Will Chess.com Save My Sanity?

Dear People I Like, Who Read My Writing: 

I am so very happy to report that I am back in the saddle, writing again for Poodles on the Roof after an eventful lapse of several years while the world fell apart and we all tried to maintain our sanity. Please stay tuned for the musings of an aging unicorn with purple pandemic hair who has not given up  on life, love and the goodness of other people. New (harmless) hobby: online chess. More later on this!

Please donate to help settle refugees from Afghanistan. Wear a mask. Eat blueberries. 

Heart Attack in the Career Lab

Yesterday at 10:30 in the morning, one of my adult students, 61, murmured that she was feeling nauseous.  Also, there was pain radiating down both her arms.  I asked if she might be having a heart attack. She has a background in health services, so I valued her opinion.

"Maybe," she said. "How's my color?"
"You look pretty pale," I said. "Gray, actually."

We quickly decided the best option was to call 911 and get her to a hospital as quickly as possible.
(This after another teacher in the next room vetoed my suggestion of bringing Ann via Lyft to the Emergency Room.  What was I thinking? New Yorkers think first of cabs, not ambulances.)

In less than 10 minutes, my room was overflowing with strong young emergency techs wielding iPads, aspirin, nitroglycerine, electrodes, a gurney......She was whisked down in the elevator and off to an unknown fate.  I made sure a large piece of paper with my cell phone number on it was in her purse.

Three hours later she called me from the hospital.

"I had a widowmaker! They reamed out 2 arteries, and put in 3 stents!"  She was laughing.
"But I could have died.  Thanks a lot."

I listened, shaking. She had called her brother in California, and she was arranging for her cats to be fed by a neighbor.  She'd be out of the hospital in 3 days. One of my favorite students, Ann is a cancer survivor with a dry sense of humor and a Master's degree who was in the last stages of applying for part-time work as a caretaker in a care facility for adults with intellectual challenges.  She was in the final stages of being approved for the job, and had an appointment to be fingerprinted in the afternoon.  I hoped to hell this incident didn't derail her chances.

Just another day at work.

Next up: helping the 16 year-old young woman who is 13 weeks pregnant and finishing her GED.
She needs a rudimentary Resume she can post to help her find babysitting or house cleaning jobs.  She's willing to work up to 9pm on weekdays and Saturdays and Sundays from 9am-7pm. Currently, she's living with a foster family and has a curfew.  She wants to go into nursing, to provide a good life for her baby.

America will be all right.  It's full of amazing people. They are keeping my spirit alive.
 I love my job.

Trumptime

The question burning in my brain: what are my responsibilities as a human being in the time of Trump?
I'm reviving my blog, Poodles On The Roof, to explore this question.

The Novoir: Genius name for a new genre, or DOA?

So, one of my favorite subjects lately is the quite unnecessary flap about the difference between an autobiographical novel and a memoir.

A novel, based on some stuff that has happened to you but altered ON PURPOSE by you (for whatever reason) is a novel.  Fiction. Maybe even a roman a clef. (Ah, quaint term of yesteryear.)

It's NOT a memoir. A memoir, kids, is when you try to describe a part of your life in order to understand something about it.  ( It consists of  'information in search of illumination,' I heard Francine du Plessix Gray say (more or less) to Charlie Rose one night, and I loved that description.....  Her own hefty memoir about growing up with her beyond colorful Russian emigre parents is called Them.) You might "mistakenly remember" something in a memoir, but you really can't ethically do it on purpose (to increase your sales numbers or get a hotter agent).
Of course, no one remembers everything-or anything at all -with 100% accuracy. But you can try.  If you don't even want to try, write a frickin' novel!
Not that easy, is it?  Just because you get to make things up.... there're a few little things called narrative drive, and tone, and voice, and point of view....

An autobiography is your whole life....recollected at leisure.  Just because.  You can write a whole bunch of memoirs, maybe not so many autobiographies.  (And as many novels as your mental health will permit.)

Still with me?
Why do some people still want to call a messed-around-with memoir a memoir, when it isn't one anymore?
Because they don't want to do all the invisible, heartbreaking work fiction writers do EVERY DAY for (usually) essentially no money.  And perhaps memoirists don't really want to swim with the big kids, the novelists- they want to stay in the kiddie pool, splashing everyone.  Look at me!  I'm floating!!
(Anxiety of Influence, anyone?)

And because readers are such voyeurs these days, memoirs are often perceived to have more commercial potential. ( Don't get me wrong, I adore a well-crafted, honest memoir.*)

But maybe should we give these aspiring, anxious & lazy memoir writers a new genre to play with-
voila,  the novoir.  It has a ring to it, don't you think?  Solves so many problems.

When you are not honest & brave enough to write a moving memoir, and too lazy to write a novel-
just call it a novoir and you have covered all your bases!

Or not.

*********************************************************************************

*(My all-time favorite memoir just might be The Coldest Winter, by the brilliant Paula Fox. I dare you not to read it.)

A Greenwich Village Girl Reflects on "Inside Llewyn Davis"

IN case you have been visiting another planet since November 2013, let me bring you up to date: the reality of global warming is still being debated by a few idiots, New York City has a dynamic new mayor (hooray), and the Coen brothers have birthed a new film, "Inside Llewyn
Davis," their idiosyncratic take on the burgeoning folk music scene in Greenwich Village in 1961.  Hooray?   Not so much.  Not from this born and raised Villager.

                                                        *                                *                                *

   There seems to be a wide disconnect in reactions to the film (a stunning 94% rating by critics on www.rottentomatoes.com, but only a 76% rating by viewers).  A reviewer I hugely respect, A.O. Scott of The NY Times, has practically made a full-time job out of his enthusiasm for the film.   To be so out of sync with someone whose taste I generally trust puzzles me. Could it possibly be because of my over-eager anticipation to see and hear a tale about the old Greenwich Village, replete with a stunning soundtrack and quirky characters, shot on location all over the streets of my childhood? 

    Rumors abounded for months before the film’s release.  I had previously seen and admired virtually all of the Coen oeuvre (some films several times); their skill, intelligence and dark humor have carved out a unique niche in the pantheon of American filmmakers.  Yet, I must have unconsciously hoped that their dystopian take on humanity and its foibles would be softened in their treatment of the unique scene that was the Village in 1961. 

    Like everyone else, I admired the gritty realism of the cinematography and set design.  That hallway in the fifth floor walk-up, barely the width of Llewyn’s shoulders!  The cigarette smoke, the sweaters! The garbage cans! 

    However, for me, the emotional zone of the film as occupied by Llewyn was essentially a numb center, occasionally enlivened by a blast of profanity from Jean.  She’s the supposedly meek and lyrical half of a folksinging duo who has cuckolded her partner by sleeping (and being impregnated) by our anti-hero, the sort of Dave Van Ronkish folksinger Llewyn Davis (get it? Wink, wink- a Welsh name, like that Dylan guy). Her one-note stridency depressed me and didn’t ring true for the period.  Is having 90% of Jean’s dialogue be four-letter words (actually, mainly one four-letter word) the only way to delineate her character’s despair and anger? 

   Now, it really doesn’t matter that I grew up in the ‘50s in the Village, and witnessed the emergence of the folk scene- the washtub & mop handle basses being plunked in the dry basin of the fountain in Washington Square Park, the feverish collecting of albums by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, and learning songs like  “If I Had A Hammer,” in our 5^th grade music class. I wasn’t a true insider. But.   Seriously, Coen brothers?  This is your best shot?

    When I read the recent interview with the ex-wife of Dave van Ronk in The Village Voice, I felt that I was not so off the mark in my reactions.  She laments that this film completely misrepresented the spirit of that time, the joyous collective spirit of people making music (and not money!) for the love of it.  When a NY Times obit for beloved sandal maker and musician Alan Block (he died at 90 on Oct. 23, 2013) describes his shop in 1961, overflowing with musicians from all over the country, jamming ecstatically at all hours of the day and night- one really has to ask why would artists as talented as the Coen brothers make a film about this music scene that is so mean-spirited and flat, so shaggy-cat.  This was a lazy and  wasted opportunity.  Do we really care that much about the freakin’ authentic period ambiance and the smoky café lighting and the vintage street signage? Are we that easily seduced?

    There is so much to say about the pain of not making it as an artist in America, and about the legions of those pilgrims to the Village who were left by the wayside, or committed suicide, or died in poverty.  Why did you choose to tell this story with an unsympathetic “hero” who sucks the life out of everything he touches, who never connects with us, or anyone else?

    With a little more effort you could have made a film that would have ripped the heart out of your audience.  We lined up, we bought our tickets, we were bursting with anticipation.  Why did you stay on the surface of your subject, tease us, insult us, bore us, disappoint us? 

      Because you are Ethan and Joel Cohen, and you can.  But shame on you, boys.

 

Jan. 27, 2014

Healthy, Fun and Firm

So, I'm taking out the package of frozen blueberries from the freezer, and I suddenly actually read the words on the package:

           BLUEBERRIES

      Healthy, Fun and Firm!


Seriously?  My blueberries are writing their eHarmony profile all of sudden?

Fun & firm?  Those are not qualities I want from my blueberries. 

How about

                          Blueberries- we're up to our ass in antioxidants!
or

                         Blueberries....
                                 just sayin'


Don Draper, where are you when we need you?

My Mother Moved to Florida and All I Got Was This Blogpost

(for Laramie)

So, here is my first letter from Paradise.

As I am preparing to  leave Manhattan, I give my new mailing address to the  Citibank teller:

"Moving  to Florida!"
I say happily.

"By choice?"  he says.

**********************************

Day 1    In my mailbox: Free prepaid cremations, courtesy of The Neptune Society.

Day 2    During my Sunday walk through the scruffy little urban park:  A signboard proclaiming "Free TAMPA RAYS vouchers  to all Blood Donors- today only."

Day 3    Passing a  racy low-slung silver Scion with West Virginia plates,  am startled to see a decal saying "As I Lay Dying" on the rear window.   A fellow  Faulkner fan?  Then I spy the "KISS" decal......just a metalcore fanatic.  Sigh.

Somehow all these  reminders of looming disaster, of death & dying, are weirdly invigorating.

Day 4   It's freakin' hot and humid. Again, I find myself taking the shortcut through the  little park.  Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.  I pick up my pace.

My spring-green canvas Adidas move quickly past the unshaven smokers slouching towards their tropical Bethlehems. 
The men poke hopefully into trash cans, postponing that status-lowering  trip to the Blood Bank.

"You take it easy now," an older black man says to me when I meet his eyes. "I will," I say.

Screw the Citibank teller and the horse he rode in on.

Ha ha Death, haven't caught me yet.  Down here it feels so good, it actually feels naughty, just being alive.