When Chris was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease nearly ten years ago, more than one family member said, “Now you’ll slow down.”
I thought the same thing. And I thought this again as I left my full time work almost five months ago. I will relax more, volunteer more, work out more, write more. I will do all of these things and I will slow down.
Um, not so much.
As my husband slows down, I feel inclined to twirl in my life twice as fast.
Last week my daughter and I went to New Jersey for a camp reunion. This was the view that late afternoon.
I know I overdo. One day last week, I left the house at 7:45 am and got home at 9:30 pm. This was the fourth day in a row with these kind of hours. I had so much to do!!!
On any given day, I like experiencing a variety of settings — the after school office, spinning class, lunch with a girlfriend, free wifi at the local cafe, teaching, subway to SoHo, a meeting about my short comedy film, happy hour.
The only time I am in the slow lane is when I run. My goal is always to run a 13-minute mile.
Having a spouse with a chronic illness has made me want to get out there and interact with the world more, because, at times, the sadness of the disease’s progression simply brings me down and I cannot stay there.
Yet as lively as I want my outside world to be, I want my inside home to be a safe harbor and a cozy nest. This mama bird wants to fly back home with a mouth full of worms. I want to chill in front of the TV with my chicks.
And I want to do it now because I know my chicks are going to start to fly away soon.
We shot our short comedy film last Wednesday night for the February 2, Iron Mule Festival. The title, Spork Wars, was shouted from the audience. A spork, of course, is a spoon and fork.
Spork Wars is a silly story of a spork salesman, played by Michael Martin, who tries to sell sporks and connect with diner owner, Jay Fortunato, only to discover a familial bond from the old country.
While I had hoped the shoot would take an hour, it took three.
The secrets of my recent filmmaking productivity?
1. a deadline.. there is nothing better than having to finish something by a drop-dead date. A deadline is a line in the sand and I’m pretty good about not crossing.
2. a crew… one of my seven secrets to success is to “Pile on the People.” In filmmaking, you get to work with awesome, funny, creative people. It’s been superfun to make new friends, like Ryan Decker, Ali Mao, Michael Martin, as well as work with old friends, like Pat Bishow and Jay Fortunato!
Don’t you love a good diner? Gee Whiz Diner!
3. a location… The peeps at the Gee Whiz Diner were super-nice. And in exchange for free use of their lovely diner space, I promised to promote them! They are located on 295 Greenwich Street, right near the Chambers Street subway. Try the Greek salad.
4. a sense of humor (and flexibility)… Of course I wanted my actors to speak the lines exactly as I wrote them. But Jay and Michael are improv geniuses. Naturally, they strayed. It was cool. In fact, I was laughing so hard, especially at their improved bit about gyros, that I feared my convulsive laughter would ruin the sound track.
5. a letting go… I really don’t know what the credits should look like or how the background music should sound. I forget to call, “Action!” I don’t know all the filmmaking nomenclature, but I did my best. And done is always better than perfect. And very good is a nice place to start.
Alison sent me the RC (rough cut!) last night. And I have to admit, I found it pretty funny. I showed it to my 15-year old who chuckled, which is a pretty good response from a 15-year old.
I won’t be there. I’ll be in in Charlotte, NC, co-leading a memoir writing workshop with Ms. Cynthia Sloan. If you’re nearby, please join us. When she and I get together, there’s always laughter (and tears)! There’s still room for a few more at the story of your life, memoir.
After a 15-year hiatus, which coincided with the birth of my three children, I have begun acting, writing, and directing short comedy films again. So fun.
There are so many more wonderful women comedians and directors out there now for me to emulate. Not like when I left the biz, way-back when. The world has moved on since the days of Mary Beth & Friends, my cable show on Manhattan Neighborhood Network in the early 1990s. There’s now Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Nancy Franklin, Amy Poehler, and Kathryn Bigelow. Right, I know Zero Dark Thirty wasn’t a comedy but I just want to mention my name in the same category as Bigelow’s).
On December 1, my name was pulled out of a hat. I won the “Wanna Be a Star?” contest at the Iron Mule short comedy film festival. The next thing I know, I’m getting eyelash extensions. ‘Cause I’m hoping that my eyelashes will distract viewers from my crow’s feet (smile lines!). I’m wondering if the camera still loves me. Vanity!
The name of the movie was shouted from the audience, the Alan Ladd Syndrome. And so last month, I starred in a funny short film written and directed by Victor Vornado. (not available for viewing yet.)
The premise is that the less popular the actor Alan Ladd was, the shorter he grew. When I threatened to break up with my boyfriend, played by the hilarious Michael Martin, he claimed to have this syndrome too!
I had so much fun performing in this little film that I announced to my husband Chris, a broadway veteran, I’m going to call my old commercial agent to see if I can start auditioning for commercials again.
“Well,” he said slowly. “You reach a certain age…” And he paused, presumably, sparing my feelings.
“Really?” I said, defensively. “Because I see people like me in commercials all the time — dog food, Viagra, anti-depressants?!” Yes, that’s what I said and that, indeed, did make me feel depressed — in need of some dog food, Viagra, anti-depressant.
“Maybe?” Mr. Broadway said, noncommittally.
Screening room (courtesy of 92nd Street Y Tribeca)
interviewed me in front of, like 80 or so audience members.
I felt proud and cocky ’cause, hey, I had just starred in a movie. Besides, my eyelashes looked awesome.
I mentioned that their festival needed more women filmmakers. (And, if you know me, I think every institution needs more women, especially the White House cabinet.)
“Even though you probably have binders full of women.” Yes, I said that. Witty, no?
Jay asked me, in front of everybody, if I’d write and direct the next one. And so, of course, I said yes.
And, as usual after committing to a job, I had to overcome a few little hurtles — namely, a morass of self-doubt, inertia, procrastination.
Did I manage to get the film made? I’ll tell you tomorrow.
Read what’s coming up on the Iron Mule blog: Iron Mule NYC
Notice that behind the brilliant activist, blogger, and actress (and our friend) Christine Siracusa is musician Dan Zanes, one of my kids’ faves. Christine hosted and Zanes entertained at the million moms’ rally.
Moms are awesome!Moms were using technology to get the word out. We will protect our kids.We believe in keeping our kids safe.Such cute kids joining in the rally with a million moms for gun control.
Sure it was was cold, but there was no shortage of body heat and adorable kids wearing adorable hats.
Today to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day, I joined hundreds (thousands?) of moms at City Hall Park to support the policies to keep our kids safe from gun violence.
at least one million moms for gun control.Tweet it, sistah! #1mm4gc
In New York, it’s always about the real estate. The dude from Downton Abbey still coveted a spot on Washington Park North.
Even in 1880, when Henry James wrote Washington Square, the story upon which The Heiress is based, the gentleman caller loved Catherine Sloper for her Greenwich Village real estate, 16 Washington Square.
I love the story of The Heiress and oh, all right, I love all girl/women empowerment stories! I took a seminar about Henry James in college. In one of his prefaces, James wrote that it was far better for an artist to never marry so that the artist could focus on his or her art, sublimating sexual urges for creative ones.
James never married and was incredibly prolific — coincidence? ….He thought marriage was deadly to artists, particularly writers.
I love the fierce independence, social awkwardness and artistic drive of Catherine Sloper, our hero.
The acting in this production of The Heiress was awesome. When I saw it Tuesday night, I kept thinking, ‘Man, that Jessica Chastain can act! She looks nothing like the CIA agent she played in Zero Dark Thirty,’ which I had just seen the day before. (Zero Dark Thirty was wonderful, too, in terms of fricken’ amazing women who can do so much with tenacity and surveillance, much more effective war-time tools than torture!)
‘Chastain’s a great actress,’ I thought. ‘Great actors can make themselves look so completely different.’ After the show, my husband informed me that the understudy, Mairin Lee, had gone on for Chastain that night. Wow! I’ve got to read the playbill before the show apparently! I did not know that.
In 1995, I saw this show with Cherry Jones and Michael Cumpsty (love them!). What I remember from that performance is how Jones sat alone at the end, completely satisfied and completely alone.
As we left the theater, I told my husband, ‘Even if Catherine had hooked up with the dude from Downtown Abbey and the marriage didn’t work out because he might’ve just loved her only for her apartment, she still might’ve gotten some awesome children out of the marriage. And that would be wonderful. That is wonderful.”
I saw this show with a cool bunch of fashion, mommy and travel bloggers and before the show, we had pizza and schmoozed at John’s Pizza on 44th Street. Yummy. (Disclosure: I wasn’t paid to write this post, but was given the ticket and dinner.)
The real estate on Washington Parkis not permanent. You only get to live there a little while on 48th street. (The show runs until February 10th.)
Even briefly, you can join Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey and Jessica Chastain (or her replacement) and live like Catherine Sloper.
Sure, you may be plain and witless, but you get a glorious, delicious home and hot guys itching to marry you.
Just remember James’s word to the wise: marriage may derail your creativity.
I got up early from our condo on the south end of Siesta Key. I decided to walk the two or three miles to Crescent Market to pick up juice and breakfast for the girls. I would walk via the beach, taking photos, meditating, cogitating, generally meandering, until I could cut over to the main drag of Siesta Key, Midnight Pass Road. So far, so good.
I set off early and happily for a beach walk from our south end of Siesta Key condo.
I walked and snapped a few pictures with my phone. So far, so good.
pretty sights along the way
Then the beach was interrupted by a big jetty of brown rocks. Simple enough.
Time to head to the road. There was no pathway. I walked a little this way and that, but there seemed to be no simple (or public) walkway to the road from the beach
I could see the road, but I couldn’t get to it. “Well, I’ll simply have to run across this millionaire’s lawn to get to the road,” I thought.
“But run fast,” I told myself, “these Southern folk pack heat for this very occasion — a middle-aged mother trespassing.” I picked an unoccupied mansion and I bolted across the manicured lawn, ready to dodge a bullet if necessary.
Phew, I looked back. I made it. Here I was on Midnight — What the hell! I wasn’t on Midnight Pass Road, but trapped on some private millionaires’ road. Shit. I figured I’ll have to walk back towards where I came.
This was the first lawn I trespassed on, running across the lawn, hoping to get back to the road.
I started to get sweaty. I walked out on an abandoned dock to locate the bridge back to Midnight Pass, but there was only a wide lagoon that seemed to go on for miles. No bridge in sight. I thought for a fleeting second, Could I swim that? I thought about gators. No! I couldn’t swim it.
I continued walking back south until the road ended. I walked on a trail, clearly marked private property.
Shit. I’m lost on Siesta Key, a slip of land that I thought only had one road. I called my brother Brendan. He told me to use my phone’s GPS.
The phone told me I was just off of Sanderling Road. It told me to head north for miles. I walked back through the trail to the millionaires’ road.
There were no cars, no people, only manicured bushes, fences, walls along Sanderling road. I heard a sprinkler and thought I spotted a gardener who eyed me suspiciously. I finally saw a garbage truck headed for me. I flagged him down. But the driver couldn’t hear me over his truck and told me to go back to the beach. “There’s no way out from Sanderling road, except the way I’d come,” he said, gesturing north. “Way back there,” as if the entrance to this gates community was just a memory.
I called my brother again, getting desperate. asking for rescue. “Okay, I’ll come get you. But I don’t know if they’ll let me on the private road. I have my boat in tow.” I walked back to the beach. This time, I thought, let them shoot me. I am freely trespassing. I am flaunting my trespass. At least I’ll get out of this nightmare.
My brother called me on my phone. (I noted, my battery was running low.)
“Hey, I’m almost on Sanderling Road. But I’m stuck. The guard waved me through, but there’s a tree down in the road. See if you can walk back towards me.” Again, I trespassed. This time, through a manicured Buddha garden. I even stopped for a moment to admire the sculptured tranquility separating the empty beach from the Sanderling community.
I walked. I perspired. I was hungry. Walking north, I passed a dogwalker who wore headphones and a black tee shirt. I nodded at her (or him, I couldn’t tell). He/she ignored me.
Apparently, the only human beings on Sanderling road are the hired help and they look suspiciously at anyone they encounter.
This story ends happily. After all, I have lived to tell the story. I walked a ways. My brother eventually showed up, because they cleared the downed tree. He managed to circle around with the boat and get us off of Sanderling.
We had a beautiful day out on his boat. My getting lost on Siesta Key will become a distant memory (I hope!)
But I offer this advice to any walker on the south end of Siesta Key beach: never leave the beach, thinking you can get back on Midnight Pass Road. If you do, you may never return.
I took the first line from this post from The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman, a new and brilliant novel I was reading on the beach yesterday. I add it as a prompt from today’s daily post challenge.
december, the event of a thread, art installation by Ann Hamilton
weekly challenge: pick the best pictures from your 2012. have the pics tell everyone about your year.
I shot all of these with my iPhone 4S and a few I tweaked with filters on instagram.
november, manhattan streetnovember, on my way to a lunch date, but stopped at this 53rd street public spaceoctober, van cortlandt park, the bronxseptember, back to schoolaugust, duke university, working with united methodist womenjuly, adirondacks, cold spring bay in lake champlainjune, school of mission, george fox university, portland, oregonmay, had a get-away trip to the jersey shore, painted a littleapril, watched little league in the north meadow, also watched cross country, swim, soccer, basketball, trackapril, cherry blossoms in central and riverside parksmarch, siesta key, spring breakfebruary, the view from my officefebruary, times squarejanuary, new year’s day walk with jolain
The event of a thread is made up of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away: it is a body crossing space, is a writer’s hand crossing a sheet of paper, is a voice crossing a room in a paper bag… – Ann Hamilton
The exhibit at the Armory on Park Avenue and 66th is hard to explain.
There are pigeons, swings, talking paper bags, a writer, a reader, a listener, more…
The kids did not want to go but were glad they went.
It must be experienced. Laying on your back watching the billowing silk above. Hypnotizing.
I had one insight which is this: it is not work that makes the world go (the curtain lift), it is play.
Play is the engine.
H. discovered that our swing was not pulling the curtain alone. He spotted this when we were looking down from above. Our swing was inextricably, almost invisibly, connected to someone else’s swing who was also making the curtain dance.
Through play.
I found out about this exhibit while scanning my Facebook feed. Thanks, Yris Bilia! You made it look so fun. And it was.
I didn’t really like the Hobbit. Like everyone else in the world, I loved the earlier Lord of the Rings.
I loved the book. I have memories of sitting on my father’s lap and listening with my brothers as dad read to us on the back patio in Skokie, Illinois on a warm summer night.
But the movie left me with one burning question:
Where are the women?
Do orcs, dwarves, hobbits, ogres reproduce through spawning? This movie was like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves without Snow White.
I know men rule the world, but really. Really?
No wonder Middle-earth is so violent. There are no women with whom to partner, make love, reason, journey alongside, learn from, share.
Last I checked women and girls made up half of the world’s population and half of the movie-going audiences. Why dis us this way?
The only woman in this film was the lovely Cate Blanchett who is really more of a spirit than a body. While the men can eat and travel and fight, her special talent is that she disappears. Perfect for this movie.
The movie was clearly made for and by men and boys. It unfolds like a video game — now that you’ve surpassed the scary tiger level, you move on to the orc level, and if you move on from that level, you may proceed to the next level. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I do like a subgenre of movies where the hero (always male) doubts himself and then finds he has within him what he needed all along. (Like Glory! An all-male movie too, but brilliant!) And I guess this journey towards courage in the face of self-doubt motif happens for Baggins on his journey. But I was hoping for something more.
Even Skyfall had a few juicy women characters like Dame Judi Dench and Naomie Harris.
If you are looking for a holiday blockbuster, go to see Les Misérables, a fun adventure for girls and boys, men and women.
putting together paperwork for the kids to get on Child Health Care Plus, NY State health insurance — forms are so lengthy, so complicated! It’s confusing for the two of us, both with advanced degrees. How do people do this?
A few friends suggested I blog about the experience. I would kind of first like to see if we got approved, before I offer any summary of my experience. It’s not unthinkable that I messed up something. But until I hear if all of the paperwork’s in, let me tell you: The application is 17 pages long!
There were opportunities on the application to provide more than was asked for. For example, if your child has no Social Security number, you have to provide proof of residency. Or maybe you needed to provide proof of New York State residency any way. Being the overachiever that I am, my instinct was to throw everything at them for fear of not providing enough. I provided a utility bill as proof.
I did call the number on the application to get clarification on another question. No one answered the call after 25 minutes on hold and a promise of “a customer service representative will be with you in a moment.” I tried another number and got to ask my question.
Could I walk the application in somewhere to get it in by the 20th of the month (today)? (The 20th is the cut off date to provide coverage on the 1st.) No, it turns out, I had to overnight the application to Albany. I dreaded going to the post office less than a week before Christmas, but I used the automated machine. It was fast and easy.
There are agencies and communities centers listed on the application where one could turn for help. But, rugged and proud individualist that I am, I thought I should be able to handle the paperwork on my own. Besides, I have a Master’s degree, how hard could it be? Hard.
The good news is that the cost, if all goes well, will be about $45 per child per month. This is wonderful and much more affordable than the $1,700 or so that COBRA would cost to cover the family. We would only need this Child Health Care Plus coverage for a couple of months until my small business gets off the ground and one of Chris’s unions, Screen Actor’s Guild, kicks in for the family.
My husband Chris is on disability because of his Parkinson’s Disease and he is covered with Medicare, so that just leaves me. I have no health insurance for a couple of months.
On Tuesday, one of my creative writing middle school students got close to say, “Look! I have Pink Eye.”
“Hey,” I felt like saying, “Stay away from me if you are sick. But just for a couple of months.” Now, I’m wondering if my eye’s looking a little red. Yes, so it begins, two months of hypochondria until I get back on a family health insurance plan. Let’s hope I got the kids on their plan.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 