Went to see the "Mini Midsummer Night's Dream" directed by Morna Martell and presented by Drama Tune Inc. yesterday at the West Side Community Garden for its final Sunday performance. (The Garden is located on 89th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue, and is open daily for those who wish to stop by and look at the flowers) Last Sunday the performance was canceled due to a 3 hour downpour. This week the weather held, and there was a good turnout- about 120 people attended. The acoustics were perfect in the Garden amphitheater, and the actors experienced in projecting Shakspearian diction. The audience of all ages and backgrounds followed the story with attention and frequent laughter at the right spots. The most delightful piece of foolery was Puck, played by Jenne Vath, who expertly herded her pack of fairies (played by fifteen neighborhood youngsters) through the machinations of the plot enchantments. Titiana ( Christina Malina)was the beautiful long golden haired fairy queen, and lovingly stroked Bottome's( David Lutzer) hairy donkey ears to the delight of our local pack of fairies hiding in the wings behind the tall Asters growing in Mary Lou Briggs Flower plot. The lover's mixup was an amusing trifle, and the last piece, a "play within a play" for the Athenian king was followed with great amusement by the audience. The cast forswore the timeless Mendelsohnn songs to sing pleasant unaccompanied songs by Ralph Martell. There is a special raindate performance Thursday, Septmeber 4,at 6 pm. It's a wonderful piece, enhanced by a lush Garden setting. I think I'll bring refreshments for the end of the run.

My Third Blackout in the City... New York was finally all the way back last night at about 11 pm, and the subways started up this morning. We were out in the country when it happened. I had just gassed up and we were up at Roger's Book Barn. My brake light started going on and off after we left the book store, so I headed for a repair shop. Just as i was going to pay the guy $20 just to look at the brakes, everything went down. The lady there said "oh no, not again", and said it had happened an hour earlier that afternoon but went right back on again. I got the impression it was something local or to do with their fuse box. They went off somewhere to try and get their computer up, and a guy waiting in line with us said $20 was too much "just to look" and that they got a good mechanic down the road at the gas station. When we left the repair shop, I noticed the traffic signals were out. When we got to the gas station the pumps were already closed with cones, but the mechanic immediately told me that the red light meant that my brake fluid was low. He charged 2 dollars to put it in. We couldn't get any radio stations so we thought the power glitch was a local thing, and decided to head back to the City. Along the way we looked with wonderment on scenes of people trying to get gas, closed stores, people sitting by the roads, and local Firemen, boyscouts, Police, and State troopers directing traffic at the intersections. In Fishkill Plains, people were emerging from a pizza place with pizzas so we went in to see about dinner. It was the only place we saw open in three counties. He had the old manual cash register and terrific pizza with real mozzarella cheese. The pizzas were being put together in the darkened kitchen in back of the bar by lantern light for the crowds of people and cooked in old gas ovens. We found out while we were waiting that the blackout extended throughout New York, and over to Cleveland. After we grabbed the pizza I headed back on the Taconic/Sawmill and West side highway to W 95 St and riverside drive ( no signals the whole way) and managed to miss traffic jams of epic porportions on every other approach to the City. The Bronx/Manhattan Hudson bridge was open into Manhattan, and there was practically no inbound traffic anywhere, including the West Side highway. The other side was jammed solid with traffic and throngs of people people walking home on the highways. There were no speedcops anywhere up in the country- they were all deployed at intersections, so I went about as fast as the car would go 85-90 the whole way back so we would get in before sunset.Once back, we parked on 110th and climbed six floors into the apartment to quickly find candles, matches and flashlights before it got dark. It was real hot, about 90, even with all the windows open,so we went back out to the car with the flashlight and sat in the car intermittently running the airconditioning and watched the crowds on Broadway and traffic jams. An event like this really gives you a fair idea of how many people are in or come into Manhattan everyday. The Police had set up red flares at the 110th Street intersection and were trying to control traffic, but it was impossible because there were so many pedestrians - people in business clothes with brief cases walking uptown from work and other throngs dressed up or in shorts walking down towards Times Square. It was weird, cause just one block over on Riverside Drive there were not many cars and practically no foot traffic, even on the wide sidewalks under the trees. We walked around some, to see if lights were on in Queens and over to the River to look for lights in Jersey. Some of the bars were open and letting people run tabs or taking cash. The V & T Pizza Sidewalk cafe part was open and serving pizzas, but surprisingly the Hungarian Pastry Shop cafe at 111th and Amsterdam was closed. The other stores were all closed and locked. Places like the West Side market with substantial outside merchandise had the help sit out in front in case you might want to take a watermelon or something. The guy in front of the Famous Deli had a baseball bat. WNCY was back on the air so we could listen to the radio and read some in the air conditioned car. About 1am it got cooler so we went back upstairs. I read for a while by the light of the big Pascal candle (decommisioned from Church after Easter) and went to bed. We got up early, and I was sitting in the living room when the light went on. Barry went down at 9 am and came back with a quart of fresh milk and the papers.

Blogomat... Just looking in the Times magazine again today and noticed the article by the older guy who ruins himself playing Tennis every chance that he gets, and how Americans have become big "consumers" of exercise. Our President is characterized as a "gym rat", people pay big bucks to join gyms with special machines to exercise, and I am constantly being shoved off the sidewalk or roadway by rollerbladers or cyclers intent on getting their exercise. They all have special little suits to wear too. Pastel shorts, little warm-up items with white stripes down the sides, helmets, kneepads, exercise bras, wrist weights, sneakers. Thus, exercise has been transformed into a consumable item, a consumable that can be referenced as a class item. The other day on the train coming back from Ocean Hill I eavesdropped in on a conversation between a young black man, and a white classmate he met on the train going to Manhattan. After catching up on grades and class schedules, the white guy asked where the black guy was heading-" Oh I'm going to my gym in Manhattan... You mean you go all the way into Manhattan to use a gym? Well yes, you meet better people, and the whole experience is just better in Manhattan...." I ride a bike for basic transportation inside the City. I've been riding a bike for just about my whole life for transportation, first as a protest against automobile culture in Buffalo where I grew up, then as cheap transportation in Germany where it cost over a thousand marks to get a license in lessons fees, and finally in New York, where I rode a bike to my job in midtown everyday until they laid us off. During the nineties, I got a car as a gift, and became a car owner for the first time in my adult life. We use the Buick to go outside the City and on vacations, but still use the bike to get around town- no parking muss, quick routes through traffic, nice routes through parks, no subway or bus fare. The exercise has been a pretty secondary reason for owning a bike - a cheap one that doesn't get stolen more than every two or three years. Everyday on the elevator, my nesighbors confuse me with one who is part of the exercise culture- "Oh, are you going out for exercise? Do you ride in the park? " I nicely but pointedly say, "No, I am going to a meeting", or "I have errands to run. " I wonder how much longer the guy who ruins himself playing tennis, or the young black guy that rides into Manhattan just to use a better class of gym, will keep on exercising. I wonder if the tennis guy rides to the courts in a big black SUV, like many of my neighbors, even in the upper west side of Manhattan. When did exercise become something that was the province of the rich ( or middle class) and the young, or those aspiring to be young and/or rich? How come when I travel outside the City I rarely see anyone outside walking or riding a bike dressed in normal clothes as if they were heading to church, or a shopping center? I wonder how exercise, which used to be an inevitable part of everyday life performed by everyone as part of going about their normal daily business, became a class conscious consumable item.

In the bushes...Looking at the shrub on TV this week, I flashed on an image of the inside his head - that if you could lift off the top of his head and peer inside you'd see a little brown leather brain, wheezing like a tiny bellows when the shrub cogitated about those bothersome things like what he calls the "skepticists," or tried to remember the name of the country that his good friend Tony Blair represents. Like two tiny leather footballs stuck together...

More slow burn...Look, I know the term "burn rate" has been around for a while in places like venture capital firms...I've just never heard it applied by high level government officials to a war in front of nationwide TV before. A Secretary of Defense that refers to the use of our taxes as the "burn rate" in a war that's not really over and where people are getting killed doesn't really inspire much confidence. What's the insider slang for the deaths over there? "broken units?" The government usually doesn't give us an inside view of what they really think about us on national TV. Of course we all know that this gang is in high office because they are ambitious and want power, and not particularly interested in helping people, serving the public, saving money, educating children, or making our country better and a good place to live for everyone. But this is the first time I remember hearing officials in an administration talk the talk that they use behind the scenes right out in the open. And how does that term jibe with a deliberate manipulation of intelligence to get them the war they want? And, after hearing how they really feel about us, how are we supposed to swallow the platitudes dished out to us about freedom, liberty, and being a shining beacon of democracy for the world? How do you justify the two persona's here- the President who gets up every day to read his Bible and tells us that "Amurrica is being tested" and an administration that talks about the "burn rate" for our money? Or how about that guy Brenner on "Meet the Press" this morning who, when asked about the four soldiers killed in an ambush yesterday, included in his answer talk about how the tide of forces for freedom and justice were on the rise. How can we take that seriously? Can you imagine if four people were ambushed up on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and Commissioner Kelly told a reporter that " the tide of justice is rising in New York" ? There are definitely some unmatched codes here- one behind the scenes a group of testosterone driven, power mad, oil glutted elite power queens, and the other- a pious, Jesus saved, prayerful simple folk face, who just wants us to all get along., but "he's going to get those evil varmits who are causing all thet ruckus over there..." Come to think of it, I'll take the power mad millionaires...

NY Cowboy- 6-23-2003
Broadway Cowboy


A couple of weeks ago at about 7 p.m. we were cruising up and down Broadway in my Buick, looking for the store Judy remembered that had blueberries for $2 a pint and came upon a cowboy in full cowboy work gear with his horse on the west side of Broadway at 94th Street.

Judy whipped out her digital camera and took a picture [which i am unable to post here because technical difficulties] as I exhorted her to "get in the buildings... No one will believe this is New York unless you get the buildings into the picture..." The Cowboy had parked his horse at a parking meter, and without putting any quarters into the meter, went into a fruit and vegetable market to buy carrots and Romaine lettuce, which he fed to his horse. There is a car parked on the expired meter, behind the horse, but it moved out just after we took the picture. The person with the car came across Broadway, glanced at the horse, got into the car and pulled out when traffic was clear, without any acknowledgment of the horse obstacle, other than avoiding it and not blowing their horn. The pedestrians were equally blasé- about one in 3 actually looked, and the only people besides Judy and I that stopped were some tourists from out of town who actually engaged the Cowboy in conversation. (We could tell they were tourists cause they had on pink and blue pastel jersey shorts and tops that tourists wear.) I was double parked in front of the Whole Foods supermarket and didn’t want to leave the car, so I didn’t find out the pertinent information like "where are you from...where does your horse sleep at night?" We found the blueberries at Barzzinis, but when we went back to see the cowboy again he was gone- disappeared into the sunset over New Jersey.

Just as a matter of mild interest, since I am deep in the throes of amending my 2002 taxes just what is that thing that the white house refers to as our current "burn rate" in Iraq? The first time I ever heard the term burn rate was out of Rummy-(one of my all time faves) on Sunday July 13 with George Stephanopolis. It just slithered out, "Burn Rate" and George didn't bat an eyelash. Emboldened, Rummy started slinging the term around more and more- "burn rate burn rate for this..., burn rate that we had thought..., but the burn rate can't be calculated for the future cause we don't know the future...". Now< Tuesday on the Newshour I heard the Whitehouse head of Office of Management and Budget - and he suddenly outed with the term "burn rate" too- giving a sly smile as he said it, as if it is a piece of insider slange that they are letting us in on-. He gave the burn rate as being over 4.2 Billion- somehwat highter than Rummy's 3.9 burn rate even though it was only a couple of days later. And how come none of those news guys ask them about the term "burn rate"?
Just what is it that "burns?" Is that our money? Do they just burn it? Will there be any money to return to me if I am due a tax cut? Is that why they are implementing tax cuts? Because they don't want us to get too mad about the fact that they are just "burning it"? Where are they burning it? Do they have a big bar-b-que in downtown Baghdad where they burn money? Couldn't they just burn oil instead and let me have my money back instead of burning it?? ?