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NauenThen

Errands

October 21, 2016
It's so satisfying to go to the 99¢ store, the one on Ludlow with the nice lady who lets me be short a little on change, & stock up:
= toilet paper (four 4-packs, Panda)
= kleenex (1 extra-large box)
= 1 light bulb (not as bright as I'd hoped)
= 5 notebooks, 3 purple, 2 blue, my new favorites: spiral bound, plastic covers, tabs
= shampoo
= dish soap
= poems (short, but for 99¢ each, a really good deal)  Read More 
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Greetings from Minsk

October 20, 2016
Greetings from Minsk!

You tell me you are going to Fez.
Now, if you say you are going to Fez,
This means you are not going.
But I happen to know you are going to Fez.
Why are you lying to me who are my friend?

—Moroccan proverb

I read this joke at a rest area in Ohio in 1976:
Two men are on a train platform. One says, Where are you headed. The other says, to Minsk. The first men says, You lie! You are going to Minsk.
My boyfriend at the time roared. No one else ever thought it was funny.  Read More 
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Memory

October 19, 2016
Tags: Memory, Enroute Messenger Service, economics, University of North Carolina
This letter dates from 1977 or 78, as best I can figure, as Enroute was my first job in NYC, so I must have started there in early 1977. I think I worked for them about a year.
Memory is a strange quality. I remember having worked at UNC in the graduate economics department. I no longer remember what I did (let alone where I sat, who else worked there, where we had lunch, what time I got off, what year it was...). What could I possibly have done, given that I knew nothing about economics? There is nothing in this letter*—presumably unsent? definitely unsent, as it's not folded, & I was never in the habit of keeping copies of my sent correspondence, unless an occasional first draft to a special someone—that rings the faintest bell. I would not have thought I had written the folks at Enroute. It's like seeing yourself in a photo, sitting on Harry Truman's lap, & you are 7 years old, old enough to remember, but you don't, not even something important. Not that this job was memorable, but I wish I had a single bit of it left in my head.

*Dear Dear Enrouties --  Read More 
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Hoboken! Baseball!

October 16, 2016
Tags: Danny Shot, Hoboken, Quincy Troupe, Mikhail Horowitz
How fun to do a reading at the Hoboken Historical Museum, organized by the Museum's poet-in-residence Danny Shot, with Quincy Troupe, Mikhail Horowitz, the official poet of the Mets Frank Messina, & local historian Nick Acocella, who sweetly called every Hoboken native ballplayer his favorite. (It would be nice to be able to live where you are from & also have New York City right there. I had to choose between South Dakota & the big city.) Also a short play by Ellen Margolis with a Little League/world peace theme. Ed Charles was on the DL unfortunately.

I took the ferry cross the Hudson. You catch it at 39th Street & 12th Avenue, & it takes about 10 minutes. $8.25 for seniors. So fast I got queasy & thought we were going to turn over. I couldn't think of the word "slip" ("which ... gate?" I asked) & as I so often do, wondered why it's so hard to remember I live in a seaport.  Read More 
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Grateful I am

October 14, 2016
And grateful for this loving being.
* For Tom & Bessie, & our laughing, friendly lunch at the terrific Moroccan restaurant Mogador. We are adults together, we who were teenagers in separation—even when we took the same classes. Possibly the case for most teens, not counting the one you tell everything to.
* For a sunny day. "And if the weather pleases me, I'm happy every day."
* That I have  Read More 
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Sleepy

October 13, 2016
One of those weeks where the hours & days pass with no notion of where they want. All my endless attempts to keep track only highlight how much I don't seem to be here. I suppose a day off, which Yom Kippur most emphatically was, throws one off for a bit.
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Where'd the week go?

October 11, 2016
And now it's almost Kol Nidre.

An easy fast & a meaningful Yom Kippur to anyone to whom this pertains.

Not that all of us can't use some ruthless self-examination, no?
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Debating

October 10, 2016
It's interesting how much buried trauma has boiled up in recent days.

It's hard to be passionate about tax codes and trade agreements, but everyone has a firm opinion about sexual assault & lockerroom talk.

Consciousness raising to the max!

(short on time, will amplify this when I get a moment. any thoughts?)
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Friends in Brooklyn

October 9, 2016
He's under that gray rock, in front of the sawhorse.
A wonderful afternoon of apple crisp, imaginative kids, a talky & thinky game called HuggerMugger, intense catching up with two of the people I love & admire most in this world, & a visit to the grave of Dante-Tito, my late & still beloved beyond breathing cat.
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Buster

October 7, 2016
Instead of taking a picture of both of them, I woke up Johnny to show him that Buster & he were sleeping exactly the same way—curled on their sides, with one hand (paw) over their faces. My two well-loved menfolk.
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Timely & topical

October 6, 2016
This is one of the many short essays I've been writing.

Southern Paradox

“You are kept apart that you may separately be fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetrates a monetary system that beggars both.” This was  Read More 
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Youthful me

October 5, 2016
My allergies are swarming & all I can see is the distant past.
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l'shana tova! happy 5777

October 2, 2016
Off to eat apples & honey, blow the shofar, & look deeply into the year I've just had & the year I would like to have. Peace to you in the coming year. See y'all on Wednesday.
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A Tale of Love and Darkness

September 30, 2016
Tags: Amos Oz
I saw this movie weeks ago, and I've thought about it without really coming up with much to say about it. Natalie Portman wrote, directed & starred in it. I think I would choose the Amos Oz book it's based on, which from reading the first few chapters, clearly is more subtle & deep. Nonetheless, I liked the movie. I liked that she let everyone have their point of view even when it was clearly unrealistic, & you ended up being able to understand why they saw things that way. That's hard to do.  Read More 
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From the vault VII: "Poem"

September 29, 2016
Poem

I go to work
call my mother, my sister
a few others
watch Floyd fix the toilet
fret about my stuck hood
think about slapping a sign on the Pontiac: it’s yours
& never going near it again
I read a few pages of Shaw’s autobiography,
better yet Chesterton’s
& Quentin Crisp’s ditto
sigh & warble along with Patsy Cline
think about bills, snow, pills, Boston
the party this afternoon & Janet & Didier’s  Read More 
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A year of ups & downs

September 28, 2016
Talking to Pam sent me to an old notebook from those days. This is the first thing I found.
Three-quarters of the way through 2016 & I often feel like a person with one foot in the oven & the other in the freezer: on average I'm comfortable.

People I loved suffered, recovered, died. The loved ones of people I love suffered, died, recovered.

A short-fingered vulgarian is running for president. So is a woman I admire with all my might.

Two long-lost friends turned up, one from the House & the other, just today, my first and only college roommate, Pam.  Read More 
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Crazy roof

September 27, 2016
When it's late & Johnny's been sick all day & you want to rush home & make sure he's OK, & you're in the middle of two really good books & you're tired from class because your knee was bothering you, maybe all you can do is throw up a picture you took one day on the roof of  Read More 
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What I'm reading III

September 26, 2016
= Leap, Terry Tempest Williams (still—just a page or 2 at a time)
= Outlander, recommended by a friend, not sure how far I'll get, it's pretty overwrought!
= Where'd You Go Bernadette, Maria Semple. The person who recommended it called it the funniest book ever. I thought it was sad—funny a lot, but sad.
= Welcome to the Goddamned Ice Cube,  Read More 
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Twin Lights bike ride

September 25, 2016
I did manage to get a shot of the chocolate fountain at the second rest stop.
We saw the ocean, horse farms, masses of deeply orange flowers, churches, a really ugly stone house, thousands of other bikers, the blue cloudless Jersey sky—none of which I took photos of.
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More About Buster

September 23, 2016
Do you think I post enough about my cat? He's the only cat I've ever known who is both dumber than me & doesn't think he is smarter. It's an excellent quality in a cat. Restful.

He sleeps like Ted Berrigan, with one (or 2, or 4) arms in the air.

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Independence

September 22, 2016
Tags: Sylvie
For the first time, Sylvie, who will be 9 in 2 months, was allowed to walk alone to her piano lesson. Usually her mom watches from the stoop. The piano teacher is two buildings away, and there were texts to say she was on her way & that she'd arrived. I'm all for free-range parenting, & contemptuous of  Read More 
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From the vault VI: "The Indian Maiden's Head"

September 21, 2016
This poem is very familiar, but why the quote marks? when did I write it? I suppose it was meant to be an imitation of one of Michael's small heavy objects, but whenever I think I've written an homage, no one else does. I couldn't say within 10 years when I wrote it. I think I like it.


The Indian Maiden’s Head
for Michael Scholnick

“the middle class”
kicking around the reservoir
“is propitious”
 Read More 
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Shofar so good

September 20, 2016
It felt good to blow the shofar at minyan this morning. It certainly woke me up, which is why we blow in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. I have my intentions & worries, but when I blow, I'm not doing anything else.

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Kids

September 19, 2016
I'm thinking about a 5-year-old in California who got arrested, hands and feet in zip ties, for "battery on a police officer"... & the fact that what we consider success in our peewee class of 4- and 5-year-olds is if they can stand in line without wiggling for 30 seconds. The "worst" kid I ever had in class, &  Read More 
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Explosion

September 18, 2016

I heard about the explosion last night in Chelsea (half a block from my dojo) thanks to a message from a high school friend, now living in Boston, who wanted to make sure I was OK. "Would never have imagined this would be something to worry about," she said. I suppose they still don't have homemade bombs in South Dakota. But they do have the kind of gun laws that make it just as scary.

Have we gone around the bend as a country? What can people possibly be thinking?

Even if the extreme right wing has managed to gerrymander themselves into control of 30 states & Congress, doesn't a single one of those legislators have a heart or a backbone?


The Times' editorial on Missouri's shockingly lax new gun laws begins, "In an alarming victory for the gun lobby, Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto and enact a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state. The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training. It strips local law enforcement of its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high-risk individuals."

It just gets worse, doesn't it?

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The 1%

September 16, 2016
Two weeks ago, Johnny's urologist told him he had a 65% chance of having aggressive prostate cancer.

A week later he had a biopsy (glad I have lady parts).

Yesterday we got the results:  Read More 
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Birthdays

September 14, 2016
Tags: birthdays
The curse of the idiot savant is remembering birthdays of ex-boyfriends who I would rather not think about at all. And the birthdays of half of my second-grade class (I'm looking at you, Judi "October 12" Snook). And the birthdays of just about everybody who ever told me their birthday (unless they were born in July—those don't stick).  Read More 
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New bike

September 13, 2016
It's a lot like my old one, but with a fender! I've hated the wet butt part of riding in the rain & I finally have eliminated it.

Here's the economics of owning a bike in NYC.  Read More 
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ǝ Schwa ǝ

September 12, 2016
Tags: schwa
Remember the schwa?
What is it about schwa? Friends who are my age love the schwa, that upside-down “e” that represents the “uh” sound of an unstressed vowel. It was as much a part of a ‘50s childhood as the Mickey Mouse club. Seeing the word schwa the other day in an online scrabble game zoomed me right back to grade school.

Maybe it’s that it was my first clue  Read More 
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My neighborhood

September 11, 2016
5th Street, just west of First Avenue.
Look down!
Look up!
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