like a wild animal, when I had to take one, I was aware of mechanical sounds and speed, as if they were out to get me. I had a great companion who was getting tired of my out bursts after refusing to get into an elevator. You know how shame and fear equal anger and losing your temper. I didn’t want to lose him so I found a clinic at St. Roosevelt Hospital. A wonderful social worker dealt with anxiety. There was a woman who couldn’t be alone. Her fiancé was waiting for her outside. There was a woman who said she would welcome be trapped alone in an elevator for the rest of her life. Two of us were afraid of elevators and took over the sessions. Every session the social worker would trot us out to the elevator and try to convince the other woman and me to get into it. He, the social worker, explained that there were some theories about not trusting a parent that contributed to this fear.  No kidding. Thanks to this wonderful man and the fact that I moved into a Stuyvesant Town apartment on the twelfth floor, I got over the elevator phobia. Never mind the fact that for the first three months I climbed the twelve flights. 

I have a surrogate family that consists of my super friends in NYC and Portland, Oregon. My longing for family gets played out in my detective procedurals. So there! Into my seventies, bloody but unbowed. 

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: 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? 

NY Mysteries

April 28—  May 5

Paul Ryan repents! 

Jesuit Fr. Pat Conroy, 60th House Chaplain had been forced to resign by Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House. Ryan acknowledged his mistake and Father Conroy is back in the pulpit. Was it because of this prayer or because Fr. Conroy had invited a Muslim  cleric to say an opening prayer? 

“May all Members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great Nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by

Before the Curtain rises: HERE’s presentation of Basil Twists (and Hector Berlioz’s) Symphonie Fantastique

all Americans.”  

By the way, why do we have anyone leading prayers in the House given the country’s grounding in the separation of church and state?

Generation Women shared secrets on April 25. It was  story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant had seven minutes  to tell her secret and the fun began at 7 pm. It was at the Caveat Theatre, a  New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. The April 25 event was sold out but please come to the May 29 event. 

Boo-hoo. The Frick concert series is over. What a lovely way to spend two late afternoon hours on a Sunday. The Music Room has a gentle atmosphere. The architect, John Russell Pope, altered the original building, a private home, in the 1930s  to become a museum. Originally named the auditorium, the Music Room was intended to be used as a lecture hall and art gallery. 

On Wednesday there was a burst of summer. Friends and I had dinner at Aquagrill and then went across Sixth Avenue, walked past the gorgeous motorcycles in Dugati and arrived at HERE. We were there to see Symphonie Fantastique, a twenty years old puppetry event by Basil Twist. It takes place in an aquarium with live music by pianist Christopher O’Riley. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie  thundered across the small dark theater. 

 

 

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 stabbed partner? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case?  It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

April 21 —  April 27

 

Joyce DiDonato’s Master Classes 

Ms. DiDonato described her three master classes (April 21, April 22, April 23), given before the public, as a playground and as a three day arc. For two hours on three afternoons a packed house in Carnegie Hall’s Resnick Education Wing watched and listened as the maestra took four singers through their paces. In addition, they had worked with Ms. Donato each morning. Francesca Chiejina, soprano, Ané Pretorius,

Joyce DiDonato and Germán Enrique Alcántara
Joyce DiDonato and  Ané Pretorius
Francesca Chiejina
Francesca Chiejina and Germán Enrique Alcántara
Joyce DiDonato and  Ané Pretorius
Jose Simerilla Romero and Joyce DiDonato blowing through straws
Joyce DiDonato

mezzo-soprano, Jose Simerilla Romero, tenor and  Germán Enrique Alcántara, baritone were accompanied by two accomplished pianists, Justina Lee and Shannon McGinnis.  It was glorious. Ms. Donato’s knowledge of music and people coupled with her teaching genius made the sessions a delicious respite from our contentious world. She had a singer blowing through a straw, two other singers dancing, and another singer sitting on a stack of three chairs. Why not? The master classes were streamed live online.

 

 

 

 

Generation Women shared secrets on April 25. It was  story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant had seven minutes  to tell her secret and the fun began at 7 pm. It was at the Caveat Theatre, a  New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. The April 25 event was sold out but please come to the May event. 

 

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 stabbed partner? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case?  It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

April 16 —  April 21

 

I hadn’t been in Town Hall in years. On the second floor I stared at photos of Billie Holiday and Andrea Segovia. Both had appeared in Town Hall way back in the fifties. The crowd buzzed. We were there to hear The New Yorker Radio Hour (and a half) moderated by David Remnick who was interviewing James Comey.  Comey has been jumping all over the media for the past few weeks to publicize  A Higher Loyalty, his tell (almost) all book about his philosophy as it played out in his exciting career. It was a pleasure to listen to two well educated, well spoken men. The hottest words flooded the packed theater: rule of law, transparency, Loretta Lynn, Rudolph Giuliani, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton,  Russian involvement in the American election.  I think Mr Comey will be speaking at Amazon. Remember the saying, Revenge is a dish best served cold?  Mr. Comey + Mr. Jeff Bezos is almost as titillating as Trump + prostitutes in Moscow. 

  

James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty

 

 

Stuyvesant Town has been described as a place “to live in a park – to live in the country in the heart of New York.” One of its traditions is the Stuyvesant Town Flea Market. It was an annual event until 9/11 closed it down. Don’t ask me to explain that logic. It was brought back last year. It’s on this weekend. I’m not participating because I’m going to a Joyce DiDonato masterclass and because, last year, it took me five hours to make about twenty seven dollars.  It was still fun. Neighbors and I shared a booth. Friends dropped by. Meanwhile, the woman next to me made out like a bandit selling little toys to lots of little children.  

 

@Generation Women is sharing secrets on April 25. It’s  story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant has seven minutes -7- seven minutes to tell her secret and the fun begins at 7 pm. It’s at the Caveat Theatre, a  New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. The April 25 event is sold out but please come to the May event. 

 

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.

April 8 – April 14

 

Attention! @Generation Women is sharing secrets on April 25. Come, please come, to story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant has seven minutes -7- seven minutes to tell her secret and the fun begins at 7 pm. It’s at the Caveat Theatre, a  new New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. 

 

I went to a book launch. Laura Catherine Brown and Sweta Vikram introduced a Blue Stockings packed audience to their latest books.  Laura’s Made By Mary will be out in May and Sweta’s louisiana catch was available that evening.  Surrounded by friends, fans and family, Laura and Sweta read and discussed their works of fiction. Mary, In Made by Mary, bears a child for her daughter who was born without a uterus. In louisiana catch, Ahana, an abuse survivor, flees New Delphi for New Orleans.    

 

 

Book Launch: Laura Brown and Sweta Vikram
Made by Mary pin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweta Vikram’s louisiana catch

 

 

The Frick Collection’s April 8th concert was given by the Mozart Piano Quartet. However, they didn’t play Mozart and there were not four pianos. Instead, there was one piano, one violin, one viola and a cello. And lovely selections by Dvorak and Brahms.

 

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.

April 1 – April 7

 When attending Studio 5, my friend and I have a ritual: early supper in a Thai restaurant on 58th Street, jaywalking across the street into one of the City Center buildings and taking the ornate elevator to the fifth floor to a well lit rehearsal room surrounded on three sides of folding chairs. The early birds grab the center section. We sit on the stage right side. Studio 5 was invented by Damian Woetzel who is now the seventh president of Juilliard. The president has left the premises but he’s been succeeded by other ballet luminaries. This evening Kate Lydon, the Artistic Director of ABT Studio Company, moderated American Ballet Theatre: From Trainee to Luminary.  The average age of the dancers was nineteen. They discussed where they came from, what it was like training and living in ABT housing but the focus of the evening was when they danced. We were treated to excerpts from Giselle, William Tell and Le Jeune. So backstage, so NYC. 

 

 

Studio 5 ABT Dancers
Studio 5 ABT Dancer
Studio 5 ABT Dancers
Studio 5 ABT Dancers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next evening we went to Juilliard Jazz. Wynton Marsalis introduced A Tribute to Blue Note Records. In the playbill, there was a short interview with Conductor Marsalis in which he stressed the importance of jazz’s history for musicians and named some of the Blue Note musicians with whom he’d played: . Juilliard Jazz played nine pieces including Woody Shaw’s The Moontrane and Dexter Gordon’s Ernie’s Tune. The evening ended with Wayne Shorter’s Free for All with a tremendous drum solo.  

Juilliard Jazz
Juilliard Jazz
Juilliard Jazz
Juilliard Jazz
Juilliard 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.

March 25 – March 31

Via Quadronno: a slice of northern Italy on 73rd Street and Madison. We tuck ourselves into a little table parked under a bookcase. I had beautifully cooked and served asparagus and a boiled ege. My friend had minestrone and a panino American style i.e. more prosciutto than you’d have in Italy. I looked at his food hungrily then consoled myself by sopping up the oil in my plate with toasted bread. He handed me James Rebanks’s THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE Modern Dispatches From an Ancient Landscape and told me to speed read it for our Arsenal Book Club on Wed. Reading a book about shepherding in the English Lake District? I assumed the prosciutto had gone to his head. I was wrong. Rebanks’s story of home and staying there is compelling. It’s about preserving a way of life that is difficult to sustain and as moving as the old movie about Lassie. Rebanks is on Twitter: Herdwick Shepherd.

I confess. I read The Nation recently. I was waiting in a doctor’s office. Did you know that The Nation like Ted Turner Classics has a wine club? Did you know, courtesy of The Nation, you can go on an Alaskan tour with Ruth Messinger?

An artist friend and I wandered through the Whitney’s Grant Wood exhibit. We admitted grudgingly that Wood was a superb craftsman. In addition to being an artist he was a silversmith and he had a streak of whimsy. Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell came to mind.

An Altar to the Home, Grant Wood
A Screen, Grant Wood

Are they American Regionalists like Wood? His art celebrates the American farm. His attention to detail is extraordinary. There’s a uniformity of expression and of gender. The men are big, usually in overalls and engaged in the manly arts of mechanics. The women are small, usually in an apron and engaged in the womanly arts of polishing the furniture. We walked down the outside stairs from the eighth floor cafe to the fifth floor exhibit. Wonderful views of lower Manhattan and the Hudson.

A view from the Whitney

 

 

 

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.

March 17 – March 24

Busy week.

Starting with St. Patrick’s Day and ending with the Morgan Library & Museum’s Now and Forever: the Art of Medieval Time where I learned that St. Patrick’s Day like Christmas harkens back to the middle ages when fixing a holiday on a specific date was done to keep track of time.

Now and Forever: The Art of Medieval Time

 

Now and Forever: The Art Medieval Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A memorial in New Jersey was followed by a birthday dance at the Joyce. The Stephen Petronio Company celebrates choreographers of the past. Tuesday was Merce Cunningham night. Petronio scored. Reverence for the past did not rob his pieces of their freshness and sexiness. The Butcher’s Daughter on Hudson is vegan, in spite of the name. I dote on their breakfast menu, especially soft boiled eggs and soldiers. Don’t tell me you don’t know what soldiers are.
A friend and I drifted across the Morgan corridor from the medieval to the modern. We went to the Peter Hujar: Speed of Life. Hujar was one of the many AIDS victims who died in the eighties. For me there’s a sadness that hangs over the exhibit of a very young, very talented photographer.

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life
Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.