Letter from New York

On Being Vertically Australian

2010-07-29T21:58:00.042-04:00

"She had long, swinging black hair and Hector guessed she was Vietnamese." - From "The Slap", Christos Tsiolkas

"'It's alright, Ecttora,' his mother answerd in Greek, kissing him on both cheeks, two large bowls of salad in her hands. 'We are not barbarians or English to bring nothing to a barbecue.'" - From "The Slap", Christos Tsiolkas

"The combination of a model's body and a wog woman's style - the teased dyed hair, the long painted nails, the too bright make-up - made people think she was a bimbo." - From "The Slap", Christos Tsiolkas

I don't understand. Patrick White could do it. Tim Winton does it. Helen Garner does it. And in the visual arts, Paul Cox did it. And Nolan and Drysdale ... That is, produce a work of art that anyone could enjoy and which was, as it happened to be, Australian.

And it seems today - from FOX advertisements to literature, that the Australian "cultural cringe" is alive and well. But now the 'Cringe' taking on a new form, and instead of being apologetically Australian, it is "oi oi oi we are AUSTRALIAN." In bold print. Accompanied by shouting.

At the bottom of the heap are the Fosters ads. "Australian for board meeting" is the caption for a photo of a few surfers at Bells Beach. Very funny I don't think. There's a whole series of "Australian for" something. Australians for sex, Australians for backpacking. A man is shown passed out in a bar with several dozen empty cans. "Australian for designated driver." A woman is shown at the beach, wearing only bikinii bottoms - "Australian for prude." And so on.

Up a rung. Steve and Bindi Irwin. So Australian it is coming out their ears. But what sort of Australians? Cartoon Australians in a cartoon Australia. A glib advertisement Australia. Crikey!!!

One level up from Steve Irwin are movies such as Ben Luhrman's "Australia". Best summed up by a true Australian, writer and raconteur, Barry Dickens. "Each scene possesses its secret gaucheness and unmeant hilarity. The story is rubbish. The meaning is beyond analysis.

When Jack Thompson is run over by bulls and makes a tragic incomprehensible speech, he speaks really for all of us. Australia is our stupidity made vaudeville and our history slapstick."

But let's move up yet another notch. To "the top of the heap. 'A'-number one". To the novel "Slapped" by Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas.

"Slap" portrays social and sexual relations in present-day Melbourne. It is long-listed for the 2010 Man Booker prize. I just had to buy it, especially as it was available in the Kindle edition. I hate the smell of dead-tree books in the morning.

Well, what can I say? I have not finished it, but it starts off with a barbeque in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. Northcote was once populated by working class Australians and immigrant Greeks. In the 1980's it started to become "gentrified", to use an American term. I've forgotten the Australian one.

And who comes to the barbecue - which is held by the second generation Greek Australian protagonist Hector, and his Indian-Australian wife, Aisha? First to arrive are Hector's parents, with heaps of food - "eat, eat ...". Then Bilol an aborigine recently convertd to Islam.

No sooner has Biliol has refused a beer, than Dedj and Leanna turn up. Dedj hugs Manolis - Hector's dad - "in the Balkan way". Anouk and Rhys arrive. I'm not sure where they are from but one of them is gay. Aisha brings out samosas. There is plenty of moussaka. And then along comes Gary, a working class ocker who is intent upon arguing with the trendies about the virtues of state-run schools.

Guest Rhys is familiar to a number of the other guests as he currently has a part in a local soap opera. Gary, the philistine working class ocker, is riled by Rhys's very existance and notes that he's wearing a casual but expensive fine cotton cowboy shirt, and black jeans with a confederate buckle belt.

"You shot a man in Vermont, eh? Just to watch him die," says Gary.

Possibly the best line in the book. And yes maybe, just maybe, for this alone Tsiolkas deserves to be long-listed for the Booker.

But the references to multi-culturalism - Greeks, Slavs, Indians and the obligatory aborigine - and what's more, an aborigine converted to Islam ...

Come off it. I've lived in Northcote.

But now I come to think of it ...

On Newfangled Things

2010-07-24T15:59:00.015-04:00

The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a "mouse". There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don't want one of these new fangled devices. John C. Dvorak, February 19, 1984 San Francisco Examiner.

The noisiest buzz in the industry lately has been over the emerging use of cable TV systems to provide fast network data transmissions using a device called a cable modem. But the likelihood of this technology succeeding is zilch. John C. Dvorak, September, 1995 San Francisco Examiner.

Andris steered his donkey left in order to take advantage of the shade from the large silver maple that grew on the the southern end of the village square.

He was returning home to Bacharach from a lengthy visit to the Herrenstiftin School in Mainz - where he'd spent his daylight hours in prayer, meditation and reading - and had stopped at Lorch to rest his donkey. He sat under the tree for several minutes, and was about to get up to leave when he saw an old friend approaching. It was Gerhard who he'd known since they were both children.

After the normal greetings Gerhard asked Andris where had he been and why. It was not usual for people to travel over 30 miles unless they were merchants or soldiers and Andris was neither.

Andris was only too happy to tell Gerhard of his journey and to show him what he had brought back from Mainz. He took him over to the donkey and lifted the flap of the bulkier saddlebag. There, wrapped in damask, was what would be later known as a book. It was in fact a bible.

Andris unwrapped the book and opened it, showing his friend the print. Words were separated from each other by spaces. He explained to Gerhard that it was now possible to read without saying the words out loud and that this was called "silent reading". "I saw 20 of these books," he told his friend. " And many monks were reading them, quietly all in the one room."

"Why would you want one?" asked Gerhard. "The bible is to be read only by clerics and is meant to be in a codex that is nice and heavy and chained to reading stands to prevent theft. What is this book thing? I would not read one and will continue to go to church to hear the bible read by our priest."

"Perhaps," countered Andris, "people such as yourself said the same thing when the codex replaced scrolls."

Nothing really changes. Scrolls to codex to modern books and now it seems back to scrolls. Look at the books on the iPad. You can read them in portrait where you see a page at a time and scroll from one page to the other, right to left.

Or you can read in landscape mode and then you see a representation of an open book - two pages. The right one "turns" graphically as you go to the next page.

A bit like the early motor cars that were modeled on the horse carriages rather than being designed as functional objects in their own right.

Yes there's nothing new under the Egyptian sun god of Ra.

And it is not only evident in the increasing use of symbols to represent words, it is also in the lack of vowels in the texting alphabet. Just like the ancient Egyptians who talked in consonants!

stA tunD

P.S. If another bus or subway person interrupts me to ask about my Kindle, and then says in a smug know-it-all-tone, "But I need the feel of a real book," I'll scream.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives and Boys in Envelopes

2010-07-23T20:54:00.011-04:00

The blue cheese olive combines the pungent taste of the cheese with the salty flavor of the marinated olive. Perfect to dress up your martini, for a meat and cheese tray, the blue cheese stuffed olive can even smarten up your salad. - from "How to Stuff an Olive with Blue Cheese"

Annie Hall is as white bread as people come. In fact, in an New York deli she orders a pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise, which would be like ordering a taco with mayonnaise in an East L.A. - from "Woody on the Cusp - a Review of Annie Hall"

As we approached the Triborough Bridge the high rises of Manhattan came into full view. I was home.

We got closer and it was as if the buildings were wrapping round me, enclosing me. Welcoming me. There are few sights as appealing as the Manhattan Skyline. Or as comforting

I'd been away. In the Mid-West. The American Heartland. One forgets when one has left. Typical Mid-West things get buried in the more immediate concerns of New York. Take their restaurants, for example.

But that'll have to wait. My trip to Illinois was marked by my saying goodbye to my friend of three weeks, Flat Stanley. Here he is at LaGuardia airport where we parted ways.

Flat Stanley has his own website FlatStanley.com. Flat Stanley is a drawing on a piece of paper (hence the "Flat"). He visits people all over the world, moving from place to place in an envelope. He usually stays about a week and during that time you take photos of him in landmark places and write letters to his parents, pretending to be him. In actual fact it is a child who gets the letters, and he or she takes them to school so that all the grade school children can learn about other places.

At first I was a bit concerned. How could I photograph a piece of paper near the Rockefeller Center, at Central Park, in Greenwich Village? But it turned out not to be so difficult. People were only too happy to join in and help me position Flat Stanley so that the landmarks were visible in the photos.

Here is Flat Stanley at the Admiral's Club at LaGuardia. On his way home to San Diego.

As for me. I was going in another direction. To Illinois.

It seems to me that Illinois is not much different from New York. Except for the accents. And the clothes (colored) and the food.

You are probably wondering what this photo is of. I will not keep you in suspense. It is of an olive, stuffed with blue cheese. One of the more exotic offerings at J. Alexanders, a restaurant in Deerfield, Illinois. You get three of them stabbed with a toothpick in your martini.

At J. Alexanders I was reminded of the first place I lived in when coming to America. Edmond, Oklahoma. The restaurants have identical layouts. A horseshoe-shaped bar in the middle and sit-down areas where on either side.

The food was good, though I gave the blue cheese olives a miss.

Back at the hotel (a Marriott) I asked about WiFi. No we don't have it but we might get it in the future I was told. I mosied down to the hotel's "Business Center", sure that there'd be some ethernet connected PCs for guests to use. There was. One.

Now I don't want to sound like a critical New Yorker. Because of course I am not.

I don't like Kate Miller-Heidke any more and she's from my home country, Australia. And I do like Flat Stanley, and he isn't from New York. I don't like a certain person in Spain, and he has never been to New York. I don't like people who cannot write in complete sentences, even if they ARE fans (see HERE). And I don't think I could EVER like

blue cheese stuffed olives.

Where Have All the Singletons Gone?

2010-07-18T16:51:00.007-04:00

In York City's Upper East Side there were 3,707 twin births in 1995; there were 4,153 in 2003; and there were 4,655 in 2004. Triplet births have also risen, from 60 in 1995 to 299 in 2004. Wikipedia - Twins

Men may be able to run the mile in less than four minutes and open stuck pickle jars with a twist of the wrist, but for all our physical prowess, we cannot carry new life within us and bring it into the world. To suggest that we do is a slap in the face of women. Mark Galli - "We Are Not Pregnant"

My little singleton

When we do things in this city, we do them well. Or so we say to the likes of people like Jeff.

Jeff is one of my fans. I think he lives in Ohio or maybe it is Kansas. No doubt he'll write and tell me.

Jeff is one of those people who don't like New York for no other reason than it is New York. Normally I wouldn't bother with the likes of Jeff but there's something endearing about him - the childish way he likes to divide Americans into opposing camps. I suspect he is a Tea Party person.

But back to New York.

New York women appear to be taking efficiency to a new level. The reproductive level. Balancing career, marriage and parenthood, and believing that only children are lonely children, they have started to use science to have instant families.

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) has boosted the number of multiple births. Its major use has been to help otherwise infertile couples to conceive children, but I suspect it is now being used to provide couples with instant families.

Whereas I produced two children over a period of five years, women can now produce all the children they want in one go.

Walking in my neighborhood (Upper East Side) it is rare to see a nanny pushing a singleton stroller. Twin and triple strollers are the norm.

I wonder, is their a discount for having more than one child in childcare?

As well as the satisfaction - immediate gratification - of having all the kids arrive in the world at once - there is the advantage of having a single maternity leave in one's life. And of course having only one pregnancy.

Talking about pregnancy, does anyone else feel bemused when they hear couples say, "We are pregnant"? Now it is all very well to involve the man in child-getting and child-rearing, but it is a fact that has to be accepted, that it is women who incubate babies. I really cannot accept this new "we are pregnant thing".

Imagine if women started linguistically sharing in events dominated by men.

Imagine Mrs (Tino) Martinez saying "We hit a game-tying home run."

Or Mrs Smith saying "We are donating our sperm."

Or Mrs Cohen saying "We are a rabbi."

And on that note,

We are signing off.

We are Kathleenwng and we approve this message.

A Lack of Soul

2010-07-16T00:16:00.010-04:00

"It was badly done, indeed! Mr. Knightley to Emma in Jane Austen's "Emma"

"The sixties were 50 years ago. Get over it." Kate Miller Heidke, "Politics in Space"

I have seen a few artists perform in New York - Bob Dylan, Paul Kelly, Michelle Shocked, Eric Bogle, Celine Dion and a couple of others whose names I have forgotten.

A divergent group with a common trait. They all gave their all to their audience, however small.

Last night I saw Kate Miller-Heidke perform at Le Poisson Rouge in the Village, Manhattan.

I had been interested in Kate Miller Heidke for a couple of years, and had particularly liked her song, "Caught in the Crowd". I'd even bought her album - something I rarely do. Plus she's an Aussie.

And so when I saw she was to perform at Le Poisson Rouge mid-week, this week, I was keen to go. I called my fiend B and we organized to meet at the Minetta Tavern at around six.

And so the evening began.

Let's skip over the bar (excellent) and Poisson Rouge (fair to middling) and get on to the performance.

Well we had about 45 minutes of Ms Miller-Heidke performing the songs she's known for - FaceBook, Last Day on Earth, Psych Killer, Politics in Space. And although the event had been promoted as featuring her new album, the new songs were barely there, or not noticeable. Or mentioned.

Yeah, she was OK. There was nothing really wrong.

Except.

Her time on stage lacked soul. It was a throw-away thing. Take it or leave it. New York, so what. My fans, so what.

I could have played my Kate Miller-Heidke album on iTunes and it would have had the same impact.

C'mon, Kate. Even Sinatra thought he'd put a bit of oomph into it when playing in New York.

Or anywhere.

What have you got that makes you so special?

"Get over it!"

The Comfort of the Familiar

2010-07-10T17:33:00.016-04:00

"Highly sexed young men living on farms are always called Seth or Reuben" - Flora Poste played by Kate Beckinsale in Cold Comfort Farm

Today I did something I haven't done in fifteen years.

What was the occasion?

Well nothing sexy I can assure you.

I filled in an Australian tax return.

I decided to fill it in myself, though in Australia I'd always used an accountant, and I certainly do so here in the States as I have no idea as to what to do with the various forms with unfamiliar number-names.

So I went to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) on-line to print off the forms. What joy! I only needed one.

It was so familiar. An Australian thing in my apartment! Memories flooded back. I felt quite weepy in a nice way.

"O no," I thought. "I am enamored by an ATO tax form. What is the world coming to? What am I becoming."

Maybe I should write to the Australian treasurer and tell him how I almost had an orgasm when I saw in bright red, "Tax returns for Individuals 2010". In America the tax forms are denoted by numbers which I can never remember. IT-150, IT-201, IT-201-ATT, IT-203, IT-203-ATT, IT-213 and so on to infinity. Unbelievable!

I looked at the top of my ATO Tax Form. Note that the headings are in lower case. And the off-beige background color. So elegant.

Compared to forms with weird names where nearly every word is capitalized.

The only thing that was a little odd with the ATO form was the mail-to address, if you were not submitting on-line.

" ...mail your tax return in a business-sized envelope to:

Australian Taxation Office
GPO Box 9845
In your capital city

Do not replace the words in your capital city with the name of your capital city and its postcode – because of a special agreement we have with Australia Post, you do not need to do this."

But I even found that endearing. Though what the United States Postal System will make of it I hate to think. I can only hope they don't look at the address, but knowing New York and all the security regulations ...

After I'd finished my paperwork I estimated my tax liability. I'm used to having to take a second mortgage to pay my American taxes. So I was please to see I owed the Australian government very little. I looked around the ATO site to see who I should make the check out to. I couldn't find instructions anywhere.

Then I remembered. In Australia you pay the money after you've been assessed. No wonder our anthem starts off with, "Australians all let us rejoice"!!!

Then it was back to reality. I put on the telly and saw how BP has removed a containment cap on the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico in order that a better-fitting one can go on. Meanwhile, oil is now shooting freely from the riser.

I've been wondering the past few days about this tragedy - what happens to the space under the earth's crust where all this escaping oil used to be? Is there a vacuum? What will happen to the empty space that the departing oil leaves behind? What if the ocean gets sucked in to fill that empty space? Will we be able to walk to Cuba?

Scary stuff indeed!

All my friends are getting botoxed!

2010-07-08T22:21:00.043-04:00

When You (sic) so (sic) an old person going through a mid life crisis and there (sic) face has no wrinkles like a cartoon character. - Definition of Botoxed, Urban Dictionary

I'm in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows. - Billy Page, the In Crowd

I was on FaceBook tonight. Yes I'm a member: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and I noticed that an old friend had changed her profile photo.

Botoxless in New York

Now I haven't heard from J for some years, but I DO know old she is. Is that an old photo of her, I wondered. Many people opt for putting baby photos of themselves on their on-line profiles.

I clicked on her FaceBook profile pic to enlarge it. No, it wasn't J as a baby, child, or even a teenager. It was J now. I saw from the background that the photo was taken around 2009.

I stared at the screen. I saw a young woman, well maybe not so young, maybe about 28 years old - who looked terrific.

Now "J" is about my age. And so I recognized the tricks of the trade. Look up to make your neck look firmer. Wear sunglasses to cover any wrinkles around the eyes. Hold that tummy in.

But more than that was involved here.

J looked GOOD. She looked like a model, a film star even.

It isn't just "J" - it is X Y and Z too.

My hair stylist is having some beauty sort of laser therapy on her lips and around her eyes. Another friend has had something done to her cheeks. Several friends have opted for botoxing their foreheads. And just yesterday, I was lunching with a friend and I noticed that something had happened to her legs. She seemed to have gained six inches in the length of her thighs and her calves were taut, smooth, a paler shade of tan, with an acceptable hint of muscle.

As for me, in the last decade my internal image has been one of the elegant French woman. I've let my hair go gray and keep it back from my face. All my skirts and dresses go to below the knees.

I have no intention of looking like a St Trinians school girl. Not for me those cute navy pleated school-girl skirts riding about eighteen inches above the knee. Not for me those tight little boleros and camisoles hugging my breasts.

I am aù naturelle.

But lately I've started wondering. I remember feeling very alone in high school when most of my peers were tarting it up, hoping to impress the Melbourne High School boys. Pathetic I thought then, and pathetic I think now. Instead of trying to look like Karen Black, I opted to look like Jean Seberg, or if I was living it up, Mia Farrow.

But maybe now is the time to change my game.

Maybe instead of aù naturelle I should join the crowd.

And go ... all the way.

The Botox way?

And then again, perhaps not.

Stay tuned.

Save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

2010-07-06T21:51:00.095-04:00

Before going to my regular posting please read the following. I colored the box yellow and purple as these are the colors of women's emancipation.

If the sentence is carried out, Sakineh Ashtiani, 42, will be buried up to her chest, according to an Amnesty International report citing the Iranian penal code. The stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately.

Sakineh Ashtiani could be stoned any minute. We can at least TRY to stop it. FaceBook has a page Save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani from being Stoned to Death in Iran with information and suggestions for action - who to write to, where the on-line petitions are. Care2 has information too. And there'll be many other sites.
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Back to normal transmission
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Those who return phone calls (and those who don't)

(The Death of the Answer)

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde

"There are three types of people in life: those that can count and those that can't." - Anon

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty." - John Cleese playing James McNeill Whistler in the Monty Python Oscar Wilde Sketch

My beef today is about people who don't return calls or emails, despite having been left MESSAGES.

HELLOOOO - we are still here. WE asked a question.

I suppose it is because we now have so many places where people CAN leave messages - cell phones. landlines/VoIP, email, social networking sites such as FaceBook - that people do not feel obliged to concern themselves with replying - one can always go to a FaceBook wall, to a Twitter tweet, to work out what one's friend is doing.

But for the old-fashioned, is it TOO much to ask that people respond to messages left, sent, transmitted ... whatever?

Everyone wants to be acknowledged.

I can give a million examples where calls or emails may as well been delivered to a void. But one will do, for obvious reasons.

Yesterday I phoned my rental agent in OZ. He wasn't there. I spoke to a colleague of his, and explained the situation - I had a couple of questions I needed answers to; I'd emailed them a week ago, and had received no answer. Not s a sausage!.

"Don't worry, Wayne will email you TODAY," came the reply.

Wayne didn't. So I called back the next OZ day. "Oh Wayne isn't feeling too well; I'm sure he'll answer when he gets better," said Trevor/Jason.

Now I'd put Wayne at 28, plus or minus a year. He's not terminally ill. He has a cold, well so Trevor/Jason had informed me. Poor baby! But the world must wait??? I'm not feeling so good myself! Still, let the world PAUSE, for Wayne.

Great.

Then there's social-friend-sort-of-people. One of my social-friend-sort-of-people called me last week and wanted to do brunch over the long (Independence Day) weekend. "I won't take no for an answer," she told me.

Let's call her X.

Well with my oh-so-heavy-social-calendar, it was difficult, but I did manage to accommodate her. No brunches Saturday, Sunday or Monday. I made sure all slots were free for ... X might call.

She didn't.

So when the long weekend was over, I called her. I got her voice mail. "X's voice mailbox is full," the voice-robot said in voice-robot language.

Emails went unanswered.

I worried. Well not too much, but it was a consideration.

Eventually X called me. I explained that I'd tried calling her and was worried, as I couldn't leave a message, and the heat advisories on telly had told us to check on neighbors and the elderly. Well I didn't say the last bit as I didn't want to be shrieked at, but I wish I had.

"Oh," my social-friend-sort-of-person said, "I didn't want to talk to anyone. So I shut down my computer and phone."

Which raises a question. Now that we know that we all (well almost all) can contact each other in less than a second, SHOULD we expect answers?

My stand is that we should reasonably expect an acknowledgement that the initial message was received, within the next 12 hours if on the same continent, otherwise 24. That is, UNLESS there's some sort of auto-reply, indicating that the intended recipient is away.

But then as Oscar would have said,

"There are two types of people in this world: those who acknowledge us, and those who don't give a stuff."

My name is Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

Galveston

2010-07-05T22:01:00.009-04:00

"More tar balls were found scattered along 1.5 miles on East Galveston Beach on Sunday. Officials have not confirmed the source of those tar balls, and are expecting test results on Tuesday." - Tar balls from oil spill found on Bolivar coastline (July 5, 2010)

Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea winds blowin'
I still see your beaches glowin'
I was was sixty one, when I first saw Galveston

Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea-waves crashing
While I watch the oil smashing and.
We know BP has won, but I still dream of Galveston

I still see you standing by the water
Standing there lookin' out to sea
And are you waiting there for me?
On the beach where I used to run

Galveston, oh Galveston, we know BP is lying
And I dry the tears I'm crying
While I watch the sea birds dying in the sun
At Galveston, at Galveston

Apologies to Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell (1969)

Memories of Melasti Street

2010-07-04T14:58:00.022-04:00

Two weeks in Bali is better than Sixty Minutes - Lettering on Australian teeshirts circa 1990 in protest over a negative Sixty Minutes' report on Bali

"Big Bambú", rooftop garden, the Met

My good friend Babs and I were sitting on a bench in the shade, on top of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was our first stop there, and we had organized our itinerary.

To our right was Doug and Mike Starn's exhibition of sticks of bamboo, tied together. You can see a small part of it in the photo on the left. It will, when it is finished measure 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high.

"We could be in Bali," I said to B as we sipped our cocktails in the heat. She agreed. The bamboo looked exactly like building scaffolding I'd seen many times in Bali. What with the heat and humidity and the casual attire of the tourists who were everywhere, it felt like a day on Jalan Melasti, the street that runs through Kuta and Legian on the southern coast of the beautiful island of Bali.

We were having an afternoon at the museum. New York style. After cocktails at the roof garden, we went to a contemporary photography exhibition - "Between Here and There". The exhibition contains photos that "reflect on post-national, global existence, and examine perceptual and psychological disconnections "that accompany the same seismic transformations." Well that's what the writing on the wall told us. I'll take the curator's word for it.

But global seismology aside, the exhibition is worth going to, for Rineke Dijkstra's portraits of the transformation of a girl through adolescence to young adulthood alone.

"Look at that study in pink," Babs nudged me. I looked around at the photos, and then when I was about to tell Babs I had no idea what photo she was referring to, I spotted the object of her concealed attention.

It was a man, dressed in 1950s type clothes of an American housewife on her way to the PTA. Pink dress and pearls. And carrying a pink clasp purse. The dress which ended just below the knees failed to conceal two very hairy legs. As the man turned I saw that he hadn't shaved for several days. And what's more he was wearing man shoes.

"His girlfriend seems normal enough," I said to Babs. She agreed and said we'd best get moving if we were to cover the Picasso exhibition, the "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" exhibition, cocktails on the balcony with music, and dinner at the Trustees Restaurant.

So we hot-footed it through what must have been several hundred Picassos in half a dozen or so rooms, past the twenty Rodins and on to the American Women fashion identity thing.

We loved it. Sample of costumes from eras of "Gibson Girls," "Bohemians," "Flappers" and "Screen Sirens, and movie clips of the all time greats of the thirties and forties projected on to the walls.

Through the Egyptian Gallery. "Why are all the Egyptians portrait in profile?" I asked Babs. She didn't know. Then she ducked in to Tutenkhamen's funeral, joining me 90 seconds later.

We were making excellent time. So we virtually strolled to the elevator. I noted that B called it a "lift". The heat must have been getting to her. Certainly it was getting to me. I'm dehydrated I told her. So we stopped of at the Trustees' restaurant, looked quickly at the menu, booked in for 6:30 and hurried down to the music area on the balcony.

The effect of the cocktails on the roof was wearing off, so we ordered white wine. Time got away from us as we talked about anything and everything and whether New York museums were better than the Tate or the Louvre. A tourist asked us what a "dime" was worth. We told her. All very cosmopolitan at the Metropolitan ...

We had the waitress call up to the restaurant to tell them we were running late.

But eventually we made it, ordered wine and food and relaxed after our fruitful late afternoon.

Suddenly it was ten o'clock. How time flies. We paid the bill and walked through the museum to the steps on Fifth. It was eerie, cool and quiet. Rooms that had been chockers just a few hours ago were deserted. I liked it. So did B.

We walked up Fifth, Central Park on our left and turned down 86th to Lex where B got the subway. I walked the next few blocks home.

New York!

Happy Party to Maya!!!

2010-07-03T23:09:00.006-04:00

I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph - From, "A Day in the Life", Lennon-McCartney

I went to Central Park today.

And discovered Maya.

Maya was having a party. If you were there, you could have come too. The directions were clear.

See below.

And a little further on ...

Almost there ...

And there were more.

Did I go?

No?

What did I do instead?

Stay tuned ...

Spitting Image

2010-07-02T21:27:00.011-04:00

Can you send me your family tree to look at, to look for clues to the connection? You requested extended sharing, which I will decline. That is an unacceptable loss of privacy. - email from a "23andMe" member

I took the time to write to my old friend
I walked across that burning bridge
I mailed my letter off to Dallas but
Her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska - From Michelle Shocked's "Anchorage"

From Whence I Came

A few years ago I joined "23andMe". 23andMe has a mission which is, according to its "About Us", page "to be the world's trusted source of personal genetic information."

I've always been interested in genetics. My primary degree was in psychology and later I took up computing, and became interested in "genetic algorithms".

And so once we could, as individuals, discover our genomes, our genetic information, I jumped at the chance.

I paid my 350 plus dollars to 23andMe, and was sent a "kit". I had to spit into a test-tube thing to put it bluntly. And then I sent the test-tube thing, my biological data (spit), to 23andMe.

I got a heap of information back. I am pure Viking and probably have blue or green eyes (I have green) and am unlikely to get melanoma ... and so one and so forth.

But along with personal attribute information, you also, as a member of 23andMe, get information about possible relatives. This information just comes up as an anonymous list. "XXX" may be a 3rd cousin. You can request contact by clicking HERE.

So I clicked a few possible relatives and mostly people accepted and we found out we had no ancestors in common, or none that we could verify.

As well as being able to establish contact, you can elect to share more "extended" genome information.

So on one of my so-called "cousins" I clicked the "yes link". The reply came, (possibly from Anchorage).

Can you send me your family tree to look at, to look for clues to the connection? You requested extended sharing, which I will decline. That is an unacceptable loss of privacy

Manhattan Woman Near Tree

Excuse me!!! My family tree! ASIF.

Now I don't minding letting others know that I probably have green or blue eyes, that I have wet rather than dry ear-wax (yeah that's the sort of information you find out) and that my ancestors pillaged English people. But my family tree???

Jeez. Why join a site, group, whatever and subject your DNA to be discovered in spittle and be told that you have potential cousins if you want to be private.

And if you really DO want to be private, why on earth expect others to send you their family tree?

Someone needs to get off their tree.

As for me, I'm fine. At least my tree has branches.

My name is Kathleenwng and I approve this message

Walk Like an American

2010-06-27T18:12:00.012-04:00

"Irish stepdance is considered a modern form of old-style stepdance, taught in the early 1900s by traveling dancers. The jig involves rapid movement of the legs while keeping one's arms at one's sides and moving sideways in sync" - From Now Public

Sam: Elaine, am I crazy? I just get the feeling that Dugan and the others are making fun of me all the time.
Elaine: Well, You might wanna think about...maybe, eh...moving your arms a little when you walk.
Sam: My arms?
Elaine: You know, sort of swing them, so your not lurching around like a caveman. - From Seinfeld Scripts, "Summer of George"

New York Kids on 60th

I was walking home one night last week when I suddenly noticed something seemingly different about myself. About the way I was walking. I was swinging my arms. I mean really swinging.

"Hang on!" my inner voice screeched. "What's happening here?"

Because you see I was walking like an American. When could this have happened? It must have crept up on me when I wasn't looking.

When I first arrived here in America, one of the things that stood out to me was the way Americans walked, swinging their arms up until they are horizontal to the ground, and then swinging them back 270 degrees.

This was new to me. I walked like an Australian. No swinging of arms. I suppose we Australians must look like Irish jiggers, bobbing along cork-like, arms to our sides. Unless of course we are running, jogging or power walking. Then we swing our arms with the best of them.

I must have acclimated more than I had thought. I had realized that my Australian ways were fading when I stopped feeling weird when the airline pilot would announce, "we are landing momentarily," half expecting him to be true to his word, touching down only to take off again a moment later.

But maybe it's an evolutionary thing and Australians are walking like that now. I wouldn't be surprised as my home country is changing in so many ways. Last week we got an new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and I read that Ms Gillard doesn't believe in "a big Australia". "Big" must mean something other than it did when I was last in OZ. Of course we can't change the size of Australia, even momentarily.

And then this afternoon I was talking to an Australian in Perth. He said he was about to watch the soccer match between Germany and England. "It's over," I said. "Germany won."

Tourists in Central Park
(arms hanging down)

"No," he argued, "they haven't played yet. Right now Argentina is playing Korea and the Germany England match is after that".

"Nooo," I explained, "Argentinia will play Mexico today."

I checked my facts on my trusty iPad. I was right. Of course.

He insisted. "Not according to CNN sports," I told him. "Or FIFA.com." I was glad I wasn't using a PC - I didn't have all day. Facts were literally flying to my fingertips. "Or Associated Press," I added. "Perhaps I should check Reuters?"

All to no avail. He was sure he was right.

So with all this weirdness I would not be surprised if all Australians were now swinging their arms.

Just like me.

My name is Kathleen wng and I approve this message.

A Family of Smokers

2010-06-26T18:13:00.011-04:00

For the first time in history, sex is more dangerous than the cigarette afterward. Jay Leno

Nicotine patches are great. Stick one over each eye and you can't find your cigarettes. Unknown

Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries. Luis Buñuel

Smoking with bro on graduation day a hundred years ago

I gave up smoking on 9th September 2008. I chose that day and month so that I would remember it no matter what country I was in. For although I've gotten used to the American date format of "month day", sometimes I revert to the more sensible Australian-Euro "day, month".

My mother smoked, my father smoked, my brother smokes. And until 9/9/08 I thought I'd never stop. I smoked more than anyone I I've ever known, except perhaps my father. I'd wake in the night craving a cigarette. My mother claimed I smoked even when I was gardening, but she was wrong there; I gardened while I smoked.

Smoking was the primary thing. Other activities somehow fitted in around it.

There are hardly any photos of me as an adult without a cigarette in my hand.

Here I am on my 37th birthday. Smoking.

How did I give it up and why? I THINK I gave it up because I wanted my freedom. The freedom from having to remember to take plenty of cigarettes wherever I went, from having to cater for the smoking habit in every aspect of my life. From having to wash my hair daily, from having smoke-stained clothes, walls, mirrors, teeth.

Until about five years ago I never even contemplated kicking the habit. And then in 2006 I think it was, at Auckland airport on a one hour stop-over, instead of wandering around the shops and having a coffee, I dutifully joined the other smokers in the smokers room. I had an epiphany. I didn't HAVE to smoke. And so the thought germinated and grew until in August 2008 when I decided to take the plunge.

For the first and only time in my life, I gave up smoking.

I was surprised. It wasn't so hard. A few days of cravings and then ...

Freedom.

However I still do miss my cigarettes now and then. Every month or so, I'll remember how nice it was, having a cigarette with coffee after a meal. There's nothing like it. I don't kid myself.

But I have my memories ...

And shall have to be content with those.

Positively 161st Street

2010-06-19T22:36:00.033-04:00

"NEW YORK – The New York Mets lost on Saturday afternoon, two days before the official start of one of those baseball summers here, and Jose Reyes first recognized that."

"Subway Series heat is on full blast", Tim Brown

Sometimes I wonder how I got through third grade. Take today, for example.

"There's two of us," I was explaining. We were standing at an entrance to Yankee Stadium.

"We are both wearing jeans and Yankee tee-shirts," I added.

Yep, there we were, standing outside the Yankee Stadium. There were tens of thousands of people like us.

Oblivious, I persevered. "You're sure to recognize us," I was saying.

Yeah, sometimes I worry about myself. Sometimes I seem divorced from this world.

I'd been invited to watch the Yankees play the Mets from one of the luxury suites in the Yankee Stadium. I had invited my friend J to accompany me.

I had a cell phone number to call when we arrived, and someone was going to come down to escort us into the suite.

So there we were at Gate 4 for luxury-suite-people. "You'll recognize us," I blah-ed on, looking innocently around at the crowd of Yankee-cladded t-shirt people.

Amazingly we were eventually identified, and were escorted in. Me and my friend J.

We had a great time. I learned about strikes and outs and innings. It was like a mixture of cricket and rounders. I liked the way the crowed roared, and sang "YMCA" and The Star Spangled Banner. Patriotism and pop culture. Nothing better.

The Yankees were on top of the game in every set, or over or innings ... whatever. We were sure to win!

Then suddenly the game was over and the Yankees had won as I knew they would. We were all standing up singing, "New York, New York". Except for the Mets people that is. They slinked away somewhere. To Queens, probably. And then it was time to go.

"Let's get a cab," said my friend J. "Of course," I replied. "We aren't getting the subway! ASIF!"

We left the luxury of the glass-enclosed suite into the main part of the stadium, to join the throng of normal New Yorkers who seemed to be making their way to the subway.

And so there we were in the Bronx, surrounded by Yankee fans heading to the subway station.

"Where are the cabs?" I asked. "When I leave the opera they are everywhere!"

A few people near us glared. But I was undeterred.

Till I realized what I'd said. My mind was racing. What was wrong with me? Turning up at Yankee Stadium expecting to be recognized by my Yankee tee-shirt. Talking about the opera in the middle of the Bronx. Not that Bronx people don't go to the opera. I was getting confused. Political correctness was schizophrenic-ing me.

There were no cabs to be seen. Several New York cops tried to explain this to us. "You need the subway lady, there are no cabs here."

But we didn't want to know.

We walked north. We walked south.

Well maybe we did. We are both spatially dyslexic.

"I have no sense of direction," said J. "Me neither." I said.

Still no cab in sight.

Eventually we gave up and accepted out fate. We walked to the subway station.

Six minutes later we were in Manhattan.

I put J in a cab. I walked home.

"Jesus," I told the doorman when I reached the safety of my apartment block lobby. "I went to the Yankee Stadium and there were no cabs!"

"I know," he said. "It is a dead area. Never go there."

I got in the elevator and walked into my apartment.

Somehow I felt that I'd passed a test. I was fulfilled.

I am Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

Did he think he was in Ireland?

2010-06-19T10:58:00.014-04:00

Over at the Village Voice, Jen Doll cleared it up for Svanberg: "Oh BP, when will you learn? It’s not small people, it's Little People! Jeez."

From "BP boss 'sorry' about 'small people’ remark", MSNBC, June 16, 2010

The following is an article by Australian Edward Kanze, who has given permission to reprint his article, "Pelicans Fraught With Oil and Irony". Thank you Ed! The photos were taken my me, and are of the Maine coastline, as yet unsullied.

Pelicans Fraught With Oil and Irony

By ED KANZE

BP Ad from 1999

One score and ten years ago, I set off for the Gulf coast. The National Park Service had offered me work as a ranger at Gulf Islands National Seashore, a sprawling collection of barrier islands, coastal marshes, and historical structures in Florida and Mississippi. I was heading to the Florida district. For six months I would live and work on Santa Rosa Island, near Pensacola.

The brown pelican, surely the most handsome member of its ungainly feathered tribe, had been considered an endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for ten years. DDT, disturbances to nesting grounds, and competition from fishing boats had come close to putting the yellow, white, brown, and gray bird permanently out of the seafood business. The banning of DDT and the creation of sanctuaries such as Gulf Islands National Seashore had helped turned things around, and when I arrived, brown pelicans were on the rise.

I'll never forget my first sighting of these extraordinary birds: a line of them flying in formation low over the water, jowly faces contrasting with the grace with which the birds flapped their broad, two-toned wings (seven feet or thereabouts from wingtip to wingtip). It was evening. Lemon-yellow sunlight slanting over the gun-metal surface of the Gulf illuminated the birds theatrically from above and below. Foreheads glowed gold, like incandescent light bulbs.

Brown pelicans were not rare then, but they're weren't especially common, either. Certainly they were nowhere near as abundant as I found them twelve years later when I returned to Gulf Islands for another stint. This time I worked in the Mississippi district. Brown pelicans turned up every time I ventured near salt water. Clearly, things were looking up.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed brown pelicans from the Endangered Species List in 2009. No one could foresee that in the spring of 2010, the world's largest oil fiasco would begin playing out in the Gulf of Mexico, and the bird would find itself hurtling toward oblivion all over again.

The most recent figures I've seen report 57 brown pelicans found oiled and dead, plus another 157 oiled but alive. These numbers likely represent a pittance of the real total. Most of the birds are probably succumbing out at sea or on remote sections of coast. It's pelican breeding season now, and breeding season for loggerhead, leatherback, hawksbill, and Kemp's ridley sea turtles, too. The timing of the gusher, which continues to spew and will go on poisoning the Gulf for decades, couldn't be worse.

It's hard for me to picture that coastline today. During my time as a ranger at Gulf Islands in 1980 and from 1992-1995, the shorelines were cluttered in places with beached flotsam, most of it from shrimpers and fishing boats. Still, the sugar-white sand of the beaches was a marvel to behold, as was that most elegant and noble of grasses, the sea-oat, which held the sand in its roots and made possible the growth of dunes.

News from friends along the Gulf has taken me on a roller-coaster ride. First there was horror and anger. Then there was hope, as the situation seemed less dire than it might have been. Then the oil from British Petroleum's undersea geyser continued pouring tanker-loads of liquid fossil sunshine into the water every day, and the fumes and the floating menace and the corpses began coming ashore.

Everyone is asking the same question. Where do we go from here? Triage comes first. Over time, the environmental, economic, psychological, and political ramifications will be profound. If we can't stuff this genie back in the bottle, we certainly must make sure that all the other genies remain where they belong. This will require rooting out the toxic influence of oil money in Washington---do-able, we of goodwill must believe, yet no easy task.

Edward Kanze June, 2010

Copyright Edward Kanze, 2010

The Giving Tree

2010-06-13T20:52:00.026-04:00

Maybe everything is going to be all right - Maybe (Everything Will Be Alright), The Giving Tree NYC

Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mart - Guantanamera, José Fernández

Slim and his Sister

I met Slim on my way back from brunch today. He and two of his buddies were hanging out in front of the locksmiths on Second Avenue near 90th. The locksmith is just next door to the liquor store.

"We are hungry," said the man whose name I was later to learn was Slim. He held out his cup.

Now normally I don't give to panhandlers but there was something about Slim. Chutzpah, larrikinism, call it what you will ....

"Hungry?" I answered? Sure you mean thirsty?" And I gave him a dollar. He looked stunned.

Can I take your photo?" I asked. "Certainly," he smiled. "I'm Slim and I look after this block."

I took a few with my Canon Elph, and as I was leaving Slim asked if ever got them developed, could they see them? "You can leave them in the liquor store," he told me. "They know me there."

I crossed the road to our apartment building. A doorman opened the revolving door for me and the concierge said good afternoon. Two worlds ...

Back in the apartment I was about to slob around, watch some telly ... but I was thinking of Slim and his friends. "Stuff it," I thought, "I'll print the bloody photos for them now."

So I looked through my computer supplies and found some photo paper and stacked it in the printer tray. Was it glossy side up or down? As if that mattered. As with anything to do with computers, Murphy's law comes into play. I spent an hour trying to get the printer to print correctly.

Never buy an HP DeskJet. No matter how much ink you have in the color cartridge, it always blocks up when you need to print in color.

Slim et al came out in bright magenta. I reset the cartridge. The magenta was brighter. I googled, and found that I wasn't alone. Run it under warm water, offered a fellow HP DeskJet owner. I tried it. Still magenta. Boil the water. Still magenta. Use alcohol. I tried some merlot. Perhaps I was meant to drink it. In any case, nothing happened. I googled some more and found someone suggesting soaking the cartridge in Windex.

Eureka! It worked. I printed the photos. You can see some of them here.

And off I set back to the locksmith.

It was all worth it. As I walked towards the threesome I waved the photos in the air.

When I handed the photos over they were gob-smacked. "She's printed them," yelled Slim. "Look!" "Is there one of my sister?" "Yes Look at this!"

"No worries," I told them. "Can we have copies?" one asked. "You can have these," I answered.

As I walked off I looked back. They were still looking at the photos, and I wondered how long ago it was that these people had had their photos taken, let alone be given prints.

The hour I spent mucking about with the HP DeskJet had been worth it.

There's something wonderful about giving.

See, I'm not such a bad person .... Well not ALL the time, anyway.

My name is Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

No Goals for BP, and ABE

2010-06-12T20:50:00.027-04:00

The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume. BP CEO Tony Hayward Guardian, May 14 10

There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back. BP CEO Tony Hayward, Guardian, May 18 10

The TV in the nail salon was showing the soccer. The sound was off and the closed captioning was in Spanish. Most of the staff were Korean. All were Asian. And those of us having pedicures and manicures were a politically-correct multi-cultural mix.

Being not much interested in soccer and understanding only half a dozen words of Spanish, I turned to my book, "Incendiary"by Chris Cleave. It's a well-executed novel, especially relevant to those of us who lived through 9/11 in New York or DC.

It's set in England and the writer does a good job at describing London, old, gray and depressing.

Not that I'm anti-English. I'm not one of those "ABE"s - "Anyone But England" people. In fact I'd never heard of them until my good friend Madge, who is currently living in the "old country", explained them to me tonight.

But it was comforting to see on the telly, in the nail salon, in Spanish, England draw one-all with the USA in soccer.

Of course it would have probably been comforting to see England draw with Paraguay or Lithuania. Because if you come from a former colony, you have to admit, there's something very annoying about the English.

It's not their fault of course. But as my uncle would say, "It get's up my nose" when they talk of the antipodes and us Aussies losing at cricket (ASIF). Deary me I suppose I'm stereotyping. But as George Cloony's character, Ryan Bingham said in "Up in the Air, "I'm like my mother, I stereotype. It's faster."

Which brings me back to the title of this blog, "No goals for BP and ABE". Well England DID score a goal in the soccer and so did America; but as my friend Madge explained, "The US wouldn't have scored one except that ..." Whatever.

My gripe isn't the almost-lack-of-a-goal but it is about the oil that BP spilled in the Atlantic, and the insulting gaffes made by BP's CEO Mr. Tony Hayward. Mr Haywood may think of the Atlantic Ocean as "the Pond", but most of us, including the fish, do not.

Mr. Haywood wants "his life back".

England wants her goal back.

And the people of Louisiana want their income back.

Stay tuned.

I am Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

Eastern Standard Time and Being American

2010-06-10T23:47:00.038-04:00

Deep in my heart
Safe from the guards
Of intellect and reason
Leaving me at a loss
For words to express my feelings - Tracey Chapman, "Deep in my Heart"

Now I've lived in America for over 15 years and I thought I'd seen and heard it all.

Diversity is the name of the game here in the U.S. And because the place is so diverse, we (the uninitiated) tend to think that Americans will understand and recognize diversity elsewhere.

Not so.

"Diversity" in America apparently means "Diversity in America". "Diversity" is an American thing and nowhere else can have it. I suspect they have patented it.

Case in point: I was talking to am American friend tonight on a number of matters. An intelligent woman. I suspect that like all intelligent women everywhere, that she's an Obama supporter (all be it now reluctantly), and that she doesn't like BP flooding our seaboard with oil. And so for a moment there I thought we were talking the same language.

BUT then we got on to "time zones". She (let's call her "T") was asking me about times in Australia and Australian "states" and "cities".

Now as all my followers would agree, I'm a very patient person.

"Melbourne is a city," I explained. "And Victoria is a state. Melbourne is to Victoria as Tallahassee is to Florida; as Sacramento is to California; as Albany is to New York."

"Oh," said "T", so Melbourne is in New South Wales?"

"No-oooo," I said, taking a full sip of my shiraz. ""Tallahassee is not in Texas."

By this stage I think that "T" was taking sips or sniffs or inhales of something, as she was becoming quite confused.

"Listen," I said (taking deep breaths). "America has states and in states are cities."

"Yeah," she said, "Like Brooklyn."

Not really, " I sighed. "Brooklyn is a district, a county. We are talking about cities and state capitals. Like Springfield, Illinois."

"OK," said "T". "I get it."

So far so good. So it was back to the original topic, "time zones".

"So what time zone is Melbourne in and what is the time there?" she asked.

"Eastern Standard Time, 8;00 a.m." I answered.

[Laughter]

"What's the matter?" I inquired.

"Eastern Standard Time is East Coast America daylight savings time," she retorted. "How can that be an Australian time?"

"Listen 'T'," I attempted. "It isn't only America that has an east coast. Or a time!!"

But deep in my heart I understood. I'm beginning to get it.

America, You're standing in it.

I'm Kathleenwng and I approve this message.

Fragments of Me

2010-06-06T12:37:00.023-04:00

"Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?" - from "Tombstone Blues", Bob Dylan

"How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown" - from "Like a Rolling Stone", Bob Dylan

A week ago today I fragmented. Into small pieces. Like the small pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle. You know, those huge jigsaws of supposedly idyllic English country scenes with thatched-roof cottages and multi-hued hills and cloudy blue skies.

Except no parts of this particular jigsaw actually touched. A scrambled jigsaw.

Well, at least that's how it felt by the end of the week. I was to all intents and purposes, invisible. I saw no one - literally - for eight whole days. This must be a record for me for I cannot remember prior to last week, spending more than twenty four hours entirely alone.

How could such a thing happen in a city of eight million?

Sure, bits of me remained scattered around the place. Bits of me were remembered for sure by my friends around the world. But no one actually saw me, and only two people made sure to phone to see how I was.

How could this be?

Two reasons.

1: I was ill. And 2: I live in New York.

Eight days home alone. At first it was fun. I lay around in bed, coughing my lungs up, watching day-time telly and playing with my iPad. But after a hundred consecutive episodes, even Judge Judy becomes boring. And as for my former favorite, Joy Behar, by the end of the week her cheery happiness and loud New York voice was painfully grating. And the iPad - well that toy is no longer a shiny apple.

Around Day 3 I was so bored that I looked myself up on Google and was surprised at the amount of information there was about me. Mostly from social and professional networking sites. Enough already yet! I dropped out.

I remember the drop-outs of the seventies. I didn't appreciate them back then. Why didn't they hang in there and fight, I used to wonder. But I was so much older then, as Dylan sang. I'm younger than that now.

I intend to shrink the internet fragment of me. Of course I won't drop out of the internet entirely. It has its uses. Like looking up the weather on my iPad instead of looking out the window. And finding out how to make Anzac cookies.

But back to the fragments. There's the work-me. The social-me. The wife-me. The mother. The sister. The expat-me. The Australian-me. The New York me. I could see them all on the internet and wondered, is that the only place they now reside?

Lying alone in bed for eight days gives one time to reflect.

Yep, I made up my mind on a number of my fragments.

But as for New York - the jury's still out.

I am Kathleenwng and I approve this message

Old Ladies Don't Drink Margaritas

2010-05-30T19:01:00.022-04:00

"...and they tell him, "take your time, it won't be long now
'til you drag your feet to slow the circles down" Joni Mitchell, "The Circle Game"

You say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you. Beatles, "Birthday"

When I write the Great Australian Novel it will be called "Controlled Falling". Watch out for it.

The expression came from an old boyfriend. I don't know whether it was because of his Dutch heritage or his science major, but he tended to see the world through unemotive eyes.

We were walking down from an outcrop of rocks. It was a hundred years ago in a desert somewhere in Australia. "It's much easier climbing down," I commented. "Climbing down is just controlled falling," he explained in his Dutch lecture-style way.

Since then I've seen my life in terms of a prolonged and (mostly) controlled falling, from one stage to the next.

The speed of a person's life-fall is not constant. It is extremely slow during childhood, perhaps to twelve years of age, speeding up from then on, until one gets to a certain age and time starts to screech by, somewhat short of the speed of light.

Major changes in speed occur several times in one's life, often associated with life events, such as one's first sexual experience, birth of one's child, the first gray hair, divorce, death of a parent...

Some changes in speed are sign-posted by an epiphany or a comment from another person marking indelibly the precise time of the change.

When I was about 10 I used to run home from school jumping over rubbish bins on the sidewalk. On one particular day I suddenly stopped dead short of a rubbish bin. "You are to old for that," an inner voice whispered. And I jumped no more. My childhood was over and its slow speed accelerated to the faster speed of adolescence.

Marriage, children, divorce, menopause, career ... the wheels of change move increasingly faster as life events pile up rapidly, sometimes even colliding with each other.

Old Lady Not Drinking a Margarita

A "sign-post" manifested itself just yesterday. I was talking to a friend. "My husband invited you over for margaritas," she was saying. "I told him," she continued," "Kate is an old lady and old ladies don't drink margaritas."

The world sped up and I recognized another turning point.

I, who I believed could never get or look old, was defeated.

About to fall, tumbling to the last rung of my descent.

But first, I think I'll have a margarita!

Stay tuned.

hhh

Chicago, Chicago

2010-05-28T00:01:00.055-04:00

Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago? - Charles Horton Cooley "Human Nature and the Social Order" 1902

Went to Chicago last week. I was surprised. I'd imagined a slick, dark city that was sort of a shadow of New York.

Not so. Chicago is like my home town. "Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, The World, The Solar System, The Galaxy, The Universe", as we used to say in grade 3.

With a difference. Look at the photo on the left. Positively forties. I didn't manage to capture the U.S. naval soldiers who were there, dressed all in white with those little white caps. But the girls in the photo should give you an idea of ... CHICAGO. Melbourne Australia is anything but forties. Thirties maybe ...

Still, wandering around Chicago was like wandering around my home town of Melbourne - with everything mirrored. The only difference was in the rivers; but even with the rivers there were similarities. Both rivers did a reverse take.

Over one hundred years ago Chicago reversed the flow of the Chicago River from going INTO Lake Michigan to going OUT of Lake Michigan. A vertical reverse, so to speak, as he Chicago River is now two feet below Lake Michigan. The Melbourne Yarra, on the other hand, has the mud on the top. A lateral reverse.

We didn't have a lot of spare time. Stayed in Chicago a couple of days.

Chicago was nice, but when duty called it was back to New York.

Still, away and on vacation for only a few days, it was enough to free me from the inevitable daily tribulations of transactions.

An old boyfriend of mine used to say that the less "transactions" you did, the more pleasant your life would be. And I suspect he was right. As soon as you actually DO anything in this world, your life is fraught with danger.

You buy an airline ticket, for example. Something goes wrong and then it is ten hours on hold to the airline's customer service, and THIS only after having to listen to a robot voice asking you if you speak Spanish and to please say your frequent flyer number.

Better to go nowhere. Buy nothing. Hide. And then, sans transactions there may be peace.

However I was back in New York and I'd forgotten the old boyfriend. After all, sanity is high on my list of priorities.

Once unpacked and settled in the apartment, I remembered that I had a $25 gift voucher from Bloomingdales. A couple of months ago I had bought clothes and had been rewarded with a $25 voucher. Where had I put it? I had no idea. I searched the apartment but the two rooms yielded nothing.

The results of a transaction had been lost.

Where was it? I had searched high and low. Laterally and vertically.

Nope, nothing to be seen. I must have accidentally thrown it out.

I called Bloomingdales and screeched at robot for several hours. After pressing "1" a hundred times and saying "representative" a million times, I got a HUMAN.

Well, I THOUGHT it was a human...

I explained.

"Oh," he said. "You have lost your voucher. This is not a problem. We can issue you another. Please tell me the voucher number which is just under your address on the right-hand side of your voucher."

"I don't have it," I explained. "I LOST the voucher and that is why I am calling you!@!!"

"I understand," said the pretend human.

I was starting to wish I had the robot back. Even a Spanish speaking one!. "But we cannot issue a new voucher unless we have the number," Jason (it was BOUND to be a Jason) was saying.

"OK," I said. "Please answer me this. Why would anyone call Bloomingdales to get a replacement voucher if they already had a voucher?"

"I can only repeat," said Jason. Or was it the robot? "Look at the top right of your voucher and tell me your number and we will be happy to replace your voucher."

"I give up."

I gave up.

I will remain voucherless.

And I will follow Jason's parting reply and, "have a nice day.".

Australians in Chelsea Market

2010-05-25T13:22:00.006-04:00

Roam if you want to, Roam around the world. - B52's

On the road again, Goin' places that I've never been. Seein' things that I may never see again. - Willie Nelson

The following Letter from New York is by the mysterious LFNY Follower, Jaded NYer

Two months ago I started working for a company located inside the Chelsea Market. The Chelsea Market, which is in the trendy Meatpacking District of the West Village, started out as the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) in the 1890's. Today the building contains offices and a wide variety of stores and takes up an entire city block from 9th to 10th avenue between15th and16th street.

During the past two months I have discovered something interesting about the area. I am surrounded by Australians.

Not only do I work with two of them, one in particular who looks exactly like a young Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones, (I told him to get a paternity test, he might be rich and not know it), and the other, a middle aged gentleman who is smart, funny, and disorganized. Whenever I run into Australians, I find they all seem to have the same sense of humor, which personally I find to be a mixture of sarcasm and common sense. Good match if you ask me.

Without fail, whenever I am standing outside during a break (I believe the Australian word is "smoko"), I’m approached by an Australian looking for the High Line.

At first I wondered, why do Australians like to get high? Is it because they come from down under? However after investigating, I discovered what the High Line actually is.

The High Line is a new park built on an old elevated 1930's freight rail structure. The structure was created to remove freight trains from street level traffic due to the many accidents that occurred on the streets of Manhattan from 1851 through 1929. These elevated trains delivered goods to upper floor loading docks of businesses in the area. The last train ran in 1980 with three cars loaded full of frozen turkeys.

The High Line entrance is located at 15th Street and 10th avenue. Currently it is divided into three sections, the first of which runs from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street.

The second section is still under construction and will stretch on to West 30th Street. A third section is planned for the future, so that the park will comprise the entire length of the structure from Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street.

Currently there are "No Dogs Allowed on the High Line", and several people expressed to me that they would like it to stay that way. I promised to mention that in this article.

What I found was indeed a rare treat. Assorted trees, plants, and flowers, landscaped within the existing infrastructure, between the old rail beds and tracks, along with the original restored outer railing that make for a unique promenade. A genuine take on the old and new.

Spectacular views of the Hudson River and surrounding skyline.

Ah, I thought to myself, these Australians were on to something. Here was a place to get away from it all, to relax and unwind in a peaceful oasis right above our city streets.

It looks like the High Line has found it’s new purpose. What used to be a means for transporting goods has now becomes a means for transporting our minds.

Jaded NYer
New York
May 2010

Lulu in the Sky with Diamonds

2010-05-15T16:03:00.013-04:00

"Search fearlessly for every sin, for out of sin comes joy."

Frank Wedekind - author of the play "Lulu"

Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

From Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Lennon and McCartney

It's hardly like "To Sir With Love!"

Babs to me, during the second intermission of "Lulu"

Lobmeyer crystal chandeliers at the Metropolitan New York

Last week I saw my very first opera. "Lulu" based on Frank Wedekind's play of the same name and set to opera by Alban Berg in 1937.

The crystal chandeliers that ascend silently to the gilded ceiling as the lights fade before the beginning of each performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera were apt. Diamonds in the sky, heralding all manner of characters and ideas.

There's an Alice-in-Wonderland quality about the chandeliers, a quality that was mirrored in the opera that was to follow their ascent. Although now that I come to think about it, perhaps the Brothers Grimm would be more in line ...

The opera was nothing like I had expected.

For starters, the lead women in it were young and slender. I'd been under the apparently erroneous impression that female opera singers were buxom creatures verging on middle age. I know better now.

Then there was the plot. I had decided to read up on the story line before going to the performance. Google is great for researching in a hurry. I expected a one paragraph synopsis. Opera for dummies sort of thing in a wiki somewhere.

I expected something about lovers and villains, cuckolds and unrequited love.

Wrong again. The shortest synopsis I found was three pages long, compactly written with every sentence describing several major life events.

No room for even a whittled down version here.

I can tell you about the main characters though and that might give you an idea f the complexity of the story.

The main characters in Berg's Lulu are - an animal tamer, an acrobat, a publisher, a prince, a lesbian,a physician, a banker, a schoolboy, a professor, a composer and his son, and Jack the Ripper. Oh, and of course Lulu who in the course of the play is sought after by nearly all of the above, marries, kills the composer son who she has married, is arrested, gets sent to prison, contracts cholera, is rescued by a lesbian, becomes a prostitute, gets syphilis and is eventually chopped up by Jack the Ripper.

The whole thing was sung in German. Luckily there were subtitles on the back of the seats in front. I liked the bit where Lulu coloratura-sopranoed things like, "I want to go to university and study journalism."

I had no idea that opera was like this!

I now have quite another take on twentieth century culture. Music and lyrics in particular. Sergeant Pepper, yawn, yawn. Passé when it was produced in 1967. Lou Red's "Walk on the Wild Side" (1972) - tame as milk. The Sex Pistols? The Doris Days of punk.

The score of Lulu contains no melody or harmony. There are (only???) twelve notes, all within an octave and treated equally. I am not sure if I understand the meaning of this and must assume it has something to do with the collapse of liberal democracy in Germany in the late 1930s. A political statement?

Clearly there's more to opera than meets the eye!

But on a serious note, I enjoyed the opera. It was nothing like I expected.

And so I think it'll be that start of many yet to come.

I can't believe what I've been missing.

Stay tuned!

Naked Men on Buildings

2010-05-08T17:09:00.030-04:00

Sul mare luccica l’astro d’argento.
Placida è l’onda, prospero è il vento.
Sul mare luccica l’astro d’argento.
Placida è l’onda, prospero è il vento.
Venite all’agile barchetta mia From "Santa Lucia" - Traditional

On hearing that God is sending an angel down to earth -
Jesus: "Father, why don't you send me?
God: "Last time was a disaster." From Mylène Farmer's "Que mon cœur lâche"

A few weeks ago I wrote about my idea for a Pretentiousness Meter.

No I haven't developed it though I still intend to. I think I'll make it only work on Windows, as there is the beginning of a backlash against trendy Apple, ever since Apple started acting snooty.

Snooty with the unfortunate Apple employee who lost the iPhone in a bar. Jon Stewart of the Daily show is incensed. "It wasn't supposed to be this way." he said. "Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one. But now you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto, while commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes. What the f*ck is going on? It is all mixed up. I don't know which end is up anymore. Black is white. Cats are dogs.""

I've revived my interest in my Pretentiousness Meter, not because of iPhoneGate, but because I've had a week of bumping into pretentious people. More than I normally do, that is.

First there's the building supervisor who acts like he's the lord of the manor. He wasn't there before; he must be new. I pass him on my way to my second bus stop in mid-town. There used to be just the uniformed doormen standing under the typical Manhattan stripy awning outside the apartment building, but in the past few months there's a man standing a little away from the doormen, surveying the sidewalk as if it is a rural roadway in Britain before the serfs were freed. His bald head is always carefully combed. The adjective that comes to mind when I see him, is "dapper". As people leave his building he greets them with an English smile, and if they are young and pretty, stares at their legs as they walk on.

I hate him and must think of an alternate route to work.

And if that's not enough, midweek I was watching a show on the arts on "Ovation" and heard for the first time about "Relational Art". Seems I really am behind the times. I'd never heard of this movement. The show was called "Relational Art: Is It an Ism?" and it was all about the philosophy and creations of the Relational Art people. One guy assembled a life-sized model of his kitchen in an art gallery and invited people to cook in his kitchen. Another had part of a wall in a gallery and a pail of white paint with brushes for people to paint the wall, over and over and over ...

Then there's the twelve pajama-clad, rubber booted male figures drinking from chalices, wearing diving helmets who are hanging out in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest.

The creativity of these artists knows no bounds!

Was Yoko Ono a Relational Art person - with her ladder for people to climb up and read a tiny, unimposing "yes", printed on a canvas suspended from the ceiling? Surely she was a woman ahead of her time.

I wonder what course one needs to undertake in order to qualify as a Relationionalist I can't imagine rolling up to an art gallery with a pile of lettuce leaves and a sieve for what those in the know call an "installation". There must be prerequisites. "What-Bizarre-Idea-Can-I-Come-Up-With-Next 101" perhaps.

Another pretentious thing - those trendy supermarkets and coffee shops that instead of Musak or Mylène Farmer or Lady Gaga - play Mario Lanza singing "Santa Lucia", or even Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma. I went to one this morning after gym. It's called "The Vinegar Factory". But it could be called anything. "Loaf of Bread" perhaps, or "Bagels R Us".

I'm sick of pretension! I need something down-to-earth, normal, run of the mill. What could I do to satisfy my urge for something very basic, pedestrian even?

I know! I can go and see the naked men on to of buildings in mid-town. There are thirty one of them - life-sized figures by British artist Antony Gormley. Apparently they are all modeled in his likeness. I suspect he is having a sly dig at God. They are perched on top of buildings including the Flat Iron and the Empire State. Babs has found twenty seven of them so I should go see them too.

Yeah, that's what I'll do.