All
week long, I read about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and
Edith Wharton, friends corresponding
through the years, sharing ideas and letters through days of innocence, war,
connection, separation, estrangement, jealousy, reconnection, volunteering
together, and ultimately saying goodbye.
“That’s
your favorite topic,” said the teenager to me on the way to ERA rally at Washington
Square Park.
“I
love all the Suffragette fashion,” she followed, looking at the Rise and Resist
sashes.
A
year ago, we traveled to South Carolina for a roller derby tournament.
Soon
after the season was suspended.
Future
indoor performances for her band were canceled.
And
school went online.
A
year later, we’re still online.
But
spring is coming, at least it feels like it.
I
have two vaccination shots in my arm, although many do not.
It was a full week of it.
On
Thursday, Kevin and I sat in the cold at the Brazen Head on Atlantic Ave, reading
Frost:
My
biking ethnographer of the city, Kevin recalls his “Dust of Snow” from memory:
“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”
Listening, I find myself thinking of the Lone Stryker…
Dad’s favorite Poem, he read it to me seven years
ago, before he departed, almost as if leaving clues:
“He knew another place, a wood, And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs; And if he stood on one of these, ‘Twould be among the tops of trees, Their upper branches round him wreath.”
We’ve all known another places, other times, but we
are in this one.
Sitting with the teenager in Washington Square Park, I
think about Henry James, who wrote about life’s limits in Washington Square:
“he smoked a good many cigars over
his disappointment, and in the
fulness of time he got used to it.”
We’re tried not to get used to it.
But it has not been simple – a year of a pandemic,
still dominating our lives.
I ask friends how they’ve coped.
Some days the mood grasps hard, they say.
Some days better than other.
Some wonderful friends have been there.
Others have disappeared.
Moods have pulled at all of us.
All week, they are with me, through work and the
meeting with friendships, spring teasing, winter chills returning, hopes and
joys in the bright sun, walking the streets of Brooklyn, from Crown Heights,
where they are fighting developers, to Barbes, where we talk about the press
conference earlier in the day and the report in the paper.
“CONTROVERSIAL GARDEN-ADJACENT
TOWERS STALLED AGAIN BY LAWSUIT
A lawsuit has temporarily stalled the land use
process for a controversial development that potentially threatens the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden.”
Alicia says “#novirtualulurp #nodevelopergiveaways.”
@voiceofgowanus stands with you.”
The pandemic cannot be a green light
for developers.
My second vaccination making its way through me.
Friday, I work and walk.
Caroline and I chat all night, thinking about friends
and pandemics and kids growing.
Up up up and up… into their lives, precarious and
free, hopefully finding a better world.
We’re trying to make that for them.
Saturday, my friends in the Union call for:
BROOKLYN DEMANDS
A NEW DEAL FOR CUNY
RALLY @ BARCLAYS
CENTER; MARCH TO NYC TECH
SATURDAY, MARCH
6, 1PM
There are so many reasons for a #newdeal4cuny:
For
upward mobility, for education, for workforce development,
For
our city, for the people’s university...
The PSC is a
proud member of the CUNY Rising Alliance,
a coalition of community, alumni labor and student organizations fighting for
free, high-quality CUNY education.
CUNY Rising is racking up co-sponsors
for the New Deal for CUNY legislation in both the NYS Senate and the Assembly.
But we need more legislators signed on—and we need them speaking up for CUNY
now during the final weeks of the State budget process…
Please send this letter to your legislators right now
and urge them to cosponsor the #NewDeal4CUNY and to pass a budget with no cuts
and increased funding for CUNY.
That afternoon, we march from Barclay’s
Center to CityTech, chanting:
Tax the Rich, not the
poor, stop the war on CUNY!!!! #newdeal4cuny
James is passing out flyers:
“Investment in CUNY can’t wait. CUNY is
essential for a just recovery from the COVID Crisis.”
Sunday, the teenager and I stroll through Washington Square.
There we:
“Join
Rise and Resist as we march to recognize International Women's Day, honor women
leaders, and demand the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) FINALLY be added to the
U.S. Constitution.
In
solidarity with this year's theme for International Women's Day, we celebrate
women's leadership. Women were on the front lines in the pandemic, and we
suffered the greatest losses, especially job losses. The Equal Rights Amendment,
first introduced in 1923, has been ratified by the necessary 38 states and
should come up in the Senate during the Biden Administration. The ERA would
help guarantee our rights to equal pay, equal access to work, reproductive
freedom, child care, health care, LGBTQ rights, freedom from sexual violence,
and more.
The
amendment says, simply, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
That’s
it. And though other laws, both state and federal, do forbid discrimination,
women’s rights are constantly chipped away by courts and legislators. Without a
Constitutional ERA, a judge may—and many do—interpret federal or state law
through their own values and biases around gender and sexuality.”
“A woman needs a man like a fish needs bicycle. Pass the ERA!!!”
says Brian.
I can’t believe it
still hasn’t passed, I think.
Breaks my heart.
Out we stroll through
the Village after the march, meandering through the streets to Generation
records with a few friends.
Monica’s play is later
that night.
A note about the
upcoming performance with Al
Límite:
In honor of Women’s Month, we’re
uplifting our current femme-led ensemble for Quiet Us/ Riot Us. Check us out!
And please donate if you can to support our work: Venmo @QuietUsRiotUs We open
this Saturday and run for only four days Sat- Tues.
Quiet Us/Riot Us is an illuminated
ritual on collective grief and mourning performed in the streets and rooftops
in Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Sat. 3/6 @ 6pm in Williamsburg at
Bedford Ave & South 6th St.
Sun. 3/7 @ 6pm in Crown Heights at Park
Pl. (btwn. Bedford & Rogers Ave.)
Mon. 3/8 @ 7pm in Bed-Stuy at Marion
Hopkinson Playground
(btwn. Rockaway Ave. and Thomas Boyland
St.)
Tues. 3/9 @ 6pm in Williamsburg at
Bedford Ave & South 6
After the show, Vanessa and I talk about
that whole living theater we are a part of, the bike rides with Julian and Judith,
connecting all of our streets and lives and performances, between this world
and the next. between this experience and the next.
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