A Tale Told By A Live Nerve Ending

I’m a speed freak. It’s not my fault. We inherit our energy. I talk fast. I walk fast, I eat fast and I was prenatally curious. So there I was with my inherent traits, some admirable and some needing to be undone, guiding forty eighth graders and six teachers from a private school in the mid-west. Save for nine fourteen-year olds who clung to my side, asking me questions; the rest in the group frustrated me. They walked leisurely, stopped frequently, repositioned themselves often, chatted into their cell phones and let their mouths shape into yawns as they orginated or replied to texts. Many of their eyes remained in a singular fixed position, a blank stare, as if auditioning for a 1950s black and white zombie film, causing me to wonder whether they had all passed away leaving these resemblances, ambulating cadavers, in their stead.

Click to read more ...

People Interest Me

People interest me at first sight. There I was staring at a bunch of faces on the Number 6 train, at noon, May 5, getting on at 77th Street, headed for 14th Street to get on an L train and go to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I was going to take a tour, on a weekend where the Municipal Art Society was sponsoring many of them all over the city, all in honor of the writer and activist, Jane Jacobs, who altered the way planners approached cities by proclaiming urban centers to be living ecosystems, synergistically dependent upon buildings, sidewalks, streets, parks, neighborhoods, in her book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She died in 2006. At 68th Street, a woman sat next to a man who sat next to me and as he was descending he said, "Tell me if you have enough room" to which I responded, "This is public transportation. I can't tell you what to do, but presently your right posterior cheek is touching my left one."

Click to read more ...

Your Patrimony

While staring at the roofline of Box Hill, architect Stanford White's summer home, a rambling beach-pebble pressed into wet stucco covered multi-gable structure, with a one story verandah lined with fluted columns, I realized the Whites, with ancestors dating back to the 18th century and the Smiths, his wife's family with roots in the 17th century, were bequeathed land, houses and antiques; whereas I received nothing from my maternal grandfather’s side, disembarking in 1859 from Germany,as well as my ancestors from Austria, Lithuania and Poland, arriving in the beginning of the 20th century. I chewed on that while sitting on a capital that had once been atop a column on the outside of the Stanford White designed 1883 Madison Square Garden, at East 26th Street and Madison Avenue.

Click to read more ...

Fit to print in the New York Times

Alice dated a married man for five years while attending services at the Ethical Culture Society. My comment, “Don’t go to any more meetings on Sunday since you don't seem to be learning anything" elicited this remark, “I’m sure his wife wouldn’t mind for they have separate bedrooms.” Alan lived in a walk-up on Sixth Avenue; from there he sold cocaine constantly declaring, “I'm not creating an addiction, just feeding one." When he had accumulated $300,000 he moved to a condo on Ludlow Street, bragging about his increased square footage, sending me into spasms of "Acquired by breaking the law." Abbey, owner of a nursery school in a row house on West 16th Street,smoked a joint in her office every morning minutes before her charges, twenty three-year olds, arrived. When I suggested, "Why don't you ingest marijuana at home?" she called me "A hard-nose who lacked compassion for her stress." She had a point. Three times in one week I had given my opinion to individuals who had not solicited it, when it would have been better if I had shut my mouth, content in the knowledge the only business that I need concern myself with is my own.

Click to read more ...

That's All, Folks!

My right outstretched arm supported my palm as it felt the shallow furrows and scaly ridges on the grayish-brown bark of a 35 foot Callery pear tree that had been brought back to life and back to the World Trade Center Memorial Park December, 2010 by a flatbed truck. It had come from the Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx where it had been replanted, November 11, 2001, one month after two Parks Department employees, while searching for living flora at ground zero found, between building four and five of the World Trade Center complex, covered in ash, missing its crown, its bark the hue of this side of midnight, and its root system exposed, a Pyrus calleryana planted in the 1970’s, with one living branch. Now there are many rising above its once burnt base, all covered with heart-shaped leaves and five-petaled white flowers. I, when I first saw it, tapped my finger tips on its outer shell, as if that way I could procure some of its strength, when Bugs Bunny jumped out of a drum, and in his Brooklyn-Bronx accent uttered “That’s all, folks! And dat’s the end!” and then disappeared.

Click to read more ...