R.I.P.

Lest we forget. It wasn't always rising property values and high-fashion-high-life.
Click for article from 1975

Christmas Dinner 2006

It was my turn to do Christmas dinner this year.
Seven of Mac-Tim's eleven sibs were in attendance and one of mine. With the various spouses and cousins and friends and my mom, we were almost 30 people. Chicago Mac-son's girlfriend-who-could-not-get-home-to-Denver was a big hit with everybody and she was a good sport about the dumb questions.
"Do you think this spot could be cancer?"
"So skin is an organ, huh?"
"Did you bring any Botox or Retin A?"
(She's a dermatologist)
Mac-Tim cooked the three fillets of beef on the gas grill in the pouring rain. There were no leftovers.
I wasn't hungry for dinner but I think it was because I filled up on smoked salmon appetizers and the fabulous pitcher of cosmopolitans whipped up by Mac-son and mac-sweetie.

Bizarro Christmas

At this point I'm wondering if I should set the Christmas dinner table on the deck. It's mid afternoon on the Saturday before and I'm opening the windows and doors and sweating. It's hot in the house. At least I won't have to scramble for extra firewood. I'll be damned if I'll build any fires this weekend.
My mother should be arriving in a cab any time now so I need to get myself ready for the talkathon. Mactech-son & girlfriend (she, being an unexpected guest who was shut out from going home to Denver as there is some cataclysmic weather happening there) are out and about in Manhattan. Mac-Tim is shop-working, combining a property visit in SoHo with his usual last-minute creative gift picks. I just got back to the house with an armload of roses - $12 for 2 dozen so I bought 4 dozen and holiday greenery from KeyFood.
I'm making my cooking lists and schedules which are essential when you are cooking for 30. I think the three whole fillets will be enough but Mac-Tim picked up a whole spiral-cut ham this morning at the excellent Polish market on 5th Ave -just in case.
In a pinch, Fairway is open 'til 9:00 on Christmas Eve so I'm not worried.
I got out the creché and dumped it on the mantlepiece and decided to leave it just as it fell - a visual metaphor for my holiday season and my holiday season affect.
It will be chaos but it will be good.

Be Hopeful For Better Things

Hopeful is what we have to be, when we're really "quietly scared," to quote an esteemed colleague. All in our circle seem to be quietly scared about one thing or another these days. And we're all dead tired as well. Another year has bolted past us like third graders on their way to the yard and it was a year marked as much by things that didn't happen as things that did.
And still we keep on.
Thanks to all of you for being there, for every kindness for all the music and especially for all the laughs. I need that the most.
"So here's hoping all the verses rhyme, and the very best of choruses, too."

The Year at a Glance-A Meme

The opening sentences from my first blog post each month in 2006.
I "caught" this from Unwellness.
It makes the year seem so short. And it's a fair snapshot of what I blathered about in 2006. Work, The Weather, Travel, The Past.

JAN First day back at school after the holidays...D+
FEB If you're going to feel plowed under anyway, you may as well have a snowstorm.
MAR I was really into The Lives of the Saints in my early adolescence.
APR The picture above is of many thousand year old cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument, NM.
MAY I would rather delete by hand the stupid generic advertising and anonymous comment posts, that land on occasion on my blog, than put people through the maddening task of typing nonsense security words.
JUN Leftover Stories to Tell is a tribute to the late, depressed, anxious, dyslexic and brilliant Spalding Gray.
JUL I'm liking the new head of BCS.
AUG There's been a lot of complaining about the heat this week prompting questions of "What do you hate more, NY summers or NY winters?
SEP It is cooler this morning but the sky is exactly the same as it was that day.(9/11)
OCT I could tell you about the dinner party I hosted to raise money for the school, you know, What was my menu? Who were my guests?
NOV Steve Earle played his first Brooklyn gig ever on Wednesday night, at SouthPaw.
DEC I've often felt the school year starts as a slow torturous climb up a sheer precipice, its summit reached sometime Thanksgiving week. The rest of the year is a hurtling bumpy slide down the other side. (ok, 2 sentences in this case)

Walkathon Plus

There was a piece in the Times (Arts section) yesterday about Will Self, a Brit author. He's here to promote his new work, "The Book of Dave," which sounds intriguing and wacky, but you'll need to read about that yourself.
What was even more intriguing and wacky was the fact that he walked to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport (6 hours) and this is a normal course of events for him.
Here's a bit from the article:

Smoking is Mr. Self’s only remaining vice. He used to be a prodigious drinker and drug-taker, famous for late-night altercations, not always coherent public appearances and marathon hours at trendy spots like the Groucho Club. During Britain’s general election of 1997, he set a new standard for journalistic infamy by getting himself bounced off John Major's campaign plane for snorting heroin in the bathroom.

But Mr. Self has been clean for eight years or so, and some of the energy he used to expend on carousing now goes into epic hikes, sometimes as long as 100 miles — from London, say, into the Lea Valley and through the Epping Forest to north Essex.

Sounds like our kind of guy, right?

That Time of Year Again

I've often felt the school year starts as a slow torturous climb up a sheer precipice, its summit reached sometime Thanksgiving week. The rest of the year is a hurtling bumpy slide down the other side. (I watched The Mission last night and that over-the-waterfall scene is definitely pertinent here) and I don't have to check my calendar to know that the ass over teakettle descent has begun.
There is no hope of controlling the fall at this point. You just have to protect your most vulnerable parts and hope you can stand up when you reach the bottom, sometime before the fourth of July.
My view was once again upheld during the hilarious post TG faculty meeting. To those of you who were there, if you weren't suppressing the urge to either hyperventilate or shove your head through a window and scream for air you must have already drown because it was a classic example of how out of any one's control things get right about now.
After the waves of auction project planning and winter concert logistics crashed repeatedly on our heads we'd hardly caught our breath before we were pulled out to deep water by progress report deadlines and style sheets, and conference write-ups that were due last week.
We were treading water (though weakly) when we hit a patch of rocks and rough water. We would, it was announced, from now on, be known as a nut sensitive school. (Well OK, that seems prudent) Peanuts and sesame seeds were singled out as the chief pariahs, "tree nuts" were getting a pass, at least for a while. So we'll be getting our deputy nut police badges any day now and you know that also means no more ordering in cold noodles with sesame sauce? (What! Do you mean we can't eat what we want? Oh the humanity!)
The final item on the meeting agenda was "snacks." A benign subject, right? Apparently not. The triscuits, graham crackers, pretzels and veggie booty that have fortified our charges through the mid-morning blahs would now be supplemented by fresh food prepared by parents and brought into school, say, once a week. The brouhaha that ensued? Well, you'd thing the Hemlock Society had been contracted to take over the food service at Burpie Cow Wow.
And another thing, animal crackers would be no more as they contain the dreaded substance -trans fat.
"Whoa! that's all my kids eat!" came a plaintive cry from a far corner of the room. (So she'll need to hoard the last of the supply.) but wait, where can she store the stash? Such agonizing problems!
The extreme hardship of having to deal with strange food items being introduced into the classrooms and what of the self esteem of those children whose clueless parents bring in unpopular offerings? It's hard enough dealing with the weeping and gnashing of teeth when broken graham crackers are all that's left. And that veggie booty? Kids don't like it the way they like animal crackers. The teachers are eating it all up. You can see the telltale green flecks between their teeth.
There we all were, hurtling towards the falls, hardly able to keep our heads above water. It was as if we had been unexpectedly attacked by a school of ravenous fish (looking for a special snack, no doubt). The only reason most of us made it back to shore that night is that the fish were momentarily confused because a number of us were not sweet, some of us were cracked or broken and others had green flecks on their booties.