Elinor Nauen

This looks a little like our land in Prospect, Maine. I moved up there with 4 other people. We all left eventually, within a year or after 40. One of the guys moved back & one lives there in the summer. We used to say "summer people—and some aren't."

I first typed his name Birchfield.

We got a lovely quick dusting this morning. Lots more next week, according to Willis, the source of all my hope & information. Read More 

One time, the first winter I lived in the woods in Maine, Rick & I went for a hike on our property, in a snowstorm—one of those soft, incesssant, anarchic snowstorms that are the reason I like snow so much. We walked through the birches & firs, & didn't get lost, & when we got back to the main house, Sherri had made soup & bread.

It's going to snow some more this week.  Read More 

The reason I know I'm getting sick is it's the only time I ever feel like reading spy novels. When I grabbed Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrius, I should have known. It's not the flu, it was half a day of a stomach thing. I am now dressed although I think I will go home & go back to bed. And finish the book.

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& Junior's after, before it leaves its Flatbush welcome & 60s decor. The food was plentiful...

We had problems with the play, mostly that none of us could hear the actor who played Nora. So it's hard to discuss.

A nap? Is that likely?

Tonight seeing the Italian Futurism show at the Guggenheim (it's still my birthday if someone is offering me a birthday treat) & tomorrow night we are seeing A Doll's House at BAM. I need to stay up later than 10 tonight so I can do the same tomorrow. No snoring through Ibsen!

I think the Futurists will wake me up!  Read More 

I do love the snow but I was really, really glad to be able to ride my bike today, in 40° weather. Only one ice-slush strip on 19th St, but I didn't go down. Lots of craters—the snow & ice has really chewed up the streets. And I also like that it's beginning to be light out till late  Read More 

I love karate & I love fighting. Maybe a little too much? Today I bloodied (one drop) the nose of a girl who is my senior & who won the fight championship last year, oh & is less than half my age. And another very senior black belt complained that I hit him too hard. He wasn't protecting himself: How was I to know  Read More 

The poem of the day was Byron's "So we'll go no more a-roving," the second line of which serves as the title for my long poem in ottava rima: So Late into the Night. I mentioned this on Facebook & Gyorgyi Voros posted a link to Leonard Cohen singing the poem. Yeah!

The quote of the day was from Tom Robbins: "When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing." So I quit feeling goofy for enjoying my birthday so much. For waking up early, excited. One day to be frivolous, what's the big deal?

It snowed & then a bit of rain & then it got sunny. The weather trifecta.  Read More 

I may like the day before my birthday even more than I like my birthday. The un-public nature of the anticipation, the feeling of at least two days that are mine. The worst day of the year is the day after my birthday, when it's a whole year till it comes around again.

We had planned to go out to Queens to watch Rio Bravo with our daughter & son-in-law, whose movie theme for the moment is "siege." The DVD didn't arrive so we had a drink at the SideWalk instead. The main moment I remember in Rio Bravo is when Dean Martin sings the lovely "My Rifle, My Pony & Me," with then–teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson chiming in, his light tenor an embarrassment next to Martin's smooth growl. I suppose I wouldn't have thought so if I'd been an adolescent at the time (1959): I suppose I would have had a crush on Ricky Nelson & looked at Dean Martin as a washed-up drunk. Angie Dickinson plays a character called Feathers.

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Cory Booker is the first mayor of Newark not to be indicted since 1962.

So it's not just Christie, it's New Jersey's shockingly old-fashioned bare-knuckle politics. Fascinating article in The New Republic about how he rose to power. Click on caption to read the piece, which contains this (& much more):

Barbara Buono, the state senator who had volunteered to challenge Christie when more prominent  Read More 

We've already had 4 feet this winter & more coming tonight. There's a pause right now, a little rain to pack it all down. I walked across the street to put my laundry in the machine & when I crossed back, my tracks were gone.

And why did I do my laundry today? Because all the towels got soaked when I had to deal with the results of a burst pipe above me early this morning. What a dismal sound, rain crackling down in the kitchen & bathroom. Yikes. I can't believe how much water there was—& how little got ruined. Lucky once again. If only our landlord would hire a real plumber. A 5-year-old  Read More 

Sorry to hear today of the death of the artist Nancy Holt. Her Sun Tunnels was my favorite among the Land Art I visited for an article I wrote several years ago for Organic Style, which unfortunately folded before my piece ran.

ART ROCKS: A way of seeing

Not long ago, I lit out to what looked on the map like unexplored territory—an immense tract of Utah and New Mexico with plenty of desert, mountain and rock but few landmarks or even roads. All the more startling

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Why didn't I take a photo of Alex & I having lunch at our place, Noho Star? I guess we were too busy catching up, enjoying our salads, linking pinkies to remind ourselves that we are sisters, laughing, confessing, exhorting, reminiscing, loving... Lucky me! Lucky us!

Ugh, hate editing Google docs. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, & can't find a Help menu that tells me anything except how to change the font. The woman I'm working for keeps using the word "resistant," as in "I used to be resistant [like you, you big baby]." I'm happy to learn but why should I? That is, I'm happy to learn, but I'm charging you for the lesson & it's unwieldy & Google docs still don't have all the features I need. I think electronics should stop in 2007. I've learned as much as I want to.  Read More 

My friend Avery wrote me that bewildered is her new favorite word. "A few weeks ago, in a ghost story set in Victorian England and written (more or less) in the style of that period, I read of an insane asylum referred to as a 'home for the bewildered.' Is that great or what? Since then I’ve been seeing the word everywhere and I just love it more every time I come across it." According to Read More 

Another part of the pleasure is that they're exactly one day & then you get out of the way for whoever was born on February 19 or May 30 or whenever. You get your special day (for something random that you had nothing to do with) & then you have no choice but to let go of it. It's like finding a $20 bill lying on the ground--cool but inconsequential.  Read More 

This is an example of chromatic type, which is printed from up to 7 pieces of type, each in a different color of ink. It's from the William H. Page company's 1874 book of 100 plates, which was used to sell the wooden (!) type to printers. The types cost around 25c per letter, per ink color.

Some other little chromatic poems:
Storm Shun Bug
Erudition Bluster Pines
Marines Normandy Merchant Thrones Providence
Storm shun bug
Detriment prison untie

Did the Pages think these were strange & funny, or were they just letters not poems not words?
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Wow, it must really be true that when you put your desires out there to the universe, they come true. I want snow. I want snow. I love snow. I love snow & want snow. And voila! It's just like the The Voorman Problem, one of the Oscar-nominated short films I saw the other day. An English psychiatrist interviews an inmate who claims to be God. If he’s so all-powerful, why is he in prison? And then we find out. But even he didn't make it snow. Read More 

Becca & I ate at Neptune yesterday morning. I went to black belt class, ate an almond croissant at La Maison du Macaron with Yukie, & assisted the peewees & youth karate classes. I met my friends Lucie & Jason at the Gramercy Park Hotel, which has been fancied up since the last time I was there, when it seemed like a Milwaukee hotel circa 1960, where they served eggs russe in the dining room & the TV was black & white. Lucie & Jason, whose organic egg business is called Locally Laid, were runners-up (out of 15,000 small business entries) to win a Superbowl ad. Part of their prize was a dream trip to New York. They sent me home in the snow (softest of the year) with a bouquet from the big Superbowl party. In the morning they rang the Nasdaq bell to kick off the day's money trading.

Whenever people visit New York, I fall in love with my city all over again. The best moment was looking out their 14th-floor window down onto Gramercy Park, & feeling the connection to the past that is so strong in that part of town.

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Haven't visited the scandal here for a couple of weeks, but still enjoying it, especially that so many of his peeps & formers are falling over themselves to rat him out (& save their own asses) or are getting fired, subpoenaed, or are resigning. As the who-know-what-when gets closer & closer to the governor—who's left?

Is 2014 going to continue 2013's horrible dying ways? Yesterday it was Rene Ricard, poet, artist, critic, bon vivant, legendarily beautiful Warhol actor.

When I think of Rene, I think of how he was always nicer than I expected, always seemed to have plenty of time to stop & chat, always remembered who I was & what I was up to. He was such big fry that that was flattering, naturally.

Maggie & I asked him for a naked photo for KOFF magazine. He had a very beautiful one, he told us, but he decided not to let us use it: You might get jam on it, he said.  Read More 

Just received word from her husband Ron Goble that my friend Linda died on Wednesday. She had had a rare lung cancer. I'll remember her big smile, her big laugh, her love for her family & for baseball, her good poetry.

I never thought I would say it, or think it, or feel it, but I'm sick of this cold weather. Snow I never get sick of & I don't entirely mind the cold, but it is wearing me down. I am grumpy & I'm not the only one: People seem on edge, jokes aren't rolling off like they usually do.  Read More 

Melissa ("Dorothy") Zexter was a painter who developed a sensitivity to her materials and migrated to embroidered photography. She's a big baseball fan, with a particular fondness for Butch Hobson, Butch Wynegar, & Butch Huskey. She once led a life of crime but has rehabilitated herself. She also has 2 beautiful daughters.

P.S. Happy birthday, President McKinley  Read More 

All the stories I'm hearing today are similar: how unpretentious, kind & good-humored he was. He was at a breakfast in the Adirondacks, where he played & sang a little. A kid climbed right up on his lap & said, You will always be singing in my heart. Pete loved it. But damn it, I can't remember what he said back except that it made everyone love him.

OK, in a hurry, can't stop to verify or track this anecdote down any better.

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Snow predicted today for southern Alabama & South Carolina, rain for New York City. What's wrong with this picture? And as someone pointed out, there's something amiss when 36° registers as a heat wave.

Weather, weather. Maybe it's not the all-consuming interest for me that it is for a couple of my friends. I can't remember from day to day what yesterday was like, & I'm not much interested past advice on sweaters & scarves. Or maybe weather's a great hobby, since, like cloud-watching, it involves little more than paying attention whenever you think of it.

Just blew a fuse so now the heater's off in here. That's weather for ya. Read More 

Maybe the great separation is not the living & the dead, but the minding & the not minding.

For years I've said hello & nothing more to one of the elderly janitors at YAI, where I help teach karate once a week to developmentally delayed adults. I actually wasn't sure if he was YAI or not, due to his heavy accent. Last night when I was leaving, I waved & idly asked if he was enjoying the cold weather. Oh boy!  Read More 

A friend from back home ee'ed me to ask: "I know you like snow, but when is ENOUGH?!"

We only had 11" & they didn't cancel school. How could that be ENOUGH?

Now it's Day 3, & it's bugging me not to ride my bike. Maggie says the trains are horrible—infrequent, therefore crowded—so I'm mostly walking but it's harshing my mellow. Also, it's cold without much prettiness left. I like the cold when I'm outdoors, but in my office, not so much.

Friday update: My friend says the East River is frozen over off Greenpoint. "It looks like a bunch of icebergs." Read More