Riverside Park Walk

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I walked from 75th and Riverside to 116th and Riverside to pick up one of my daughters from a sleepover.

As I walked, listening to Britney Spears, there was an aroma. An amazing scent that filled the air and practically made me cry. Pine trees. Christmas. Little woodchips made from yours and my Christmas trees in New York City.

To smell this mulch on the side of the hills along Riverside Park. It made the walk so worth it. It began to rain. I didn’t care. The smell grew stronger. I love the way New York City recycles Christmas trees and helps other trees.

Also, at the end of the walk, I saw this guy (I’m trying to post the video to show you but I just practically crashed the computer. I’m not a techie!). It was of a guy rollerblading down a metal railing. People are risky and talented and amazing. A walk in New York always leads to some kind of crazy serendipity.

Query Letter

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Apparently, you’re supposed to submit a query letter when trying to get some bit of writing published. This is hard for me. As I would much prefer just sitting at my computer waiting for an editor to approach me. But no. That apparently is not the way it is done.

Having just been to the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art yesterday, http://mybeautifulnewyork.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/tim-burton-at-the-moma/ I can tell you that young man (well, he’s older than me), he actually sent many cover letters and query letters. You can see copies of one he sent to Disney and an editor replied that his work was much too similar to Dr. Seuss’s work. So there.

If Tim Burton (aka Genius) can write a dang query letter, why can’t I? Lazy? Or maybe there’s some little fear of failure? That if I write a letter, I could be rejected.

Now who likes rejection? Don’t all raise your hands at once. Okay, guess what? Tim Burton got and gets rejected a lot. He also does not finish many of his projects. Mary Beth, do your best, my friend. Write your dang query letter and then get on with your day. Who cares about your feelings? (Me! I do!)

You, Mary Beth, like all artists, actually have to do some work to get paid for your writing. No one is going to show up at your front door and ask for your pearls of wisdom. Not today, any way. Although I am waiting.

Yup, waiting. Still waiting. Nothing? Nada? Nope?

Write Away

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I have OD’ed on blogging. I have seven blogs. Four are on wordpress, one is one TravelPod, one for work at UMCommunities and one on parenting at hubpages. This is not counting the Notes section of Facebook where I sometimes repeat one of my favorite blogs to 603 of my best friends.

How much Mary Beth (or Starr) Coudal does the internet really need?

It’d be one thing if the world clamored for more Mary Beth after I launched one simple blog. If web surfers everywhere emailed me, “Dear Blogger, great to hear about your trip to France. Write more. Start a new blog.”

The only time anyone has ever really immediately asked for more of my writing was after a poetry reading in the East Village. I had read a surreal poem. A young man handed me a slip of paper, which I think I still have. I unfolded it. “More Dada-ist poems please!” That was 15 years ago. But the next day, I was bored of my Dada-ist period, even though I had one real-life fan.

Having so many blogs keeps me from getting bored.

http://RunningAground.wordpress.com/ I am trying to run a 5K but I keep stopping to smell the flowers or take pictures of the George Washington Bridge.

http://GettingMyEssaysPublished.wordpress.com/ is kinda self-explanatory. It’s also a place to put my version of my essays before they get edited. My brother, who is the king of graphic design blogs, told me to call this one Screw My Editor, This One’s Better. But he didn’t actually say Screw and I don’t want to antagonize the potential good will of editors.

http://MyBeautifulNewYork.wordpress.com/ Here are my beautiful Manhattan peeps and places. It’s also a place to chronicle how I frequently get parking tickets.

http://MBCoudal.wordpress.com/ My spiritual journey and my 7 rules for living, especially with regard to my actor husband who has Parkinson’s Disease.

www.umcommunities.org As Mary Beth, the staff writer of a Methodist missionary agency, I share stories that relate to international and national stories.

www.hubpages.com Under the name Starr Coudal, I write mostly about parenting my three brilliant, spoiled rotten kids.

Which blog have I forgotten? Oh, never mind, I’m bored already. Let me change topics.

When I post a blog, say, about any thing – about taking French Class at the Alliance Francaise – the world barely blinks. When I blog a new post, and even spruce it up with a picture, a video, a link to a podcast, I get nada. Nothin’. When my post, like a rock, hits the water of the web? Barely a ripple.

But ya know what? I don’t care. I personally am fascinated by what I have to say. “Mary Beth, I wonder, how is the grammar going in your French Class?” I’m listening to myself. I write away.

I also find myself infinitely amusing. Who cares that Mary Beth delights in beating her kids at the card game, Apples to Apples? Or that she can’t get enough bacon on a Sunday morning? Me! Me! Me! I cannot get enough Mary Beth.

I am thinking of rolling all seven blogs into one unwieldy blog. In which case, I could post on it everyday, instead of like once a week per blog. But then where would people find my Dada-ist poems? Oh, that’s right, I don’t write that way any more. I don’t write for the coffee house open mic. That was before the internet, long ago, when I actually wrote poems instead of blogging about poems that I used to write.

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.

The Happiness Project. I'm jealous

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I know you’re supposed to feel happy when you read the Happiness Project a book by Gretchan Rubin. And in general, I do. But dangit, I also feel jealous. I’ve been working on my 7 Rules for, like, a couple of years. Also, I have been following the Happiness Manifesto for like seven years. So why am I jealous and not happy.

When I saw that movie, Julie and Julia, I felt jealous then too, because at the end of the movie Nora Ephron was calling Julie about making her blog into a movie. This particular blog I’m writing right now may not make a good movie.

Maybe I have too many blogs. About travel, about running, about my spiritual journey, and this one, about writing.

I will let it go. I will be happy. I want to blog more right now but I’m trying to pull the kids away from the computer, XBox, and TV to play some cards. Maybe that will make me happy.

For a writer, happiness seems so tied to getting published? Or at least getting paid.

Haiti’s Poverty and Deforestation

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United Methodist missionary Rick Jost and Solar Ovens

Usually I blog about running and health here. My posts here seem often to be about the beauty of nature – trees, birds, wildlife – seen as I run. This is a story about trees being cut down in Haiti and this problem of deforestation.

Yes, earthquakes kill and maim and destroy, rich and poor alike. But the real killer and maimer and destroyer is poverty. Poverty leads to deforestation.

If the same magnitude – 7.0 earthquake that decimated Port-au-Prince – had struck in a country with better infrastructure and less poverty, perhaps a hundred people would’ve died, not tens of thousands. The earthquake of 1989 in San Francisco was a 7.0 magnitude and killed 63 people. So, poverty makes natural disaster thousands of times worse.

Haiti is often called the poorest of the poor. In 2006, I wrote a story for the Global Ministries’ magazine New World Outlook about Solar Ovens in Haiti. I learned that in May 2004, light rains triggered flooding in Haiti. The same rain fell in the Dominican Republic, the country which shares the island with Haiti. In the DR, less than two dozen people died. In Haiti, three thousand people died. The DR is greener and wealthier.

The problems with deforestation cannot be underestimated. Trees mean more topsoil, less runoff, less disaster when flooding hits, less killer mudslides. That’s why people from the Dakotas United Methodist Church supported the Solar Oven project.

The sun’s heat is an alternative cooking source. I really don’t know how having more trees might positively impact a country like Haiti during an earthquake. I have only reported on the natural disaster of flooding.

But I do know, as the weeks unfold, and as yesterday’s Christian Science monitor story suggests, reforestation should be a priority as Haiti rebuilds and returns. Harnessing the cooking power of the sun is preferable to cutting down trees for firewood.

Ick! Lice! A funny essay

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Trying to find the positives when my little family gets lice. Turned this in for my memoir writing class next Tuesday. It’s through Media Bistro. I’m trying not to give all my writing away through my blogs but send them out to magazines too. I just love the immediate gratification of blogging!

Remembering Clint

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I was walking with Clint and Adam on Claremont, heading home from work. They were headed to McSorley’s Pub and invited me to join them. Clint had never been there. I had been there too many times in college. I begged out – kids, husband, dinner to make. (I had wanted to and now, of course, I wish I had.)

For some reason as we walked to the subway that night, we got talking about our cell phones. They both told me I had to get Google Maps. Clint said it was great for getting around the city, for finding your way.  

People are complex. It shows in their friendships. Like the friendship between Clint and Adam.

“Clint and Adam were best friends? But they’re so different!” Charlotte, one of my 10-year olds, told me a few days ago. Not so different – both handsome, quick-witted, global. Their thirty-something year age difference didn’t seem to matter.

Clint saw beyond perceived differences in people. He seemed to make and keep friends easily.

Clint was devoted to his unlikely and diverse family of friends. I realized this during the worship at the fall board meeting a few years ago. During that service, the presiding bishop asked family and close friends who knew each new missionary or had walked with them on their life’s journey to stand. I felt too embarrassed to stand up for anyone, although I knew and liked some of the new missionaries.  

The Vangs are members of the United Methodist Hmong Community of Minnesota. They were being commissioned to serve in Southeast Asia. When the Vangs names were spoken, Clint stood. He stood very tall, very happy, very proud. He was not embarrassed. Afterwards, he hugged the Vangs tightly.

A colleague told me that Clint had a heart for Southeast Asia. It surprised me. I don’t know why. Yes, Clint had a folksy, Texan, big-hearted charm. I just had not seen Clint as the global, diverse, loving man he was until that worship when I saw him hugging the entire Vang family. He was such a gentle giant.

As a tribute to Clint who cultivated such a diverse group of friends like Adam and the Vangs, I, too, want to stand for people who appear different. I think, even better than Google Maps, that was the way Clint found his way around.

Remembering Sam

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“I’d like to take a year off to photograph sunrises every day for a year,” Sam had said. “I’m funny like that.”

We were walking out of 475 on Claremont from work at the same time one day, maybe a year ago. This creative and poetic side to Sam Dixon surprised and impressed me. I can’t remember the context of our conversation. Did he say we wanted to photograph both sunrises and sunsets? Was it the beauty of the day’s sunset that sparked this conversation?

I remembered this snatch of conversation on Wednesday when I first heard Sam had been in the Hotel Montana in Haiti during the earthquake. It seemed no one had survived. I felt deeply sad. Sad that Sam wouldn’t get to take that year off to capture those daily miracles.

Then I heard that Sam was rescued on Friday. I laughed to myself and said, “Shoot, I’m going to tease Sam about that conversation. I’m gonna’ ask him when I see him, ‘Will you take some time off now to photograph the daily sunrise?’ I’m gonna’ tell him, “I couldn’t get that conversation out of my mind.” I was so glad he was alive. So glad. Then, on Saturday night, I learned that he hadn’t been rescued at all. So sad.

I remembered one of my last conversations with Sam, a few weeks ago. I was looking for Paul Kong, his predecessor at the development fund, on the 15th floor. Our offices were all discombobulated since the downsizing over the last couple of months. We didn’t know where to find each other. I hadn’t realized UMCOR had moved to the 15th floor. Then, I saw Sam.

He was back in his old office – the same office he’d had when he headed the evangelism department a few years earlier. At that time, occasionally, I’d find myself perched with a notebook in front of the big man and his big desk. He was always accessible, always smart, always kind, always easy-going, always funny, always good with a quote.

“Hey,” I stepped into his office. “You’re back in this office?” I asked. He had his old view of the Hudson, the Palisades, the George Washington Bridge. “It’s nice here. Must feel familiar?” I asked him.

“Yup,” he said, smiling, nodding, looking around. “Kinda’ like coming home.”

I hope that in his death, Sam really is home, more home than in his 15th floor office, more home than in his own home. Maybe in death, Sam is getting to take in the daily sunrise. Maybe, in some way, he’s a part of it.

One way I’m going to remember Sam is by paying attention to the daily miracle of the sunrise and the sunset. I might even photograph a few, just ’cause Sam didn’t get to.

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.