So I haven't posted a blog in almost two months. Does that make me a bad blogger? Perhaps.
I've been busy...vacation in Canada, sleep-depriving Olympics-watching addiction, unhealthy Democratic National Convention watching, swamped at work, etc., etc. Sure, there was plenty to blog about. Hell, rarely a day went by where I didn't think that X or Y would be good blog fodder, but then I'd find myself waking up the next morning, postless.
But it is time to move on. Last week marked the one year anniversary of this blog, and damn if I don't feel a year older for it.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Dinner at our house
Cathleen cooks up a savory dish of sauteed organic vegetables (from our Community Supported Agriculture share) over pasta. After a few bites, Eliza starts placing her pasta into her glass of chocolate milk. Cathleen and I glance at each other and silently shrug. Eliza then picks up her glass and drinks the milk.
Moments later, Max starts talking.
Max: This winter I am going to find two snowflakes that are exactly alike.
Cathleen: You know, Max, that there are no two snowflakes that are exactly alike, just like humans.
Max(without even looking up): You'll see.
Moments later, Max starts talking.
Max: This winter I am going to find two snowflakes that are exactly alike.
Cathleen: You know, Max, that there are no two snowflakes that are exactly alike, just like humans.
Max(without even looking up): You'll see.
Still here
Wow, it has been 19 days since I last posted. I'm finding it more difficult to find the time to wax poetic in this forum. I typically post at night, and lately I've been consumed with watching baseball, playing ultimate, and going to sleep, all of which seem to preclude a certain amount of blogability.
Not that I've been without thoughts and experiences. July has been a busy month, with highs and lows.
I flew out to L.A. by my lonesome on July 6th to attend Sameer and Shruti's wedding. It was a marvelous happening at a semi-exotic locale. It was a traditional Indian (Gujarati) wedding, or at least as traditional as I could tell, which made it a fascinating cultural experience for me, on top of the fact that I was so damn happy to watch Sameer get married. I felt a little bit of the outsider all weekend, given that I was "the high school friend" who did not fit neatly into any of the larger groups of friends, but Sameer, not surprisingly, has surrounded himself with warm, sincere and interesting people, and they welcomed me into their fold with open arms. Very good time for me, though I missed Cathleen and the kids. This past weekend Cathleen and I attended a larger Connecticut reception hosted by Sameer's parents. Mike also attended and we were most interested in hanging out with each other (something that we don't get to do too often anymore, certainly not as adults).
I then had to return to my office to fully confront the reality that Bloomberg and the City Council, in what can only be described as an odious and cowardly move, completely gutted HIV Legal Services funding as part of an approximately $70 million wack at human services programs. Sure, they managed to find a way to keep the middle class property tax rebate in the budget (thank goodness I'll still get my $400!) but they abandoned the City's most vulnerable residents. My program took a $111,000 hit -- I'm not only at risk of having to lay off two-three employees, but unless I find alternate funding we are going to be without funding to provide housing legal services (eviction prevention work), which just happens to be the most important issue our clients face. Needless to say, I was pretty depressed for a few days, but adversity kind of gets my juices flowing and I'm resolved to find alternate funding. Game on. We already completed a grant application that I feel pretty good about it, and we're pursuing a couple of other avenues.
SLIPPING has been garnering great reviews. We don't know yet how well it has bee selling, but there's an incredibly positive vibe about the book lingering in the air. Maybe that's a bit naive, but Cathleen has been receiving such overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback that I feel confident in saying that some identifiable level of "success" has been achieved. So far two otherwise-unconnected young readers have emailed her after having read the book to express how much they enjoyed it. Fanmail! How cool!
Finally, for reasons I need not get into here, I was recently forced to confront my father's death in a way I had not had to do in years. And you know what? Twenty-three years later and his death is still painful for me. As difficult as it was to be taken back to that time and encounter those feelings of loss and grief, it was strangely reassuring, like I hadn't lost my connection with him after all of these years. In a choice between feeling something or nothing, I'll always take the something.
Not that I've been without thoughts and experiences. July has been a busy month, with highs and lows.
I flew out to L.A. by my lonesome on July 6th to attend Sameer and Shruti's wedding. It was a marvelous happening at a semi-exotic locale. It was a traditional Indian (Gujarati) wedding, or at least as traditional as I could tell, which made it a fascinating cultural experience for me, on top of the fact that I was so damn happy to watch Sameer get married. I felt a little bit of the outsider all weekend, given that I was "the high school friend" who did not fit neatly into any of the larger groups of friends, but Sameer, not surprisingly, has surrounded himself with warm, sincere and interesting people, and they welcomed me into their fold with open arms. Very good time for me, though I missed Cathleen and the kids. This past weekend Cathleen and I attended a larger Connecticut reception hosted by Sameer's parents. Mike also attended and we were most interested in hanging out with each other (something that we don't get to do too often anymore, certainly not as adults).
I then had to return to my office to fully confront the reality that Bloomberg and the City Council, in what can only be described as an odious and cowardly move, completely gutted HIV Legal Services funding as part of an approximately $70 million wack at human services programs. Sure, they managed to find a way to keep the middle class property tax rebate in the budget (thank goodness I'll still get my $400!) but they abandoned the City's most vulnerable residents. My program took a $111,000 hit -- I'm not only at risk of having to lay off two-three employees, but unless I find alternate funding we are going to be without funding to provide housing legal services (eviction prevention work), which just happens to be the most important issue our clients face. Needless to say, I was pretty depressed for a few days, but adversity kind of gets my juices flowing and I'm resolved to find alternate funding. Game on. We already completed a grant application that I feel pretty good about it, and we're pursuing a couple of other avenues.
SLIPPING has been garnering great reviews. We don't know yet how well it has bee selling, but there's an incredibly positive vibe about the book lingering in the air. Maybe that's a bit naive, but Cathleen has been receiving such overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback that I feel confident in saying that some identifiable level of "success" has been achieved. So far two otherwise-unconnected young readers have emailed her after having read the book to express how much they enjoyed it. Fanmail! How cool!
Finally, for reasons I need not get into here, I was recently forced to confront my father's death in a way I had not had to do in years. And you know what? Twenty-three years later and his death is still painful for me. As difficult as it was to be taken back to that time and encounter those feelings of loss and grief, it was strangely reassuring, like I hadn't lost my connection with him after all of these years. In a choice between feeling something or nothing, I'll always take the something.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Slipmania
It's here. And there. And somewhat everywhere. SLIPPING is out. June 24th was the official release date, which mainly meant that amazon.com shipped out it's pre-orders. Our pre-ordered copy arrived the next day. Yes, I said our pre-ordered copy. Cathleen's contract with Bloomsbury guaranteed her 25 author's copies, but she was so excited at seeing the book listed on amazon a few months ago that she ordered one.
A day or two later Lorri emailed around photos of Ari standing in a western New York Barnes & Noble pointing to copies of SLIPPING on the bookshelf, and holding it in the store. Very cool stuff.
Around mid-week, Cathleen's editor forwarded to her a PDF from Publisher's Weekly with their forthcoming review. SLIPPING received a "Signature" review, and it was fairly glowing. Here's a clip from a New York Sun article in 2005 explaining the significance of such a review:
PW reviews are important because they can jump-start the publicity for a book or can, just as easily, push a book a lot closer to oblivion. PW claims that its policy of unsigned reviewing is done not to shield reviewers but to ensure a consistency of standard and tone.
The magazine's new editor, Sara Nelson, who is making major changes in the publication, said, "We hope to have a signature review in many issues. We want to match up a fairly prominent book with a fairly prominent reviewer. Frank McCourt is, of course, a very prominent reviewer. We will still have non-bylined reviews. But certain books just seem to scream out for special treatment."
So, you know, it was pretty exciting to see that review. It was published in the June 30th edition of Publisher's Weekly.
Last night we hosted a book release party at Pacific Standard, a great little pub around the corner from our home. We had platters of food from Fairway, I had ordered custom-made M&Ms in two different shades of blue that had "Slipping" printed on them, and there was an employee of a local bookstore, Book Court, hawking copies of the book. Approximately 30 friends and family showed up to celebrate with Cathleen and listen to her read from the book, but she had laryngitis! Are you kidding! Thanks to drastic measures, she had enough of her voice to socialize, but I had to step in as her reader proxy. On one level it was disappointing for her to not be able to read to this crowd; on the other hand she really enjoyed listening to her book being read out loud. And I had a lot of fun reading it. Woohoo, we were all having fun!
We still haven't seen it in a bookstore ourselves. Maybe we'll do that this weekend. It's pretty good times right now.
A day or two later Lorri emailed around photos of Ari standing in a western New York Barnes & Noble pointing to copies of SLIPPING on the bookshelf, and holding it in the store. Very cool stuff.
Around mid-week, Cathleen's editor forwarded to her a PDF from Publisher's Weekly with their forthcoming review. SLIPPING received a "Signature" review, and it was fairly glowing. Here's a clip from a New York Sun article in 2005 explaining the significance of such a review:
PW reviews are important because they can jump-start the publicity for a book or can, just as easily, push a book a lot closer to oblivion. PW claims that its policy of unsigned reviewing is done not to shield reviewers but to ensure a consistency of standard and tone.
The magazine's new editor, Sara Nelson, who is making major changes in the publication, said, "We hope to have a signature review in many issues. We want to match up a fairly prominent book with a fairly prominent reviewer. Frank McCourt is, of course, a very prominent reviewer. We will still have non-bylined reviews. But certain books just seem to scream out for special treatment."
So, you know, it was pretty exciting to see that review. It was published in the June 30th edition of Publisher's Weekly.
Last night we hosted a book release party at Pacific Standard, a great little pub around the corner from our home. We had platters of food from Fairway, I had ordered custom-made M&Ms in two different shades of blue that had "Slipping" printed on them, and there was an employee of a local bookstore, Book Court, hawking copies of the book. Approximately 30 friends and family showed up to celebrate with Cathleen and listen to her read from the book, but she had laryngitis! Are you kidding! Thanks to drastic measures, she had enough of her voice to socialize, but I had to step in as her reader proxy. On one level it was disappointing for her to not be able to read to this crowd; on the other hand she really enjoyed listening to her book being read out loud. And I had a lot of fun reading it. Woohoo, we were all having fun!
We still haven't seen it in a bookstore ourselves. Maybe we'll do that this weekend. It's pretty good times right now.
Friday, June 27, 2008
I am fuel, you are friends, we got the means to make amends
Hey look at me, titling consecutive blog entries with song lyrics. And hey, look at me, writing consecutive blog entries about Sameer.
He and I went to the Pearl Jam concert in the Garden on Tuesday night. Eddie Vedder has to be the most essentially cool person in the world. Could not take my eyes off of him, no matter what was going on in the concert. The band played for three and a half hours, and it was sensational. I was particularly psyched that they played "Leash" and "Given to Fly"; was kind of hoping to hear "World Wide Suicide" and "Jeremy" but didn't. The concert featured a healthy mix of old, new and everything in between. There are few experiences that approximate the energy of 20,000 people singing along in unison to a completely electrified band. It was so loud that I would not have been able to tell if I was singing along or not had my throat not been hurting from the effort.
Delight, delight, delight in our youth...
He and I went to the Pearl Jam concert in the Garden on Tuesday night. Eddie Vedder has to be the most essentially cool person in the world. Could not take my eyes off of him, no matter what was going on in the concert. The band played for three and a half hours, and it was sensational. I was particularly psyched that they played "Leash" and "Given to Fly"; was kind of hoping to hear "World Wide Suicide" and "Jeremy" but didn't. The concert featured a healthy mix of old, new and everything in between. There are few experiences that approximate the energy of 20,000 people singing along in unison to a completely electrified band. It was so loud that I would not have been able to tell if I was singing along or not had my throat not been hurting from the effort.
Delight, delight, delight in our youth...
All summer long, we sang a song
Sameer Ashar and I have been friends since the 8th grade. At the end of the 8th grade, some high school kids came to our middle school to recruit folks for the debate team. Sameer and I attended that meeting, listened to their nerdy pitch, and decided we would be debate partners the next year. We spent the next four years of high school developing a debate partnership that turned us into a nationally competitive team (arguably a top 10 or 12 team in the country)(arguably...get it?), while cultivating a deep, deep friendship. Since high school it has seemed, with some exception, like we've never been farther than 20 minutes apart from each other: we went to colleges 20 minutes apart from each other, law schools 20 minutes apart from each other, we worked for a while in downtown Manhattan near each other, and now we live about ten blocks from each other in Brooklyn. He is terrible at returning phone calls, is almost guaranteed to be late to any appointment, is a frickin Yankees fan, and is one of the very best people I know in the world. And, finally, that boy is getting married.
Last Saturday I gathered with four other of Sameer's friends (Ajit, Deepu, Tito and George) to engage in that right of passage called "the bachelor party." We drove up to Cornwall-on-Hudson and kayaked on the Hudson River. It was a gloriously sunny day, and I could not have imagined doing anything better than kayaking on that expanse of river (and off through a marshy tributary). When we finished the kayak trip, I had to teach Tito how to use his keys to get into his car, and then we dined on pizza and ice cream at a local joint. We drove back to Brooklyn, dined at a trendy but middling Mexican restaurant in Red Hook called Alma, and then headed to a karaoke bar.
I've never done karaoke. Honest. It's not just that I've never sung karaoke; I've never actually been to a karaoke gathering of any sort. The bar that we went to (the Hope 'n Anchor in Red Hook) had the kind of karaoke where it is basically open mike at the bar. You would peruse a book that listed the 15,000 different songs that you could sing, and then submit a post-it with your song on it to the 7-foot trans woman who was hosting the karaoke. Really, she had to be 7 feet tall, and she wore a glorious blonde afro wig. Sameer led off for us with Pearl Jam's "Elderly Woman behind the counter..." and then it was game on. Deepu, Ajit and Tito sang a range of pop hits (Sweet Home Alabama, I'm Just a Gigolo, etc.). Sameer and Ajit performed a duet to The Killers' "All These things that I've Become" ("I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier..."). The pressure on me to sing was mounting.
I don't know what other karaoke scenes are like, but with the exception of our little crew, this seemed like a fairly serious karaoke scene. Every member of the bar's staff, including our 7-foot hostess, would take turns singing a song and they were all amazing. There was another woman in the bar who simply had a professional-sounding voice. When she belted out "Me and Bobby McGee," you almost believed that Janis Joplin had been resurrected. I was intimidated, yes.
But a couple of whiskeys in me, and singing became an inevitability. I searched for a short song, and came up with Sinatra's "Summer Wind." I started in a bit late on the song but ended admirably -- heck, a drunk couple even got up and danced while I sang. When it was over, sure, I felt like a man. A man, that is, that doesn't need to sing any more songs in a bar for quite some time.
Sameer's wedding is in L.A. in a little over a week, and I'm looking forward to partying with those crazy boys again.
Last Saturday I gathered with four other of Sameer's friends (Ajit, Deepu, Tito and George) to engage in that right of passage called "the bachelor party." We drove up to Cornwall-on-Hudson and kayaked on the Hudson River. It was a gloriously sunny day, and I could not have imagined doing anything better than kayaking on that expanse of river (and off through a marshy tributary). When we finished the kayak trip, I had to teach Tito how to use his keys to get into his car, and then we dined on pizza and ice cream at a local joint. We drove back to Brooklyn, dined at a trendy but middling Mexican restaurant in Red Hook called Alma, and then headed to a karaoke bar.
I've never done karaoke. Honest. It's not just that I've never sung karaoke; I've never actually been to a karaoke gathering of any sort. The bar that we went to (the Hope 'n Anchor in Red Hook) had the kind of karaoke where it is basically open mike at the bar. You would peruse a book that listed the 15,000 different songs that you could sing, and then submit a post-it with your song on it to the 7-foot trans woman who was hosting the karaoke. Really, she had to be 7 feet tall, and she wore a glorious blonde afro wig. Sameer led off for us with Pearl Jam's "Elderly Woman behind the counter..." and then it was game on. Deepu, Ajit and Tito sang a range of pop hits (Sweet Home Alabama, I'm Just a Gigolo, etc.). Sameer and Ajit performed a duet to The Killers' "All These things that I've Become" ("I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier..."). The pressure on me to sing was mounting.
I don't know what other karaoke scenes are like, but with the exception of our little crew, this seemed like a fairly serious karaoke scene. Every member of the bar's staff, including our 7-foot hostess, would take turns singing a song and they were all amazing. There was another woman in the bar who simply had a professional-sounding voice. When she belted out "Me and Bobby McGee," you almost believed that Janis Joplin had been resurrected. I was intimidated, yes.
But a couple of whiskeys in me, and singing became an inevitability. I searched for a short song, and came up with Sinatra's "Summer Wind." I started in a bit late on the song but ended admirably -- heck, a drunk couple even got up and danced while I sang. When it was over, sure, I felt like a man. A man, that is, that doesn't need to sing any more songs in a bar for quite some time.
Sameer's wedding is in L.A. in a little over a week, and I'm looking forward to partying with those crazy boys again.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Hey, drunk lady
One of my dogs is taking a crap.
The other one is barking hysterically at you.
And I'm not making any eye contact, while trying to walk away.
What is it about this set of circumstances that leads you to believe that I want to have a conversation with you about anything, no less your aunt's five dogs?
Thank you, however, for repeatedly telling me that my dogs are beautiful. Not everyone appreciates them, like you do, when one is squatting and the other is yapping his head off.
The other one is barking hysterically at you.
And I'm not making any eye contact, while trying to walk away.
What is it about this set of circumstances that leads you to believe that I want to have a conversation with you about anything, no less your aunt's five dogs?
Thank you, however, for repeatedly telling me that my dogs are beautiful. Not everyone appreciates them, like you do, when one is squatting and the other is yapping his head off.
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