Walt Whitman ponders on the path through the snow

2/12/14 18:28

This is my journal for the 10 days or so that Ali and Emma are in London, Paris and Madrid.  They flew off last night and while we were sleeping landed in Great Britain.  Earlier today, Ali called from London and said it was pouring rain.  She was on her way to dinner via the tube.  She also sent some texts, having spent the afternoon in Coven Garden.  She called later and spoke to Joe and Bella before hitting sack, it’s five hours ahead in London, and with the time difference and classic jet lag, she was exhausted.  I made tacos for dinner and in a little while will heat up an apple pastry served with vanilla iced cream.  The Talking Heads are on the radio, Little Creatures…are whatever the song is called.  Hope to watch It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World since Sid Cesar passed away today at 91.  Yesterday, we lost Shirley Temple, at 85 and just the other week, Pete Seeger, 94. I have to get downstairs and hang out with the bums, last night we went to Target to buy a toy for Joe which he needs as a prop for the play he’s in…and I was struck how articulate my children are and what a feminist Bella is.  At school one of her friends was selling something and told Bella that being a girl, she was able to get a discount and Bella said that was not fair, if anything both boys and girls should pay the same…amazing…

2/16/14 08:54

                I got out of bed about an hour ago.  Sleeping in till 07:00 is a luxury on the weekends.  It snowed yesterday and into last night, and even with the warnings, I didn’t want another day stuck inside the house.  Originally we were going to drive to Boston with Joe and Diana to see Mo Cheeks and spend two nights in Boston.  With the approaching storm and the threat that Boston was going to get the brunt of it, we decided it was best to stay home.  Who wants to be stuck in a hotel room?   Like I said I didn’t want to spend another day inside the house.  Besides the storm was slated for last night, but on the drive home after a visit to Book Revue and an early dinner at Munday’s on Main Street Huntington – we were the last patrons for the night, the car slipped a little in the snow in Kings Park.  I said, “Shit,” out loud and regretted saying it since Joe and Bella were in the car.  Thought of the Eddie Murphy’s line, “You heard the word, but it doesn’t mean you repeat it.”  I made the comment and Joe rolled his eyes, the budding teenager.  Before Huntington, we hung out at my parents for a couple of hours.  Bella asked Ma, “How did my father propose to my mother?”  The historical event took place in Huntington Station at a place where they hung out with their friends.  Think late fifties…Dad and Ma picked out the ring at the diamond center in New York City, after taking the train from Huntington and Ma picked three rings and Dad picked the biggest one.  I don’t think I heard that story before.  I knew the snow was going to come down as the day progressed so around three, I clapped my hands and made the announcement we were leaving, we made our way to Huntington.  Honestly, I wanted to stop at Walt Whitman’s house for a tour since neither Joe or Bella know who the great poet was….anyway after the meal we ran up the snowy sidewalks, cleaned off the car and drove back home around 5 PM, and pulled into the driveway in the dark, and I blessed God for getting us home safely.  Now Bella wants to know what are we doing today?

Ali called from Paris...having a grand time, loves the beauty of the city...Emma is in her glory...

                After church we drove out to Walt Whitman’s birth house in Huntington after I explained who Walt was.  One of the greatest lessons for many of us was the movie, Dead Poet’s Society…that will trigger more of their imaginations. Maybe they’re too young?  All of my children are history buffs which was passed to them by my father-in-law.  Once I said the house is a national landmark and a little more about the man, they hurried and got their jackets on and we were back out on the road.  I can’t say I have budding poets, but Joe is busy downstairs working on a play he is writing for the Theater Three One Act contest.  After walking through the rooms at Whitman’s house with another couple who joined us, and after our small group stood in the small bedroom where immortal Walt was born, and then going up steep stairs and checking the height of the snow outside the windows, kitchen, pots, tables and candles all homemade since there were no factories to make clothes or food, we walked in the winter air in single file through a narrow path the width of a shovel which cut through the snow…

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Richard Hell Doesn't Like Punk?

3/16/13 10:18 Home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyqmt8G5BiI

Richard Hell autobiography has been published, I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp which is on Harper Collins.  He was in Huntington's Book Revue for a signing.  Arriving about twenty minutes early last night I was dismayed by sparse audience.  There may have been six of us.  The others were older than me, discussing their children in their twenties, divorces and lives they’re living outside of the book store.  One man had a Long Island Duck’s jacket and brought an album to get signed.  You like punk?  Maybe you need a little background of the man?  Richard Hell was a staple in the New York punk scene in the late seventies to the early eighties.  He has the reputation of being the person to influence the punk fashion style of the Sex Pistols.  He was in Television, The Heartbreakers (Not Tom Petty’s band) and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.  His story is different, running away from private school in Delaware, getting arrested in Alabama after setting fire to a field (because he wanted to see it burn) and eventually arriving into New York where he wanted to make a name for himself as a poet.  The fact he is alive is a miracle since the book will depict his struggles with drugs and eventual retirement from music back in 1984.  I am not familiar with his music as I should be, so I checked YouTube and watched the Blank Generation.  I will see if I can link it to this entry.  If not, do yourself a favor, it’s a good clip and has excellent audio and visual that was shot at CBGB’s.  Hell is the man who helped build the stage at CB’s and made an appeal to the owner of the venue to recruit other bands to play there like Patti Smith and her band, as well as Blondie and Talking Heads.  So I wanted to hear him read and describe the book in some detail.  I was disappointed.  Hell was late for the signing, close to twenty minutes, “They picked me up late.”  By the time he arrived there was a decent showing, around thirty bodies of various ages and identities.  But he seemed less prepared than what I would expect for a reading.  For most readings and/or signings, the writer will share some stories of the book and make the reader want to read it.  It only makes sense.   They may actually read from the book, but did not. So when Hell was introduced and walked up to the microphone he seemed nervous and awkward.  His voice was sort of muffled maybe the influence of the southern drawl he may had.  He said, “I should describe the book, but I’ve never done that.”  Instead he referred to a recent interview.  The journalist did not want to ask him the typical question.  Richard thought this was different - the reporter cared what questions he was asking.  “Why did you write the book now?  It came time to write another book.  I regard myself as a novelist, I’ve been out of music for thirty years and I wanted to be a professional writer.  Finish one book and start the next.  It’s truly my vocation.  For fiction, I’m not very good at the plot.  I need a strategy.  For instance my first novel is a road novel.  The characters travel across the country.  It has momentum.  I didn’t have to conjure up a story.   My second novel, Godlike is based on a pre-existing story in history.  A couple of poet s from the 19^th century, so I took advantage of their interesting story and set them in New York City in the seventies.  I never thought I’d do an autobiography.  It’s easier to write fiction.  With fiction, you don’t have the constraint of describing things, following something that actually happened….when you hit your forties you assess who you are and what you’ve been through and get a handle on it.  I could work through that problem or question by writing about it.  My purpose is to write a good book.  The point is to write well.  It’s almost incidental what the story is.  Richard said his writing style is clear and concise.  Hell is also a voracious reader, has an extensive poetry collection which is described and referenced some of his favorites writers like Raymond Chandler and an obscure British writer (hope to get the name) as well as William S. Bourrough’s later novels (not the cut and paste works)…the audience was allotted a few minutes for a Q&A and had some good questions.  I was curious if he wrote his autobiography after reading Patti Smith’s very popular book, Just Kids.  A woman asked this.  He said he was afraid of the comparison, but her book was a memoir.   A memoir can be a book about having a disease like cancer or having a relationship, like Patti and Robert’s love.   What was surprising was Richard’s taste for music.  “I don’t listen to punk music.  I’d listen to rockabilly or something else for entertainment.”  He discussed how long it took for punk to gain popularity, more than twenty years.  He did not see any royalty checks till years after his albums were released and what was a shocker, The Ramones who are a legend today did not have the status back then, they toured constantly and were frowned upon back then.  After waiting a few minutes to get my book signed - the line was fairly short, I got up to the table and took my picture as he signed my book and CD.  I asked him, “Why did you quit music?”  He glanced away from the book and looked up and said, “You have to read the book.”  I’m curious what he has to write about Johnny Thunders who was influenced so many, played in the NY Dolls as well as The Heartbreakers.   Another guitarist, Robert Quine who I met before a Lou Reed concert at Stony Brook back in the late eighties.  I was told Quine was a legend and I remember how he was down to earth, a gentleman who was short and bald with dark glasses and smiled from embarrassment when I was told he was a legend.  Both men are dead, but were important friends in Richard’s life and have most of the space within the book…

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When 30 inches of snow strikes Long Island we discover we are human after all

Yesterday, I dug out of the ton of snow.  We have a chicken in our neighborhood and I found it on top of one of the stone white lions that sit on the sides of our front steps.  It nervously looked at me before flying off into the tree, well aware it couldn’t escape by running away.   The night before the kids asked me if I could get it and bring it inside.  “It will rip your eyes out if it had the chance.”  This is no ordinary chicken; this was a street wise punk who picks up scraps when the opportunity strikes.  He struts like he owns the block.  He may be tough but he is a survivor living through this storm as well as Sandy.   The estimate is 30 inches of snow fell in our area.  It was the hardest hit on Long Island.  There was the stifled silence which I felt when I sneaked under the snow laden limb to toss bird seed onto the snow.  Yes, I feed the birds. The silence reminded me of building a snow fort when I was 9, eating my dinner inside the hollow chamber with a flickering candle.  I was separated from the outside world, it was warm in that fort, my brother or sisters could not penetrate the thick walls; until the sun melted away the privacy and space into the spring soil.  This weekend has been a change.  On Thursday night I picked Amanda up at JFK, we stopped in Huntington and ate a late dinner at Mundey’s and picked up a book at Book Revue.  We made it home by 9ish.  Bella wrote a Welcome Home sign for her.  Friday morning the storm was coming.  Even in the snow we prepared and dropped off the kids at their schools.  I worked from home since the predictions called for more than two feet in the area.  The kids were let out from school early.  Joe’s performance at the high school, Sound of Music was called off on Friday and Saturday.  The snow and winds came.  I spent hours shoveling out a path to the driveway and then the whole driveway and then the cars.  The show was piled to the top of the trunk.  Eventually my muscles waved white flags, cease and desist.  I thought of my parents on Bellecrest Avenue and felt relieved to know my Brother-In-Law was there to shovel them out. I heard of cars abandoned on the expressway and Route 83 and 347.  People were stranded in their cars.  For the first time in the twelve years we have lived on this block, our road was not plowed.  Even now a full twenty four hours after the snow and thunder, the road is still treacherous.  No church this morning.  The cable and phone and internet are out.  The cord snapped off the pole.  I pulled the thick plastic cord off the road and wrapped it around a fence post.  We are left to DVD’s and games and talking to each other.  It’s a weekend you’d imagine you’d like.  As the years passed - we have been busy with distractions and events.  I felt that emotional tug; I’d like a day when I had nothing to do.  There is hardly a day for that - nothing to do - especially when you’re home.  I found myself organizing the file cabinet, finding old bills and old pictures.   I may bring them in since I told Beth there was a picture of me and Shane from The Pogues…it’s Sunday…and there is nothing to do or so I thought till I wanted to jot down some thoughts.  

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