Feeling 18 without all the burdens. That’s the assessment of her life by one of the older women featured in “Advanced Style.”
No matter your sense of style, no doubt you will love these New York women who dream and live out those dreams.
Whether you are feeling creaky or don’t recognize yourself when you look in the mirror because you feel so young, give yourself a treat with this documentary. Maybe you’ll want to sign up for the blog for that ocassional pick-me-up!
The New York day was jammed – with heat, with tourists, with smells, and with action. Three museums, two plays, a movie, and a partridge…
Best of all though was walking the streets and letting New York happen.
Seeing “Skeleton Crew” by Dominique Morrisseau was brilliant enough in itself-so assuredly written and acted, characters thick with their (extra)ordinary struggles that transcend when put in Detroit in 2008. The genuine acknowledgement of the craft at its peak with sustained applause through two curtain calls. The wonder of discovering a gloriously talented playwright.
After, I had nowhere to be fast or slow. As I strolled out the door onto the sweltering street, I smiled at a woman sitting on her stoop (Atlantic is on a residential street in Chelsea), and she smiled.
A tiny women, all bent over, asked, “so how was it?”
“Excellent”…”so good,” a young man and I answered together.
“I’ll get my ticket,” she said tottering toward the theater.
The young man, so pretty and sweet and gay and put together, and I compared notes, admiring the playwright, whom he worked with when he first moved to the City. Turns out he’s 39, although he looked 23 at most, and an actor. Of course. We chatted amiably until parting for the next adventure.
I turned the corner, scanning for Blossom where I was planning to have a vegan burger with the onion ring and vegan bacon inside–crunchy and yummy by the way. I stopped in front of a movie theater playing “Love and Friendship.”
Nothing feels so good as the cinema on a really beastly day. Okay, I thought, I’ll just see what time it’s playing.
In 30 minutes. So I got a ticket, now involving selecting an exact seat.
“You have such beautiful diction,” commented the ticket sales woman.
“I narrate for the blind.”
“See there? I’m so smart. I just at knew it,” she said proudly, handing over my ticket as she peered over her cheaters with a smile.
I smiled right back, then went outside to find Blossom. The girl working as a greeter at the entrance to the theater looked with me across the street. “I don’t know it,” she mourned, throwing her hands up in resignation.
I went across the street anyway in search and found its tiny storefront camouflaged behind the only tree on the block.
After my burger, I found the same girl stationed by the door, and she seemed delighted I came back to report to her. We shared a moment about that tree.
The movie based on Jane Austen’s Lady Susan promised to be her most biting, with its true antiheroine. But alas it was unfinished, and the movie feels the same. Its sour cynicism is enormously amusing though.
After, even though the evening was still oppressively hot, I decided to walk the 20 blocks to the Broadway theater. Still in Chelsea, virtually everyone responded to my sparkly glasses and goofy grim with a smile right back. The tall, slim young man waiting for the 8th Ave bus, the bagel peddler, the barista selling iced, cold brew coffee.
My first sip exploded like a crunched, toasted coffee bean in my mouth, round, smooth, and strong. Was anything ever so delicious?
Of course, entering the Penn Station area, then Times Square, sobered me up fast, and I got back to people watching with my game face on. The two girls, all brown flesh and swagger, in their rainbow-colored, twisted balloon crowns. The three sailor boys in their Navy whites. Wait! One was a girl, her blonde hair braided and tucked under her cocked cap, and her thin, wire-rimmed glasses just cloaking her Times-Square-neon blue eyes. The long, sweaty lines of theater goers waiting for that first whoosh of theater-cold air and relief.
Summer in New York can be horrible, but its neighborhoods and people never are. The best part of any day.
Wonderful exhibits. I was captured by the shadows, creating new works of art.
Moholy-Nagy, Twisted Planes, plexiglass and steel, 1946 at the Guggenheim
Hellenistic Wrestlers at the Met
Zeus’ head and fist at the Met
Greek theatrical masks at the Met
Right now, it seems like the creative culture, in all its forms, is about the Cold War.
There are the two Oscar contenders: Stephen Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” and “Pawn Sacrific”e about Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky when chess mattered. Both films are gray-washed, cold things, as if we need some kind of visual reinforcement of the plots. Both are very fine films, the former marginally warmed by Tom Hanks; the latter not at all.
The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor tells the woeful story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg from the viewpoint of a neighbor. It’s a harrowing piece of fiction based on the facts. I dare you to put it down.
I just finished the novel when surprise, the new play with Linda Lavin has a doozy of a plot twist. Spoiler alert ahead. Absolutely stop reading now if you’re going to see “Our Mother’s Brief Affair.”
Lavin’s character had a long-ago affair, to the shock and discomfort of her adult children. Turns out, she had that affair with David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, who named names all the way to the electric chair.
Or did she? That’s the question we’re left with, as she states she has a moment–a moment when she was really seen. So what if he was a spy responsible for the gruesome deaths of his family? She and he had a moment. Or did they?
The play is clearly the weakest of all these works. But I was affected by the idea of the importance of moments, in it and them all, and the ramifications those moments can have.
Now, emerging, I hope, from this Cold War moment, I’m really ready for some color and warmth!
P.S. I initially forgot to mention the very fine “Trumbo” in the listings of Cold War movies this season.
Sophie Tucker was the original Red Hot Mama and every hot moment is explored in the delightful new documentary Outrageous Sophie Tucker. It’s new out in theaters in New York, and I saw it at the JCC. So keep an eye out.
There are all the typical celebrity talking heads and accolades, but also surprising insights that came from a four-year study of her exhaustive scrap books. She married three times and also had many female friends, implied as lovers. As a Red Hot Mama, she sang about the sexual pleasures of being fat with all the innuendos the era could stand.
I was genuinely shocked to learn that she started as a ‘coon singer’ in black face, because that’s the only way she could get on stage. She predated Bessie Smith and several other amazing black women singers from the 1920s who revolutionized the blues, singing in a jazz and (Jewish) blues style they must have known and emulated.
A star that made stars, she starred in the first film after The Jazz Singer, featuring Al Jolson, but she called it a “stinkeroo.” Her second, Broadway Melody of 1938, launched Judy Garland with her generous helping hand. She was friends with both Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover, finding the human in everyone.
The documentary will make you smile, hard, toe-tap to her wonderful voice singing the American songbook, and admire a woman who made it alone when no woman could. She established the American celebrity culture with her insightful marketing and pushed for racial equality and union rights. Plus who doesn’t love a proud, big woman? Here’s a sense of the film:
You gotta love these small, niche museums that are filled with passion and focus. Like the Witches Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, CT.
From the age of 13, Cortlandt Hull knew what he was passionate about. The son of a Hollywood-set-painter father and seamstress mother, Hull made Zenobia, his first wax movie figure, at 13, embellished by a costume stitched by his mother and jewelry from his grandmother. And the museum of horror movies was born.
Isn’t her movement wonderful? I think that’s truly the meaning of special effects!
Seeing how committed Hull was to celebrating the classic horror film, he was given and collected the tools of the trade. This “life mask” of Bella Lugosi was used for the actor’s makeup tests. Steven Spielberg didn’t realize the value of his original ET, and here it is.
And this Golem was used in the 1920 movie. Wonderful!
Carmilla, glowing in warmth (not), took us through the museum of wax figures, made by Hull throughout his life, his personal tribute to the films he loved. I’m getting in the Halloween spirit already!
Bella Lugosi as Count Dracula
The vampire skeleton, safely tucked away in the casket, unless…someone removes the stake through its heart!
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
The science experiment gone terribly awry, with “The Fly”
The original Werewolf. Hull did have some Hollywood help with the hair.
Frankenstein
‘The Beast” from the French version. This costume is sumptuous.
Phantom of the Opera
Definitely keep an eye out for the new documentary “Rosenwald,” opening soon around the country. Another love project by Aviva Kempner, who made the documentary “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” and another on Hank Greenberg, this film on Julius Rosenwald is deeply touching and profoundly inspiring.
JR believed ‘give while you live’, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that by doing so, he changed the culture and future of the U.S. He promised his young wife that he would save $5000, spend $5000, and give $5000. That was just the beginning.
Son of an immigrant peddler, he manufactured men’s clothing in Chicago, making his first fortune in men’s suits. Richard Sears was intrigued, ran an ad for JR’s line, and was swamped by over 1000 orders. Rather than pay his bill, he made JR a partner. Rosenwald’s business acumen perfectly balanced Sears’ marketing brilliance.
Then the real philanthropy began. First, JR funded YMCAs for African Americans. Young men who moved for a job needed a place to live, and Jim Crow eliminated their options. In Chicago, JR put up 1/3 of the money ($25,000) to build a Y, as long as the black community raised the rest.
Twenty-seven Y’s popped up around the country following this model. Booker T. Washington then showed JR how critical education was to changing the life of American blacks. JR had no trouble associating the KKK with the pogroms in Russia. He was outspoken in criticism of white America, and then he acted. Build schools for black children.
Again using the 1/3-2/3 funding split, this time, 1/3 came from the states’ board of education. Separate but equal. Washington rejected JR’s offer of using Sears Prefab buildings for the schools. Pride would come with community sweat equity.
JR was touched by the photos of the schools and the students
Lots of fish fries and collections of pennies, combined with the states’ and JR’s funds, led to an astonishing 5357 new schools across the South. Reportedly, one in three African American children attended a Rosenwald School. Some were burned by whites, but were rebuilt, often more than once, until the dominant community accepted the schools, and its concomitant risk of shared power that education promises. The whole process was a study in community resilience.
Several commented on how nice their Rosenwald Schools were
You would be astounded by all the cultural icons that attended a Rosenwald School, not limited to Maya Angelou, John Lewis, and James Baldwin, to name a shortlist few.
JR also funded the Tuskegee Institute and its later Airmen, who returned from the war with confidence and a sense of self that led to the Civil Rights Movement. Rosenwald’s Fund kickstarted the emerging careers of young artists like Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage, dancers such as Katherine Dunham, and writers including James Baldwin, Rita Dove, and Langston Hughes, along with singer phenom Marion Anderson.
Jacob Lawrence, Great Migration Series
Jacob Lawrence created his Great Migration series under a Rosenwald Fellowship. Gordon Parks got his start, before his FSA funding. And Woody Guthrie got a fellowship to travel through the South.
JR funded museums, housing communities, Jewish charities, and more, before passing away in 1931. The Fund depleted in 1948, after gifting over $70 million (consider the era!). Give while you live.
Influenced by his Rabbi, the powerful social activist Emil Hirsch, and the visionary Washington, JR personified tikkun olam–repairing the world with all his heart, proudly not becoming a man of his times.
Here’s a sneak peek of the film:
It’s not often than academic politics are the subject of a movie, and I’m not sure “The Historian” entirely succeeds. Still, here’s a film with a top drawer cast and an eery-thriller cadence, that was written, directed by, and stars a Latin professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. So there’s certainly an air of truth, as well as clear self-congratulations.
If learning, knowledge, and wisdom, plus where these fit into the ‘real’ world, intrigue you, I bet this film will, too. If you watch it, let me know what you think.
A beautiful, small film with a genuine relationship of two characters at its center. I found myself wanting so much for both of them, with some doubt that they would ever get even close. So true to life, but probably not quite like anything you’ve seen before.
I didn’t know the actors, but there a teen-hearthrob or two in there. Don’t let that, or Debra Messing’s brittle character, deter you. The tender cello theme at its center, like any affecting music, will stay in your mind’s ear long after the final credit line rolls. Enjoy.
The snowy weather makes us slow down, but here are two films about speed you may want to keep on your weather radar.
The Age of Love makes its point that the yearning for love doesn’t change at any age, but really doesn’t offer many other insights. It’s a documentary about seniors speed dating in Rochester, NY. Their event was only open to 70-90 year olds, so I had high hopes for age-appropriate, fresh fun.
Immediately striking is that the women looked a whole lot better than the men. I expected the participants to revel in the freedom afforded by age. But instead, I was mildly surprised that the women expressed the same longings they probably felt at 20–their lives didn’t have meaning without someone to share it with. One woman had not married, so her sentiments were especially notable. Does she dismiss her life to date as meaningless?
Both the women and men were either overly critical or not critical at all, in selecting people they’d like to see again. Just as if they were 30. They were needy, flippant, desperate, emotional, analytical. Just as if they were 30. The men and the women were hopelessly vain and as tied to cultural norms as no doubt they were at 30.
Okay, the point was well made, particularly to the Quinnipiac University undergraduate audience, who sighed and ah’d with each ‘cute’ thing a senior did or said and with the inevitable heartbreaks. I couldn’t help but be silently critical of the youths for their superficial, unknowingly belittling ways. Will they remember this film when they get a little age in them?
My friend and I did both laugh out loud at one point. When one woman arrived for a first date after the speed dating event, she said, “you’re not the right man. You’re not who I thought I was meeting. No, forget it,” and turned to walk back to her car.
The gaggle of girls in the audience gasped.
Then the couple basically said, fooled you. They had planned this prank on the filmmakers, and audience, in advance. Imagine having a camera crew follow you on a date. Well, with reality tv, maybe you can. We saw one man, pulling his oxygen tank, almost get stood up. Another said to the film crew, “time for you to go now,” as he waited to be fed dinner at his date’s apartment.
I’m devoting a lot of words to this movie, as the premise of seniors bothering with something as frustrating and frivolous as speed dating is intriguing. But I was hoping for a joie de vivre that age can offer, a sense that the seniors were free to take risks, to dare to be different than their younger selves. Instead, I left with a sadness that perhaps we never do change, let go of old insecurities, find a different kind of liberation as we lose the pleasures of a younger body.
Edouard Manet never had time to find out. He died young, at 51, of syphilis, suggesting he’d done plenty of living up to that point. But I digress.
Another form of documentaries gaining speed right now, and it’s worth a date, are the films profiling museum exhibitions. Manet: Portraying Life does a pretty good job of looking at key works, and few lesser known paintings, by the intriguing Manet. He was known as the master of the modern, showing us how the speed of modern life affected Paris in that 19th-century moment.
While some of the commentary is pretty light, following the speed dating phenomena of selling headlines to see if the buyer will want more, other moments are quite wonderful. Each profiled painting is shown with musical accompaniment, no words, for about 90 seconds. So we, as viewers, can simply look, or fall asleep, depending on how into it you are. Risky, but worthwhile, in that slow-looking mode gaining in popularity in museum education these days.
Plus you get a tiny snapshot of what’s involved in putting a show together. The series started with Rembrandt and continues with Vermeer, so take a slow look for these and speed up to get a ticket for a date with some art. I bet you’ll find it more gratifying than dating with the seniors.
Best Video has figured out how to adapt from outmoded technology back into relevance with live music, screenings, readings, lectures, and other heady events, just a short walk from my house. Today was the kickoff of a lecture/film series about Alfred Hitchcock.
Mark Schenker, Dean of Academic Affairs of Yale College, provided fascinating insights into how to “read” a Hitchcock film. We focused on “Notorious,” watching big chunks of the film, basically with the sound very low, analyzing why he used certain camera angles and shot styles. Plus the structure of the scenes.
The next time you watch the film, pay attention to the following themes. Notice how Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are regularly positioned with him on the left and her on the right. When that’s not the case, trouble’s brewing. Are they in the shot together, or does the camera cut back and forth between them, as adversaries? Are they touching and flor how long, or separated?
Also watch their hair. Her hair in their first car scene, 
which is bookended at the end, is loose, a metaphor for her notorious lifestyle. His hair is plastered down, unmoving, for his overly buttoned-up temperament. He is silent, unable to speak, certainly incapable of expressing emotion, which costs the two of them. Her mode is talking, another symptom of her looseness. The contrast of silence and talking is a theme among the other characters, as well as for the film, which has long stretches of complete silence, alternating with fast dialogue.
And then there’s the drunkenness. Bergman’s character is a lush at the beginning, out of despair. Then, she’s drunk-on-love while sober with Grant, followed by a kind of drunk again when she’s slowly poisoned at the end. Wine bottles make regular appearances, not only furthering the spy plot, but also to comment on the love affair. Fascinating.
So take a fresh look at an old classic. You’ll be amazed at how you can deepen your viewing pleasure.
“If Those Knishes Could Talk” is a new documentary about the history and future of New York accents. It’s a bit diffused and wanders off the point, but it’s still a loving look at the way the New York accent developed and continues to morph.
The film raises a debate: is the accent about the boroughs or does it differ by ethnic group? I like the arguments that went for the latter–the Irish, the Italian, the Jewish, the Puerto Rican, the German New York accent. Some compelling evidence abounds. The Korean man who sounds just like the Italians he grew up around on Staten Island. The Bangladeshi girl who fits in just fine with her Latina girlfriends. Great stuff.
My favorite insight? The deaf sign in accents. And the New York accents vary according to the debate above. There are particular signs for New York slang and distinctive signs for neighborhoods.
And then there’s Twitter. Linguistics are now studying language patterns among the Twitter feed. Dat sux!
So look out for it. It’s not a perfect film, but the nostalgia and stories are a lot of fun. Plus you’ll get a kick hearing from the literary and filmmaker celebrities. Here’s a taste for you:
A silly smile, a goofy grin, a loopy laugh. Through the whole performance of Orchestra New England.
Conductor Jim Sinclair arranged and narrated the program, filling it with entertaining anecdotes. “We’re dressed for the ’20s,” Jim said, but then his tie malfunctioned, “and I’ll have to do this sans tie.” As he took it off, a catcall came from the audience: “take it all off.” Yes, it was that kind of evening.
What were we in for? Musical accompaniment to three silent films. The music was provided by an abbreviated orchestra of eight members, but the sound was just perfect. Like those old radio shows, the percussionist Patrick Smith stole the hour, with his hilarious renditions of actors speaking, a horse clopping down the street, cops smacking into each other, doors slamming, the hot tamale, the flirting couple, and much more silliness.
So what were some of Jim’s tidbits?
I had never put together that silent films transferred straight from Vaudeville. They didn’t even have to come up with new material. This Charlie Chaplin film from early in the scheme of things, 1916, featured the Little Tramp (who turned 100 in 2014). The Vaudeville stuff? The classic duck-and-the-innocent-gets-punched schtick, the swinging doors routine, and roller skating slips and falls. Here in it’s entirety (with music by someone else) is the two-reeler (each reel lasted about 9 minutes) The Rink:
You have to admit that the “Stout Lady” was a very good sport. And did they speed up the film to get those shots? Goodness! They were all such athletes.
I had not seen Harold Lloyd before, and apparently of the main silent film comics, he was the sort of “normal,” leading man type. We saw Haunted Spooks from 1920. It’s filled with some dated black performer/minstrel stereotypes, but also one great Little Rascal who almost makes up for the other.
Buster Keaton certainly competes in high-jinks athleticism with Chaplin. Keaton was also an engineer and used physics to help plan his stunts. Don’t miss the moment in Cops from 1922 when Keaton grabs on to a moving car. This one seems to use that ‘when a moving object hits an immovable force …’ or, well, I’m not much of a scientist. Take a look:
This film has a kind of plot that exceeds the Chaplin strung-together routines, which is definitely part of its appeal for me. Poor Buster all the way through, and then at the end…
Now I will say that the music used on these videos doesn’t compare to the hilarity of what we heard with Orchestra New England.
The overture they started with reminded me of “Fractured Fairy Tales,” although this was “An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration No. 2),” which Jim pointed out meant there had been a No 1! It features familiar operatic music converted to fox trot and ragtime beats. “You can dance to it,” said Jim. Especially fun for you musicologists out there.
Check out a taste of it here. The overture did its job; it certainly put us in the mood.
The three films were accompanied by Jim’s compilations of Irving Berlin, Richard Wagner, Igor Stravinsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Charles Gounod, and more, but like you’ve never heard them before. He was not afraid to splice and dice the music, changing rhythms, fragmenting familiar motifs, and all so cleverly done that the music seamlessly integrated with the images.
I’m not sure if it was the pictures or the sounds or the combination that made my friend and neighbor Penny and me repeatedly laugh out loud, but we certainly did, with dopey aplomb. Wish you could have been there, too.
The New Haven International Film Festival is on, but I stayed fairly local. Lots of compilations of shorts, packages from D.C., Texas, New York, and Connecticut, some good, some not.
The film that blew me away was the feature-length documentary called “The Cardboard Bernini.” Connecticut artist Jimmy Grashow constructed a full-scale recreation of the Four Rivers Fountain by Bernini (above). Except Grashow’s version is made out of cardboard. Originally, he wanted to sneak the work into the piazza and leave it there. This was not to be, but the story is remarkable nonetheless.
He started working in this throwaway material as a boy, more interested in the box than any gift it contained. I’m reminded of the many hours of hilarity my brother and I got from rolling around in the back yard inside large boxes left over from refrigerator and TV deliveries–providing so much more pleasure than the objects themselves.
So I was predisposed to like this guy. I liked his art, too. He did a series of 15 foot high, caricatured figures scattered in space to walk among. While his series of 100 monkeys was considered “cute,” he was commenting on the impermanence and futility of human life. Emptiness was the theme of the anthropomorphic buildings in “Soft City.”
These serious themes weave through his career, culminating in “The Cardboard Bernini.” On the surface, the work is a bravura of scissors, glue, razored edges, and adze-formed curvilinear shapes. Plus Grashow invests the recreation with his philosophy. His vision: to make something heroic out of something no one wants, then allow it to be destroyed. He knew he was not going to pull a Bernini feat. Bernini–the artist who could breathe life into marble. Grashow’s intent was different–to fill life with the knowledge of death.
Unlike marble, cardboard is perceived as worthless, and the artist says it “is grateful to be rescued from the trash.” His intent was to rescue the material, work it, then leave the finished piece out in the elements so that it would dissolve. Life is impermanent. Our bodies are fragile and temporal. So, of course, is art.
One critic commented that Grashow allows his works to be destroyed due to being disparaged by his gallerist in New York Allan Stone. Stone left some of Granshow’s work in the alley, discarded. Hurt and humiliated by Stone’s apparent rejection, according to the critic, the artist recreates the experience over and over in his work. Grashow agreed.
But he reflects that more is going on as well. The fountain is Grashow’s self-portrait in cardboard–all bluster on the outside, and at its best, revealing of the inside. The natural process of creation includes destruction, just as in life. For Grashow, three years of work and a museum show at the Taubman Art Museum would necessarily culminate in an outdoor exhibit at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, and its ultimate destruction.
Grashow said he sees beauty in decay. The disintegration process also confronts our terror of mortality. The fountain became his vehicle, his grand statement about the impermanence of our finite vessel, our body.
At both museums, visitors could toss a wish into the fountain. Not a coin, the wishes were written on paper, and those longings, too, would dissolve with time.
Watching the disintegration of the piece over the course of several weeks, sped up on film, was moving, unsettling, sad, and actually painful, seeing the form de-form. Three years of work was washed away in one deluge.
The Aldrich and Grashow had a funeral for the remains, as it transitioned into a dumpster, its coffin. Popping the cork on champagne, Grashow said the closing event was like attending his own funeral. “It looks perfect,” he said, gazing at the remains of his art in the dumpster.
One of the joys of Connecticut is its natural beauty. I first fell in love with what seemed like a gracious place, when driving years ago on the Merritt Parkway. Well, tonight, I got some insight into how the magic of that road came into being, viewing a documentary called “The Road Taken…The Merritt Parkway.”
Like so much else, politics were important in the conception of the road in the 1920s, but so were values. Schuyler Merritt was a Congressman who wanted to create beauty in a road connecting New York City and Connecticut. The idea was to create a park, a very long park, with a way through it–a park-way.
Cars were not as common as now, of course, with only the wealthy driving. They didn’t want a parkway going through their estates, so the road was designed, winding not to follow the natural landscape, but to skirt the large estates.
Still, creating a road of and for beauty was inspired. Merritt and others with this vision were followers of The City Beautiful aesthetic, emerging from the 1890s and 1900s. Architects, sculptors, and city planners worked in conjunction to make cities better places to live. With beauty as a major goal, this road was designed for a time when cars “purred,” according to Merritt, and the drive was a leisure-time activity for the whole family. The results were meant to be “exhilarating”!
An architect was hired, not an engineer. Each bridge spanning the Parkway is different, ranging in styles from Art Deco to medieval to natural.
Poetry and lyricism were added. A metal worker spun his magic…
…as did stone masons…
…and carvers
Construction was mostly done during the 1930s, as a public works project that put many unemployed men to work. Here a bridge carving honors their efforts.
What also makes the Merritt special is the way it harmonizes human-made with nature. A landscape architect was hired to ensure that. He planted trees in clumps, the way they grow in nature. Larger trees were planted well away from bridges to create a kind of entrance to the bridge as a focal point. Like Connecticut, the Parkway has four-season beauty.
Apparently, John Lennon would rent a car in New York City and take a drive on the Merritt to clear his head and find peace, before returning to the city, refreshed and with new ideas.
My favorite story comes from the transition period just when tolls were no longer collected, and the toll houses were removed. One man reminisces how he loved the signs that read, “Toll House 1 mile ahead.”
He approached the Department of Transportation about handing out Toll House cookies on the day tolls were no longer collected. They said , “no.” Insurance, liability, blah, blah.
“No” didn’t stop this man. He had two women bake 750 cookies, and he placed them in wax paper bags. On the day the tolls were no longer collected, 750 drivers passed by a sign that read “Toll House Cookies 1 mile ahead,” then passed through the booth for the last time with a smile on their faces, cookie in hand. Try that on I95!
Try any of this on I95, add a little beauty to the mundane, and what a better world we would live in.
“We are certainly not invisible old ladies,” comments one of the ‘fashionistas’ in this marvelous documentary. Thank you to my friend Jane for sharing it!
Tonight, I went across the street to the Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center for a screening of the new film “Philomena” with Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, who also wrote and produced the movie. Tender and traditionally told, the story centers on a not-too-bright Irish woman who longs to find the son taken from her as an unwed mother in a convent.
The stories of the ‘Magdalene Girls‘, as these young women came to be known, is a familiar one by now. So you go to this one for the performances. Dench, as ever, is tremendously subtle and sensitive. The packed house stayed in its seats all through the credits, something I’m not used to in the movie theater. Some things are just best left to a good ol’ storytelling. Look for this one at Oscar time.
Exiting the theater, it’s back to the real world. A poster had been slapped onto a light pole–man and dog murdered, $60,000 reward.
When I led tours at the Delaware Art Museum as a docent, we received a gift of 50 conceptual and minimalist works collected by Herb and Dorothy Vogel. A beautiful 
documentary about Herb and Dorothy told the story of how a postal worker and Brooklyn public librarian were able to amass a world famous art collection. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you rush to it. So inspiring!
Now a follow up documentary is being released. It looks at the gift the Vogels made to each of the 50 states. 50 Works for 50 states. One museum in each state got the gift. In this trailer for the new film, you’ll hear my voice about 22 seconds in and then see a glimpse of my public tour they filmed. Apparently, more is in the film.
I hope you’ll catch a screening–opening at New York’s IFC Center on September 13 and Real Art Ways in Hartford on October 4! I can hardly wait.
When I first started watching “The House I Live In,” I thought, “oh, I know all about this.” Now, after watching this fast-paced, compelling documentary on the ‘War on Drugs’, I am humbled, saddened, and ashamed.
Taking a very intelligent, systemic, carefully presented approach to an issue we’re all familiar with, the film continued to take me deeper into the complex ways humans target the Other. The film lays out a human historical narrative, comparing, for example, the Holocaust and the War on Drugs, as “roads to destruction” continually repeated.
The documentarian started asking questions when he had an adult understanding that this War had a direct effect on his beloved housekeeper, ironically named Nanny. He grew up, with her, in New Haven, which is probably the best city in my experience for demonstrating the societal problems we have created and my personal complicity.
I know that these comments may make you want to turn away to some summer fun. I don’t blame you. But if you are a fan of “The Wire,” this film serves as an update, with David Simon as one of the major commentators. I loved and appreciated that harrowing series, and this film goes to the next step, boldly stating what I don’t think any American would want to admit. If you’re willing to go there, as hard as it is, I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
In the category of it’s-a-small-world-after-all, today’s lecture on Jane Austen’s Emma and the screening of the Israeli film “Fill the Void” I attended yesterday are completely related. Both the novel and the film used “economy of means” — just a word or gesture is full of significance. Not much is needed to get a whole world across.
Emma paints a social canvas of a small community in the radius of greater London, which had surpassed a million residents in the early 1800s. “Fill the Void” follows one Hasidic household in the teeming city of contemporary Tel Aviv. Both accentuate the vulnerability of unmarried women in restrictive, rule-bound communities. Neither suggest the possibilities of a wider world, in which characters have greater choice.
Given how relevant these issues are even in non-cloistered communities today, I needed some fresh air. I decided to walk the 20 blocks to my crosstown bus. And what a day for a walk through another set of small worlds. The lecture took place at the Columbia University Faculty House, and the campus was breathtaking.
I followed this bride for awhile before passing her. She was marrying in a traditional Korean ceremony.
Yes, there are temporary, tiny petting zoos in New York City.
And enormous cathedrals for the ages.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
The Children’s Sculpture Garden across the street from the cathedral has small works and giant monuments.
Spanish Harlem is a small world of its own, full of taquerias, beauty shops, and barber shops. I liked how the orange shirts of the barbers and the capes on their patrons were reflected in the mirror. I was too self-conscious to go for a better shot, to show the diversity of young and older men getting their hair cut and heads shaved.
And street fair season has started up again. On Amsterdam above 96th Street, it’s quieter than those further downtown. But all the usual suspects were there, including the booths with stuff that fell off the back of a truck, the jewelry stalls, food trucks, and this place which had attracted a crowd:
What interested me was how many small worlds I walked through in just 20 blocks. We all live in a small world of our own making. What a difference stepping outside can make.
If you are a Katharine Hepburn fan like I am, then get thee to NYPL’s Performing Arts Library exhibit in the Lincoln Center complex. Love the Playbills, over-the-top movie posters, photos (my favorite was Hepburn in trousers standing on her hands), and other ephemera, but it’s the objects that bring Kate to life.
Seeing Hepburn’s makeup kit led into a conversation with a diminutive woman, stabilizing on her walker. 
“She kept everything, you know,” the woman told me. “A lock of her baby hair, her first school books. She was an eccentric.” While the woman didn’t know Kate personally, she saw her on the streets of the Upper East Side and went to the auction held after Hepburn passed away. I think many New Yorkers feel ownership about Kate, even though she seemed to identify with charming Old Saybrook, CT.
You know how much I love hats, and to see the tiny, tiny hat she wore for Alice Adams, well, it didn’t look small on her. That powerhouse 
on screen was teensy. Of course, she always looked slim on celloid, but really. The size of the pants and dresses make me feel hugely dinosauric. Even in the late 1940s, when she was in her 40s, she had a waist size of 20 inches, and the gowns look even smaller than that.
Check out the Madwoman of Chaillot boa, and more, in the slideshow below.
