Odd Job

Friday Field Trip. In the weeds.

“Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end.” – Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

The first time I read these words I was in high school. Eventually I’d write a master’s thesis on Rebecca. However, I wasn’t yet in the weeds.

The thing about gardening is wanting to do the work. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t. I got my first job at age ten and I’ve been working ever since. Every odd job there is, I’ve done it. Even packaging false eyelashes.

But gardening is its own reward because you are always in a race against weather, time, or weeds. Sometimes the reward is a cleaned-up bed. Sometimes it’s a spring bloom.

I often find myself doing more weeding – maintenance – than planting. This seems to be the story of my life, making order out of chaos, or battling the natural monsters that are stealthy and insidious and have “long, tenacious fingers”.

The father of a dear friend just passed, and I grew up watching him work on his house and garden. What a work role model he was. He taught me the value of work, and the satisfaction of a day’s job done.

Work is sometimes rewarding and sometimes it is odd. As when you don’t tend to the garden after a season of rain. All your previous work is gone. That’s when you, as Irving Berlin wrote, “pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

Happy Fourth of July.

Going Public

Friday Field Trip: The gorgeous Goods for the Study.

Where does one even begin? Papers and cards and those pens. Oh my.  

I’d been planning this Upper West Side trip for several weeks, in order to discuss teaching a cursive handwriting workshop there. I’d met the manager of the Rockefeller Center location of the store and we had a great conversation about what I call the “hunger for the analog arts”. She delivered some good news: “I sell fountain pens all day long.”

Wow.

Years ago, I was in another store, Housing Works, and I signed a paper credit card slip. “Your signature!” the clerk said. “You should teach handwriting.”

I wrote about this scene in my Object Essay Pen. The upshot was that, at the time, I didn’t think it was possible. My reasoning? I didn’t have the training, it takes a lot of time, and simply having the skill myself was not a basis for teaching it.

Years went by. Without my even mentioning it, the cursive conversation would come up with outraged parents. Why weren’t their children learning this crucial skill?

I started thinking about it. What’s the worst that could happen? I wouldn’t be good at it and I’d drop the whole idea.

In a New York Times article about the documentary Turn Every Page, Robert Gottlieb refers to the idea of “…making public your own enthusiasm.”

I’ve now taught at least five cursive workshops at the New York Public Library and Artist & Craftsman and the only reason for their success is my enthusiasm. I am passionate about the subject matter and love sharing it with anyone who will listen. It’s certainly not because I taught cursive in the classroom for years. That would help but, I happily learned, was not a precursor for making it public.

The workshops follow a format: an introduction to the subject and the research (which states still teach it, which might soon return; how the mind processes information better when we write by hand; the importance of cursive for speed, as well as the ability to read historical documents). Then, we do arm, wrist, and hand exercises. Next, we dive in and start working with pen, pencils, and tracing sheets. Finally, we work on a letter to a friend or family member. The takeaway? An inexpensive Pilot fountain pen. Everyone loves some swag.

I have the Rudolf Steiner School to thank for this. I learned curisve in third grade and have never stopped. I wrote about it here.

Oh, and another thing. My dad, that Bronx boy I mentioned last week, had perfect Palmer penmanship. He’d be thrilled I was teaching cursive.

Breaking Bread in the Bronx

New York is so big. Then there’s the Bronx.

My late dad grew up there. Yesterday was his birthday.

This is a borough I know nothing about. Oh, I’ve been to the zoo and the Botanic Garden. But that’s different.

To get an authentic feeling about a place you need to walk its streets, see its people, and, most of all, eat its food.

Which is why I boarded the D train Friday bound for Arthur Avenue. I’d always wanted to go. 

This part of the Bronx is old school, a New York I remember from childhood, when we lived in Queens. Pre-war apartment buildings, an occasional clapboard house, open windows.

When I got to the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, I found Mike’s Deli and the counter women who were very enthusiastic when asked about the best chicken sandwich they could recommend. A cutlet with fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers? I was in! Add a cappuccino, which I sipped while I ate and listened to a couple of gents speaking in Italian next to me. I could not believe how easily I’d discovered my new happy place.

Oh, did I mention how Mike gave me a lesson in how to “bathe” my mozzarella?

After, I walked the avenue and bought a pound of espresso, as well as chocolate from Piemonte at Cerini Coffee and Gifts, and breads with prosciutto and olives at Addeo Bakers. Last stop was Madonia Brothers Bakery for chocolate lace Florentine cookies. My bag was brimming. I had to cut myself off so I could haul the load home.

On the way to the subway, a mother and small child were dancing to music at an outdoor barbeque.

I love these summer days, when I get to be a tourist in my hometown.

Happy Birthday Dad. I salute your roots.

A Child of the Subway

One of the delightful parts of writing is research.

For my current short story collection, a character and his girl board a subway for a beach day at Coney Island.

However, it’s the 1950s and New York City subways didn’t have letters. What to do?

Too much information on the web? Always go to the source. Which is how I found myself on a hot afternoon descending the stairs to the cool underground of the New York Transit Museum.

Not only did I have a delightful conversation with an employee, but he was kind enough to refer me to the research team that supports folks like myself.

“Oh,” I mentioned before leaving, “I can’t tell you how happy your promo video made me.”

 Children learning about the subways? And buses? I was a child of the subway. Still am.

Yes indeed, doing research is delightful.

The City Lives of Others

There’s a certain summer sound you rarely hear in New York. 

When I was a kid, you heard it all the time. Someone was playing a musical instrument, heard through an open window.

Often it would be from across a courtyard; it might be a piano, or saxophone. Sometimes it would be vocals, practiced by an opera singer. When I moved to my current home it was a performer of show tunes.

Rear Window is a masterpiece of certain summer sounds, as among other things you hear the composer practicing on his upright piano. The sounds are, of course, muted because they are not in the room with wheelchair-confined James Stewart, but what Hitchcock does brilliantly is capture the city lives of others, in an era before air conditioners, when you could hear the birds and the tinkling of a piano, as I did the other day while walking to the subway.

Sometimes summer sounds still survive.

Field Trip

In a short sorry I’m writing a character walks along Greenwich Avenue and spots a rooftop water tank.

A conversion ensues with his girl about a childhood memory.

I recently visited the location to determine where the building with said tank would be. Currently such a building does not exist.

I stood. I looked. I argued with myself. Then I remembered. It’s fiction. I can write anything I want.

That’s the beauty of the form. The ability to take liberties.

It’s all in the details

The Details of Yesteryear

To be a better writer you need to be a better reader. I’d add, you also need to be a great observer.

On the way to a downtown appointment, I noticed a building, the kind of old-school tenement you now notice mainly when it’s gone, its hand-laid brick and carvings replaced by machine-made steel.

One such building in Chinatown had open windows, some with books lined up across the sills. There were small screens I haven’t seen in years.

But it was the fluorescent lighting, as well as a fan, in a small produce store that captured the essence of old-school New York.

Nothing fancy here, just the kind of yesteryear details a writer notices when they look up.

A Winner

It’s been a good week. We all need one from time to time.

The good ones motivate us, urge us forward, remind us why we do what we do.

First, I heard from an online journal that picked up my essay, Black and White, one which I’ve been trying to place for some time.

Then, I taught another cursive handwriting workshop at Artist & Craftsman, Park Slope. I had a fabulous group of students, and we practiced the alphabet, looked at handwriting samples, and wrote letters. I loved every minute of it. Can’t wait to teach the next one.

Finally, I stopped by Troubled Sleep Books, Park Slope. “You’re just in time,” the clerk said. “I just sold the last copy of your novel!”


 

Connecting on the Q Train

One never knows where one will find it.

I was reading the paper, trying to decide which article I could stomach, when a rich glorious voice emerged from behind me, singing Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable.

A tall man of a certain age walked forward, serenading his subway riders, as I reached into my change purse and produced two sad dollars.

“Thank you so much,” the man responded, as I handed him the folded-up bills.

“This simply is not enough,” I answered, “for a voice as glorious as yours.”

The man described his conversation with God this morning and his struggle to get up and leave the house.

“But you came out and shared your gift with us,” I said.

The singer, another passenger, and I looked at each other, clearly grateful that we could all encounter joy for a moment on the Q train.

I was reminded of the epigraph from E.M. Forster’s Howards End: “Only connect!”

The Rhythm of the Day

There’s something about eight in the morning.

If you’re a morning person, it might just be the hour of creativity. For my father, the late Daniel Gutoff, eight in the morning was when he sat down to practice piano. For one hour. Every day until his early 90s.

For a friend, eight in the morning was when he wrote his novel. Every day in a cafe before he went to work as an editor.

For myself, early morning is when I have energy to write. The house is quiet. Only the birds serenade me. Strong coffee helps.

I find when I travel the rhythm doesn’t change. Wherever I am, the routine stays the same. Rise early, make coffee, write. 

It might be a few words.

It might be a paragraph.

It doesn’t matter.

The goal is simple.

Just keep it going.

Reading and Reconnecting: Part Four

And then there’s Scorsese. In a class all by himself.

This New York story, told in Martin Scorsese, by Mary Pat Kelly, is downtown, the old Little Italy. Before the tourists arrived. And he was asthmatic, so he didn’t play sports. He went to the movies.

Once more, the arts enthrall, and allow a child to escape their surroundings, creating their own universe. By the time Scorsese enters New York University -- his father’s dream for his son – he’s off and running.

One of the joys of Criterion Channel membership is the added benefits of, say, Scorsese Shorts, a collection of student films and interviews, such as the one he did on WNYC in 1970. I loved when host Mrs. Doris Freedman – yes, that’s how she was introduced – asks about what happens after production of a film is completed.

“By the time they finish – if their film is any good – their troubles are only beginning,” Scorsese answers, as he elaborates on the filmmaker’s path, from script to release.

Yet another amazing reminder that all artists struggle. Some simply have more zeros to work with.

 

 

Reading and Reconnecting: Part Three

In my continuing quest to read the experiences of artists, I listened to Al Pacino’s autobiography, Sonny Boy. Another great New York story.

Unlike Streep, who grew up in New Jersey, Pacino is a Bronx boy, a child of the streets, and yet somehow not. He was always looked after by his family.

Over and over, what these stories tell is the ability of art to transform children, to give them a different lens through which to view the world.

The challenge is how to, once a student graduates, learn the language of rejection, to constantly be told no, until the day when yes arrives.

In Pacino’s story, what struck me was his later career quest to make Searching for Richard, about the significance of Shakespeare, and no, once more, stopping by. He couldn’t get the support, no less the financing, even though he was Al.

Somehow, I found this comforting. My own quest to get my debut novel off the ground has been a slow process, and In Searching for Richard, I was reminded that everyone struggles. Even Al.

And then, one day, yes came a knockin’.

One Way to Whitefish arrived on ten branch shelves at the New York Public Library. My father, the late Daniel Gutoff, was a librarian in the Queensboro system for thirty years.

Somewhere he’s smiling.

One Way to Whitefish at New York Public Library

Reading and Reconnecting: Part Two

Then there’s reading the work of others. Especially other artists.

I recently read Her Again, the Meryl Streep story, by Michael Schulman. Here’s what a great biographer does: he taps into the cultural context of his subject – in this case, the New York of the 1970s, where Streep landed after Yale – giving the reader a framework for understanding the development of the artist.

Streep’s story is inextricably linked to second-wave feminism, especially in her portrayal of Johanna in the iconic Kramer vs. Kramer, the history of The Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park, and the actor John Cazale, with whom Streep lived in a loft on Franklin Street before he died of lung cancer in 1978. I’d completely forgotten about that year’s snowstorm to end all storms, which, when over that spring, left mounds of garbage and sludge on the streets of New York. The following is my favorite section, where Schulman shows the multiple sides of Streep’s feminine persona at the end of second-wave feminism:

“The Deer Hunter took her dangerously close to Hollywood It-girl territory, but she would soon do her best to unplant those seeds. After Cazale’s death, Streep threw herself into three projects simultaneously. She played the tell-all–writing ex-wife in Woody Allen’s Manhattan. In Kramer vs. Kramer, she was Joanna, locked in a reckless custody battle for her son with her ex-husband, Dustin Hoffman’s Ted. And she played Katherine, the lead in a Shakespeare in the Park production of  The Taming of the Shrew. ‘Her life was like a one-woman repertory theater,’ Schulman writes. ‘Uptown, she was Joanna, the mother who leaves her son. Downtown, she was Jill, the wife who humiliates her husband. By night, in Central Park, she was Kate, the shrew to be tamed. Joanna, Jill, and Kate: three women who break the rules, leaving the men around them befuddled, cowed, and furious.’ ” – Vogue Magazine

As a native, such stories add richer layers – who knew there were more? – to the glory and madness of my own New York-in-the-1970s childhood.

Reading and Reconnecting

Sometimes life intervenes. Not a lot of writing gets done.

While I try to write every day, there are times when this isn’t possible. That’s where reading comes in.

I once decided that if I can’t write, I can always read: Review something I’ve worked on, see how it sounds, decide if it’s going in the right direction.

Reading is part of the writing process, and reconnecting with your work is as valuable as new writing.

Notebook

Last week I was in California.

In an effort to keep my luggage light, I no longer travel with a laptop.

I bring a notebook.

One of the reasons I love writing in one while travelling is the lack of interruption. Working on a laptop means there is always a chance to look something up, which in itself cancels the flow of writing. In addition, I’ve noticed certain sites are so ad-filled that’s it’s impossible to focus.

I love the feeling of simply sitting in silence and writing.

Just me, and my pen.

A Perfect Space II

Here’s the thing: no phones.

In order for The Morning Pages to be effective, you have to be fully present. Especially since one of the rules is not stopping. For full concentration, a cell phone has to be put away and there can’t be any interruption.

A recent article in The New York Times talked about what I’ve been feeling for some time: a sense of loss for the way we once lived. We simply walked down a street. We wrote letters. We spoke face to face. It’s a late 20th century custom that has turned into a vintage phenomenon.

“There are lots of ideas for how to break phone addiction, but not as many for how to regain the romance of what I’m coming to think of as the slow-comms era, the second half of the 20th century when the phone and the mail were our main means of long-distance communication. The ache at the sight of an empty mailbox was, in my memory, more than balanced out by the ecstasy at the letter that finally arrived.” – The New York Times

One way I got through this long and dreary winter was by leaving the house and working at the library. I visited multiple New York and Brooklyn branches and found my perfect, happy place: sitting in silence, reading and writing.

Phone off, filed away, far out of reach.

A Perfect Space

Julia was really onto something.

In the 1990s The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, called upon anyone who wanted to create to get in touch with their inner artist.

One of her most valuable tools was The Morning Pages, designed to be done as soon as one wakes up in order to connect with our waking thoughts.

I’ve recently started doing them again and I’ve found that although they are not easy, they are incredibly freeing and help me make sense of whatever is behind all those swirling thoughts.

I can’t always do them first thing in the morning but I’ve noticed that when I can my day goes better. Somehow that first coffee, pen and paper ground me for whatever may lay ahead.

The rules: three pages, handwritten, no stopping. The reasons: three pages is sufficient; we process information better when we hand write; when we stop we edit.

Times are tough and there’s a lot of chaos out there. The Morning Pages are the perfect space to place all that mind chatter.

Want to know more? Read about it here.

Accessing the Analog Arts

It’s amazing to me what a hunger there is for the activities we used to take for granted: drawing, sewing, cursive.

This week I taught the second of two workshops at the New York Public Library, with a focus on cursive handwriting. The participants spoke: they were less interested in the crafts from last week. They wanted more cursive.

We worked on three activities: lists, letters, and journals. First, we brainstormed what kind of lists we can make: to do, grocery, and new year goals were a few that came up. Then participants spent time writing their lists. Next, we spoke about letters – I had brought paper and envelopes – and discussed who we could write letters to. Friends, family, someone in the community were mentioned. Finally, we journaled: although we attempted the three full sheets of Morning Pages (Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way), this was tough in the time we had left. The goal was to finish one page.

At Artist & Craftsman, where I did a workshop last weekend, I had three ten-year-old students who had never had cursive instruction. They were delightful, and I could not believe how quickly they picked up the skill, simply using cursive alphabet tracing pages, and having lots of time to practice. Here’s the thing about cursive: like anything else, the more you practice the better you get.

Cursive handwriting is just one activity in what I refer to as the analog arts that so many of us are yearning for in our wholly digitally-overloaded world.

The Calm of Creativity

Teaching at the New York Public Library. My happy place.

This week I taught the first of two cursive-and-crafts workshops with a focus on Valentine’s Day. Last summer, the classes focused more on cursive handwriting – its history, current status, and how to re-connect – and this winter the goal was to combine cursive with crafting.

I brought lots of art images from old appointment books, colored index cards, and letter writing paper. Students turned their valentines into collage, added notes, and most of all, practiced their cursive handwriting skills. There were worksheets, and we went over some of those pesky letters – for example a lower-case “r” -- which lots of folks struggle with.

Oh, of course, there were pens. Ball points, markers, and even some Pilot fountain pens. For some students, these were a first. But they loved them.

The best part? For next week’s session, the students wanted to focus more on cursive and less on crafts.

Made my heart sing.