anonymous intimacy

Tags

curtains, grid, home, intimacy, joan didion, New York, other lives, spanish folk songs, travel, windows

Photo courtesy of Alejandro Cerutti. See more of his work here.

There is an odd intimacy that comes of so many people living quite literally on top of one another on this tiny island. Sometimes, as I’m lying in bed before I drift off to sleep, I think about the walls and floors and beds above and below me and I feel as if I am floating, suspended in a grid of other lives. Though I know hardly any of the other people in my building, I know something about their lives from the sounds that drift in through my bedroom window and reverberate through the walls and floors. There is the kid who runs up and down the hallway next door in the late morning, the man who blows his nose like a foghorn in the building adjacent, the couple that fights at dawn, and the couple that has loud moaning sex on weekday afternoons.

Our living room shudders with the constant rearranging of furniture from upstairs, and from the street below, we hear the drunken warblings of a homeless woman singing Spanish folk songs. One night, just as I was slipping into sleep, I heard a woman yelling out the window—“Will those of you who are having a party please close your window!” A minute later, she shouted the same thing again. I wanted to shout back, “Will you who is shouting out of the window please stop! I cannot hear the party but you are keeping me awake!”

I am fascinated by glimpses of other people’s lives in all of their unselfconscious everydayness. I can lose myself looking at the corner of a window that reveals a group of potted plants, part of a bookshelf, or a bright dress blowing in the wind. I imagine what it would be like to inhabit that space, to be inside the mind of the person who chose the curtains or arranged the plants.

I love this passage from Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye to All That:”

“All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in afternoon thunderstorms.”

The essay is Joan Didion’s epitaph to the years she spent in New York as a young writer, years that were full of beauty and loneliness and a youthful romantic wide-eyedness. In this one lovely sentence, we see the space she occupied (an empty apartment with big windows), we sense the beginning of her depression (“I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better”), and we are captivated by the image of long panels of golden silk whipping around in the wind and rain. I can imagine standing outside on the street in the charged moments before a summer storm, my eyes caught by a flash of gold from the window above me.

We think of windows as our own private views onto the world, but they are also how the world sees in. Whether we arrange our spaces with careful intention or not, they house our daily motions and emotions; they stand as evidence to our private lives. In the adjacent building one floor below me, I can see directly into a room where a stocky man with cornrows walks around his room with heavy steps, completely naked. Either he has not considered the possibility that others may see in, or he just doesn’t care. Two floors above him (one floor above me), I sometimes see a man with shaggy brown hair reading or playing his guitar. There’s a bookshelf behind him, and some sort of poster on the wall. And I find it really strange that I know something about these two people, but that they probably know nothing about each other even though they live parallel lives, literally. And I wonder—what do others see of me from my windows?

the deodorant chronicles

Tags

bad day, bad morning, bar, deodorant, Dove, hotel bar, mingling, networking, Secret, Tribeca

This is not the kind of thing I normally write, but my friend Emma made me promise after I recounted my harried morning to her in breathless frustration as I walked, still sweating and very much late, to work. So this is for Emma, who has just moved to Utah for the summer where she will probably need a lot of deodorant.

I started off ahead of the game. I got up early and took as shower before settling down to write. But then the fatal flaw. I wanted to wear something comfortable until I left for work, so I changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt. I hate those little white lines you get on the sides of your shirt when you put it on over already deodoranted armpits. So I thought—I’ll wait to put deodorant on until I change into my work clothes. And then I thought—I’ll definitely forget to put it on.

I did forget. And I didn’t remember until I was a block away from work, sweating away in the June humidity and already late. I knew it! I did a quick assessment of the situation. On a normal day, I would have just gone into work, sweated it out, maybe picked up some deodorant on my lunch break. But after work I was planning to go to one of those mingly-type events in a swanky Tribeca hotel bar – one of those events where people dress extra nice and pretend their jobs are more impressive than they are and stir their gin and tonics and trade business cards. This is the kind of thing I often talk myself out of, but I was determined to make it, and which meant I had to ensure that when 6 o’clock came, I had no excuses. And that meant I had to take care of the sweaty armpit situation now.

I stepped down into the little Chinese 99 Cent store a block from work. Slightly below street-level, it was dimly lit with tall shelves stacked with a rather odd assortment of items. I found the deodorant, on a shelf behind bars. It took me a moment to get the attention of the woman behind the counter, who was chatting in Chinese to an older woman and didn’t seem to have much interest in selling me anything. She finally came over and unlocked the bars on the shelf, never ceasing her conversation.

To my dismay, there were only two kinds of deodorant, and both had stupid floral scents. I really don’t understand this—I do not want to smell like spring rain or everlasting sunshine or sparkling peach or violets and vanilla or unicorns or rainbows! I’m not kidding! I don’t need my armpits to waft the sickeningly sweet scents of Disney flowers! Who buys this stuff?

But today I was desperate. I chose the least offensive (shower fresh) and brought it up to the counter. “$3.50,” the woman told me. Why is it called a 99 Cent store anyway? I had only $2.50 in cash. “Do you take credit?” I asked. “No,” she said. “Okay, then I can’t buy it.” I set it down on the ridiculously high counter as the woman shrugged and returned to her conversation. I felt bereft at her indifference to my plight.

Next I tried Fine Fare. But though I circled the soups about five times, and found dog food and paper towels, I couldn’t find deodorant anywhere. Rite Aide it had to be, though each subsequent store was taking me farther from work. And now the whole walking quickly and being very late thing was escalating the sweaty armpit situation.

Rite Aide was blessedly cool. I found the deodorants easily. But my eager hand was blocked by clear plastic doors. Across them was written, “alarm will sound.” You are kidding. I have never in my life considered stealing deodorant, but right then, I was ready to. I glanced nervously up and down the aisle, imagining the security guards rushing at me from both ends when the piercing alarm announced my crime to the store. And then I did it.

“Ding ding.” A pleasant chime sound, as if to say, “congratulations!” or “welcome to the world of sparkling flower armpits!” No one came running. I opened and closed the door a couple more times to be sure. “Ding ding. Ding ding. Ding ding…”

Then I knelt down to examine my selections. Even here, with five shelves full of more than ten brands of deodorant, they were all stupid girly scented. Seriously?? No really, I don’t understand. Who buys this stuff? Someone tell me the Secret.

Finally I found one stick of Dove unscented deodorant, pushed behind a row of “fresh linen.” I clasped it to my chest as if someone might take it from me, and made my way up to the counter where I stood patiently sweating while the cashiers lethargically rang up the customers ahead of me. I could become a deodorant thief yet.

In case you’re wondering, I did make it to the event in Tribeca, though I broke my boss’ purple umbrella on the way there (it matched his shirt). Armed with some Dove unscented deodorant (armed, get it?), I entered the chic, dimly lit hotel bar where I ordered a vodka cranberry then proceeded to hide behind a potted tree and pretend to be busily engaged with some business on my phone. Obviously, a smashing success. I did finally talk to a few people—a couple of lovely travel photographers and a writer—before heading back out into the rain without an umbrella.

In Light of Developments in Tibet, a Letter to the New York Times

Tags

China, china daily, China Daily News, current-events, freedom of speech, Hu Jintao, human rights abuses, New York, New York Times, page advertisement, politics, President Obama, self-immolation, Tibet

Last Tuesday, I sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times regarding a disturbing advertisement printed in the first section of the paper. As I have heard nothing from them, I can assume that it will not be printed and so I have decided to share it here. In light of an increasingly dire situation in Tibet, continuing self-immolations, the ongoing curtailment of free speech and dissident opinions in China and the recent talks between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, this is highly relevant. Please read and pass it on.

Re: China Daily Advertisement, April 27, A12-A13

May 1st, 2012

Dear Editor:

I was appalled on Friday to find a misleading two-page advertisement for China Daily disguised as a news story printed in the first section of the paper. The advertisement featured two stories on improving conditions in Tibet—stories that are not only false but insulting and harmful in light of the more than thirty Tibetans who have self-immolated in protest of Chinese rule in the last year. These self-immolations are the actions of a people pushed to desperation by severe human rights abuses, and serve as an undeniable refutation of China’s official story on Tibet.

In response to the self-immolations and other protests, China has closed Tibet to journalists and foreigners. China Daily is a government-funded paper committed to propagating a state-sanctioned message. As a newspaper committed to unbiased reporting and freedom of the press, I expect more of The New York Times.

Emily Strasser, New York, NY

 

a new endeavor

Tags

blog, coffee shop, corporate lawyer, couple of crazy kids, East Broadway, Emily Strasser, friendly neighbors, journal, New York, Pushcart Coffee, sister maggie, story, The Lower East Side

Hi all,

I’m sorry I have been seriously neglecting my blog lately. Between two jobs and various other endeavors, the busyness of New York has finally caught up with me. I’m incredibly touched that some of you have been asking for a new post and wondering where I’ve gone. I am going to try to make an effort to get back to posting, but I can’t promise that I will be on here as often as I’ve been in the past. However, I am still writing a lot, and if you’re interested, you can hop over to http://pushcartcoffee.com/journal to see my newest project, a blog collecting the neighborhood stories and daily happenings at the Lower East Side Coffee shop where I work.

Since I haven’t written about it before, let me tell you a bit about Pushcart Coffee. I ended up here rather serendipitously in the midst of my whirlwind job search, and I’m pretty happy to be here. Pushcart Coffee is a little neighborhood coffee shop nestled out of the way on East Broadway in the Lower East Side, a cool neighborhood I’ve really come to love—if I turn left out of the subway, all the signs are in Chinese and if I turn right, all the signs are in Hebrew.

The owners of the shop are a couple of crazy kids (I mean that in the best way—they’re young of spirit and wide-eyed with excitement) who jumped into this business with an incredible amount of energy and enthusiasm when their other pursuits weren’t cutting it–Jamie was miserable as a corporate lawyer and Lisa was going through the post-college growing pains (pangs) I’m all too familiar with. They both live above the shop, as does Jamie’s sister, Maggie, who bakes muffins and other goodies for the shop. We have meetings in Lisa’s living room, and the “office” is a desk in Jamie’s apartment. The other baristas are a bunch of young creative types, and the customers a mix of weird and talkative old folks, efficient businessy types, friendly neighbors and everything in between—the strange, the grumpy, and the chatty. I swear it would make a great sitcom—Friends meets quirky indie film. We just need to throw in a few love triangles. Actually, I have a secret fantasy that we’ll be “discovered” through my blog and some producer will buy the rights to “The Pushcart Story.” Anyway, it all seems a little too good to be true, but for now I’m on for the ride, watching it all unfold at The Pushcart Journal.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Emily

 

missing mountains

Tags

Emily Strasser, food runner, immigration, julay, Karma, Ladakh, ladakhis, mountains, northern india, Tibet, trekking guide, Zanskar

There is a new food runner at my restaurant. When I heard people calling him “Tenzie,” my little Tibetan attuned ears perked up. But I didn’t approach him for weeks—he looked so serious with his prominent cheekbones and weatherworn face, polishing silver and bustling around the dining room. I tried to figure out how to introduce myself without saying “Hi. Tenzin? You’re Tibetan, right? Guess what—I like Tibetans!”

In the end, that’s sort of what I did. But when my usual, “I studied in Dharamsala” failed to elicit much of a response, I asked him where in Tibet he was from. “Northern India.” He told me. “Where?” “Zanskar.”

I’m not sure who was more surprised—me to hear that response or he to see that I knew what he meant. He used to be a trekking guide in the Himalayas and now he’s running food in New York City. I don’t know why he came exactly, except that an American friend, probably someone he guided on a trek, encouraged him. His family is all still in Zanskar—mother, father, and a couple of sisters—farming and raising animals in a small remote village.

Most Ladakhis will not say their land is beautiful—they say there are no trees, that it is so cold, that the life is hard. They have heard of New York, seen images in Bollywood movies and Indian soap operas where everyone lives in huge immaculate houses and never works. Even before I moved to New York, I told people in India I was from New York  because New York and California are the two places everyone has heard of. They don’t know that there are rats on the subway.

Tenzin gave me a documentary called Journey from Zanskar about a monk bringing a group of children from Zanskar to a school in Manali (a hill station in Himachal Pradesh that begins one of the two land routes into Ladakh) where they will learn about Buddhism and Tibetan culture. Many of the children will not see their families again until they complete their schooling in ten or twelve years. Mothers and grandmothers, wrinkled prematurely from the sun and wind, wipe tears from the leathery corners of their eyes. One wails that her karma must be very bad that she should have to say goodbye to her daughter.

 

One night, I overheard one of the servers say to the manager, “Tenzie looks so sad it breaks my heart.” I wonder if he misses the mountains. In Zanskar the sky is so big you could loose yourself in it. Here, you see it only in gray stripes between the buildings.

Every time Tenzin sees me, he says “I can’t believe you been to Zanskar. I can’t believe you went to so small village.” I say, “it’s so beautiful there.” He smiles, and his forbidding face is completely transformed. “Julay,” I say, which is hello and goodbye and also thank you.

baseboards

Tags

baseboards, Emily Strasser, grandmother, house cleaning, life stuff, mom, mundane chores, new york apartment, ship at sea

Last weekend, my mom visited me in my New York apartment for the first time. I spent the morning before she arrived cleaning—scrubbing down the bathtub and toilet, sweeping hair from the bathroom floor, washing all the dishes, wiping down the counters, vacuuming the living room. It really wasn’t all that messy to begin with—we three former Vassar gals mostly pick up after ourselves. But I thought of how my mom always puts clean sheets on my bed before I arrive and plans meals a week in advance, and how I’ve always whined when she asked me to help her clean and so I devoted the morning to making the place spotless.

This is my first apartment, and I guess I wanted her to see that even if I don’t have any of the life stuff figured out, at least I can take care of the little things.

I had planned to do only a few discreet chores, but once I started cleaning, I began to notice little corners of dust and sticky spots on the counter—my cleaning moved in wider circles. I wanted it all gone. As I neared the end of my tasks, the apartment newly swept, sanitized, and smelling of swiffer wipes, I glanced down and noticed the line of dust collected on top of the baseboard along the hallway. I grabbed a damp paper towel and wiped it all along the baseboard to the door, and was rewarded by the satisfying sight of a now white baseboard and a dingy paper towel.

(from Rapunzel’s Delite)

I think the last time I cleaned baseboards was when I was about ten. My mom loves to entertain—we hosted solstice parties, birthday parties, dinner parties, my father’s department parties and family gatherings. The day of the parties, our house became a ship at sea—no one could leave, and mundane chores were charged with the urgency of survival.  My mother was the captain ordering her crew to their posts—my dad to mow the lawn or blow the leaves, my brother and I to dust and vacuum and clean the bathrooms, while she reigned over the kitchen. For years, it was my job to wipe the baseboards, one task I didn’t mind so much. This was the finishing touch as we pulled into harbor, the mopping of the deck, the unfurling of flags. A house with clean baseboards, I thought, was a house ready to receive guests, a house in which nothing could go wrong.

My mom liked my apartment—she exclaimed about our red couch, the living room filled with plants, and our shiny honey-gold wood floor. But she didn’t say anything about the baseboards. As we wandered through Central Park on Tuesday morning, heading vaguely in the direction of the Met, I mentioned off-handedly about the baseboards. She laughed, and told me about the first time she ever thought of cleaning the baseboards. It was Christmas 1987, and I was a month old. My grandparents, both of her parents and my dad’s mother, were visiting us in Chicago. One afternoon, my mom went out to run some errands and get a much needed breath of fresh air. When she returned, my three grandparents were sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee.

“We cleaned your whole house!” they told her triumphantly.

“I even wiped your baseboards down,” said Meemaw, my dad’s mom. My mom’s first thought was–have I ever cleaned the baseboards? Have I ever thought of cleaning the baseboards? She was horrified to think of her tiny wiry mother-in-law kneeling on the floor and wiping away years’ accumulation of grim.

“So I guess that’s when I started cleaning baseboards,” she concluded. “I always thought of Meemaw when I did.”

Ah-ha, so it’s your fault, Meemaw.

“Monday. I am so clean now in my room after today’s house cleaning, that even my ink well shines brightly here in front of me. Ha! Ha! A strong north wind is blowing.”

(From the very cool blog Moore’s Postcard Museum)

sunday afternoon in the park

Tags

Central Park, Emily Strasser, Key West, Key West Custom's House, Manet, New York, Openhouse Gallery, Park Here, Picnic, Soho

Hi All!

Sorry I’ve been scarce of late—I’ve been giving myself a break from the blog as I adjust to two new jobs and a new city, but I plan to be back with a vengeance in the New Year. In the meantime, I couldn’t help but share this New York scene.

Sunday afternoon, spontaneously reunited with a few college friends, I found myself in the surreal but strangely pleasant indoor park in Soho. We wandered there out of curiosity and stayed despite ourselves. Sandwiched between swanky boutiques and galleries, the Park Here looks at first like an art installation—floors carpeted with fake grass, walls pasted with glossy life size photos of central park, fake flowering bushes and trees along the edges of the room. There are even benches, picnic blankets, and food carts selling coffee and snacks. A few families with small children lounged in the “grass,” letting their toddlers crawl around on ground sure to be free of broken glass and syringes.

The five of us sat down a bit stiffly around a picnic table. A soundtrack of birdsongs filled the rooms. My friend Sean, who knows about these things, commented with a cringe that the birds we were hearing are not native to the area. But we eased out of our coats and into the warmth of the room, the cheery fake springiness of it all.

The park’s caretaker carried a pair of gardening gloves in his back pocket, which he put on to adjust the thermostat. As we sat there, more people trickled in and settled onto benches with books to read, or stretched out on picnic blankets with their laptops (the park offered free wifi). Seeing a group of women eating a picnic lunch was a bit too much—I almost wanted to ask them if they were actors. The whole strangeness of the place reminded me of Manet’s “The Picnic,” and then of a bizarre little Key West art museum I visited last January that featured life-size dioramas of famous paintings, including “The Picnic” which visitors could walk into and have their pictures taken.

The Key West art museum had something distinctly Conch Republic about it—an independent mindedness and lack of concern with the rest of the world’s standards of good taste. It also embodied the tourist culture that is an inevitable part of the flavor of the island—visitors to the museum were not interested in looking at good art, but in taking hokey pictures of themselves in famous art. Park Here, on the other hand, distills something particular to New York—that is, a collective determination to move through odd rituals with complete indifference.

The woman reading her novel on a bench looked as comfortable as if she sat in a coffee shop, and the couple lounging on the picnic blanket a few feet from her could easily have been enjoying a Sunday afternoon in Central Park in May. Like the picnickers in Manet’s painting who go about their discussion as if there is not a naked woman sitting in their midst, the people in the park seemed not to notice that they were in an indoor park with fake grass and spring flowers in January.

As far as I could tell, my friends and I were the only ones who peered curiously around the rooms and discussed the weirdness of the space. Still, we ended up moving from the table to the ground, enjoying the cushion of the “grass,” stretching out our legs, and lying on our backs and bellies. It was somehow nice. The soundtrack changed from birds to a gurgling stream to a different bird soundtrack. “These birds are native,” Sean told us. “Doesn’t that feel more comfortable?” We all just laughed. When I got up, I had to pick woodchips out of my wool sweater.

comparisons

Tags

Atlanta, being nice, hospitality, New York, restaurant, Southern Food, The South

By strange coincidence, I have landed myself a hosting job at a Southern inspired farm fresh restaurant that seems to be Watershed’s Soho equivalent–both menus feature grits and pimento cheese. But the similarities kind of stop there.

My first day at Watershed, I was overwhelmed by the immediate friendliness of the staff, everyone introducing themselves and asking me who I was, what my story was. My job there mostly had to do with feelings—keeping the servers happy, soothing the guests, treading lightly around chef, and charming the kitchen staff for slices of chocolate cake.

I controlled the books, and there was a funny kind of intimacy there. Each reservation had a section for notes–mostly they mentioned allergies, birthdays or seating preferences, but occasionally a note would reveal something a bit more interesting. “First date with a girl,” said one. “Please tell Marlene that she looks beautiful,” said another. The servers and I would cluster in corners of the dining room, watching people and speculating—

“Table 25, date or daughter?”

“Is the woman at table seven a man?”

“How does she not know he’s gay?”

Though it was nationally known in the food world, Watershed was essentially a neighborhoody place, and we had regulars. There was the artsy looking trio—tall woman in a beret, brother in sunglasses, white-haired father in a wheelchair, all dressed in black. Then there were Basil and his wife—they always sat at the same table and never looked at a menu. Basil walked slowly, stiff back stooped. His wife, hair died blonde and fixed into thin curls, would walk ahead of him. She’d pinch my elbow and ask, “are you married?” When I told her no, she’d say, “well don’t be in a hurry. They get weird when they get old,” nodding to her husband, who was describing his urinary catheter in excruciating detail to a poor trapped male server. One day, Basil came in during the middle of brunch looking happier than I’d ever seen him. He stopped at the door, straightened up, and called to the manager, on the other side of the foyer, “Gregory! I’m free! I don’t have bladder cancer!” To celebrate, we sent a slice of chocolate cake to their table.

My first day at the New York restaurant (I’ll keep it anonymous while I’m employed there), everything felt much more smooth and impersonal. Rather than whining about being double sat, or begging for a table, the servers barely spoke to me. Everyone mostly just did their jobs. How strange. We get regulars here too—stylish women with foreign accents, former editors of Gourmet, but I haven’t seen anyone as eccentric as Basil.

A week in, I’ve gotten to know the staff a bit more. The friendliest people are the bussers. I said two words in Spanish to one of them, and they all started talking to me, asking who I am, where I’m from, and how I speak Spanish. “Cual raza?” (which race?) one of them asked me, as if being able, or being willing, to carry on a simple conversation in Spanish overcame my otherwise obvious whiteness. It’s not that the others are rude—I think it comes down to what one server said to me when I introduced myself as the new girl; “we have so many new people here I don’t even notice.” In a city where everything changes crazy fast, you don’t invest in people until you see who’s sticking around.

I miss the Watershed staff—Clay, with his mop of curly hair, who made his tables feel like they had known him forever, and would mutter things like, “even pompous m****** f*****r’s eat fried okra.” Gazi, from Bangladesh, who had worked there since the day Watershed opened fifteen years ago, and was known by some as the Gaz Father. He was particularly sought after for his wine recommendations, though he never drank. I especially miss Gregory who’d stand with me at the front and make scathing character judgments of guests based on their shoes. He dispensed biting one-liners like popcorn, and would smile in a crazed way. When it came down to it though, he was a sweat heart who liked me despite my unacceptable shoes

After a couple of days at my new restaurant, I found I was most comfortable with one of the four managers—she’s a bit more vulgar than the others, smokes throughout the night, and calls people “darling” even when she’s stressed. Maybe especially when she’s stressed. Well wouldn’t you know, she’s from Virginia.

Twice this week, I’ve had strangers on the subway comment to me, “you’re not from here, are you?”

When I told a friend who’s been in New York much of his life, he said, “You talk to people on the subway?”

staking out a home

Tags

homeless, Occupy Wall Street, police, starving artist, utopia, writers

After dropping my bags at the apartment on Saturday, I decided to check out Occupy Wall Street with my dear friends Nathalie and Dan. It seemed like a good way to spend my first afternoon in New York.

The park was smaller than I expected, but the tents were packed in, organized around narrow pathways crowded with purposeful occupiers and curious wanderers. I keep trying to think of something critical and reflective to say about it, but mostly I just felt a vague solidarity with people who are scared about the way things are going. At the same time, I find myself puzzled by their unwavering commitment to an undefined purpose. Like at any other demonstration, people carried signs, but the messages were disparate–some addressed Bloomberg, some of the Thai King. Along the edges of the park, I passed a gangly man with a cup and a beat-up cardboard sign that said “starving artist support my dream.” I have a lot of sympathy for starving artists, as I’m on the way t becoming on myself, but without knowing the guy’s story, that just strikes me as lazy. A few blocks away from the demonstration, I saw a homeless man sitting on a wall eating a sandwich. Beside him was a sign that said “picture: $2, listen to your problems: $5.” I was more tempted to give him money.

Perhaps my favorite sign was held by a cheerful young man in an knit hat and round Harry Potter glasses–”We’re here. We’re unclear. Get used to it.”

I want to be able to express whole-hearted support for this movement (I’d like to count myself among this crowd) but something in me is resisting–though I’ve never been a good protester. This article in The Indypendent, a free city newspaper, turned me off with its poetic ramblings about a lived utopia. Something I find really interesting is the discussion and tension around issues with the homeless. Police normally kick the homeless out of Zuccotti Park, but the Occupy Movement has created unique circumstances. Many homeless have gravitated to the park for the  food, clothing, and companionship. If we’re talking about people who have been screwed by the system, the homeless should be a part of this, but there have been some complaints of sexual harassment, mooching, and inappropriate behavior. This article in Mother Jones by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed raises some interesting issues, and makes a good argument for why the Occupy Movement should embrace the cause of homelessness:

 Homelessness is not a side issue unconnected to plutocracy and greed. It’s where we’re all eventually headed—the 99 percent, or at least the 70 percent, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior—unless this revolution succeeds.

That feels a bit like an overstatement, but still, out on my own in a big city with my resume and my dreams, I feel it. Yesterday, an opera singer got on my subway car and serenaded us with Tchaikovsky to beg our spare change.

Here are some photos.

maybe my favorite

As we were about to leave, a line of police cars pulled up beside the park and stopped. Then another line pulled in beside them. The policemen got out, adjusted their jackets, and leaned against their cars, chatted with each other, or took pictures of the park with their iphones.

 

freight train

Tags

Elizabeth Cotten, Freight Train, left-handed, Seeger

Well I’ve been here now two days. Have managed to assemble my bed and find the nearest grocery store. Just waiting for my mattress to be delivered so I can really settle in. In the meantime, I can’t stop humming this song.

 

 

Elizabeth Cotten wrote this song when she was eleven years old, watching freight trains pass by her house in Carrboro, North Carolina, maybe dreaming of a world beyond the small view she was given. She was married at age 15, and gave up guitar until her 60s when she was rediscovered by the musical Seeger family, whom she was working for as a maid. She picked up the guitar again, started writing new material, recording, and performing into her 80s. She died at age 92, the year I was born. Her songs would be covered by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Taj Mahal and many others.

And this is great–she was left-handed (like me!), and instead of restringing the guitar, just played it upside down.