monday morning cooking club

Okay, I admit it, I putz on the web and occasionally look at the websites of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. When I workout at the gym, I play Keith's music. When I fantasize about womanhood, I fantasize about Nicole Kidman. So I checked out (for the first time) her blog and went to this link, that, in light of upcoming Passover and the coolness of their website, I am recommending, if you like to cook, like to cook Jewish dishes and/or are just a woman who wants ideas for meals--look at http://www.mondaymorningcookingclub.com.au

pictures and people

Two photos:

First, a still by Cezanne. Second, on the steps of the Metropolitan museum of art, five days ago. You can't hear (or see) the saxophone player just right outside the "steps" picture, but he was playing Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and drawing a crowd of listeners, a few dancers, and the obligatory hot dog vendor was bouncing to the beat.

The Cezanne was just one of six large galleries of Impressionist paintings, before we got to the Stein Collection which did not allow photos.

More photos will be posted soon!

spring time in New York

I don't have photos to post yet but you will see that we so lucked out (in many ways) with our NYC/NJ trip: "it is as warm as May", I heard one local say yesterday as we took a ferry to Ellis Island. Joggers are bare chested, toddlers resist putting on a jacket as their nannies try to tug them into obedience, dogs frolick at the harbor park and sunshine glitters on the Hudson.

We have just today to have more adventures...and we will. Last week, we ventured into the City, via the train on the NJ side, and "got lucky" by scoring late afternoon tour tickets to the 9/11 Memorial. Last night, my son met up with a friend and did Manhattan, Times Square and Hell's Kitchen, coming back at 2 a.m. full of NYC lightheadedness. My husband went on his own (with a bit more frustration, I think) to see his cousin who lives by Central Park and he stayed over rather than repeat a very late night of trying to get the right subway to train.

As for me, I requested and enjoyed a solitary evening in my cousin's apartment, gazing at the NY skyline and lights, finding mars in the sky, reading and writing. This is not a lifestyle I could take on for everyday but it's one that, I think, gives a deeper meaning to the 99% vs. 1% current economic divide. We are "visiting" the world of the 1% and returning to our real 99% life tomorrow.

More on the trip and reentry next week, if not before.

Spring Poem etc.

Well, after two writing sessions at the wonderful Tucson Book Festival, I am reinspired to play with my blogs, recommit to writing and "learn something new everyday." Yesterday, at the Festival, I followed a commitment to myself that I made after visiting the Musicial Instrument Museum in Phoenix last week: I bought a pinwhistle and retaught myself sight reading of music well enough to play a duet (Irish tune, of course) with one of the folk music volunteers. That was really fun. What's something new you learned today, or this week?

And...

Here's a poem about Spring I really like:

A Cold Rain the Day Before Spring

by Stuart Kestenbaum

From heaven it falls on the gray pitted ice
that has been here since December.
In the gutter rivulets erode piles
of dirt and road salt into small countries
and the morning is so dark, in school

teachers turn on fluorescent lights
and everyone comes in smelling of damp wool.
From heaven it falls, just the opposite
of prayer, which I send up
at the traffic light: please

let me begin over again, one
more time over again, wipe the slate
clean, the same way after school
janitors, keys jangling from
belt loops, will use a wet rag and wipe

the school day off, so there is only
the residue, faint white on the smooth
surface. It's the same way
the infield looks before the game
begins, or the ice on a rink

between periods. All new again
for the moment and glistening.
Imagine each day you get to start
again and again. Again. How many
days does the janitor enter the room

of your soul, wipe it clean
go out into the hallway
and push his broom
down the long corridor, full
of doors to so many rooms.

"A Cold Rain the Day Before Spring" by Stuart Kestenbaum, from Pilgrimage. © Coyote Love Press, 1990. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

turning 63

Well, here I am in all my Springtime glory at the Arizona Inn. Thus began a four day celebration where Mark and I spent half of it in Phoenix. Due to the winds we didn't go to a baseball game but we saw the Musical Instrument Museum, dined with friends, and spent some cash at Ikea. Came home to an TCM showing of "Some Like It Hot" (who can recall anyone hotter than Marilyn in that movie: those dresses by Edith Head that barely covered her coveted body parts), and then, today, brunch with our son at Hacienda Del Sol. I have "lunches with friends" all this week so the party continues. If I could play like this all the time, I would be a jolly soul but, community work also beckons this week so that pays the bills and keeps me humble.