Yep, another New Year ends!

I am always glad when the Christmas rush is over. 

There is no way to escape from the constant
dash to make everything just so perfect. Done.

Back now to the time of routines, 

reading again and working.

The best is that there is an endless stream of books I 

I want to read. That's good.

 But another year again?

Yep, another Christmas!

It was a nice Christmas, peaceful and, yes, rich in gifts. Somehow there is this incredible generosity by everybody to please everybody at Christmas time and I probably "made out" best, who knows. We break open our gifts on the 24th at night, we laugh, and eat, and are happy. The next day we went to Luise  and Sid for a sort of "family christmas" (which is a very mixed family anyway). And again, fun, food, laughter. Cannot be nicer. And to top it all of we had a load of snow. Nothing is nicer than the first snow of the year covering everything, frosting the windows, making everything look tranquil and restful.

A trip to New Orleans and searching for KATRINA

Living in the historic and vibrant French Quarter for a whole week, in walking distance to the mighty Mississippi River — and it looks exactly as I had expected it. From the first minute on I decided to eat only cajun and creole fare, oysters and jambalayas and cray fish, non-stop, and I managed to do so. It's a lively city with open markets, flea markets, historical and landmarked buildings, flowers all over ... no trace of the devastating hurricane KATRINA. Lots of music coming out of every window and door,  street musicians celebrate in the streets, but also there are lots of beggars and yes, drunks, openly carrying a glass or other vessel in their hands.

Sightseeing took us of course to the grand plantations (well restored and quite substantial); the Bayou with alligators and exciting wild life, huge turtles in a very different landscape.

The only transportation we took was public and it was excellent: street cars for a mere $.40 per trip (for seniors, that's me) into the Arts and Warehouse district where the museums are. It was Monday and only one was open the OGDEN. But it also took us to the Garden District with the largest mansions, incredibly huge, all finely "landmarked" with proper plaques.

Another highlight  was Preservation Hall, a sanctuary devoted to Dixie Jazz, Lines form early for three one hour sessions. Altogether we managed to end up there three times. And we had a ball.

At the State Museum I saw an excellent exhibition of 15 or more heart rendering videos about KATRINA telling stories of social breakdown, corruption, heroes, discrimination and unacceptable behavior by political leaders. Later once we came home I saw the Spike Lee documentary about KATRINA, raw, accusing, sad stories looking at the many aspects that form a disaster.

Yes, here was a city in America that did not strike me American at all, much more relaxed and openly vibrant. A great experience.

Court Again!

The saga with my friend continues and we were asked again to court — the third time now since June. Last time he didn't show up, but today, there he was ... quite run down looking and sad. And after endless traffic violations and abuse cases and the Judge leaving the room every 45 minutes for half an hour, we were asked to "all rise" again and again. This time the court room was even more crowded than the past times. My friend was asked by the prosecutor in advance if she wanted to drop charges and to my relief she agreed to this immediately. When "our" case came up finally, it was a short affair. The restraining order was upheld, but no financial punishment or any other penalty was given. He walked out of our life and the court room. We waited a while and  happily left the court room a while later. It's over. We hope to never see this man again although after all I felt sorry for him. I am sure he was once a nicer human being before the alcohol captured him.

Thank you for another Birthday!

I had decided that now is the time to disregard my birthdays completely; they come all too frequently. But it's not so easy. All these many many calls from Germany, from England and from around here, and then there is this Facebook thing ... how can people remember something so unimportant? It impressed me deeply and I felt bad since I am not good in remembering birthdays at all. And it is so nice to receive the calls  all day long and to catch up with so many people. Suddenly it was quite clear to me that it had to be a little bit more of a memorable day than planned, and in a rush I prepared a nice display of food (part from the Fairway store, part from my kitchen). Chrissy and Stefan and Jay and Tom had time to come and we sat around the table finally. And it was nice. As always I got the biggest early morning display from Stefan and as always we slobbered down a piece of cake at 8:00 AM. A flat screen is not bad at all; I did not want it but oh boy, the movies look great with it and I have no trouble now reading the captions in foreign films. With Jay I will go to New Orleans in two weeks! Hurrah, that will be nice. Must say, birthdays are very nice, who said they are not (what comes with it is not!)

Das Rheingold

I must admit that I never went to a Wagner Opera in my life.  I have read about Wagner in all my research about the War many times and I arrived at the point that I needed to see the opera.  The Met plans to stage the whole cycle over two years, and the first cycle, THE RHEINGOLD, was immediately sold out of course. And so we went to the movies to see and hear the opera, sitting in these very comfortable chairs in a 10plex where I normally do not go a lot. But to listen to the opera there is great, in addition to listening  to close up and behind the stage interviews and scenes with all these famous singers. What a performance it was, what budget it must have been. A 45 ton two-tower set dominates the staging consisting out of huge planks that move up and down. A stunning opening scene with the three Rhinemaidens who suspended by ropes swim around in mid-air, releasing columns of bubbles from their mouth and sing wonderfully. It all was a mesmerizing display of magic hearing and watching the gods struggle for the possession of the magic ring. The singers moved around in infrared light wearing bold and I would say a bit unattractive costumes. But the contrast between the super modern and sparse stage setting and the very very dated costumes was spellbinding by itself. You were never able to see the whole stage completely, an overview that I missed. On the other hand, there were all these great close ups focusing on the faces,  and you could virtually see the sound roll out of their mouth.

The conductor was James Levine who had just come back from a back surgery; Wotan was sung by Bryn Terfel who sometimes I think looked a bit lost. It was a tour de force for 3 1/2 nonstop hours and very exciting. I was impressed by Alberich, the dwarf who was sung by Eric Owen. Altogether it was the most impressive magnificent operatic piece I have ever attended! It's strange to know that THE RHEINGOLD was written last by Wagner, he went backwards here I have read somewhere. First the third cycle, then the second and then only the first. Who would have know that I cannot wait to see and hear the next cycle!

The Passport by Herta Müller

Herta Müller was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. I had never heard of her and finally found one of her books in the library. Writing in German, she is a Romanian woman of German descent. In this book, The Passport, she writes about the stifling hopelessness of people living in a small village under Ceausescu's dictatorship. She writes in a sparse language, hauntingly beautiful; the sentences are just simple statements, they  are all short and factual and display the oppression suffered by the people.

I virtually forced myself to read this book very slowly, sentence by sentence, almost word by word, and then a surrealistic picture formed in my head. Light is thrown up here and there and illuminates the existing grayness and blackness. It is a very odd but beautiful and poetic reading experience about village life dominated by the wish to escape and to migrate. To achieve permission to do so and to obtain a passport, the villagers try many things, mostly under the cover of the night. The village miller tries to bribe the mayor by transporting flour sacks on his bicycle, and he fails;  the wives or daughters might be sent to the village officials and, yes, also to the local priest who takes fullest  advantage of the situation "trying to look for the missing birth certificates under the cover of the mattress of the iron bed." It is the horrors of totalitarianism told in the lone voice of village life in a forgotten region. The Passport is a very quiet book allowing the shaping of word pictures in your mind. Unforgettable.

Reading matters

Oh, all the places one goes to learn a few new things every day — the books, the newspapers, the magazines, the TV, the videos on the internet, or just talking to somebody or listening to the radio. Again and again one realizes how little one knows about the world,  There is so much time and still it's never seems enough to suck up the endless stream of information.

The in the UK published GRANTA comes out on a quarterly basis with stories, poems and photography by various authors from around the world who always provide a new point of view. They have a knack of finding fresh and interesting writers, and many of these writers who have appeared first in GRANTA are now well known here. The latest funky looking copy of GRANTA has just arrived on my doorsteps, and this time the issue  had a very different feel. As always it is completely devoted to one subject only, in this case it is PAKISTAN.  The cover was commissioned by a Karachi-based artist who normally paints trucks and other vehicles in wild beautiful colors. Once I saw a movie that took place in Pakistan and I noticed that all the trucks and trains were painted in these intense colors. The trucks for instance might be dilapidated, old, overloaded and appear dangerous to maneuver around, but they are attractively decorated. And so it is with the new November issue of Granta, the high gloss cover shows the biggest splash of colors. Every article brings Pakistan to life, the different regions, the different cultures (with a plural), the traditions and religions (although it is now mainly Islamic), the tribes, the wars, the leaders, the corruption, the castes. This country is filled with 200 million people speaking nearly sixty languages and brought into nationhood under the auspices of a single religion, Pakistan is divided  and destabilized with ongoing conflicts in Iran, Afghanistan and Kashmir.  It is a country of jihadists and anti-Americanism. All 18 stories are seen from varioust angles,  and almost all are written by men.  The authors either live in  the cities, in the country, on the coast, or they are Pakistani living in America, or England.  All the writers were new to me except one, Moshin Hamid whose book "A Reluctant Fundamentalist" I had just finished. All the  writing is fine and  a great mix of reportage, fiction, poetry, nostalgia. I could not stop reading the issue non-stop.

My favorite was the first piece, Leila in the Wilderness, a fable to me. A long piece about two star-crossed lovers, Leila and Qes, and it dramatizes the age-old prejudices toward the birth of girl babies and how this is still surviving in Pakistan. The shortest story in the collection was Mohsin Hamid's "A Beheading";  it was startling and made a strong point on how it is to try to live and work under a repressive intolerant regime. All stories are varied, and each is good. Arithmetic on the Frontier introduces the Pashtun machismo. They live in the North West Frontier where hospitality is inevitable to friend and foe, but tribesmen old and young all brandish their Kalashnikovs. They seem to be smiling and then the fire starts. Written by a Manchester Guardian correspondent who accompanies a civil servant, Jasmal Kawal, and his body guard through the country. The astonishing fact is that Jasmal is all, a lawyer and chieftain, a landlord and warlord. Murder and fighting are constant preoccupations in the Pashtun territories. Besides hospitality, the second requirement is to observe Pashtunvali, the honor code of conduct. Everything must be revenged and nothing is ever forgotten: a murdered relative, a philandering wife, or maybe just a casual insult, A profusion of blood feuds take place non-stop. It is a wild story and completely incomprehensible to my mind.

And so it goes on. How can the Western World lead by the US ever to intrude successfully in such a big muddle and change things that have not been changed for centuries? I quote a remark from the book by a man interviewed by the author in the story of The Trials of Faisal Shazad: "... If you train American-born guys, spend a lot of money teaching Arabic, the culture, the most they get, even after all that, is 30 per cent".

Tina Bausch Dancing Theater

Finally we made it again to the BAM — this beautiful old and handsome theater in Brooklyn, exciting and enchanting. As part of the New Wave Festival they performed Tina Bausch's VOLLMOND (FULL MOON). New Wave always promises to be exciting and spectacular, and this of course was no exception. Non-stop dancing steps were fueled by non-stop energy in a one piece program interrupted by an intermission.
The constant and brilliant footwork reminded me of our life as human beings with all our weaknesses, our strength and the absurdity of all of it. Non-stop we go. One is pinned to the seat and VOLLMOND triggered thoughts of the moon and its myth, its relationship to the tides and the waters and maybe also to our sometimes bizarre behavior during the time of a full moon. 
It was artistic and spellbinding; the stage scene was just a huge huge rock crossing over a river, a piece of water, real water and a lot! Nothing else. Dancers appeared mostly in pairs; the men were strong, silly, playful and the female dancers whirled around strong and feminine when they interacted with the men. They walked over the rock, danced on the rock, played with the water, swirled buckets with water around creating a symphony of water, and yes they all also swam in it. All was underlined with the most beautiful music, very haunting. Tiny little stories were acted out and made you laugh out loud at times. Spoken utterances consisted just of a word or a sentence: sometimes like a cry for help,  or a dry comment. One could not help smiling while listening to the profoundness of it all — or you could cry about the sadness. It seemed that everybody in the audience was spellbound, and a huge applause arose at the end. We all became alive again.
Tina Bausch died in 2009; this was her last creation, just finished before she was diagnosed with cancer and then she died nine days later.

Tomato time in Massachusetts

The summer is unraveling all at once. No kidding, it's over! Here is a short retrospective about our visit to Erik and Mary in Massachusetts — and perfect summer days. They had moved into this old huge farm house a couple of years ago, and it looks lovely but oh boy it must be cold there in winter. But in summer, oh summer, it has a picture book quality. When we went this time it was for lots of talking, beautiful eating and swimming in what they called a "swimming hole" deep in the woods, at a point where two rivers meet. One swims through rocks, the water is black but clean and cold. At least to me this was a high point — the whole quality about it. The posted pictures speak for themselves, and in the midst of winter I will look at them again! Looking forward to the next summer. Yes.

Missed the beach this year? Yes!

This summer has just zoomed by, zzzz...   Of course I am lucky I had the pool and I was able to swim a lot. But the ocean is different! Finally last week we made it to Jones Beach, after the Season it was,  a wonderful warm day on September 26. And even the water was still warm, no life guards to be seen, and there were some frolickers and swimmers. Yesterday just a week later it had turned seasonably colder and instead of going into NY we drove to Island Beach State Park,  located off the NJ coast, on a long sliver of an island (10 miles long). A spectacular place and in summer it is apparently drawing immense crowds of people  — a money maker for the State. 

Anyway when we went there yesterday  no people to seen, it was completely empty, and I walked on this never ending beach  along miles of sand dunes on this very rainy and stormy day. The waves were magnificent, the grayness beautiful and wherever you looked plants, thickets, bushes, flowers and and here and there an osprey colony's nest (empty now of course). This narrow barrier island stretches on and on and Henry Hudson sailed by on his Half Moon and first described the Jersey shore. I found also a large expanse of heather and grew very excited about it; but this heather blooms yellow in Spring for one week only (and is not of purple color blooming in August as it does in Northern Germany). The plants look a bit the same, but this is where the similarity ends except for their name. We call it Heide and the translation is Heather. 


I was able to pick a few milk weed pods with seeds which apparently entice Monarch butterflies to put there eggs on it. Will try to grow the milk weed on my terrace on the 21st floor in a pot and will find some Admiral larvae on the internet; and maybe, maybe i will have a colony of Monarch butterflies in the future. I thought they were all distinct since I never saw them anymore. Let's see. I hope I will not forget to do this all in Spring. Picked some Golden Rod plants with roots and will  grow these also in a pot outside. Learned that Monarchs like Golden Rods.  What a place. Will never forget it. 


Inched into the ocean, surprisingly not icy at all, but I was pitch wet up to my hips after a while, and it rained again. Driving back past rows and rows of boarded up summer houses we looked for an open restaurant, was not easy, and finally ended up at Crab's Law, recommended by a guy in a bar. What a memorable meal I had, Seafood Newburg perfectly cooked with Sherry, or whatever "spirit" belongs into it.  Was suddenly remembering that in Hamburg we would drink  a "Grog" on a cold day to warm you up and I asked them to make one for me (a shot of rum and hot water in a glass, skip the sugar) and it worked alright. My face is still burning today from all that wind and rain. 


The  pictures from the internet. My small camera broke and I did not dare take along the "real" camera. In reality, the beach was grayer and longer, more mysterious and one of a kind,  the sky was darker, wilder, more menacing. But still everything was endlessly beautiful.


These were great hours and I feel fully energized again. All it takes is an ocean.

A trip to Bard College and more

It is already over two weeks ago that we decided to buy tickets for a performance by Oedoen von Hovath's "Judgment Day" and the play does not leave my mind. So it's better to write it all quickly down. I was familiar with this author,  Jay was not, but I only knew him from my school education and most probably I saw also a play or two in the theaters in Hamburg. I also remember that I did not appreciate von Hovath a lot then and found him complicated and always hard to decipher. But anyway, I was willing to try it again and off we went. I chose a motel in Kingston, NY  — a town which I had bypassed many many times on our various Catkills adventures for hiking or skiings. This time though it was the middle of the summer and Kingston was a great surprise to me, an old town consisting of two parts. The older part is situated at the Hudson  and named Rondout. I fell in love with the old houses, the old marina, everything there had the slight misfortune of having been abandoned a good while ago. But there were tries again to lift the town of its depression — new lovely restaurants at the river have sprung up,  galleries, stores displaying sharp looking fashions, real old  houses with fresh paint, and a certain trendiness has suddenly appeared among the shabbiness.  How great it was to walk alongside the Hudson and we immediately scheduled a Hudson cruise for the  next day, a trip three hours long, peeking at many light houses, at all the old mansions and the splendor of the Catskills. The Vanderbilt mansion impressed me the most with its 79 rooms, only to be lived in for two weeks per year. Well! Kingston (the new part) was rather old also and had these lovely roofed sidewalks uptown with a wild menagerie of bookstores, galleries, pawn shops, and restaurants of course. A nice discovery of a town that I had by-passed so many times before and never paid any attention to.

Saturday night it was off to Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson where the play JUDGEMENT DAY was staged at Gehrig's Fischer Hall, an incredible steel covered and spectacular modern building sitting in the middle of the lush and green scenery of the Catskill mountains. Seating in the theater was arranged around the movable stage and on account of this everybody had good seats and got fine close-ups of the actors. The stage setting was modern and simple. The story took place at a small town train station and the focus is on the unhappily married station master, Thomas, who is distracted for a moment by a young woman and seconds later 18 people are dead. The townspeople want to find the guilty party of course, there is lots of finger pointing  and everybody gets mixed up into the malicious situation. The perfect station master  cannot face the situation and falls apart; the woman he flirted with cannot silence her guilty feelings. And the pointed finger remains up in the air to the very end.  And this air is full of chill and not only because of the horrible disaster, but also of the time in the thirties; loud mouthed Nazi officers in their brown uniforms march around; the good town folks and the horrible disaster mix up the question where guilt starts and how it possibly can be all loaded on one single person.

Peace and Quiet in the Museum?

Sunday,  a brilliant, sweaty and hot Sunday. Decided to  go to NYC yesterday, actually against my will,  but nevertheless wanting to suck up some culture. Leaving the bus, it hits you: the oppressive heat, the crowds, the noise!  Pushing  against human flesh to make your way from point A to B. There happened to be a parade that day also, I forgot, the Puerto Rican Parade, a wild circus to be avoided under any circumstances, but impossible if you want to walk from 42nd Street Bus Terminal to 52nd Street and  the Moma. Disgusting, irritating, crazy.  Expect peace in this cultural institution, no!  A people flood and to top it off, an installation with microphones invites people to go up to it and shriek as loud as they could. and as long as they could, in intervals, and the sound to be magnified every few minutes over the whole museum. That is art? Freedom of expression but expressing what? Simply horrible, disgusting, annoying. We went to their cafe and had coffee + croissants,  I then saw one exhibition about  women as experimental film makers; and afterwards decided to just sit in the sculpture garden which compared to everything else was a relative calming experience; watching the old, the young and the very young, the lonely, and the show-offs, but nice. One way how not to spend your Sunday afternoon. But it all ended with a fine dinner and a glass of wine on 9th Avenue in one of the many eateries  — and then back home. Some you win, some you loose. 

A beautiful summer morning.

We have a heat wave alright and we got it for a couple of weeks already. It's blistering, it's humid, it's hot. But the mornings, especially after a rain storm or thunder, are fine and exquisite. I decided to do my morning run alongside the river and then had some yoghurt and fruit and tea on the terrace before I starting the tedious stuff. The Arts Festival keeps me more than busy, many ads to design, old accounts don't come in, enough to do. But I had decided to first attend to a big stack of unopened mail, speak bills, and pay them. I am always reluctant to do so and I am always procrastinating. Well, here I sit now at the computer,  looked at my e-mails, talked to Neda and the mail is still not yet opened! Sad. But it was a wonderful morning on the terrace. The view, the air, the lushness, my flowers, the peace! I started reading a Granta story, but I faithfully put my book down to attend to my work with a great sense of gratefulness about this particular morning! I want to remember this feeling in the middle of the winter. Is that possible?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

This is a first book and it was written 2009, it is published in 35 countries and is on the bestseller list of the Times; in addition a film is in the works. Certainly a great success for the author who is only 22 years old. Normally I don't pick books like this but I am glad I did. My curiosity arose when I read that the story is set in the rural South of the 1960's in Mississippi describing African American maids working in white households when black women were expected to help raise white babies. The main characters are two maids who have the guts to tell their stories with a good sense of humor, covering the rough truths as part of life, and taking the race differences for granted. The third main character is a white young woman, Skeeter, who is finished with her education and who was also raised by another very similar maid. Skeeter has a very observant eye and wants to become a writer and so she decides to write about the times in Mississippi at that time. It sounds pretty unreal nowadays but the maids worked horrendous hours, got no time off, had to be available at all times, the reimbursement was extremely poor, they even could not use the same toilets as their employers! The "babies" loved their nannies, returned to them rather then to their mothers in times of problems — but once they grew up they became again like their own mothers — distant and removed and selfish.

The time was ripe for a change indeed, the women were suffocating within the lines that defined their town and their times. And it was time to cross these lines. I personally happened not to be in the country at this time, I did not grow up here,  and to be honest, once I arrived I also did not pay too much attention to this situation. Later on I had Elva in my house to help me "raise" Chrissy and Stefan in a very loving way while I was at work. We talked a lot, I tried to help her, she smuggled in her own daughter from Jamaica who lived with us for a while. I remember finding her a place in a Head Start school in Englewood. I would say that sort of a friendship existed between us. Maybe out of necessity, but things were fine then and I hope to have acted vastly different from these white ladies in Mississippi. It truly was a horrible exploitation while everybody looked on and took for granted that these maids were considered not really "human". Very very hard to believe now and shocking! It was good to read this story to reinforce the truth and just to not forget what had happened not so very long ago.

Sailing on the Hudson

One of the things I really love is to live where I live.  To have ended up here I consider this one of the better decisions in my life. The Hudson view from my window is always great: rain, shine, snow, storm, thunder. There is not a single morning that I will not roll out of bed and admire the view —  gray or green water, high or low tide, I love it. A secret dream of mine was when I grew up  to live close to the water; I have arrived. I walk out of the building, there is no street to cross and I take my morning run (or walk) alongside the shore, looking at the bridge in a different light every day.

This year it is a hot summer, really humid and hot and everybody hates it. It happened that an oyster boat anchored the other day at the Marina, an old old boat, with a wide berth and no luxuries whatsoever, huge coarse sails on two masts and fortunately also a motor. It was available for hire and so we went for a couple of hours at evening time for a sail, a little bit up the Hudson, a little bit down, past Manhattan's skyline surrounded by the greenish lush of the island and past all the new buildings and parks and the Palisades on the NJ side. Although I have studied this so many times, again it looked slightly different and more beautiful. Yes!

Family Court

Here comes a completely new experience, going to Family Court! Well yes, I had glanced at the court scenes on TV in the afternoon, listened with amusement to outraged voices blaming each other and a Judge trying to straighten out the mess. It happened that I got involved into a very unhappy situation of a dear friend of mine, who trusted me and related to me her mishap. She had happened to have made the mistake by inviting somebody to live with her for a while. This person had been evicted from his apartment and looked now for a new place of residence. So he moved in and did not wish to move out again! He did not want to participate in the rent and other common expenses for living and this and other things started a terrible home situation. I guess there were some good times also but most of the times things got worse especially when heavy drinking on his part was involved. Unfortunately he just could not be persuaded to leave again this cozy free spot.  I am sure there was lots of verbal abuse and matters got worse by the day until the first incident of physical abuse occurred. The desperate person confided in me and I told her to call me anytime when she thinks that she might need help with calling the police to force  him to move out. And sure enough this call came soon enough; she called the police and filed a report. He was incarcerated with a bail of $200. It was 2:30 pm when we finally left the precinct — a very busy place at night! A report needed to be filed about physical abuse, a judge needed to be called to grant a temporary restraining order, and a court date was set — oh boy, we were tired but relieved. All the while you sit there and cannot avoid listening to other ongoing family disputes. A few days later the boyfriend was was released and immediately showed up at her door again: he suddenly wanted to marry her, he pleaded  with her and begged her over and over. Not to my surprise when we went to court she withdrew the restraining order and this is what many other women do also. He proceeded then to Rehab until his money ran out, soon enough, and finally he came back and moved in again. The situation would have ended differently if he had money to continue Rehab, but he was thrown off in the middle of the program and left to his own vices.  Life goes on.

Not long after this, the old story repeated, but much worse this time with heavier abuse, more tears, more shouting, Women are in disadvantage here definitely!  She just had a laser operation and bingo his fist went into her eye. She was cornered, threatened with a chair, was terribly afraid for her life, a monitor was smashed, the face was punched in and no doubt the drinking had started again. She was not allowed to call the police, but somebody from the outside did so fortunately. Again, my "experienced" friend went to the precinct and wrote her report, her bleeding and swollen face was photographed this time, and she talked with the Judge to obtain a temporary Restraining Order again. It was granted. He went right to a cell and revolted and screamed, we were told. Fortunately this time there was more determination on my friend's part to finally extract him from her life. Same precinct procedure at the police precinct again, with reports and contacting the judge. A  date for Family Court was set to finalize the Restraining Order. Now my friend is hard and of hearing and was unable to understand the Judge at the court session a few days later. Hs definitely had a whispery voice and the trial was postponed to another day with equipment for hearing enhancement available.

It was a pretty frustrating time for her until the time of her  next court date. He bothered  her day in and day out with many phone calls, begged her to forgive, asked her over and over to patch things up, or he just showed up at her door steps — of course all of this violates the temporary Restraining Order completely. Anyway, finally the day had arrived for another court appearance. Before being allowed into the court room, the "victims" sit in the "Victim's Room". Ushered finally into the court room, you listen to various sad stories, oh boy, some sad stories! A 74 year old grandmother who raised her grandson and who assaulted her. The grandson was brought in handcuffed. A woman whose child has disappeared and she was threatened daily with  messages from relatives. Some people brought their lawyer which is definitely a smart thing to do. There even was a male "victim"! Many women decided to lift the Restraining Order and to take the "violator" back. This time my friend got a headset to enable her to understand the Judge better and "our" case went with relative ease.  She was sworn in, pleaded her case in her words, and the Judge asked him whether he had  any objection or counter arguments."No" he said and the final Restraining Order was granted. What a relief, no more phoning, no more messaging, no showing up at her steps and I was happy for her. She is able to breath more easily. He got fingerprinted (I don't know why), has to pay $200 and was told very specifically not to approach her ever again. Vow, did he mess up his life, and all this is due to alcohol. A very gifted person in certain ways but impossible and selfish and unhappy and addicted. There is empathy towards him on my side, but not enough to ever talk to him again, see him, or help him ever.

I have always worked with lawyers at the newspaper, and I found a deep general respect for a Judge — "Your Honor", "Judge", and a general kissing of the ground where he steps. But thank you no, to be a Judge for Family court and listen to these non-stop disputes day in, day out, t must be horrible and boring and there is very little to admire. No wonder this Judge only whispered!

How did she do it!

My bee pet!
I am having breakfast on my balcony, overlooking the Hudson and the GW Bridge, high up on the 21st floor, facing the  North/East, enjoying the morning, and there it is —  a bee nesting on this flower or that flower apparently in constant search for more, resting here, resting there.  Now I wonder how did this bee make it all the way up the windy 21 floors to my terrace? How I ask did this bee know that my place offered more than plenty of colorful flowers. Amazing. 

 The book I have just finished was a real page turner as all her books are, Isabel Allende "Island Beneath the Sea" refers to Saint Domingue when it was owned by France, the later name is Haiti, the time is 1770 - 1830 approximately. As always Isabel Allende breathes life into history: the topic is the incredible cruelty and viciousness of slavery, about the sugar plantation owners, the rebellion and emancipation. Narration is by one slave, the main character, and the wealthy and white plantation slave owners exercising  the cruelest treatment of slaves. Slave mothers would rather kill their children than allow them to suffer alive. There are free blacks, mulattoes, maroons, all fine differences in class. The white owners feel extremely superior and are overcome with lust for violence and rape, or maybe they just closed their eyes not to see how overseers handled the slaves to get the most out of them and to increase their harvest. It's a painful story to read and you assume that the white class (with exceptions) were made from a different material,  plastic for instance. The main character Zarité, the slave girl ends up as a young girl with the plantation owner. He rapes her and has two children with her whom he refuses to recognize. When the slave rebellion begins in Haiti it is up to her to save her white master/rapist, her children the white children of the master. There is a long and hard fought journey to freedom, she is unable to disconnect from her master, and surrounded by a series of resilient women. The story continues in New Orleans where they fled to, before New Orleans was part of the States. Voodo inspired folklore and Christianity mix easily. I always like historical novels. For me they work brilliantly in conveying in this case the collision of the forces of enlightenment against the forces of capitalism, greed and prejudice.

I am being sucked into a quagmire!

Ok, I had a mini stroke and I lost vision in one eye completely and certainly do not like it. It's not only that I cannot get used to it — face it: I see less! But what really annoys me (and should not) is how doctors tumble you around. Here a test, there a test, here another one and so on. First all the test in the hospital, ok. than daily checking of blood pressure, then a heart monitor wired to the body for fourteen days, then endless examinations of the eyes, new glasses, then and why not, a walk on the treadmill combined with esophageal echo. This means radio active fluid is injected into the body, you then dance on the treadmill, and as second act you are strapped onto a chair that lifts up and turns an inch sideways every minute. This is for the doctor to assess whether the blood stream into your heart is ok. Everything is fine, I am told when I leave. But why I ask, did this three hour test need to be repeated a few hours later. I asked of course,  and the reply was "One wants to make sure."  Then various ultrasound of the eye before and after, quite interesting;  and loads, I mean loads of colorful pills, the dosage increases steadily, the blood pressure however is not impressed at all and does not go down. The pharmaceutical companies have a good laugh on my account and I decide to order my medicines now from Canada, who again orders from England, who again orders from India and it all arrives here in neat little packages and is much less expensive! 

Well, how timely it  was when a promotional postcard arrived announcing a new play: Dr. Knock, Or the Triumph of Medicine performed at the Mint Theater, 43rd Street between 8+9th Avenue, 4th floor. The play was written by Jules Romains in 1923 — and that was before the discovery of antibiotics and most of our modern-day medicines. Incredibly though, the play still represents modern-day America at the eve of our new healthcare bill.  We meet Dr. Knock who is taking over the office of a country doctor who confides that the population is quite healthy and does not require the services of a doctor a lot. But Dr. Knock turns this around quite quickly and invites people for free to see him. As soon as he meets a new patient he manages to diagnosis one or the other exotic and frightening maladies, and in his matter-of-fact chilling manner tells them that they are very sick. He prescribes plenty of medicines which is also to the benefit of the pharmacist! Familiar? Although he is a self-taught healer without a medical license his business thrives, people stream to him, and he is able to make the extreme perfectly reasonable. And he watches his financial success quite carefully on clip charts. We chuckled, we laughed; it was all too painfully familiar.

Since it was a 2:00 PM performance we decided to walk toward the River and look at the INTREPID, the huge air plane carrier, anchored at the Hudson with all its sea, air, and space structures, a huge hands-on museum and plenty of information about these incredible flight machines. We only had one hour before shut-down and had to rush through, up and down the ladders, onto the bridges (one for the Admiral and one for the Captain), quite amazing. The whole area around there has changed since my last visit to the INTREPID, no more dilapidated piers — the piers are renovated now and reach out far into the Hudson, sprinkled with restaurants, food vendors and since it was evening,  relatively few people. I keep exclaiming how beautiful the West Side is now!

A Saturday in May 2010

I had read and heard a lot how nudity had invaded the arts more openly recently: in one or two operas, in  musicals, and now in a performance installation at the MOMA. Cynical as I am I argued that this of course was only done to attract more visitors to the MOMA and these were pure business tactics to gain notoriety. Well, I had decided I would not contribute to this and simply would not see it (although we have a membership). But one afternoon, we went to see the very interesting German documentary

"The wondrous world of laundry" at the MOMA. Hans Christian Schmid's movie is an  excellent movie depicting bleak present day realities  of a small group of women and their families who live in a small border town in Poland and who wash the laundry for all the five star hotels in Berlin. The laundry is sent early in the morning and returned the next morning, washed, spic and span, folded neatly. The owner of this successful business in Berlin is a middle aged executive. He comments on his business practices, how to improve productivity of the women even further and how far he could possibly go. He is of the opinion that if you believe in something you definitely will be successful (he meant financially). Maybe he was never defeated, but he certainly was arrogant. On the other hand here were the simple Polish families and the stories mainly of the women who were virtually slaving away day for day, shift for shift, without making any financial headway. They are resigned to the fact that this is their life and they try to make the best out of it, which is not very much in our eyes. Everything looks shabby, gray and sad. They are incessantly smoking their home made cigarettes and have extremely little time for their children or any leisurely activity. School is not much to talk about and expectations are low. The only way out seems to move away to another country than Poland. Showing dignity, everything in their life evolves around their shifts, their routines to survive  the shift, every day of the week, and the complete lack of time. They are aware of their status and their lower life style compared to the rest of the European world and particularly the German (women's) way of life. But all of this is accepted by them without any complaints.

Afterwards I decided that I might as well  take a look at the performance installation that everybody talked about:

Marina Abramovic. And to just say it right away, I was very impressed and I like it! A lot! There she was, sitting in the middle of a room, on a chair (for seven hours a day) meditating, looking straight ahead, the longest time she has ever performed in a museum setting. It involves viewers' participation, and if you wanted to do so, you could sit across from her, motionless, for hours, minutes or seconds. Video screens and sound pieces document  her four decades performances accompanied by the artist's voice. The variety is far ranging, thought evolving,  referring to the cruelties of our world. It is all  awakening and very permanent. And there are the much talked about  life performances by other artists (who perform in the nude). So there is a beautiful couple,  stalk naked and standing opposite  and facing each other, blocking the entrance to another room, so close together that you virtually would have to push yourself between the two of them to pass through into the next room, if you so desire. Or there was a pinkish looking older man underneath a skeleton, motionless, for hours on time. Not far from there was a huge mountain of white washed (cow) bones, just the look of it made you shutter. Well, as I said, I was taken, I was entranced, and must say it falls into the category art —  a fact that I had disputed endlessly before I saw Marina's show. She uses her body as a medium and believes her art is not as dead as a photography; theater is just a repeat day for day — her life performances are the art, real but temporary.

Hans Fallada: Every Man Dies Alone

The other day we strolled on Columbus Avenue, rummaging through all the books at one of the street book dealers and my heart stopped when I saw the name of the author, Hans Fallada. Now this is a long time when I saw that name last, maybe I was 8 or 10 years old, when I read the book, "Kleiner Mann Was Nun?" (Little Man What Now?). I remember this book as one that I could not stop reading, but I don't remember where it came from, or who gave it to me (there were not many books around then!). I probably swapped it with somebody in school. Now here it was in English, I had no idea that his books were translated, no idea that he was a very reputed writer and all his book dealt with common people and Nazism. I also was not aware about his life. In a duel he had killed somebody very early in his life and went to prison for this, he became addicted to alcoholism and drugs. His father was a judge and his mother from a middle class background and they lived in Berlin. To get away from his addiction, Fallada worked as a farm hand in the country. Later married, he maintained a string of respectable jobs in journalism, working for newspapers and eventually for his publisher, Rowohlt. "Kleiner Mann..." was a huge success, a movie was made from it (1932) by Jewish producers,  it was translated into English and apparently became also a bestseller in the US.  Other famous books of his: Wolf Among Wolfes in 1937. But all was overshadowed by the rising of the Nazi Party. He was declared an "undesirable author", and wrote children stories and non-political stories to make money. Because of his love of  Germany he resisted from immigration. In 1943 his publisher Rowohlt fled the country and he again turned to alcohol and drugs among other things. Finding himself incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum it was suggested that he writes an anti-Jewish novel. But he wrote The Drinker, a deeply critical autobiographical account of life under the Nazis, but he was not caught. He was released in December when the Nazi government began to crumble. He remarried again and shortly after the Soviets invaded he once again turned to drugs with his new wife  and when he died in 1947 the book Every Man Dies Alone had recently been completed, a true, anti-fascist novel of a German couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who distributed anti-fascist  materials in Berlin and were executed.  Fallada died weeks before publication of this book. Altogether 10 Fallada noels have been translated into English. His pen name Fallada was taken from a Grimm's Fairy Tale Story. At the end there are several copies of the Gestapo files on which Fallada based his story in 1945. The book was completed in 24 days!


The story is of an ordinary German couple, quiet, cautious and middle-aged. Their small act of resistance begins after they learned of their son's death in the war. They decide to leave postcards in various locations around Berlin encouraging the German citizens to resist the German regime. Main characters are  Otto and Anna Quangel and the desperate Gestapo inspector charged with stopping them. It also shows how other ordinary citizens are dealing with the ethical issues of living in Nazi Germany during the war, and how some are taking advantage of the reign of fear and making a living as informants and blackmailers. It is the memory not only of the Quangel's protest, but also of many other protests which are perhaps not entirely in vain?

It is a horrifying immense story, impossible to put  down. The chapters are short, there are many different well defined and varied characters who all live in a building that also houses a timid Jewish grandmother, a bookish judge, a mail carrier, housekeepers, and a bestial Nazi family. The head line of each chapter is always short and descriptive, almost childish, a short line explaining the next chapter, for instance: Fear and Terror, or The First Card is Written, or Six Months Later: The Quangels. 


Part of what's so fascinating about Every Man Dies Alone is that this is not a story of Jews and Nazis, but of normal German citizens.  Of the writing and distribution of the 285 postcards and 8 letters dropped by Otto and Anna Quangel around Berlin, 267 of them found their way into the hands of the Gestapo quite quickly. They were almost all immediately turned over to the authorities by people too terrified by the Nazi regime to risk doing otherwise.

Being under the weather

Somehow with the loss of my eye I seem to have zoomed into non-stop doctor visits, pharmacy visits, talks about the pros and cons of this or that medicine, what to do, how to prevent more harm, and why, yes why did it happen at all? There is not eloping at all, one follows along and hopes for the best. Claudia told me about the Eye Institute at Columbia; she works with a very gifted therapist and recommended that I go there and immerse myself into a few sessions. My insurance allow me to do so. Although inside I think I will not be able to get my sight back, and every doctor whom I asked has confirmed this, but I just cannot give up. And if I only improve the vision in my good eye. Everything involves a huge "paper trail", such as references, reports, which I all initiated today. Why not! What a miracle it would be if it really works!

One thing is to listen to the stories about healthcare and the high medical cost, and the other is to be exposed to it. Incredible, what I have learned. There is for instance the blood thinner PLAVIX, it costs $187 per month. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States stopped selling the generic of PLAVIX, you can only buy the brand name although the generic was available once. They also decided that one month has 28 days only. Another medication that I am now taking to lower my blood pressure costs per month $89, and this number is just for the generic drug. Altogether I take I think six different medications and it all adds up, plus of course I pay for my medical insurance $300/month. It is frightening! I looked into the possibility of ordering from Canada ; the generic of PLAVIX is available there (surprise)  at a much lower price.  I will probably pursue this option although Dr. Davis warned me that "there are rumors that the medications in Canada come from India and they are not pure". What to do, I think I will take a risk.  It feels like being in a windstorm that takes you high up into the air and twirls around without stopping. What a crazy world. Where will it end?

Welcome Spring!

Every Spring the first color spring flowers
on my terrace

Winter did not seem to end this year,  the cold continued endlessly, and one hungered all the time for the summer and warmth. And suddenly it's here. How can the trees so suddenly show their wonderful light green dress, the magnolias burst into fat blooms,  the cherry trees display their wild force of blossoms, and the wonderful exquisite dogwood shines through the woods.  It has happened again! I bought my first batch of flowers today for the terrace, bright beautiful dots for my red clay pots. I visited Louise and we went to took Cosco, this huge ugly mega store where everything is only available in triple quantities or larger at a discount price. I ended up buying more than I could afford, but do you believe it, they did not have flowers! Next to it was Loew's and finally I got to pick the first beauties, impatiens, petunias, some basil, a weeping heart, all in yellow, pink, blue, read, magenta! I planted it today and realized that I needed more! It looks sort of sparse, but vow I know what it will look like in a month or two. What fun.

Chaim Potok: My Name Is Asher Lev

This is a book that I got for Jay from the library and I quickly started reading it before handing it over to him. It was just curiosity and I did not expect liking it at all. To my surprise, I learned a lot and turned the story around in my mind quite a bit. Well, I also discovered that  reading is a bit slower now with only one eye.

The main character is Asher Lev, a hasid, growing up in the 50's in  Crown Heights, Brooklyn, An observant Jew he lives with his very religious parents in a small apartment observing the Holidays, going to a yeshiva  and eating (of course) only Kosher food; he is part of his devoutly observant sect. His father is highly respected by the community and is important to the Rebbe and he  helps him to get Jews out of Russia into the US.  What makes Asher Lev so different is that he has a "gift" as they call it, he cannot stop painting, drawing, a non-acceptable hobby among the very religious hasidic Jews. His father cannot accept this at all while his mother from the very beginning urges him to continue his "pretty paintings." Asher Lev is driven, he cannot stop thinking about painting and it is the Rebbe (who I learned later is based on the real Rabbi Schneerson in Brooklyn) who accepts his "gift" and allows him to get acquainted with another successful artist, Jacob Kahn, a non-observant Jew, where he takes lessons and learns to paint nudes and gets exposed to a freer life style.  All the while Asher Lev tries to adhere to his religion, his studies. His father goes to Vienna and his mother stays behind, a great sacrifice for her, to allow Asher Lev to continue his paintings. He grows up to be a formidable artist. He travels in Europe and at a certain point is driven to paint his "master piece", a crucification scene that includes his mother on the cross (for all her sacrifices) and Asher Lev and the father as side characters. It turns out an extremely successful and widely acclaimed painting causing great turmoil to his parents and offending his community. It seems that it is impossible for Asher Lev to continue living among the hasidic people. He has grown too far apart. Judaism and art just do not mingle and the conflicting traditions cause extreme pain and suffering  to everybody around. I was fascinated by the strong urge of Asher Lev to follow his art against all odds and to find his own definition of beauty. He is non-stoppable and completely true to himself all the way adhering to his upbringing and his traditions. He tries to conform to the Goyim artistic world where he does not belong and at times he almost seems to lose his sense of self identity. At the end he has no other choice than going back to Europe to continue his life as a loner.

My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times

Here is a book that I was unable put down for any significant length of time — spellbinding, informative, fascinating and eye opening. The author is Gerald Boyd, the format is a memoir. In his career he reached the second highest editorial position at the Times against all odds, being black, coming from "stifling poverty" in St. Louis to this very senior post after having decided that journalism would be his only escape. How did he manage all of this? Well, no parents around, the mother dead, the father a drunkard, and it is a grandmother who raised him and his brother. Gerald Boyd worked all his life, first in a grocery store, then later he received a full scholarship to the University of Missouri, various positions at various newspapers, always stepping up the ladder and finally ending up for twenty years or so at the Times. It is an incredible success story of a dedicated and driven black man who was, I don't know how many times, the first black man reaching a certain position. This is a fact that he is always very much aware of. Boyd preached and accomplished diversity wherever he was, mentored, received awards, helped countless other people of color, formed incredible friendships. He liked the Times "I was addicted to the paper and all it represented, cloaking myself in its power and prestige," he says. He faced discrimination and racial slights  many many times. And it is to suspect that his white superiors patronized and betrayed him, but he definitely changed the diversity within the newspaper substantially and he certainly believed in it. I would not consider him a happy man throughout his life and only when he marries his third wife, Robin Stone, and has a son he is finally able to derive some personal pleasure.

The even more captivating facet of the book though is to learn about the "inner workings" of the newspaper, how thoroughly stories are investigated and written; trust and distrust among editors/reporters; personal grudges that exist but are not acknowledged openly, and the incredible competitiveness with each other to be recognized and to be valued. This is also at a time before the economy went downhill and money is spent more easily, the time when the Internet was looking for it's own place and subscription rates to the printed media went down — at the time before and after 9/11. The frantic storm that hit when the World Trade Center came down and how stories are born and carried out by a huge corps of reporters and editors.

Unfortunately Boyd's reputation gets forever involved with that of Jayson Blair, a black man, who fabricated many events, and this finally leads to Boyd's departure from the Times. Boyd is accused of favoring Jayson Blair, a fact that he strongly denies.

Well, he goes back to private life, cancer is discovered in 2006 and he dies.

I swallowed a Camera!

This is the probe containing the camera!

I knew that I always liked photography a lot but I think I went a bit too far this time! When the doctor suggested to swallow a probe with a tiny camera inside to see if additional damage had occurred to my heart, I jumped for it and spent half a day today at the hospital. Result: no damage at all! What can I say, I am happy, woozy also, but this will wear off soon. With other words, I am almost new.

Today I feel like standing on top of the roof and scream
 "I can see much better again!"

Of course I am still blind on one eye, and probably will be so forever, but it does not bother me as much as it did before. Ever since I lost the complete vision of my left eye I told myself that this is not so bad, it could have been much worse. But every day I was strongly aware that I had only one eye — the other one was just a black shadow and I just could not adjust. I did not complain and used magnifying glasses and ordered all sorts of enlargement devices, but nothing really helped. What a pain in the neck to read a book while holding a magnifier very steady just so that the page does not warp; the light must come from the back and you shouldn't move your head — all of this made the reading process very slow.

Not any more! My eye doctor recommended a place in Englewood (Spectacles) and a certain doctor (Dr. Steve Weisfeld http://www.spectaclesnj.com/) and so I went. I brought in my old frames, got newly reevaluated, and spent a fortune for two pairs of lenses, one just plainly for reading and one bifocal pair, anti-glare, progressive, bifocal, you name it, I got it. Without much confidence I went to pick them up today, but oh boy, what clearness, what sharpness  I gained —  how great is that now! I can see better than ever! I will discard all these things that have quickly accumulated the last few weeks in my apartment, all these assorted reading aids, off they go! I can see, I can read, I can work, hurrah! The new lenses are shatterproof and you can punch me into the eye and there will be no harm. Ha!