Mary Jo Robertiello's Blog, page 45

New York City Blog March 9 – March 15

Felled by a bad cold, I stayed inside for most of the week reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Bryson catches perfectly the excitement of buying lots of shiny expensive hiking equipment in hopes you’re buying security and safety on the trail. His trail was the Appalachian Trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine. I went down memory lane with the Appalachian Hiking Club. It originated in Boston but has New York headquarters as well. Bryson and his hiking pal camped. Never did I do that. Never. I was a Saturday hiker. Cadging a ride was an unusual feat. Usually, taking the subway to Port Authority and then the bus to Sloatsburg orTuxedo was routine. On the trail by 10 a.m. and back in the bus by 4 or 5 pm at the latest. A few of the memories are: a stag racing beside us judging a space exactly, and zigzagging through our straggly, bewildered line; the female photographer who took photos of the women peeing, explaining, when confronted by ladies hastily pulling up their drawers, that it was all right because it was for a photography course; the man who asked a surprised woman he didn’t know, and was never going to, if she’d swim in the nude with him for his birthday; meeting up with a bear and her cubs passed without incident, but on the trail back to the car (God bless the internal combustion machine) I kept imaging tree stumps were bear cubs.

Rather than tackling my police procedural, Graphic Lessons, or doing my income taxes, I wasted time trolling sites such as the 20 male celebrities who are shorter than you think (Dustin Hoffman – 5’ 5”, Prince -5’2”)

I gave up preparing my taxes to send to my long suffering tax man. Since I was in a hateful mood, I watched seven co-stars who couldn’t stand each other.

Finally, still coughing, I ventured out on rainy Saturday to a memorial for George Graf Dickerson. One of his daughters did the Talisman painting on the memorial program’s cover. I think it’s wonderful.

Rachel Dickerson Romano’s TalisMan

New York City Blog March 1- March 8

On Sunday I pulled on my hiking boots and went to the Frick Collection for a late afternoon concert by Florilegium, an English early music ensemble. The audience, dressed for the weather, resembled an apres skiing group. In contrast the romantic Baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann was well suited to the brocaded interior of the Frick Music Room.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Marks Hotel. We slid and skidded our way from 70th Street to 77th up a deserted Madison.It was well worth it for the wonderful cocktails, oysters, perfectly cooked salmon and homemade cookies.

You can’t go home again. A friend and I returned to a neighborhood haunt on 12 Street, John’s. We both had fond memories of delicious food in a charming setting. The restaurant itself is still engaging: the neon sign that beckons to neighborhood diners, the nostalgic murals that circle the upper walls, the dark furniture and sparkling white linens, and an original feature: the ornate candle confection. If only the service and food were as good as the surroundings. I remember fondly the sweetbreads, a dish that has been banished from John’s menu. So, I ordered tagliatelli with Tuscan ragout. It was featured on the Food Network’s Dives, Drive-Ins and Diners. I can’t imagine Guy Fieri, the genial host, being served the same dish. Forget about Tuscany. It was definitely barbecue out of a bottle.The waiters behaved as if they were in their mothers’ kitchens. They grabbed plates, acted bored and couldn’t wait to get back to the bar where they exchanged loud jokes. It was very Saturday Night Fever but without John Travolta.

John’s: A void to avoid

 

New York City Blog Feb. 23 – March 1

The 87th Academy Awards were very pretty and very boring. Shouldn’t the MC be a comedian? Remember Steve Martin making that remark about the teamsters helping Michael Moore into the trunk of his car, Billy Crystal ad-libbing about the elderly man who kept talking and no one could hear him, Ellen DeGeneres’s vacuum cleaner and selfie? This year we got Neil Patrick Harris in his underpants with a scared expression – they told me you’d laugh – on his face. There’s an English music hall ditty, “Always the bridesmaid never the bride…” that I thought of as I watched handsome and hopeful Bradley Cooper sitting in the first row and ready to race to the stage. The same thing happened last year.

 

These are for Bradley Cooper.

If you like crowded rooms that reek of meat and money, the venerable and lively Keen’s Steak House is the place for you. I don’t know if President Taft, the fattest president, dined there but many of his contemporaries did. In 1905 Lillie Langtry won the right to eat at Keens. She promptly devoured a mutton chop and is now immortalized by a nude painting that hangs over the bar.

The Lilly Lantry Bar at Keens

New York City Blog Feb. 16 – Feb. 22

Tuesday I went to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden.This is not your grandmother’s MSG. These days it resembles an airport .You go through security. Guards poke through your belongings, a mysterious wand is run over your body. I miss the gone forever freedom of going to an event without being searched, but it’s not a big deal. How would I feel though if I were black or an immigrant?

The buffet dinner in the Club Bar and Grill was perfect for the occasion: creeping through the happy hour crowd at the bar to immediate seating, a buffet line that moved, attentive service and good (not great) food. Rushing out to find our seats, we felt smug because we’d dined, not woofed down hot dogs at the various stands near the arena. I’m a doggie person and get extremely silly over beagles. However, if we had not been able to see the show on the tv monitors the dogs and their trainers would have seemed like ants. Did I pay good money to watch TV? No.

Eighty dollars a seat to watch the dog show on the monitors.

 

With the temperature dipping into the single digits, I met a friend downtown in Tribeca at the BMCC Performing Arts Center. We attended the venerable Highlights in Jazz, 42nd year and still going strong. Bria Skonberg was on the trumpet and the terrific pianist, Gordon Webster, played a selection of jazz favorites and original songs.

New York City Blog Feb. 8 – Feb. 15

Last Sunday at Carnegie Hall Anna Netrebko stepped in at the last minute and sang two divine songs by Dvorak and Strauss, She was conducted by superstar James Levine.Both artists were greeted with thunderous applause. Waiting in the Ladies’ Room line I noticed the different musical scores framed and mounted so you can entertain yourself in the time it takes to get you to your destination.

 

Rachmaninoff’s Score

I ask you is there any cooler address in Manhattan than Via Carota, 51 Grove St.? Maybe it ties with Avenue B. At Via Carota we had, among other dishes, the lard crostini and baccala fritti. Lots of fun to be in a new, jazzy, cozy restaurant on a wintery Sunday evening.

A friend and I went to Alwan for the Arts. The movie was cancelled but there was an exhibit of modern day Palestinian life.

What do these foreign dignitaries have in common with Netanyahu: French Ambassador Andre de Laboulaye and Cuban Ambassador Guillermo Bel? Three guesses.

Why are foreign dignitaries allowed to address Congress? All sorts of reasons: Republicans and Democrats duking it out, political gain for the invited speaker, commemorating the memory of an illustrious forebearer i.e. de Laboulaye spoke about Lafayette. After Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, the General was invited to speak before Congress. He made his famous speech,”Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”.

New York City Blog Feb. 1 – Feb. 8

Wasn’t the Super Bowl fun? I like football because it’s so American and so politically incorrect. But what’s happened to the cheerleaders? In the old days they were pretty, bouncy, sexy girls. Now, they look as if they take gymnastics very seriously.

I chose a day when the temperature hovered around eleven degrees to go to the Barbara Mathes Gallery to see Rakuko Naito’s paper work.The gallery is a townhouse that has the secure features of a vault, It also has the hushed, immaculate, tony atmosphere that makes you lower your voice. Then on to the Lauder Cubism exhibit at the Met. Picasso, Braque, Gris. Léger are artists in the collection. Cubism grabbed me as a child when I’d wander through MOMA and stand in front of Picasso’s Three Musicians.

Fernand Léger”s The Typographer

NYCB’s Glass Pieces with music by Philip Glass and choreography by Jerome Robbins was the best piece of an afternoon performance. My head was still filled with the images of cubism so I imagined I saw it in Glass Pieces. This is the first time I’ve appreciated Philip Glass. Choreography complements his music.

New York City Blog January 26 – Feb. 1

Was it only last week that Mayor DeBlasio and Governor Cuomo were duking it out as patres familias of New York State? Their squishy football was the blizzard of the century. I think DeBlasio won in the clothing category. He channelled his Italian DNA and slipped into various uniforms throughout the day. The most stylish one was the DSNY’s jacket. Cuomo inherited his late father’s inability to share responsibilities with underlings. He neglected to inform DeBlasio that he, the gov, was closing down the NYC subways. Loads of money were spent to keep us mere citizens locked in our caves. At least no one was killed except from laughing. An example: food delivery guys couldn’t be considered emergencies.

Blizzard equipment

I paid a visit to the Frick’s Portico Gallery to gaze at Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Diana the Huntress. She stands stark nude, on one foot, surrounded by the snowy Fifth Avenue lawn.

A discrete if lousy photo of Diana the Huntress

Isn’t cold weather a perfect excuse to eat traditional French food? If you agree, take thee to 26 Seats on Avenue B. French snails are an excuse to gobble butter and garlic, non? The 26 Seats version is delicious if awkward. Most of the lovely flaky pastry lands on your front not in your mouth.

Garlicy snails under a roof of pastry

Friends and I attended the New York City Ballet’s production of Serenade, Agon and Symphony in C. The Balanchine afternoon was conducted by the world’s smallest conductor, Clotiilde Otranto. Afterwards, we joined several million others at Rosa Mexicana.

One of many divers on Rosa Mexicana’s water wall

New York City Blog January 18 – January 25

Be the glitter you wish to see in the world was the message on the Judson Memorial Church’s program about Micah Bucey’s ordination on January 24. The service was filled with physical and spiritual glitter. At least 300 ladies and gents, adults and children sparkled with glittery outfits or witty remarks. Judson burst with affection, love and respect for Rev. Bucey.

Micah Bucey’s Ordination

On Friday, Jan. 23, Kathy Kelly began her three month sentence at the Lexington, Kentucky prison. She is being imprisoned for protesting drone killings at Whitman Air Force Base.

Bit by bit, detail by detail… My techie friend went with me to the annual Boat Show.Why? To build Steve Kulchek’s interests, to round out his character, his upbringing on Long Island. Did he sell a beloved boat because of his divorce? Did he sell it to finance his daughter’s fancy Rhode Island School of Design education? Did his wonderful Aunt Bess die in a boating accident? I think I killed her off in a hit and run in The Lemrow Mystery. Another boating connection is Con Haggerty, Steve’s uncle, Bess’s husband. Now retired, Con was the detective who introduced Steve to the NYPD world. He lives in Florida and does lots of fishing. As we walked past the Midtown South Precinct on west 35th Street my friend told me to take a photo. The officer on duty outside the building suggested we go inside. This is the kind of spontaneous NYC experience that is golden for a writer. There was a photo of a policeman over a sign, Cop of the Week, in the vestibule. Jimbo Jimenez, my wounded cop, would look good there.

New York City Blog Jan. 11 – Jan. 17

On January 11 the Paul Taylor Dance Company performed a wonderful and free program. The first performance was Images with music by Debussy. The second performance was Brandenburgs, music by Bach. The studio has a vast performing area. It’s like a large white cube with windows wrapped around the Grand Street side of the building. Sitting in the first row you have the immediate experience of the dancers being right in front of you. You see details you might miss in a theater such as a female dancer dealing with her foot caught in the hem of her costume, or another dancer giving a colleague a high five after she’d danced well or watching a dancer leaning against the wall and wiping his face after an arduous passage. It was thrilling to be a foot away from those wonderfully trained and talented dancers.

IMAGES

 

BRANDENBURGS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathy Kelly, the Chicago peace activist and one of the founders of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, spoke to a sturdy band of young and old lefties on Thursday, Jan. 15. The New York City local Green Party, Veterans for Peace and Peace Action Manhattan sponsored the meeting. It was the best kept secret in Manhattan. Although it was given at the Goddard Riverside Community Center, the center itself didn’t know or care. In spite of the lack of publicity, there were about thirty people present. Kathy Kelly talked about living alongside ordinary people trapped in war zones. She and her colleagues have been to Iraq and Afghanistan many times. Her talk was riveting and heartbreaking as she chronicled how the U. S. military debased and slaughtered the native population. Kathy has been incarcerated several times. She has gone to prison for refusing to pay war taxes. The day after our meeting she had to return to Chicago to receive her prison sentence for trespassing on a military base to protest drones. You can follow her work at www.vcnv.org.

KATHY KELLY AND ONE OF THE ORGANIZERS

SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

New York City Blog Jan. 4 – Jan. 10

I attend the garden and forest book club at the Central Park Arsenal. In addition to gardens and forests, the chosen books are about nature and ecology. My ignorance is profound so each book introduces me to a new world. Some of the recent ones have been Heinrich’s The Trees in my Forest, Rhodes’s John James Audubon: The Making of an American and Marris’s Rambunctious Garden.

The Arsenal, built between 1847 and 1851, predates Central Park. Originally, it was a munitions supply depot before it became part of the park. Very lady-like guns decorate the central stairway. On its walls are 1930 WPA murals and on the third floor, until recently, was the drawing that won Frederick Law Olmstead the contest to design the park. Known as the Greensward Plan it was the original plan created by Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. It was chosen by the Central Park Commissioners in 1858.

Breathing a sigh of relief once the elevator has heaved itself to the book club on the third floor, I go through the Arsenal Gallery which usually features photography and art that emphasizes the environment, urban topics and the history of the Park. There are interesting and off beat talks such as the one I attended about dying cemeteries in Staten Island.

The Arsenal at Nightare interesting and offbeat talks such as the one I attended about dying cemeteries on Staten Island.