tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26806020488473577352024-02-22T08:08:35.158-08:00Finding Myself in HobokenA breezy, opinionated journal of life including movies, food, books, politics, people and places--especially in Hoboken and New York City, along with assorted spots on the globe.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comBlogger334125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-1474327143939304602013-05-27T04:53:00.001-07:002013-05-27T07:30:14.514-07:00A Hoboken Connection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ovBrtXme8lF5mHPI10jrUa_YDMvxRncp87QpXyhaqJG668r8M1fQ_S5U7PO-u4nDavulPdESdPBdCaQ2Kyr96_0mLZMG5A7gIDpzAHrXMSrggBglo2TWFzV46B2Qm1zSkLDYCnuh0p03/s1600/bookcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ovBrtXme8lF5mHPI10jrUa_YDMvxRncp87QpXyhaqJG668r8M1fQ_S5U7PO-u4nDavulPdESdPBdCaQ2Kyr96_0mLZMG5A7gIDpzAHrXMSrggBglo2TWFzV46B2Qm1zSkLDYCnuh0p03/s320/bookcover.png" width="247" /></a></div>
My novel begins in Hoboken in the early 20th Century. The place fascinated me all the time I lived in Hoboken and I simply had to include it. <i>That Was Tomorrow</i> is the story of a young schoolteacher who moves to a remote utopian enclave, but her story begins in the Castle Point section of Hoboken, where she was born into the Upper Crust. There are scenes in which she walks through the city, works in a settlement house, and talks things over with her parents as she plans her life.<br />
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"The book didn't really come to life until the Hoboken scenes," my daughter said after reading the proofs. If she's right it's because I had strong positive feelings about Hoboken in those days even though I only learned about them from the Hoboken Museum.<br />
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My heroine needs to break from her protective, overbearing parents, and the trappings of wealth. It's fortunate for her that her grandfather, who ran a retail shop in old Hoboken, left her enough in a trust fund that she could pursue her dream of changing the world and being a "New Woman" of 1921. To learn more about the book, it's now available at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/That-Was-Tomorrow-ebook/dp/B00851C9N2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369655504&sr=8-2&keywords=That+Was+Tomorrow" target="_blank">amazon</a> and also at my website <a href="http://www.findingfairhope.com/" target="_blank">Finding Fairhope.</a><br />
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Check out the reviews on amazon--and if you've read it, please contribute one of your own. It's a Hoboken book as well as a "Fairhope" book. Mostly it's a historical fantasy based on time and place.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-31468035553885545782012-11-25T12:33:00.006-08:002014-10-27T05:38:28.616-07:00Leaving Myself in Hoboken<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj34RSd3uXPZsc7783f1mqFSVAmAivfim8scr-R2G8SVJC7xWHwU8lz9p0YJtxplsc5ph9AXshzrh4ttgBCyjVdgHOa7oblYkLaclJcvpYC4RrS6Zf5H4QPA3Pi5oY8urZQmrX_hJkpdzo0/s1600/hoboken1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj34RSd3uXPZsc7783f1mqFSVAmAivfim8scr-R2G8SVJC7xWHwU8lz9p0YJtxplsc5ph9AXshzrh4ttgBCyjVdgHOa7oblYkLaclJcvpYC4RrS6Zf5H4QPA3Pi5oY8urZQmrX_hJkpdzo0/s400/hoboken1.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Washington Street, June 2007 </b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I came to Hoboken just exactly five years ago and am in the process of packing up my things to leave in a week. This is not an easy move; I'm not going away mad or even without regret. It's a very endearing town, easy to fit into, easy to love, and not a bit easy to leave. My five years here have been very productive. I've written two books, made a number of friends, gained a vantage point on New Jersey and New York City, and grown in ways I never expected.<br />
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I didn't know what to expect when I arrived. I had taken one look when surveying the New York City area, found it affordable and not without a small-town charm and a scruffy, tough reputation. I felt comfortable with its outsider vibe, its survival instinct, its lopsided, striving charm. I liked walking on the streets amid old couples, young hotshots, couples speaking languages ranging from French to Russian and what sounded like Polish, in addition to the more predictable Spanish and Italian. I liked writing a blog about my daily experiences, and having comments appear from total strangers who shared their memories of bygone Hoboken. Some of them I met in person, some I never did but remain vividly real to me in their comments here. I invite you to read the early posts and meet a younger Mary Lois, instructed by generations of people born and raised in Hoboken and eager to impart their knowledge to a newcomer.<br />
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I'll miss a number of things. I already miss when Carlo's was a local bakery, a place you could drop in for a fresh canolli, a box of cookies, or a cake to take to a dinner party. I miss the people I met early and seldom see now, just because life has somehow come between us. A few great restaurants have come and gone since I first set foot in Hoboken. A few places and things remain--the two hardware stores I know on Washington Street, run by old born-n-raised-in-Hoboken guys; the <a href="http://myselfinhoboken.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=8dbtOjsBAAA.hGVjtZ1lQCu-poB94dxAjw.XAeYF8__b4LPl2DANoai5Q&postId=4365799537798865119&type=POST" target="_blank">Garden Street Liquor Store,</a> which is on Park Street. I only went to that liquor store one time, but if you go to the link you'll see why it was memorable. I'll miss the views of the New York skyline, particularly the Empire State Building. I'll miss the campus of Stevens, with its rich Hoboken history--and the public library and the train terminal, both beautiful examples of 19th century Victorian architecture. I'll miss the trees on streets like Bloomfield and Garden, O'Neill's wonderful burgers, the Hoboken Historical Museum and the opportunity missed to work on a project getting a statue of Frank Sinatra in town. I'll miss Danny Aiello, running lines with a friend as he ate spaghetti at Tutta Pasta (and I'll miss that spinach course!). I'll miss the battery of doctors and dentists who have shored up my body as I totter into old age.<br />
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I never saw the Fabian Theater, now a CVS. I never had ice cream at Abel's or saw a flock of pigeons fly out of a piano at the high school assembly. I never met Mr. Stover, the onetime principal of that institution. I never heard the crystal voice of little Jimmy Roselli, singing in church. I learned about all of them on this blog. If you want nostalgia, go to my blog posts in 2008 and 2009, as the colorful life of old Hoboken is recounted again and again by my blog readers.<br />
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I'll probably do that from time to time--revisit this blog and think of the Hoboken period of my life. But I've no time for it today. I've got organizing and packing to do and planning for the rest of my days. Please follow up by finding <a href="http://www.oldhouselife.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">my new blog</a> about my new life, and comment there and here if you want to keep in touch. I love writing for you, and am pleased you're still reading.<br />
<br />Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-91640573998387711352012-11-02T14:55:00.000-07:002012-11-18T05:44:10.302-08:00High Water in Hoboken<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVztYT0WeLclT8Dn76zqb_lrFTgft6vL9aSSsm_uc1cGWDkt5CoqH_3wwcDrDBvBlk13CeMEL4NeRbzGb0O38q4qm5Uni8dc9zwdGky-rMIA1nrl2w3yLVDFNS2xbHXOvAM5G2uRU_W1yh/s1600/r-SANDY-HOBOKEN-large570.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVztYT0WeLclT8Dn76zqb_lrFTgft6vL9aSSsm_uc1cGWDkt5CoqH_3wwcDrDBvBlk13CeMEL4NeRbzGb0O38q4qm5Uni8dc9zwdGky-rMIA1nrl2w3yLVDFNS2xbHXOvAM5G2uRU_W1yh/s400/r-SANDY-HOBOKEN-large570.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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We didn’t know what to expect, except there would be
flooding, maybe as bad as Irene flooded Hoboken last year. In that one, water
filled the back yard, like a swamp pond, and the basement was at least four
feet deep in it. I had to replace the new water heater I had had installed the
year before, and the building’s boiler needed replacement parts to provide heat
for the cold coming soon.</div>
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But this year we had a major storm to deal with. A
historical anomaly—a huge water event in the ocean combining with a snowstorm
and cold front heading our way from the West. The little building has three
young guys in it, plus one wife, one infant girl, and me. All the men are
able-bodied, young and savvy, and super-committed to save the little building
and avert the problems we had dealt with the previous big storm.</div>
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Hoboken is notoriously flood-prone, the lower part of town
in particular. Built on landfill, it is dangerously soggy and vulnerable. I was
especially pleased to get a ground-floor apartment when I bought my condo three
years ago. I had been renting walk-ups and being trapped on a high floor was
getting to me. In Irene I lost a lot of stuff I liked by leaving it in the
basement, but this time I knew better. I hadn’t taken all of it out, but was
careful to get everything I really wanted to keep.</div>
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Hurricane Sandy started slowly enough around four PM. I’ve
lived some 40 years, off and on, on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, where
hurricanes are frequent and do not bother us natives much. I watched Sandy
bring familiar wind and rain, listened to the howling, whistling gales outside,
and considered it pretty much normal. At about 9 P.M. the flood started. A water
rush of unprecedented proportions, it was as if the Hudson were in a big hurry
to take over Hoboken, and maybe take it away. The back yard was filled higher
than it had been with Irene, and water from Madison Street threatened to
overflow the stoop and whoosh onto the first floor, engulfing my condo and
destroying my last few favorite things.</div>
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But it didn’t. It stopped at the top step. We looked on in
awe at the perilous river that was now our street. In an instant the
electricity went out and cries went up in unison from apartments in all the buildings nearby. It was still raining, the wind was still blowing, but the unfathomable
thing was all that water. People had parked their cars in the street, and now
they were buried in water up to the tops of their tires. Some alarms went off. </div>
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I knew there was to be no sleeping that night. Mark, Adam,
and Cliff joined together, talking of the pump and working against the
possibility of devastation to come, but there was nothing to be done. It would
take more than a sump pump to clean our basement, and that wouldn’t work
without electricity anyway.</div>
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I took a sleeping pill and hit the sack. It was a dark,
noisy and frightening night, even for an old hand like me. I’d skipped Irene
last year and had never endured a flood before. </div>
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Here’s the obvious part of being in a flood. You can’t get out of your
house. You look at water in the back, water in the front, and you are helpless
to do anything but wait. Your life changes, like the family of Otto Frank. You
are trapped, stranded—but at least in our case there weren’t any Nazis outside
looking for us. The charge in your computer runs out; your cell phone is
unusable. You are incommunicado and people are trying to reach you. You have
messages on your cell, “I just saw Hoboken on CNN and I’m worried about you.”
You are in a new subgroup—Sandy survivors. And you can’t tell anybody about it.
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Mark had a battery pack. Tuesday I depleted it with charging
my cell phone and by using my laptop where I went on Facebook to announce that
I was fine. I sent a few emails. Tuesday night we banded together at Mark and
Mandy’s, with the baby who didn’t notice a thing. We ate each other’s food,
drank a little, and talked a lot, all by candlelight and all with a sense of
emergency and relief that we survived. </div>
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Wednesday Mark, Mandy and the baby left for a place in
Pennsylvania, largely untouched by the storm, to be with Mark’s parents and
have some electricity. The flood was subsiding, slowly, and by the end of the
day it was possible to walk around a little until you reached the corner of the
block, where there were still high waters. People were walking around, talking
to neighbors they never knew before, and the inevitable feeling of shared pain
and panic bonded us all.</div>
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Night came early, with only candles, a little portable radio
turned to WNYC, my Kindle, and whatever I could find to eat. </div>
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Thursday I began hearing about places where cell phones
could be charged. Apparently Hudson Street hadn’t lost power, and residents
there were dangling power strips from extension cords in front of their homes
to share their electricity. I took my phone, my laptop, and my Kindle, all with
charger cords, in that direction and discovered people gathered at Sts. Peter
and Paul Church on the corner of 4<sup>th</sup> and Hudson. Everybody was nice,
convivial, offering outlets on the front steps, but I went inside where it was
warm and made myself comfortable in a pew while all my electronics were
charging. I was surrounded by people with b-n-r accents, telling old Hoboken
stories, so I felt cozy and happy.</div>
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But I couldn’t tolerate another isolated night, not if I
could help it. I had an idea: Newark Airport was open—why not take a taxi there
and just get on the next plane wherever it may be going? I could go anywhere
there was a motel, with my laptop and cell phone, and charge everything up so I
could get back in touch with my virtual world. I could get a nice warm shower
and watch a little television. Sounded like a plan, but not a very practical
one.</div>
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A better idea, if power was not restored by noon today
(Friday), I would get on a bus to the Port Authority and take a trip to visit
my daughter and family in Kingston. There I could get a shower, have lights and
Internet, and also look around a little for my future home. I was able to
contact Alison and discover they not only have power, the storm barely hit the
area. And they were eager for me to visit!</div>
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I probably don’t have to tell you I followed Plan B. I am
comfortable tonight away from the stress of low food supplies, no electricity,
no contact with the outside world. I survived and feel perfectly okay. I love
so much about Hoboken, but this time I was glad to leave. Being wanted is a nice feeling. </div>
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Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-9473737423643476632012-09-28T08:04:00.001-07:002012-09-28T17:03:48.391-07:00Goodbye to Hoboken and All ThatWatch out, friends, I’m about to change my life again. <br />
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Some people move a lot, some people stay a lot. I’m in the
former group. I moved to Hoboken as transition overtook me in my little
hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, five years ago. My mother was in a nursing home
and had only a few months left, my husband had died six years earlier. I was
looking at a town so transformed I hardly knew if I even liked it. I felt
surrounded by death and knew that this was not the place I wanted to be when it
happened.</div>
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After leaving Fairhope, I found myself in Hoboken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I liked its motley, multi-culti,
multi-generational vibe, the fragrance of Italian food on its sidewalks, its
elegant 19<sup>th</sup> century architecture and its atmosphere of a small town
that was practically a neighborhood of Manhattan itself, and but eight minutes from
the Christopher Street stop on the PATH train. I was in New Jersey, but so
close to New York I could see its skyline across the river and be there in time
for the matinee of cinema or play. </div>
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Writing this blog made me visible to people who lived near.
I got invited to lunch, to parties, to obscure events like the preview of the
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats and the Heirloom Tomato Festival. I saw
contests of Frank Sinatra imitators and went to a Hoboken High production of
<i>Guys and Dolls. </i>I auditioned for a play about the old “Flora Dora Girls” of
Hoboken and landed the role of narrator. I love the town; a vibrant, dynamic,
and colorful combination of youth and age, old and new. I invested in a little
condo on the lower western side.</div>
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From where I lived I was a 40-minute (if the track were slow
that day) trip to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, get a bus to
Kingston, where my daughter and two grandsons live and be there in two hours. I
made the trip about once a month for five years. Both my grandsons were able,
on several occasions, to get on a bus in Kingston, which I met at the Port
Authority, and join me for a Broadway matinee. </div>
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I spent a month or two in Fairhope every winter and wrote
two books about the town from Hoboken. Much of my time as I was finding myself
in Hoboken was spent in my own mind, mulling over my life and feeling good
about being 72 years old and still able to do the things I wanted. I thought a
great deal about Fairhope itself, as I remembered it from childhood, and tried
to reconcile those memories with its reality of today. </div>
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Things began to change. A pain in my knee made it difficult
to walk. The journey to the A & P, and to the bus, and to the PATH train
was becoming more difficult. <i>That Was Tomorrow,</i> my novel about Fairhope, in eBook format, hadn’t
sold well and clearly would never catch on in Fairhope although it had received
good response from local reviewers. There was no more Fairhope in my life, and
less Hoboken. Arthritis then grabbed my the other knee in a viselike grip as
well.</div>
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A few weeks ago my daughter said, “You know, Mom, I just saw
the cutest little house in Kingston that you would love…” Without thinking, I
said, “Kingston? I don’t think I could live in Kingston. If I were going to
live around here, I’d look in New Paltz.”</div>
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This was a new idea for both of us, really. On the many bus
trips to Kingston I’d eyed New Paltz through the window—a quaint college town
with cottages and shops lining the streets. A feeling of old and young
together. Activities, a library, surely a historical committee or two. It’s the
kind of town you drive through and think, “I could be happy here.” I realized
I’d had that thought many times in five years. </div>
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Now my life is changing again. Both knees are in pain, and
there are new pains and complaints to come. I’m “young-old” but will be
“old-old” before I know it, and I’m pretty much alone in Hoboken. Much as I
like the place, I haven’t put down roots. My thoughts and dreams take place in
Fairhope—but those Fairhope dreams are fewer these days. The past that was Fairhope is losing
its power over me.</div>
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My eldest grandson is in college at SUNY Albany, and he
says, “Sure, I’d like you to live in New Paltz.” I wrote most of this blog post
on a bus back to the Port Authority from Kingston—Alison and I drove to Albany
yesterday and took him to lunch. His brother Andy, too, says he’d love to have
me living nearby. I’m thinking about our visits in a new way.</div>
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There
is much to do to make this happen. It may come as a shock to those who
stay put, but moves like this have stimulated, motivated, and jostled me
(in a good way) all my life. I used to move every few years,
always thinking it was the last time, and not truly thinking ahead in
Hoboken.
I’ll have to sell a condo, buy a car, and make all the plans for a move.
I’ll
have to see doctors, dentists, and get my piles of papers, cartons of
collections, and sort my stuff once again. </div>
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Hoboken is a beautiful place, a kind of secret place for me,
a place I found myself and will never forget once this is all done. Maybe I’ll
write a book about it. It will definitely be a part of me forever. Upstate New
York looks like a pleasant next step. </div>
Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-56266656381859116572012-09-05T13:46:00.000-07:002012-09-27T15:21:02.940-07:00Movie JagThe last few weeks I've been exploring new movies, the kind of offbeat indie fare that doesn't make it to the nearby cineplexes in Jersey City and Hoboken. It means seeking out the titles that intrigued me but I couldn't find locally, checking time and venue in the city, and organizing myself to take the PATH train to New York in time to catch the most available ones on my list. I saw three excellent little films, two of which I recommend to all, and one which made me queasy but ultimately I am coming to appreciate. I'll restrain myself from spoilers in these little mini-reviews.<br />
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The first was a French number called <i>Intouchable</i>, a title which baffles me, but I'm sure it means something in French that is not quite translatable so the producers just decided to retain in the original language. They probably don't know that it is not only untranslatable to English, it is also pretty much unpronounceable and most Americans will just say it as it looks--which renders it really much less accessible than the movie is. Unlike A.O. Scott I don't see this as a movie about class differences or the concept of the Noble Savage. It is a movie about men who come to love and depend on each other in the most improbable circumstances. Scott described the protagonist as an uptight rich guy--that's amusing because he's not uptight psychologically. He is physically paralyzed, which is a different thing altogether. He had once been a bit of a free spirit, but is broken by a terrible accident in which he lost the love of his life. He would never have hired such a clearly marginal rebel as a caregiver had he been an uptight personality. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnqh70_UddGilcvA7SFBCKxvlDG2bvsEG0s1pjeONC4OATqZSngqgdfqdqFveIQpFqn8GwjKcA_GHCk_D1-ovjQ_fuYqLeN6cDUbTF0c2VJAT_jv8VuXnXy08fQeqBLQFptjG2c_Yp7st/s1600/intouchables-span-articleInline-v2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivnqh70_UddGilcvA7SFBCKxvlDG2bvsEG0s1pjeONC4OATqZSngqgdfqdqFveIQpFqn8GwjKcA_GHCk_D1-ovjQ_fuYqLeN6cDUbTF0c2VJAT_jv8VuXnXy08fQeqBLQFptjG2c_Yp7st/s400/intouchables-span-articleInline-v2.jpg" width="397" /></a>The acting by both Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy is superb; the story has a
few twists; the soundtrack is perfect, and throughout the movie the
viewer hopes all will end well. I won't even give the ending, but will
say that these characters buoy the audience throughout the process.
There is an actor here, M. Sy, I hope to see again in many films. Highly
recommended.<br />
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Then I saw a little gem called <i>Beasts of the Southern Wild. </i>This is a unique, homemade-looking movie, introducing us to a way of life we never dreamed of. The people are living so far below the poverty line they have descended into a magical underworld, a nether place we could not have imagined and yet almost hope exists. They are outside the realm of our minds, living on an island so flood prone it is known as The Bathtub.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLb-kZpsoowRVI-6hPMfPeuDiFuGHSlyI6USdKwU6Pm7fhKZyvpFWu_S_3Ud58sguacZ4b6ceFP12gH1GE245AAHx_AxRoHGO6wT4ZjRWR-Ed3JzJDDqHCiL9kuJFEKj0Mtvk1zEJKw4q/s1600/beastsofthesouthernwild-clipthumb-jpg_164252.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHLb-kZpsoowRVI-6hPMfPeuDiFuGHSlyI6USdKwU6Pm7fhKZyvpFWu_S_3Ud58sguacZ4b6ceFP12gH1GE245AAHx_AxRoHGO6wT4ZjRWR-Ed3JzJDDqHCiL9kuJFEKj0Mtvk1zEJKw4q/s1600/beastsofthesouthernwild-clipthumb-jpg_164252.jpg" /></a>There is a father and his six-year-old daughter he calls Hushpuppy, the two of them facing life and death and drifting in ignorance and myth, and calling on the magic within them to ward off the demons and dilemmas they struggle against. The director used non-actors in all the roles, and it pays off here in bringing a gritty, unpretty reality to a bold and unexpected mythology. Little Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry, if they become movie stars and act in hundreds of films in their lives, will never be better than they were as Hushpuppy and Wink.<br />
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<i>Killer Joe</i> was not what I expected. I mean, that's a killer title, and Matthew McConaghey is my kind of guy, usually. I like his swagger, his nasal voice, his native diffidence and poise. Okay, he's playing a gun for hire, a hit man, we've seen a lot of them in the movies and sometimes they're kind of cute. Not so here.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSQ7hZE2REkBWeqMMYQRdt7MSw9tMkaPUGb5ovcqY6RS39AyJkrHSetVBJTtirxVHzQl3hd-Iodt0PgJl_yhv4wWTfI-t3UrMS5e7ueCGO1LjNw4Hfc_wFPbFqSj8Bc-Y321dcLA1jZ4Q9/s1600/killer-joe05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSQ7hZE2REkBWeqMMYQRdt7MSw9tMkaPUGb5ovcqY6RS39AyJkrHSetVBJTtirxVHzQl3hd-Iodt0PgJl_yhv4wWTfI-t3UrMS5e7ueCGO1LjNw4Hfc_wFPbFqSj8Bc-Y321dcLA1jZ4Q9/s320/killer-joe05.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
McConaghey is pure menace, as evil a sadist as Robert Mitchum in <i>Cape Fea</i>r--a rattlesnake who will bite anything, and does. Thomas Haden Church is excellent at appearing to be dumber than dirt, and he stretches that ability to its outer limits here. There are laughs in <i>Killer Joe</i>, not a lot of them and they aren't warm fuzzy laughs, they are just carefully placed in the script to relieve some of the tension that underscores this dark, violent film. There was nobody to like in this movie, but the actors, including Gina Gershon, Emile Hirsch, and Juno Temple, made us believe, for a few moments anyway, that this crew of reprobates were almost worth saving. If you have a strong stomach and don't mind blood, gore, rape, molestation and murder, it's a pretty good movie.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-14230438697565573932012-08-18T11:53:00.003-07:002012-09-27T15:21:24.512-07:00A Book Is LaunchedAn eBook, at any rate. I've got reviews in the local newspapers in the Fairhope, Alabama, area, where much of That Was Tomorrow takes place, and am awaiting a surge of sales on my website and at the Internet retail sources like amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Vook. Yes, I said Vook. Check it out.<br />
<br />
<i>That Was Tomorrow</i> is a historical novel. Most of the story takes place in the remote reformist enclave of Fairhope, a real place that seems very unreal today, but it begins in Hoboken with a poor-little-rich-girl heroine raised on upper Hudson Street in the early 1900s. She escapes through a helpful and loving aunt who raises her with her rambunctious family, is educated in Quaker schools, and decides to become an educator herself.<br />
<br />
This takes her to the Alabama town where a unique form of education is being practiced, and where she thrives and considers life as a New Woman of the 20th century.<br />
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The book has been on amazon dot com since the end of April, and was reviewed there by 11 people so far. The following reviews include some of those and others from the publications I mentioned.<br />
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Timbes knows of a secret place, and once she gets her wagon
rolling, she carries us there with grace and intimate charm…</span>a strange
yet familiar world is here for the taking. <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>That Was Tomorrow</i> drops itself squarely in
the middle of Fairhope’s golden era. It is the 1920s…via narrative fiction,
Timbes has lifted this world from the dust of time and holds it up for us to
inspect to the best of our abilities. We are allowed into the town via its
unconventional ferries and dirt-road main streets. We are invited into its
leading hotels and community gathering points. She lets us wander through the
classrooms and sit with the children as they are taught by the Organic Method.
We are treated to an intimate and personal account of life as it existed nearly
a century ago in a place now accessible by car but almost impossible to find
again in the mind. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">While this is Timbes’ first novel, it is her
third book on Fairhope. She is herself a graduate of The Organic School, and
she served as the curator for the Marietta Johnson Museum in Fairhope. She grew
up in Fairhope, left for the world at large, and came back. And left again.
Educated in the same place and manner she describes, she has cultivated a
precise and careful prose uncommon in popular fiction. Her nuanced, period tone
carries us easily backward to the innocence and charm and guileless rhythms of
1920s Fairhope. Her fiction is lively and ambitious. <i>That Was Tomorrow</i> is a
historical novel, so her literary license comes with some restrictions. Yet she
seamlessly twines Fairhope’s known personages into her own creations, allowing
the reader to speculate beyond the range of straight fiction. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Although her descriptions of seemingly
insignificant details such as the layout of a cottage, the flora on a specific
street, the intricacies of a folk dance, or the plot line of a stage play can
be viewed as overly worked, they actually carry the true substance of her
effort. It is precisely through this detailed reconstruction of the daily lives
of the citizens, the teachers, and the students that we find ourselves
ultimately swimming far, far below the surface of the Fairhope we can drive
through today. And when we surface, is it our eyes that are changed, or has
tony, flip-happy Fairhope once again become full of thinkers and artists and
bons vivants? Read; then decide. It’s certainly nice to think so. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For anyone wanting a realistic portrayal of
yesterday’s sleepy South, a more informed connection to modern Fairhope, or a
working re-enactment of Marietta Johnson’s Organic Education philosophy,
Timbes’ book is a clear choice. She escorts us into the cliffs and gullies, the
dirt and the shine, the people and the place, and the village on the bay that
was a utopia for the taking. Jump in. Mobile Bay hasn’t felt this good in decades.
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rex Anderson</b>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mobile Press Register</i> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's
hard to believe that there was once a time in this country, between the Last
Great War and the inevitable onset of the next one, when there existed utopian
communities across America, testing shared principles of civic idealism,
personal actualization and the common good. And it's harder to believe that one
of the more interesting was located in the Red State of Alabama, in the coastal
community of Fairhope. In <i>That Was Tomorrow,</i> Mary Lois Timbes brings the
improbable to life, complete with complete with believable, flesh and blood
characters all living out their hopes and dreams in a concretely described,
lush Southern setting. Take a trip to Fairhope. You will not only discover a
progressive community of the past, but also what is finest in the American
character. believable, flesh and blood characters all living out their hopes
and dreams in a concretely described, lush Southern setting. Take a trip to
Fairhope. You will not only discover a progressive community of the past, but
also what is finest in the American character.<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Jonathan Odell</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, Author, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The View From Delphi,</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Healing</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Historical
fiction is a much abused genre. Too often fascinating people and events are
treated like museum pieces - fragile, silent, and dead.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>That Was Tomorrow</i> avoids these pitfalls, giving us a vivid portrait
of a time and place in history filled with colors, scents, sounds, and a strong
sense of the future.<br />
<br />
Along with heroine Amelia, we explore the turn-of-the-century Utopian
experiment known as Fairhope, getting to know the colony's eccentric citizens,
their habits, their politics, their fears, and their dreams. It is a
coffee-fueled, romance-filled, full-sensory trip back to a dynamic time in a
very unique place - and is well worth the visit.</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Michele
Feltman Strider</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, Author<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Homecoming,
Hometown</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The character depictions in Fairhope, some fictional and
others not, are the highlights of <i>That Was Tomorrow</i>, together with the details
of the activities such as folk dancing and singing that occupied such a central
place in the Fairhope school. Having written on Fairhope before (<i>A Fair Hope
of Heave</i>n and <i>Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree), </i>Timbes hits her stride in the
telling of these tales…That Was Tomorrow is a very good read, well<i>-w</i>ritten,
nicely laid out and gives just enough coverage to the somewhat raffish
character of the colony in those early days to underline the point that, in a
very unprogressive state, a flower grew and flourished.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>Ralph E. Thayer</b>, <i>The Fairhope Courier</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If your appetite is whetted--and I hope it is--go to <a href="http://www.findingfairhope.com/">my website</a> for more details and buttons where you can order the book directly from me or from any of the sources. Or go to your favorite online book retailer (i.e., amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, or Vook. Yes, I said Vook) and search for <i>That Was Tomorrow.</i></span></div>
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<br />Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-83262469845828434522012-08-08T11:35:00.000-07:002012-08-08T11:35:23.891-07:00The Way We Thought We WereA friend of mine once explained his breakup with a beautiful young woman from Iowa, "She saw the movie <i>Annie Hall</i> when she was a teenager and decided then and there she was going to be like Annie Hall and move to New York and seduce a witty Jewish guy like Woody Allen. After she moved in she discovered I was Jewish only on my father's side and was no Woody Allen. It was all downhill after that."<br />
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In the early days of the Internet I got interested in chat rooms. Now, of course, I use Facebook as a virtual time sink for semi-personal relations, but back then I had a lot of fun in a chat room of my own I called The Algonquin Round Table. I had fancied that the name would attract wits and wags from all over the country who knew about Dorothy Parker and the denizens of the so-called round table of the 1920s. For the better part of a year I kept it going, but I all too often I had to explain what the original round table was and try to keep the conversational patter at a level that would invite wisecracks and witty comments. People did come in as alter egos and one young woman dubbed herself Holly Golightly (I know it's the wrong period, but she was allowed in in the spirit of the game. She had seen the movie <i>Breakfast at Tiffany's</i> and obviously it struck a chord with her). <br />
<br />
To make this long story short, she attracted one of the young men in my vicious circle so much that one weekend he hopped a plane from Denver, where he lived, to meet her in Seattle, where she lived. The visit was a fiasco. I don't know the details, but I suspect he was expecting Audrey Hepburn to greet him as much as she expected George Peppard to step off that plane.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's common for adolescent girls to latch on to a particular image of someone they see in the movies to define their expectations of the next phase of their life. What then, I asked myself, did I see myself as? The answer came to me right away.<br />
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I was Leslie Caron as <i>Lili,</i> naive, hopeful, a little tacky, but oh so charming and elfin and young, young, young, like a kindergartner let loose among the grownups and choosing to play with the puppets. I loved that movie. I remember bawling out loud at it. I think I was it. And part of me still is. Do you know who you thought you were? How did that work out?<br />
<br />Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-2604850642738373472012-07-01T15:00:00.001-07:002012-07-01T15:00:30.586-07:00Amelia of Hoboken<style>
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<i>That Was Tomorrow,</i> a first novel that has begun life as an e-book and may eventually be published under my own imprint, has a Hoboken history and is not autobiographical but does deal with some situations that have happened in my own life. <br />
<br />
I began the book in Hoboken, where my leading character was
born. I would take young Amelia King through a privileged childhood with a nanny
from hell, a repressed woman with so many hangups that little Amelia’s only
refuge was in a game that involved torturing her teddy bear in order to save
him. </div>
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Amelia was born in the late 1890s into what was known in
Hoboken as the upper crust—the moneyed families who inhabited the mansions of
Castle Terrace and Hudson Street. I gave her a sympathetic grandfather who
happened to run a prosperous business, a dry goods store on Washington Street,
and a father who was a doctor with alcohol and drinking problems. Her mother
was the daughter of the hardworking Irish couple--the eldest, prettiest
daughter, somewhat inhibited and socially insecure. This backstory became a bit
convoluted as I had a beloved aunt rescue Amelia from the cold-hearted mother
and the evil nanny and take her to live with her family of four boisterous
children in Philadelphia. Amelia was enrolled with her cousins in progressive
Quaker school, and she decided early on that she wanted to be a schoolteacher
herself.</div>
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I sent Amelia off to Mt. Holyoke, which is where the model
for this character, Grace Rotzel, actually did matriculate. I kept almost
nothing of Miss Rotzel’s character in my creation of Amelia, as I knew so
little of what she was like. I didn't think about it, but through this character I was able to work out some of the problems of my own young womanhood and make this one work better than mine had. Amelia was to become, by her own choice, a “new
woman” of the 20<sup>th</sup> century and carve out a life for herself outside
Hoboken, starting with a trip to the utopian community of Fairhope, Alabama, to
study with the visionary educator Marietta Johnson. Like Grace Rotzel, she
would spend most of the 1920s in Fairhope, working under Mrs. Johnson, and
ultimately leave it to start a similar school in Rose Valley, PA. </div>
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One Hoboken chapter takes Amelia on a walk from the train terminal to her family home on Hudson Street to announce to her parents her decision to move to a faraway community to study the new approach to education among a community of reformers. In my own life the parallel was a discussion between me and my father, many decades after Amelia's awakening, about my wish to become an actress and drop out of college to go to acting school. By the time I came to the last draft of <i>That Was Tomorrow</i>, the chapter of the father's alcoholic rehabilitation was no longer in the novel. My father was hardly the model for Dr. King, but the scene certainly took me back to the moments gathering the strength to tell him of my plans. (In my own case, Daddy suggested I live at home and save money for the school myself, and I did just that, working as a copy girl at the Mobile Press Register for almost a year. I didn't go to the American Academy of Dramatic Art after all; at the end of the year I chose to get married instead.)<br />
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Most of the Hoboken stories had to be omitted to focus the book on Amelia herself and the life she creates. The kindly grandfather who left Amelia enough money to allow her to pursue her dream of teaching school in the remote, earth-changing village, is reduced to a few mentions. Descriptions of early Hoboken were edited out, some of them fanciful anyway (I had created a singing shoeshine boy hanging around the terminal, based on stories of the revered Italian singer Jimmy Roselli who actually lived in Hoboken a generation later; I reluctantly cut this character out of my novel for space.) There is affection for old Hoboken in my narrative, even though I never experienced it. Every step I take in Hoboken informs me and sends me into a reverie about the history of the city, and I hope <i>That Was Tomorrow</i> has enough of Hoboken in it to be of interest to those who live or visit here now. The e-book is available on amazon or from my website at <a href="http://www.findingfairhope.com./">www.findingfairhope.com.</a> E-books are the wave of the future, and you don't even need an ereader. They can be downloaded right onto your computer.</div>
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<br /></div>Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-4726386945466869062012-06-03T09:18:00.000-07:002012-09-27T15:21:50.486-07:00Dinner With MargaretMargaret called me a few days ago--a voice from the past. I was embarrassed that I hadn't gotten in touch with her since my move. At that point I'd expected to be seeing a lot of her, and no doubt I would have if I had just informed her that I had moved to Hoboken.<br />
<br />
I knew her in college, oh those many years ago, and got in touch with her when I was househunting and had all but decided on Hoboken. I remember asking her if people in Manhattan were still as reluctant to venture off the island and see their friends in New Jersey as they were when I lived in the city in the 1960s and 70s. She assured me that there were plenty of people in the city who went off the island all the time. Luckily, she was partly right about that. On the other hand, I still find some resistance when I try to pull those entrenched New Yorkers out of their nests. Some don't even venture out of their neighborhood (say, the Starbuck's at W. 92nd St.) very often at all.<br />
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But I was remiss in ignoring Margaret. I had a good long natter with her about living in New York when we had dinner in 2007. We talked about our college days and about Jerry Newell, our mutual friend from the art department, a unique and extremely entertaining person who lived larger than life and who left us in death some ten years before. Margaret was on the periphery of my life in those days, but was very close to Jerry and we both missed her terribly.<br />
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I remember when an upperclassman commented about Margaret that she had the face of a Modigliani, hence the reproduction here. She had a long, strangely beautiful face, glorious, flowing, honeycolored hair, and a tendency to be in the background, observing everything. She was very scholarly and made perfect grades. She could whip out a Dorothy Parker epigram when she felt it was needed, and, like me, she was fascinated by Jerry's wit and boldness.<br />
<br />
It was Jerry we had in common. Maybe that was why I hadn't contacted her; the association was and is still a little painful. But Margaret received the alumni bulletin that had my name and phone number, and she called to see if I'd like to join her in an art opening Thursday. I realized I could and that I wanted to, so I met her at the gallery on 21st Street and 11th Avenue and we went to dinner afterwards. She suggested a nice restaurant on 10th just off 23rd, which had good food but was noisy and crowded as New York restaurants tend to be these days. It wouldn't bother me except that such places require screaming, especially if your companion is 70 or older, may have some hearing impairment, and you have a lot to talk about.<br />
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What we talked about, mostly, was our college days and the people we remembered. I went to that school for only one year; Margaret had stayed on and graduated, so she had acquired a larger following, which included many faculty members. She reeled off names of some of the people she had kept contact with, including my old English 101 teacher, Walter Coppedge. She had spoken to him on the phone recently.<br />
<br />
"You ought to get in touch with him," Margaret said above the din of shrieking 30somethings accustomed to eating in the midst of clamor and chaos. Mr. Coppedge was one of those people who ignited me and set me on the road to writing. I remembered his class vividly. He taught us how to read Shakespeare, drilling down on all those light/dark, moon/sun, day/night images of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, and arranging a showing of Olivier's sterling film of <i>Henry V</i> at what he called the "local cinema palace." Coppedge was working toward his Ph.D at Oxford and affected an overlay of a British accent on top of his Rosedale, Mississippi cadence. It worked.<br />
<br />
My best memory of this professor, however, was when I selected as a topic for my weekly essay, "What I Really Want from Life." My friends in the dorm were more than skeptical. This was a tall order. I was sure I could do it, and sat down and whipped off a rather snappy, as I recall, three-page, handwritten on lined paper, treatise on wanting a glamorous life which included the requisite husband and 2.3 children plus the ability to be my best self at many endeavors. I remember that the prose flowed rather easily, but when I turned it in I had no thought that the essay itself would change my life.<br />
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Mr. Coppedge was a rather cynical man at that point. He knew
he was meant for better things that teaching mediocre minds at an obscure
little college in Alabama. He was discouraged because he hadn’t been granted
his doctorate from Oxford. He was hard on us. But at the beginning of the
class, he said, “Miss Timbes, will you meet with me briefly after class?” My
girl friends turned their heads to look at me; I didn’t know what to expect
that he’d say. Had I gone too far, reached too high?</div>
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After an
anxious class, Mr. Coppedge said to me in the hall, “ I’ve been having a rather
bad time since I got back here. I haven’t seen much of interest in this class.
I’ve been thinking I may have made a mistake to come back to teach. I had come
to dread the reading of the weekly essays. I sat in my home going through piles
and piles of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolute drivel</i> , and
suddenly I came upon your theme!” At
last he took a breath and tried to think of what to say to me. </div>
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“You can
write.” </div>
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He handed
me back the paper, with a 94 grade on it, no blue-pencil marks on the margins,
and simply the comment, “Damnation! You can write!” scrawled at the bottom. At the top was an A-.</div>
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From then on, my fate was sealed. </div>
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The day after dinner with Margaret I inscribed a copy of <i>The Fair Hope of Heaven</i> to Mr. Coppedge, wrote him a fan letter, and put them all in the mail to the address I found for him on the Internet. I also directed him to <a href="http://www.findingfairhope.com/">my website</a> and gave him my home address and phone number. I hope he gets in touch with me. Most of all, I hope he likes my book.</div>
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And yes, I'm looking forward to many more dinners with Margaret.</div>
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<br />Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-89719607734370313232012-05-19T12:31:00.002-07:002012-05-19T12:31:41.587-07:00Return To HobokenA few weeks ago I was visiting my daughter in Kingston, NY, and she told me about a cute little Craftsman-style house nearby that looked like something I'd like to live in. Once in a while, visiting her, I think maybe I would like to live a little closer. To get to her and my grandsons I have to catch a #126 bus from Hoboken to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York before I take the two-hour bus ride to Kingston. The bus from Hoboken to the city is a short ride--20 minutes tops--but sometimes I have to wait half an hour for that bus to come. Plus, it's a fifteen-minute (walking briskly) trek from my apartment to the bus stop. When the weather is bad I wonder whether it's worth it.<br />
<br />
But Kingston? There are lots of things I like about it. It has a historical section. It has a few good restaurants. And Alison, her ex-husband, her two sons, and her current significant other are all there and they have a lot of friends. On the other hand, it's a good two hours to the city, more like 2 1/2, and it is pretty much a distant outpost. I said, surprising even myself, "I don't want to move to Kingston. New Paltz, maybe."<br />
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I've written before about the adjustment to Hoboken after having lived 20 years back in my hometown of Fairhope, Alabama. I missed the Northeast and Hoboken was as close to the NYC I remembered from living there in the late 1960s through the 1970s. It has the best of New York, with easy access to the city, and the easy going vibe of a small town. An example of this happened just this morning at the A & P. When the groceries piled up I realized I didn't have the cash for it so I opened my credit card wallet to pull out my bank card and discovered it wasn't there! All the usual things ran through my mind, but first off I thought I had probably left the card in the machine at the bank when I took out cash two days ago. I couldn't picture a thief in Hoboken stealing my card, but ran through the litany of things I must do in case that happened.<br />
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I paid for my groceries with my American Express card, grabbed my heavier-than-expected plastic bags of groceries and headed toward home. As my anxiety grew I decided the best way to alleviate the situation would be to go five blocks out of my way to the bank first. On the way, I remembered the time, soon after moving to Hoboken, when I left my wallet with my credit cards on the counter at the post office on Washington Street at 8th. When I realized where it was, I hurried back and the lady behind the glass said she'd seen it, checked out my address, and put it in an envelope for the mailperson to deliver to me! I wrote a blog post about that. You bet I did. This time, I hoped that the bank was as friendly as the post office.<br />
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I went up to the window at the bank, which, luckily, was open until 3 P.M. on Saturdays. I explained the situation to the teller and she said, "Let's go have a look."<br />
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She asked my name, and when I said "Mary Lois" she said, "We have it." I guess I'm the only Mary Lois in Hoboken, and also I'm the only person who lost an ITM card two days ago, and everybody in the bank was waiting for me to miss it.<br />
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My heavy packages felt much lighter on the way home. Hoboken is a nice town in every sense of the word. And it's a town I feel at home in and am in no hurry to leave. Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-75313452485640339242012-04-20T04:26:00.000-07:002012-04-20T08:05:28.524-07:00The Band and Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is not going to be another obituary for Levon Helm. If you want to read such, the absolute gold standard for obituaries, chock full of stories about Levon Helm, was in the New York Times. Read it <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/arts/music/levon-helm-drummer-and-singer-dies-at-71.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120420">here</a>.<br />
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This triggered my own memories of The Band, Bob Dylan, and a time in New York when I was young. No, I wasn't a folk groupie, or a Woodstock alumna, or even a starry-eyed kid waiting for Bob Dylan's next record. I was in my late 20s, an actress working at temp secretary jobs in New York. I was married to an actor, Jim Vann, and we were both Dylan fans and idealistic folk music fans. We were just a little older than Dylan's demographic, but we loved hippies and thought of them as an exotic new species on the horizon. We thought they were the hope of the world. We were almost the only people we knew who didn't smoke pot or experiment in the drug scene.<br />
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I had a temporary assignment as secretary to an executive in a little music company. This was a mainstream company, classy offices, upscale address. All I did was a little steno and typing, and it was only for a couple of weeks. It was on Madison Avenue, I believe, maybe up in the 50s. I wouldn't know the man I was working for if he walked in the door today, but I can remember this: He was related to the Gershwins, and he was trying to persuade one of the daughters to give him the rights to record some of the brothers' recently discovered music. This would have been a huge get for him as the very young head of a small New York company. He was enthusiastic to the point of obsession about the prospect of making it big in the business.
When he learned a bit about my musical tastes, he told me about this great new sound, the band who used to be Bob Dylan's backup, who had rehearsed in a pink house in a remote town near Woodstock. He waved the album "Music from the Big Pink" at me, played some of it on his fabulous sound system, and after work I went out and bought the album.<br />
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The music was like nothing we'd heard before--and we had heard a lot of Bob Dylan, so we had heard some strange stuff. It was hard to think of these guys as a backup band for anybody, their sound was so unique. I'll never forget it booming at me on those huge speakers in that office.
Years later my brother, who had been at the University of Alabama at the time, told me that The Band had been booked to play at one of the fraternity dances the night before the big game with Auburn. He said they blew the audience away by focusing on their job, playing their kind of music, and at the end the leader--my brother said it was "the one with the big head"--simply said,"Good night. Hope y'all win your ball game." This was a departure at the University of Alabama, where the bands know all the dances are partly football pep rallies (indeed, it might be argued that most of university life is a big football rally). It is expected that, if not playing "Stars Fell on Alabama," at least most of the night will be devoted to local chauvinism. The Band had a different agenda.<br />
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I still have one vinyl and one CD of The Band. The music doesn't sound a bit strange or revolutionary to me anymore. It was part of an era, a shred of hope against all odds, combining sounds of the past and an uncertain present with the defiant throb of the future. The era has ended. We have all moved on in spite of ourselves. The music pulls us back and slings us against the walls once more, but more gently now, as if the walls were nothing but a distant memory.<br />
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I'm at a point in my life where I'm forced to let go of old friends. It's not easy to do, and sometimes, as in a particularly well-written obituary, I'm drawn back to a place and time I had almost forgotten, and I have to do it again. Let it go; let it be. Rest in peace, Big Pink.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-53958437046965624112012-04-13T19:54:00.004-07:002012-04-14T04:45:23.562-07:00Hoboken Taps Its Feet<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLAemob6YoB49c19FrIJdDq8NrbkxSWZZpIzydEdHrCeVIhHZO5qZKVTMqEOs83a4axTO6bNkf_5TMXBBabtTgIX6CiU0u1DkplnNmnhq08PMAvs8SUIB8v1tCmgpsUs0xqsrwjhYRdhcW/s1600/Putting+on+the+Hats+for+Web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLAemob6YoB49c19FrIJdDq8NrbkxSWZZpIzydEdHrCeVIhHZO5qZKVTMqEOs83a4axTO6bNkf_5TMXBBabtTgIX6CiU0u1DkplnNmnhq08PMAvs8SUIB8v1tCmgpsUs0xqsrwjhYRdhcW/s400/Putting+on+the+Hats+for+Web.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5731084720910100258" /></a>The scene is a church hall in Hoboken, New Jersey, where a former Broadway dancer is instructing a modestly talented class in the art of tap dancing. Each of the class members came for a different reason, most of which we learn during the course of the evening as we watch them magically become almost good--and we are pulling for them every minute.<br /><br />Hudson Theatre Ensemble's production of <span style="font-style:italic;">Stepping Out</span> by Richard Harris warms the heart and sets toes to tapping as it takes the audience through a labyrinth of frustrated hearts and semi-broken lives, all looking for an escape through tap dancing. As is to be expected from this excellent troupe, under the direction of Laurie Brongo, the play is fun and crisply performed. <br /><br />Cristina Marie plays Mavis, the catalyst as dance teacher, who is sympathetic and wise even though she is going through a crisis of her own in her real life. Marie is a dynamite actress and dancer, coaching the clumsy and talented alike. Somehow we know all along she's going to get the best out of all of them. The script is predictable although it contains many little side trips and not a few unsolved mysteries and unresolved conflicts. But never mind about that. Life is better if you dance, isn't it? <br /><br />The cast is interesting and each plays his and her own story at a professional level while admitting that if life wasn't so bad outside they wouldn't be here trying to tap dance. Even the pianist is frustrated about something, although it's less clear what. Dinah Gravel plays her quite seriously, with a bit of a sarcastic edge. I would have liked to have seen her really playing the piano, but I guess that's too much to ask. She had the role nailed, even with piped in music. <br /><br />Florence Pape is always a joy to watch onstage, and the audience loved her as Vera, the bossy control freak to whom tap dancing is an escapist pastime. Other characters have more serious problems, like Emma Peele whose husband beats her and who gets a powerful dramatic scene that brought the role into sharp focus. Gregory Nye played the only male in the class with a studied unease that made his inept dancing appear to be good acting. In some cases I couldn't tell--and in this show it didn't matter.<br /><br />The house was packed on opening night, and the air conditioning was faulty, which was a bother. Pacing could have been picked up in the first act, but that will all be worked out by the next performance, I'm sure. <span style="font-style:italic;">Stepping Ou</span>t will run Saturday at 8 P.M., Sunday at 3 P.M., and next weekend Friday and Saturday evenings and a final matinee Sunday, April 22 at 3. Hudson Theatre Ensemble perfoms at the Hudson School, 601 Park Avenue. Go--and enjoy the show!Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-39147649233664207332012-04-06T12:47:00.006-07:002012-04-07T07:45:42.000-07:00My Un-Bucket Un-ListsSometimes I think I'm just plain ornery because I seem to avoid things that everybody else really wants to do. I decided to make a list of them just to show myself what a contrarian I am. This is not a bucket list of things I would like to do, it's a list of things I don't care if I never do no matter how close I come to getting the chance. <br /><br />Things I had the opportunity to do but didn’t and don’t regret:<br /><br />1. Visit the Eiffel Tower.<br /><br />2. See a production of an Andrew Lloyd Weber show.<br /><br />3. Go to Disney World.<br /><br />4. Sit through a symphony.<br /><br />5. Go skiing in the Alps.<br /><br />6. Go to a rock concert.<br /><br />These are wonderful projects, things that anybody should want to do I suppose, but for the life of me I don't really want to do any of them. Before I began to feel bad about myself I decided to make another list, a list of things I'm pleased to say I have done and have treasured memories of.<br /><br />Things I have done that make me happy to think about:<br /><br />1. Read all of <span style="font-style:italic;">Don Quixote</span>.<br /><br />2. Visited Stonehenge.<br /><br />3. Walked through Roman ruins in Switzerland.<br /><br />4. Saw Ralph Bellamy in <span style="font-style:italic;">Sunrise at Campobello</span>, Andy Griffin in <span style="font-style:italic;">No Time for Sergeants</span>, Jack Lemmon in <span style="font-style:italic;">Tribute</span>, John Lithgow in <span style="font-style:italic;">M. Butterfly</span>, Kevin Kline in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cyrano de Bergerac</span>, Ian McKellan in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wild Honey</span>, Jane Fonda in <span style="font-style:italic;">33 Variations</span>, Sutton Foster in <span style="font-style:italic;">Anything Goes</span>, Bernadette Peters in <span style="font-style:italic;">A Little Night Music</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Follies</span>, Carrie Fisher in <span style="font-style:italic;">Wishful Drinking</span>, and the original production of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Book of Mormon.</span><br /><br />5. Heard jazz at Tivoli Gardens.<br /><br />6. Chatted with Ellis Larkins at the Carnegie Tavern.<br /><br />7. Had cocktails with Ralph Bellamy and his wife.<br /><br />8. Watched the fireworks at the annual Fête de Genève from a friend's balcony.<br /><br />9. Learned to use a computer.<br /><br />10. Wrote a novel.<br /><br />11. Saw JFK in person on the Senate floor.<br /><br />12. Started two theatre companies.<br /><br />13. Dined at Lutece, Taillevent, and Commander’s Palace (when Emeril Lagasse was chef).<br /><br />14. Shook Jacqueline Kennedy’s soft hand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<br /><br />15. Visited Rome and London by myself.<br /><br />16. Flew to Paris for a weekend with a lover I hadn’t seen in 30 years.<br /><br />17. Interviewed two American Ambassadors to Switzerland.<br /><br />18. Started three blogs.<br /><br />19. Raised a beautiful daughter who is one of my favorite people in the world.<br /><br />20. Created a character called "Grandmama" for two really special young men.<br /><br />So it's mostly coming down on the plus side of the ledger. I'm not finished yet, not by a long shot, but as I started on the lists the good stuff kept coming to me. I can continue the lists, but let me suggest something to you, my reader: Make a list or two of your own, and share them with us on the comment page here. I'd love to hear what you've done in your life, what you've avoided doing, and which you're proudest of.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-73333145539405257542012-04-03T03:32:00.004-07:002012-06-03T18:11:17.326-07:00Tom Pelphrey's Rainbow<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixvnzhN76aPO1EqfF53JkuJU0FTOKWK9RSiii6lZv_wTMP8qkyCEffadytQlG50ah6kK-ZgFHw6Me6pZXfFfffNYKHSoEFlADqTI-SV3_XzZmo3cEGEFCtY9C5eqAQPFe2roNCeRMxjeJe/s1600/MV5BMTM3NDE4MDY3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDgzMTA3MQ%2540%2540._V1._SX140_SY210_.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727120635490675106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixvnzhN76aPO1EqfF53JkuJU0FTOKWK9RSiii6lZv_wTMP8qkyCEffadytQlG50ah6kK-ZgFHw6Me6pZXfFfffNYKHSoEFlADqTI-SV3_XzZmo3cEGEFCtY9C5eqAQPFe2roNCeRMxjeJe/s400/MV5BMTM3NDE4MDY3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDgzMTA3MQ%2540%2540._V1._SX140_SY210_.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 210px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 140px;" /></a>I had heard there was soon to be a Broadway musical about Judy Garland. Why not, thinks I, we're so busy deifying actresses who can impersonate Marilyn Monroe and others of the era, and Judy is so accessible to the impersonator--ho hum. Little did I know. <br />
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I picked up the review (if you can pick up an Internet posting) in the New York Times this morning of <span style="font-style: italic;">End of the Rainbow</span> and was astonished to see a review that was nothing short of a rave from Ben Brantley. This is the paper of record for the theatre, and Brantley is a respected and articulate critic.<br />
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I'm reading along, about how beautifully the play is written, how astonishing is the leading lady's (Tracie Bennett) performance, and I hit upon a familiar Hoboken name: Tom Pelphrey. He is playing Micky Deans, Garland's husband during her final slide into drug-induced, hysteria-laced darkness. Brantley says he is perfectly cast. This means he's done quite a job--going toe-to-toe with a dynamite actress playing the role of a beloved dragon--and he's made the shadowy part of an also-ran type guy into a remarkably living, memorable character. <br />
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I first heard of Tom Pelphrey when he appeared in a one-man show in Hoboken called <i>My Italy Story</i>. My Hoboken theatre friends were blown away by his performance. It had run for only one or two performances in Hoboken, but I made it a point to catch it when it moved to The Barrow Street Theatre in the West Village. Tom peopled the stage with characters and held the audience in the palm of his hand as he described a young Italian American's journey to the village where his family lived in the hills of Italy. I came away somehow convinced that it was Tom's own story, that he was the one who had written it and was just relating his adventures in a vivid way. I look at the flyer I was given and see that it clearly names a playwright, Joseph Gallo, and identifies Pelphrey as an actor playing a role. He doesn't even have an Italian name. <br />
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I'm thrilled for Tom. I'm thrilled that the play is good. And I'm thrilled to be back in Hoboken, where a trip to a Broadway play is just minutes away. I'm hoping to see this one.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-83082574794724072312012-02-25T14:47:00.010-08:002020-06-10T04:51:18.169-07:00Remembering Howard Kissel<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5713495270443794114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQnVX0r8UcCZnGVu5rc1r6xjFy_CEnTSRpNho-R6qlsLxi_1Z-03IwvTt_scKVQGuqVmqKFabRo1fIb8-LFiv7vA3R-Gf2ChnRfd_Qxsqm-k9Sr5w-yZv7b3G_kiSAiA4Cc5sgUYhQFGF/s400/Howard.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 353px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /><br />
It is with enormous sadness that I report the contents of an email this morning informing me of the death of Howard Kissel, whom I have known since the late 1960s, and whose friendship I've cherished from the start. He was brilliant, funny, and a unique man. I saw him develop from a newcomer fresh from Milwaukee and dreaming of a career in the glamorous part of New York--the New York he and I knew from movies and plays--to an <span style="font-style: italic;">eminence gris</span> who was very much a part of that world.<br />
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Howard came to visit me in Hoboken in late 2008, when I had relocated here after returning to my hometown in Alabama for almost 20 years. This is the blog post he wrote about that visit, appearing in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Daily News </span>January 8, 2009.<br />
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Tuesday I took a journey that lasted barely 15 minutes but brought me into a totally different world.<br />
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Boarding a Jersey Transit bus at Port Authority, following the directions given me by my friend Mary Lois Adshead, in a quarter of an hour I found myself in downtown Hoboken, a place that until then had only been a name.<br />
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I knew its history -- it gave us Frank Sinatra and "On the Waterfront" -- but I had no sense of it as a place. I have known Mary Lois for over 40 years -- we worked together at Fairchild Publications in the late '60s, a quiet time in New York, when the city was thought to be headed for self-destruction.<br />
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We toiled in an old building on 13th Street just east of Fifth Avenue, which did not even have air conditioning. In the summer if the Temperature Humidity Index reached 80 and you had finished your work you could go home earlly. The one good thing was that we got, after only a year of employment, three weeks of vacation.<br />
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In those days Fairchild was still a family-owned business. (It would later be acquired by Capital Cities, ABC and finally Disney, which sold it to Conde Nast a few years ago.) Its best known publication was Women's Wear Daily. Mary Lois and I worked for what was the original Fairchild publication, Daily News Record, which had been started as a general business paper at the turn of the century Chicago World's Fair. As businesses grew in importance -- like women's ready-to-wear -- separate papers would be spun off DNR. A few months ago DNR became a weekly page in WWD.<br />
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When I was there DNR covered men's fashions and textiles. My career began writing about hosiery and underwear. Then I was given work clothes, soon pants, then sport jackets and eventually all of sportswear. I remember telling a source about one of these shifts (perhaps the addition of sport jackets to my other responsibilities.) "I hope this is not just a lateral move," he said, by way of congratulation.<br />
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I was indeed an intrepid reporter and in my coverage of work clothes I even ventured to the East Village, a bar called Slug's in the Far East (in the '60s that meant East 4th Street between Avenues B and C, dangerous territory in those days.) There I heard the not yet known Sun Ra and interviewed him the next day.<br />
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I wish I could remember who had recommended him -- I did not have many hip friends in those days. All things considered, I do not have many hip friends all these years later, which is why it seems so remarkable that I could have known about Sun Ra. The main thing I remember about out interview was that he costumed his Arkestra (his coinage) in fabrics from a store called Paterson Silks, around the corner from m office on Union Square.<br />
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As work clothes editor, I also did a tongue-in-cheek review of the latest Sears, Roebuck catalogue, for which I was chastised by my editor, Blll Taffin, one of the few bosses in my long career for whom I had unreserved respect and affection. Once a year he and I would go to lunch with executives from Sears. Whenever we ordered a round of drinks and someone said, 'Cheers,' one of the executives would say, with an impish grin, "And Roebuck!"<br />
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Mary Lois covered textiles. At the time she was married to an actor of the avant-garde variety, Jim Vann. He had a young daughter roughly the same age as Mary Lois's Alison. (I remember that when Alison saw her first Afghan she asked, "Mommy, is that dog wearing a costume?") Weekends with Jim's ex-spouse the girls were taken to avant-garde performance spaces. At some point they were taken to see a play in a Broadway theater and were enraptured by the spectacle of the curtain.<br />
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Mary Lois left Fairchild well before I did. At one point she married an executive with DuPont and spent several years in Geneva, Switzerland. A dozen years ago, when she had moved back to her home town, Fairhope Alabama, she invited me to direct Wendy Wasserstein's "The Sisters Rosenzweig" at the semi-professional theater she ran, the Jubilee Fish Theater, three of the happiest weeks of my life.<br />
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A year ago she returned to this vicinity and settled in Hoboken, about which she blogs on "Finding Myself in Hoboken." She has also written <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fair-Hope-Heaven-Hundred-Utopia-ebook/dp/B00CD9PA8I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Fair+Hope+of+Heaven&qid=1591789433&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">a history of Fairhope, a Utopian community</a>, called <i>The Fair Hope of Heaven.</i><br />
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She suggested we meet Tuesday at an old German restaurant called Helmer's, a block from the bus stop. It had the Spartan charm of working class taverns of a century ago. It also had an excellent steak sandwich with very thin slices of steak and gravy topped by perfect home fried potatoes. I wish there were a place in New York where you could get perfect home fried potatoes.<br />
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Mary Lois also invited Jerry and Kathy Anderson to join us. It is a sign of how naive the times were that dating between employees was forbidden but Jerry and Kathy had ignored the ban. When they decided to get married they had to tell one of the supervisors about it so they could take simultaneous three week vacations for their honeymoon. All this had to be kept secret, but their last day before getting hitched somehow the word got out. We tortured them mercilessly but they refused to come clean. Jerry continued to work in the men's wear industry, most recently as director of the Men's Tie Foundation, which recently disbanded. Neither of us, I regret to say, wore a tie to lunch.<br />
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One test of true friendship is that time is erased within seconds when you see someone with whom you were once truly close. I think of my four years at DNR as the darkest, longest part of my life, but there was deep camaraderie among the inmates, and our reunion could not have been warmer or more festive.<br />
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After lunch we wandered through the streets of Hoboken to have dessert at Mary Lois's apartment, a few short blocks away. The architecture resembled that of Brooklyn more than that of Manhattan, and there were a few buildings glittering enough to be on Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland.<br />
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Mary Lois has been delighted to find that longtime citizens of Hoboken have a deep understanding of their history, which they share with her on her blog. She had learned, for example, that Helmer's had been destroyed in a fire a few years ago but was restored to its original state from photographs. It is more authentic now than it was before the fire.<br />
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The discovery of a getaway, free from the cares of Manhattan, just across the river, has contributed enormously to my mental well-being as we begin a difficult new year. <br />
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*** <br />
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I'm pretty sure Howard didn't believe in heaven any more than I do, but today I keep visualizing him there, making the acquaintance of his heroes in music and in the theatre. How happy they are to meet him--and, well, he is in heaven.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-66684304994878134622012-01-13T10:15:00.000-08:002012-02-04T14:19:50.109-08:00Changing A LifeI'm about to do it again, but in a small way.<br /><br />Four years ago I totally changed my life by making a move from Alabama, where I was born and raised, to the New York City area, where I have felt the most at home in my life. I lived in Hoboken for one solid year before I decided to revisit the South again, first for two weeks, and then for the month of February. Then last year I went home in January for a month. When I got back to Hoboken it was still bitter winter--blizzards and freezing temps--and that weather lasted until the end of March. I decided to do the smart thing and take the months of February and March in southern Alabama from then on.<br /><br />And then came the winter of 2011-12, astonishingly pleasant and mild. A freak snowfall came on October 1, but melted away, and the rest of the season we've had no brutally cold days or nights (or, if it was below freezing at night, I slept through it in my cozy little place).<br /><br />Never mind. The plans have been made. The cottage has been reserved, a rental car requested, and old friends have been told of my imminent arrival Feb 1. Now I have to get out of my New Jersey state of mind and into my Alabama one. There is more than jet lag involved. I'm not ready for some football, although no doubt there will be some, nor many of the other activities that I know I'll run into no matter how I try to escape. I'll take some books, I'll visit with some friends, and maybe have a surprise or two. I'll be changing my life, but only for two months, after all. <br /><br />It won't be all that cold there--but thank goodness it won't be summer-hot either. Azaleas and wisteria will bloom. The bay will softly welcome me with its constant sound track of gentle waves. There will be sea food and grits. There will be comfort and smiles. Everybody will tell me how happy they are. The people who hate me just will avoid me and I will see many admirers and supporters. I shall avoid controversy. I shall stay on my diet. I shall continue to visit the gym four days a week. <br /><br />And I'll bask in pretty days and pleasant weather. I'll see a local play or two and join a group of friends at the movies. I'll gab and gossip over lunches of salad and have the occasional cup of tea with family members. <br /><br />And I'll start posting on my other blog soon--I hope you'll join me there. I'll be in Hoboken until Feb 1 and maybe run into you before I go. If not, I'll see you in April, when the flowers are in bloom and there is little chance of a blizzard.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-6269434429182968732011-11-28T11:42:00.000-08:002011-11-30T06:02:09.092-08:00The First Four Years<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrifFPjsxtcQR0orEK3pwGF6E3Bp32BeIA53IRcGmYcNY83NjtuoDMsWENs7FZw4ZqbI5n1Hu3uYNUZbV31_KM_IxNhI7IYg1I24-AzOfGQbG1ivV17UxhtKuR70Z4NZPFSIaWsb2uF6t/s1600/hoboken1.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIrifFPjsxtcQR0orEK3pwGF6E3Bp32BeIA53IRcGmYcNY83NjtuoDMsWENs7FZw4ZqbI5n1Hu3uYNUZbV31_KM_IxNhI7IYg1I24-AzOfGQbG1ivV17UxhtKuR70Z4NZPFSIaWsb2uF6t/s400/hoboken1.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5680134655996130482" /></a>There was no wonder I picked Hoboken as the place to relocate when I first saw it back in June 2007. The wide sidewalks of Washington Street were welcoming, the skies were blue, the people friendly as those in a small town. It had the self-contained feeling of a historical and pleasant community, yet it was only 20 minutes from the heart of New York City by bus or subway. <br /><br />I put my house on the market, sold 3/4 of my furniture and possessions--including my car--bought a one-way airline ticket, and packed my bags. I was returning north from the town founded as utopia to the one known as the mile-square city. I had lived my happiest years in New York back in the 1960s and 70s, but with the way things were I found it impossible to afford now. Hoboken would have to do, even though I assumed I would be spending a lot of time in Manhattan. That was four years ago. On December 1, Fairhope friends drove me to the Pensacola airport, where I flew to Newark and spend the first night of my new life in a Marriott in Jersey City. It was much colder in Jersey City than in south Alabama which I had just left, but I was prepared for that. The Marriott is in a neighborhood I know pretty well now, across from the Pavonia Newport Mall.<br /><br />I walked, that cold December day, from the Marriott to Target and bought a pair of folding chairs, carrying them back to my hotel room. There would be no furniture in the new apartment but an inflatable bed and these until the moving men brought my stuff from Alabama in a few days. I've been around long enough to know a body does need a chair or two.<br /><br />My furniture did arrive as scheduled, and I began to make adjustments to my new location bit by bit. I found that what furniture I'd kept more than filled the 800-sq.-ft. apartment. Luckily there were lots of big closets, and most of the stuff was shoved in. I bought a little single bed since the bedroom was too tiny to get even a double in comfortably. I was also able to use the little room for my laptop. I began my new blog.<br /><br />Right away I found a doctor, a dentist, and the public library. I explored Hoboken on foot and got a little disoriented looking for basics like the A & P; tried to adapt to the colder climate, and wrote about all my new situations on the blog. A compulsive blogger in my home town, writing about my life helped me clarify things in my own mind.<br /><br />The enormity of what I had done was slow to sink in. I had thought about the climate, the isolation, the difficulties of getting everywhere on foot--the blank slate that lay before me--and it all confronted me every morning. It was a whole new life. There would be no phone calls, no board meetings, club meetings, organizational meetings. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t experience this as loneliness, but rather as a transition to something I couldn’t possibly understand. It seemed like an opportunity, but I couldn’t define for what.<br /><br />I felt a little uncomfortable in my own skin, as if I were in a dream or on vacation in a place where I could speak the language but nothing else. I would get confused on the city streets, even in my old neighborhood in Manhattan. I took it slowly and didn’t push myself into doing too much too soon. It seemed as if my feet always hurt, from the walking and from minor foot surgery I had endured at the end of summer. I was never sure my clothes looked right--everybody in New York and New Jersey seemed to wear black all the time, not the bright colors and patterns I had been looking at in the South for almost 20 years. It took time to realize that this was less about Hoboken than about myself, facing a new phase of life in which I had to admit the person in the mirror looked didn’t look much like the self I had once known. <br /><br />Writing a blog about these things was helpful in surprising ways. Within a few months people were actually reading the blog, which had not necessarily been the case of my blog in my home town, “Finding Fair Hope.” On the Fairhope blog I had had a few regular readers, but most of them were people I had known in the distant past, keeping in touch with me from far flung outposts. I had about five regulars from contemporary Fairhope, and they were all people I knew who seemed a little uncomfortable about the thought that I might quiz them about the blog the next time I saw them. Hoboken brought me an average of some 40 readers a day, and they began to make themselves known to me by sending me emails and commenting on the blog. The blog posts about "old" Hoboken brought interesting responses and commenters enlivened the blog and informed me about my new-found home. I learned what Hoboken was like in the 1940s and 50s, about the making of <span style="font-style:italic;">On the Waterfront</span>, about the ice cream parlors and the Fabian Theater, Mr. Stover of Demarest High School and what it meant to be a b-n-r in those days. From Chris and Mary I learned where to get the best mutz in town (Lisa's); and I met Christina, who has been a loyal and kind friend in need ever since. I heard many stories about Frank Sinatra, and about the history of Hoboken as the birthplace of baseball and as a place of debarkation for the doughboys of WWI.<br /><br />As time went by I felt less and less like a visitor and more convinced that this was indeed my real life. I could hop a bus and go see a matinee on Broadway in less than an hour's time and I saw some great ones: Bernadette Peters in both <span style="font-style:italic;">A Little Night Music</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Follies</span>, Kevin Kline in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cyrano de Bergerac</span>, Christopher Walken in <span style="font-style:italic;">A Behanding in Spokane,</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Anything Goes</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Book of Mormon</span> and the extraordinary English import <span style="font-style:italic;">Jerusalem</span> I took my grandsons (who met me at the Port Authority Bus Terminal), to <span style="font-style:italic;">The Farnsworth Invention,</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Blythe Spirit</span> with Angela Lansbury, <span style="font-style:italic;">Avenue Q</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">All My Sons</span> with John Lithgow. I've even omitted a few, but I've seen a boatload of plays.<br /><br />I took part in a local reading of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Flora Dora Girls</span> by Hoboken playwright Louis La Russo II and met a number of Hoboken and Jersey City actresses in the process. I wrote reviews on my blog of the productions of Hoboken's Hudson Theater Company every year. <br /><br />With a little time and distance, my perspective on recent life events changes; I rewrote my book about Fairhope <span style="font-style:italic;">Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree</span>, retitled and repackaged it as <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fair Hope of Heaven.<br /></span> I surprised myself by writing a novel last year, set in the utopian Fairhope of 1921, about a young teacher from Hoboken who finds herself there, finds romance, and moves on. It has been rewritten three or four times now and is in the hands of its second editor. I've learned that it's one thing to sail through the writing of fiction and quite another to make it come alive and interesting (nay, compelling) to an unbiased reader. It's more than a project--it is a new experience. An adventure.<br /><br />After that first year I discovered the joy of going south for at least a month every winter. Last winter, full of blizzards and bitter temperatures in the Northeast, I decided to make that two months this year. I love the beginning of winter, the look of the city at Christmastime, the crunch of snow under my boots, but month and month of grey skies, layering clothes, and dodging slippery black ice, is wearing to the spirit. From South Alabama, I had become accustomed to a flowery and fragrant March. I shall spend that month where it is already spring, and when I return to Hoboken it will be spring here too.<br /><br />Wherever I am based, things keep happening to me. Over time in Hoboken I've made new friends. I have the option of lunch with a friend or the theatre in New York, a visit with my daughter and her family upstate, or a movie date with a nice guy I met online. People still ask me why I chose Hoboken, and the answer is always that you may not know it, but it's a beautiful little town. I invite you to scroll through this blog for old posts that deal with my growing affection for Hoboken and my life here. It was a good move, just four years ago, and I love living with the promise of still better things to come.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-84060933200356006482011-11-22T07:46:00.000-08:002011-11-22T07:51:57.434-08:00Thank You for My Gratitude<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDii_WTX7Dob0JqgkiHyXlgr0IkSgdP6g1saQxR5FeYBRiizgYYTAUHZ24qIwTaaDnogMQI4tdStNvKU2RRJamZVCZ6r7M3gReKbgGMbXPaJvwspalLv2k7Dm8lOI6ePTIKpClXA_zTv2b/s1600/Freedom_From_Want.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 119px; height: 155px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDii_WTX7Dob0JqgkiHyXlgr0IkSgdP6g1saQxR5FeYBRiizgYYTAUHZ24qIwTaaDnogMQI4tdStNvKU2RRJamZVCZ6r7M3gReKbgGMbXPaJvwspalLv2k7Dm8lOI6ePTIKpClXA_zTv2b/s400/Freedom_From_Want.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677848423936784994" /></a>It’s hard for me to think of Thanksgiving in the terms that other people say they do: Take some time every day to say something you are thankful for…Say grace at this meal by listing the things you are thankful for…If you had a wonderful mother (father, brother, child, cousin, etc), post this to your status for a day…<br /><br />I have no memories of a Norman Rockwell meal with Granny placing the long-awaited bird on the table to the sound track of oohs and ahhs. My mother hated cooking and we never had turkey. We did not have a family of cousins, uncles and aunts who gathered together for one or two big meals during the holiday season. I didn’t miss it, because it had never happened. I loved my cousins, but they were teenagers when I was born and they lived in another state. Neither of my grandmothers were living. I had one great aunt whom we all treasured, but she stayed home that day to cook the big meal for her brothers who lived with her. We must have celebrated Thanksgiving with something, but I don’t remember what. <br /><br />I didn’t have turkey until I was in my late teens, and it always just seemed like an overgrown chicken to me. I learned to cook it and had it often that first year of marriage because it was so cheap. I loved all the things you could do with the leftovers, and with cooking a whole turkey for two people there were always plenty of leftovers. The first Thanksgiving meal I prepared was one month after my wedding, in November of 1960. We had the boss and his wife over for the meal. It was a breeze as far as I remember, but all I know is that I made a cornbread stuffing with oysters. Probably I made pecan pie because it was one of the first things I had learned to cook.<br /><br />We didn’t serve wine with Thanksgiving in the South in the 1950s. There was no more drinking on that day than any others, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t much. There was no tradition of watching the game and getting drunk that has become part of the Thanksgiving ritual in so many homes today. I never saw the family brawls most people report from the tension of trying to create loving scenes of family joy and unity.<br /><br />As to the thanks-giving,I didn’t learn about real gratitude until I was in my 50s. I was at my first Al-Anon meeting and a man, leading the group, said, “Whenever I get in a fight with my wife, I stop myself now. I say, ‘This is not about her. It’s about me. I want to blame her, I want her to change—but all I can change is myself; all I can change is my reaction to her.’” I had never heard anything like this before. <span style="font-style:italic;">It’s not about her. It’s about me.</span> I was overcome by a feeling that I identified as relief. In these meetings, I learned that moment, it could be about me. “Me” was the only thing I could work on, the only thing I could change. <br /><br />It was several months later at another meeting when someone suggested the topic of <span style="font-style:italic;">gratitude</span> for the group to talk about. She expressed gratitude for a hammock chair she had bought for herself and the peace she experienced just swinging in it. When it was my turn to talk I said, “Gratitude! That is the silliest topic I’ve ever heard brought up in these meetings. I see nothing spiritual about swinging in a hammock chair…” The group laughed indulgently and told me that as a newcomer my response was valid and that they hadn’t grasped the healing power of gratitude for small things until they had been in the program for a while themselves. They went around the circle, as is done in 12-Step groups, speaking one by one, all contributing their notions of gratitude until finally it sank in, to me. What I had felt that first meeting when the the brave man spoke of fixing himself instead of yelling at his wife—the gift of being allowed to make your life about yourself and not about what some other person is doing or not doing. The feeling I had thought of as relief-at-long-last was not so much relief as gratitude. <br /><br />Like many intangibles (serenity, for example; and sobriety), in the 12-Step programs, gratitude is regarded as palpable, malleable, a tool to be sought and found. It’s even a goal, to be planned for, sought and found every day of your life, not just when there’s an abundance of food and good cheer around. Gratitude can provide a path to a whole and resplendent life. Finding gratitude on a deep level is part of finding yourself. In Hoboken, or in Fairhope, in the movies, in a book, in creation, or in discovering insights, wherever you might be. <br /><br />I’ve had many pleasant Thanksgiving meals, in my own homes and in those of others, and I’m sure a national day of thanks is a positive celebration in any society. The concept of gratitude, while suffusing this one day in most lives, transcends the day, the nation, the spirit and can bring a great deal more in depth and breadth to our lives than a day of eating, drinking, and watching football on television ever can. <br /><br />I’m looking forward to a solitary, simple Thanksgiving Day this year. I love to cook and will give myself something special on the day. But the most special part of the day is the moment of personal realization. The joy of gratitude itself. That is the one thing every human being can give thanks for.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-87035115224339806992011-11-01T13:20:00.000-07:002011-11-01T14:00:15.356-07:00Me and Wall Street<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmRhH5aYQgwKS6JNG_OVZge-4_5flK6YdsZmZp7b9O2lsPLWJPfNEsMvAcTEjvD1azmuZnx-MlT3Mt7SXkIhMTFcTko9dFC60PYu_mfnOIm3e5K2a2-CiXcVgWW7mcS0GIPyOFlRULTECk/s1600/OWS.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmRhH5aYQgwKS6JNG_OVZge-4_5flK6YdsZmZp7b9O2lsPLWJPfNEsMvAcTEjvD1azmuZnx-MlT3Mt7SXkIhMTFcTko9dFC60PYu_mfnOIm3e5K2a2-CiXcVgWW7mcS0GIPyOFlRULTECk/s400/OWS.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670129554793009778" /></a><br />For a minute after I got off the train at the World Trade Center stop I thought I wasn't even going to find the OWS protest. I had thought I'd just follow the crowd, but of course you don't do that in that part of the city--they are going everywhere. I knew Wall Street was somewhere off to my right so I started walking. Names that I recognized cropped up: Cortland, Vesey, Maiden Lane (I always liked that one). I assumed I was going vaguely in the right direction.<br /><br />I didn't relax until I saw a news camera pointed in the direction I was walking. It had a little maple leaf sticker on the side--I and a cameraman from Canadian television were off to cover the movement. I didn't want to ask, "Can you tell me where the protest is?" Nothing more uncool than that.<br /><br />Then, there it was. A little square filled with people, tents, and signs. The smell of Indian-vegetarian cooking was in the air, and young people holding signs that said things like PROSECUTE WALL STREET FRAUD lined the edges of the park. There were some 500 or more actively working in the stalls and I even got to hear one of those "human microphone" announcements. Everybody looked so happy and friendly I had trouble believing I was in the right place.<br /><br />It's a little too easy to say it was the 60s all over again, but that was what it felt like. Maybe cleaner, maybe brighter, and not so angry. It looked to be mostly people in their 20s and 30s. A lady sat doing her knitting next to a sign that proclaimed she was a 52-year-old grandmother, and, "Don't wait for change. Be the change." All the people seemed to be diligently working on something--either the Liberty Library (a section of the park where books of all kinds are donated and traded) or passing out leaflets like <span style="font-style:italic;">The Occupied Wall Street Journal</span>, and talking, explaining the mission and the movement. Nothing ambiguous about it. They were out of work and wanted to make their voices known. The top one per cent has all the money, we are not in that one per cent. We don't like being treated like undeserving children. We don't like that money dictates everything from where the jobs are (overseas) to who gets to be president--or what agenda that president follows. <br /><br />The signs were well made and elegant. One read, "WE JUST BOUGHT REAL ESTATE IN YOUR MIND."<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-4JDxlxGxB2N9UKFEG6_9W9AneHXqIyTs8J0odOvF6YKFLfh8jDXvkVxWdxxpbe2tYawhn9svlLDqTlzIYJRkbd_9ToxVGNAP6gojsaVIAoqMYV1ihTCa2x3tZy51vhGCM6N1YWsUh8q/s1600/IMG_1079.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-4JDxlxGxB2N9UKFEG6_9W9AneHXqIyTs8J0odOvF6YKFLfh8jDXvkVxWdxxpbe2tYawhn9svlLDqTlzIYJRkbd_9ToxVGNAP6gojsaVIAoqMYV1ihTCa2x3tZy51vhGCM6N1YWsUh8q/s400/IMG_1079.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5670133428095400850" /></a> Another held by a rather handsome young man said MEDIA: Please Tell the Truth about What Is Happening Here.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Occupied Wall Street Journal </span>is a good read. It's literate, upbeat, brief and to the point. It lists places where you can learn about the movement, or volunteer to help. It seems they need help in the areas of Outreach (mostly contacting commuters on the subway platforms and trains); Medical; Facilitation (holding daily training sessions on communication and mediation); Food; Comfort (sleeping in a park is not always comfortable, they need blankets, socks, etc.); and Design (this committee is responsible for the signs).<br /><br />If you want to follow the occupation, here are some places you can go: www.nycga.net or www.occupywallst.org.<br /><br />As for me, the OWS movement has already bought real estate in my head.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-23450498778012123872011-09-24T13:30:00.001-07:002011-09-24T14:08:45.712-07:00Finding Franz (Hals)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinDvPxTc0mFX_v3AnshsDoUMmzG7-XqpFdDJh83H_CPT9bSdPFIF6HtOy_pg_-I8SnZF8j7LnqS3zZcXa_nxDJCGgFzHCbZtWpl7Jk9EYrue4sEkBSvuFFrWxtHxKYJ6yVgyf8Ts3aqMwd/s1600/220px-Cavalier_soldier_Hals-1624x.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinDvPxTc0mFX_v3AnshsDoUMmzG7-XqpFdDJh83H_CPT9bSdPFIF6HtOy_pg_-I8SnZF8j7LnqS3zZcXa_nxDJCGgFzHCbZtWpl7Jk9EYrue4sEkBSvuFFrWxtHxKYJ6yVgyf8Ts3aqMwd/s400/220px-Cavalier_soldier_Hals-1624x.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656026419530974210" /></a>I remember a big book of art prints my parents owned. We three children were fascinated by those images and the commentary about them--"The Laughing Cavalier" by Franz Hals, "Birth of Venus" by Botticelli, and John Singer Sargent's "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose."<br /><br />First, that laughing cavalier, bursting right off the page with his joy, his ornate attire, and that look of devilment in his 17th Century eye. I didn't know what a cavalier was, but I knew a happy man when I saw one. "Birth of Venus" featured a naked lady, and my sister and I didn't know why the little boys in the neighborhood all wanted to ogle that one; but the Sargent could have been the two of us, working with lanterns in an overflow of flowers. <br /><br />The Metropolitan Museum of Art advertised a Franz Hals show which will run for a few more weeks, and I didn't want to miss it. I had seen some of his work at the art museum in Amsterdam, and regretted that I didn't get to Haarlem to the Hals studio and museum when I was in Holland. I made a note to myself to get to the Met before the show closed.<br /><br />Last Wednesday I decided, "Now or never," and got myself together enough to find my way to the Met from the PATH train in Hoboken. My friend from Hoboken wrote me this on Facebook when I posted that I was on my way: "Port Authority. Go downstairs to #7 Flushing, 2 stops to grand central, upstairs to uptown Lex. Ave. Get off at 86th." Too bad I didn't see this until after I got home--I had taken the train instead, transferred at 34th to the B, and ended up at the wrong museum. I got a taxi across the park and went into the Met. I didn't know the "suggested" entrance fee is $17 for seniors, but for a chance to see some Franz Halses, I sprang for the full amount. <br /><br />The Met is always awe-inspiring, with its white noise of hushed echoes of people talking and its elegant, old-world architecture. The Franz Hals were just right, a small collection, really, some on loan but some owned by the museum. It's easy to get overloaded with imagery at any art museum, and tempted as I was to try to get my money's worth by walking through other exhibits, I limited myself to the few rooms with the work of Hals.<br /><br />He painted peasants and nobles, whores and potentates. He had a stable of young painters learning from him, copying him (literally) and generally helping cement his place in the firmament of great artists for all time. Van Gogh is said to have been stunned by the excellence of his work. The legends accompanying this exhibition all spoke of his brush work, his slashes, and I was glad to have technical elements pointed out to me. But the overarching beauty of his work to me will always be the gusto of his subjects and the artist's grasp of that.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijD3Sg_kw_rXRrI8RjGP9XPTp6xPY8PsD0_YDeu3zm4FXL9FniuVuAVUo51FoshZ_KBGTzVHp_NUEYsiIzBDNloVWUa8FXZokJ3kYPeOkjf7mYrqQcfIMu4JFDEPPGKkgO2ny1yFkRnP1w/s1600/220px-Frans_Hals_008.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijD3Sg_kw_rXRrI8RjGP9XPTp6xPY8PsD0_YDeu3zm4FXL9FniuVuAVUo51FoshZ_KBGTzVHp_NUEYsiIzBDNloVWUa8FXZokJ3kYPeOkjf7mYrqQcfIMu4JFDEPPGKkgO2ny1yFkRnP1w/s400/220px-Frans_Hals_008.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656032909700435090" /></a>He painted court and political scenes, barroom scenes, portraits of reprobates and hookers, all with an unmistakable verve and sometimes a photographic accuracy. (I can only guess at that, since I never saw the subjects in photographs, but I'm sure I'm right about it.) It is a joy to contemplate the work and wonder and the genius who created it.<br /><br />Coming home, I still really didn't know my way. I knew I wouldn't find a subway on 5th Avenue as I strode downtown--why I didn't just go over to Lex I can't imagine, but I didn't. I walked ten blocks to the street that crosses the park and thought, Well, it's only a few blocks to the West Side subway from here, which was a mistaken assumption. I walked across Central Park, feeling embraced by the beautiful space so beloved by New Yorkers, paused at the lake and fountain, and trudged on until I reached Central Park West, then Columbus Avenue, and then at last my old IRT train that took me to the Port Authority for a bus back to Hoboken.<br /><br />I'll eventually know how make the trip easily. I have in the past. Somehow I always feel at home in Manhattan no matter how ritzy, how snobbish, how intimidating it gets. When I am there, I feel close to that young woman I once was, the one who had not yet gotten to Amsterdam and only knew "The Laughing Cavalier" from her parents' art book, the one who lived in a shabby rent controlled apartment and felt as if she owned the universe. She and I are close to New York still, and will always appreciate the fact that there is so much real art so near.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-14538435365982975662011-08-30T13:54:00.001-07:002011-08-31T06:22:21.207-07:00Life After Irene<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8KJggf3GrWHBzMB4OupEbKSZHJv3qxXsoZccv1pQKjYqTXuvRa65OMVjb3SzwGXWAjw_BIFTO6BtXqIqtODvVSBeKoioqY4jLKf7RYLN-zXkiF8l-NIzTmoegqQz5byOkQQVznVzZRnBi/s1600/9942548-standard-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8KJggf3GrWHBzMB4OupEbKSZHJv3qxXsoZccv1pQKjYqTXuvRa65OMVjb3SzwGXWAjw_BIFTO6BtXqIqtODvVSBeKoioqY4jLKf7RYLN-zXkiF8l-NIzTmoegqQz5byOkQQVznVzZRnBi/s400/9942548-standard-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647006810510983074" /></a> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Photo by The Jersey Journal</span>
<br />I've lived through a lot of hurricanes. There are two things I know about them without a doubt. (1, No one can predict where one will hit and (2, no one can predict how strong it will be. All those weather guys in their windbreakers grimacing into the wind and rain are just guessing, and often they are no better at guessing than the man in the street.
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<br />The word went out last Thursday and Friday that Hurricane Irene was going to hit near New York City Sunday, and it was going to be strong. That was enough for me. I left on the bus for upstate New York, where my daughter lives with my two grandsons, at 2:30 on Friday.
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<br />I've ridden out many a hurricane that hit the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay over the past 18 years. They are fearsome acts of nature, full of lightning, thunder, rain and winds that snap pines in two and slam them into nearby houses, cars and people. The power goes out and inside your abode you hover listening to the sound track that strikes a certain amount of terror into your heart, while you occasionally glance out a window at the show. Evacuation is an option but getting out will only take you to a slow moving line of traffic going nowhere except usually deeper into the storm.
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<br />I always stayed home while most friends, particularly those who had not endured the storms, tried to get out, but usually returned with tales of trying to get upstate only to find no lodging and that the hurricane beat them there.
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<br />This time, knowing Hoboken's tendency to flood just from a rainstorm, and living in the flood-prone area of the city, I knew enough to call my daughter and say, "I'm coming."
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<br />She lives in Kingston, which largely escaped the hurricane although there was some flooding and power outage. Her house was high and not exactly dry, but unscathed. In the early morning hours I awoke, and not hearing thunder or experiencing the flashes of lightning or even hearing wind, I looked out the window of my wee bedroom. It was raining, all right, in heavy sheets--and the wind was blowing it horizontally, hurricane-style. I was glad not to be in Hoboken, as I knew the streets would be rivers and the basement of my building was bound to wash away my stored winter clothes and cartons of old treasured items.
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<br />I was unsettled and antsy all day. Being dislocated and picturing your stuff floating around in dirty water can do that for you. I wanted it to be over, and to be home. Unfortunately the buses and trains weren't running on Monday and I had another day of peace and quiet to secretly fret about the condition of my building and my town. My upstairs neighbor, Mark, emailed that there was at least three feet of water in the back yard and much more than that in the basement, and my brand-new hot water heater there was submerged and probably inoperable.
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<br />Tuesday morning there was one big bus with the word CHARTER on it in the parking lot at the Kingston bus station. The bus driver had announced when he pulled in, "Here is your bus to Atlantic City!" and we New Yorkers stood on the sidelines grumbling. A few people were getting in, so somebody finally walked over and said something to the bus driver who admitted that it was the New York bus and he was making a little joke. Bus drivers sometimes have an odd sense of humor.
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<br />I was able to get home by 11:30 and Mark and his wife were working in the back yard, wringing out what had been in their corner of the basement and I went out at talked with them. The sump pump was working away but there were still a few inches of water to slush around in. I looked around but indulged myself by putting the major clean-up off until today. I called a plumber who can look at my hot water heater Friday.
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<br />My electricity and gas is working, my cable tv is fine, and I can shower at the gym. I'm going to the gym this morning and the rest of my day is going to be spent lugging soggy cartons out of the basement and sorting out what to keep and what to discard. I'm lucky--and we in this part of the country are really lucky that we really didn't see much of Irene at all. My heart goes out to the places that were harder hit.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-81257049733525385472011-08-09T07:25:00.000-07:002011-08-09T09:05:18.459-07:00A Tale of Three CitiesThis year I’ve been to three cities in North America—distinctly different cities, all apparently thriving and each offering a specific kind of beauty.
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<br />Minneapolis is thriving, busy, modern. It has an artistic side, an elegant side—the latter for the most part is in St. Paul, which for all practical purposes really is Minneapolis. There is an active arts scene in the twin cities with many theaters, most of them professional, a major university—and writers all over town, getting together, talking, teaching, and of course, writing.
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<br />I went to Minneapolis in early April for a writing workshop conducted by author Jonathan Odell. Jon is a transplanted Mississipian, so we had a lot in common as Southerners in a land where the Civil War is seldom discussed, nor do people necessarily sweeten their ice tea, and tall tales are reserved for standup comedians. We tossed around Southern expressions like, “He’s just talkin’ to hear his head roll,” and “It’s hog-killin’ weather.” Jon was conducting a writing workshop, “Writing in the Middle of Your Life,” at the Loft, which is housed in a spacious building on South Washington Avenue with a café, meeting rooms and classrooms—all for writers. A friend met me at the airport the afternoon before the workshop and gave me a tour of the two cities, saying all the while that I really should see it in the summer when it’s at its best. It was a cold early-April day and there was still some snow here and there, but the town, with its bridges, its wonderful modern architecture, and its sense of itself, were a pleasure to experience. We ate at a Pakistani restaurant and had really excellent food in a clattery, casual atmosphere.
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<br />Minneapolis seems a business town—intelligent, no-nonsense, with an artistic flair in a very controlled, intellectual kind of way. I viewed some of the historic sections of St. Paul and was astonished to find it was the old-money part of town, dotted with mansions and a beautiful cathedral. Its twin city is the home of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater which is housed in an award-winning new facility that looked to me more like an airport than a theater—but I’m sure still a location of many first-rate productions. Other smaller theater spaces abound in the city. I even was driven past a little Frank Lloyd Wright house with signs in the yard, “This is a private residence. No Trespassing.” How I would have loved to creep around that yard and peek in windows, but no soap.
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<br />I loved Minneapolis-St. Paul and hope to visit there again—maybe even in the summer!
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<br />Last month I went to Montreal, where my daughter is going to live next year. This bilingual city reminded me of Geneva, where I spent some six years in the 1980s. It is cerebral and artistic at the same time, with a softer feel than Geneva, I would say. Not closed. Not Swiss, let’s face it. Not quite French, but with that almost-American touch of Canada. It was clean and spruce, its neighborhoods green with trees; its international feeling unmistakable with the plethora of restaurants and citizens in the streets in native garb.
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<br />We attended an astonishing show at the art museum—a display of the work of French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. Gaultier’s work set the fashion world on its ear in 1981 with his extraordinary <span style="font-style:italic;">haute couture </span>versions of street and punk fashion. He’s been doing it neatly ever since, and this exhibit showed his designs up close (don’t touch!). Some were displayed on mannikins with hologram faces, whose eyes follow you, and who sometimes speak. I kept returning to the handsome black hologram, and at last he said to me, “<span style="font-style:italic;">Je t’aime</span>.”
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<br />Montreal is busy and varied, upscale and historical. I expect many revisits as my daughter works toward Canadian citizenship and a way to build a better life outside the reckless madness of her native country’s political scene.
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<br />I am writing this from the third city on my travels this year—Santa Fe. This is a unique little city, expensive and esthetic, with a distinctly spiritual tone. Its main attractions are churches, including the breathtaking little Loretto Chapel. Loretto has a legend, that the Sisters of Loretto who were working in the lovely little chapel patterned after Sainte-Chapelle in Paris needed a staircase to the loft and prayed to St. Joseph for help. A stranger showed up and built a spiral stair, using wooden pegs instead of nails and creating a work of art that was just the staircase they needed. He then left, not giving his name and not accepting any money for his work. They never saw him again.
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<br />There are Indian (Native Americans here still refer to themselves as Indians) stories of miracles, Catholic stories of miracles--the city is awash with tales of magic and religion of all definitions. Santa Fe has a "look," preserved by strict historical preservation ordinances. Almost all the buildings are in what is known locally as Pueblo Revival style, others are called Territorial style which look like Western traditional wood framed structures. The effect is unity with a certain elegance.
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<br />It has also become a major center for fine food. Not only Mexican, although that cuisine enhances most of the menus in town--there are top-notch eateries for Italian, Asian and Indian even molecular gastronomy.
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<br />There are concerts, indoor and outdoor, often at the art museums. There is jazz and country-western, classical, organized events and impromptu. Santa Fe is one of the centers for fine art in the country; contemporary and folk art museums and galleries
<br />are all over town.
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<br />Through it all there shines a city with a distinct personality, like a friend you want to get to know better.
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<br />Even the tourists here seem better dressed than in other places.
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<br />Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-68102954731720842602011-07-25T06:24:00.000-07:002011-07-25T12:06:35.530-07:00The Shaw Festival, Canada<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwZeKOaT0LkTw1ncpt91BPmsNdZadyBegmsWSmzTiUolCIKfngkb_FcT1YkrulkN27HZUhMKc54vmvOagvB0BX6dOv7Eh4EKsNbinUCxgFi6hyZeub3YCBAFJbLzDPVaFZMi9ewaCk7AC/s1600/myFairLady1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 317px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwZeKOaT0LkTw1ncpt91BPmsNdZadyBegmsWSmzTiUolCIKfngkb_FcT1YkrulkN27HZUhMKc54vmvOagvB0BX6dOv7Eh4EKsNbinUCxgFi6hyZeub3YCBAFJbLzDPVaFZMi9ewaCk7AC/s400/myFairLady1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633280509785707106" /></a><span style="font-weight:bold;">Benedict Campbell and Deborah Hay in My Fair Lady</span> <br />The Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada is a national treasure I had never experienced until a week ago. Maybe that's forgivable since the nation whose treasure it is is not my own.<br /><br />I had heard for years from friends that the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake is a delight, in a pretty little town on Lake Ontario, but not until this year I was able to make it. I saw <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Heartbreak House, The Admirable Crichton, My Fair Lady</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">The President</span></span>. They are not all Shaw, as you see, but the mission of the Festival is to present the works of Shaw and others who wrote in the same genre at roughly the same period in time and place. According to the notes from Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, "The Shaw Festival was conceived in passion--a local lawyer’s passion for the plays of Bernard Shaw which led to <span style="font-style:italic;">Candida</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Don Juan in Hell</span> being staged for eight weekend performances in 1962. That passion swept up a town, hundreds more artists and thousands of theatregoers. It led to expanding the playbill, developing an acting ensemble as its center, adding theatre spaces, and slowly but purposefully becoming an internationally celebrated theatre company renowned for its rigorous intelligence, outstanding production values and brilliant artistry; all led, still, by a huge passion for what we do."<br /><br />This is the most inspiring piece of writing about the love of theatre that I have ever seen; I do not know of any theatre company in the U.S. that would make such claims. One might think it hyperbole, and in the States I don't even know if it would sell tickets, but for a certifiable theatre nut like me the statement knocks the ball out of the park. It makes me wish I had been living in Niagara-on-the-Lake back in 1962 when the Festival started. I love the notion that the passion swept up the town--and the fact that the Shaw Festival is still a going concern, with crowds flocking to plays like <span style="font-style:italic;">Heartbreak House<br /></span>is testament to the literal truth of the statement. I've seen local rep companies in the States, most quite well-funded and supported by their communities, but I daresay few of them swept up a town in passion for their mission, not even at the outset.<br /><br />I always knew there were many excellent actors from Canada but had no idea how many were still practicing their art there in so many venues. The Shaw Festival is only one of many repertory companies that pepper the country. The caliber of talent is astonishing, and the enthusiasm of the audiences is encouraging to say the least. It reminds me of Edinburgh when I visited in the early 1970s--alive with citizens who liked nothing more than talking about plays. The maid in the hotel described her experience at <span style="font-style:italic;">My Fair Lady</span> (she loved it) in great and excited detail. The audience at all plays was a mix of locals and tourists, and some appeared actually to be younger than 70. <br /><br />I had to think that part of the difference is the removal of the need to be commercially viable; the many theatres of Canada must be line items on the federal budget, and have funding from individuals as well as corporations. The box office is busy and healthy because the country wants and needs a theatre but the boost from an enlightened government makes box office only one of the ways to keep a theatre afloat.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMs63ceVQKF_0DJvivDQH8CD2oVLF1uP8lcsU-uY3KcxQNdgegHbNq4svfOoVaPCw0bgOporx_f3Ejoa8bybGvpWEHA_s-5tUSosEAdSAt0m63wuSbFsjGmU6t-INk11JhGe5FJoTyRyhw/s1600/heartbreakHouse2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 337px; height: 294px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMs63ceVQKF_0DJvivDQH8CD2oVLF1uP8lcsU-uY3KcxQNdgegHbNq4svfOoVaPCw0bgOporx_f3Ejoa8bybGvpWEHA_s-5tUSosEAdSAt0m63wuSbFsjGmU6t-INk11JhGe5FJoTyRyhw/s400/heartbreakHouse2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5633367131804223314" /></a><span style="font-weight:bold;">Michael Ball in Heartbreak House <br /></span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Heartbreak House</span> was my favorite of the plays I saw. Here the actors seemed very English, perfectly at home in the period of the play and the nonconformist message. It's a difficult play, talky and demanding, with strange, fantastical characters and situations; yet like all of Shaw's work there is a clear point of view coming from the playwright. It had laughs, it had romance, it had charm--but the overarching message was serious and profound. The actors were more than equipped to the task, with perfect diction and Shavian logic and intellect. I thought often how lucky they were to be Canadians and have that little touch of the U.S. overlaid with a touch of their English heritage--and their specifically Canadian determination, brilliance and optimism. <br /><br />It is a theatre to be proud of. Now I look forward to finding the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and getting to know more of my neighbors to the north.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-27257355750189540552011-06-23T05:01:00.000-07:002011-06-23T06:07:57.043-07:00Is the Theatre Dead? Not on Your Motherf**cking Life<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwJoeAFTcilvwYehSkstfjbrJmWk4ZJ4_wPKdHjHCmqGL-EVN0acV-x0mw9BnINKdP5nwi0a1hcd071LTqi5ZjOpICX8I12KH8P5FcTu3EgLvkf3fjK2rizTcb_kX0uYMC-rG4rX_7jRta/s1600/The-Motherf-ker-with-the-Hat-Bobby-Cannavale-as-Jackie-and-Chris-Rock-as-Ralph-photo-Joan-Marcus.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 252px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwJoeAFTcilvwYehSkstfjbrJmWk4ZJ4_wPKdHjHCmqGL-EVN0acV-x0mw9BnINKdP5nwi0a1hcd071LTqi5ZjOpICX8I12KH8P5FcTu3EgLvkf3fjK2rizTcb_kX0uYMC-rG4rX_7jRta/s400/The-Motherf-ker-with-the-Hat-Bobby-Cannavale-as-Jackie-and-Chris-Rock-as-Ralph-photo-Joan-Marcus.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621384381943793858" /></a><br />I rushed to the bus to New York yesterday because I didn’t want to be late for my matinee of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Motherf**ker With the Hat</span>. I was in the mood for some laughs, and the show will probably close soon, so there was reason to get in gear and go.<br /><br />I made it in time, got my seat in the center of the back row (it’s not a huge theater) and could tell from the set I was in for a great ride. I expected some comic turns by the always irreverent Chris Rock, maybe a stand-up type routine or two tied together with a loose plot and a lot of people running back and forth.<br /><br />The play wasn’t like that at all. It began with a long telephone monologue by the extremely funny and hip Elizabeth Rodriguez. She’s playing a pretty if scruffy young woman talking on the phone to her mother and acting very much as if she is the mother herself. By the end of the speech she’s done a line of cocaine and had the audience howling with laughter. Her boyfriend enters, played magnificently by Bobby Cannavale, upbeat (for the only time in the play) and bragging about having landed a job. They are going to celebrate any minute—until he sees an unidentified man’s hat on a table in the room and everything in both their worlds changes forever.<br /><br />The set does the first of its own dances now, revolving, looping, furniture folding down into the floor and up from another part of the floor. We are in a different setting where our hero is consulting with his AA sponsor, who is played very suavely by Chris Rock. I was delighted to see an AA element effectively worked into the play, neither as the crux of the script nor its <span style="font-style:italic;">deus ex machina</span>. Just a fact of life. Like it or not. I for one love the 12-Step programs.<br /><br />Other characters come in, other sets, and as the play moves on we cannot wait to see what happens next. It’s so expertly written that the viewer doesn’t think of it as a string of long monologues woven together to tell a story, which, on one level, it is. The use of profanity is essential—this script elevates street language to poetry and raises the mundane, tawdry situations of everyday life of flawed, dirty, confused people to classical heights. It was a wondrous experience in the theater. <br /><br />When I first lived in New York in the mid-1960s, the theater was thought to be pretty much a dying elephant in the city. Plays were old-fashioned and the best actors had gone on to be movie stars. I have an announcement to make. Great theater has made a roaring comeback, and it is not going away. If what I’ve seen in the last 12 months is any indication, there is still a <span style="font-style:italic;">need</span> to explore our psyches and souls in this way. The playhouse was full, and not only with us greybeards either. There were all kinds of people in that audience, with all kinds of hair, from dreadlocks to perms and literally every color of the rainbow. Plays like this speak to a vital and dynamic audience, with a voice even we old-timers appreciate. I admit some of the rapid-fire dialogue went past me, but I was transfixed from the get-go. <br /><br />Was it a star turn for Chris Rock? Not so much as it was an excellent vehicle to show him as an actor rather than just an insult comic, and he acquitted himself superbly. More than that, it was a production that grew out of love, from a theater company of actors who have worked together for years, from the Public Theater to Broadway—a playwright, Stephen Adly Guirgis, who wrote from his own heart for actors he knew; and a director, Anna D. Shapiro, who approached the material with simplicity and vigor. Even the scenery by Todd Rosenthal whirled about sleekly and seamlessly, and appeared to be a participant in the drama and comedy of these lives. It was an ensemble of equals, including Yul Vazquez in an ambiguous role of a light-in-his-loafers cousin balancing the volatile nature of the Cannavale macho man; and Annabella Sciorra, who radiated rage and tenderness as the broken-hearted ball-buster wife of the AA sponsor. <br /><br />There is much in this play that keeps us on the edge of our seats. Our hearts are touched, we laugh, we are astonished. What more can we ask of live theater?Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2680602048847357735.post-73268253774488473132011-05-29T04:00:00.000-07:002011-05-29T04:05:19.112-07:00Looking at Memorial DayMemorial Day, I was taught, was started in the South after the Civil War. Widows, mothers, and others who loved men who had lost their lives in the defense of the South in that tragic war went to cemeteries often and put flowers on the graves of their beloved men. It became institutionalized as Confederate Memorial Day, within a few years co-opted by the bereaved on both sides. At first the women of the North set aside their day for decorating graves, and they called it Decoration Day; but over time the two sides came together to honor all who died in the Civil War under the appellation of Memorial Day, and May 30 was designated. In recent years the date has been made flexible in order to allow a three-day weekend.<br /><br />In the South, where many diehards still reside, there are pockets where Confederate Memorial Day is observed on various days in the year, but let us face it, there have been many more men lost in many other wars, and the memories of the lost Southern cause have been blurred by so many re-inventions that there is absolutely no point in defending anything about that particular war.<br /><br />Imagine my surprise in reading this in <a href= "http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28mon4.html?th&emc=th"> an article by Adam Cohen</a> in today's <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Memorial Day got its start after the Civil War, when freed slaves and abolitionists gathered in Charleston, S.C., to honor Union soldiers who gave their lives to battle slavery. The holiday was so closely associated with the Union side, and with the fight for emancipation, that Southern states quickly established their own rival Confederate Memorial Day.</span><br /><br />He gets his information from an impeccable source, <a hrep="http://www.yale.edu/history/faculty/blight.html"> Dr. David Blight of Yale University</a>, who has written several award-winning histories espousing this theory. In fact, Dr. Blight's take on that particular war has helped shape our perceptions of our wars, our history, and our racism.<br /><br />Well and good, and I hope I'm not considered a racist (but I feel certain I would be by Dr. Blight) because of what Memorial Day means to me. I don't love the holiday (except that it usually falls on my birthday), and I certainly don't love the Civil War or the Southern cause. I Googled Memorial Day and found many an entry, not all of which support the idea that the day itself has helped the country to proceed with ignoring civil rights. <a href= "http://www.memorialdayorigin.info/"> This one </a> I found quite fair and balanced, partly because it re-tells the old old story I grew up with, true or false. Don't miss the page on Mrs. Logan.<br /><br />Let us observe the day tomorrow with not receiving mail, finding the bank closed, thinking of the real meaning of each and every war, and also not forgetting that somewhere within the long weekend was my birthday.Mary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.com4