May 9, almost 2 months ahead, & the 99¢ store on my block has put up its Independence Day display: a cheesy poster with flag 'n' fireworks & 3 blinking packages of Christmas lights: red, blue, white. Today, with its cold rain, doesn't feel like summer at all, let alone halfway to Labor Day. But then again, the calendar gallops increasingly faster.
* The Man of Good Humor in Maryland sold a Red, White, & Blueberry among his treats.
I was on line waiting to order. I heard one of the 2 young women (pretty sure they were sisters) in front of me ask, What is pumpernickel? The guy taking the order, with the posture of genuinely having all the time & patience in the world, asked if they knew what rye was & went on to explain. I didn't hear more. When it was my turn, I asked, Where are they from that they don't know what pumpernickel is? London, he said. OK, I guess that makes sense; I probably didn't know what it was myself. Pumpernickel's my favorite, he said. Is that what they ordered? No, he said, french toast. I made the New York purist's face. No, he said, it's pretty good. He dropped his voice. I'll put one in your bag for you to try - no charge, because you're nice. It is pretty good but I don't think I'd ever order it. Now I'm craving pumpernickel & slightly regretting my usual everything.
Then I ran into Jimmy Fragosa, who has kept up St Marks Church for as long as I remember, & we talked as we always do about the Yankees, & I asked him to put in a good word for the Twins, but he wasn't having any of it. I met his friend Raoul, & thought about how great both summer & the East Village are for chatting on the street.
Music must be like breakfast. Many of us eat pretty much the same thing every day. I listen to the same songs often. Novels are dinner: we would get impatient if dinner every night was exactly the same & while there are a handful of novels I've read over & over, most of the time I'm looking for something fresh. Poetry is more like music ~ I go back to the same poems over & over. Am I in a rut? No, because I spend time every week listening to fresh-to-me artists. When I go to the Whitney, say, I always spend part of the time with the permanent collection & part of my visit with whatever show is going on. Not sure if there's a conclusion to draw. That variety and consistency are complementary? That the familiar is the base for appreciating the new? That listening to music is like being half-awake, when my stomach can only handle coffee & toast?
Some of the 5-star songs that rolled through my playlist so far today:
I'll Fly Away, Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch
Hard Times, Anna McGarrigle & Kate McGarrigle
Respect, Aretha Franklin
City Of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie
Shine Hallelujah Shine, Bill Monroe & his Blue Grass Boys
Dark Was The Night - Cold Was The Ground, Blind Willie Johnson
The Last Mile Of The Way, The Blue Sky Boys
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, Bob Dylan
I Ain't Got No Home, Bruce Springsteen
Racing In The Street, Bruce Springsteen
That Lonesome Valley, Carolina Ramblers
Hello Stranger, The Carter Family
The East Virginia Blues, The Carter Family
Maybellene, Chuck Berry
The Leaving of Liverpool, The Clancy Brothers
Along The Bayou, Cliff Le Maire & His Melody Boys
Down On the Corner, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Teach Your Children, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Lonesome Frisco Line, Darby & Tarlton
Iko Iko, The Dixie Cups
Your Long Journey, Doc Watson
Just One Look, Doris Troy
Under the Boardwalk, The Drifters
Saturday Night at the Movies, The Drifters
Son Of A Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield
That Old Sweet Roll, Dusty Springfield
Take It Easy, Eagles
High Road, Elle King
Snowbird, Elvis Presley
Early Mornin' Rain, Elvis Presley
All I Could Do Was Cry, Etta James
I'd Rather Go Blind, Etta James
Morning Morning, The Fugs
Cry Baby, Garnet Mimms
All Fall Down, George Jones
Amarillo by Morning, George Strait
The Twist, Hank Ballard & The Midnighters
Ninety Miles An Hour (Down A Dead End Street), Hank Snow
Six More Miles (To The Graveyard), Hank Williams
Lost Highway, Hank Williams
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hank Williams
Mardi Gras Mambo, The Hawketts
Wayfaring Stranger, Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra (they're Norwegian!)
Another Like You, Hayes Carll
Smokestack Lightning, Howlin' Wolf
Four Strong Winds, Ian & Sylvia
Some Day Soon, Ian & Sylvia
It's Raining, Irma Thomas
Ship Sailing Now, J.E. Mainer
Love is life's snow. It falls deepest and softest into the gashes left by the fight - whiter and purer than snow itself.
― Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North
The word snow, which goes back 1200 years to Old English, might be my favorite word. Certainly the most calming. Love's OK too.
I try not to take books from LFLs, because, y'know, so many books already. But these were irresistible!
* The Old Jewish Men's Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around, by Noah Rinsky. I am trying to have an OJM for a husband, & to that goal, am trying to teach my Irish husband to say "oy gevalt." For a New Yorker, he sounds as unJewish as the Scandinavians I grew up with. Oy gevalt!
* Red Ribbon on a White Horse, by Anzia Yezierska, who wrote the great Bread Givers. This came out in English in the '80s & has an introduction by W.H. Auden (which is not noted on the cover - apparently her name was plenty).
Who was that guy on the radio who used to say it was one of the Top Ten days? That was yesterday - a soft clear day with enough breeze to ruffle your nerves alert.
Something happened that I meant to talk about, but what? Was it the utterly nerdy & addictive Norwegian grammar site? Was it finally buying some food? I'd been reduced to squinting at that last box of matzoh. Was it having a satisfying B&H breakfast? Was it that the pigeons on my ledge now have two eggs, or that the baby pigeon from last month is fully grown, with just a few wild unfurled feathers on its head, but still not flying, as far as we can tell?
Even though we're members, I hadn't been to the Whitney in ages. Very much enjoyed the Amy Sherald show of large, colorful portraits of well-dressed Black people. She's probably best known for her official portrait of Michelle Obama, which holds us off more than it lets us in, revealing resolve & self-sufficiency. While flat & not overly detailed, every single picture was arresting - she showed something about everyone that I had to believe was true about them. Great hats! Great clothes!
It was a two-for-one day of culture. In the evening my visiting sister & went to Drunk Shakespeare, which was funny & topically satirical, & the best kind of live theater: actors putting everything they had on the stage. Only one was drunk & boy was he. But he managed to give the "tomorrow & tomorrow" speech with dignity & conviction. There was a woman who sang fantastically & followed that with a perfect cartwheel. I also loved that everyone in the cast wanted the audience to have a good time.
Swell to sit at the 15th floor bar of the Indigo Hotel on Ludlow Street, looking out over the city, enjoying the breeze, & hanging with my sister.
Stay tuned: we are leaving the neighborhood today!
A happy day puttering around the East Village. I took a class at my gym, hard but good. Sat on a bench with my best friend to reminisce & illuminate things. Got the good news that a sick friend's health is not as dire as it looked a day or 2 ago. The weather pleases me. I watched half of a documentary on the Lofoten Islands & recognized a couple of buildings from my visit there a few years ago. Norway is beautiful in an otherworldly way & the old men look like my cousin & have the laconic voices of my childhood. (When I talked with Leik, that cousin, a few weeks ago & said a few words in Norwegian, he said with delight that it took him straight back to his Norwegian grandmother, Margit Walstad.) My pigeons have one egg & they're back up on the ledge; the egg is new today; will there be another? I crossed everything off my to-do list & whittled down my email box to zero unread emails; if I go away or let up, it gets back up & up quickly. But today I am quietly happy.
It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.
~ Paul Erdos
As part of my exploration of my city, I went on a little outing in Jackson Heights, casually led by my friend Lenore. Mostly the supermarkets of Jackson Heights. The Chinese one sold Cooked Apple Snail Meat, Mudfish Chunk, Pork Feet & Pork Front Feet (gag). The Indian one had lots of desserts & breads.
It really was somewhere else to be there.
Every time I leave my neighborhood, I love this city. I love the East Village the most, of course.
Here to report that every single block in my area now has a bakery. There is also a new restaurant, a sandwich joint, a takeout specialty (one with dumplings, another with Korean dumplings, a third with vegetarian Korean dumplings) on more or less every block. Trendy bars! A place that sells only Irish soda bread (loaves or scones, take yer choice)! You certainly wouldn't think of the economy is tanking from all the hubbub in the East Village.
I think that horrible woman at the Post Office (OMG I wrote Poet Office) threw away my magazines - I know they haven't all arrived.
And people at that (MY) post office do actual crimes! In case the link doesn't work, there was an attempted rape after a party, on camera, on the street, by idiots: "When officers responded to the 911 call, prosecutors said, they found Mr. Alcala and Mr. Chou sitting in the front of the mail truck. They refused to step outside the vehicle or to open the back of the truck, and told officers there was no one back there. But the officers could hear banging and screams for help coming from the back of the truck, prosecutors said. Mr. Jean then emerged from the back with his pants unzipped, and when officers went inside they found the woman with her pants also undone."
Was at the Grolier Club last night for the launch of Granary Books' After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960–2025. "This book offers a visual and thematic journey through avant-garde, concrete, visual, and experimental poetics as they appeared in ephemeral little magazines and small press publications from the 1960s onward." The exhibit from the book (probably the other way round: the book is the catalogue for the show) at the Grolier Club will be there until July 26, with several talks and discussions.
I was around for 2/3rds of the time the show covers & admit I had never heard of many or most of the presses or magazines. I was at the bottom rung of production values: the magazine I co-edited had construction paper covers & blurry photography, what little of it there was.
One of the two authors, the brilliant enthusiast M.C. Kinniburgh, has in her bio that she's a member of the Grolier. The young friend I took with me, who is interested in & tracks down everything, told me there's a Reddit thread on how one gets invited to join the Grolier. It's for book collectors, dealers, & the like; more than that I do not know.
I expected more ceremony, given that Louis & I had been talking about this for at least 2 years. They come with a bin, not a vault, we dumped in 8 or so boxes of papers, he took it away & that was that. Goodbye to 1980s tax returns! Goodbye to ancient bank accounts! Goodbye to mail. I don't know what Lou was getting rid of, work stuff. It cost $175 + tax & they came right to our door without excitement. One step forward for Swedish death cleaning & I have a little extra space in my office.
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
~ Henry James
I was at a great seder except it lacked young people. How do you carry on a tradition without someone to hand it to? A culture needs both tradition & the individual to make sense of it & set it on fire, as the case may be.
On the plane back from Sioux Falls by way of MSP in February, I had a deep conversation with the young man sitting next to me, while we circled in the snow over NYC & finally didn't land at Boston. He was brilliant & gathered & wove huge heaps of knowledge from every direction. He's a classical pianist & is in some sort of hiphop/jazz group as well - his musical interests resembled his intellectual in being farflung & interrelated. He told me he was playing at Merkin Hall on April 17 & so I discovered his name: Mikael Darmanie (rhymes with harmony?) & went to see him last night. He played an hour of eclectic "Piano Dialogues" that included Schubert, Duke Ellington, Bartók, & half a dozen others, including 2 pieces he wrote. Riveting & I loved that he wanted us to feel the farflung, interrelated connections among centuries & genres.
I didn't at all assume that he would remember me - I didn't know if he had even seen my face on the plane, in fact - so I began, You probably don't remember me, & he instantly said, the plane from Minnesota, you're the author, we had that beautiful conversation.
So he got even more points.
I hope we become friends but even if we don't, I cherish the chance meeting & getting my mind blown open a little by all that the world contains.
Who told me this morning that he has loved me for over half his (very long) life. I can't do the math in return but it's a lot of years of being enthralled & amused & swept away by the "man's man & a woman's dream" that is Johnny.
A movie about a rescued penguin who proceeds to rescue all the humans around him, without being heart-warming. That's a tough thing to pull off, even if it's set in 1970s Argentina at the beginning of the brutal, murderous military dictatorship. Steve Coogan was perfect as the English teacher who drifted into a hoity-toity boys' boarding school in Buenes Aires, and the penguin should get an Oscar. I never want to say too much about a movie except to say see it or skip it. The Penguin Lessons: See it!
Some poems of mine are now up in the swell online journal R&R, accompanied by the elegant, sunny art of Baltimore artist Mason Owens.
One of our students at English in Action asked why her friend laughed when she said she was going to start drinking at noon & would meet her a few hours later. We finally figured out that to say "let's go drinking" or "to start drinking" means that the drinking is the point. By contrast, to suggest "let's meet for a drink" is suggesting a meet up, with alcohol incidental - it's the getting together that's the point. The Russian repeated my "let's have a drink" as "let's get together for a few drinks." His idea of a drink was to have a few of them. He didn't even hear himself editing it. Russian drinking culture.
I started my project of getting to know New York City by taking the 7 train to 103 St-Corona Plaza and walking a few blocks to the Louis Armstrong House Museum. You can take a tour of his actual house but I stayed across the street at the really well done visitors center & learned a lot about his life and influence. My favorite single item was a 6-page hand-written letter about living on the block for 29 years. He described the neighborhood kids watch him "ooze" out of his garage in his Cadillac and follow him to the Chinese restaurant, where they asked for so many autographs that his food was cold, & he had to go home where his wife fried up a dagwood sandwich for him.
I never was all that crazy about his music, kinda corny, though I know it's brilliant and foundational, but I sure am crazy about him. What an ambassador for love and fairness.
The neighborhood I walked through was almost entirely Hispanic, & from the shop signs, largely from South America. According to the demographics I looked up, Corona is roughly 75% Hispanic, 10% each Asian & Black, and 5% white.
Having a leisurely & delicious breakfast at Balthazar with an old friend reminded me of going there once, long enough ago that baseball news was finally in the Times at the end of a baseball-less winter. It was snowing softly & I had a bowl of thick hot chocolate. And it was my birthday. Today it was eggs, coffee, & good conversation with plenty of laughing. The man next to us ate a sticky bun & a plate of bacon.
I've lived in New York long enough that the sibillant Puerto Rican accent that was ubiquitous in my neighborhood & that I hardly hear any more is just as nostalgic as the soft Lakota accent of my childhood. It's the madeleine of my ear.
You can cut the branches of the tree of liberty, but you can't destroy the roots because they are too strong and too many.
~ Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803), Haitian revolutionary
I dreamed my cat, Lefty, asked me to call him Mr. Money when we were out in public. I was carrying him in my arms down 10th Avenue at the time.
What a difference a week makes. Last week I was singing the praises of my post office & today I got the most horrible employee I have ever encountered in any business or context. She yelled at me for believing what her coworker told me, told me different things, including that my large envelope is not a large envelope, said it was $4.63 not $4.61 and I should just walk away she couldn't help me, wasn't wearing her required name tag & refused to tell me her name. Oh, I am not going to relive how rude she was. She has given me a hard time every single time I have had the misfortune to be in her line. What is her problem? What a miserable life she must lead.
They say all of us are "temporarily abled" (if that). That we should prepare for illness, accident, disfigurement, paralysis ~ you know, all that human flesh is heir to. Until that day, like the day we die, we kind of expect to be an exception, right? I've been fine for mumble-mumble years. Instead of thinking that the odds are getting shorter of something happening, I think the odds are longer of things continuing as they've been. Despite being an accountant's daughter, I also think that the odds are always 50-50: either I win or I lose. Ah, we have glided to the safe, delightful harbor of numbers & away from the messy, embarrassing, self-pitying swamp of disease. I'm fine now, I really am.