one thing today

  ... photo of a guy so in love with language and a big sister type who took one of his songs with her mates and ignited both of their projectories . he looks like he's saying something very personal and she looks like she  thinks ... do you really think that or do that ... aaahhhh, that's so sweet or that's so weird or wrong or right ... and he looks like he's ready to hear things that he'll make his own and then ours ... things about love ... or songs that have a lot of guts ... songs that seep into bone and time ... casts of characters and circumstances that grind their ways into fine powder we wear, girls who treated mink capes like ponchos ... damaged men who got breaks that resurrected them from the dead ...  Mary went to Florida one winter but wasn't allowed to get a tan and thus began the great folk rock scare and all that followed that aligned with certain peoples lives and shines all day still today.

  “It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: ‘This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree.’ If it were to go, all would go — this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.”                                                                                                                ...

Hi Laurie I just walked past you on Charles or Perry street, by the river - you were putting luggage in the trunk of a car. I almost stopped to say hey. I tai chi-ed with the crowd while you played violin the other night at  Little Island. We worked together one day thirty plus years ago … at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. You did intros for a Channel 13 independent film series - I remember Jim Cohens Lost Book Found was part of it. Home of the Brave was the best concert I ever experienced and Here With You will be played at my gathering when I kick.  Thank you for your art.  Regards,

  thanks for the old school correspondence. I was just talkin' to Bonner the other day and mentioned when I did my annual Labor Day rumination bout summer '26 - what popped up in my head was our fab Fire Island Louisiana Bollfest - when fun and talk and tales and laughs and music and tastes and drink were had by all. and yes, the place is easy to feel memorable - a touchstone about how easy and right and lovely life can be. and yes - as you mentioned - it does sustain me year round - the wonder and warmth of a perfectly beautiful place. 

had wine with Wendy last night after the screening and she told me about her city hall marriage years ago. they had to do it fast for immigration reasons and it was a Wednesday and they had to get a witness - an unemployed friend who could get downtown pronto. they called his French mother. She refused to do it ... said she didn't believe in marriage. then they thought of a friend - but Wendy hesitated because she was lesbian and she thought her girl might be unwilling to support an institution that didn't support her. Then Husband to Be called his friend with a wife who was making him more and more boring like herself and he showed up with her - and Wendy didn't want her name on their marriage license from that day forward. So much for just going down to City Hall to get hitched easy peezy .  

  … that Madonna always has a black roots center part. Like she wasn’t entitled to Medicare three years ago. … that the current day Bill Maher complained to a university president that colleges were too into cancel culture to book him and his guest said - well ,   students in the 60s didn’t book Don Rickles or Rodney Dangerfield. … that actors like Drew Barrymore and Ted Danson and Doogie Houser shill for gambling apps that lure people into a life destroying addiction. just writin'