CUNY Rising: Rally to Fund CUNY! at NYS Senate Hearing #FullyFundCUNY #CUNYRising

Norasays:

"Full day started with a reminder from #CUNY students about how underfunding impacts them. Too much food insecurity/ housing insecurity on our campuses and politicians need to step up. Biked back to #citytech to find people studying for midterms on the floor because we don’t have space in our library for them to sit down. #fundcuny #publiceducationmatters"

Yesterday, I got an invitation  for an action by CUNY Rising:

“Join the CUNY Rising Alliance for a rally in advance of a hearing of the NYS Senate's Standing Committee on Higher Education. The Senators should not be able to come to a CUNY campus without hearing loudly and clearly from us that they need to FUND CUNY! Spread the word!
Thursday October 24th
Rally at 10 am in advance of hearing at 11:30 am
Bedford Avenue Gate, Brooklyn College CUNY.”

A glorious fall day, I took in the beautiful trees and murals, changing leaves and scenes along  Bedford Avenue on  the way to the college, where so many luminaries have found a home. 

The City Tech student president was speaking when I arrived, lamenting the  food security on the campus.

If education is your priority, why am I paying more and getting less, lamented another student leader?

New York can support higher education.

We can move in the right direction.

Congrats on  a new contract, noted one organizer, speaking about the MOA just announced by the Professional  Staff Congress, to be voted on on November 7^th.

Most  love it.

Others worry it did not get enough,

As if we could have gotten more.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good I thought to myself,  riding home.

Don’t take defeat from  the jaws  of  victory.

Lets be flexible.
Take this win.

Move forward.

And keep on organizing.

Others  passed out flyers about the higher education hearing:

“@tobystavisky, hundreds of thousands of student constituents expect the  chair of the higher  education  committee to  be  bold in  the  fight to #FullyFundCUNY.

We’re  tired of  years of neglect and  demand higher education to  be  championed in the  coming  fiscal year #CUNYRising.”

Immigrant Songs and Other Adventures at Honk! #honknyc #honklife #supportlivemusic

 #HONK GETS BETTER AND BETTER. FOR ONE WEEK A YEAR NYC IS NOLA! — at Brooklyn, New York.

I smiled on the beach reading the last page of The Master and Margarita.

That feels like a long time ago.

Sweet July, the hot sun and smell of the water.   

But the seasons pass.

School starts.

Fall descends.

“Then the moon goes mad, deluges Ivan with streams of light, sprays light everywhere, a moonlight flood invades the room, the light sways, rises, drowns the bed.  It is then that Ivan sleeps with a look of happiness on his face,” Mikhail Bulgakov writes as the saga of The Master and Margarita comes to an end.

My week was anything but like this.

The savage city hit me from all angles.

The sun shone as I rode down  Myrtle to the first night of the Honk festival,

At the Market Hotel.

Murals and music everywhere.  

For one week a year, NYC feels like NOLA.

Bands are everywhere.

We drink together.

Hang out.

Try to catch them in the street.

Make friends.

Gossip with

Fanfarra Feminina Sagrada Profana from Belo Horizonte, Brasil

L Train Marching Band.

Seed & Feel Marching Abominable

Yana

Elissa

Dancing.

Shaking.

Murmuring.

Gossiping.

Venting. 

Drinking.

Repeat.

Wondering about the labors of work.

"[O]n a daily basis we combat the accretion of disparate obstructions and frustrations,” laments Caroline H. “… the sum of which threatens not only our ability to do our jobs at the level we'd like, but more broadly, higher public education. we attempt solutions, only to be borne back ceaselessly."

Barbes on Thursday with Barbara

And Yana

And Jamie

Chatting with

Fanfarra Feminina Sagrada Profana from Belo Horizonte, Brasil
Dawn Drake & ZapOte Batucada
Dingonek Street Band
underground horns

You can all stay at my house forever,

I tell one of the Fanfarra Feminina

Inside a round of tubas and drums,

A wall of horns unleash the

Immigrant Song,

A  crescendo of sound hits in waves.

Thundering tubas scream:

“Ah-ah, ah!
Ah-ah, ah!

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow
The hammer of the gods
W'ell drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, and sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming!”

Dancing and roaring through the old club

Riding into the night.

Whisky on my breath.

Meandering through the week.

To DC and Back on  Friday.

Saturday.

To  the farmers market in Park Slope.

Greeting the fish mongers.

Our to the East Village.

Where are the bands.

They played in Washington Square,

Not Tompkins.

Adventures.

And Gumbo.

Can the roux really look like pecans?

Mixing flower and butter.

Stirring.

Adding oil.

Onions

Peppers

Garlic

Crab

Bass

Flounder

Monk Fish

Sea stock

Red, white, black pepper.

Into an alchemy of flavor.

Out into the streets

For one more night  of Honk at Rubalad.

Dancing with Yana.

Lights colors feelings.

The city careening in front of my eyes.

For one more moment. 

Goodbye Honk.

It was great to know you.

Driving up to Poughkeepsie in the rain.

Thinking about the immigrant songs of the week.

Listening to Woody Guthrie’ s Deportee

“The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

I guess that’s all we’re doing,

Sending em back.

Losing a bit of ourselves along the way.

Chaos in Washington.

Kids locked up on the border.

We’re all a little unsettled.

Watching the leaves of the fall.

Wondering about what I did wrong.

What happened.

Conversation for hours. 

About Harold Bloom.

Anxieties of  influence reminding.  

Lost brothers and friends.

And poetry that tears and digs

And snubs and shuns

And reminds.

Walking through the Poughkeepsie night.

Listening to the crickets.

Chatting and crooning,

“The Bottle Let Me Down,” laments Merle Haggard.

“Each night I leave the bar room when it's over
Not feeling any pain at closing time
But tonight your memory found me much too sober
Couldn't drink enough to keep you off my mind

Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down”

Quietly the day began as I made my way back to NYC to see the kids off,

A day not unlike the final lines of Bulgakov’s masterpiece.

“The next morning he wakes up silent, but completely calm and well. His ravaged memory quiets down, and no one will trouble the professor until the next full moon: neither the noseless murderer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.”

p.382-3