Elinor Nauen

We've had a squab down in our pit. His twin (both all black) died a couple of weeks ago. Not sure why ~ I think he conked his head on a pipe. The parents (presumably) were around & then they weren't. My little guy has been hiding behind a pipe, seemingly abandoned and very timid. I have spent the last couple of days talking to him/her & saw when I was recognized & less frightening. Did he wait to fly away for me to see? (I know, I know.) He beat his wings awkwardly, flew lumpily a yard or two, & was gone. 

I've always had luck with money. 

Sometimes spectacularly, like the time I found 19 $100 bills lying on the ground. 

Other times inexplicably, like getting my taxi to the airport refunded by Delta when a flight was canceled, while someone I know paid $1,200 for hotel & car rental when his flight was diverted to Boston, & got a $100 credit with the airline. 

Yesterday I got a check for $25 (luck but not lottery luck!) from Mt Sinai, as a "refund to [my] account." I have no idea what it's for but whoever gets money back from a doctor, hospital or health insurance, at least not without kicking, screaming, & crying? 

I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man. 

~ Bruce Springsteen, "Promised Land"

For a long time I thought he was saying, "I'm not a poet, no I'm a man" & I was like, hey!

Happy 75th birthday to the Boss! 

And the weather got the message. That crushing heat is gone & it's the bright breezy coolness that will hold me till we make it the only season that really matters. And this year I'm going to Swedish Lapland in December, so my chance of seeing snow should be pretty good.

Between 1933 & 1939, hundreds of laws, decrees, guidelines, and regulations increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of Jews in Germany. My dad, who was born in 1906, finally left Berlin in January of 1939. What was the last straw. It's the frog in the pot, right? The temperature gets a little more uncomfortable but it's not quite time to bolt, is it? Until, for millions of people, it was too late. I'm thinking about my father and I'm thinking about a situation I'm in that feels similar (although nothing to do with being Jewish) - things get a little worse & a little worse but there are still reasons to stay.Or are there? It's certainly a more muddled view from the middle. I understand better why people didn't get out of Europe earlier ~ it's hard to pack up & leave, will it be better elsewhere, I still have 6 months on my lease, my kid wants to finish the schoolyear, my health club membership is ....And the frog is boiled without knowing it. 

A show I loved as a kid was Swamp Fox, about South Carolinian Francis Marion, a Revolutionary War hero; I just discovered it starred Leslie Nielsen & lasted only 1 season (1959). So practically the only state I had an interest in (besides my own, neighboring Minnesota, & California, where Grandma lived) was South Carolina. When I met Steve, it seemed impossibly glamorous that he was from the same state as the Swamp Fox. 

But I didn't have a real idea of SC, or pretty much anywhere, till I was much older. Steve did, because he was a weather buff & studied the states & what lay above them. Early on, he said, he could draw a map of the U.S. I knew where the states were, because I liked information & lists, but none of that was real to me because I don't remember reading anything my whole childhood that was informative. I read Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries & learned what evil lurks in the hearts of men; and along with everyone in my family, I read The Education of H*Y*M*A*N  K*A*P*L*A*N, Cheaper by the Dozen, plus kids books and lots of Dickens & Stevenson. Maybe I needed to see it to believe it. I was a girl who hadn't seen the ocean or a city. 

Fun place to see a show & a good meal to go with Rachelle's fantastic voice & persona & performance. Not sure why Loudon Wainwright III is so much better known, when she can sing & write rings around him. But that's the way it goes, isn't it? So much overlooked or underappreciated talent in all the arts. 

Whoa! 

I got a spam comment yesterday, which occasionally happens & which I rejected, then another this morning, saying I'd been scammed & here were hackers who could help. It took a couple of tries to reject that comment & I really thought they'd snuck in. It seems OK now.

Does just the mention of XX trigger them to sniff around? I'm a little creeped out by this. 

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.

~ Ted Chiang

I found this in Austin Kleon's essential substack. He goes on to say, "To be fair, I think we'd been doing a pretty good job at lowering our cultural expectations prior to the popularization of A.I.! In fact, I think one of the reasons the results of A.I. are so acceptable if not exciting to so many people is because they've been trained on the never-ending slop of online 'content' and the homogenous output of, say, mainstream Hollywood or reality television."

I have artist friends who love playing with AI to create images to accompany their words, & vice versa. The results look to me like adult coloring books, quite honestly, but I have my own time wasters so who am I to judge. 

One great thing about having visitors is seeing the city through their eyes. Even when I'm looking at the same things on our walks, I don't see what Steve sees. He's here frequently, knows the city well, & relishes its endless offerings: the heirloom tomatoes of the Union Square Greenmarket; the county-fair crush of the San Gennaro festival on Mulberry Street in Little Italy; the musicians, students, potheads, & old folks enjoying a late summer day in Washington Square Park. I feel like I did when I saw all for the first time, years ago: as full of excitement, wonder, pleasure & gratitude. There's a lot more country in the city than city in the country, isn't there? 

Today being Friday the 13th reminds me of my (late) sister Edie, who was born on March 13 (a Wednesday that year). She felt how special it was to be born on the 13th, & 13 was her lucky number. A favorite remark of hers: 

"I got married three times in Las Vegas. Vegas is lucky for me!"

We called it a play: We were ourselves, reading speeches & declaiming, with Rachel singing (which is worth the whole half hour). It was Public Access Poetry! We had guys playing Tree, Cloud, Stream: nonspeaking parts. I didn't rewatch the whole thing ~ hard to get past seeing yourself when she is no longer you. 

It wasn't a debate as much as a rout. She baited & he went for it every time. 

He claimed some states allow post-birth abortion, which is of course not true. (He lied, as he does.)

He never said her name or looked her way. 

She sliced him six ways to Sunday. Did he even know? 

But. 

Maggie & I are going on a trip in December to see the Northern Lights in Swedish Lapland, through my group the Cloud Appreciation Society. 

Yay. 

But. 

Then comes a million decisions, hotels, flights to Europe, flights within Europe, insurance, even meals on the plane. Why don't I have an assistant to figure all this out??

Every day I do a little & then I ask for help. My ignorance annoys me.  

There's a confidence in not hating or pitying the region that birthed you, a joy in maintaining the strong ties you choose, and a peace in not hierarchically ranking the cultures that compose your identity. It's possible to love a place from afar and never really leave it.

Ann Friedman on being a "joyfully displaced midwesterner" 

I agree and at the same time, I will say that I've noticed that midwesterners tend to love the midwest in inverse proportion to how long they've lived elsewhere & how far away from home they are. 

It's satisfying to have caught up with every single thing on my to-do list. 

The store & the laundry will be back, of course, but for now I am free of obligations. 

A small but gratifying pleasure. 

I had the middle section of a sectional couch, covered in nubby aqua-glitter cloth. It was wide in the back but narrow in front, so it barely fit two people yet took up a disproportionate amount of room in my small apartment. So I decided to get rid of it. 

I threw it out my window. Oh my, what a satisfying thunk when it landed in the courtyard. There's a picture, but I can't find it & I can't really tell which way it goes. 

This was shortly before I started going out with Johnny, the longtime super of his building. 

I mentioned it one day & he was so appalled he almost broke up with me. 

It was the backyard! No one was endangered! 

Since I complained so much all summer about the enervating heat, it's only fair to shout out the energizing autumn mild. Right this minute it's 75°. There's a spring in my step (as it were) - better than a fall in my future! Giddy, I think of this:

An American Poem

In New York in autumn
leaves don't change. They wither & tumble

or wilt & stay stuck. What's special
is Saturday night.
It's the night
brokers have off
from robbing people
to mug people.
Nature?
One birch after another.
Have a nice trip—
see you next fall!

Which in turn reminds me of a poem I wrote in maybe 8th grade. I praised New York City (where I'd never been): bright lights! big city! The poem ended with this line: 

Nature: green emptiness. 

My wonderful neighbor took this wonderful photo last month in Vermont. Should be the cover of an edition of Moby-Dick, doncha think? I remember the cold, sunny New England farm houses I lived in the years I spent in Maine. 

1) Sitting on my bench, a little boy came over to show me his acorn. What does an acorn turn into? I asked him. An oak tree! He was probably 4. He was with a younger brother & a baby, and his mom, whose hair was well past her knees ~ the longest hair I've ever seen. I thought of my mom, who also had 3 kids under the age of 4 at one point. This woman didn't look the least frazzled & maybe my mother didn't either. 

2) On the corner of 5th St, I overheard a man tell the woman with him that this was the block with the Hells Angels clubhouse. That was 3rd Street, I called to them. They stopped & we chatted about the neighborhood & how it's changed, & what businesses & people were still there or not. Chris & Virginia: old friends in a moment. 

I love my neighborhood, no matter how many beloved residents & restaurants & stores disappear, no matter how many killing e-bikes replace them. 

Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
~ Seamus Heaney

This makes me think of a little anthology I have of troubador poetry by women (a book I can usually put my hand on but I can't spot it at the moment)(but I can look it up: Meg Bogin's The Female Troubadours) (damn, where is it??) & how sure I am that those poets & I would be laughing together in a couple of minutes (language aside). I know them, I am sure, & they would get me. Yes, poetry is the way they are alive with me. (Oh, there it is!)

East 3rd Street, the Two Boots corner. No matter how many times I walk on any given block, I almost always see something new, surprising, &/or enchanting. I will never not love New York City. 

Look up, it's Cloud Appreciation Day

Thousands of cloudspotters around the world will be looking up on Friday September 13 and submitting photos online for the third annual Cloud Appreciation Day. Anyone, anywhere, can take part for free by photographing their sky and submitting an image for the 2024 Memory Cloud Atlas website. Images can only be submitted on the day.

"We encourage contributors to include with their photograph some words about their feelings and impressions of the sky above them on the day," says  Cloud Appreciation Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney. "In this way, the website serves as a worldwide snapshot of the beauty of clouds and of thousands of people around the world looking up on the same day. It's a record of people's feelings about the sky, which is the most universal part of nature that we all share."

Finally my sister & got to watch our favorite episode of What's My Line together, 3 times in fact. This is out of the something like 500 episodes that are available on YouTube. Everyone on the panel is tipsy, along with the usually unflappable moderator, John Charles Daly, but especially Arlene. Drunk in a ti many martooni sort of way. This is a great show, as I've written about before, & while this one isn't typical of its usual sophistication, it's awfully fun to see what can happen on live TV. 

My three siblings & I just spent a couple days together to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of our mother's passing, as well as what would have been her 100th year. We went to a show & had some leisurely meals full of laughter & reminiscence. One sister brought in the idea of Jeffersonian questions at dinners. It seems that Jefferson didn't like people having side conversations at his dinner parties, so he would ask a thoughtful question & every guest was expected to respond. We did that last night & it was very revealing & loving. Our first question was something we are proud of that the others might not know, & then we each said something we admired about each other. When does one have the chance for that sort of conversation?

I'd never seen Cabaret, & knew little more than it was a louche look at Berlin in the 30s. My siblings & I went last night, half-imagining it would give us a glimpse into our dad's life in Berlin - he & Christopher Isherwood were the same age & I imagine my dad as at least a hanger-on in that world, being a young man-about-town with money & curiosity. The show Cabaret, however, was kind of awful. I don't really like musicals, & this was nearly plotless plus rather random: CBGB's legendarily dirty bathroom meets Fiddler on the Roof. Maybe it would have worked better if the star (Eddie Redmayne) & not the understudy had been there to play the Emcee, or if the obviouslly gay main character wasn't having a love affair with Sally Bowles. And the sudden appearance of a Nazi was both dated & overly topical. We left at the intermission. 

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel. 

~ Horace Walpole

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
~ Jean de La Bruyère

I've heard this many times but who said it? Jean de La Bruyère lived a century before Walpole. Or maybe it's one of those thoughts that people have that gets credited to someone respectable to give it extra weight, the way the Psalms are attributed to King David. I think I like JdLB's version better. What does that say about me & my sense of humor, irony, or philosophy? 

This is not an old-time story but something that was in front of my building a day or 2 ago. Why? Who? No idea. Hooray for the East Village hanging on to its unapologetic strangeness. 

What the hey, I have decided to consider Brooklyn to be in the neighborhood. A 30-minute ride on the F & I knew exactly how to get to my friends' place from the train. I passed restaurants I would eat at & stores I would explore. Baz & Martha are neighbors, sympathetic, fiery friends. We laughed & talked & reminisced & I was home again in no time. An expanded neighborhood is a good thing. 

In economics, free-riding means using services, resources, and other public goods without paying (or paying enough) for them, a term often applied to tax cheats. Besides putting an extra burden on those who do pony up, free-riders can lead to lack of cooperation and cynicism, which in turn makes things worse. I've never heard the term applied to politics, but I think it could & should be: it means enjoying the benefits of government — peace, economic stability, rights & so much more — without being willing to contribute to maintaining them. A friend's partner, who's in his 40s, has never voted. He thinks (like an adolescent) that all politicians are corrupt; he will only vote for someone who is perfect & in perfect alignment with his own positions. I used to stop my mother from talking about politics - she lived in the United States for 70 years before she became a citizen - I believed she had no right to an opinion if she wasn't going to vote, if she hadn't committed herself to this country. (She became a citizen in 2016 at age 92 in order to vote for a woman.) I think of the long long lines of people waiting to vote for the first time in post-apartheid South Africa, many of them people who had dedicated their lives to acquiring that right, & it's hard to feel respectful towards people who spurn that right.