15.8.15

It is Nice to Love a Bug


A green Volkswagen Bug parked on a side street in Staten Island
Bug #1 — Staten Island, 2015


A green Volkswagen Bug parked on a side street in Staten Island with a license plate that reads Bic Boy
Bug #2 — Staten Island, 2015


A green Volkswagen Bug parked on a side street in Staten Island
Bug #3 — Staten Island, 2015

Love a little. Love a bug. Love a green bug. Isn't love nice?

Image Source: Greig Roselli

20.7.15

L is for "Lying Prone on the Floor at Manhattan Mini Storage"

Greig Roselli fishes out a key with a rule from under the locked door of a storage locker..
Looking like a bible salesman 
who lost the key to his storage locker, 
I lie prone on the floor of the Manhattan Min-Storage.
How I was locked out of a storage locker and fished out the key with a ruler:

Lisa told me to ferret the key out with a flat ruler. It didn't work! And we needed to get in! Can you tell I'm opening this post like the beginning of a badly written situation comedy?

Feeling like a cartoon character, I got prone on the floor vainly fishing out the key to our storage locker. Am I a bible salesman trying to get my Gideon bibles? Or maybe I'm a bootlegger and this maximum-security storage locker holds my gin. Or maybe it's a year's worth of three-hundred-paged-glossy-covered coupon books —those artless tomes filled with fifty percent discounts for edible arrangements and vacation cruises. Mostly sold by high schoolers raising money for track and field. Or some other kind of extra-curricular activity.

17.7.15

Writing About Teaching (Again!) — and When Superheroes Have a Villain Named Lester

A photograph taken at the intersection of E 183rd Street and Jerome Avenue by the IRT Jerome Avenue Elevated Line That Carries the 4 trains
Jerome Avenue has its heroes.
Teaching kids in the Bronx at the Francis Martin branch of the New York Public Library, I learn a little bit about superheroes and us as a class brainstorm some ideas on how to identify and fix problems in the neighborhood:

Writing about teaching is a go-to blog post idea. When I am teaching, I notice human behavior in a way that I do not notice outside of the classroom. That's why the classroom is great fodder for something to write about on a blog.

Teaching is about being aware. I know this to be true. As someone who is characteristically blissfully unaware, when I train myself to become aware I notice phenomena that had previously railroaded me.


1.7.15

Book Art from the Lamb Shakespeare for the Young: A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the Lamb Shakespeare for the Young, a classic children's book version of Shakespearean plays, the opening act of Midsummer Night's Dream is retold.
Egeus comes before Theseus to beg the Duke to command his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Lamb Shakespeare for the Young
Illustrated by Helen Stratton
1908
Egeus comes before Theseus, the Duke of Athens to "complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander."

It's funny how in this Lamb Shakespeare for the Young retelling, published in 1908, the author comforts his readers (presumably the young) that while daughters who refused to marry the suitors their fathers chose were to be put to death under Athenian law, "this law was seldom or never put in execution." The author also adds — and I am not sure Shakespeare makes such a big deal about this part of the plot — that fathers "do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory . . ."

In the drawing, Hermia is rather resigned. She sits. Her hands are calm by her side. Her father, while old, is a spry old man, and he seems animated in bringing his case before the Duke. Egeus is thoughtful like a student, with his chin resting in his hand.

I wonder if Hermia is seething with anger? Or is she just blithe and becoming, secretly humming a lighthearted tune? Maybe she is already scheming her escape with Lysander into the woods.

What do you think?
Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Lamb Shakespeare for the Young. A Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Duffield and Company, 1908.
Image Source: Google Books

13.6.15

On Being Right in the World

An E train waits in the station at the terminal World Trade Center station
An R160B rolling stock working the E line waits in the terminal World Trade Center station in Lower Manhattan.
I do not think it is hokey to think about what kind of energy we project into the world.
No matter how smart you are, what clever ideas you bring to the table, or what accomplishments you've mastered — it's all about how you are in the world that counts.

I'm not talking about broadcasting a veneer of positivity. Even when you don't feel so great, you can still be mindful enough to not let your own feelings seep out and be destructive. I know from experience that never works.


That's why we have art. And stuff. And tragic movies. Or hitting a baseball. Or running until your chest hurts (I know. I don't do that too much.)


Frankly, for me, I'm just beginning to come up to the surface of the water to breathe. And the air does feel good. On my face. The taste of pepper on my scrambled eggs.


Can you tell I am trying to make a breakthrough? 

5.6.15

Toyo Miyatake, Self-Portrait (1932)

Toyo Miyatake's "Self-Portrait" from 1932 makes a showing at the Whitney's first show at its new building in SoHo.
An image of photographer Toyo Miyatake's "Self-Portrait" from 1932
Toyo Miyatake, Self-Portrait (1932)
Miyatake's self-portrait is currently on display at the Whitney Museum's new SoHo building on Gansevoort Street.

The museum's first exhibition in its new building serves up a grand survey of American art.