potato report

 

Word on the scabrous potato (or as Dugan calls it, the syphilitic potato, and he should know being a former medic during the Vietnam war): I do not know whether the President of the Garden Club has planted it. I doubt it, since she has hardly worked in her own garden at all. However, she did come to my house and plant my herb garden. Lest you think I'm a lazy bum (she also painted the front railings at Hannah's), let me point out that I pitchforked and edged and weeded until I hated dirt. Yes, I know it's supposed to be good for you. Why would you think that weighed with me?

wtf is in the truck this time

     It started with the potato. I was clearing out of NYC, and I could not bring myself to throw away this potato. It can't be eaten, but I thought my sister might like to plant it in her garden. I texted her and she said sure. Whether she will or not who knows, but whatever. Hard for me to throw away. And then there was the trampoline and the giant table and the rest of it. I went to see Ed and told him I had lost my mind. 

     He said just put the potato on the trampoline.

Me and the potato and the trampoline made it to Providence, where my grand helped me unload in front of Hannah's house. The potato appeared to have survived the trip. Also the trampoline.

And me. And the coffee and the applesauce. Why do I travel like this? 

So we got on the ferry.

And we made it home. Potato and trampoline intact. Will my sister plant it? I've done my part to keep the world from wasting a potato.

 

 

98 penthouse

In my apartment (I'm assuming that everyone reading this has been there) you have to press your nose against the glass to see the river. But in the one just three floors up, it's no such thing. The footprint is a bit smaller than mine—the penthouse bedroom is where my living room is, and their living room is where my bedroom is, but it has all the mod cons—including a washer/dryer—and, well, a terrace that can't be beat.

   The kitchen is where mine is, but extends into where my bathroom is. 

The second "bedroom" would serve as an office. I has a great view of the water tower. And the midtown skyline, if you squint.

It has two full baths, one ensuite with a shower and another with a tub. 

 

The living room is rather small. But it leads onto. . .

And the apartment next door shows you how a terrace is done. Though once you do this one up they won't have a river view any more.

 

Oh, and the light is beautiful in all rooms at all times of day. For 8k a month, this could be yours. Maybe. Check with Rita. LINK HERE.

happy hoppy easter!

 

Some fairly sleepy bunnies greeted Easter morning today. Hannah had done a brilliant treasure hunt for the baskets.

Clues:
    Hop hop hop you are a bunny
Find the next clue where you’d get some honey….

Sweet (like honey) and busy like a bee.
Find the next clue where you might pee.

Carrots are crisp, carrots are crunchy.
You’d look in this drawer if you were feeling munchy.

Daffodils and iris are flower of spring.
Felling kinda bouncy? Jump on this thing…

Boing, boing, boing. Zing, zap, zart. Head to where you might throw a dart.

Good game, good game. Are you getting tired? If so there’s a special bean that makes you feel wired.

Coffee’s not for bunnies and sugar is for ants.  Where might you find something to water plants?

Thirsty little flowers readying for spring,
If someone pushed this thing it would go dong ding.

You are getting close now, you fast little hare! Is there a place you’d go to sit in a rocking chair?

Sit down and take a rest, it won’t be long. Or if you’re feeling luck, go practice a song.

Easter is here. And we like it a lot. Now it’s time for baskets, if that’s what you want?
There’s a secret space, where you both like to hide.  In here you’ll find some treats., if you don’t mind! 

Well this little bunny is apparently now an apprentice Easter bunny. This morning the following was discovered on Hannah's kitchen table. 

the ed report 4/2/2023

Cut to the chase: He's ok.

When I got there all seemed normal.

Ed was asleep in his room, as is usually the case.
 

I was slow on the uptake. I had had an exciting day already.

   The two mourning dove eggs that were laid on my windowsill ia month before had taken flight that morning. (Incidentally if you wonder why I wasn't posting here all that time, it was because I was continually videoing the chicks growing up.) If you watch THIS VIDEO WHEN DOVES FLY turn sound on so you can hear me gasp when the first one didn't make it to the roof quite—guided to a sill across the courtyard by the papa—but mainly to hear my upstairs neighbor leaning out the window narrating and thinking I wasn't awake yet! 

   Anyway, I became alarmed when Ed wasn't waking up for supper as usual. He seemed too sacked out. And then I felt his forehead, and it seemed warm. He was flushed too. So I rang the button around his neck and asked for a nurse to come. And I called Ed's daughter, who was in town. And I dithered. The nurse said he had 100.4 and wanted to call the EMTs and take him to the ER. Ed's daughter said yes.

The EMTs got Ed's son on the phone, and I had his daughter on the phone and I was taking pictures. Ed was alert enough to tell them his birth date. 

   "You're not allowed to take pictures here," one of the EMTs said.

   "I'm a journalist, and he's a journalist, and I will be taking pictures," I said.

   "You want me to call the cops?"

   I shrugged. 

I stuck his phone in his pocket, and off he went. His daughter met him at the hospital. 

So off he went into the sunset. They tested him for Covid, which he had had once before, and voila. His lungs were clear, and it seemed a mild case, so they sent him back to "the hotel," as he calls his place, with Paxlovid and instructions to quarantine. 

And I want home under an almost full Easter/Passover/Pagan Spring moon to my empty nest.

 

so very happy

My granddaughter made this marzipan pig for me! Isn't she sweet!

 

the name game

NAME THOSE CHICKS I requested suggestions of names for the Mourning Dove Twins (I was calling them chicks, but I understand they are actually called squabs, which sounds too much like food.)

 

There were a lot of pair names, obv.

Bert and Ernie

Time and Life (sigh)

Brooklyn and Queens

Bagel and Lox

Sancho and Panza

Buddy and Holly

Lovey and Dovey

Claude and Clyde (per the McBeeBee twins, made famous by Bob & Ray)

My contribution to this batch would be Eeny and Meany

 

Then we got further into the stratosphere

I loved Calvin Coolidge and Kublai Khan

Likewise Limerick and Lemonrick (Their scions to be Sonnet and Daughteret)

Paz (Spanish for peace) and Palom (Spanish for dove)

I was thinking maybe Paz and Amor, for peace and love, which doves symbolize. (Which makes me wonder, do birds who mate for life ever get pissed off with one another?)

Hemingway (Hemi) for the big agressive dude and Rumi for the other, a nod to the literary world

 

Then Then we go full on aloha

Hana and Pepe or Wai  and Mea (if they've a Kauaian streak)

And Kai and Kiki, suggested in homage to the parents and also Hawaiian connections

Ok, so the parents' names are CooCoo and Haiku

If you take the family name to be Coo, I can't help but think of Coochie Coo and Hoochie Coo

 

This, despite the face that my friend Toby (whose name means dove in Yiddish, she says, though in Hebrew it is Jonah like him with the whale) said the mourning dove call is not coo. "There is no K sound," she says. JUDGE FOR YOURSELF HERE.

 

Anyway, I like the K sound. So I think I'm going with Kai Coo—Kai for ocean in Hawaiian, and to keep the theme going, Kukui Coo, kukui being a native Hawaiian nut tree that symbolizes, among other things, peace. 

And you know whose vote counts here.

 

The chicks are already growing wing feathers and finding it difficult to conceal themselves beneath their parents. In a week they will be grown and flown. Follow on my FB story.

And BTW, despite all our anthropomorphizing and notions of gender roles, it's mainly the papa bird you see feeding the chicks in my videos. He takes most of the day shift, and I can't see any of them at night. Nor can my phone. Not sure where he sleeps. 

 

Oh, and one more thing. Speaking of names, I find this years prospective hurricane names hilarious. I don't know why. (If you do plase tell me!) I mean, the hurricanes themselves are not likely to be the least bit funny. Especially for those of us with beach rentals. But the names. . . Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince and Whitney

ed report, march 12

 We sat within view of the actual Brooklyn bridge and harbor, but settled for the historical view in the dining room. we were joined earlier in the day by former coworker (Life, Time) David Van Biema, and had a grand time reminiscing about the bad old days while Ed attempted to snooze. 

And we have the Me Report. I have a couple stubborn swellings where the stitches in my face have not completely dissolved or resolved, so today, a month and a half since surgery, the doc shot them up with some steroid solution. We shall see if that plus hot compresses reduces the lumps.

ed report, march 6

The cruelties of illness and time. I saw Ed on Monday. I got there around two and had dinner with him (for once, he had something other than a hot dog: salmon and asparagus), leaving after he had his meds, around 7:30. I think I took the photo below in 2015, but clearly the picture is from his younger years. His eyes are still blue. I asked him whether he remembers cooking and taking out the trash and the other tasks of daily life he no longer does. And he said it pretty much seemed like another life. I think we can all relate to that feeling as we age. When I think back to the risky things I did back in the day, it definitely seems like another life. Alt life. 

   When I left, Ed was dozing off again. I said goodbye, and he said, "Are you coming back tomorrow?"

 

bragging, right?

 

I know y'all don't think I do anything much other than sit on my ass and drink beer and write intros for friends' books and their grants, but about once a year I work in advertising. Yep, I help to sell California Closets. Magazines are pretty much dead on account of lack of ads, but California Closet doesn't need ads to put out a high end perfect-bound product on good paper with great reproduction. I mean, the whole thing is an ad. It looks like Real Simple back in the day. Which is no surprise since the editor of California Closet's Ideas of Order used to be the editor of Real Simple. And one of mine at Life. Anyway. Here's the latest essay I did for them. See if you can find the logical flaw I wrestled with. Oh, and I did the pictures! In my apartment, and got paid better for them than the words. I may change my professed profession. 

 

Oh, and yeah, the caption is dummy type. I did write one. But if you have been in my house you will recognize these things. Taking questions.

 

   And now I want to brag on some friends. 

   Some of you may recollect from the distant past Gallery Girl, daughter of friends Eddie Wong and Anna Whittington. Well Maggie Wong is now an artist in her own right, teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago and practicing her art. THIS ARTICLE is about her latest show, which explores her lived experience of growing up with parent activists who formed a communal day care for their children. 

   My friend Wesley Strick (also known to my friends as one of my college boyfriends) spent the pandemic recording music. If you are on Facebook I think you can LISTEN TO IT HERE. 

    Another college friend (also known as one of my college boyfriends who has been married to my best friend from college lo these many years), former judge Bill Downing as appointed to the Public Disclosure Commission in Washington State. As such, he and a fellow lawyer and a journalist caused META to be fined $25 million for not being transparent about their political ads. Sound familiar? You can READ ALL ABOUT IT here.

     And on a totally unrelated topic, Donna Ferrato is interviewed about the time she spent photographing at the sex club Plato's Retreat, of 80s fame. Her black and white pictures accompany a lot of the interviews. in a documentary by Vice TV.  You can FIND IT HERE. Click on "Sex Before the Internet," and search the episode "The King of Swing." Ah, back in the day when we had analogue IRL sex. 

   And finally, because I'm plumb wore out (are you?) Here is a A BIRTHDAY TAPE for Karen, of Block Island, RI, who recently turned 80, not that you'd know it. She was a dancer in the Paul Taylor company for years. You probably don't want to watch if you don't know any of the cast of characters, though I do recite an execrable poem.

    OK enough bragging for now.

   

    

real estate news

 

Well. It doesn't look like a beach day in Block Island. My sister, Erin, sent me a pic of this year's destroyed railings (bane of my, my sister's and my carpenters' lives), and then Waldyn went over to Hannah's Hideaway (which Hannah herself doesn't stay in, but at Claudia's Surf City) to take a look at it this week. Built 17 years ago, the railings have been falling off for a decade. Redwood my ass. Azak all the way, baby! Erin redid the railings at Claudia's in pressure treated some years ago, and they have been more durable. (Claudia's in background.) If this weird weather continues, I assume the smashed lilac bush will be leafing out next week.

Meanwhile in Missouri, Frank and Dianne swung by the Goose a few days ago It looks a bit forlorn as well. But save the occasional massive flood, the river water is less destructive than saltwater. I mean, despite taking on seven feet of water every so often, the Goose has stood since it was built as a jailhouse in the late 1800s.

 

    In more cheerful real estate news, Douglas's former partner Lynn has a few weeks open at her house on Block Island, which is quite charming and secluded from the hurly burly of summer there. You can see her place ON VRBO HERE.

    

In the fall Lynn spiffed up Douglas's house on Block Island—the shack we bought in 1980 for $45,000, which though much improved over the years (see below) would still be a millionaire's teardown.

Douglas put his place on the market for a few months last fall for $2.8 million. Ahem. His house and shed are in the foreground, across the compound from my two places, which are the third and fourth from his, after my brother-in-law's two houses. Figure that out!

  Hannah's Hideaway had a couple cancellations (one woman told me her grown kids couldn't come out and she didn't want to be there all alone "feeling like a loser!"), so I have two July weeks and one June week available. You can check that out also ON VRBO HERE.

   Oh, just one more. Friend Aron's house on BI, down the road from us,  is also for sale, and you can see it ON ZILLOW HERE.

    Location location location

the doves are back

 

One morning Isaac heard cooing and saw some fluttering, but the flowerpot stayed empty for a few days, despite early morning cooing. I wondered if maybe we were too loud. But one morning after the kids left, I saw this. She stayed all day for several days. And then I caught Coocoo and Haiku switching off, and figured there were Eggs! Last year they hatched two chicks, but I flew away before they did. Below, the male prepares to take his turn on the nest.

 

the ed report february 26

 

Linda came to New York for another LIFE friend's book party, and so of course we went to see Ed. This was two weeks ago. Peter Meyer, also a LIFEer trained in from Hudson, NY, and we foregathered at Ed's digs at the Watermark. Or the Hotel, as he calls it. And I must say, it is pretty hotellike.

We had dinner with Mary Anne, 84, Ed's Watermark friend, who was married to a well known Indian photographer (he founded ICP with Cornell Capa, before they had a falling out).
 

 

Then we went up to the rooftop room, with the view you can see at top for a little bit, before making our several ways home. Peter took the following picture of Juliana getting Ed up to roof level on a little lift. Ed was so tired after all the festivities that he needed to rest for two days.

Yesterday I went back. The kids followed Linda into town in the interim, so I couldn't get to Brooklyn last week. The day before had been Ed's wife Alison's birthday, so the fam had all gone out to a gala meal. Result: Ed was somewhat tired. We hung out together and then had supper in the dining room. 

 Ed was worried about Mary Anne, his mealtime companion, who he hadn't seen for a while. He gets very anxious about everything these days. I tracked down her son, who told me she was in hospital. I finally spoke with her today.  She is getting over the Covid, and says the hospital experience was horrendous but curative. She must be in quarantine until tomorrow or something. She's still coughing, but very ready to come home to the Watermark.