Vietnam Veterans Plaza

Somehow I didn't realize, or had forgotten until this month, that New York City has a memorial to Vietnam veterans, created in the same era as the one in Washington, DC, the early 1980s. It's a small riverside park on South Street called Vietnam Veterans Plaza. Two days ago, thinking about John McCain, I stopped and spent some time there.

Etched on the glass wall are quotations from writings of New Yorkers who served in Vietnam, including this letter from LT JG Richard W. Strandberg:  "One thing worries me--will people believe me?  Will they want to hear about it or will they want to forget the whole thing ever happened."  And this, from a poem by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, written shortly before he was killed in action on March 24, 1970:

And in that time  When men decide and
Feel safe to call the war insane . . .
Take a moment to embrace those
Gentle heroes you left behind . . .

Aretha, now

If you happen to see this on August 19, right now, and till midnight, WKCR (89.9) is playing nonstop Aretha.

WKCR 89.9FM NY

Can't tear myself away.

Gardens Speak

Last month I participated in a play, Gardens Speak, part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar festival, that I'm still thinking about.   Here's what I remember:

In an outer room, the guide instructs you to take off your shoes and put on a light raincoat.  

In the next room, you sit on one of two benches along two facing walls.  In the middle of the room is a rectangle with grass, dirt, and ten wooden tombstones--the garden.

You are given a piece of paper with a name in Arabic.

You step into the garden and look for the tombstone with the name matching the one you hold.

When you find it, you brush the dirt off a plaque at the base of the tombstone to reveal the name in English.

You lie down with your head at the base of the tombstone, and the voice of the deceased whispers his or her story in your ear, as if coming from the grave beneath you.

These are all victims of the Assad regime in Syria, many of whom were secretly buried in gardens and parks.  

When you're done listening to the story, you cover the name,  return to the bench, where you find a small notebook in which you are invited to write a letter to the martyr whose story you heard.

You go back to the grave, this time to its foot, and sit a while, as you learn is the custom in Syria.  If you write a letter, you bury it there--perhaps you find letters that others have written.

The letters will eventually be shared with the families of the victims.

Finally you return to the anteroom, where you can wash your feet in a foot bath.

It has been only 45 minutes.

You wish many, many others could share the emphathy-inducing experience you had in that room.


Gardens Speak is the work of performance artist Tania El Khoury, who is based in London and Beirut.

Waiting for the storm

Back in the days when the only warnings of serious weather came shortly before the event from sky, air, or movements of animals, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote what may have been his masterwork, Snowbound: A Winter Idyll.

After a dedication-- 

To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

 --and quotations from Agrippa's Occult Philosophy and Emerson's poem "Snow Storm", the poem itself begins:

The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Slow tracing down the thickening sky

Its mute and ominous prophecy,

A portent seeming less than threat,

It sank from sight before it set.

Snowbound was published in 1866, soon after the Civil War and, with its vivid descriptions of a powerful storm and the contrasting warmth and intimacy of storytelling around the fireplace, proved hugely popular.

It was one of my favorite poems as a child, and these days its themes of memory, loss, and changing times mean much more to me than when I first read and loved it.  But it's been years since I read its many verses all the way through.

Tomorrow--as a storm blankets the East Coast with the kind of snow that may one day be only a distant memory--will be a good time to immerse myself in Snowbound once more. 

What Bike New York’s Not Telling Us About the New, Improved Five Boro Bike Tour

It was the last day of lottery registration for the 2012 Five Boro Bike Tour—the annual event in which thousands of cyclists enjoy the thrill of cruising, albeit slowly, along carless roads, including the East River Drive and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—and Bike New York, which runs the tour, had emailed me once again to remind me of the fact.

They sure wanted my $6—a nonrefundable fee just to be in the lottery—but they weren't going to get it.

Bike New York billed their new lottery, which would-be riders could enter from January 17 through February 7, as a “more fair and equitable chance of participating” than was the first-come-first-served system of the past that last year shut out anyone who didn’t bother to enter on the day registration opened. They even claimed to have instituted it because of “popular demand.”

But the brilliant thing about the lottery is that there’s no limit on the number of would-be riders from whom Bike New York can collect those $6 fees.

The tour is capped at 32,000 riders. Since that figure includes riders for charity who are required to raise a minimum of $750 and VIPs who pay $300, presumably the lottery slots will be limited to somewhat fewer, say, 30,000. If the lottery attracted 60,000 entries, that’s an extra $180,000 for Bike New York—not exactly chump change, though lottery losers may feel like chumps when they get their rejection emails a few weeks later.

In media coverage, Bike New York has disingenuously presented the lottery as a positive incentive to attract bicycling tourists. “The new lottery system will be promoted locally, nationally and abroad,” wrote Lisa Fickenscher in Crain’s New York last November.

But the truth is—and Bike New York hasn’t said a public word about this—out-of-towners did’t need the lottery, as long as they joined the right tour or meet-up group.

Velo Quebec Voyages is offering up to 200 cyclists who sign up before March 9 packages starting at $585 that include participation in the tour.

Last December 23, tripsite.com announced as Breaking News! “We have scored tickets for the 5 Boro Bike Tour in NYC and have reserved some rooms!”

In January I learned from a friend about a group in Virginia that had been promised guaranteed registration if the leader could pay Bike New York registration money for at least 20 riders by Friday, January 13. Twenty-eight of them signed up.

Last weekend, when friends from Boston said they had gotten in, I found myself wondering how.

The Five Boro Bike Tour has come a long way from its origins in 1977 as a day trip for 250 riders, sponsored by American Youth Hostels, to give high school students practice in bike safety. And its fees have come a long way as well, nearly doubling from $42 to $80.88 (including a required service charge) between 2007 and 2011—and now adding a fee imposed on local lottery losers as well as winners.

It seems that Bike New York has a new vision for the tour, not as a grassroots event, filled mainly with New York cyclists, but as a destination for affluent tourists—folks who can afford $550 for a two-night minimum at the Marriott New York Downtown, the only lodging recommendation listed on the organization’s website.

In his history of the tour on the Bike New York website, Steve Bauman concludes “the Tour has become a much-beloved springtime tradition for its participants—yet it still retains the simplicity and friendliness of the first ride.”

It’s just that the registration process is a little complicated and unfriendly—especially to locals.

Janet Bode

Janet Bode's been gone for nearly 10 years, but she's alive as ever in my heart. I can still hear her voice on the phone, which would lift my spirits whatever either of us was going through. Janet went through a lot, including a losing struggle with breast cancer and, long before I knew her, surviving a brutal gang rape.

Besides her influence on friends, Janet left an extraordinary body of work--at least 14 nonfiction books for young adults on some difficult subjects, like teen pregnancy, romantic troubles, divorce, eating disorders, and teens in prison. The heart of each book is direct quotes from the hundreds of teens she interviewed all over the country.

Though she had no children herself, Janet had enormous empathy for teenagers and connected with them deeply. I'm guessing that her books may have helped save some of their readers' lives.

Here are the titles of Janet's books for young adults that I know about: Beating the Odds: Stories of Unexpected Achievers; The Colors of Freedom: Immigrant Stories; Food Fight: A Guide to Eating Disorders; For Better or Worse: a Guide to Surviving Divorce; Hard Time: a Real Life Look at Juvenile Crime and Violence; Heartbreak and Roses: Real Life Stories of Troubled Love; Kids Having Kids; Kids Still Having Kids; New Kids in Town: Oral Histories of Immigrant Teens; New Kids in Town: Oral Histories of Immigrant Teens; Rape: Preventing It; Coping with the Legal, Medical and Emotional Aftermath; Truce: Ending the Sibling War; Trust & Betrayal; The Voices of Rape. Some of them are illustrated with cartoons by her partner, Stan Mack.

For adults, Janet wrote Fighting Back: How to Cope with the Medical, Emotional, and Legal Consequences of Rape; and View from Another Closet: Exploring Bisexuality in Women.

Today, Bastille Day, was Janet's birthday.