It’s been a busy week.
It began on Monday, June 2. I went to The Bowery Poetry Club to hear a reading by Laura Catherine Brown who read from her delightful, off-beat novel, Made by Mary. She was followed by other prominent female writers. Such fun to be in the new and old Bowery.
Next day I went to Washington D. C. to visit my Washington family. I hadn’t been in the capitol in years and felt like a hick coming to the
big, beautiful, clean city with a metro that was so efficient it might have been Swedish. I visited the open court of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to witness my nephew, a judge, who was appointed by President Obama in 2013. The two mornings I was there the different judges discussed patent cases, a veteran who claimed his healthcare benefits were inadequate and the building of a road from a private New Mexico property across federal land. Although this court deals primarily with patent law its case load is hodgepodge. My nephew said this was done so that the judges did not develop too narrow a focus.
The 70th Anniversary of D Day came up. I recalled going to Omaha Beach. Have you been there? It rubbed me the wrong way. It was gaudy, triumphant, very much in the MGM musical mode. I expected Gene Kelly to tap dance out of a grave. My friend and I then went to the nearby German military cemetery. As dark as Omaha Beach was light. From MGM to Dante’s Inferno. It reeked of defeat and death. It’s near Mont Saint-Michel.
Back in NYC, a friend and I went to a trendy East Village restaurant, Van Da. Its specialty is modern Vietnamese cuisine. It’s new, in the toddler stage with lots of explanation about the menu and philosophical musing, “Our culinary journey just began.” I give it a year.
On Friday, yet another friend and I went to Hearth. I admit I entered with a chip on my shoulder because of the signs stressing the freshness of their food/ how to treat the earth etc. Surprise, surprise, the food and wine were delicious.
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?