Mad Mama

Sister Corde called earlier in the week hoping we would be able to see her again before we left town. We arranged to rent a car, and we picked her up at the convent. “Do you like Italian?” asked this little full-blooded Italian woman. “Do I LOOK like I like Italian????” I responded. She correctly took that as a Yes. She gave me directions to place she enjoys, Villaggio’s in Whitestone, and off we went. The aroma of the pizzas baking in the brick oven was enough to make me a believer. I had veal marsala with pasta, Sister had ravioli, and Gracie ordered a bianca pizza made with ricotta, fresh mozzarella, andbasil. Of course, I started inhaling the lunch before remembering the photos, but I did get pics of Gracie’s leftover pizza and our desserts. ... read more

We were meeting my cousin Joan and her daughter Jen in Long Island City, so we started out early and headed in that direction. First, the Isamu Noguchi Museum and Sculpture Garden is a block from the river. Noguchi was a sculptor, landscape architect, and theatrical set designer who lived and worked in LIC. He created the Red Cube in the Financial District, and the Sunken Fountain at Chase Plaza, among other public art. The Noguchi Table (1948), with its distinctive yin-yang design, is still in production today. He also designed stage sets for Martha Graham, George Ballanchine, and others. Noguchi opened his museum in LIC in 1985 as the culmination of his commitment to public art, using a 60-foot tree-of-heaven (ailanthus altissima) as a focal point. When the tree started to die, threatening to fall ... read more

Monday. It finally stopped raining sometime overnight, bringing a cool and cloudy morning. Gracie went to meet up with a friend in Brooklyn, while I decided to walk around downtown. I wandered from 23rdStreet and Broadway to Herald Square, walking up and down the streets. One sight I wasn’t prepared for is a Home Depot housed in a historic building near 5th Avenue on 23rd St. I took some pictures. I’m so used to seeing the big blocky suburban stores that this one looked like a Disney version or something. Last week we saw the Met Life building where I used to work. The last job I had in NY was at the Pan Am building, which is built over Grand Central Station and blocks Park Avenue, so from a distance looks like it sits in ... read more

Today Gracie took herself to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, as a die-hard Beatles fan, to Strawberry Fields. I stayed close to the apartment and rested my weary back. Gracie took all the shots you see on today’s blog entry. Captions and explanations are hers. There are a couple of laundromats nearby, so I tossed the clothes into a rolling bag and made my way there. While waiting for the process to finish, I waited outside on a chair and watched the neighborhood characters do their Astoria thang. A few families walked by. Stroller babies either ignored me as if they were my own teenagers, or smiled brightly, secure in the knowledge that they’d get attention—they can always spot a sucker. A large man across the street happily shouted greetings to delivery truck drivers as ... read more

As usual, the subway was our starting point. Upon arriving at the 5th Ave station we found some mosaic art I hadn’t seen before. After walking from the Plaza Hotel end of Central Park, we wound up at 42nd Street and the NY Public Library. I showed Gracie the location of my very first real job, across 5th on 39thSt, where there was a 3-floor Woolworth’s that had seven different food counters, from pizza slices to full meals. I started working there a few days after I turned 16 in 1965, once I got my “working papers” out in Flushing somewhere, which was my introduction to NYC bureaucratic systems. My sister took a job at the same Woolworth’s the following year when she turned 16. We worked all of the food counters at one time or ... read more