Sally Field

I find that’s one of the great things about acting—you have the opportunity to stand in somebody else’s shoes, whether it’s someone with mental health problems or someone who lives and works in a small town. Each character faces a dilemma in her life, and as an actor you’re able to step into that character’s skin, look through her eyes. You leave transformed, a different person, because once you live a little bit of someone’s life, it changes you.
-Sally Field

Stray and Abandoned Computers

All of my computers have been cast offs, and hand me downs, and trash pickins. The latest one a beautiful Mac, (1998) was inherited from from URI's Music Library, a few years ago. Today it has finally bit the dust. We are hunting for cast offs from Bill's school. Stay tuned. Donations accepted. Looking for a non portable simple desk top. Nothing fancy.

Kids on my Corner

Last summer the kids on the corner gave out free manicures and pedicures, with their illustrated poems. They came and told me a police man stopped to have his nails painted! They were so ecstatic and so were their parents. They talked about it all week. These kids have since moved a few blocks away and I see them when I'm out walking Lily. Maybe we can get something going again this summer with fresh tortilla-making hand-cranked ice-cream, and writing and illustrating poems. And drawing with sidewalk-chalk too.

Free Mending Library Creates Community

Love this!!

Magritte Summer Sky

I woke at three thirty and now at 4:30 I'm looking out and I see a Magritte Summer sky.

2 Small Bits

Hypo-Mania Vest

Years ago I stayed with friends in CT on my trip home from a pavement pounding portfolio day in NYC. I was so hopped up I couldn't sleep. At 3 in the morning I started cleaning their kitchen stove and counters and microwave. I threw my black vest in with my 2 canvas bags and washed them in their basement washing machine.
The result was my favorite black linen vest got ripped and raggedy. I was devastated and embarrassed. What was I thinking?

I continued to wear it, looking like a character from Oliver Twist. Wearing it was punishment. If I kept my right arm down, or hid it with my dog walking shoulder bag, I could hide the major raggedy seam. it was awkward because I am left-handed and prefer to wear my bag on the left side. I was always reminded. I was still my favorite vest, and I wore it this way for 15 years.
Yesterday I opened up my sewing machine and hemmed the raggedy seam. It still has wonky spots but it is still a great vest. Now I wear it as a reminder of how bad I can get in hypo-mania.



Chief's Bathtub

Years ago we rented a fabulous apartment on Grand Street up on the hill off Park Avenue. We never tired of the view of the City hills houses and waterfall. When I washed the dishes or got dressed in the morning I gravitated towards the view. We had a fireplace too! The bathroom was also spectacular. It was a real room, a black and white 1920's tiled room with a built in tub. My husband made beer in the tub. I took baths in it with my two 80 pound dogs resting nearby. We had been told the Police Chief lived there years ago. When sudsing I always imagined the Chief of Police taking a bath in my tub.

Uncle Peter

My Uncle Peter Loeser was my step father Tony Gargagliano's best friend. He was born in Holland. He introduced Tony to my mother Sonia, after both of their first marriages broke up. He also knew and worked with my bio dad, Tom Lisker. They were all Madison Ave advertising art people in the 50's and 60's.

When I was seven my mother dragged me into the kitchen to say "Uncle Peter has had a few drinks, he's telling stories about how he escaped the Nazis. Don't ever ask him about this."
Of course I wanted to ask him. When I was 21, out on my own, I wrote a four page hand-written letter to him when he lived in Santa Monica California. I asked him about his life and told him about mine. I told him why and how I escaped my family, particularly my mother, and what I thought my mother was doing to me because of HER childhood.

18 years ago Uncle Peter was asked to write his war story for Steven Spielburg who was collecting Holocaust survivor stories. I have a copy and it's AMAZING! He escaped the Nazis 6 times. One time, a crowd of hundreds were rounded up in a theater. He walked out, acting like an everyday German going to work. He hid in ceilings. He fell in the firing squad, feigning death. He lived with a family, hidden between two floors, never being outside for a few years. He knew to avoid the two creaky stairs when entering their apartment to use their bathroom. He got really good at morphing.

I think of this because when I photograph I am taking Uncle Peter's advice on how to be invisible. "People never look up!" This is one of the many ways he was invisible to the Nazis. He was a natural actor--in order to walk out of a round up he had to be confident, and have German posture. Be an actor! And it worked.

Uncle Peter was surrounded by glamorous women fashion models who were ranked on description cards - "Legs Excellent, Eyes Blue" - yet he had an early life of adventure, espionage, and tragedy. He gave his photography portfolio to my half-brother Peter, his namesake, and Peter loaned it to the art directors of MADMEN to get the details right. He died 2 years ago at age 90, a bachelor.

Cheap Travel

I listen to radio classique 24/7 hoping I will become fluent in French.

Le Journal du Classique

A 13h, Laure Mézan reçoit Seiji Ozawa, chef d'orchestre et fondateur de l'Académie de Musique Seiji Ozawa.

Listen here

Smellevision

I learned from my 98 year old friend Anita Long, that there was a famous bar at my corner years ago. I can still smell it I tell her. On hot humid days the old urine wafts up from the cement sidewalk in the alley under my window. I have tried everything to bleach it out. Now I laugh.

In Summer I can't walk through any neighborhood where the garbage truck has left the trail of leaking garbage 'soup' without gagging. My husband laughs at me "Just block your nose!" He says.

Any molecule of cat urine sets me off too. It might as well be radioactive waste. Yet, I love to sniff my cats scented whisker pouches, my dogs fur after sitting near a wood stove. I love to sniff my pillow. I love the scent of moth balls, and cedar chests, fresh coffee, black blueberry tea, and my husband's neck when he is grilling meat over the hardwood charcoal. I love the scent of baking bread. I love the smell of the fertilizer aisle in the hardware store, and new shoes. I loathe the scent of cologne and perfume unless it is diluted. I love the scent of a freshly lit match at the beach. Or the fresh scent of newly blown out birthday candles and cap guns. I love the scent of bleach at the butcher shop at clean up time.

I love the scent of paper leather bound books. I love the scent of seaweed and salt water. I love scent of vinyl seats in a NYC taxi cab. I love the machine oil scent of subway tracks in winter. As a child I loved the scent of my fathers face when coming home from the train station in winter. He smelled like newspapers and cold air. I loved my mother's Ma Griffe perfume when she had been out to dinner. I loved the scent of bath oil. I love the scent of dog breath and a baby's scalp. I love the scent of cardboard.

I love the scent of Murphy's Oil Soap and imitation green apple scented dish detergent.

I love the scent of ceramic studios, oil painting studios, wood shops, and glass blowing furnaces.

Most of all I love the scent of pens and paper. Love the smell of my dashboard of my old blue Volkswagen super beetle that I learned to drive on. I was told horsehair was responsible for the distinctive scent. I do love the smell of hay and horses.

I love the smell of tractor tires and the hot metal seat, baked in the sun.

Neighborhoods used to be filled with common scents; making home made pickles, boiling cabbage, baking beans and pies muffins and roasts on weekends and Italian bakeries.

My friend told me his puppies paws smelled like corn chips. it was true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/opinion/summer-in-new-york-season-of-smell.html
Summer in New York, Season of Smell

from Jon Frankel:Smell is very important, yes. And I have done a lot of thinking about how urban dwellers navigate their environment using smell, as of course all people do. If you put a manhattanite down in the rain forest, or the Australian outback, they’d be lost. But on the streets of manhattan, with the eyes closed, you can tell the difference between an Italian bakery and a bagel bakery, between pizza and egg rolls, between dry cleaners and street sweepers, garbage and shit, a fish store and a produce stand, a newsstand and a bookstore. Sometimes it’s human urine that reeks on a hot night, but it’s also dog urine which stains the curbs, hydrant, light poles. If there are feral cats, it’s a different smell. And then there are the smells of steam radiators, roaches and mice. Of chlorine bleach, ammonia and lemon cleaner. Once, walking in the hall at the library, a young woman walked by, very beautiful but very young, and she smelled like bubblegum and perfume! How enticing, how mixed the signal…

A guy I worked with told me he had a reaction to medication after his appendectimy. He said his food smelled and tasted like plastic so he couldn't eat. I always imagine that's what is in those weight loss drops.

Bibliomancy Oracle

Try it here.

Steven Heller

Article in Print Magazine on the inhumanity of stripes.

I finally Understand

Stephen King — 'Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.'

Inspiring Mr. Addo

Mr. Addo, who honed his muscles using a mango tree as a pull-up bar and concrete blocks for dumbbells, is a two-time former winner of the Mr. Ghana bodybuilding championship.

Mr. Addo, too, says the seniors energize him. Raised within the Ashanti tribe, Mr. Addo was always taught that improving the lives of one’s elders is of the highest virtue. “They remind me of my grandmothers and aunties back home,” he said.

Article

I Love Faith Shearin

This poem was featured on Writer's Almanac today and I sent it to a bunch of people.

Spelling Bee

by Faith Shearin

In the spelling bee my daughter wore a good
brown dress and kept her hands folded.
There were twelve children speaking

into a microphone that was taller than
they were. Each time it was her turn
I could barely look. It wasn't that I wanted

her to win but I hoped she would be
happy with herself. The words were too hard
for me; I would have missed chemical,

thermos, and dessert. Each time she spelled
one correctly my heart became a bird.
She once fluttered so restlessly beneath

my skin and, on the morning of her arrival,
her little red hands held nothing.
Her life since has been a surprise: she can

sew; she can draw; she can read. She hates
raisins but loves science. All the parents
must feel this, watching from the cheap

folding chairs. Somewhere inside them
love took shape and now
it stands at the microphone, spelling.

"Spelling Bee" by Faith Shearin from Moving the Piano.
© Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011

Annabella Gloria Philomena Sciorra

Fabulous actress!

La Mamá Grande

BARCELONA — Carmen Balcells was never just a literary agent. Nicknamed La Mamá Grande, after a story by Gabriel García Márquez, she served as a confidante and coach, someone who paid her writers’ dentist bills and deftly resolved their domestic problems while promoting the greatest Latin American and Spanish authors across the globe, including Mr. García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and many more.


Ms. Balcells’s parties are legendary. Once, she hosted a dinner for the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and his wife. When their plane was delayed for hours, she had the dinner served, then had the entire table cleared and set again so that when the couple finally arrived it appeared as if the party was just starting.

Article

Classic Bistro

The owner, Michel Bosshard, 77, covers his big belly with a white chef’s apron and always wears a red bow tie. He welcomes his guests with slices of a fat, garlicky, cured sausage that he cuts with a large knife and serves with a pleasant, bubbly white wine from the Loire.

“You have to drink it without making a face because it’s a gift I offer you,” he said.

Article

Barn Owls

I woke up at 2:30 AM and watched barn owl on a live web cam in Texas.

Ghostly pale and strictly nocturnal, Barn Owls are silent predators of the night world. Lanky, with a whitish face, chest, and belly, and buffy upperparts, this owl roosts in hidden, quiet places during the day. By night, they hunt on buoyant wingbeats in open fields and meadows. You can find them by listening for their eerie, raspy calls, quite unlike the hoots of other owls. Despite a worldwide distribution, Barn Owls are declining in parts of their range due to habitat loss.

View here

Cheers to Amy Bloom

I love Amy Bloom's writing. She is featured on Writer's Almanac today:

It's the birthday of writer Amy Bloom born in New York City (1953). She worked with pregnant teenagers and autistic kids, and she said, "I realized that I didn't find other people's problems as boring as many people seem to." So she decided to make a living from it. First she worked as a psychotherapist, but she found herself wanting to write, and she began writing short stories. Her first collection, Come to Me (1993), got great reviews and was nominated for a National Book Award. She continued to write, and her books include Love Invents Us (1997), Away (2007), and Where the God of Love Hangs Out (2009). Her novel Lucky Us will be published next month.

She said: "There are no general stories. One doesn't hear general stories as a therapist. One hears unbelievably specific, intimate, detailed stories. There is no big picture. There is only this particular moment in this particular life."

Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics

A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion

by Robert E. Bartholomew McFarland

"For a two week period in 1956, residents in the vicinity of Taipei, Taiwan, lived in fear that they would be the next victims of a crazed villain who was prowling the streets and slashing people at random with a razor or similar weapon. At least 21 victims were reported during this period, mostly women and children of low income and education." A thorough investigation revealed however, that: "five slashings were innocent false reports, seven were self-inflicted cuts, eight were due to cuts rather than razors, and one was complete fantasy." This is one example of many cases of what has traditionally been called "mass hysteria" that are examined in this comprehensive study of human beings' fear of the unknown. Beginning with a concise history of mass hysteria and social delusions, the author differentiates between the two and investigates mass hysteria in closed settings such as work and school, and mass hysteria in communities with incidents such as gassings, Pokemon illnesses in Japan, and medieval dance crazes. Also examined are collective delusions, with information on five major types: immediate threat, symbolic scare, mass wish fulfillment, urban legends and mass panics. The book ends with a discussion of major issues in the area of mass hysteria and a look toward the future of this intriguing subject.