#BLM Art and Former Statues

#BLM Art and Former Statues

Not only have there been gorgeous murals going up around the world in support of Black Lives Matter, but they are also painting the streets themselves. Black Lives Matter in huge letters, visible from space, or at least from small aircraft.

And the statues, ALL the statues seem to be coming down, all the ones which lack compassion.  And even the ones of old men, who might be on the good side of history.  In these days, it is better to rethink everything.  Even those who fought, did they not fight hard enough?  Did they do everything and we are still stuck in this world? Would their ghosts be fighting for change, along with the protesters? 

I imagine the ghosts on the better, more equitable side of history, cheering on the living.  All the energy (both living and dead) are contributing to the new world.  And even the ghosts with regretful pasts, are changing their minds.  Even they can change their minds, even they can fix things for the better from the grave.  

All the souls in the world want mercy for the future.

Even in Portugal,there is a sense of reckoning.  The idea that "Portugal is not a racist country" has been brought up again-how can the country which started the slave trade and commissioned histories to define the hierarchy of races- Prince Henry the Navigator has lots of statues-but we must now understand who he really is.

https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/06/06/black-lives-matter-movement-to-hold-more-rallies-across-portugal/

https://lithub.com/ibram-x-kendi-how-racism-relies-on-arbitrary-hierarchies/

America is on Fire!

Plenty of virtual ink has been spilled about the horrendous treatment of African Americans at the hands of the American police.  Those who are supposed to protect and serve will easily kill anyone with non-white skin.  This also applies to immigrants, those with accents and those with mental health issues. But African Americans were brought to this country illegally, forced to work, and have never been freed of the social idea that they can never have respect, especially from "authorities".

This has been an issue for the past 400 years, but after 2 months of being locked up, America is bursting at the seams in trying to get the attention of the non-leaders, calling for justice for a man who was choked to death on video over a long period of 8 minutes. Earlier in the week was a black man who was birding in Central Park who videotaped a white woman who called 911 on him.  She knew to call out race, to say that an African American man was threatening her life-even though she was the one who had her dog off leash in one of the few areas in the Park that requires a leash at all times.  She was committing a crime, and knew that if she called the cops-he would be the one to face consequences.  Her name was Amy Cooper, his name was Christian Cooper-at some distant point in the past it is likely that her family OWNED his family.  She lost her job and her dog and her reputation.  NYC was proud that it turned into a non-issue. But in Minnesota, everything else went wrong.

So the peaceful protests started.  And the out-of-state white supremacists began to incite violence.  Agent Provocateurs set fires, egged everyone on.  It is again an excuse for white expression during continued black oppression. NYC is being destroyed, the police are being supported by the military and very soon we will be living in a police state. All to create chaos in a country, in a world that is beset by a pandemic.  To keep the idiot in chief in power. And who knows what else?

Greenpoint Ghost Town

NYC has been hit hard by the Virus.

Lots of restaurants have closed down completely, and some have stayed open just for take out. The best new places to get food are the Soup Kitchens and Food Pantries.  All those restaurants have had to lay people off, and the whole food supply chain has been disrupted.

Greenpoint was ringing with multiple sirens at the same time just a few weeks ago. And it's just come out that a funeral home couldn't handle the number of bodies they had to deal with. 

Any restaurant that can figure out how to survive this will be remarkable.  Small catering businesses can handle this-I know of one that is doing individual meals-since everything is take out now.

Will we need to have places where we gather over food? When?  Of all the things that me and my friends miss, going out for a dinner party, eating with friends and strangers around a table in public is the act of beauty that we are all eager to engage in again.

Cheers, to the time when it can happen again!!!

The World Has Stopped-Corona

Broadway shut down on March 12 and the rest of NYC and MA on Friday the 13th.  People began hunkering down, schools closed, colleges, businesses. Staying home in quarantine is now the new norm, and it just got extended from Easter, to April 30 to May 4. Some theaters are trying to go online-AEA is stopping some productions bc they don't know how to frame it in a contract.

Restaurants are closing or just doing takeout. Mostly closing

ALSO-Jericho Hill Forest is going to be torn down (maybe?) I'm trying to fight against it, using every trick I know how to use.  Yesterday, I sent emails to the City Counsel Members-asking if I could walk the trails with them, only one said yes. Indeed, I'm resorting to being NICE-although I can't tell you how much my blood boils when I see how they've already begun destroying things to measure it all.

Henry DThoreau was a surveyor, he felt guilty.

I've started an Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jerichohillforestwaltham/ for pictures and am posting on Twitter, Nextdoor and FB.  The ironic thing is that my town has shut down the parks and playgrounds, so these trails are the only open space left to engage with nature. The Forest should be renamed Sanity Park-for keeping everyone's sanity up.  Even the governor yesterday said it was good for people's mental health.

I can't quite describe yet, how beautiful the forest is. How it's like a cathedral, and also a cemetery.  A future cemetery, all the trees and animals about to be taken from the earth.  Its as if the trees are the souls of Waltham, the ones who have come before.  And it is my duty to keep them there, awaiting and vigilant, for the future generations (especially for the very high school students that the area is being given for-to be made into a parking lot)

How all these stories seem so far away-the rainforests of Brazil, the virus in China. And then it comes home. And it changes everything in your life.

Hospital Food and Bookmarks

This month I spent too much time in hospitals.

I wonder why the food in the cafeteria is NOT healthy. Its because most cafeterias are run as cafeterias and not as health centers. You don't want to scare anyone, and want to make sure there is a comfort food option. Who are we kidding? They are run by the cafeteria paradigm-basic food. Ideally not terrible. Put cheese on everything, this is America, dammit. The sawdust cheese, they won't even notice!

I also sketched out the idea for a children's book, called the Bookmark Lady. It is about performative moments in a hospital, and being able to overcome your own emotions by being kind to others-and handing out bookmarks as gifts. Sometimes people need to be distracted by their own simple humanity-just long enough to get out of their own heads about being scared at a hospital.

MIT Reality Hackathon and Midnight Pancakes

Attended the MIT Hackathon about XR, actually called a Reality Hack.  I crafted and scripted the narrative about Desegregation in Miami in 1957-specifically a story about Frank LeGree and how his family had picketers outside his house, threw rocks and eventually erected a cross on his front lawn-all in order to get him out of a neighborhood.

The video of the AR experience we created is here: https://youtu.be/C6w3e4wqwfk

Our team would love to do more with AR and explore this and other stories of America's growing pains further. Desegregation of schools, different neighborhoods in large cities i the 1950's. Life for a growing country and how that time period brought forth change that is still unresolved today. 

Connect that period with When They See Us-and #OscarsStillSoWhite and you will see how America still exists in black and white for so many people. The best part of the Hackathon was the idea that so many different people could come together to build a new reality. One in which the only judgments issued are on a lack of imagination.

Cultural and Culinary Adventure in Provincetown!

Having spent Thanksgiving in Provincetown, with all its associated Portuguese heritage, I noticed that there is an Annual Blessing of the Fleet and weekend-long Festival at the end of June (6/25-28/2020) More information can be found here:
https://provincetownportuguesefestival.com/

It's never to early to plan your time in this seaside town, especially bc it fills up so quickly in the summertime. See you then!!

Interviewing Paige Lipari of Archestratus

As part of the amazing Food Writing class I took with Devra Furst, we were encouraged to interview someone within the food industry.  Something that would make a good story.

As a sheer coincidence that night, Paige casually mentioned that it was the 4th anniversary of the store.  Of course I had to follow up.

So before the last class, I sat down with her for a quick chat that turned into one of those amazing conversations.  Here I was expecting her to blow my mind with recommended cookbooks-which she did. But I also got a larger conversation about life and how it can lead you in funny directions.

The gist of it all, and the thing that has stayed with me, is that she has always wanted to create a space that was about bringing people together to do their thing. To create a container. It's not that her passion is NOT cookbooks, or creating a food store, it's all that and MORE. She's facilitating a way for people to express themselves. Creating a community. The books, the cooking are a way to get there. And the best rainbow cookies in NYC don't hurt either. ;)

(Actual interview still to come!)

Collecting the Best Breakup Restaurants in Greenpoint

If you really want to get distracted by amazing fries while your Soon To Be Ex is crying into their avocado toast, check out my new series on Breakup Joints in North Brooklyn!  On the lookout for sweet & semi-romantic, with enough of an edge to these hidden gems to make the both of you laugh over your shared dessert.

PAULIE GEE’s

Take your former beloved to your once favorite pizza joint.
Nod and smile as you mentally try to deconstruct the Neffy’s Porkpie White,
with sweet Italian fennel sausage, basil and ricotta. 
You were never able to take out a whole pizza here-
something about violating the crust by putting it on cardboard.
But shrug and smile, knowing you’ll never have to listen
to your ex complaining about his Mom
and her weird obsession with always wanting to do the laundry.

You know the secret ingredient, Mike’s Hot Honey,
will fix any pizza mistakes you may make when you experiment with pizza-making at home.
Besides, PG recently opened up a slice shop for freshly single people
like you
who don’t have the time to waste on frivolous conversation.

PAULIE GEE’s

https://pauliegee.com/greenpoint/

347-987-3747

60 Greenpoint Ave @Franklin St

Brooklyn, NY 11222

Dine In Only

Paulie Gee’s Slice Joint

110 Franklin St @Noble St

Brooklyn, NY 11222

A Single Ingredient: Sugar

A summer evening festival, a blur of white skipped past me in the under the string of lights,

dressed like it was her first communion or her wedding day. 

But she was only 6 years old and so was I.

And I stopped her for the most important of reasons,

“You’ve got sugar on your face!” I said.

Stopping, she looked me and right in the eye and then said something of grave importance. 

I didn’t understand her.

Her voice was Portuguese,

familiar but just out of reach.

A lullaby language, words my mother and aunts used, but not as items I could understand.

They were just sounds, as familiar and as foreign as the Festa, or festival,

the same kind they had multiple times of year. 

There is a Christmas kind of gathering,

and one for Easter,

and one where they parade a statue,

and one where they cover the streets with flower petals,

and one where you wait in the hot sun to share soup sitting on picnic tables.

But most every festival had malassadas (“under-cooked”) also known as fried dough.

Our grandmothers wouldn’t make it at home, at least not MY Vovo.

She saved her dough for Massa Sovada, fresh every week,

for the family to eat for dessert with butter.

Grown-ups were even harder to understand than Portuguese words,

but butter seemed like an adult’s version of sugar; a coating for the basics. 

I put my hand to my cheek and then- so did she.

It was like looking into a mirror.

She brushed her cheek and said something else.

“Obrigada,” she said in Portuguese and then “Thank you,” with an accent I wished I had.

And then she skipped off, comfortable in two languages, with a little less sugar on her face.

And left me standing, alone.

Thoreau/Twain in Concord

I'm happy to report that the performance of Thoreau/Twain: Brothers in the River for the Thoreau Society was a tremendous success.

Brent Rinalli, Tammy Rose and Joel Hersh

The main performers were Brent Rinalli, who has been in and around Concord giving lectures and historical interpreting as Thoreau for the past few years and Joel Hersh, a local actor known for his varied musical ability-played Twain.

The main conceit of the show is that an Academic is trying to summon the spirits of the authors, to have them discuss a major, and underexplored parallel of their lives.  Both of them had a deep relationship with a brother on the river of their childhood, and both of them lost that brother to a sudden event. This happened before either of them began to write-but both found inspiration in their brothers and documented the influences strongly in their writings.

The authors -who had never met in real life- get deep into conversation, about their lives, commonalities they share-and especially their brothers. Most of the text of the play is taken directly from journals, letters and the formal published writings of the authors-and their contemporaries. They argue with each other using their own words and get a chance to recount a major emotional moment in their lives. (No pop-psychology or therapy here-the drama comes directly from their own words and existing texts).

Thanks to the Thoreau Society and to all the amazing and attentive attendees!  Especially those who took pictures and gave me feedback on new areas to explore between the two!

And extra special thanks to my fellow Tourguides who make all the research and the entire experience of Concord SO MUCH FUN!!!

Thoreau/Twain: Brothers on the River at the Thoreau Annual Gathering, Semi Annual Thoreau Play

Thoreau/Twain: Brothers on the River

Masonic Hall, 

58 Monument Sq, 

Concord, MA

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

7pm

(immediately after the performance of "HDT's Heroic Journey")

https://www.thoreausociety.org/annual-gathering#Wed

"Be thou my Muse, my Brother--,"

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Both Henry David Thoreau and Samuel Clemens were by the deathbeds of their beloved brothers.  What happens when one brother is left on the river, and the other has to complete the rest of the journey in life alone?

Come see Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain meet under new and unusual circumstances; a meeting that never happened in history. Finally, both have a chance to recognize and reconcile their parallel journeys. 

Primary texts of the play are taken directly from primary sources including A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers & Life on the Mississippi, as well as from journals & letters from the authors themselves.

Written by

Tammy Rose

and Henry David Thoreau

and Samuel Clemens

One

Vulnerability

=======

Maybe Writing is Being a Goldilocks

Imagine a writer, thinking herself into insanity. Trying one thing after another-too hot, too cold. Waiting until she can find the thing that is Just Right:

"Okay, so at one point after college, I realized I was a Writer-I had always identified myself as one, always did research and readings, kept a journal, etc-but I realized I hadn't WRITTEN.

So I literally began at my beginning.

I started doing Blogs. And Plays. And Short Stories. TV Pilots, Novels. And lately, I've also started doing Satire.  Short pieces which focus on humor, on a good idea that gets developed-and also gets workshopped among you and your closest writing partners.

New York has hosted several of my pieces, and I've been proud to help others bring theirs forward (helping to produce is helping to pay it forward in your own "work")

Everything feels natural to each of the medium (media), but it's about persistence.  And if something is not working, not breaking through, I'm willing to try the NEXT GENRE-the next pattern of storytelling.  Because it IS all the same urge, just coming out in different frames and formats."

NYC fights back against Amazon!

I think it was everyone's secret hope-I know it was mine-that Amazon would change its mind about moving its headquarters to NYC-specifically LIC.

Not just one area, not just LIC-but Greenpoint, and the 7 train and the G, and the LIRR-and all the other parts of the city that would be overburdened by YET ANOTHER wave of young hopefuls heading to the city, wanting to work for a tech giant.

Prayers were answered.

Now we get to go back to the normal pace of complaints about general decline. ;)

Documenting the Decline

At one point in the future, Greenpoint will have become the neighborhood it is growing into.

As of today, it is still in a weird transition.

On the same day, they listed 2 pieces of news in the hyper-local online sites.

First, our favorite restaurant is closing after 20 years (because that is the life expectancy of a joint in this hood?).
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/enids-in-greenpoint-to-close-at-the-end-of-march/
This is a year after Matchless closed, another great bar that defined the nightlife of this neighborhood.

And second, there was a piece of hate mail sent to a couple who are running a business out of their home.  It was anti-semitic and anonymous (of course), and the funny part is-the couple isn't even JEWISH!!!

So what does that mean-were they targeted by stupid bigots (yes-that's certainly contributing), were they assuming that because one of them was Mexican/Cuban and the other was Italian. was it sheer terror or foreigners? In a Polish neighborhood?-With Williamsburg next door, can they not even IDENTIFY who they hate-or are they trying to target hipsters?

is the neighborhood shifting in ways that are freaking people out? Yes. But go to one of the local places and celebrate, while you still can. And be nice to your neighbors. Please.

Where You Are is Who You Are

"Where You Are Is Who You Are"-the new billboard on the new apartment building.

I went to the newly "reopened" Key Foods nearby.  It was just as I remembered, except everything was shinier. Even though the chain itself is not very upscale, it is competing with CTown nearby, and preparing itself for the onslaught of new residents to the neighborhood.  A new glass tower is nearing completion just across the street from it and will be one of the many places to overcharge the new neighbors.

I have to admit, I was sick and wanted some juice and soups. Nothing fancy, just Vitamin C and chicken something, and maybe a few croissants.

Dave in Baked Goods recognized me, I think. He should, I've been going there for 4 years.  I can never tell if he's flirting with me, but it's nice to be recognized.

Lost and Found

Lost and Found (to be continued)

Elyse, Ntozake and Maria

Three Giant Women of theater have passed away in the space of just a few days.

An influential director.

A playwright of African American women and expanded territories, opening her arms to inclusion of multiple communities. (For Black Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf, a Choreopoem)

A playwright of Hispanic women, opening the theater walls to audiences to Fefu and her Friends.  Staging was nontraditional, taking people beyond a stage to different areas -seeing scenes in various order.

The world is better for them all.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/24/elyse-dodgson-royal-court-theatres-international-director-dies
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/obituaries/ntozake-shange-is-dead-at-70.html
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/obituaries/maria-irene-fornes-dead.html

Ntozake Shange at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Sunday, October 21, 2018