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Posts Tagged ‘New York City’

My beautiful daughter with her two daughters;  Finley Ray as Snow White this Halloween, Francesca artfully disguised as a Pumpkin although most people thought she was a Carrot!  Chiara in a Halloween Hoodie courtesy of Tia – I got one too!

halloween, Finley Ray Clark, Chiara Berti Clark, Francesca, Frankie, Snow White, halloween hoodie

Let the fun begin...

photo by Lori

We’re pretty used to seeing celebrities walking, talking and shopping in New York City; so many live here.  But they also work here and hardly a week goes by when you don’t see a film being shot on location here.   A few weeks ago look who was in town.  I just LOVE Ed Harris.

Man on a ledge

Ed Harris - Man on a Ledge

photo by Murray Head

And let’s not forget Sam Worthington (Avatar) who was also turning quite a few heads (the younger crowd).

Avatar, Man on a ledge, New york city, movie making,

Sam Worthington

photo by Murray Head

After seeing this photo, you might want to think twice about going to a Sleep Lab to get a cure for sleep apnea! My friend, Jim submitted himself to this tortuous event and as he said, “I failed the test”.

Jim Taylor,

"and you expect me to sleep like this?"

photo by Susan

Last week I had a special visit from our friend and adopted daughter, Luana.  She arrived with her husband (newly weds) Gustavo and spent a week in NYC.  Timing was perfect because she got to meet Finley too and lucky for Luana – Finny decided to spare one of her band-aids for Luana’s boo-boo!

Luana Teves, Finny, Finley ray, New York city, boo-boo,

Luana has a boo-boo but Finley took care of it

photo by Gustavo


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FAB FOTO FRIDAY

I know, I know, it’s just soooooo New York! BUT hey Central Park IS New York AND it is a treasure trove for a photographer!  The wildlife alone provides numerous opportunities to capture the habits and habitats of the wild things that inhabit its 843 acres right smack in the middle of New York City.  Of course the animals, birds and flora are only one area of interest to the man with the camera;  There are playgrounds where the City kids can be found frolicking,  the Children’s Zoo, or the Carousel.  Or the tennis courts, basketball courts, roller skating area, bike paths, walking trails, bridle paths and baseball fields where one can snap photos of urban athletes.  There are dozens of statues of iconic figures, an Obelisk which is the oldest public monument in North America, Belvidere Castle, Bethesda Fountain (where you can always find street performers) and the Great Lawn and Strawberry Fields.  NEED I SAY MORE?

Central Park, Murray Head, bubbles,stone arch

Bubble Floating Thru the Archway

 

photo by Murray Head

Big bubbles, Central Park, rainbow prism,

The Big Bubble

photo by Murray Head

autumn, fall foliage, Central Park, stone bridge

Stone Bridge in Central Park

photo by Murray Head

Central Park

Painter in the Park

photo by Murray Head

 

Central Park, The great lawn,

Do NOT Mess With Me

photo by Murray Head

 

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I Love New York logo

Image via Wikipedia

I JUST had to share this article with you.  True to form, the Village Voice consistently features well-written, sometime tongue in cheek, clever articles.  I just LOVE IT and I heart New York!

50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City – New York News – Runnin’ Scared.

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Love & Heartbreak Cover

Image via Wikipedia

I just got home from Boston and in time (late though it may be) to post some Six Word Memoirs that I received this week.  As the weeks roll by, I find it interesting to read my own memoirs and those of my readers and note how as our lives take various twists and turns, some good, some not so good, our six words often reflect that fleeting moment or life-long desire.

My week in Boston was spent alternating between cuddling a newborn sweetie and coddling my granddaughter, Finley who is suffering ever so slightly from the many rapid changes in her life (Daddy working in NYC, Mommy nursing a newborn, going to nursery school) and I think she may have a small case of the terrible twos. So although I usually put my own Six Word Memoir last, this week it’s first.

“I want my  Mommy” said Finley – Me

I am baking 3 rum cakes – startingoveringermany

Job abandonment – Not a horrible idea – Weez

Can it almost be Thanksgiving? Yikes! – Gail

If you read this blog, you don’t need me to go into yet another explanation of the origin of The Six Word Project, so I won’t.  Recently, one friend/reader said she tried to do the Six Word Memoir but she can’t.  I can only encourage you to try – put the pen to the paper and think…about your life, your dreams. your present day situation, a bad or good feeling and the six words will write themselves!

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This is the day it’s all about: Candy, Witches, Kids Trick or Treating, Ghosts, Pirates, Devils, well you get the idea……BUT in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, this is the night  when…..

Boys Will  Be Girls

boys will be girls, Japanese kimonos, japanese fans
Boys Will Be Geisha Girls

photo by Murray Head

 

gold gown, gold butterfly

Boys Will Be Girls in Gold Gowns

photo by Murray Head

 

pink hair rollers, pink sponge rollers

Boys Will Be Girls in Pink Rollers

photo by Murray Head

 

hoop skirt,

Just Another Night in the Village

photo by Murray Head

AND Last but not least of this week long series….

 

female wrestlers,

Boys Will Be Beastie or Busty Girls

photo by Murray Head

Happy Halloween To All


 

 

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I’ve been living in New York City for a long time and I admit that I don’t spend a lot of time in Central Park. So when I heard a beautiful bird song the other day, I stopped dead in my tracks.  It was a clear sweet sound and then it abruptly changed.  A lyrical trilling followed and then a distinct chirping… I couldn’t believe my ears but it sure sounded like a Mockingbird. Further investigation into a bush-like tree along the sidewalk and sure enough it was a Mockingbird; Peter and I saw the long tail and watched the little throat pulsate and the beak move as this lovely bird sang out.

What a great thrill it was and a surprise too!  Of course I know there are birds in New York City and those that read this blog steadily know I have posted many photos of birds taken by my friend Murray Head. He has shot photos of all kinds of birds from Egrets to Warblers, from Hawks (probably Pale Male) to Herons and Buntings to Thrushes. BUT those pictures are taken in Central Park where wildlife abounds and this was outside an office!

Anyway, this little ornithological treat got me to thinking about birds in Manhattan and I remembered something very, very interesting.

Several years ago, I was waiting on a corner  to cross the street when I heard a bird chirping and it sounded like it was right above me and it was.  I looked up and there sat a bird on the crosspiece pipe of a street lamp.  As I watched, the bird hopped to the end of the pipe and then disappeared inside the hole at the end.  What??? Yes! The bird went into the pipe.  I waited and soon the bird reappeared and took off but there were still chirps coming out of the pipe.  Amazing I thought.  A bird had built a nest inside the pipe where it was really safe from marauders and other dangers.  Wow, Mother Nature and the little sparrow’s survival skills were pretty impressive.

I mentioned it to Peter and he told me that he had seen this urban phenomena many times.  After that incident, I kept my ears open for the sound of birds on street corners and over and over again I did see birds housing themselves on City property.  Bird squatters I guess.  These spunky little Sparrows found a home in urban New York City.  It’s not that we don’t have lots and lots of tree-lined side streets because we do and I would guess there are bird’s nests in them but I’ve never seen one  and we have a LOT of street lights!!

Manhattan street light, New York City, sparrow nest

Home Sweet Home

Think about this; not only is the bird really protected from the elements in his little pipe house, there’s usually a trash can on every corner so I’m sure there is fairly endless supply of food crumbs for the picking as well as nest-building materials.  Just goes to show you how adaptable living creatures can be to their environment.  You do what you gotta do to survive wherever you are and whoever you are…reminds of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse.

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Sometimes you can walk through Greenwich Village and see some characters you just aren’t going to find on Maple Street in Iowa.  BUT, on Halloween, THEY ALL come out of the woodwork, the closet, and some look like they escaped from the Institute.  These are photos from previous annual  Greenwich Village Halloween Parades.

Nine Days to go…. I’m calling this series Wigs and Wings

white wings, Murray Head,

Wind Beneath My Wings

blue hair, Greenwich Village, Murray Head,

I'm Feeling So Blue Over You

Murray Head, Greenwich Village Halloween, Devil, Mummer

A Rogue Mummer

Yellow wig, Murray Head, Greenwich Village Halloween parade, diva

"Oh YES I AM"!

Eagle's wings, Greenwich Village Halloween parade, Murray Head, raptor

On Eagle's Wings

 

bikinis and wigs, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, Murray Head

It Must Have Been Warm That Year

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FAB FOTO FRIDAY

If you don’t live in New York , maybe you’ve read about how our Mayor Bloomberg is cleaning up the City, we don’t smoke, we don’t eat transfats…he has pedestrian malls in two of Manhattan’s busiest squares; Times Square and Union Square and he would like to eliminate most of the cars.  Take away the cars, the MTA keeps increasing their fares and what’s left?

Take a look at the Signs of the Time.

bicycle rental, New York Athletic Club

Taking a break at 1927

photo by Murray Head

Manhattan bike rentals

Wheels in the Wheels

photo by Murray Head

red high tops,

RED High Tops

photo by Murray Head

Manhattan, bike rental

Flower Power bermuda shorts

photo by Murray Head

Manhattan bike rentals

Please Rent a Bike

photo by Murray Head

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Temple de Dendur, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ...

Image via Wikipedia

New York City has been called many things; The Big Apple, The Capitol of the World and is described in the most eloquent of terms, AND I call it a Cultural Cafeteria – a phrase that came to me a couple of weeks ago after we saw two movies that hadn’t been released yet and went to a Judy Collins Concert held in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art all in one week. And that’s only an itsy-bitsy smidgen of what goes on every night in Manhattan.  It is really mind-boggling!

Here’s a random sampling:  The opera, Das Rheingold opened at The Metropolitan Opera.  The play, Brief Encounters, a British-born production played at Studio 54, The Joyce Theater featured the Batsheva Dance Company, The New York City Ballet Company performed Barber Violin Concerto and Opus 19/The Dreamer.

Angels in America, first American revival of Tony Kushner‘s masterpiece is in previews at The Signature Theater, the Film Forum is showing The Bridge Over the River Kwai and it doesn’t end there.  Well anyway, you get the picture!

First we saw You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, the latest Woody Allen film – it was good, I liked it and I haven’t cared for some of his more recent movies.  I think it was good that he wasn’t in it and it was very different from his earlier movies which were all about Jewish angst and Manhattan.

Then the next night we saw Jack Goes Boating and this WAS shot in real-time, I swear.  Very very slow.  It had its poignant moments and I always like to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman although this character was particularly sloppy, fat and very unkempt.  I wish he would lose some weight.

The next night it was Judy Collins in Concert – the venue was the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a place! What a voice! What a body! Judy is a wonder, she is 71 years old!!! Her range of octaves is phenomenal, her figure slim and her voice beautiful.  We were crying when she sang Both Sides Now– the nostalgia swept thru the mostly baby boomer-semi-hippie crowd.  We all had memories associated with that lush love song.  Her show was full of glorious praise for her now-hometown, New York City and peppered with quips, anecdotes and self-deprecating remarks-she was really funny.  She ended her show (which ran over in time) with a heart-wrenching rendition of Bring in the Clowns which brought the 200+ audience to its feet clapping and clapping and clapping.

Special for me was the fact that I, an adopted New Yorker,  was sitting in the Temple of Dendur attending an evening concert.  So many nights as Peter and I drove through the Central Park transverse we would see crowds in the Temple and wonder what was going on there after hours and how come we never knew!

What a night! What a week! I LOVE NEW YORK!

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Well according the article linked below the answer is NO.  It seems we have selective memories and when weird things happen to us, we may note there is a full moon and decide surely the full moon is responsible for this lunacy.

Harvest moon, September full moon,
The Harvest Moon

Lunacy and the Full Moon: Scientific American.

Alright so the moon was NOT responsible for the past few days of madness – even so…coincidentally then this is what came down since that big fat Harvest moon began to rise on Thursday night:

THURSDAY: I had planned to leave for the shore  in the early afternoon; it had been two weeks since we had been there and I missed my little cottage and was sure our feathered and bushy-tailed friends thought we had abandoned them :(.   Trying to leave early was difficult since I was trying to set up appointments for Chiara and Tom to see apartments this weekend  without me: She (Chiara) sprung this surprise house-hunting trip on me.

I checked my voice mail and had a message from  broker stating she wanted to show my listing on Friday at 3pm.  Of course, why not-FRIDAY at 3pm!!!! Why wouldn’t I want to leave the City on a FRIDAY during RUSH HOUR so I could show an apartment which might take all of 15 minutes.  I questioned the broker; did she see the web photos and floor plan? Could they make it any earlier? She said she would see if they could make it at 2pm and I said “FINE” I’ll be there. Thursday night the phone rang at midnight!!! It was the co-broker calling, thinking she was calling my office to tell me her customers could make it at 2pm instead of 3pm.  Good news even it was late.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Before I left for the weekend, I needed to iron some things. The phone rings and it is the co-broker and now her buyers can’t come till 2:15pm – Whatever!! Peter and I drove to the showing stopping in Midtown to pick up some paperwork which was supposed to be left for me – NOT THERE!! !  So onto the apartment to show and lo and behold we see that East 50th Street is in the frozen zone. No stopping allowed; police barricades on both sides of the street.  I HAD to stop to get out of the car – don’t you know a cop threw his cruiser in reverse and came barreling back to reprimand us!  Since I jumped out so quickly and Peter took off, he just gave us a dirty look.! if you don’t live in New York City then you probably don’t know what kind of self-imposed gridlock and lock-down the City goes into when the UN is having some sort of special session.  Streets are blocked off, traffic is clogged up and the diplomats from around the world are eating out in the best restaurants and the President is throwing a special event of his own at the Museum of Natural History – SO effectively both the West and the East sides were a mess! Got to the apartment and NO MORE show sheets! Of course not.  True to form the buyers were in and out in 15 minutes or less.

SATURDAY MORNING:  Susan called from the car and said she was  following the ambulance which was taking Joe, our host for that evening to Emergency Room.  UH OH!  Should I or should I not go to the vegetable stand and get the last of the ingredients and pick up Susan’s vegetables??

SATURDAY EVENING: Joe was finally released from the hospital and still wanted us all to come for the cook-out!  So at 7pm with Joe sleeping soundly with the afterglow of his morphine drip, Michael stepped up and played the most gracious host and cooked a delicious meal.  It had been a long day for everybody with a lot of stress, strain and phone calls, so about 10:30pm we headed home.

SATURDAY NIGHT LATER: I just got into my pajamas, took out my lens and the phone rang! Susan had gotten a phone call from Heide who apparently was in a lot of pain and had been throwing up for several hours – OMG!  Jim called 911 for an ambulance (can you believe this was his second 911 call today!) and I said we would get dressed and meet them over at Heide’s. The ambulance was already there;  Poor Heide, she looked very pale and was a little delirious from being de-hydrated.  We grabbed her meds, her keys, her cell phone and insurance cards and took off behind the ambulance for the ER.  I tried several times to reach her daughter in California and thankfully, at about 1:30am she called back.  Heide was about to go for a stomach X-ray.

SUNDAY AM: We stayed with her till about 2am and by that time we knew she;d be there for the rest of the night/morning.  I told her to call me in a few hours to pick her up if they let her go.  We went home, crashed and the next thing I knew it was 9am.  The phone hadn’t rung so I assumed Heide was still in JSUMC.  Before I went to sleep I sent Trish an email telling her what had happened.  Trish is the early bird in our group and she was at the hospital before 9am and passed on the latest news to all of us via email.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON: Susan and I went to Heide’s and got her important meds , took the trash out, turned off her computer and gathered some tees shirts and socks.  We visited with her for a short time and promised to check in the next day.

OY what a weekend – so what part did that big old moon play?

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