a little red hen

Improve the New York Times: re-arrange pages!

Times' editors wanted to make me angry this morning with this on the front page.  How phony and infuriating  for this "opinion-making" newspaper to herald McNamara's death with "Architect of Futile War."  That's what they write now...What did they learn as their editors learn from Vietnam as they waltzed their important readers into support for invading Iraq?

Not till page 18, was the page that should have been on the front.  Emma Shulman, an inspirational old lady whose comments and lifestyle could make all ages pause.  Notice that Ralph Blumenthal's color photo in the online edition is even better than the black/white.  Who decided?

Finally, Bob Herbert's column, "After the War Was Over" (have to wait till Op-Eds, page 23), belonged alongside the McNamara one.  I could continue by re-arranging the other sections but have to get into the shower.

Why haven't they asked me how to improve the Times?

July 4, 2009: A Day Ends in Red Hook, Brooklyn

RED HOOK, Brooklyn                                      

 

 

Ron Bloom Celebrates Another Birthday!

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived,  children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

  All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

Memorial Day for Pacifists

 We have missed another opportunity.  It is not the first time.  Year after year we shift uncomfortably in our  seats when the day arrives to celebrate wars past.  We do not have an answer other than our usual one.

The street below my window is quiet at 9 a.m.  It's easy to hear the crows on my roof.  I might celebrate the longed-for quiet.  I am grateful.

Gratitude is not sufficient.  Celebrating the lost lives of those who fought America's wars continues.  Even as we know that lives were ended for those simply supporting this country's repeated missteps, our busybodyness elsewhere. 

Pacifists could use Memorial Day in America to reflect on how we believe that warfare only brings loss and sadness to women and children and men and landscapes.  And punishes those who have correctly oppossed this thinly-disguised screen to build capital.

Pacifists, those of us tired of exceptions for "good wars," what about this  everyday strategy to end war--a program beyond the tee-shirt?

Grannies Speak for Us & Arrested Once Again

MARCH 18, NEW YORK CITY, Eve, 6th anniversary Iraq War, Times Square Recruiting Station

 

 THREE YEARS AGO, a Tax Day Protest, Harlem Recruiting Office, April 15, 2006

(top two photos by Eva Baird of Granny Peace Brigade)

WHAT YOU CAN DO...Read about them HERE.  Find out ways to help Counter Recruitment in YOUR community.

"Weekend at War" featured in New York Times

 Each Friday, the New York Times includes a special section in the paper, "Escapes." It features places you might like to vacation. I rarely read it but this large photo  last week-- with its evocative feel stopped me.  And caused me more amazement about journalistic thinking than most.  It's one of the pictures for the lead article, "Weekend at War" and shows some of the 1,500 vacationing re-enactors attending a gathering in January.

"The Battle of the Bulge Living History Commenoration" was a chance for WWII veterans of that 1944 event, 21 of them, plus others who enjoy military dress-up to do their thing in at the Fort Indiantown Gap military base in Annvile, Pennsylvania. 

What did you miss?  Dancing to an 18-piece band ala Glenn Miller...chance to buy "authentic Axis headgear," and, of course the high point:  a simulated forest battle of a devastating encounter, the Battle of the Bulge.  That's the one that left 19,000 Americans dead, 47,000 wounded.  Perhaps some were in your family.  I remember my pre-teen struggle to have a conversation with a neighbor's son--once animated, now gaunt and distracted--a year after his return from the battle.

Who are we in America?  "Almost every weekend, there is a re-enactment somewhere around the country," the Times reports, the number of them growing by the year.  Mostly men except for the wives. There are a few female re-eneactors-- Nicki Jaine of Philadelphia  as a German cabaret singe,  a woman from Ohio as a war correspondent. It's a long article with many more awesome details the boggled my pacifist/feminist mind.  Escape, indeed.

Invitation forwarded from NYC...which button wiil I wear?

Like everyone else, my expectations are high for President Barack Obama.  Far from the East Coast where I'm usually  closer to Federal action, I feel a bit disoriented.  My Elderblogging friend, Betty Reid Soskin, has flown from California with her special invitation for January 20, 2009.

As I watch from Oregon, I'll think of her, an 83 year old African American (still working as a Park Ranger) who has known discrimination on both coasts and perservered through many life changes.  Her next post at CB Breaux Speaks will be wonderful to read.   My own hopes are expressed in the many categories  listed at the end of this post.

 Sunday's Oregonian featured a long article  on Portland as the whitest city in the United States.  It's a long and sorry story that goes back to its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century.  Young Oregonians and new residents are asking more questions--a hopeful sign.

IRAQ WAR ENDS: Special Edition N.Y. Times, July 4, 2009

"Free New York Times," the woman said as we exited the subway at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue. "Really! Who did this?" "Someone just gave them to me to distribute." I look at her closely: smart, not going to tell me more. "Terrific idea...thanks." Seems 1.5 million of this free, fake, wishful edition distributed today. Amazing. [photo: Ron Bloom]

If not now, when...

  Walking beside Riverside Church, New York City, November 6, 2008, I saw bag-pipers as they prepared for the funeral of  Sgt. Deon Taylor.  He was 30 years old, an undercover NYPD police officer, killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on October 22.

Further along Riverside Drive, a car struggled for attention.

Lisa Anne Auerbach has been making art that matters for a
 long time.  

We are happy and restless as we wait for January 20, 2009.

Funeral Parade--with Drums--from My Window

"What's that music?" Ron leaned out the window facing 125th Street yesterday afternoon.  Sounded like a jazz funeral parade in New Orleans, the one you couldn't help but follow.  Yet different.

Barbara Ann Teer, founder of the National Black Theater died last week at 71.   When she moved from an active life on the stage to devoting herself to  the NBT, she stated:

We must begin building cultural centers where we can enjoy being free, open and black...where we can find out how talented we really are, where we can be what we were born to be and not what we were brainwashed to be, where we can literally ‘blow our minds’ with blackness.

Once again we found ourselves fortunate to live beyond the proper confines of the "upper west side," and within Harlem's boundaries.  Ron would point out details he noticed as we ran from one window to another to follow the parade as it turned from 125th onto Amsterdam Avenue below our window on the 21st floor.  "I got teary," he said. I wonder if picture-taking gets in the way of my own strong emotions.

The tourists on the double-decker bus (see final photo) probably never learned they were privileged spectators to a remarkable ritual, rarely seen in New York City.  The explanation came to us in today's New York Times headline, For Champion of Black Theater, A Funeral through Harlem's Streets.  There are many fascinating links for more about the visionary Dr. Barbara Teer,  known as "the queen of Harlem."

UPDATE:  More details at UPTOWN Flavor, a lively blog about all aspects of the neighborhood--events, art, politics.  Discovered independent movies are shown Wednesday and Thursday night in Morningside Park.