a little red hen

Lisa Daehlin Sings Saturday, NYC...

Join us May 17 if you're in the City.(Enlarge invitation for details.)

Singing brought Lisa here from Minneapolis a few years ago.  Along the way she discovered her "inner-knitter," now creates designs for publications like this "Lace Dolly Purse" in the Bag Style book, Interweave Press.

Knitting brought us together at the original UWS (upper west side) Knitting Circle when she amazed us with her riffs on lacy scarves.  In 2007, a supporter of the Knit a Condom Amulet Project, she created three unusual patterns that are among the most-viewed on the site.  To answer those who have asked how to use the Breast Pouch and Bra, a friend modeled for the photo at the left. It's on Lisa's own new website, DeLisa.us.

Two years ago, she developed knitting and crochet classes for the Continuing Ed roster at Cooper Union--famous for architecture and engineering programs.  And there's her day job! 

Someday there's going to be an opera about knitting and singing and the days and nights of a creative woman in this city.  Word is that there's someone ready to do the libretto, another who'd write the music to encompass her many paths-- 

Crochet class flyer

Teaching at Harlem Knitting Circle...

With Eunny Jang, Interweave Knits Editor, at Knitty City... demos use of Breast Pouch for business cards, an action view.

By the way, if you're here for the weekend, Sunday, May 18, is AIDS WALK New York, more information at www.aidswalk.net or call (212) 807 9255.

 

"STRETCH (a fantasia)," must-see play, hurry...

Next week we re-visit playwright Susan Bernfield's wondrous evocation of all things Nixonian--and its dependence on dependent women-- STRETCH (a fantasia).  Runs through May 26.  You need to decide as you read this to buy one of its cheap tickets (under $25), because it has just received an over-the-top review in The New York Times.

Last July, I wrote here about my amazement at how far the piece had come since its first, fledging outing.  Now, in it's third re-working, it's having a longer run.  Not long enough in my book.  We have much to learn from the aging Rose Mary Woods, loyal secretary to Nixon, as she remembers the past from her wheelchair in an Ohio nursing home.

This richly detailed image (click to enlarge) of objects creating a Nixon portrait was designed for the show's  advertising by Another Limited Rebellion who see their work as "design therapy." It's a veritable kitchen sink of elements from the play--contemporary campaign stickers, reel-to-reel audio tapes, cocktail glasses.  And typewriters, so central to this political tale.  All supports Susan Bernfield's view that connects yesterday and today in America's ongoing dysfunctional political landscape.   The vintage click-clack of an IBM Selectric is one of several instruments in the Rachel Peters' music for the play.

Kristin Griffith plays Woods, young and old, and is terrific.  "Commanding performance," the Times noted up front in its review.  Another actress over 50, I'd add--and it's about time. 

My wish in last year's post was that STRETCH would return for  longer  than a four day run.  Okay, its one month this time.  More, more, please!

 

Women with Wrinkles--Acting!

Carol Rosegg's photo appeared in the New York Times review of "Vita & Virginia," one of two plays I enjoyed last month in their final perfomances. The pose was not replicated by Kathleen Chalfant, left, as Virginia Woolf and Patricia Elliott as Vita Sackville-West.  They were always at a distance of several feet apart. 

Each stood behind a music stand with the script before her.  Often one or the other would turn to direct her words to her partner, but they were never close.  This seemed right since the text was letters.  And pointed up the geographic and emotional distance in their relationship.  Some of that had to do with their class difference, some with Woolf's reluctance to be intimate.    "I was always sexually cowardly," Woolf writes in one early letter.

Eileen Atkins has adapted a correspondence that spanned rom the 1920s through early World War II. Atkins, a woman of many theatrical parts--actor, writer was the co-creator of the British TV series, "Upstairs, Downstairs." (From the halcyon days of the early 1970s when parents and children sat together to watch television.)  As skillfully as she's assembled the letters, Atkins' adaptation is enhanced by the two women who performed.  (Atkins herself appeared as Woolf in the first production of "Vita & Virginia.")

You will not be surprised that the audience was older women like me.  Two younger women sat next to me and I would have liked to know  if they had many friends who'd come to see it.  There's a picture HERE of Chalfant who looked just right--wrinkles not hidden and reading glasses with extended earpieces perched at the end of her nose--to be playing Virginia Woolf.   She and Elliott made me feel I was walking in an English garden and overhearing an intimate conversation between two very verbal women struggling with their times and complex choices--married to men and somewhat closeted lesbians.

[I now long for a pair of these "funky" glasses which seem more to the point and more glamourous than my ordinary bi-focals .]

Two days later, we went to an itty-bitty space on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village for "Kitty and Lina" --unknown to us except through a review in the Times.  Once again the publicity photo gives a skewed idea of what's ahead.  Sitting in the audience before the play began, we wondered why there was only one chair next to a small round table.  Would one of the actors stand throughout the performance?

No.  First Jennifer Boutell appeared as Kitty and told a story of coming eagerly to New York from a Baptist family in Texas.  We listened as her dream of joining the Actors' Studio and stardom elluded her. Life became drearier as she struggled to make ends meet.  She exited.

Lina, played by Marilyn Bernard, pranced into view and immediately engaged us. As a starter, she advised she was a pretty snappy woman who would go home with one of the men in the audience.  Gliding to the chair, she pulled a cigarette out of her purse, put it into a holder, then was briefly indignant with the stage manager when told she could not smoke in the theatre. 

In her life story of a single woman in 1950 and 60s New York, I was reminded of women I'd known who had a great deal of charm and few skills.  Often their road to survival was pleasing men.  That's Lina.   We meet her after many years of an affair with an older married man, who has left her for a woman the age she was when she arrived in the City.  Now alone in a youthful New York, she is, in the words of the Times' reviewer, "saucy and poignant." Another terrific older woman in theatre...three in one week! 

The Vagina Monologues and MACBETH

Lisa Daehlin, the exceptional knitter/crocheter/singer, and I were the over-twenty-somethings at last Saturday night's "The Vagina Monologues" at Columbia University.  Though 2008 marks the tenth anniversary of Eve Ensler's "organized response against violence against women," it was a first-time for each of us.

We both were impressed by how much has changed for college students.  The auditorium, on the second of three nights, was mostly women plus a representative number of men.  We joined their enthusiasm, were touched by the openness about their concerns. Lisa was an undergraduate twenty years ago-- nothing like this in Minneapolis, her home base.  And we know what a desert it was in the 1950s, my era.

Original monologues were a first at this year's presentation.  Performed with great fervor, they were less "polished" than the VM script itself and very powerful.  The six performers were talking for themselves about eating disorder, about gender identity.  Very funny one about visiting a therapist.  The only review online is HERE from an undergrad magazine at Columbia.  None in "The Spectator," semi-official daily emanating from the School of Journalism.  Because Barnard College is the source?  I've always been puzzled by the relationship of Columbia to this women's college.

At intermission I talked with two Barnard women at a table in the lobby to promote this year's "Take Back the Night" events in April.  That energy began in 1976 in Belgium with marches through dark streets by women who wanted to feel safer in the public space.  These were happening more generally throughout the U.S. in the 1980s.  I'll have to dig up a photo from one in Baltimore--and that red tee-shirt.  Currently it is college campuses that keep the flame alive on this issue-- as crucial as ever.  I'd like to see this year's efforts draw in the community around Columbia, my community--a concept that's always a challenge.

Oh yes, Macbeth with Patrick Stewart.  Ron and I saw that the next day at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Talk about culture disjuncture!  Again, it was via another that we happened to be there.  A friend could not attend, asked if we'd buy her tickets.  Okay--and who was Patrick Stewart?  Do I hear a gasp from readers younger?  We were very busy in the day of "Star Trek."  Seeing clients at night, raising kids by day.  All the pyrotechnics that worked for last year's "The Coast of Utopia", Tom Stoppard trilogy, were mostly annoying for me in this production.

Flashing light shows?  We had not done discos either; amazing how culturally disadvantaged we can feel.  [Aside:  This is why much on TV, stuff in the entertainment section of NY Times does not speak to us pre-boomers.]  My very least engaged moment, enjoyed by Ron and NY Times, was this one.  Stewart walks to refrigerator (Macbeth reimagined as 1950s Russia, see review above), takes out plate, slices bread and deli meat (symbolic?), makes sandwich and eats it while speaking.  Somewhere in Second Act. 

Patrick Stewart is a fine actor; we could feel that beyond the distractions.  I would love to see him in something more about the play, less about the production.  We came back to ourselves with a Middle Eastern meal at a modest place on Atlantic Avenue--Bedouin Tent, no website.

 

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues in December?

"Even cowgirls get the blues," a popular expression in the 1980s,  always made me smile.  But I never really knew what it meant.  That no one is immune from feeling sad?

Hoping to perk myself up in that little red hen way, I purchased some eyelash yarn on sale at Knitty City.  Maybe it could evolve into a seasonal condom amulet.  It did. I hung it briefly on the wreath in my building's lobby.  Simply knit a swatch, stitch together the long edges, voila!--a fuzzy red ornament with blue condom.  Loop made with finishing yarn for convenient hanging on a tree or mistletoe.  Happy Safe Sex to all!

As if to dampen everyone's holiday spirit, the past month has offered more somber political misadventures daily.  Naomi Wolf minces no words in the title her new book, "The End of America."  The subtitle is "Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot."  The link is a YouTube video of her talk to a crowd in Seattle.  Before she spoke last week at Bluestockings Bookstore, she and I had an exchange--first about the confusion in the public space that mixes her up with the other political writer Naomi Klein.

We spoke about blogging; she mentioned being interviewed HERE, an anti-war site.  In talking about Elderblogging and LRH, we exchanged about technical stuff that mystified her.  She was suprised I'd been able to take a digital photo of her appearance on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now TV show.  Sure enough, when introduced, Wolf was given the "other Naomi" last name.  One of the by-products of living long:  my once unusual first name has become almost common.

Time Goes By, happily back online, features several posts about Wolf's thesis.  Every time she begins with this message, "...not a warning..a difficult message with hope on the other side."  At the end of her talk and book is a link to the American Freedom Campaign which promotes learning more about the erosion of the U.S. Constitution--and doing something about it by writing those who were elected to represent us.

Yesterday's inspiration--and we do need it--provided by listening to Al Gore read his acceptance speech for his half of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Read it HERE if you missed it.  Thanks again to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!, the Peace Report, for providing this to viewers.

LYSISTRATA film appears briefly in NYC

"Where did you get that shirt?" Joan Wile asked.  We sat next to one another along with a bunch of other Grandmothers Against the War for a screening about the unprecedented, worldwide, anti-war theatrical happening in 2003, Operation Lysistrata, (film clips at this link).  It was Joan who had emailed me about it.

Joan is the instigator of the GAW, the group that has held a peace vigil, rain/shine/holidays, every Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:30 in front of Rockefeller Center. She is one of the 18 grandmas arrested here a couple of years ago for their peaceful protest at the Times Square Recruiting station.  Out of that initial action, the Granny Peace Brigade grew,  now includes a counter-recruitment effort which is described--with videos--at their website.

The film shows the time before the Iraq War began, the  energetic anti-war ferment.    Malachy McCourt, who sang to all us marchers in February 2003 as we rallied against the impending war, sat behind Joan and me.   "...Tens of millions of people took to the streets all over the world....organizers say half a million in New York City [more here at Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" site]. 

"Joan, we were so hopeful then," I sighed.    The film reminds us that many young people responded to the immodest notion of performing Lysistrata in cafes, parks, living rooms all over the world.  Michael Patrick Kelly, the filmmaker and his co-producer, Suzanne Hayes Kelly, answered questions about their documentary.  The screening was part of their effort to secure the small amount needed to produce a CD for distribution through their website.  [Contact Aquapio Films to learn more.]

It was cold as hell that March 3 in New York City.  Did one happen in your own locale (list here)? Imagine:  high school students--home-schooled 15 year old in the film used plastic dinosaurs for his unusual performance-- people all ages all over the U.S. diverse colors, gender prefs.  Touch-and-go to find a group in North Dakota but two cities signed on.   We owe a lot to Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, who conceived The Lysistrata Project.  That night the play was presented to a sold-out audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Appearing were Kathleen Chalfant, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, F. Murray Abraham, many more New York-based actors. You can see them in the film--along with wannabes worldwide like you and me.   

Joan and I, tee-shirt-wearing grandmas, continue to be hopeful, ask questions of authority.  She did not know details of The Thought Crime Bill.  Have to tell her about my latest idea after hearing the latest on The Bill.  It's skipped into the Senate; new number is S.1959.  Targets the internet in particular.  Five years ago we reveled in our freedom to protest--though the film reminds that not everyone supported the huge demonstrations nor the performance of Lysistrata itself.  Restrictions on the internet would deprive us of the unprecedented connecting possible through the ether:  59 countries and 1,029 readings. 

Yiddish Typewriter: who knew?

I leaned over the glass case, turned off the flash, snapped this just for  readers who visit here.  This amazing machine was one of two items that spoke to me at "The Jewish Daily Forward:  Embracing an Immigrant Community," currently at the Museum of the City of New York.

The other artifact was harder to get a good  photo because it was surrounded by a glass vitrine.  Why?  A large metal advertisement for Singer Sewing Machine.  Would someone be able to walk off with it?  There was a feel of impersonality to the entire enterprise--especially for those of us who view 19th and early 20th Jewish life as warm and untidy.

How our immigrant families Americanized themselves from tenement life to the suburbs of the 1950s was the subject of a 1990 exhibition at the Jewish Museum.  "Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home, 1880-1950."  Because the catalog from it has become wildy expensive, here's a link in libraries to search.  Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's  fine article,  "Kitchen Judaism," begins:

The beauty of white stewed fish on the Passover table carried a special message at thhe World's Columbian Exhibition...1893.  There, at the Jewish Women's Congress, Mary M. Chohen spoke to interested but uninformed Christians in her audience about the kitchen's role in creating a 'bond of sanctity' between Jewish religion and family life.

But I digress.  We went to the Museum to see a 1988 film, “The Forward: From Immigrants to Americans,” directed by Marlene Booth.  This history of The Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish newspaper, was followed comments and answers to questions by Chana Pollack, an archivist at the newspaper.  Ron, who rarely remarks on clothes wanted a tee-shirt like hers with Yiddish written in Yiddish, of course. 

The Forward has amazed readers and scholars with it survival.  Now an English-language weekly, today's publication continues as a link to a rich past, continues a Yiddish edition.  For Ron's parents and friends, it was the life-line to their Eastern European roots.  Ron, after public school classes, would travel on the subway to Yiddish school.  He is our family's link to that tradition though he claims his reading ability is not what it used to be.

No surprise that the entire movie audience was over 55, maybe 60.  Questions were thoughtful and, surprising for a New York Jewish audience, without argument.  Chana shared her extensive knowlege of The Forverts, what my late mother-in-law called it.  Wonderful there is a younger generation of scholars and enthusiasts to continue this link to our socialist cultural past. We have, indeed, changed.

[Posted while a little red hen and spouse visit family in Portland, Oregon] 

 

New York City: Thunder, Lightning and Loss

Two days ago, as we stepped off the #1 subway at our 125th Street stop, the sky rumbled.  We were stranded on the open air platform with excellent seats--under the overhang-- for a long, crackling lightning display.

In the hour Ron and I watched the sky, trains came and went.   Quite a changed transit experience from what we'd just seen in The Taking of Pelhman One, Two, Three, a 1974 movie.    Part spoof, part the NYC we know and knew, the film holds up surprisingly well.  It has everything-- stereotyped attitudes by and about the City's underground passengers, police, transit officials.  All wrapped around the hijack for ransom of a subway car from the Bronx.  Kept my attention with its scenes in our old neighborhood in the east twenties, now known as "little India," and the artful writing that kept the suspense going to the end.  Spot-on description at the link above from the Film Forum on Houston Street.

We were especially open to prolong our return to our apartment.  Earlier in the day we said goodbye to Lulu, our much-loved, tabby of 15 years.  Both of us will miss her sweetness and spunk.  An indoor/outdoor cat in Baltimore, a brief sojourn in Boston with our son, with us for ten years in Manhattan.  She models, in her younger life, a knit red wiggler worm on my Cityworm website.  Great patience. Lulu is our last cat.

The Hand Knit Shawl Leaves Home

Too dressed up to ride the subway? Alway a quandry.  Just like the blogger Doulicia who knit a beautiful French-inspired, Clapotis and noted, "I just can't imagine when one would wear it."

My newest FO (finished object), a simple shawl lingered in the front hall.  A few weeks went by and we prepared to go to the musical "Gypsy" at City Center.  Not for Patti LuPone but to see Ron's racquetball partner, Jim Bracchiatta, who had two roles in it.  His was a strong presence in what, for us, was a disappointing production.  (Jim is a busy voiceover actor who has appeared in many episodes of "Law and Order.")

Off-off Broadway and off-Broadway are where we typically go to theatre, so we were not prepared for the audience.  Woman behind us was eating popcorn. Clapping and foot-stamping began as the orchestra played the overture.  What was this, a rock concert?  Was it our cheap seats in the second mezzanine? the end, our eardrums throbbed from the whistling and yelling.  You had to be there.

For a change, I wore a dress-- in honor of the first outing of my the pale indigo, silk noile shawl.  The copper fibula designed by Rosemary Hill worked to keep it all together.  By chance, Ron was a match, seen here as the train pulls in and we are about to make our dramatic entrance into a subway car.  Dress up, our style. 

Natural History, the play and the surroundings

Through the magic of synchronicity, Ron and I were invited to visit friends vacationing in what the local library calls the "hamlet" of Cragsmoor, set between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson River, surrounded by the spectacular Shawangunk Mountains.   It's only a two-hour drive into upstate New York.  At the same time, Natural History, a play we wanted to see, was opening nearby.

Though we live on a high floor in a Manhattan apartment in an area known as Morningside Heights, our panoramic view of bridges and buildings is less awe-inspiring than this one from the porch of Mike and Mary's rented cottage.  Well, perhaps if you were very accustomed to natural history, our brick and steel scene calls up a "Wow!"  But there is something about hills and mountains and lake that speaks to that side of me longing for a more untouched environment.  Mike burst that bubble when he pointed out that  much of the landscape has been entirely changed from the time it was first encountered in earlier centuries.

Okay, but I'll stay with my fantasy.  And the quiet.  The City has become noisier over the ten years we've been back.  With greater prosperity there are more vehicles--so many tour buses in Harlem-- and car horns.  I am typical of very urban types who long for respite elsewhere.*

Cragsmoor is one of several late 19th century artists' colonies upstate.  (Sketchy Wikipedia link does not include painters and artisans for whom the area is famous.)  On our way into town, we visited its famous "Stone Church," a small, pretty structure (photo in above link) begun in 1895.  Even quieter within than outside, I especially admired this stained glass window from the Tiffany Studios.

Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville was our destination for Jennifer Camp's play, Natural History.  It's a compact downtown in what was once known as the "Borscht Belt." In the summer, early 20th century immigrant Jewish families took long bus rides for escape from the crowded tenements of New York City.  Abandoned, then revived, this former movie house showcases up and coming playwrights.

Imaginatively staged with a simulation of the American Museum of Natural History entrance lobby, the four separate scenes--three actors playing nine roles!--also effectively used video on large screens.  Each scene centered around romantic relationships-- hilarious, hesitant first meeting, anxious couple's struggle to conceive, youthful, tragic loss of a partner, and divorce.  The four of us were enthusiastic about the work.  I was struck by a dark undercurrent in each story that contrasted with comic moments and fast-paced very New York exchanges. 

The actor Anthony Blaha impressed me.  He projected convincingly in a wide range of characters-- a young man triangulated into his parents' dysfunctional marriage, a gay man who has lost his partner, and a romantic medical student in pursuit of a much older woman physician.   In that last one, "The Big Bang," all three characters were doctors. I'm not sure you'd be drawn to any of them for health care once you knew their personal stories!  A local reviewer offers more details about the play and actors. 

[Another disclaimer: Jen Camp was the excellent teacher who challenged me to finish my first one-act play .]

*Note:  Unfortunately these areas are not amiable places for older Americans.  Each year there are fewer doctors outside large metropolitan areas as this New York Times article makes painfully clear.