Lemons into lemonade

Today the plan was to take the express bus to the Bronx and meet my friend Marion and have lunch at a favorite spot of hers in Bronxville.  Got there at 7:50 for the 8:15 bus.  A sign said because of the Sikh Festival on Madison Avenue the buses where on Park Avenue.  There were no signs for buses on Park Avenue   I knew, deep inside, from experience, that there would be no bus on Park Avenue.  Did I mention my 16 years of Catholic school and my Irish catholic immigrant parents.  I love them; may they rest in peace;  we did what we were told.  So I waited until 8:45 for a bus that I knew wasn't coming.
So I went to the festival and had a great time.  It is the Sikh tradition, once a year, to feed others, and that's what the festival was: tables of free food.  Lovely, pleasant, happy people sharing what the have.
                                     
                                                        In Madison Square Park
                                                                 

                                                                                         

And lastly this:  a lovingly remembered N.Y. street presence.  It takes me back to all the times my Mom and I would go downtown to buy my school clothes.  We'd walk and walk, maybe have a bite at the automat, but we'd always keep our eye on the "big clock".  So we'd get home in time for dinner.  Not a lot of working class people had wristwatches in the 1940's and early 50's and there were big clocks all around the city.
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History Lesson

Saw "The Conspirator" last night.  Directed by Robert Redford with a great cast:
James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Kevin Klein, Tom Wilkinson and one of my favorites
Colm Meaney.  Colm Meany is the star of two great Stephen Frears movies "The Van" and "The Snapper".
Last night the movie house had about ten people.  I don't know why it's not getting an audience; I enjoyed it.  It's well done and has some suspense.  The scenes of  an imagined 1865 Washington, D.C. were excellent.  Although, I don't know how accurate the scenes of Washington are, nor how accurate the story.  My strongest feeling after viewing the movie was regret and anger at the edited/proscribed American History I was taught.
As I remember it, I had eight years of American History in grade school, and two in High School.  I do not recall hearing, reading or being taught any of what I saw in this movie about the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.   I was taught that John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln; then jumped onto the stage at the Ford Theater injuring his leg.  We were even taught the name of the play.   This movie is about Mary Surratt, who I had never heard about.  According to the movie she ran a boarding house that Wilkes visited.  The film shows that her son conspired with Booth to kidnap Lincoln and when that failed he may have joined in the assassination plot.  The son was acquitted by a jury of his peers, both northerners and southerners.  He didn't have a military trial.  Mary Surratt did and was convicted and hanged.
Mary Surratt was the first woman hanged by the United States.

From the Tao:
When a country is in harmony with the Tao,
the factories make trucks and tractors.
When a country goes counter to the Tao,
warheads are stockpiled outside the cities.

There is no greater illusion than fear,
no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself,
no greater misfortune than having an enemy.

Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.

Angels on East Third Street

There is a building on East 3rd Street with a lot of history that starts with Dorothy Day.
Dorothy Day, 11/8/1897 - 11/29/1980, was born in Brooklyn.  She was a college graduate who read and was influenced by Upton Sinclair, Jack London, William Haywood, Mother Jones, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, and Carlo Tresca.  Her father had been a journalist and after she graduated from the University of Illinois she went to work for the "New York Call" and then "The Masses", both socialist newspapers.  In 1916 she interviewed Leon Trotsky who was living in exile in the east village.  Where else would he stay?
"The Masses" supported  pacifism during the first world war and because of that they lost their mailing privileges and went out of business.  Day supported and worked for Woman's Suffrage, the unionization of workers and non-violence.  When her job at "The Masses" ended she started to attend Catholic services: "the church of the poor".  She has written a number of books that tell what brought her to Socialism and Catholicism.  There are many things to motivate people.  It might be greed, fame, power, or sex.  But to sustain a commitment to the poor throughout her life of service seems superhuman.  She says it came from her political influences.
Her family was from Tennessee and her father was a product of the Jim Crow South.
Her friends were socialists and anarchists.  The father of her out of wedlock child Tamar was the anarchist Foster Batterham who left her when she had Tamar baptized.  Then in the 1930s she met Peter Maurin, a Christian Brother.  Together on 5/1/ 1933 they began "The Catholic Worker" in order to publicize Catholic social teaching.  In 1936 there were 33 Houses - today there are 130 in 32 States and 92 Foreign Countries.
Just a few doors east of MARYHOUSE:
Is the New York City Headquarters of The Hell's Angels.  The east village is diverse.  One interesting note about this building which the Hell's Angels owns.  The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp, rented an apartment there.  If you don't know who Quentin Crisp is you can rent the movie.  He's worth knowing and the movie, starring John Hurt is terrific.
Crisp said they, The "Angels", were always very nice and gentlemanly toward him.    

Candida, a minister's wife

Saw "A Minister's Wife" at Lincoln Center.  It's a musical adaptation of Shaw's "Candida".  I had seen "Candida" many years ago with Edward Herrmann, Austin Pendelton and Blythe Danner and enjoyed it immensely.  This adaptation did not have the wit and lightness of the production I saw.  So I was not impressed
Tao Te Ching.     
" People are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail."

The New Yorker in "Holy Matrimony" writes about the royal wedding.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fan of the monarchy or aristocrats.  However, many people all around the world will be watching the ceremony this Friday, and they'll dream that they're a part of it all.  The New Yorker mentions that the Queen this past Christmas canceled the staff Christmas party because of "the difficult economic circumstances facing this country".  She is the head of the Church of England but Jesus will have to fore go his birthday party.  Well, actually, just the staff.  According to The New Yorker the royal wedding "will cost British taxpayers an estimated twenty million pounds."  About $30,000,000.  I wonder what that staff Christmas party would have cost.  Oh, oh my back is stiffening.  Tao, Jim, Tao.