Salut Ides of March

Salut to the Ides Of March! Does feel like the start of a new jahre (Roman calendar of Julius Cesear times)!!! This winter in NYC/Newark was cold all the time. I think the temp was 22f everytime I heard a weather report. Of course it did get warmer but that 22f was a constant! ugh

Happy Birthday to my nephew.. who is 27jahre today! I certainly remember the day of his birth.. my roommate told me.. "you are now an Uncle!" My parents always wanted a sports star.. and they got him in their first grandchild.. signed to play minor league baseball on his graduation from high school! Frequent news photos and stories of his accomplishments in the hometown press! Many kudos to him for doing it!

Hoping for a good jahre ahead! For once in my life I am trusting our President! He just feels so familiar.. the Columbia U connection, community organizing, progressive politics, changing the lenses! I do think that the administration's work is making a difference. The corporate media, in particular, is yet to process the historical change. The tired ways of looking at phenomena through their alleged bipartisan, jaded lenses is jarring. NBC had Meet the Press and wierd questions from the moderator such as ... didnt McCain say something similiar in the campaign and was beaten up?... Then, Eric Cantor with the ridiculous spin of the Disney to Vegas train. Can only wish we had trains like other advanced industrial nations. The election was seismic, things have changed, and we would be in a twilight zone if the Republicans had won. So this wierd bipartisan... of course, the media is big business and many of the boys did make out in the Bush years. CNBC has certainly shown its colours.

Matt Lauer on Today got on my nerves with his harrangue of Michael Phelps and marijuana. Like my nephew, a young man, worked hard in sports, and accomplished a great deal! In Phelps case, he also has cognitive issues (ADHD) which can hamper one's judgment at times. The real culprit is the one who set up that cellphone photo. I am not buying Kellogg's for awhile. Matt is another generation and time frame. Being around the same age it is hard to accept that what one knows now is not where guys 30 years younger are at.

happy new year! (Roman)
hugs, peace, compassion
Happy Happy Birthday

backtrack to Purim

posting the pages of an invite to a fundraiser held in 1984 for klezmer music. Great music for Purim! I was on the event committee, organized by a NYC family foundation, predominately supported by employees of a leveraged buyout company. The company officers were all Harvard MBAs and the company was their endeavor. (I declined going into the Harvard MBA program as I had just finished my Columbia MSW degree in 1982). The family foundation was run by the CEO and his wife. They lived on East 82nd street doors from the Metropolitan. We usually met with committee members at the Stanhope Hotel around the corner.

Such a festive event! great music! excellent food. There was a pre-concert dinner of Moroccan food at a committee member's home. Nice apartment... 111 East 63rd St... close to today's infamous Bernie Madoff! I had written down Madoff's address but misplaced it as I knew the address was somewhat similiar. The hosts of the dinner moved south in 1986 and I didnt stay in touch. A really lovely family! They were very involved in NY Philharmonic fundrasing.

The concert took place at the Americas Society on Park Avenue. This November 2008, the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House held a klezmer music soiree but don't remember the performance spot. I was going to fax this 1984 invite to the assistant exec director just for fyi... I worked for Lenox Hill in the 1990s at the Park Avenue armory program (down the street from the Americas Society).

The fundraiser made some money although not sure of the results as in 1985, I was recruited to work for the NYC Board of Education to help create new social work programs. I didnt stay in touch with the foundation until the 1990s when I heard the couple had broken up, the foundation closed.

In 2009, I am amazed once again by how busy I was in the 1980s! But also over time the different meanings which locales and places have. In 1984, I paid no attention to the Park Avenue Armory. In 1985, I went to a fundraiser for the Nation magazine there. Ran into some Columbia professors which was great fun! Watched James Baldwin and Gordon Parks smoke cigarettes and drink at the bar! Who knew I would be working in the armory 11 years later! It is almost ten years that I have walked the streets of the UES (although I zoom through on the 6 train to the Bronx a lot)

hugs, peace, compassion

back to normal.... funding UN programmes

Kudos to the Obama administration for restoring funds to United Nations programmes such as the population fund. Research has always shown that money given to help educate women, provide better health care, and give women reproductive choice stabilizes people's lives, their communties and ultimately our world. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30164&Cr=population&Cr1= It is a joy to see science replacing a particular narrow ideology in this new administration!

thoughts again on women who have enriched my life. Spoke with my Lakewood Colorado high school buddy anoche. He spoke how the girls just loved me as I would listen to them opposed to many of the guys. His memory is that the hot girls all liked me and he was jealous! I really dont remember any of that. I vaguely remember high school actually and would love to know who all these hot girls were! lol. Of course, I was 16jahre when I graduated and then my folks moved us to NJ the December after my graduation. I just remember hanging with my buddies at the drive-in, or driving into the foothills or prarie.

It has been one of my strengths to know people from many backgrounds. I wouldnt be a social worker if I wasnt interested in hearing people's stories. I am blessed to read all of my college students' essays on a myriad of topics. Having clients/patients has been fascinating! I am always amazed by what and how people process and think!

An Oster card sent from women who meant much to me (1999 photo uploaded). Listening to older women. I usually focus on grandfathers though as I am of that age where my peers have that status. But, I do know many grandmothers or woman of that age. Always a blessing to get cards which I save. Since my Mom's death, I have particularly thought about grandmothers. I spent 50 some years with my Mom but my nieces/nephews will not have that luxury. My Mom loved her grandchildren much! I know how much she was loved by her father's mother.

The caption in the photo montage is from Andrea Bocelli (the voice of an angel!!) as my remembrance of the women who have now died. "I already hear that she can hear no longer: in silence, she went to sleep, she has already gone to sleep". Thanks much for the memories!!!

peace, hugs, compassion

Women's Equality

Salut (albeit late) for Women's International Equality Day! I always think of the work of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Endless bravos to Jane Addams for helping to found, and a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930. I have had the good blessings to know many interesting, dynamic or just an endless special woman my life long!

Thoughts of the mother of a friend, Adeline. Photo inserted. When my Mom died, this friend said he wished he had a Mom like mine. My Mom was fine but I would have loved a Mom like Adeline as well! Of course, I would only visit on holidays and she would bake all sorts of italian foods. She would go to Pegnataro's in New Haven and make sure we had lasagna, apizza and the stuffed breads! Of course my friend had a different experience as his Mom also had a disabled child who needed endless care. I remind my students that not until 1974 were all children required to be educated (Public Law 94-142). Those with special needs often languished in the basement or attic or were institutionalized. The scandals in the early 1970s showed the horrors of such wanton institutionalization. So, my friend's childhood consisted of being second to the sister with multiple needs. I am truly amazed at the remarkable strength that Adeline had though in raising 3 children, the two boys getting advanced degrees and professional jobs. Adeline has about 15 grandchildren now although few will remember her spirit. I remember how she finally put her daughter in a home when Adeline reached 60 years but made sure her daughter visited holidays! I was blessed to have her friendship.. "a true friend waiting for a visit".

A long ago buddy, Hannah was a member of WILPF, in fact she made me aware of them. Hannah an oldtime child welfare social worker, CPUSA member in the 1930s thru 1950s, and long time resident Greenwich Village bohemian. In my community organizing work, she would always show up at demonstrations and sign petitions. I had endless interesting chats with her. We were both members of the Village Independent Democrats and always eager to support progressives. Hannah was a real mensch and I will always love her! Om mani padma hung!

Thinking from the paradigm of caregiving, I am always assured, hopeful, by the understanding that so much of our lives are enriched and we thrive from the caregiving we have or give. It is not just Winnicuit's "good enough mothering" but the notion that we all caregive throughout life. I am always blessed to have known and then to have read "The Caregiver's Tale" by Dr. Ann Burack-Weiss!

peace, hugs, compassion

het weer maart 09, 2009

great weekend weather but now het weer is rainy again!

scanned a February 1994 sketch (above). late February (20), 1994, Central Park. Sunday weather in the 60s although snow still on the ground. I can remember some of the squishyness of the pathways due to the snow still melting and water collecting as the ground was saturated. Hopping to avoid the deepest puddles. Yet my notebook says 5 guys in shorts (already!!!) A sunny day. A woman was out walking her turtle and letting it get in the snow. Dunno if that turtle is still around.. but I dont know turtle acclimation issues with snow. I do remember live turtles by the Des Plaines river near Park Ridge, IL. So, turtles must survive harsh temps. And my last chat with Bobby Love, famed Mapplethorpe model. Bobby is the suited guy with his zipper open and.... He was living at the Hayden Hall.

The Hayden Hall has probably emptied most of their neighborhood folk. A travel site lists it as a "charming 100room, handsomely decorated, budget-minded, but quality hotel located in the prestigious...." so perhaps some of the "budget-minded" acknowledges the occassional long time hotel tenant still managing to stay there. By 1994, the Upper West Side had pretty much done a good job of gentrification.

peace, hugs, compassion

Turk thoughts March 08, 2009

President Obama is making a brilliant decision to visit Turkey this April after the G20 summit in London! Turkey is one of the countries that I look at in keeping some paradigm about the world. I have known a number of Turks over the years, and I read theorists who see Turkey as that bridge between the Europe and Asia.

1987 pastel of a graduate school friend from Columbia University. She and I would pal around a lot. She came with me to visit my Mom and siblings one holiday. She came to a Citibank company picnic with me one summer. We were residents at the International House. She worked in television. She was one of the political refugees from the Turkish Army coups in the 1970s. She came to NYC from Paris. One of the many who could not go back home. Dunno what happened to her... she moved to Queens and we lost touch.

This past year I read Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul! Wow, such a fascinating read! A book I lived through, looking up references online, looking at my own memories in other ways. A fascinating book.

From my SIPA days, I have thought about the end of the Ottoman empire and the absence of a muslim political entity in international politics. The Ottoman empire was cut up into pretend nations by the European powers after WWI. Today we have nations such as Iraq, almost 100 years old, part of the Ottoman empire for centuries, and still the power vacuum. The whole mideast and the Muslim world does not have that power it had as an international broker for centuries. We have yet, as a world community, to figure that power gap out. Today, we have Iran versus Saudi Arabia, orthodox versus modernists say in Lebanon, and the sad legacy of no resolution for Palestine.

I think it quite astute that Open Society aka the Soros Fund, has an office in Istanbul. Turkey plays a significant role by its years of brokering as a NATO member and part of other multinational relationships. Not only the Ottoman legacy, but also the years of Turkish emigration in the EU. The Turk presence particularly in Holland and Germany. I am quite pleased by Obama's decision!

peace, hugs, compassion

Art en NYC Maart

The Armory show and other fairs such as Pulse going on in NYC this weekend. Following the blogs on both, the Armory show looks great as ever! ArtForum subscriber also I stay up on the galleries. Love the David Zwirner gallery... Neo Rauch is so good.

Off to do my NYC flaneur thing tomorrow but will probably just walk downtown as the horrific 22degree weather seems to be gone and I am sick of being inside! I used to work in the 67th Street Armory and witnessed many a show over the years.

The shows made me look through my 1970s art notebooks. Scanned one of my subway sketches and notes from a museum visit. I loved sketching on the subway! So many sketches from the perfect setting.. the subway whatwith the endless variety of faces, bodies, clothing.. wow! On these pages, I seemed to have seen my Professor Lee Bontecou's pieces at the Guggenheim. She was so quiet and unobtrusive... a great class at Brooklyn College.

hugs, peace, compassion