Front page news, a blessed day, God and the devil

12/8

I wake up to find a copy of today’s West SIde Spirit. And there we are, there I am, on the front page.  Preservation hurts, says the headline. I have read the story online, but it’s great to see it hard copy. 
(http://westsidespirit.com/2011/12/07/preservation-hurts/ )

I go to a street box and pick up a bunch of copies. Take them in to show Danielle and Sarah. Sarah is ecstatic. To follow up on the story, she wants to use the white  helium balloons, place them around the neighborhood to attract attention, spread the story. Solicit help.

P_____ has come in. I tell her about Sandy, try to find a way to get them together 

to talk.  

We’ve got to count up the champagne bottles, settle up with Paul. There’s 28 empties and two full. Looks like six disappeared along the way. Heather the lighting designer is moving her equipment out. Sarah shows her the picture of the play in the  Spirit. Check out the lighting, she says with a smile. 

The cocktail tables are being moved out.  A plumber and an electrician are hard at work in the basement. I remember how upsetting it was minutes before the gala to take RL downstairs to look at the ready to go boiler and find another leaky pipe, which I almost get stopped. That almost did it, he says. 

That’s all I can do tonight, I said.  

Hemade a complex comment filled with non-sequitirs about the church and his relationship to it. Sounds like there’s a song in there, I say. 

Well it would take Patrick Sky to write it, he says, and I ain’t him. (Ah another 60‘s/70‘s era obscure songwriter...) 

Gotta get the show on the road, I said, And he gave me an Indian shaman blessing, sent me on my way back upstairs. 

Blessing.  When I got the homeless steps occupiers to break camp, the scraggly haired guy said, with a touch of sarcasm, anger at being moved,  You have a good day. Then, No, a blessed day. A God blessed day.  But really, i think we bless ourselves, not God blesses us. Then there’s the devil. And as he breaks his camp, and heads down the street, I hear him continuing to mutter to himself about God and the devil, God and the devil.

The big iron gates have been removed from the chapel. Berik and Leila are filling the chapel walls with art from artists from their New York Realists group.  I do an interview with a union journalist on the Sweat Shop Free campaign. Why it’s important, matters to the church.   It’s time to head out and see if I can find Hope and Tracy on the picket line.