Category: New York Story

Soft Blanket of Snow

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The snow is like a soft blanket. It quiets the city. Like White Out erasing my screen, erasing these words as I type them. We have had the crunch of salt beneath our boots for a week. It felt like the salt was disappointed. It did not get to do its magic “make the snow vanish” act. And now the snow is piling up and the salt won’t be enough. It will need additional reinforcements. Poor beleaguered salt, can never win.

I have to run to the store now. To buy more hot cocoa. The kids are waking up. They are looking out the window. Eyes round. “Look out your window!” they call to one another.

I have to put the sleds by the front door. And find matching pairs of gloves.

I want to curl up in a soft blanket of snow. I want to put on a movie, one of those Netflix films I never get to.  Make popcorn. But I will be out in the blizzard. By the big hill in Riverside Park, watching the kids. Or maybe we’ll go to Central Park.

And, of course, I will take some runs down a hill too. If I can wrest the sleds from their clutches. Then we will come home and I will make them hot cocoa. I will try to make good memories of the blizzard of 2010. But wait. I am not in charge of their memories. I did not make this storm. The blizzard just blanketed the city. I did not have to do anything. Just look out my window.

Admiring Starry Night

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If only Vincent could have had a thicker skin. If only the church valued his contribution. If only there was medication for his manic depression. If only there was a support group for self mutilators. If only he’d hung on a little longer.

If only.

He was so young, so passionate, so troubled, so smart, so hard-working, so confident, so insecure, so religious. Vincent van Gogh was such a good writer as well as a great painter.

For my Literature of Art class at the Art Students League taught by Ephraim Rubenstein we read Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo. They break your heart. He writes to his brother with enthusiasm about the first sermon he preached. Yet the strict religiosity of his father failed him. He did not have the proper degree and could not obtain it. His father was an arbitrary, withholding, judgmental preacher. Vincent converted his religious zeal into his art. This schism of art and religion is a theme in his life and letters.

Vincent became itinerant. Though he lived in extreme poverty; he was always hopeful that the next place, person, teacher would help him. That good was just around the next corner. He died at 37. His best work happened in just 10 years.  If only he had hung on a little longer.

The savior of his work and legacy was his sister in law, Theo’s wife, Johanna Gesina van Gogh. She kept his letters and his paintings together. Would you do that for your husband’s mentally ill brother?

I doubt I would. There was so little to indicate that his work had value.

A current running through van Gogh’s letters is a desire to help mankind. To be useful.

And another theme is the way he prods Theo to admire other writers and painters. It’s true. We do not admire each other enough.

“Admire as much as you can; most people do not admire enough.” God. So true. I admire van Gogh for his writing and his art, but not for his life. I do not admire him for giving up on himself.

I was at the MoMA last week. After reading his letters, it’s amazing that his work persists. His Starry Night, (see above) it can suck you in.

In my water color class, I tried to paint like him on Saturday. The teacher told me, “That tree or that bush, or whatever that is, that’s too big.” She did not see the resemblance of my work to van Gogh’s. But I see it.

Train your eyes to see and to admire.

Tim Burton at the MoMA

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this is copy right of Tim Burton
genius

I was at the MoMA for the second time in a couple of weeks this afternoon. The Tim Burton exhibit is amazing and perhaps, addictive. The guy is insane. But you know, in a good way. And in an exceedingly productive way. I love the comic gothic – if that’s what you call it. I also love the preoccupation with the mother and the bloody babies and the monsters and the aliens. And by the way, what does he have against grown ups, holidays, realism?

I love the sculpture of a doll-house sized white house decorated with big bulb Christmas lights and peeking in the window, you see a little person bathed in red (is that blood?) and then you also see long black pant legs sticking out of a doorway. Oh my God! It’s funny and scary and weird!

There are lots of moving images to take in too. A little homage video to Vincent Price narrated by Vincent Price. The whole thing – Priceless!

I am so impressed that the Museum of Modern Art is a place that showcases the work of a living artist. And an artist, like Burton, who crosses over so many mediums.

I just love Burton’s drawings. I love the way he draws a little pool of shadow under a crazy eyeball popping cactus. It is so dream-like and so real. Who hasn’t dreamed of cacti with eyeballs?

MoMA is amazing, totally worth the gulp, $20 admission fee. For a break after the Burton exhibit, plunk yourself down in front of Monet’s lillies. I dare you not to be energized, exhuasted, transformed after taking in these two exhibits.

Butterflies and Stars

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1.07.10

I stood arguing with the girls on the corner. Did they really want to stay and play in the freezing cold playground? They did! They did not want to go with me to the Museum of Natural History, for which I had passes to the special exhibits. The passes expired that day. (Thanks to Ruth who gave them to me, because she volunteers there!)

I may be wrong but if my mother showed up to pick me up from Roosevelt Elementary school and said, “Let’s go to the Museum of Science and Interesting,” (our nickname for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago) I think I would’ve been thrilled. But no.

I was pissed. With my coaxing and everyone crying, we eventually made it to the museum. We decided to attend the butterfly exhibit at the museum and the Star Show in the planetarium.

We first stopped for dinosaur-shaped nuggets and fries in the cafeteria. (I LOVE museum cafes and cafeterias – always good, friendly (a tad pricey) food.)

The butterfly room was hot, humid, delicious. We took off our coats and our pissed-off attitudes. The butterflies’ lives are so short. They are so beautiful. It strikes me as incredibly sad that creatures of such beauty flutter by so quickly.

We hustled to the Star Show. Whoopi narrated. Every sentence, she infused with amazement. The billions of years. The heat of the stars. The durability and yes, one day – not soon – the end of our sun. These are huge concepts. One on each side of me, the girls held my hand tightly through the entire planetarium show. As if we could protect each other  from that inevitable shooting star bound to collide with earth. No, not soon. But too soon, whenever it hits.

From the small, fleeting beauty to the vast, colliding universe, the museum so delivers. It is impossible to visit either of these exhibits and not be transformed. Of course, there is beauty and infinity in the school yard, but once in a while, it’s good to find it in the museum down the block.

SNAFU @ JFK

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It is great if you live in NYC and can occasionally get away from NYC. Like we did for Christmas and New Year’s. We went to Akumal, about an hour south of Cancun.

12/24/09

Well, at the beginning, we had a little SNAFU (that stands for yes, Systems Normal All F’ed Up) at the airport.

See, Mom, in her inimicable wisdom and frugality made two separate reservations for the American Airlines flight to Cancun – one for she and Hayden with frequent flier miles and the other through Orbitz for Chris and the girls.

But when they arrived at the airport with an hour to spare (we would’ve had a lot more time but we had to drop off that stupid hamster in Washington Heights and we followed the GPS way to the airport instead of my favorite way the Triboro Bridge (now called the RFK bridge). Any way.

The passports were not accepted at the kiosks. We were vaulted to the front of the line and an agent named Precious came back after 20 minutes to inform us that she was able to ticket Chris, Char and Cat, but she could not find mine nor Hayden’s reservations. It was now 3:50. Our flight at 4:30. Those who had tickets had to go because the flight was boarding.

Here’s how we coped. Catherine said, “I don’t want to go without mom.” Chris said, “We’re going with or without Mom and Hayden.” I said, “I’m sure it’ll work out.” Hayden said, “I’ll go back to the city and stay with Nick for the week.” Char texted Kenna.
“I got a brand new phone for Christmas!”

Chris and the girls headed towards security. I said to Precious, “I was sure that I had a reservation. I just checked the reservation yesterday. I remember because I tried to get us seats near each other. No seats were open.”

Finally Precious located my so-called reservation. And guess what? Our flight was for day, indeed, but for the morning flight. And that was hours ago. But Precious and a few other agents found a way to re-instate us. But suddenly the computer was giving Precious and her colleague trouble. Time was ticking away. It was about 4:10.

“Good luck!” Precious and the agents called as they we handed us our passports with the airline tickets tucked in. We still had to get through security.

We only had to cut in front of one person – a kind, tall, blonde college student – to get to the front of the security checkpoint. Then we ran, dragging our rolling carts, up and down escalators to our gate. We saw Catherine at the top of the escalator.

Hayden described her stance as that of a relay runner, waiting for the baton – her body poised forward, her hand reaching back to grab our luggage. For Hayden, that was the highlight of the day, seeing Catherine ready to help us run our luggage to the gate.

When I saw Catherine, I knew we would make it. We were the last to board that flight for Cancun. We were grateful. Chris told me on the flight, “I was sure you wouldn’t make it.”

“But I knew we were on the flight. I had tried to get us to sit near each other and I couldn’t.”

“It’s hard to get seats near each other when you’re on separate flights,” Chris noted wryly.

Goofing around with Google Wave

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I’ve been thinking about thinking… about

mind

character

commitment

community

Especially I’ve been wondering What makes for community? When I was on my sabbatical I was often thrust into community – at Chautauqua, Alliance Francaise, Taize. At times, I had no choice. I had to go along and get along.

Yes, I am resilience, but I, like everyone, can be uncomfortable moving out of my comfort zone.

I just heard a lecture on critical thinking from the headmaster of Riverdale Country school. He is particularly brilliant. here’s his blog.

http://rcsblog.com/headmaster/

One point Dominic made was that schools are not there simply to have students regurgitate facts but to learn to be

global

service minded

inclusive

healthy

I believe we are called to do this too in our work.

That rather than judging students or coworkers merely on academics, we could look at each other’s capacity for curiosity, zest, self control (delayed gratification), gratitude, hope/optimism, and social intelligence.

Perhaps then we could find the brilliance of one another.

Poverty – It’s Not Rocket Science. It’s Harder than Rocket Science.

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Reducing poverty? “It’s Not Rocket Science. It’s Harder than Rocket Science.”

Geoffrey Canada, very charismatic, threw away his notes at the beginning of the talk. Notes serve to comfort the audience, but the speaker didn’t need them.

 His topic? “Changing Lives, Changing Communities.” It was my NYU college reunion on Saturday (25 years since undergrad, and 20 years since grad). I’m interested in what makes for community and how to uplift people caught in the multi-tentacled beast of poverty.

Canada is the genius behind the Harlem Children’s Zone. Their slogan? “Whatever It Takes.” The zone is a 100 block radius to lift about 15,000 Harlem kids socially, educationally, medically. The zone promises to stick with a child through college.

 Goals for Children

“We have to have the same goals for poor children, as for our own children. We aspire for college, not technical schools or the military, for our children. Because, at different times, people have break throughs,” Canada said. The one kid that no one thought would amount to anything continues through college and earned their Master’s degree in education. “So, we don’t know.” 

Do Lots of Things

“The U.S. is a rogue nation. We lock up more people than any other country. There’s a school to prison pipeline… You believe that children are our future and you love America.” So do something. But, Canada said, we have to do lots of things.

“Growing up in the ’60s, we always thought there was a conspiracy. The government had a plan. I’ve talked to presidents. There is no plan. There is no answer…. We keep thinking we can do one thing. We have to do everything,” Canada said.

 The cure for poverty is like the current treatment for AIDS, he said. You can’t give one pill – like better schools – you have to provide many antidotes – “hold people’s egos in tact while getting them to work harder.” What you need is an AIDS cocktail of pills, not just one anti-viral.

How We Talk to Children

“Poor parents use far more negatives when talking to kids. ‘Stop. Don’t. How dare you!'” Canada acted out an example of this. When a child with educated parents, dumps his juice on the floor, the parent gently corrects, coddles, maybe even uses the spillage as a teaching moment about gravity. When a poor child does the same thing, the family yells, “Stop that!”

The guy is engaging. The speech was a part of NYU Silver School of Social Work as it kicks off the new McSilver Institute of Poverty Policy, Practice and Research in a week or two.

At NYU, I attended the English department for grad and undergrad. I believe writing is a form of advocacy and social work. In college, I loved abnormal psych, anthropology, drama, literature, and writing.

Having written about reducing poverty through the Circles Campaign for Global Ministries, I have begun to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what the average person can do to help dig another person out of entrenched poverty. It seems to me that the Harlem Children’s Zone is digging deep and well in its attempt to reduce poverty.

French Class – Vive La Vie!

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On Friday, I finished a two-week immersion class at the French Institute, Alliance Francais (FIAF). On the last day of class, we took a test. It took about an hour – we watched une petite filme about a family returning from vacances. Then we answered questions. We discussed our answers. I got one wrong.

I still received my passport entitling me to move up to the next level from intermediate towards mastery. The passport said I was able to “understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g., very basic personal and family information….)”

Then we turned off the lights and watched a feature film. It was “Cote d’Azur.” Very silly and sexy. Every few minutes, someone was masturbating in the shower in a villa near the beach. It was Friday morning. I thought, “I paid $500 for this!” well worth it!

I was one of six people in the class. My classmates were all at least 15 years younger than me. My teacher, Michelle, was my age. Just about everyday Michelle wore polka dots.  She was from Haiti, Mexico City, France, and Queens (as far as I could understand).

The other kids (I always call people in my classes “kids,” whether I’m the student, teacher, oldest, or youngest) spoke French very well. They were from Colombia, Russia, England, Cuban descent, far flung places. I was the only one from the heartland. They were taking the class to communicate better with their husbands, boyfriends, jobs, lives. I took it to prepare for my trip to Geneva and Taize in a week and a half.

At some point during every class, Michelle would exclaim, “La vie est belle!” or “Vive La Vie!” I loved that!

We discussed deep topics — religion, crime, cancer.

I learned several things:

1. School is difficult. Concentrating on new words and unfamiliar grammatical patterns is exhausting. I give my kids credit. I applaud anyone who attempts to learn anything.

2. I have to forget what I think I know. Having studied a little Spanish, the Spanish word will pop in my head first and I just have to forget it. I have to listen for my second wave of thinking.

3. There are rules. Like when I took tennis at NYU, I loved it; because unlike studying literature, there are actually right answers. The ball bounces inside the line or not. There are absolutely correct and incorrect ways of doing things. In life, the rules are often amorphous. It’s nice to have clarity – to speak and read and think properly, not ambiguously.

4. That I have an aptitude for realms beyond work and family. When I first had kids, my whole wide circumference of life in NYC shrunk. I was lucky if I made it to Fairway or Riverside Park, forget a museum. If I took a class, it was on parenting. But now, taking a class in French, my world opens up again. And the world is wide.

5. Studying French means studying contemporary French culture too. France is not fixed in some ancient belle epoch. Because I modeled for a brochure, I was given tickets to see Bettina Atala, a French performance/film artist in the FIAF festival, “Crossing the Line.” So funny and creative, Bettina narrated her film, “Season 1, Episode 2,” a commentary on the unreal rules of filmmaking.

6. The fine art of listening? Not so facile! When you talk, you absolutely know the next thing you are going to say. But when you listen, wow! It’s almost always a surprise. Especially in French. Je prefere parler. Mais j’aime entendre francais.

Beaucoup!

Central Park

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I have ridden my bike every day since French class began a week and a half ago.  I ride through Central Park with my heavy text books (yes, they’re paperbacks, but they’re BIG paperbacks). Lately I take my laptop in my backpack too so that I can write in the library here at the French Institute.

I love riding my bike in New York City. I love when I forget my helmet and I feel the wind in my hair. I love the beauty of Central Park.

Everyday there is a spot where I have to brace myself for the beauty. That’s when I leave the road and travel briefly on the sidewalk to the exit at 59th. On my right is the pond and I ride over a bridge. Today there was a young Asian woman standing on the slight wall of the bridge. Her arms were outflung and her head was back. As if to say, I own this place. This place of beauty.

Almost every day I ride over that bridge some tourist is photographing a  friend on the bridge. It is the spot. And I get to see it every day.

Citifield Lost & Found

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I took three 12-year old boys to Citifield on Sunday to watch the boys/men of September. The wonderful thing about baseball is that I will never be asked to perform.

The Mets willl never be missing a player and call over the PA system, “Will Mary Beth Coudal please come onto the field and help us out? We’re missing a player.”

It won’t happen. As if it could possibly – not likely – but possibly happen at a Broadway show, a national political rally, or a mega-church Sunday morning service. The times I’ve been in attendance at those events, I do sit and relax and enjoy the show. But there’s always a part of me that wonders, “Oh, maybe I should get up there and help them out. Maybe this team needs me. Maybe I’ll be asked to help out.”

That never happens at a sporting event. Unless we’re talking badmitton. But then no one ever talks badmitton. (And I have heard athletes can be in their 40s and be Olympic champions in archery. But then again, no one ever talks archery. Sadly.) But I digress. I was talking baseball.

Here’s the thing about going to Citifield. The boys just wander around the fabulous new Mets stadium. They hardly watch the game. They look at tee shirts in the shop. They go to the batting cage or dunk tank. They visit Shake Shack. Alone, I read the NYTimes Sunday Style Section, catch a few rays, people watch.

On our way out of the stadium on Sunday, Joey swung his navy sweatshirt over his shoulders. It was still hot and sunny. The Mets had won. Not that it matters. We almost made it to the subway stairwell when Joey realized he was missing his wallet. It must’ve fallen out when he swung his Yankees sweatshirt. I don’t know why Hayden’s buddy, Joey loves to wear Yankees attire to Mets games. But twelve-year olds are like that.

So we went back to the stairwell.

“Yes,” said the older gent in the green polo Staff shirt. “Someone found a wallet. It’s probably on its way to the lost and found now. Go to the Jackie Robinson Pavilion, sit there, and wait.” ‘

Under the huge black and white photo murals of Jackie Robinson you can ponder the courage of the man who broke the race barrier. Joey informs me that every team has retired Robinson’s number to honor him. (You can learn a lot at a game.)

When we ask the pimply kid at the Lost & Found desk about the wallet, he informs us that none have been turned in. But the gent had told us to wait. So we sat in the air conditioned tiny room on cushy black chairs and waited.

Joey wondered if maybe the money and the Metrocard would be taken. “The person will probably just leave me my library card.”

“How much money was in it?”

“Fifteen dollars.”

And guess what? A few minutes later the wallet was turned in, complete with Metrocard, fifteen dollars, and even the New York City public library card.

You gotta love it. Maybe the Mets aren’t in contention for the World Series. Maybe I won’t ever play professional sports. But basic human kindness wins big time. Taking a few 12-year olds to a baseball game on a waning day of summer is bound to teach you that.