4/14
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| Roosevelt Triangle |
Last night, my friend Joyce Miller brought her evolving performance piece “Handmaid’s Dianetics” into the world of Virtual reality. (http://www.joycemiller.info/videouml.html). For the last 4 or 5 years, she has been developing a dramatic exploration of her journey from the Church of Scientology in which she was raised into a new world that is anything but straight. Her piece has been done as new wave stand up, monologue, mutiplayer theatre with music, and now virtual with a guest appearance from singer Kosi and music by Mike Handelman. Amazing how virtual performance can feel distant and intimate at the same time, which is a good description of “Handmaid’s…” It moves an arc from satire to something approaching post modern magic realism in a fever dream of Margaret Atwood and L Ron Hubbard. All of which is expressive of the dynamics of her perilous odyssey. I look forward to seeing where she will next go with this…
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In the grocery store, I see one more thing that is gone….grind your own coffee. I enjoy creating my own blend from favorite Central American sources and grinding preferred levels from espresso to course. No more. I truly don’t understand how they decide this things. I look at the long line on the sidewalk, people dutifully six feet apart. Reflect on what we now accept as normal. How we adapt.
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Outside the Fire Baptized Mt.Olivet Church sits a big black hearse. From inside I hear the sound of drums. Are these two things related?
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| The hearse |
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My friend Tina is a retired EMT who thinks she may have had an early visitation of the virus. She’s looking for a place to be tested for antibodies so she can become a n emergency room volunteer.
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In this week’s New Yorker, David Remnick reports that the US now has more Covid19 cases the any other country in the world. I talk with my friend Jim who lost both parents to the virus in Holy Week. He speaks of the sadness of not being able to say goodbye. And the cemetery only allows one family member to accompany the body out of fear for its workers’ safety. He still has Trump supporter friends from the Queens of his childhood who still believe that this is all an overreaction to make Trump look bad. He invites them to help carry his parents’ coffins.
In Ozone Park, Ralph has now died following his wife Christine. This seems to be a pattern. So needless.
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Found an old recipe in my grandmother's cook book for a "leftover ham" casserole. Goes extremely well with my leftover Passover charoset. (Sorry about that....). Stop at CVS to look for half-price Easter candy for this ongoing fantasy of normal I have been creating.
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I pass by a small park named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. All our small parks are closed now. The sign reminds us how he said, There is nothing to fear but fear itself. He was truly a President, I think the says it.
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| Roosevelt Triangle |
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| Jackie Robinson, Montreal Royals, 1946 |
