Bread
One of Those Surveys
JULIE, 25 RANDOM FACTS, FEBRUARY 1, 2009
1. I am obsessively private about my life, to point at which I really debated if I could fill out one of these things… to the point at which people sometimes think I am either really snobby or too cool for school. I'm not too cool for school, I hated school and mostly think of myself as a big dork.
2. I have a weird and slightly obsessive fascination with logic puzzles. I work them all the time, they are my fifteen minute time wasting preference. I especially work them at night before I go to bed to wind down - something about determining the breakfast food, last name, job, street name and spouse of six random strangers based on four scant clues is oddly calming.
3. I live in the 70s. I love 70s music, my sense of fashion is sort of 70s casual, politically I identify most strongly with first wave feminists, and I still buy in to late sixties early seventies ideals about peace and universal acceptance/tolerance.
4. I go back and forth between really wanting to start a family and worrying that I am far too nutty about my privacy to deal with kids and their lack of boundaries. I also have no desire to be pregnant, ever.
5. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old after watching a video in my health class about how hot dogs were made. The video started with little pigs oinking in a field and tracked them through a slaughterhouse all the way until they were hot dogs in a grocery store shelf. I was particularly traumatized by a picture of a stack of skinned pig snouts. I never ate meat again after that day, and eventually phased out seafood. I could probably be a vegan if it weren't for cheese.
6. I am forever fighting a losing battle against cat hair. I go through periods where I am obsessive, and will stand and pluck every last hair off my clothes in the hallway outside my door before I go out, and then periods when I give up and everything I own is coated in a sheen of cat hair. During those times, I am like Pigpen from the Peanuts, and anyone standing near me is probably also coated in cat hair, too.
7. My favorite song in the universe is “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies LISTEN.
My second favorite song is a tie between the album version of “Somebody to Love” by Queen from A Day at the Races LISTEN,
...and “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” by Judee Sill LISTEN
8. I supported Hillary, and voted for Obama grudgingly.
9. I came out when I was 19, but I always knew I was a lesbian. My very first crush I remember having, ever, was on Linda Carter/Wonder Woman. I remember having little fantasies that she was the damsel in distress and I swooped in and rescued her (telling, yes?). Years later, in my twenties, I stood next to her at a pharmacy counter in Cleveland. She smelled HORRIBLE. She was wearing some kind of awful perfume, and my attraction to her was instantly, permanently killed.
10. My first real NYC apartment that was mine was a ramshackle building in a Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. My landlord was a complete slumlord; the building was pretty much made of paper and tar and if you kicked it too hard, it probably would have fallen over. It had an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, and you could clearly see the Empire State Building out of the kitchen windows - on holidays my friends and I would take to the roof for amazing fireworks over the city. Some of my fondest New York memories are intertwined with that apartment.
11. When I first moved to the city, to pick up extra money I worked as a cat sitter for an upscale pet sitting company on the Upper East Side. I got paid ridiculous money to feed designer cat food and Perrier water to rich people’s cats. Every week my boss would give me a set of keys to let myself into various client’s apartments daily and care for their pets. I got to see firsthand the outrageous displays of wealth the upper 1% enjoy. Among my clients were Justine Bateman, Jennifer Tilly and Munch from Law and Order SVU.
12. I am ridiculously verbose. I can’t start talking or write a sentence without turning it into 10 minutes or 400 words (obviously). This is not because I can’t get enough of my own voice, but because I have an irrational fear of not being understood or making my point plainly enough and feel I have to explain myself six ways to Sunday.
13. The very first place I lived when I moved to NYC was an apartment share in Brooklyn. It was a one bedroom occupied by a Turkish couple in their twenties. I rented the bedroom and they moved into the living room. They rented to me for extra money, and because Serder, the husband, wanted an American in the home to speak English to his wife regularly to help her learn. Serder turned out to be a batterer. Although he never attacked me, he became threatening the second time I called the police as I heard him beating his wife on the other side of my bedroom door. I moved out abruptly after only 6 weeks there. Sadly, I was never able to really talk with his wife about the battery due to the language barrier between us.
14. I have an obsessive personality. Whenever I get a new interest, I go crazy researching and learning and gathering and collecting anything to do with it and then eat, sleep and breathe it for a short time until I burn out in boredom. Fortunately, the things I get interested in are mostly nerdy – board games, television shows, books. Most recent geek-outs include my new Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports and We Ski ROCK) and the Twilight books, because they are Just. So. Ridiculous. I’ve been playing “horrify the Twilight noob” with all my friends for three weeks now.
15. I love food. I love cooking, and eating, and talking about food, and reading food blogs and trading recipes. My favorite recreational thing to do is invite friends over and cook for them.
16. I am nearly deaf in my right ear. There is a 78% hearing loss due to deterioration from a childhood accident involving a pair of scissors during a haircut. I hear mid-range tones, but have a very difficult time hearing low tones like whispering, mumbling or soft volume bass notes.
17. I love interior decorating, but can never seem to keep my apartment from looking like a college dorm room. I can’t afford to buy furniture that matches my taste, so I have picked up things from craigslist here and there over the years creating a hodgepodge of styles that lack cohesion. Decorating magazines of any kind are my apartment porn.
18. I have secret fantasies about becoming a street artist in the vein of Banksy or Keith Haring. Wooster Collective is one of my favorite blogs, and I taught myself wheat-pasting a few months ago. I’m waiting for the nerve to go out on my first mission. I want to spread love with my art.
19. I love being alone; I enjoy my own company and am happiest by myself, geeking out over this or that project and feeding my brain.
20. I lack ambition, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In the early stages of my career, I always felt frustrated that I didn’t have more autonomy, that I was smarter and could do a better job than my supervisors, and I felt restless. As I get older, I sometimes feel just fine being a worker bee, doing what I need to do to earn a living and basking in my free time everywhere else. I suppose another way of saying that is I work to live instead of live to work The goals I have now all center around my art and creativity. Over the last year I have made choices that take me closer to those and further from career ambition, and I’ve been happier than ever.
21. I love older women, and I look forward to being in my 40s. Over the years, I have known so many amazing women and mentors in their 40s and 50s; women who create peace and radiate calm and contentment. I think that kind of self assuredness can only come with age. I have taken great strides to achieve this through my 30s, but I think 40 will feel like an old friend when I meet it.
22. I hate drama in my personal life, and pretty much in general. I can often be heard telling people something is “not a big deal.” My mom frequently asks me if ANYTHING is a big deal in my universe. I think not really. It takes a lot to take me out of my comfort zone and generally laid back state. I can’t remember the last time I got really upset about something in my personal life.
23. My favorite tv show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’m heartbroken that Fox discontinued the DVD box sets after season 4.
24. I really, really want to be a homeowner. I go back and forth between wanting to buy and renovate a rambling three family Victorian in Ditmas Park (Brooklyn) or buy and trick out a loft in Williamsburg (also Brooklyn).
25. My favorite qualities in people are kindness, directness and intellect. ¶ 5:01 PM 0 comments
Sunday, February 01, 2009
So, I have had about 10 people pelt me with this survey, in which you're supposed to write 25 random things about yourself. It was harder than I thought...JULIE, 25 RANDOM FACTS, FEBRUARY 1, 2009
1. I am obsessively private about my life, to point at which I really debated if I could fill out one of these things… to the point at which people sometimes think I am either really snobby or too cool for school. I'm not too cool for school, I hated school and mostly think of myself as a big dork.
2. I have a weird and slightly obsessive fascination with logic puzzles. I work them all the time, they are my fifteen minute time wasting preference. I especially work them at night before I go to bed to wind down - something about determining the breakfast food, last name, job, street name and spouse of six random strangers based on four scant clues is oddly calming.
3. I live in the 70s. I love 70s music, my sense of fashion is sort of 70s casual, politically I identify most strongly with first wave feminists, and I still buy in to late sixties early seventies ideals about peace and universal acceptance/tolerance.
4. I go back and forth between really wanting to start a family and worrying that I am far too nutty about my privacy to deal with kids and their lack of boundaries. I also have no desire to be pregnant, ever.
5. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old after watching a video in my health class about how hot dogs were made. The video started with little pigs oinking in a field and tracked them through a slaughterhouse all the way until they were hot dogs in a grocery store shelf. I was particularly traumatized by a picture of a stack of skinned pig snouts. I never ate meat again after that day, and eventually phased out seafood. I could probably be a vegan if it weren't for cheese.
6. I am forever fighting a losing battle against cat hair. I go through periods where I am obsessive, and will stand and pluck every last hair off my clothes in the hallway outside my door before I go out, and then periods when I give up and everything I own is coated in a sheen of cat hair. During those times, I am like Pigpen from the Peanuts, and anyone standing near me is probably also coated in cat hair, too.
7. My favorite song in the universe is “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies LISTEN.
My second favorite song is a tie between the album version of “Somebody to Love” by Queen from A Day at the Races LISTEN,
...and “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” by Judee Sill LISTEN
8. I supported Hillary, and voted for Obama grudgingly.
9. I came out when I was 19, but I always knew I was a lesbian. My very first crush I remember having, ever, was on Linda Carter/Wonder Woman. I remember having little fantasies that she was the damsel in distress and I swooped in and rescued her (telling, yes?). Years later, in my twenties, I stood next to her at a pharmacy counter in Cleveland. She smelled HORRIBLE. She was wearing some kind of awful perfume, and my attraction to her was instantly, permanently killed.
10. My first real NYC apartment that was mine was a ramshackle building in a Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. My landlord was a complete slumlord; the building was pretty much made of paper and tar and if you kicked it too hard, it probably would have fallen over. It had an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, and you could clearly see the Empire State Building out of the kitchen windows - on holidays my friends and I would take to the roof for amazing fireworks over the city. Some of my fondest New York memories are intertwined with that apartment.
11. When I first moved to the city, to pick up extra money I worked as a cat sitter for an upscale pet sitting company on the Upper East Side. I got paid ridiculous money to feed designer cat food and Perrier water to rich people’s cats. Every week my boss would give me a set of keys to let myself into various client’s apartments daily and care for their pets. I got to see firsthand the outrageous displays of wealth the upper 1% enjoy. Among my clients were Justine Bateman, Jennifer Tilly and Munch from Law and Order SVU.
12. I am ridiculously verbose. I can’t start talking or write a sentence without turning it into 10 minutes or 400 words (obviously). This is not because I can’t get enough of my own voice, but because I have an irrational fear of not being understood or making my point plainly enough and feel I have to explain myself six ways to Sunday.
13. The very first place I lived when I moved to NYC was an apartment share in Brooklyn. It was a one bedroom occupied by a Turkish couple in their twenties. I rented the bedroom and they moved into the living room. They rented to me for extra money, and because Serder, the husband, wanted an American in the home to speak English to his wife regularly to help her learn. Serder turned out to be a batterer. Although he never attacked me, he became threatening the second time I called the police as I heard him beating his wife on the other side of my bedroom door. I moved out abruptly after only 6 weeks there. Sadly, I was never able to really talk with his wife about the battery due to the language barrier between us.
14. I have an obsessive personality. Whenever I get a new interest, I go crazy researching and learning and gathering and collecting anything to do with it and then eat, sleep and breathe it for a short time until I burn out in boredom. Fortunately, the things I get interested in are mostly nerdy – board games, television shows, books. Most recent geek-outs include my new Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports and We Ski ROCK) and the Twilight books, because they are Just. So. Ridiculous. I’ve been playing “horrify the Twilight noob” with all my friends for three weeks now.
15. I love food. I love cooking, and eating, and talking about food, and reading food blogs and trading recipes. My favorite recreational thing to do is invite friends over and cook for them.
16. I am nearly deaf in my right ear. There is a 78% hearing loss due to deterioration from a childhood accident involving a pair of scissors during a haircut. I hear mid-range tones, but have a very difficult time hearing low tones like whispering, mumbling or soft volume bass notes.
17. I love interior decorating, but can never seem to keep my apartment from looking like a college dorm room. I can’t afford to buy furniture that matches my taste, so I have picked up things from craigslist here and there over the years creating a hodgepodge of styles that lack cohesion. Decorating magazines of any kind are my apartment porn.
18. I have secret fantasies about becoming a street artist in the vein of Banksy or Keith Haring. Wooster Collective is one of my favorite blogs, and I taught myself wheat-pasting a few months ago. I’m waiting for the nerve to go out on my first mission. I want to spread love with my art.
19. I love being alone; I enjoy my own company and am happiest by myself, geeking out over this or that project and feeding my brain.
20. I lack ambition, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In the early stages of my career, I always felt frustrated that I didn’t have more autonomy, that I was smarter and could do a better job than my supervisors, and I felt restless. As I get older, I sometimes feel just fine being a worker bee, doing what I need to do to earn a living and basking in my free time everywhere else. I suppose another way of saying that is I work to live instead of live to work The goals I have now all center around my art and creativity. Over the last year I have made choices that take me closer to those and further from career ambition, and I’ve been happier than ever.
21. I love older women, and I look forward to being in my 40s. Over the years, I have known so many amazing women and mentors in their 40s and 50s; women who create peace and radiate calm and contentment. I think that kind of self assuredness can only come with age. I have taken great strides to achieve this through my 30s, but I think 40 will feel like an old friend when I meet it.
22. I hate drama in my personal life, and pretty much in general. I can often be heard telling people something is “not a big deal.” My mom frequently asks me if ANYTHING is a big deal in my universe. I think not really. It takes a lot to take me out of my comfort zone and generally laid back state. I can’t remember the last time I got really upset about something in my personal life.
23. My favorite tv show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’m heartbroken that Fox discontinued the DVD box sets after season 4.
24. I really, really want to be a homeowner. I go back and forth between wanting to buy and renovate a rambling three family Victorian in Ditmas Park (Brooklyn) or buy and trick out a loft in Williamsburg (also Brooklyn).
25. My favorite qualities in people are kindness, directness and intellect. ¶ 5:01 PM 0 comments
Over and Over
I've been here the whole time, laughing, scrapping, working, thinking, yearning, puzzling, knowing and finally deciding.
I sat down three and half weeks ago to write this.
I was going to tell you how I'm in the middle of a long exhale. Life has been full of changes, the biggest of which is my recent decision to quit my day job and wade back into the uncharted waters of freelance work and my love of the arts. I have struggled, these last months, with the familiar stagnancy of doing the same thing every day, of feeling like a wage slave as I spend 8, 10, 12, 14 hours per day throwing my love and my energy at someone else's vision for too little money and even less of my own time. I have worked for an amazing company these last two years, a company I have left with the fondest of farewells, and a sense of greater purpose and renewed commitment to things I have previously dismissed at too frivolous for becoming my "real" life.
That was three and half weeks ago, and, as always, real life kicked me in the ass again. The very next day, the very day after I started that post, an apartment opportunity presented itself. For those of you who know me closely, you know that finding just the right apartment to settle into in this city has been a seven year longing for me. Moving is always really hard, and despite my initial misgivings, the situation offered to me was just too good to pass on. Bad timing, really good situation. The result? It's nearly a month later, I'm half-unpacked in my very wonderful new apartment, but the cost was high, and I'm smarting. I had, over a period of months, saved a sizable amount of money to carry me through my period of unemployment, and was poised to enjoy at least two or three months of time to myself before I really needed to start worrying, by which time I had hoped I would be generating at least a small writing income. In addition, I had another income source on top of that based on my previous rental situation, so I felt I was good.
Things, as they often do, failed to work out the way I planned, and my world is on tilt right now. I used my backup money to move, and, through a series of unrelated events, lost my backup income as well, leaving my wallet really thin right now. I lost my time and space for a clear head and creative pursuits in the stress of planning, packing, moving and unpacking, and trying to find a sublet for my now empty but still under lease old apartment. Part of me is screaming to go out and do what I know I can, which is get a job, a grown up job, back in my career field, and cope with this stress by falling back on the security of a steady paycheck, 401k and health insurance. The trouble is, having a fall-back option means that, in these situations, you always... fall back. And the joyful stuff gets shunted to the back burner. Again.
My decision to quit my job was huge. HUGE. Going off the grid is not easy for me. I've always been a person who finds security in a routine, in a controlled environment and knowing what comes next. I'm a girl with a plan.
Except, right now, I'm not. I met someone new the other day, and I didn't really have an answer to the question "what do you do?" HUGE. I want to go to film school. I want to direct another show. I want to make t-shirts and sit in Union Square all day and sell them. I want to freelance. I want to write a novel. I want to get my MSW. I want to get a clinician's license and do private-practice therapy. I want to create street-art. I want to open a cookie bakery. I don't want there to be limits on what I can do, and I don't want to fall back.
Still, there are bills to be paid.
I don't know what I'm actually going to do right now, but I know that I can't not write about it. I've missed writing about it, and I have thought, at several points over the last year, that I wanted to re-initiate but the recap seemed too overwhelming.
At this point, I feel like... fuck the recap. I'm here, I have no idea what is coming next, and I'm stupidly excited and stupidly terrified at the same time. I forgot, though, that this is what growing feels like.
Nice to see you, friends, and stay tuned. I fall. But I get up again. Like Madonna. Over and Over.
¶ 10:25 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Oh, friends, it's been awhile.I've been here the whole time, laughing, scrapping, working, thinking, yearning, puzzling, knowing and finally deciding.
I sat down three and half weeks ago to write this.
I was going to tell you how I'm in the middle of a long exhale. Life has been full of changes, the biggest of which is my recent decision to quit my day job and wade back into the uncharted waters of freelance work and my love of the arts. I have struggled, these last months, with the familiar stagnancy of doing the same thing every day, of feeling like a wage slave as I spend 8, 10, 12, 14 hours per day throwing my love and my energy at someone else's vision for too little money and even less of my own time. I have worked for an amazing company these last two years, a company I have left with the fondest of farewells, and a sense of greater purpose and renewed commitment to things I have previously dismissed at too frivolous for becoming my "real" life.
That was three and half weeks ago, and, as always, real life kicked me in the ass again. The very next day, the very day after I started that post, an apartment opportunity presented itself. For those of you who know me closely, you know that finding just the right apartment to settle into in this city has been a seven year longing for me. Moving is always really hard, and despite my initial misgivings, the situation offered to me was just too good to pass on. Bad timing, really good situation. The result? It's nearly a month later, I'm half-unpacked in my very wonderful new apartment, but the cost was high, and I'm smarting. I had, over a period of months, saved a sizable amount of money to carry me through my period of unemployment, and was poised to enjoy at least two or three months of time to myself before I really needed to start worrying, by which time I had hoped I would be generating at least a small writing income. In addition, I had another income source on top of that based on my previous rental situation, so I felt I was good.
Things, as they often do, failed to work out the way I planned, and my world is on tilt right now. I used my backup money to move, and, through a series of unrelated events, lost my backup income as well, leaving my wallet really thin right now. I lost my time and space for a clear head and creative pursuits in the stress of planning, packing, moving and unpacking, and trying to find a sublet for my now empty but still under lease old apartment. Part of me is screaming to go out and do what I know I can, which is get a job, a grown up job, back in my career field, and cope with this stress by falling back on the security of a steady paycheck, 401k and health insurance. The trouble is, having a fall-back option means that, in these situations, you always... fall back. And the joyful stuff gets shunted to the back burner. Again.
My decision to quit my job was huge. HUGE. Going off the grid is not easy for me. I've always been a person who finds security in a routine, in a controlled environment and knowing what comes next. I'm a girl with a plan.
Except, right now, I'm not. I met someone new the other day, and I didn't really have an answer to the question "what do you do?" HUGE. I want to go to film school. I want to direct another show. I want to make t-shirts and sit in Union Square all day and sell them. I want to freelance. I want to write a novel. I want to get my MSW. I want to get a clinician's license and do private-practice therapy. I want to create street-art. I want to open a cookie bakery. I don't want there to be limits on what I can do, and I don't want to fall back.
Still, there are bills to be paid.
I don't know what I'm actually going to do right now, but I know that I can't not write about it. I've missed writing about it, and I have thought, at several points over the last year, that I wanted to re-initiate but the recap seemed too overwhelming.
At this point, I feel like... fuck the recap. I'm here, I have no idea what is coming next, and I'm stupidly excited and stupidly terrified at the same time. I forgot, though, that this is what growing feels like.
Nice to see you, friends, and stay tuned. I fall. But I get up again. Like Madonna. Over and Over.
¶ 10:25 PM 0 comments
Roll Out the Barrells
Frequently, I run late to work. Not outrageously so, not generally in ways that impact my coworkers or interactions with clients. Generally speaking, it's a 10 or 15 minute window of time contingent on the quickness of the train in the station, the ancient elevator in my building at work. Something I can't quite put my finger on that causes me to lose time in the mornings, so that nomatter how early I seem to get up or leave the house, I end up late to the office.
Sometimes, I allow myself to simply arrive late. Other times, I call in the help of my local car service to speed up the local leg of my commute. It takes me roughly 8 minutes to walk from my apartment to the nearest train station, 10 if the weather is bad. When I'm running really late, I'll call up the car service (in speed dial on my phone) before I put on my shoes to leave, and by the time I'm downstairs on the sidewalk said car is usually waiting for me in front of the building. They drive me the 12 blocks/four stations up to the express station, which gets me to Manhattan in 20 minutes, shaving about 20 minutes off my regularly 45 minutes commute.
Not a bad deal.
Here's the thing. For those of us living in New York, we understand clearly the differences between a taxi and a car service. For my non-city pals, here's the breakdown. Basically, taxi = metered yellow cab which can be hailed on the street, with a running fare calculator based on where you go/how long it takes, driven by a city licensed and insured driver. Car Service = foreign guy with a car and an arbitrary formula for deciding how much to charge based on how he sizes you up and how badly you seem to need a ride. Brooklyn is comprised mostly of car services, some of which are formal and have a phone number and a dispatcher, some of which are just guys sliding up to you on the curb and offering a ride. Sketchy? Why yes, but sometimes you just don't care.
My neighborhood car service and I have a love/hate relationship. For awhile, about a year ago, we were happy together, and mutually satisfied. I called them three to four times a week, they were prompt and consistent with the fare. It was a good match. At some point, however, they changed management, and I nearly broke up with them. They stopped being reliable and prompt in coming when I called, and several times attempted to jack my fare from the usual $7 to $13. Needless to say, those were some volatile times in our relationship. Happily, we've move forward and things have settled down again. The dispatch office is right around the corner from my apartment, and they are back to their timely, affordable business.
A tactic frequently used by car service drivers relates to radio play. Many drivers, in a play for a higher tip at the end, adjust the radio as patrons come into the car, choosing stations based on their perceptions of what their riders will most enjoy. I've had drivers come out and ask me directly what I like. Others just give me the once over and make their best guess. This has frequently yielded interesting results. Sometimes I get adult easy listening, which I don't so much mind (think oldies station). Other times I get classical or NPR. Again, not bad, fairly respectable if a bit stuffy. I can live with that.
Apparently, however, my image has undergone a transformation of sorts.
This morning I got into the car only to find that within seconds my driver had flipped stations to arrive at... Polka.
That's right, Polka. Russian polka, accordian player and russian lyrics and all.
Polka.
Polka?
Polka.
Do with that what you will. Julie = Polka.
Polka is the new black. ¶ 1:00 AM 3 comments
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
A fun fact for the moment:Frequently, I run late to work. Not outrageously so, not generally in ways that impact my coworkers or interactions with clients. Generally speaking, it's a 10 or 15 minute window of time contingent on the quickness of the train in the station, the ancient elevator in my building at work. Something I can't quite put my finger on that causes me to lose time in the mornings, so that nomatter how early I seem to get up or leave the house, I end up late to the office.
Sometimes, I allow myself to simply arrive late. Other times, I call in the help of my local car service to speed up the local leg of my commute. It takes me roughly 8 minutes to walk from my apartment to the nearest train station, 10 if the weather is bad. When I'm running really late, I'll call up the car service (in speed dial on my phone) before I put on my shoes to leave, and by the time I'm downstairs on the sidewalk said car is usually waiting for me in front of the building. They drive me the 12 blocks/four stations up to the express station, which gets me to Manhattan in 20 minutes, shaving about 20 minutes off my regularly 45 minutes commute.
Not a bad deal.
Here's the thing. For those of us living in New York, we understand clearly the differences between a taxi and a car service. For my non-city pals, here's the breakdown. Basically, taxi = metered yellow cab which can be hailed on the street, with a running fare calculator based on where you go/how long it takes, driven by a city licensed and insured driver. Car Service = foreign guy with a car and an arbitrary formula for deciding how much to charge based on how he sizes you up and how badly you seem to need a ride. Brooklyn is comprised mostly of car services, some of which are formal and have a phone number and a dispatcher, some of which are just guys sliding up to you on the curb and offering a ride. Sketchy? Why yes, but sometimes you just don't care.
My neighborhood car service and I have a love/hate relationship. For awhile, about a year ago, we were happy together, and mutually satisfied. I called them three to four times a week, they were prompt and consistent with the fare. It was a good match. At some point, however, they changed management, and I nearly broke up with them. They stopped being reliable and prompt in coming when I called, and several times attempted to jack my fare from the usual $7 to $13. Needless to say, those were some volatile times in our relationship. Happily, we've move forward and things have settled down again. The dispatch office is right around the corner from my apartment, and they are back to their timely, affordable business.
A tactic frequently used by car service drivers relates to radio play. Many drivers, in a play for a higher tip at the end, adjust the radio as patrons come into the car, choosing stations based on their perceptions of what their riders will most enjoy. I've had drivers come out and ask me directly what I like. Others just give me the once over and make their best guess. This has frequently yielded interesting results. Sometimes I get adult easy listening, which I don't so much mind (think oldies station). Other times I get classical or NPR. Again, not bad, fairly respectable if a bit stuffy. I can live with that.
Apparently, however, my image has undergone a transformation of sorts.
This morning I got into the car only to find that within seconds my driver had flipped stations to arrive at... Polka.
That's right, Polka. Russian polka, accordian player and russian lyrics and all.
Polka.
Polka?
Polka.
Do with that what you will. Julie = Polka.
Polka is the new black. ¶ 1:00 AM 3 comments
The One Where I Pimp Lesbian Hillary Love
In this instance, I happen to be talking about the people's power to mock, ogle, citicize, rib and obsess over pop culture, and more recently, the political process.
To be still more specific, my newest obsession of the minute is Taryn Southern's very fabulous and spoofy Hott 4 Hill! video that is making the pop culture rounds. My love for this video knows no bounds: for its queerness, for its satire, for its brass. I just love it. The Obama Girl vid may have started it, but Taryn Southern has taken it to a whole new level.
Here's the vid. Be sure and scroll down to check out her introduction to the video, aptly titled A Letter To My Fellow Americans, which is also found on her website hott4hill.blogspot.com (where the vid can also be seen, if it's loading too slow here.)
A letter to my fellow Americans:
On June 13, 2007, the face of the 2008 presidential campaign was forever changed with the release of a provocative video known as "Obama-Girl."
It was all there - a passionate statement of love and partisan politics - thoughtfully packaged into a catchy pop song.
In less than a week, the Obama-Girl tribute to Democratic candidate Barrack Obama earned several million online hits and played on primetime news stations across the country.
Now let me preface my announcement by saying that I am no stranger to politics. I ran for Student Council President in the 7th grade. I attended the 2004 presidential debates in Miami. I even met Bob Dole this year in the Las Vegas airport.
Following the release of the Obama-Girl video, I felt that it was my social responsibility to provide America with a fair and balanced view of the 2008 Democratic campaign by showing my love and support for my own favorite candidate - Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
xoxo Ms. Southern ¶ 10:10 PM 0 comments
Sunday, July 08, 2007
So, to quote John Lennon, Power to the People!In this instance, I happen to be talking about the people's power to mock, ogle, citicize, rib and obsess over pop culture, and more recently, the political process.
To be still more specific, my newest obsession of the minute is Taryn Southern's very fabulous and spoofy Hott 4 Hill! video that is making the pop culture rounds. My love for this video knows no bounds: for its queerness, for its satire, for its brass. I just love it. The Obama Girl vid may have started it, but Taryn Southern has taken it to a whole new level.
Here's the vid. Be sure and scroll down to check out her introduction to the video, aptly titled A Letter To My Fellow Americans, which is also found on her website hott4hill.blogspot.com (where the vid can also be seen, if it's loading too slow here.)
A letter to my fellow Americans:
On June 13, 2007, the face of the 2008 presidential campaign was forever changed with the release of a provocative video known as "Obama-Girl."
It was all there - a passionate statement of love and partisan politics - thoughtfully packaged into a catchy pop song.
In less than a week, the Obama-Girl tribute to Democratic candidate Barrack Obama earned several million online hits and played on primetime news stations across the country.
Now let me preface my announcement by saying that I am no stranger to politics. I ran for Student Council President in the 7th grade. I attended the 2004 presidential debates in Miami. I even met Bob Dole this year in the Las Vegas airport.
Following the release of the Obama-Girl video, I felt that it was my social responsibility to provide America with a fair and balanced view of the 2008 Democratic campaign by showing my love and support for my own favorite candidate - Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
xoxo Ms. Southern ¶ 10:10 PM 0 comments
Dear 16 Year Old Me...
10 Things I Would Tell My 16 Year Old Self:
1. You won't always be so powerless. One day, you will have your own apartment, and your own money, and your own life, and you can finally stop being careful and guarded and live on your own terms.
2. Those feelings you have? Those sex feelings? TOTALLY normal. Stop worrying, being queer won't seem so world ending in 10 years.
3. You don't need anyone's approval, particularly your famliy's, which you're never going to get in the way you want. Get an earlier start on doing what you love without apology.
4. Relax. RELAX. The world is bigger than Ashland, KY, and your life will take you wonderful places. You're right to love diversity and intellect, and you don't have to live here forever. You're going to make it just fine in New York.
5. Respect money. It doesn't always just come to you when you want it, and you haven't learned to manage it well yet. Be cautious with the check writing and the bill paying, or you'll make things really hard for yourself later. Your credit score DOES matter in the long run.
6. If you ask for what you need, someone will give it to you. IF YOU ASK FOR WHAT YOU NEED, SOMEONE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU. People love you but they can't read your mind, and you're going to keep being disappointed until you learn to tell people how to meet your needs and then give them the opportunity.
7. All of those things... those bad things that are happening to you and those bad things you're being told and those ways you're being hurt? You don't deserve them. Any of them. You're wonderful, it isn't your fault, and by the time you're 18 all of it will stop.
8. You're going to want to be an English Major in college... don't. It isn't practical, and that career you think you're headed for in journalism is going to suck. Take theatre, take screenwriting and filmmaking, and don't worry about being practical. You're never going to have trouble getting a job, so do the things you've always wanted and thought were frivolous.
9. Pursue other options for funding that independent liberal arts education. You don't really get it yet, but $60,000 is a LOT of money, and you're not going to be able to get out from that kind of debt for a long time. Don't do those student loans unless you absolutely have to.
10. Your straight girlfriends will never love you like that. Stop looking for what you need in the wrong places. Straight girls in general are not going to work out, so when you hit that fall in love with straight girls phase... skip it. It doesn't matter how good together you are, they're never going to settle down with you. ¶ 3:50 AM 0 comments
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Another meme, this one I thought particularly thought provoking, that's making the rounds... 10 Things I Would Tell My 16 Year Old Self:
1. You won't always be so powerless. One day, you will have your own apartment, and your own money, and your own life, and you can finally stop being careful and guarded and live on your own terms.
2. Those feelings you have? Those sex feelings? TOTALLY normal. Stop worrying, being queer won't seem so world ending in 10 years.
3. You don't need anyone's approval, particularly your famliy's, which you're never going to get in the way you want. Get an earlier start on doing what you love without apology.
4. Relax. RELAX. The world is bigger than Ashland, KY, and your life will take you wonderful places. You're right to love diversity and intellect, and you don't have to live here forever. You're going to make it just fine in New York.
5. Respect money. It doesn't always just come to you when you want it, and you haven't learned to manage it well yet. Be cautious with the check writing and the bill paying, or you'll make things really hard for yourself later. Your credit score DOES matter in the long run.
6. If you ask for what you need, someone will give it to you. IF YOU ASK FOR WHAT YOU NEED, SOMEONE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU. People love you but they can't read your mind, and you're going to keep being disappointed until you learn to tell people how to meet your needs and then give them the opportunity.
7. All of those things... those bad things that are happening to you and those bad things you're being told and those ways you're being hurt? You don't deserve them. Any of them. You're wonderful, it isn't your fault, and by the time you're 18 all of it will stop.
8. You're going to want to be an English Major in college... don't. It isn't practical, and that career you think you're headed for in journalism is going to suck. Take theatre, take screenwriting and filmmaking, and don't worry about being practical. You're never going to have trouble getting a job, so do the things you've always wanted and thought were frivolous.
9. Pursue other options for funding that independent liberal arts education. You don't really get it yet, but $60,000 is a LOT of money, and you're not going to be able to get out from that kind of debt for a long time. Don't do those student loans unless you absolutely have to.
10. Your straight girlfriends will never love you like that. Stop looking for what you need in the wrong places. Straight girls in general are not going to work out, so when you hit that fall in love with straight girls phase... skip it. It doesn't matter how good together you are, they're never going to settle down with you. ¶ 3:50 AM 0 comments
Requiem
Partner, with whom I ended our three and a half year relationship in October. Tomorrow will mark the 29th year of her life, and the 8th month of our separation.
Our breakup has not been nice.
Friends of mine tell me that few ever are.
Our breakup, much like our last months together, has been full of fighting, of accusation and blame and anger. I've come to understand that I will never be able to do anything right where she is concerned, and that she will never be able to be for me the woman she was when we first fell in love.
Our most recent fight, and one of our worst yet, occurred nearly a month ago.
We haven't spoken since.
This has weighed heavily on me given her upcoming birthday, and my conflicted feelings about calling her or not.
When I think of her, when I close my eyes I know her as in our early days together...
...she is turning toward me on the balcony of our Montauk bungalow, she is orange sun and blue blue water and a smile like I am the only person in the universe... we are a tangle of limbs in the bed, end of the day easiness with breath in tandem, her face in the space of my neck, her lips grazing my collarbone and whispers of forever love... she is turning to me and we are laughing, laughing and there is nothing in the world but this...
It is this woman that I grieve. It is this woman with whom I never thought there would be an expiration date, couldn't imagine a world in which she wasn't in. It is this woman that still inspires a fierce protectiveness in me, that to this day I want to shield from the pain of our breakup.
I'm not going to call. I forgive her for the ugliness between us, and I understand what it means to be finished.
Dear Partner, I love you but I just can't carry your blame. ¶ 8:56 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Tomorrow is Partner's birthday.Partner, with whom I ended our three and a half year relationship in October. Tomorrow will mark the 29th year of her life, and the 8th month of our separation.
Our breakup has not been nice.
Friends of mine tell me that few ever are.
Our breakup, much like our last months together, has been full of fighting, of accusation and blame and anger. I've come to understand that I will never be able to do anything right where she is concerned, and that she will never be able to be for me the woman she was when we first fell in love.
Our most recent fight, and one of our worst yet, occurred nearly a month ago.
We haven't spoken since.
This has weighed heavily on me given her upcoming birthday, and my conflicted feelings about calling her or not.
When I think of her, when I close my eyes I know her as in our early days together...
...she is turning toward me on the balcony of our Montauk bungalow, she is orange sun and blue blue water and a smile like I am the only person in the universe... we are a tangle of limbs in the bed, end of the day easiness with breath in tandem, her face in the space of my neck, her lips grazing my collarbone and whispers of forever love... she is turning to me and we are laughing, laughing and there is nothing in the world but this...
It is this woman that I grieve. It is this woman with whom I never thought there would be an expiration date, couldn't imagine a world in which she wasn't in. It is this woman that still inspires a fierce protectiveness in me, that to this day I want to shield from the pain of our breakup.
I'm not going to call. I forgive her for the ugliness between us, and I understand what it means to be finished.
Dear Partner, I love you but I just can't carry your blame. ¶ 8:56 PM 0 comments
So In Love
My life was a sad song for a little while there, but it's getting better, and I'm getting what I need. Thanks, people of mine, for reminding me what I love.
I hope you love this like I love this...
Curtis Mayfield, So In Love
and further listening...
It's All Right (with The Impressions)
People Get Ready
(Live performance circa 1988, track down the original version off the People Get Ready album with The Impressions)
We People Who Are Darker than Blue ¶ 1:46 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Today, just a song that I happen to love. Curtis Mayfield, So In Love. The brass and organ riffs in this song break my heart in pieces, and put it back together again every chorus. Listening to this song feels like being in love feels to me, earnest and hopeful and sad all at the same time. Curtis's music is like that, is open and gentle and vulnerable in ways that really reasonate with me. My life was a sad song for a little while there, but it's getting better, and I'm getting what I need. Thanks, people of mine, for reminding me what I love.
I hope you love this like I love this...
Curtis Mayfield, So In Love
and further listening...
It's All Right (with The Impressions)
People Get Ready
(Live performance circa 1988, track down the original version off the People Get Ready album with The Impressions)
We People Who Are Darker than Blue ¶ 1:46 AM 1 comments
Snapshots, Spring 2007
Rather than a mad recap, I thought I'd let pictures tell the tales. Something about 1000 words. Something about just not sinking too far in the details. Suffice to say I've surfaced back on top, I'm feeling more in control, summer is coming and I'll take whatever is coming.
As for these last months, the quirky never stops. Thank goodness...
FEBRUARY...
...Neck Face tagged the block where I work. I saw my first Neck Face tag three years ago; he tagged several buildings around my block in Williamsburg, my favorite of which was his name along with the trademark hairy monster arm. I hadn't seen anything new in awhile, but I hear in the years since then he's left his mark all over the globe, from California to Tokyo. Seeing him back here put a smile on my face. This is one mailbox; he tagged all of them all down the street. Welcome back, Neck Face!
MARCH...
...Color globes in the window of ABC Homestore on Broadway & 19th. A little art on my way home every night.
...I fall victim to a weird and inescapable obsession with baking. One that gave me temporary amnesia, and caused me to completely forget that while I'm a very excellent cook - I'm a really lousy baker. As evidenced by this coffee cake. I am not daunted, however, and continue to ruin concoction after concoction, all the while reading food blogs and telling myself that I'll get it right eventually.
I didn't.
...March, apparently, is also for lovers. Note the kissing feet under the ad behind the bus shelter while waiting for the bus one blustery Saturday afternoon in the shelter next to theirs. Periodically, one of them or the other would poke their head around the corner to see if the bus was coming, and then they went right back to their embrace. A lot of people around me, mostly older women, were scowling over it, but I thought good for them! Infatuation like that is so lovely. It's two months later now, I hope wherever they are they're still happy, and still kissing with such passion.
...I give up my weird obsession with baking, and go back to cooking, which turns out fabulously. Pizza from scratch, chunks of imported mozzerella, pecorino romano, fresh basil, olive oil. Perfection.
But I'm still reading those blogs...
APRIL...
...Nonni. Nonni, Nonni, Nonni. I visit Kentucky, and the world as I know it comes crashing down on my head. And she is the child, and I am the adult, and the strong, independent, self assured woman who has handled every problem in our family my entire life is gone. And she cries, and suddenly I am her power of attorney, and her finances are a mess, and I'm the master of my own life but the master of hers, too. I can only hope to be the matriarch that she has been.
...Another tag in the neighborhood where I work, this one traced in cement. I looked up the name Rudy Kazooty online, because it was unique and it made me laugh out loud, and because it was sillier and more fun that most of the tags and graffiti I see every day, especially with the added touch of heroic lightning bolt over the oo's. It turns out, Rudy Kazotty is either a children's television character, a puppet, or a Little Golden Book character. Maybe all of the above. I'd love to hear if anyone reading can provide a little backstory here.
...Over 5 Zillion Sold. There's a mexican restaurant across the street from my office called Uncle Moe's. I stop in a lot after work or on my lunch break, and I've gotten to know the guys behind the counter pretty well. They know what I want when I come through the door, and also hook my up when I'm feeling like indulging in their VERY FABULOUS and FAMOUS dessert. A rice pudding empanada. When I come in, they ask me if I want one, and if I do, they don't give me one from the glass dessert case that's been sitting around. Instead, they go in the back and fry me a fresh one. The empanada is stuffed and deep fried, leaving the outside crispy and flaking and heating the creamy rice pudding inside until it's hot and succulent. Then, before serving it, the whole thing is taken out and rolled hot in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar that powders my fingers and elevates this dessert to perfection. And yes, I'm addicted. And no, I'm not getting paid for singing these praises.
The last time I stopped in, which was at the end of April, was after a long and stressful work day. They were nearly closed, but let me in. They had their music cranked up and rocked out to what sounded a lot
like a Spanish speaking Led Zepplin while I ate. They brought me this without my asking, and we sat and talked awhile. All across the walls of the place were photos of little Taquerias, one after another, all taken with the same camera and developed in the same warm tones. I asked if the restaurants were all owned by their family; it turns out not, but that one of the brothers is learning photography and took them while on an internship in California. Above is my favorite, with an awning proudly boasting Over 5 Zillion Sold. I love that pride, and the life standing behind it. I love thinking about the owner of the business, who must have sat thinking about what to say on his awning, what would make his or her business stand apart from the many others like it and draw a crowd. I wonder if if made them smile like I did, and how many customers were told about the 5 Zillion before it ever went up on the awning. I miss how business used to be that way. Before computers, and chains, and automated phone systems and credit cards. The guys at Uncle Moe's get it about running a family business, and catering to your local and regular crowd. Here's hoping all of us choose to give our patronage to the little guys first.
...I was reminded that I have the two cutest, sweetest cats ever...
...who snuggled up with me and kept me company while I was tearing my hair out trying to take care of Nonni's bills...
...and chased my blues away with their supreme cuteness. Albert & Alex seen here, some candid snaps from a Saturday afternoon in April.
MAY...
...Peak blooming at the Cherry Esplenade at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.
A blue sky, fragrant flowers, green grass, a perfect spring Saturday afternoon.
...Recently saw the movie The Reaping at the Clearview Cinema on 19th St. When I bought my ticket, I went inside to find the ticket taker, an older gentleman, engaged in a lively conversation with a patron who had just Fracture, the two of them debating its merits. The patron looked to be about 60, wore a tan fishing hat, a red flannel coat, and a business suit. I smiled at their rather curmudgeonly exchange, at which they turned to me and began to flirt shamelessly. We chatted briefly about movies in general, and I asked them their top three best movies of all time. The ticket taker said, without hesitation, Inherit the Wind, Gone with the Wind and Terminator 2. The patron felt it was too hard. He told me he had seen a lifetime of movies, 55 movies a year in fact, and it was just too much to pick three out of such a big pool. I stopped to think about that. 55 movies equals one a week, with three weeks in which he sees two. I was curious about which occasions he marked with a double viewing, but before I could ask he gave me the once over, and told me a story. He said he had spent his early career on Wall Street, and was miserable. He said in his 40s he had a midlife crisis, and decided he needed to figure out his life's purpose, but first needed to figure out how to know what it was. That involved quitting his job and just "being" for a little while. He said it took him 10 years, but he figured out that his life's work was to elevate people's minds, and he was to do that through demonstrating complete and unconditional kindness to all living creatures, human and animal alike. He told me he wrote a book on that very thing, but that rather than waste precious time fighting and compromising with the book publishing industry, he wrote a 42 page book and made it a point to give out ten pages a day, one each to ten different people he met during his day to day travels. He told me that he had given a page to Hilary Clinton, and to Katie Couric, and he gave one to me. His name was Bob White, and he handed me a handwritten, xeroxed piece of his life's work.
Would that I can be so lucky as to achieve that level of definition. Even if the meaning never goes beyond myself.
Thanks, Bob White, for nudging me back to my own writing life. ¶ 1:23 AM
Monday, May 14, 2007
It isn't so much that nothing has been happening that is worth writing about; rather, I've been slogging through a mess of a life these past months. On top of all the hurrying and the laughing and the crying and the motion, stopping to write has seemed simply to overwhelming.Rather than a mad recap, I thought I'd let pictures tell the tales. Something about 1000 words. Something about just not sinking too far in the details. Suffice to say I've surfaced back on top, I'm feeling more in control, summer is coming and I'll take whatever is coming.
As for these last months, the quirky never stops. Thank goodness...
FEBRUARY...
...Neck Face tagged the block where I work. I saw my first Neck Face tag three years ago; he tagged several buildings around my block in Williamsburg, my favorite of which was his name along with the trademark hairy monster arm. I hadn't seen anything new in awhile, but I hear in the years since then he's left his mark all over the globe, from California to Tokyo. Seeing him back here put a smile on my face. This is one mailbox; he tagged all of them all down the street. Welcome back, Neck Face!
MARCH...
...Color globes in the window of ABC Homestore on Broadway & 19th. A little art on my way home every night.
...I fall victim to a weird and inescapable obsession with baking. One that gave me temporary amnesia, and caused me to completely forget that while I'm a very excellent cook - I'm a really lousy baker. As evidenced by this coffee cake. I am not daunted, however, and continue to ruin concoction after concoction, all the while reading food blogs and telling myself that I'll get it right eventually.
I didn't.
...March, apparently, is also for lovers. Note the kissing feet under the ad behind the bus shelter while waiting for the bus one blustery Saturday afternoon in the shelter next to theirs. Periodically, one of them or the other would poke their head around the corner to see if the bus was coming, and then they went right back to their embrace. A lot of people around me, mostly older women, were scowling over it, but I thought good for them! Infatuation like that is so lovely. It's two months later now, I hope wherever they are they're still happy, and still kissing with such passion.
...I give up my weird obsession with baking, and go back to cooking, which turns out fabulously. Pizza from scratch, chunks of imported mozzerella, pecorino romano, fresh basil, olive oil. Perfection.
But I'm still reading those blogs...
APRIL......Nonni. Nonni, Nonni, Nonni. I visit Kentucky, and the world as I know it comes crashing down on my head. And she is the child, and I am the adult, and the strong, independent, self assured woman who has handled every problem in our family my entire life is gone. And she cries, and suddenly I am her power of attorney, and her finances are a mess, and I'm the master of my own life but the master of hers, too. I can only hope to be the matriarch that she has been.
...Another tag in the neighborhood where I work, this one traced in cement. I looked up the name Rudy Kazooty online, because it was unique and it made me laugh out loud, and because it was sillier and more fun that most of the tags and graffiti I see every day, especially with the added touch of heroic lightning bolt over the oo's. It turns out, Rudy Kazotty is either a children's television character, a puppet, or a Little Golden Book character. Maybe all of the above. I'd love to hear if anyone reading can provide a little backstory here.
...Over 5 Zillion Sold. There's a mexican restaurant across the street from my office called Uncle Moe's. I stop in a lot after work or on my lunch break, and I've gotten to know the guys behind the counter pretty well. They know what I want when I come through the door, and also hook my up when I'm feeling like indulging in their VERY FABULOUS and FAMOUS dessert. A rice pudding empanada. When I come in, they ask me if I want one, and if I do, they don't give me one from the glass dessert case that's been sitting around. Instead, they go in the back and fry me a fresh one. The empanada is stuffed and deep fried, leaving the outside crispy and flaking and heating the creamy rice pudding inside until it's hot and succulent. Then, before serving it, the whole thing is taken out and rolled hot in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar that powders my fingers and elevates this dessert to perfection. And yes, I'm addicted. And no, I'm not getting paid for singing these praises.
The last time I stopped in, which was at the end of April, was after a long and stressful work day. They were nearly closed, but let me in. They had their music cranked up and rocked out to what sounded a lot
like a Spanish speaking Led Zepplin while I ate. They brought me this without my asking, and we sat and talked awhile. All across the walls of the place were photos of little Taquerias, one after another, all taken with the same camera and developed in the same warm tones. I asked if the restaurants were all owned by their family; it turns out not, but that one of the brothers is learning photography and took them while on an internship in California. Above is my favorite, with an awning proudly boasting Over 5 Zillion Sold. I love that pride, and the life standing behind it. I love thinking about the owner of the business, who must have sat thinking about what to say on his awning, what would make his or her business stand apart from the many others like it and draw a crowd. I wonder if if made them smile like I did, and how many customers were told about the 5 Zillion before it ever went up on the awning. I miss how business used to be that way. Before computers, and chains, and automated phone systems and credit cards. The guys at Uncle Moe's get it about running a family business, and catering to your local and regular crowd. Here's hoping all of us choose to give our patronage to the little guys first.
...I was reminded that I have the two cutest, sweetest cats ever...
...who snuggled up with me and kept me company while I was tearing my hair out trying to take care of Nonni's bills...
...and chased my blues away with their supreme cuteness. Albert & Alex seen here, some candid snaps from a Saturday afternoon in April.
MAY......Peak blooming at the Cherry Esplenade at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.
A blue sky, fragrant flowers, green grass, a perfect spring Saturday afternoon.
...Recently saw the movie The Reaping at the Clearview Cinema on 19th St. When I bought my ticket, I went inside to find the ticket taker, an older gentleman, engaged in a lively conversation with a patron who had just Fracture, the two of them debating its merits. The patron looked to be about 60, wore a tan fishing hat, a red flannel coat, and a business suit. I smiled at their rather curmudgeonly exchange, at which they turned to me and began to flirt shamelessly. We chatted briefly about movies in general, and I asked them their top three best movies of all time. The ticket taker said, without hesitation, Inherit the Wind, Gone with the Wind and Terminator 2. The patron felt it was too hard. He told me he had seen a lifetime of movies, 55 movies a year in fact, and it was just too much to pick three out of such a big pool. I stopped to think about that. 55 movies equals one a week, with three weeks in which he sees two. I was curious about which occasions he marked with a double viewing, but before I could ask he gave me the once over, and told me a story. He said he had spent his early career on Wall Street, and was miserable. He said in his 40s he had a midlife crisis, and decided he needed to figure out his life's purpose, but first needed to figure out how to know what it was. That involved quitting his job and just "being" for a little while. He said it took him 10 years, but he figured out that his life's work was to elevate people's minds, and he was to do that through demonstrating complete and unconditional kindness to all living creatures, human and animal alike. He told me he wrote a book on that very thing, but that rather than waste precious time fighting and compromising with the book publishing industry, he wrote a 42 page book and made it a point to give out ten pages a day, one each to ten different people he met during his day to day travels. He told me that he had given a page to Hilary Clinton, and to Katie Couric, and he gave one to me. His name was Bob White, and he handed me a handwritten, xeroxed piece of his life's work.
Would that I can be so lucky as to achieve that level of definition. Even if the meaning never goes beyond myself.
Thanks, Bob White, for nudging me back to my own writing life. ¶ 1:23 AM
Come on, Snow, Come Down from Sky.
I was headed into the grocery store to pick up snacks for Oscar night.
He was standing in front of the double doors, a silhouette against the flourescent lights of the store's interior.
He was wire thin, in his 30s, maybe, and wearing dark jeans, a winter jacket and black ski cap, skin darker than blue, his words thick with an island accent.
He was standing, hands at his sides, palms open and up toward the stars, his neck bent far back to turn his face to the sky.
His voice boomed, a deep baritone plea.
I looked up at the sky in spite of myself, like how could it not respond to such richness of a person.
Nothing happened. I smiled at him. He nodded in my direction. I went around him into the store. He went back to soliciting store customers for a ride in his gypsy cab. As I walked by, he mumbled to himself about feeling tired, and wanting to be able to go home.
I don't know the particulars of his situation, of why the onset of snow would allow him to go home. It would be hours before the roads got bad enough to warrant not driving. Maybe if it snowed he could justify to himself retiring early for the evening, missing out on whatever fares he might have left tonight if he loiters in front of the store until the 11 o'clock close.
Before I lived in New York, I lived an insulated life. I lived in a house, which I left every morning and got in my car, and drove to my job, where I worked in my office until I got back in my car and drove back to my house. I lived in a world of walls, barriers between me and the rest of the people in my town moving around in their own barriers. I know this now because here, in New York, I live among people. Being an avid pedestrian, I walk among people, rub shoulders with them (literally) on my way to work, whisper light brushes against their bodies walking down the street, hear snips of a thousand conversations every day. There's a different kind of intimacy, privacy here in the city, a privacy that incorporates a hundred bodies, a hundred voices in every space. I am struck daily by the beauty of people simply going about their business. It takes all kinds of people to make a city work; councilmen, dog walkers, fry cooks, teenagers, cab drivers, sanitation workers, doctors, window dressers, food cart vendors, nannies, real estate moguls, bank tellers, and on and on. A city's elite can only live by sharing the street with the blue collar workers who tend them. That's true of any cities, population 2 million or 2 thousand.
My mom recently sent me one of those forwarded emails that make the rounds, this one labeled an angry "HOW TO DESTROY AMERICA" just like that, in all caps. The long and short of this email was that our country is dying because of an influx of immigrants and a government that indulges them by adopting a policy of multiculturalism, valuing diversity over patriotism and tolerance over adaptation. According to the article, we are losing our national identity, and the loss is killing us. These points all made in much more offensive rhetoric than how I've summarized them here. I asked mom what she thought my reaction to the email would be. Rightly, she said she knew it would make me angry, and it did. I find such oversimplified, alarmist attitudes symptomatic of a kind of educated biggotry. The kind that points fingers at our immigrant populations and blames them for rising unemployment levels, health care costs and poor economies.
Here in the city, I interact with these people every day, all day. They are my clients at work. They serve me pretzels on the sidewalks and drive me where I need to go when I run late. They cook the food and mop the floors behind the swinging kitchen doors of my restaurants. They carry the boxes that contain the clothes hanging on the shelves of my clothing stores. They've also probably picked the fruit I eat when I buy it in the store, refinished the floor in my apartment when it was last renovated, stitched the knockoff designer bag the lady next to me on the train is carrying, sold me bootleg dvds, delivered my food when the weather has been too lousy for me to go out, and scores of other behind the scenes tasks I probably don't even know about.
Some of them work 14 hour days, live in 2 bedroom apartments with up to 8 people, send 60 percent of their income home to families abroad, or save their entire pay to bring more family members here. They do it without health insurance, paid holidays, sick days, life insurance, tax returns or vacations.
None of them are working jobs that I find myself sitting at home wishing I had, but most of them, like me, just want the opportunity to work and make a living.
As for the man I saw this evening who stood outside the grocery store pleading with the sky, when I came out of the store 20 minutes later, he was gone, and it was snowing.
I love how sometimes the magic of just wishing for something really hard works.
I love the sight of people in moments of true humanity, unguarded.
Humanity is what we all have, and it doesn't matter what state of affairs our "papers" are in.
The real destruction of America is in the forgetting of that very thing. ¶ 8:26 PM 1 comments
Sunday, February 25, 2007
That's what he said.I was headed into the grocery store to pick up snacks for Oscar night.
He was standing in front of the double doors, a silhouette against the flourescent lights of the store's interior.
He was wire thin, in his 30s, maybe, and wearing dark jeans, a winter jacket and black ski cap, skin darker than blue, his words thick with an island accent.
He was standing, hands at his sides, palms open and up toward the stars, his neck bent far back to turn his face to the sky.
His voice boomed, a deep baritone plea.
I looked up at the sky in spite of myself, like how could it not respond to such richness of a person.
Nothing happened. I smiled at him. He nodded in my direction. I went around him into the store. He went back to soliciting store customers for a ride in his gypsy cab. As I walked by, he mumbled to himself about feeling tired, and wanting to be able to go home.
I don't know the particulars of his situation, of why the onset of snow would allow him to go home. It would be hours before the roads got bad enough to warrant not driving. Maybe if it snowed he could justify to himself retiring early for the evening, missing out on whatever fares he might have left tonight if he loiters in front of the store until the 11 o'clock close.
Before I lived in New York, I lived an insulated life. I lived in a house, which I left every morning and got in my car, and drove to my job, where I worked in my office until I got back in my car and drove back to my house. I lived in a world of walls, barriers between me and the rest of the people in my town moving around in their own barriers. I know this now because here, in New York, I live among people. Being an avid pedestrian, I walk among people, rub shoulders with them (literally) on my way to work, whisper light brushes against their bodies walking down the street, hear snips of a thousand conversations every day. There's a different kind of intimacy, privacy here in the city, a privacy that incorporates a hundred bodies, a hundred voices in every space. I am struck daily by the beauty of people simply going about their business. It takes all kinds of people to make a city work; councilmen, dog walkers, fry cooks, teenagers, cab drivers, sanitation workers, doctors, window dressers, food cart vendors, nannies, real estate moguls, bank tellers, and on and on. A city's elite can only live by sharing the street with the blue collar workers who tend them. That's true of any cities, population 2 million or 2 thousand.
My mom recently sent me one of those forwarded emails that make the rounds, this one labeled an angry "HOW TO DESTROY AMERICA" just like that, in all caps. The long and short of this email was that our country is dying because of an influx of immigrants and a government that indulges them by adopting a policy of multiculturalism, valuing diversity over patriotism and tolerance over adaptation. According to the article, we are losing our national identity, and the loss is killing us. These points all made in much more offensive rhetoric than how I've summarized them here. I asked mom what she thought my reaction to the email would be. Rightly, she said she knew it would make me angry, and it did. I find such oversimplified, alarmist attitudes symptomatic of a kind of educated biggotry. The kind that points fingers at our immigrant populations and blames them for rising unemployment levels, health care costs and poor economies.
Here in the city, I interact with these people every day, all day. They are my clients at work. They serve me pretzels on the sidewalks and drive me where I need to go when I run late. They cook the food and mop the floors behind the swinging kitchen doors of my restaurants. They carry the boxes that contain the clothes hanging on the shelves of my clothing stores. They've also probably picked the fruit I eat when I buy it in the store, refinished the floor in my apartment when it was last renovated, stitched the knockoff designer bag the lady next to me on the train is carrying, sold me bootleg dvds, delivered my food when the weather has been too lousy for me to go out, and scores of other behind the scenes tasks I probably don't even know about.
Some of them work 14 hour days, live in 2 bedroom apartments with up to 8 people, send 60 percent of their income home to families abroad, or save their entire pay to bring more family members here. They do it without health insurance, paid holidays, sick days, life insurance, tax returns or vacations.
None of them are working jobs that I find myself sitting at home wishing I had, but most of them, like me, just want the opportunity to work and make a living.
As for the man I saw this evening who stood outside the grocery store pleading with the sky, when I came out of the store 20 minutes later, he was gone, and it was snowing.
I love how sometimes the magic of just wishing for something really hard works.
I love the sight of people in moments of true humanity, unguarded.
Humanity is what we all have, and it doesn't matter what state of affairs our "papers" are in.
The real destruction of America is in the forgetting of that very thing. ¶ 8:26 PM 1 comments
Artgasm
Friday night I spend my time in the American and Modern sections.
And that's where Jackson Pollock happened to me.
I've always loved art. I've loved making it, I've loved looking at it. I got my first real art supplies when I was about seven, a professional pen and ink set, and several college level books detailing techniques for line ink drawing. I devoured them.
In college, I took several art classes, and in my senior year an art history class, Women Artists Since 1940. It was my first official "survey" art course, and I chose it with trepidation but at the encouragement of my academic advisor, who felt it would work doubletime to satisfy both my English and Women's Studies requirements for my major. The class was taught by a sour, unpleasant woman named Thalia Gouma Peterson, who believed noone was as smart as her and who, despite being an avowed feminist, actually hated women. In the first week of class, she informed us that we would be keeping a semester long journal in which we were to choose six paintings from the coursework a week and journal about them. Never having taken an art history class before, I wasn't really sure what "journal about them" meant, and I raised my hand and asked for clarification. Did she want us to talk about how we felt looking at them? About the composition...color, tone, texture, mechanics? About what critics said? Was there a form for this type of writing, or was this to be a more organic process? She looked at me with contempt and informed me that journaling meant journaling. That first week, I fretted about what to do. I knew what I liked, how my tastes ran, and we had been introduced to several works that I had strong reactions to, but I had no idea what was expected of me in terms of how to talk about art. I ended up writing about my reactions to the paintings, their tone and how they made me feel.
That was apparently not what she had in mind. The following week when she handed the journals back, I opened mine to find a big red "F", and a scrawled note reading I can't believe you're a senior English major!
So began an ugly semester between the two of us. My efforts to better understand her expectations of me only fueled her belief that I was just trying to "get over" in the class, which only fueled my anger at her anti-feminist approach to teaching and to women in general. I ended up failing the class. I appealed the F and won, and she ended up begrudginly passing me with a "C".
Since then, I've always been a little bit intimidated by the "art world." Again, I know my taste, and I'm confident in my ability to do things like decorate my home, or create household art, but I've shied away from talking about art with people who are artists or art critics. I'm able to enjoy looking at art, I love going to the Met, but I've never had that really intimate, personal and gut punching reaction to a piece. I've never just been floored, in any kind of emotional way. Usually it's more about appreciating the work of a specific artist in the context of their life condition or struggle.
This weekend I saw my first Jackson Pollock painting in person. I've seen poster reproductions of his work, and I've seen reproductions in art books and documentaries. But never the real deal. And I've never felt particularly drawn to abstract art.
Imagine my suprise, then, when I turned a corner in the modern gallery and came face to face with Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) and couldn't walk away.
It was bigger than me, and it had a depth that I felt like I literally sank into. It had a kind of energy that was mesmerizing, and I found myself staring and staring, trying to find a methodology, trying to find a starting point among the layers and layers of paint drips. I've looked at his drip works before and flippantly thought to myself that they didn't seem particularly "planned," that they were random and chaotic and easily reproduced. I was completely wrong. The longer I stood there and stared, the more entreched I got, and patterns started to emerge, and my eyes were travelling and travelling the canvas without stopping. It was alive. I sat down in front of it and just stared, and felt this warmth come over me, this joy. No kidding. It was like suddenly I just "got it." I got what people talked about when they talked about art that was transformative, that was emotional and intimate. I had my first artgasm, right there in the Met in front of 20 other people speeding through the galleries with no idea what I was seeing. I was awestruck. I used to be one of them.
I sat there for 45 minutes. I started to feel this protectiveness of the painting. I felt myself inwardly flinching as people walked by and commented that it was nothing, that they could do the same thing on their garage wall. I wasn't really interested in seeing anything else that night; I was afraid to walk away from it, afraid when I came back to see it again I wouldn't see it like I was seeing it in that moment, that it's power would be lost.
After a little while, the gallery security attendant walked over to me. He apologized for interrupting me, told me he wasn't supposed to talk to patrons but he couldn't help but see my reaction to the painting. He had a thick Jamaican accent and I had to strain to hear him, but I was curious as to what he wanted. I nodded that it was okay, and he proceeded to tell me a story of a man he saw one day who came in and sat on the very bench I was sitting on, staring at the painting. He told me the man sat for six hours, six hours, and at the end of the day he stood up, he shook his head, shrugged and walked away. The guard told me he didn't know what it was that man had been looking for, but that he didn't think he found it. He told me I had that same look in my eye, and told me the painting was very intriguing to many people.
I still sat, looking. I do think the man found what he was looking for.
I certainly did. Without even realizing that I had been searching. Hello existentialism, I didn't know I had you in me.
When I got home, I researched a bit about Jackson Pollock. I found out that he believed that art was more than representations of familiar forms. He thought people used lines to create boundaries, to define shapes and space and enclosures, and he sought to free lines from definition and expose them as independently beautiful. When he painted, he stretched great pieces of canvas across the floor of his studio. He said "On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting." He didn't work with a brush, he used his hands, he used sticks and sometimes poured paint right out of the can to drip and spatter paint against the canvas in layers on layers. This was known as his "drip" period, between 1946 and 1950. Eventually, as his work gained more notariety he began feeling pressure from gallery owners to return to a more structured, traditional "form" representation in his paintings. He stopped doing drip works, and began drinking. In 1953 he stopped painting all together, unable to resolve his creative inspirations with the work he created to please the public and gallery owners. He died in 1956 in an alcohol related car crash, at the age of 44. People call his style of painting "action painting," and say he gave birth to the movement.
I was fortunate enough to find a video of him in action on youtube. It doesn't come near representing the actual wonderment of seeing his work in person. Neither does the reproduction I included above do it justice. If you really want to know, you'll just have to come to New York and visit the Met for yourself. I'll even put you up.
In the meantime, I've acquired a list of the locations of all 26 of his drip pieces. You can guess how I'll be spending my spring.
¶ 8:20 PM 0 comments
Sunday, February 11, 2007
I went to the Met this weekend (that's the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for those Non New Yorkers among us). I love going, and now that I'm older I've taken to restricting myself when I go, vowing to spend my time not trying to rush through a whirlwind overview of the entire collection, but to devote my time to one wing, to spend three, sometimes four hours just absorbing a small portion, taking time to read the cards and stories behind the work, to see the tiniest brushstrokes over a glancing appreciation.Friday night I spend my time in the American and Modern sections.
And that's where Jackson Pollock happened to me.
I've always loved art. I've loved making it, I've loved looking at it. I got my first real art supplies when I was about seven, a professional pen and ink set, and several college level books detailing techniques for line ink drawing. I devoured them.
In college, I took several art classes, and in my senior year an art history class, Women Artists Since 1940. It was my first official "survey" art course, and I chose it with trepidation but at the encouragement of my academic advisor, who felt it would work doubletime to satisfy both my English and Women's Studies requirements for my major. The class was taught by a sour, unpleasant woman named Thalia Gouma Peterson, who believed noone was as smart as her and who, despite being an avowed feminist, actually hated women. In the first week of class, she informed us that we would be keeping a semester long journal in which we were to choose six paintings from the coursework a week and journal about them. Never having taken an art history class before, I wasn't really sure what "journal about them" meant, and I raised my hand and asked for clarification. Did she want us to talk about how we felt looking at them? About the composition...color, tone, texture, mechanics? About what critics said? Was there a form for this type of writing, or was this to be a more organic process? She looked at me with contempt and informed me that journaling meant journaling. That first week, I fretted about what to do. I knew what I liked, how my tastes ran, and we had been introduced to several works that I had strong reactions to, but I had no idea what was expected of me in terms of how to talk about art. I ended up writing about my reactions to the paintings, their tone and how they made me feel.
That was apparently not what she had in mind. The following week when she handed the journals back, I opened mine to find a big red "F", and a scrawled note reading I can't believe you're a senior English major!
So began an ugly semester between the two of us. My efforts to better understand her expectations of me only fueled her belief that I was just trying to "get over" in the class, which only fueled my anger at her anti-feminist approach to teaching and to women in general. I ended up failing the class. I appealed the F and won, and she ended up begrudginly passing me with a "C".
Since then, I've always been a little bit intimidated by the "art world." Again, I know my taste, and I'm confident in my ability to do things like decorate my home, or create household art, but I've shied away from talking about art with people who are artists or art critics. I'm able to enjoy looking at art, I love going to the Met, but I've never had that really intimate, personal and gut punching reaction to a piece. I've never just been floored, in any kind of emotional way. Usually it's more about appreciating the work of a specific artist in the context of their life condition or struggle.
This weekend I saw my first Jackson Pollock painting in person. I've seen poster reproductions of his work, and I've seen reproductions in art books and documentaries. But never the real deal. And I've never felt particularly drawn to abstract art.
Imagine my suprise, then, when I turned a corner in the modern gallery and came face to face with Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) and couldn't walk away.
It was bigger than me, and it had a depth that I felt like I literally sank into. It had a kind of energy that was mesmerizing, and I found myself staring and staring, trying to find a methodology, trying to find a starting point among the layers and layers of paint drips. I've looked at his drip works before and flippantly thought to myself that they didn't seem particularly "planned," that they were random and chaotic and easily reproduced. I was completely wrong. The longer I stood there and stared, the more entreched I got, and patterns started to emerge, and my eyes were travelling and travelling the canvas without stopping. It was alive. I sat down in front of it and just stared, and felt this warmth come over me, this joy. No kidding. It was like suddenly I just "got it." I got what people talked about when they talked about art that was transformative, that was emotional and intimate. I had my first artgasm, right there in the Met in front of 20 other people speeding through the galleries with no idea what I was seeing. I was awestruck. I used to be one of them.
I sat there for 45 minutes. I started to feel this protectiveness of the painting. I felt myself inwardly flinching as people walked by and commented that it was nothing, that they could do the same thing on their garage wall. I wasn't really interested in seeing anything else that night; I was afraid to walk away from it, afraid when I came back to see it again I wouldn't see it like I was seeing it in that moment, that it's power would be lost.
After a little while, the gallery security attendant walked over to me. He apologized for interrupting me, told me he wasn't supposed to talk to patrons but he couldn't help but see my reaction to the painting. He had a thick Jamaican accent and I had to strain to hear him, but I was curious as to what he wanted. I nodded that it was okay, and he proceeded to tell me a story of a man he saw one day who came in and sat on the very bench I was sitting on, staring at the painting. He told me the man sat for six hours, six hours, and at the end of the day he stood up, he shook his head, shrugged and walked away. The guard told me he didn't know what it was that man had been looking for, but that he didn't think he found it. He told me I had that same look in my eye, and told me the painting was very intriguing to many people.
I still sat, looking. I do think the man found what he was looking for.
I certainly did. Without even realizing that I had been searching. Hello existentialism, I didn't know I had you in me.
When I got home, I researched a bit about Jackson Pollock. I found out that he believed that art was more than representations of familiar forms. He thought people used lines to create boundaries, to define shapes and space and enclosures, and he sought to free lines from definition and expose them as independently beautiful. When he painted, he stretched great pieces of canvas across the floor of his studio. He said "On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting." He didn't work with a brush, he used his hands, he used sticks and sometimes poured paint right out of the can to drip and spatter paint against the canvas in layers on layers. This was known as his "drip" period, between 1946 and 1950. Eventually, as his work gained more notariety he began feeling pressure from gallery owners to return to a more structured, traditional "form" representation in his paintings. He stopped doing drip works, and began drinking. In 1953 he stopped painting all together, unable to resolve his creative inspirations with the work he created to please the public and gallery owners. He died in 1956 in an alcohol related car crash, at the age of 44. People call his style of painting "action painting," and say he gave birth to the movement.
I was fortunate enough to find a video of him in action on youtube. It doesn't come near representing the actual wonderment of seeing his work in person. Neither does the reproduction I included above do it justice. If you really want to know, you'll just have to come to New York and visit the Met for yourself. I'll even put you up.
In the meantime, I've acquired a list of the locations of all 26 of his drip pieces. You can guess how I'll be spending my spring.
¶ 8:20 PM 0 comments
Icicles
Icicles, especially in unlikely places.
Q train, Prospect Park station, Brooklyn, NY.
Monday morning commute.
February 5, 2007
¶ 11:40 PM 1 comments
Monday, February 05, 2007
Things I love...Icicles, especially in unlikely places.
Q train, Prospect Park station, Brooklyn, NY.
Monday morning commute.
February 5, 2007
¶ 11:40 PM 1 comments
Great Music Monday: Linda Ronstadt
It's been awhile, but I thought it was time for some great music, you know, on Monday, because Monday's suck. And great music is...well...great!
Today, a little Linda Ronstadt.
I've been a Linda fan for a long time; I love her in the 70s with her rootsy, country-folk rock, I love her in the 80s and 90s with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra doing jazz standards, I love her these days teaming up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris doing covers and converting rock songs to children's lullabies.
Linda hit the music scene in 1967 as the lead singer of a band called the Stone Poneys, with a song called Different Drum, written by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. Different Drum was not her most commercially successful song, but her clear-as-a-bell voice did get her the attention of several songwriters, beginning her looong career as a talented vocal artist and champion of then lesser known songwriters including Elvis Costello, Phillip Glass, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Paul Anka, Hank Williams, Patti Griffin, The Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Neil Young, Tom Petty and Aaron Neville.
She's incredibly feminine, but also incredibly and tomboyishly tough, and brings a different kind of femininity to her music than other female artists of the time including Diana Ross, Melanie, Carole King and Carly Simon. She was faded blue jeans over flower skirts, electric guitar over whispering folk, and managed to break into the boys club of rock and roll but maintain her identity as a woman at the same time. She was also the first woman to successfully sell out stadium concerts with only herself as the headliner. In 1975 she was photographed by
Annie Leibowitz for an interview and picture spread in Rolling Stone magazine, launching her to super sex-symbol status, but never lost her girl next door appeal.
That's what I like best about her. On top of her importance as a woman in the rock music scene in the 70s, she just makes really good music, and onstage she has a realness about her that draws you in and feels incredibly homey to listen to. Like she might well be playing the night away in a backyard jam session rather than playing to audiences of a thousand or more. And she is a person who simploy loves music. Of all genres. She's collaborated with more artists than I can list here, and has had hits on the pop, country, rock, latin, easy listening, blues, opera, mariachi and children's charts. The big hits, most of us know... It's So Easy, That'll Be the Day, Heat Wave, When Will I Be Loved, You're No Good, Blue Bayou. Below, a few of my favorites, of the lesser known but just as good variety. And a few that are insanely popular but simply too good not to include.
These are all live performances... she's actually never released a live album throughout her career, which is unfortunate as she seems to be a performer who really feeds off of and gets that much better with the energy of the crowd.
Most of these clips are from her 1976 concert Linda Rondstadt London, which is posted on youtube in it's entirety by the fabulous JKTRL. If you've got the time, I encourage you to watch all 12 of the clips. It won't be time wasted.
And now, some favorites. You'll have to follow the links for some of these, as the user denies embedding access. Just click on the song name for the jump.
The Tattler
Willin'
Desperado
Okay, so here are two versions of this song, because it's my favorite of hers and I simply couldn't decide which I liked better. The first is from a 1974 performance on American Bandstand; it sounds much like the studio released version that got radio airplay, and you can really hear how good the song is. Plus I love the backup singer in the yellow jumpsuit behind her who is shaking hip like she doesn't even have bones.
The second version is from an outdoor summer concert she did in 1976 and she is ROCKING OUT. She's really feeding on the energy of the crowd, and the music is loud and hard, and she's putting all her guts into it and the result is awesome, even if the audio quality isn't as good.
Hope you enjoy them both. I just couldn't choose only one.
You're No Good - American Bandstand
You're No Good - Summer of 76 ¶ 11:00 PM 0 comments
Today, a little Linda Ronstadt.
I've been a Linda fan for a long time; I love her in the 70s with her rootsy, country-folk rock, I love her in the 80s and 90s with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra doing jazz standards, I love her these days teaming up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris doing covers and converting rock songs to children's lullabies.
Linda hit the music scene in 1967 as the lead singer of a band called the Stone Poneys, with a song called Different Drum, written by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. Different Drum was not her most commercially successful song, but her clear-as-a-bell voice did get her the attention of several songwriters, beginning her looong career as a talented vocal artist and champion of then lesser known songwriters including Elvis Costello, Phillip Glass, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Paul Anka, Hank Williams, Patti Griffin, The Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Neil Young, Tom Petty and Aaron Neville.
She's incredibly feminine, but also incredibly and tomboyishly tough, and brings a different kind of femininity to her music than other female artists of the time including Diana Ross, Melanie, Carole King and Carly Simon. She was faded blue jeans over flower skirts, electric guitar over whispering folk, and managed to break into the boys club of rock and roll but maintain her identity as a woman at the same time. She was also the first woman to successfully sell out stadium concerts with only herself as the headliner. In 1975 she was photographed by
Annie Leibowitz for an interview and picture spread in Rolling Stone magazine, launching her to super sex-symbol status, but never lost her girl next door appeal.
That's what I like best about her. On top of her importance as a woman in the rock music scene in the 70s, she just makes really good music, and onstage she has a realness about her that draws you in and feels incredibly homey to listen to. Like she might well be playing the night away in a backyard jam session rather than playing to audiences of a thousand or more. And she is a person who simploy loves music. Of all genres. She's collaborated with more artists than I can list here, and has had hits on the pop, country, rock, latin, easy listening, blues, opera, mariachi and children's charts. The big hits, most of us know... It's So Easy, That'll Be the Day, Heat Wave, When Will I Be Loved, You're No Good, Blue Bayou. Below, a few of my favorites, of the lesser known but just as good variety. And a few that are insanely popular but simply too good not to include.
These are all live performances... she's actually never released a live album throughout her career, which is unfortunate as she seems to be a performer who really feeds off of and gets that much better with the energy of the crowd.
Most of these clips are from her 1976 concert Linda Rondstadt London, which is posted on youtube in it's entirety by the fabulous JKTRL. If you've got the time, I encourage you to watch all 12 of the clips. It won't be time wasted.
And now, some favorites. You'll have to follow the links for some of these, as the user denies embedding access. Just click on the song name for the jump.
The Tattler
Willin'
Desperado
Okay, so here are two versions of this song, because it's my favorite of hers and I simply couldn't decide which I liked better. The first is from a 1974 performance on American Bandstand; it sounds much like the studio released version that got radio airplay, and you can really hear how good the song is. Plus I love the backup singer in the yellow jumpsuit behind her who is shaking hip like she doesn't even have bones.
The second version is from an outdoor summer concert she did in 1976 and she is ROCKING OUT. She's really feeding on the energy of the crowd, and the music is loud and hard, and she's putting all her guts into it and the result is awesome, even if the audio quality isn't as good.
Hope you enjoy them both. I just couldn't choose only one.
You're No Good - American Bandstand
You're No Good - Summer of 76 ¶ 11:00 PM 0 comments
2006, I Hardly Knew Ya
It's 2007, and 2006 couldn't have gone by faster. New Year's Eve found me this year sitting in the back of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, listening to Audra McDonald sing the classic movie musical songs I've always loved.
I confess, that mythical larger than life, sophisticated new year nearly found me this time.
Still, after Audra left the stage and the hall emptied, I found myself left with my own recollection, as always. I've left 2006 in a good place, and I'm moving into 2007 the same.
The last 365 days, in brief:
LOST: time, sight of myself, my old insecurity about money, the summer - instead working insane hours at a horrible job, Morgan, anonymity, stress, a sense of obligation, tension in my house.
FOUND: a new job, my social life, Montauk, all the things I enjoy doing that fell away during the business of loving and living with someone, Manhattan again, financial stability, a great hairdresser, maturity, another new job, confidence, good health insurance, peace of mind.
As for the next 365 days, I've decided that this year my goal is to move beyond simply being financially stable, an achievement I'm very proud of given the cost of living in this city, and begin to acquire financial freedom. I want to stop living paycheck to paycheck. I want to repair and rebuild my credit. I want to build a "nest egg." I also want to invest. I've been reading a lot of books about economics, and I know that you can't really build wealth without doing it. I've reached a point in my life where I'm at a job that I can really commit too, with good management, room for growth, and a good wage. It's time to really take control of my fiscal self. I feel like I have developed a lot of self control about spending habits, budgeting, and managing bills, and I'm ready to look at things I've avoided for awhile.
I would also like to direct at least one other show this year. Last year was a whirlwind of changes, and I missed an opportunity I was offered and ended up not doing anything. This year, at least one. One is well within reach right now.
As for you, for my New Year's well wishing I'm borrowing from Eleanor Roosevelt this year, in a poignant speech she made on January 1, 1937. It's my favorite new year sentiment, one I go back to year after year and I'm happy to pass to you now...
"I wish for those I love this New Year an opportunity to earn sufficient, to have that which they need for their own and to give that which they desire to others, to bring into the lives of those about them some measure of joy, to know the satisfaction of work well done, of recreation earned and therefore savored, to end the year a little wiser, a little kinder and therefore a little happier."
Happy New Year, people. ¶ 1:04 PM 3 comments
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Happy New Year, people.It's 2007, and 2006 couldn't have gone by faster. New Year's Eve found me this year sitting in the back of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, listening to Audra McDonald sing the classic movie musical songs I've always loved.
I confess, that mythical larger than life, sophisticated new year nearly found me this time.
Still, after Audra left the stage and the hall emptied, I found myself left with my own recollection, as always. I've left 2006 in a good place, and I'm moving into 2007 the same.
The last 365 days, in brief:
LOST: time, sight of myself, my old insecurity about money, the summer - instead working insane hours at a horrible job, Morgan, anonymity, stress, a sense of obligation, tension in my house.
FOUND: a new job, my social life, Montauk, all the things I enjoy doing that fell away during the business of loving and living with someone, Manhattan again, financial stability, a great hairdresser, maturity, another new job, confidence, good health insurance, peace of mind.
As for the next 365 days, I've decided that this year my goal is to move beyond simply being financially stable, an achievement I'm very proud of given the cost of living in this city, and begin to acquire financial freedom. I want to stop living paycheck to paycheck. I want to repair and rebuild my credit. I want to build a "nest egg." I also want to invest. I've been reading a lot of books about economics, and I know that you can't really build wealth without doing it. I've reached a point in my life where I'm at a job that I can really commit too, with good management, room for growth, and a good wage. It's time to really take control of my fiscal self. I feel like I have developed a lot of self control about spending habits, budgeting, and managing bills, and I'm ready to look at things I've avoided for awhile.
I would also like to direct at least one other show this year. Last year was a whirlwind of changes, and I missed an opportunity I was offered and ended up not doing anything. This year, at least one. One is well within reach right now.
As for you, for my New Year's well wishing I'm borrowing from Eleanor Roosevelt this year, in a poignant speech she made on January 1, 1937. It's my favorite new year sentiment, one I go back to year after year and I'm happy to pass to you now...
"I wish for those I love this New Year an opportunity to earn sufficient, to have that which they need for their own and to give that which they desire to others, to bring into the lives of those about them some measure of joy, to know the satisfaction of work well done, of recreation earned and therefore savored, to end the year a little wiser, a little kinder and therefore a little happier."
Happy New Year, people. ¶ 1:04 PM 3 comments
All You've Got to Do is Dream
It was the perfect venue, it was perfectly glamourous, and the movie was perfectly executed.
I had been avoiding the hype, the buzz, the reviews, the music, the behind the scenes features all over the place, all of it. I find generally that when things are super hyped in that way, I tend to feel let down with whatever the reality is.
Not so with Dreamgirls. Jennifer Hudson was amazing. Beyonce, who I really don't like at all and was prepared to be annoyed by, was wonderful and understated and I grudgingly admit I really liked in the film. Anika Noni Rose lit up the screen and held her own with two very formidable presences who could have easily eclipsed her.
More than that, the cinematography, art direction, costuming and wardrobe and sound people have created a film that literally jumps off the screen at you. It was exciting like watching a live concert is exciting. At the screening, the audience, an interesting collision of city culture and broadway lovers, gay men and middle aged african americans, clapped, cheered, and at times gave standing ovations.
Standing ovations. To a movie screen. It was that good.
Pics below. This film opens in wide release on December 25th. Go see it. Dreamgirls, among other things, really will make you happy.
(click for bigger versions)
A glamourous venue for a glamourous movie.
More glamour. Seeing it in such a historic theatre made it that much better. Super smart marketing, Dreamgirls people.
Costumes in the lobby outside the theatre.
Inside the theatre. It went on for miles, and it was SOLD OUT. It was fun to feel like old hollywood for an evening.
Finally, finally, the film. Here's a little clip, it's the Dreamgirls theme, with some screencaps. I didn't make this one, but I've listened to it a million times since Friday. Enjoy.
¶ 11:49 AM 1 comments
Sunday, December 17, 2006
This weekend, a glamourous interlude. My friend Melissa and I went to see the premiere of Dreamgirls at the Ziegfeld.It was the perfect venue, it was perfectly glamourous, and the movie was perfectly executed.
I had been avoiding the hype, the buzz, the reviews, the music, the behind the scenes features all over the place, all of it. I find generally that when things are super hyped in that way, I tend to feel let down with whatever the reality is.
Not so with Dreamgirls. Jennifer Hudson was amazing. Beyonce, who I really don't like at all and was prepared to be annoyed by, was wonderful and understated and I grudgingly admit I really liked in the film. Anika Noni Rose lit up the screen and held her own with two very formidable presences who could have easily eclipsed her.
More than that, the cinematography, art direction, costuming and wardrobe and sound people have created a film that literally jumps off the screen at you. It was exciting like watching a live concert is exciting. At the screening, the audience, an interesting collision of city culture and broadway lovers, gay men and middle aged african americans, clapped, cheered, and at times gave standing ovations.
Standing ovations. To a movie screen. It was that good.
Pics below. This film opens in wide release on December 25th. Go see it. Dreamgirls, among other things, really will make you happy.
(click for bigger versions)
A glamourous venue for a glamourous movie.More glamour. Seeing it in such a historic theatre made it that much better. Super smart marketing, Dreamgirls people.
Costumes in the lobby outside the theatre. Inside the theatre. It went on for miles, and it was SOLD OUT. It was fun to feel like old hollywood for an evening.Finally, finally, the film. Here's a little clip, it's the Dreamgirls theme, with some screencaps. I didn't make this one, but I've listened to it a million times since Friday. Enjoy.
¶ 11:49 AM 1 comments
The Tree
Pics below, a few different shots because I'm not a great photographer. Click on the snaps to see bigger versions.
And here's another, the view from the front hall. It's got a weird tilt that we can't seem to fix, but it's still dreamy.
The tree casts these lovely pine branch shadows all over the wall behind it.
The whole shot...
¶ 10:59 PM 0 comments
Monday, December 04, 2006
So, it's the best tree ever. The shape, the fullness, we outdid ourselves. It's actually much bigger than last year's, in the way of being wide and full. It's taking up quite a bit of the living room, and casting a lovely glow over the place.Pics below, a few different shots because I'm not a great photographer. Click on the snaps to see bigger versions.
And here's another, the view from the front hall. It's got a weird tilt that we can't seem to fix, but it's still dreamy.
The tree casts these lovely pine branch shadows all over the wall behind it.
The whole shot...
¶ 10:59 PM 0 comments
Christmas is Coming, The Goose is Getting Fat
I love Christmas in New York City. I love the Christmas season. While I don't go as bananas as my family, I've built my own little traditions over the last 3 decades of living, and I look forward to them immensely. Christmas cards, baking, wrapping presents, the annual viewing of the Christmas three: Sound of Music, White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life. All things that fill me with the goofiest of holiday warm fuzzies and turn me into a mushball like few things do.
Last year, I added a new tradition to the list (which, I think is only a tradition this year, given that I repeated the process in exactly the same way. That's how tradition works, right?)
Anyway, added to the list: buying the Christmas treee.
Growing up I was always allergic to fresh, or "real" trees as they were called in my family. It was something I never questionned, and we all worked around, my family scouring the country, literally, for the most real looking fake they could find, resulting in a basement with, seriously, at LEAST 8 artificial trees packed away, each an upgraded model of the last.
Last year, in a move of wild health be damned abandon, I decided to get a real tree. I really had no idea if I was actually still allergic, NEVER having had one before. I felt a weird longing whenver I passed one of the million tree stands that crop up on sidewalks all over the city after Thanksgiving. Plus, I had never put up a tree since I'd moved to the city, not having had the storage space for an artificial. I talked with my roommate about it, and we decided to go for it, Morgan giving us the most scrooge like of humbugs the entire time.
We scouted around and found a Christmas tree lot that sprung up in a parking lot behind a bar in downtown Brooklyn that advertised 6 foot trees for 19 bucks. We poked, we prodded, we haggled, and ended up plunking down $60 bucks on what had to be the most perfect tree ever. Not having a car, we carried it home on the bus, up four flights of stairs and decorated it, Morgan getting excited and joining in in spite of herself.
Fast forward to this year. Last night, we went and bought our tree.
The same place, the same guys, the same excitement and another FABULOUS tree. I think this year we may have gotten a little carried away, though. We've ended up with a six foot tree that is delightfully full, but perhaps too big for our living room. It was too big to fit into the stand we had, causing Becca and I to take turns hacking away at the trunk with my swiss army knife saw, a hammer and screwdriver, and eventually, a meat cleaver from the kitchen. Add egg nog, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen singing about sisters in White Christmas, and the intoxicating smell of fresh pine all over both of us and everything in the house and you get Christmas magic. The tree is up with lights, we'll be trimming it tonight. My Christmas cards wait for me and the cookie ingredients are burning a hole in my pantry.
Merry Christmas, people. Find your holiday magic wherever you can get it, however or whatever you celebrate.
As for me, well, here's a bit of my tradition...
(click on the snaps for bigger, better versions)
The lot, the promise of a great tree for nineteen bucks which really means sixty. The smell of pine, all over the block. Twinkle lights everywhere.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
The city is getting that holiday buzz going. Walking to the train this week, the trees that line Broadway between my office and the station lit up with twinkle lights, as did the stray apartment window and fire escape here and there. I've started hearing Christmas songs playing over the grocery store speakers, and people on the street are carrying twice the shopping bags as usual. I haven't hit Macy's yet, but I know the windows are decked out in holiday wonderland.I love Christmas in New York City. I love the Christmas season. While I don't go as bananas as my family, I've built my own little traditions over the last 3 decades of living, and I look forward to them immensely. Christmas cards, baking, wrapping presents, the annual viewing of the Christmas three: Sound of Music, White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life. All things that fill me with the goofiest of holiday warm fuzzies and turn me into a mushball like few things do.
Last year, I added a new tradition to the list (which, I think is only a tradition this year, given that I repeated the process in exactly the same way. That's how tradition works, right?)
Anyway, added to the list: buying the Christmas treee.
Growing up I was always allergic to fresh, or "real" trees as they were called in my family. It was something I never questionned, and we all worked around, my family scouring the country, literally, for the most real looking fake they could find, resulting in a basement with, seriously, at LEAST 8 artificial trees packed away, each an upgraded model of the last.
Last year, in a move of wild health be damned abandon, I decided to get a real tree. I really had no idea if I was actually still allergic, NEVER having had one before. I felt a weird longing whenver I passed one of the million tree stands that crop up on sidewalks all over the city after Thanksgiving. Plus, I had never put up a tree since I'd moved to the city, not having had the storage space for an artificial. I talked with my roommate about it, and we decided to go for it, Morgan giving us the most scrooge like of humbugs the entire time.
We scouted around and found a Christmas tree lot that sprung up in a parking lot behind a bar in downtown Brooklyn that advertised 6 foot trees for 19 bucks. We poked, we prodded, we haggled, and ended up plunking down $60 bucks on what had to be the most perfect tree ever. Not having a car, we carried it home on the bus, up four flights of stairs and decorated it, Morgan getting excited and joining in in spite of herself.
Fast forward to this year. Last night, we went and bought our tree.
The same place, the same guys, the same excitement and another FABULOUS tree. I think this year we may have gotten a little carried away, though. We've ended up with a six foot tree that is delightfully full, but perhaps too big for our living room. It was too big to fit into the stand we had, causing Becca and I to take turns hacking away at the trunk with my swiss army knife saw, a hammer and screwdriver, and eventually, a meat cleaver from the kitchen. Add egg nog, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen singing about sisters in White Christmas, and the intoxicating smell of fresh pine all over both of us and everything in the house and you get Christmas magic. The tree is up with lights, we'll be trimming it tonight. My Christmas cards wait for me and the cookie ingredients are burning a hole in my pantry.
Merry Christmas, people. Find your holiday magic wherever you can get it, however or whatever you celebrate.
As for me, well, here's a bit of my tradition...
(click on the snaps for bigger, better versions)
The lot, the promise of a great tree for nineteen bucks which really means sixty. The smell of pine, all over the block. Twinkle lights everywhere.
A forest in downtown Brooklyn.
The ground was actually concrete, but the billion shed needles made a foresty carpet beneath our feet. A whole different world than the high rise buildings a block across the street. We were transported. We embraced the shmultz.
The perfect tree, getting netted for transport by the tree guy. He gave us a break, it was supposed to be sixty, but he gave it to us for fifty five. We gave him sixty anyway. The lady in line behind us made a pass at our tree, she walked right up and fingered the branches while it was in the barrel. She had passed on it earlier, realized it was perfect, and asked us about fifty times if we were buying it. We took our tree and booked.
Becca, hammer and screwdriver, chipping away at the trunk after we realized it was too wide for the stand. It would take an hour, but we whittled it down. Never mind that everything in our living room was covered with flying woodchips by the time we were done and we've been tracking woodchips all over the house for the last 24 hours.
A cup of eggnog, a bowl of balls, ready for decorating.
Pictures of the tree in all its decorated glory tonight.
Happy Thanksgiving, Brooklyn
This year, as always, a big dinner, the onset of holiday season financial drama, and my thanks, sent out into the universe that I'm blessed with a roof over my head, food in my kitchen and a life I don't hate. Thanksgiving in Brooklyn is different than the big Thanksgiving brouha that goes on at home, with the family in the kitchen fighting and loving and sharing the old holiday traditions. It's smaller, it's I don't have a real table so I'm spreading the food on the coffee table, it's more about loving myself then about a big showy affair with gorgeous place settings and impressive presentation.
I'll always do the big dinner, even just for me - I'm totally worth it. Here's to good food and another year of scrapping and shining.
The spread; mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casserole, stuffed shells, tofurkey.
Awesome. ¶ 1:56 PM 0 comments
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving people!This year, as always, a big dinner, the onset of holiday season financial drama, and my thanks, sent out into the universe that I'm blessed with a roof over my head, food in my kitchen and a life I don't hate. Thanksgiving in Brooklyn is different than the big Thanksgiving brouha that goes on at home, with the family in the kitchen fighting and loving and sharing the old holiday traditions. It's smaller, it's I don't have a real table so I'm spreading the food on the coffee table, it's more about loving myself then about a big showy affair with gorgeous place settings and impressive presentation.
I'll always do the big dinner, even just for me - I'm totally worth it. Here's to good food and another year of scrapping and shining.
The spread; mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casserole, stuffed shells, tofurkey.
Awesome. ¶ 1:56 PM 0 comments
Music Meme for the Masses
If your life were a soundtrack, what would the music be?
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, Zen, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the name of whatever song comes up
5. new question-- press the next button
6. don't lie and try to pretend you're cool
SOUNDTRACK FOR MY LIFE...
opening credits:
"Do Right Woman" Aretha Franklin
waking up:
"Train Wreck" Sarah McLachlan
first day at school:
"Beloved Wife" Natalie Merchant
falling in love:
"Lighter's Up" Lil' Kim
breaking up:
"Beautiful Boy" John Lennon
prom:
"A Kiss to Build A Dream On" Louis Armstrong
life's okay:
"Goodbye to Love" The Carpenters
mental breakdown:
"Little Plastic Castle" Ani Difranco
driving:
"Louise" Bonnie Raitt
flashback:
"Here Comes the Sun" Nina Simone
getting back together:
"I Shall Believe" Sheryl Crow
wedding:
"Hurt" Johnny Cash
birth of child:
"What Condition My Condition Was In" Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
final battle:
"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" Sophie B. Hawkins
death scene:
"Wigwam" Bob Dylan
funeral song:
"We Can Work It Out" The Beatles
end credits:
"Skyline Pigeon" Elton John
So, I totally didn't cheat. Just what exactly what IS my Zen player trying to tell me about my love life??? ¶ 11:33 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 09, 2006
SOOOO, I love a meme, I love music, and when this MUSIC MEME crossed my path, I found myself in meme heaven. It comes from the fabulous Andrea over at Hula Seventy. Read mine, play yours, and then post your lists in the comments. Here's how it works...If your life were a soundtrack, what would the music be?
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, Zen, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the name of whatever song comes up
5. new question-- press the next button
6. don't lie and try to pretend you're cool
SOUNDTRACK FOR MY LIFE...
opening credits:
"Do Right Woman" Aretha Franklin
waking up:
"Train Wreck" Sarah McLachlan
first day at school:
"Beloved Wife" Natalie Merchant
falling in love:
"Lighter's Up" Lil' Kim
breaking up:
"Beautiful Boy" John Lennon
prom:
"A Kiss to Build A Dream On" Louis Armstrong
life's okay:
"Goodbye to Love" The Carpenters
mental breakdown:
"Little Plastic Castle" Ani Difranco
driving:
"Louise" Bonnie Raitt
flashback:
"Here Comes the Sun" Nina Simone
getting back together:
"I Shall Believe" Sheryl Crow
wedding:
"Hurt" Johnny Cash
birth of child:
"What Condition My Condition Was In" Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
final battle:
"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" Sophie B. Hawkins
death scene:
"Wigwam" Bob Dylan
funeral song:
"We Can Work It Out" The Beatles
end credits:
"Skyline Pigeon" Elton John
So, I totally didn't cheat. Just what exactly what IS my Zen player trying to tell me about my love life??? ¶ 11:33 PM 0 comments
Get Out the Vote
There was a time in American history where the right to vote was so sacred, so sacrosanct, that the battle over who was worthy and who was not was so intense that everyday Americans just like you and me organized, and assembled, and fought, and bled and died to get the right or keep others from having the right.
Voting is really important.
Let me tell you a story.
Originally, a bunch of men lived overseas, became tired of taxation without representation and crossed the waters of the ocean to the US to create their own government, a democracy, where they could be self governing, civilized and generally uphold the ideaology of a free life and liberty and justice.
They were white, generally wealthy, and they were not perfect, and while their ideals were good, they weren't ready to look beyond the social parameters of their time and uphold those rights for people who weren't also white, male and generally wealthy.
Such was the birth of the civil rights movement as we have come to call the historical fight for equal rights across the marginalized sects in this country.
Women, in their quest for the vote, imagined themselves as powerful goddesses and warriors of light, mythical in their wisdom and justice, and staged parades, sit-ins and conscious raising events, dressed in elaborate costumes and defined themselves warriors in the fight for a political voice.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
There was a time in American history when not all of us could vote.There was a time in American history where the right to vote was so sacred, so sacrosanct, that the battle over who was worthy and who was not was so intense that everyday Americans just like you and me organized, and assembled, and fought, and bled and died to get the right or keep others from having the right.
Voting is really important.
Let me tell you a story.
Originally, a bunch of men lived overseas, became tired of taxation without representation and crossed the waters of the ocean to the US to create their own government, a democracy, where they could be self governing, civilized and generally uphold the ideaology of a free life and liberty and justice.
They were white, generally wealthy, and they were not perfect, and while their ideals were good, they weren't ready to look beyond the social parameters of their time and uphold those rights for people who weren't also white, male and generally wealthy.
Such was the birth of the civil rights movement as we have come to call the historical fight for equal rights across the marginalized sects in this country.
Women, in their quest for the vote, imagined themselves as powerful goddesses and warriors of light, mythical in their wisdom and justice, and staged parades, sit-ins and conscious raising events, dressed in elaborate costumes and defined themselves warriors in the fight for a political voice.
They were radical, they critized an Administration that would fight for democracy and justice abroad and deny the same to 50% of its citizens at home.
They were punished. A lot.
They were fined, spat upon, beaten, harassed by angry mobs and by police, imprisoned on false charges, force fed to break hunger strikes, falsely committed to mental institutions and degraded by the political adminstration and popular media, who called them muckrakers and dragged them through the mud. In response, they named themselves, suffragists, and vowed to suffer through whatever blocks in their way, and continued to lobby until the right to vote was granted to women, and later the equal rights ammendment added to the constitution of the United States.
They won. On August 26th, 1920, a constitutional ammendment was ratified granting American women the right to vote.
Unfortunately, people of color would have a much longer struggle.
On paper,African Americans in the United States had equal protection under the law dating back to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal rights for blacks in public places and made illegal the exclusion of African Americans from jury duty. The reality of segregation and descrimination was a different story, however, as first white America imposed unjust laws such as literacy tests, poll tax and complicated registration policies to keep people of color (and poor white people) out of the voting booths. In the 1960s, the battle for civil rights and the end of segregation and descrimination stepped up considerably. Activists who called themselves "Freedom Fighters" came from all over the North and flooded the South to fight to register African Americans to vote.
On March 7, 1965, 600 people, mostly African American, staged a march in which they planned to walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to draw attention to recent struggles and violent tactics preventing citizens of Selma from registering to vote. They marched six blocks until they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attempted to leave Selma lines. In what would later become known as Bloody Sunday, agents of state government including state troopers, local and county policemen attacked the unarmed protesters and drove them back into the city with tear gas, clubs and bullwhips. All because they feared what would happen when black people stood up and claimed their political power. When they voted.
Undaunted, they staged two more marches on the same route, determined to get to Montgomery. All over the South, however, retribution was heavy as private citizens took up the cause and fought on the side of the oppressors. African Americans paid the price. They were punished. A lot.
Eventually, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act abolished the use of literacy testing, poll taxing and local registration practices and federalized the voter registration process, thereby circumventing local government bigotry and standardizing the methods by which we all still vote today.
When I look at this history, today, as a 32 year old woman living in this time of political turmoil and facing my own disenfranchisement as an American citizen, I have to wonder what has happened to create a widespread devaluing of our collective right to vote. A vote is a voice, it's participation in our own self-governing process, and it's a power that has been so historically coveted as to inspire bloodshed and heroism on very personal scales. Over and over in history those in power have recognized the power, the danger of voting, of giving everyday people the power to unseat their ruling party. How is it that we've allowed ourselves to believe that our votes don't matter, don't have an impact on our local and national administrations, and isn't worth our time? Isn't that what they've always wanted us to believe? It's the greatest, most cunning con in history, really, this breeding of political apathy that teaches us that voting is little more than a symbolic act, a relic of freedoms we no longer need concern ourselves with.
Bullshit to that.
Bullshit to politicians and media analysts who tell us that the electoral college decides anyway. Bullshit to our family and friends who tell us that their oppositional vote will cancel ours out anyway. Bullshit to the forms, the lines, the picking our kids up from school or getting up early to vote before work or the hundred ways we talk ourselves out of claiming what we worked so hard to achieve in the first place.
Today, November 7th, is the midterm elections. We, all of us, have the right, the consciousness and the fucking obligation to get to the polls and vote. The Senate, the governership, local district representatives. All of it matters.
Even if you think it doesn't matter, even if you think it won't change anything, even if you think it's a bullshit waste of your time, VOTE.
If you live in New York City, check out a guide to the candidates and their backgrounds and partisan histories here.
If you don't live in New York and you want to find out who's running in your local election and what they stand for, check out a regional map and follow the links here.
If you need to find your polling location, figure out where you can register to vote, or get other questions about your local voting process, get that info here.
They've won when reject our own given political power.
