Manhattan is covered in a screaming white down blanket.
August 23, 2007: 97 degrees and humid:
-I remember building forts out of the mountainous snow banks made by the enormous yellow robots near the playground at Donges Bay - we'd dig holes through the sides, two people on each side to dig and dig and dig until our little gloves were soaked and our fingers were tiny icicles. We'd finally get through, widen the tunnel, and sit inside until the bell rang.
-Sliding around on the ice cover one of the Twin Lakes in West Bend with the whole Camin family and the whole Mattingly family, wearing puffy, light blue full body snow suit.
-Ice skating at Stormath with dad, who had to lace up and tie my ice skates for me. We'd skate around and then come in from the cold and sip hot chocolate from his thermos. He'd tell us stories of three brothers stuck in an underwater tornado of another world, as we stuck our dripping blades on the fireplace.
-Sledding at Meequon Hill with friends, somehow always sledding slantways, straight for the orange fence on the westernmost edge of the hill.
-Waking up every winter Saturday morning and heading for Laake & Joy's to board a bus which took us to Little Switzerland, Sunburst, or Wilmont. The bus rides were usually the highlight, flirting with the foul-mouthed boys and being mean to the frostbitten girls.
-Traipsing through three feet of snow between the trees and over the deer tracks on our property with dad, navigating our way to where our cabin would soon stand.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Scholastic: 1 Year Review
A series of stairs and elevators parade and slide me into and out of my day...after day...after day, and from February 5, 2009 to February 5, 2010, I've learned...
Title means book.
Advance means $$$$.
That there are clues. 39 of them. And everyone in the world wants to know them.
That this guy puts my rent check in my landlord's slot, with a magical wave of his wand.
That you can be 27 and write amazing books.
I can write 45 emails in one hour.
If you stare at a screen for too long, your mind/soul/creative juices go blank.
That the food is delectable in Italy and the efficiency is incredible in Germany.
That the art in a picture book can be just as stunning as the words.
That liquids are essential: coffee in the morning, water throughout, and wine afterwards.
That I am a human chess piece.
That employment means security, contact lenses, education, satisfaction...
...but it is binding, taxing, at times degrading, and has bogarted my sense of freedom.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Words of Scott Turner. Because, Wow.
I love Brooklyn.
I hate Brooklyn.
Is it any wonder these battling eternities go hand in hand?
Somewhere in the recent past, Brooklyn turned into "Brooklyn." To use one of Mayor Bloomberg's more jackassed constructs, Brooklyn has become a "destination." What does that mean? For starters, it's something for visitors to Brooklyn, not the people who live here. We're already here. How can it be a destination?
Normally, that kind of idea would just be a mostly-harmless tourism inducement. But with jackals like Bloomberg and Markowitz, it's far more harmful and insidious.
Bloomberg has made a mayoral career out of keeping his hands clean when they're dirty beyond all measures of political hygiene. He throws more money and legal bribery around than Boss Tweed ever dreamed, all the while the local media and citizenry letting him scamper back to the Upper East Side, unaffected and untroubled.
Hizzoner doesn't do the hard work on issues that has residents screaming -- affordable housing, job creation, education. Instead, he focuses on big-ticket projects that only enrich real-estate friends of his -- the new Mets stadium, the new Yankees stadium, Atlantic Yards, Willets Point, Columbia expansion, Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning, Coney Island, 4th Avenue upscaling, the West Side Stadium, the 7 train extension, the Hudson Yards, the Olympic bid.
You know what? Marty Markowitz is the most Manhattan-centric guy in the borough. He wants an NBA team...like Manhattan has. He wants tall office and condo buildings...like Manhattan has. He wants an onslaught of tourists...like Manhattan has. He wants a huge sports arena...like Manhattan has. He wants corporations in Brooklyn...just like Manhattan has. He wants asthma-exacerbating traffic jams...just like Manhattan has. He wants more wealthy people to move into "urban Brooklyn" (his phrase) with the inevitable displacement of working-class communities of color, just like Manhattan has...he wants as many big non-union chain stores as he can get...just like Manhattan has. He wants Brooklyn to have "destination status"...just like Manhattan has.
And still...and still...there's the beauty. Flatbush on a summer day with reggae and soca pouring out of the shops...the elegant latticework of the Brooklyn Bridge...the delicious food from anywhere in the world just about anywhere in the borough...stoops in warm-weather twilights...the history of the place, from the Battle of Brooklyn, Weeksville, Ocean Hill/Brownsville, Yusuf Hawkins, the Crown Heights riots, the wharves and small businesses and the Dodgers (and also Royal Giants, Americans, Tigers, Bay Parkways, Bushwicks, Bridegrooms, Robins, and yes, the Superbas!) and Walt Whitman and Shirley Chisholm and the Roeblings and Jackie Gleason and the Fox Theater and immigration stories piled high and tall-tales piled even higher.
Brooklyn is fists ready to fly and fists held high.
Precisely the reason that if Brooklyn is to survive and be more than just a spiteful diminutive man's "destination," it has to agitate. Always and forever agitating. Every heartbeat an agitation -- the energy necessary to pump blood through our veins. Agitation for life, for eccentricity, for oddity, for community and family and at least one good locally-owned pizzeria within walking distance. As contentment is the death knell for rock bands (and rappers too), so will complacency walk Brooklyn down Memory Lane after the lobotomy kicks in.
I hate Brooklyn.
Is it any wonder these battling eternities go hand in hand?
Somewhere in the recent past, Brooklyn turned into "Brooklyn." To use one of Mayor Bloomberg's more jackassed constructs, Brooklyn has become a "destination." What does that mean? For starters, it's something for visitors to Brooklyn, not the people who live here. We're already here. How can it be a destination?
Normally, that kind of idea would just be a mostly-harmless tourism inducement. But with jackals like Bloomberg and Markowitz, it's far more harmful and insidious.
Bloomberg has made a mayoral career out of keeping his hands clean when they're dirty beyond all measures of political hygiene. He throws more money and legal bribery around than Boss Tweed ever dreamed, all the while the local media and citizenry letting him scamper back to the Upper East Side, unaffected and untroubled.
Hizzoner doesn't do the hard work on issues that has residents screaming -- affordable housing, job creation, education. Instead, he focuses on big-ticket projects that only enrich real-estate friends of his -- the new Mets stadium, the new Yankees stadium, Atlantic Yards, Willets Point, Columbia expansion, Greenpoint/Williamsburg rezoning, Coney Island, 4th Avenue upscaling, the West Side Stadium, the 7 train extension, the Hudson Yards, the Olympic bid.
You know what? Marty Markowitz is the most Manhattan-centric guy in the borough. He wants an NBA team...like Manhattan has. He wants tall office and condo buildings...like Manhattan has. He wants an onslaught of tourists...like Manhattan has. He wants a huge sports arena...like Manhattan has. He wants corporations in Brooklyn...just like Manhattan has. He wants asthma-exacerbating traffic jams...just like Manhattan has. He wants more wealthy people to move into "urban Brooklyn" (his phrase) with the inevitable displacement of working-class communities of color, just like Manhattan has...he wants as many big non-union chain stores as he can get...just like Manhattan has. He wants Brooklyn to have "destination status"...just like Manhattan has.
And still...and still...there's the beauty. Flatbush on a summer day with reggae and soca pouring out of the shops...the elegant latticework of the Brooklyn Bridge...the delicious food from anywhere in the world just about anywhere in the borough...stoops in warm-weather twilights...the history of the place, from the Battle of Brooklyn, Weeksville, Ocean Hill/Brownsville, Yusuf Hawkins, the Crown Heights riots, the wharves and small businesses and the Dodgers (and also Royal Giants, Americans, Tigers, Bay Parkways, Bushwicks, Bridegrooms, Robins, and yes, the Superbas!) and Walt Whitman and Shirley Chisholm and the Roeblings and Jackie Gleason and the Fox Theater and immigration stories piled high and tall-tales piled even higher.
Brooklyn is fists ready to fly and fists held high.
Precisely the reason that if Brooklyn is to survive and be more than just a spiteful diminutive man's "destination," it has to agitate. Always and forever agitating. Every heartbeat an agitation -- the energy necessary to pump blood through our veins. Agitation for life, for eccentricity, for oddity, for community and family and at least one good locally-owned pizzeria within walking distance. As contentment is the death knell for rock bands (and rappers too), so will complacency walk Brooklyn down Memory Lane after the lobotomy kicks in.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
JD Salinger
Although I think that The Catcher in the Rye was one of the most under-rated over-rated books, and I at times might blame JD for the death of John Lennon, I still grieve today.
From TIME:
Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in 1951 and gradually achieved a status that made him cringe. For decades that book was a universal rite of passage for adolescents, the manifesto of disenchanted youth. (Sometimes lethally disenchanted: After he killed John Lennon in 1980, Mark David Chapman said he had done it "to promote the reading" of Salinger's book. Roughly a year later, when he headed out to shoot President Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley Jr. left behind a copy of the book in his hotel room.) But what matters is that even for the millions of people who weren't crazy, Holden Caulfield, Salinger's petulant, yearning (and arguably manic-depressive) young hero was the original angry young man. That he was also a sensitive soul in a cynic's armor only made him more irresistible. James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway had invented disaffected young men too. But Salinger created Caulfield at the very moment that American teenage culture was being born. A whole generation of rebellious youths discharged themselves into one particular rebellious youth. (Read TIME's 1951 review of Catcher in the Rye.)
From TIME:
Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published in 1951 and gradually achieved a status that made him cringe. For decades that book was a universal rite of passage for adolescents, the manifesto of disenchanted youth. (Sometimes lethally disenchanted: After he killed John Lennon in 1980, Mark David Chapman said he had done it "to promote the reading" of Salinger's book. Roughly a year later, when he headed out to shoot President Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley Jr. left behind a copy of the book in his hotel room.) But what matters is that even for the millions of people who weren't crazy, Holden Caulfield, Salinger's petulant, yearning (and arguably manic-depressive) young hero was the original angry young man. That he was also a sensitive soul in a cynic's armor only made him more irresistible. James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway had invented disaffected young men too. But Salinger created Caulfield at the very moment that American teenage culture was being born. A whole generation of rebellious youths discharged themselves into one particular rebellious youth. (Read TIME's 1951 review of Catcher in the Rye.)
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Past & Present
I think it was first, third, and eighth grade that I had a crush on John Darling. His rugged good looks snagged me in first: those lightning bolts masterfully incorporated into his mullet, accompanied by a cute little rat tail in back. It was his style that got me in third: he was one of the only kids in school who got to have those laser lights in the background of his school picture. The neon colors zig-zagged behind that devilish grin, and I was smitten. In eighth grade my crush was a bit more legit: we spent our time in the back of Mrs. Reige's class making fun of her armpit mole and trying to make each other mess up while making argumentative speeches about women in the military, capital punishment, and euthanasia. We genuinely enjoyed laughing together, and so, again, I was smitten. Unfortunately, I was dating Patrick Forrer at the time: making out on the hill behind the movie theater and giving sweaty, awkward notes to each other between fifth and sixth period.
In high school, John Darling became somewhat of an untouchable. He quickly became a part of the "in-crowd," a football player, and lets face it, a hottie. My friends and I remained acquaintances with him, he was always the nicest of them all, but as we grappled with figuring out what to do for the 17th "girls night" in a row of estrogen-filled weekends, John Darling became something of a pipe dream for all of us.
Six years later, John Darling appeared on my doorstep in Brooklyn, arm in arm with my best friend, Nina Shully. It took me a few hours to cope with and set aside the excitement that our high school heart-throb was standing in my kitchen- (it was a similar feeling to when Mark Steffke was using my bathroom in the very same apartment: "Mark Steffke! In my bathroom! Pinch me!"). But I manned up, suited up, and we took Johnny D. out on the town.
Having never been to the Big Shitty, John provided Nina and I with a new perspective of the place. We wove through the mobs of ill-fitted tourists in Times Square (my most dreaded few blocks of the city), and John couldn't get enough. He shook me into realizing that the bright lights are actually beautiful, the mobs of people are not lost but found. Nina played tour guide while I pretended to go into work happily - she's been here so many times that she knows every stop on the F-train, how to meander from Chinatown to the Financial district, swim to the Statue of Liberty, and boardwalk it over the WTC hole in one day.
Johnny D. laughed at my Amish way of life, and I laughed at his inability to keep his head off the plate at brunch on Saturday. He watched as I attempted a few interesting dance moves, and I watched as he made my best friend happier than I've seen her in years. After all was said and done, we saw a clown out of the corner of our eyes, and laughed just as hard as we did in eighth grade, and all of a sudden the past became the present.
In high school, John Darling became somewhat of an untouchable. He quickly became a part of the "in-crowd," a football player, and lets face it, a hottie. My friends and I remained acquaintances with him, he was always the nicest of them all, but as we grappled with figuring out what to do for the 17th "girls night" in a row of estrogen-filled weekends, John Darling became something of a pipe dream for all of us.
Six years later, John Darling appeared on my doorstep in Brooklyn, arm in arm with my best friend, Nina Shully. It took me a few hours to cope with and set aside the excitement that our high school heart-throb was standing in my kitchen- (it was a similar feeling to when Mark Steffke was using my bathroom in the very same apartment: "Mark Steffke! In my bathroom! Pinch me!"). But I manned up, suited up, and we took Johnny D. out on the town.
Having never been to the Big Shitty, John provided Nina and I with a new perspective of the place. We wove through the mobs of ill-fitted tourists in Times Square (my most dreaded few blocks of the city), and John couldn't get enough. He shook me into realizing that the bright lights are actually beautiful, the mobs of people are not lost but found. Nina played tour guide while I pretended to go into work happily - she's been here so many times that she knows every stop on the F-train, how to meander from Chinatown to the Financial district, swim to the Statue of Liberty, and boardwalk it over the WTC hole in one day.
Johnny D. laughed at my Amish way of life, and I laughed at his inability to keep his head off the plate at brunch on Saturday. He watched as I attempted a few interesting dance moves, and I watched as he made my best friend happier than I've seen her in years. After all was said and done, we saw a clown out of the corner of our eyes, and laughed just as hard as we did in eighth grade, and all of a sudden the past became the present.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What Your Favorite Author Says About You
http://laurenleto.wordpress.com/readers-by-author/
Wildly entertaining. Do read. So true, and yet, so not true.
Wildly entertaining. Do read. So true, and yet, so not true.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Perks of Being A Wallflower
November 12, 1991
Dear Friend,
I love Twinkies, and the reason I am saying that is because we are all supposed to think of reasons to live. In science class, Mr. Z. told us about an experiment where they got this rat or mouse, and they put this rat or mouse on one side of a cage. On the other side of the cage, they put a little piece of food. And this rat or mouse would walk over to the food and eat. Then, they put the rat or mouse back on its original side, and this time, they put electricity all through the floor where the rat or mouse would have to walk to get the piece of food. They did this for a wile, and the rat or mouse stopped going to get the food at a certain amount of voltage. Then, they repeated the experiment, but they replaced the food with something that gave the rat or mouse intense pleasure. I don’t know what it is that gave them intense pleasure, but I am guessing it is some kind of rat or mouse nip. Anyway, what the scientists found out was that the rat or mouse would put up with a lot more voltage for the pleasure. Even more than for the food.
I don’t know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
Love always,
Charlie
Dear Friend,
I love Twinkies, and the reason I am saying that is because we are all supposed to think of reasons to live. In science class, Mr. Z. told us about an experiment where they got this rat or mouse, and they put this rat or mouse on one side of a cage. On the other side of the cage, they put a little piece of food. And this rat or mouse would walk over to the food and eat. Then, they put the rat or mouse back on its original side, and this time, they put electricity all through the floor where the rat or mouse would have to walk to get the piece of food. They did this for a wile, and the rat or mouse stopped going to get the food at a certain amount of voltage. Then, they repeated the experiment, but they replaced the food with something that gave the rat or mouse intense pleasure. I don’t know what it is that gave them intense pleasure, but I am guessing it is some kind of rat or mouse nip. Anyway, what the scientists found out was that the rat or mouse would put up with a lot more voltage for the pleasure. Even more than for the food.
I don’t know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
Love always,
Charlie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
