one thing today

  Use the noun  panopticon  to talk about a circular building — especially a prison with cells distributed around a central surveillance station. Eighteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham dreamed up the idea and was kind enough to bequeath us the word as well, from the Greek  pan , or "all," and  optikon , "of or for sight."

  Barefoot in the Park ... Robert Redford's character tells Jane Fonda they have downstairs neighbors in their Village brownstone and they're both the same sex ... but nobody knows which one  ...                                                   like that.

  ... 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 treat mink capes like ponchos ... damaged men who get breaks that resurrect 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'

Labor Day weekend always has its unique way. end of summer like end of weekend ... maybe   coulda shoulda been better . school begins. colors change.  Patti says life is a package. Her mantra, courtesy of Jimi H -  hooray I wake from yesterday. 

Little Island tonight ... poetry reading Allen G tribute ... Richard Gere read a poem called Homework, an MGM hippy couple corralled their baby during Golden Hour and Laurie A played her violin to tai chi with Lou's teacher. doin' his thing. got me out of my dark spread, with a little help from time and Pinocchio - who is so famous he auto corrects. 

  Joan Mitchell evoked landscape environments in many of her paintings, usually by conjuring physical sensations such as light, sound, and movement. In  Hemlock , the variations of short and long brushstrokes as well as the alteration between flashes of blue or green paint and larger areas of milky white create a sense of rhythm and movement. The white paint appears both behind and on top of the other colors, which blurs the definition of foreground and background—a stylistic hallmark of Mitchell’s work throughout her career. Although the horizontal green slashes in  Hemlock  might bring to mind a hemlock tree, Mitchell titled the work after it was completed. The title derives from a passage in a 1916 Wallace Stevens poem,  Domination of Black , which contains several references to hemlock, including: “Out of the window, / I saw how the planets gathered / Like the leaves themselves / Turning in the wind. / I saw how the night came, / Came striding like the color...

one day ... an early run, looks at folks, nutrition, a book maybe, music say, a sweetness or 2. so eazeey pezzey.  next day ... a fleshy, bloody cement slab that rivals a weakling rabbi who's gotta fly a wedding right after losing a not close at all call shank  fight.                                        why?

  I go to Home Depot and eyeball cheap, ugly rugs and then walk to Madison Park to Shake Shack. I order and wipe raindrops off a chair. This big, young, friendly looking lug of a guy at the next table over says … this one here is dry. Take it. I think for a few seconds - I’m not sure if he means take the chair back to my table or - if he means I should join him - so I sit at his table. He’s Bill - something close to that but fancier, Billem maybe - from Germany- call me Bill. He’s Bosnian and 27 and has a lovely accent and writes short stories and teaches wrestling to young kids after leaving a job in publishing. He looks like a big good ole Southern bearded bad boy but speaks very intelligently about his trip and home and work. He lives with his troubled mother in a forest outside of Stuttgart and is here until Sunday and then he’s off to Texas. We eat burgers and fries and he talks about Hemingway. I tell him I am on my way to Rizzollis bookstore and invite him to join me. He ...

David Sedaris was on my favorite podcast Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud. He said last night at his reading a man gave him a taxidermied baby chick his little sister was gonna throw out because it was her first try at it and she didn't think it was any good. He (David) gave it to another kid at the event, a seventeen year old boy - and told him to give it to his younger sister for Christmas.  Bella thinks aiming for comfort in fashion is the beginning of the end . It makes me think of a certain someone close to me who personifies that belief.   his (Davids) nyc home is full of expensive paintings and bad furniture & design choices - like ceramic owls and too small wildly expensive, famous art on big walls. surprising wow is all ... 

  I just met my new doctor. He doesn't look old enough to be one. He's been one for a year. I like him a lot. He's very personable and has big teeth and a great smile. He didn't know that women couldn't own credit cards in the 70s.  I went on an app just now ... how old do I look. you just download a recent pic. I'm feeling good. Told me that I look 14 years younger than I am. Yay.