Time flies when you are unemployed.
And maybe when you aren’t, too.
I was looking at the calendar last night. It was not pretty. I have been out of full-time work for six months. I hit that milestone on Thanksgiving, of all days. Now I’m lucky to have an increasingly weird array of freelance gigs, all of which I love, and not only because they add structure and meaning to days that would otherwise have too little of either. In terms of actually getting jobs that would pay me a decent wage, well, it’s been a disaster.
The calendar, though, seems not to care much about the details of where I am at versus where I would like to be. The days fly by. I’m a fairly organized sort of person overall (I hope), but remain perplexed each day as to whether I have put the right things on the to-do list. The calendar never answers that question. That crazy calendar just reminds me that time is passing.
Then there are the little notations that I put in the calendar even before 2009 began. Today, for instance, is the seventh anniversary of the arrival of Olga, one of our cats. Happy Anniversary to Olg. This coming weekend will mark what would have been the 10th anniversary of my working where I used to work. Now I almost wish I had not bothered to write that one down. To hell with those people this holiday season (hey, there’s a card you don’t see at Hallmark).
Tomorrow is December. It used to be my favorite month. The biggie holidays are in December, as is my birthday. Then I went through a period when it seemed a bit exhausting. Cause it is. I feel oddly okay about the arrival tomorrow of December, and am looking forward to the holidays more than I usually do.
I cannot for the life of me imagine why. Maybe it’s a recession-era back to basics. Maybe it’s like Jerry Herman’s song said: We need a little Christmas.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Theater: Hating 'Hair'
After I saw the show, a fellow on the 1 line could be heard telling two other people about how much he liked “Hair.” Then, just last Friday, a woman at a lecture I gave told me that she was thinking about going to “Hair” because she was such a fan of the show years ago.
I was not a fan. I am not a fan. I am not going to be a fan.
But I’m a sucker for a free ticket. A few weeks ago, I got a pass on Election Night to the latest version of “Hair,” unveiled last summer at the Delacorte in Central Park and now running on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. I learned something weird about “Hair” that I never expected: I hate it.
Turns out I’m not a counter-culture guy. I’m too young and too old for 1960s nostalgia—unless it’s the political kind. I get the importance of the high-profile political assassinations and the political drama and the Civil Rights struggles and the Kennedy brothers. My dad stood overnight to pay tribute to the body of Sen. Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1968. But my parents never talked much about the psychedelic aspects of the Sixties, both because they were not interested and since they were not participating.
I can see why they skipped it all.
Especially if it is well-represented in “Hair,” a show that annoyed the crap out of me. Sure, I like a little nudity as much as anyone. And if I had made myself more familiar—or far more familiar—with the music, then I would have done better as an audience member. The sixtysomething woman next to me loved those tunes, remember them and bounced along to the sounds—something problematic for me because she was obese and when she moved, I moved.
Nobody warned me that “Hair” is loud and vacuous and has only a wisp of a plot. In what existed of the story, Gavin Creel, cute and cool, played our protagonist. He was okay. I liked him better on New York 1 talking about how he and the other cast members were heading to D.C. earlier this fall to campaign for gay marriage. In the show, though, there’s an assumption that everybody older is uncool…there’s that tiresome left-wing sense that we all are in agreement that War is Bad. Creel’s Claude struggles with whether to obey the law and serve his country in a war he thinks is wrong. But there’s a lack of smarts and subtlety in the debate over the war. In fact, there is no debate. It’s just basically assumed that the Vietnam War is wrong.
I think it was. But I also think the tragic dimensions of what went wrong in the 1960s—and the huge, sometimes joyous movements that helped the nation move right—deserve a far better show. A little sophistication would not kill us, either.
I was not a fan. I am not a fan. I am not going to be a fan.
But I’m a sucker for a free ticket. A few weeks ago, I got a pass on Election Night to the latest version of “Hair,” unveiled last summer at the Delacorte in Central Park and now running on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. I learned something weird about “Hair” that I never expected: I hate it.
Turns out I’m not a counter-culture guy. I’m too young and too old for 1960s nostalgia—unless it’s the political kind. I get the importance of the high-profile political assassinations and the political drama and the Civil Rights struggles and the Kennedy brothers. My dad stood overnight to pay tribute to the body of Sen. Robert Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1968. But my parents never talked much about the psychedelic aspects of the Sixties, both because they were not interested and since they were not participating.
I can see why they skipped it all.
Especially if it is well-represented in “Hair,” a show that annoyed the crap out of me. Sure, I like a little nudity as much as anyone. And if I had made myself more familiar—or far more familiar—with the music, then I would have done better as an audience member. The sixtysomething woman next to me loved those tunes, remember them and bounced along to the sounds—something problematic for me because she was obese and when she moved, I moved.
Nobody warned me that “Hair” is loud and vacuous and has only a wisp of a plot. In what existed of the story, Gavin Creel, cute and cool, played our protagonist. He was okay. I liked him better on New York 1 talking about how he and the other cast members were heading to D.C. earlier this fall to campaign for gay marriage. In the show, though, there’s an assumption that everybody older is uncool…there’s that tiresome left-wing sense that we all are in agreement that War is Bad. Creel’s Claude struggles with whether to obey the law and serve his country in a war he thinks is wrong. But there’s a lack of smarts and subtlety in the debate over the war. In fact, there is no debate. It’s just basically assumed that the Vietnam War is wrong.
I think it was. But I also think the tragic dimensions of what went wrong in the 1960s—and the huge, sometimes joyous movements that helped the nation move right—deserve a far better show. A little sophistication would not kill us, either.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Politics: The ‘Shock’ of a Close Race
When it comes to the results of yesterday’s mayoral election, I’m surprised that people are surprised.
About six months ago, I would predict to anybody who would listen—and nobody really cared, sensibly enough, what I had to say on the matter—that Mayor Michael Bloomberg would lose his re-election bid. Of course back then I did not know he was going to b low through his previous spending records and toss more than $100 million at the race.
Anyway, I was wrong about the result. But not the anger among a large part of the electorate. People like their term limits, by and large, especially in a city where they were combined with a sensible strategy of campaign finance. Even skeptics of term limits would have reason to be somewhat impressed with what they have meant to the New York City Council, where they added some life to a lot of neighborhood council contests in the past few years.
Bloomberg did not just mess with term limits; he did it in what looked like a slow and misleading way. He waited until voters could not have another referendum. And then he coupled the term limits move with record spending. When the richest person in town puts that much of his own money into a contest, some people are going to say it’s unseemly.
So on this post-Election Day, I think the pundits have it right. I think a lot of New Yorkers wanted to send a message to their mayor. The only compelling question left is whether he heard the message. Or cared about it.
About six months ago, I would predict to anybody who would listen—and nobody really cared, sensibly enough, what I had to say on the matter—that Mayor Michael Bloomberg would lose his re-election bid. Of course back then I did not know he was going to b low through his previous spending records and toss more than $100 million at the race.
Anyway, I was wrong about the result. But not the anger among a large part of the electorate. People like their term limits, by and large, especially in a city where they were combined with a sensible strategy of campaign finance. Even skeptics of term limits would have reason to be somewhat impressed with what they have meant to the New York City Council, where they added some life to a lot of neighborhood council contests in the past few years.
Bloomberg did not just mess with term limits; he did it in what looked like a slow and misleading way. He waited until voters could not have another referendum. And then he coupled the term limits move with record spending. When the richest person in town puts that much of his own money into a contest, some people are going to say it’s unseemly.
So on this post-Election Day, I think the pundits have it right. I think a lot of New Yorkers wanted to send a message to their mayor. The only compelling question left is whether he heard the message. Or cared about it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
A Home Health Care Story Hits Home
A story I wrote about home health care workers is in a special section of the New York Post today. Only took me 41 years to get into a New York City daily newspaper.
But a funny thing happened as I sat down last week to finish that story about home health care: my father started receiving home health care.
“We’ve had a visiting nurse here,” my mom told me on the morning that my story was due. “Listen: those people are better than the hospital.”My parents and grandparents have had enough health care challenges—two open-heart surgeries, successful battles against leukemia and breast cancer among them—for me to have seen some great nursing from an up-close and personal vantage point. But the latest challenge, my 79-year-old father’s fall in front of his building, brought nursing right into my parents’ Riverdale apartment building.
The nurse did so much in about a just over an hour’s time: she filled out the forms (maybe the scariest part for my family and many others), she called the doctor for information, she straightened out the prescriptions (“she knows medicines,” my mother said) and taught my dad how to give himself an injection and she took his blood pressure, measuring the difference between his sitting down and standing up.
Or, as my mom put it when asked what the nurse did: “Everything. Everything.”During a scary time, these are the people who make things a little less scary.
But a funny thing happened as I sat down last week to finish that story about home health care: my father started receiving home health care.
“We’ve had a visiting nurse here,” my mom told me on the morning that my story was due. “Listen: those people are better than the hospital.”My parents and grandparents have had enough health care challenges—two open-heart surgeries, successful battles against leukemia and breast cancer among them—for me to have seen some great nursing from an up-close and personal vantage point. But the latest challenge, my 79-year-old father’s fall in front of his building, brought nursing right into my parents’ Riverdale apartment building.
The nurse did so much in about a just over an hour’s time: she filled out the forms (maybe the scariest part for my family and many others), she called the doctor for information, she straightened out the prescriptions (“she knows medicines,” my mother said) and taught my dad how to give himself an injection and she took his blood pressure, measuring the difference between his sitting down and standing up.
Or, as my mom put it when asked what the nurse did: “Everything. Everything.”During a scary time, these are the people who make things a little less scary.
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