the pink politic

Goodbye, Tony

Andrew and I volunteered yesterday to help in the monthly soup kitchen at the church we attend. I'd done some volunteer work before - children's hospital, community cleanups, etc. - but this was a new experience.

When we arrived at the church basement at 11:30am to help prep for the noon meal, there was already a line of people waiting at the door. Downstairs, we were confronted with plastic aprons, hairnets (eek!), latex gloves and name tags. In the kitchen, middle-aged women and teenage boys were preparing huge pots of sliced ham, sweet potatoes and green beans. The salads were ready and other volunteers sliced store-bought apple pies. (We later discovered suspicious green dots on the crust of some of the pie slices and decided against serving those pieces.) An elderly black gentleman dressed in his Sunday best, a brown suit and tie, introduced himself as Mr. Thomas. He poured apple juice into dozens of paper cups.

Because we lacked in the volunteer department, Andrew and I were each responsible for our own table. I served an elderly woman with crossed eyes who spoke only Spanish, a man who read the New York Times and listened to music on an MP3 player as he ate, a man who silently refused to eat anything and pawned off his plate on an obese woman at the next table, and a young man who came to the kitchen to thank me before he left.

But the most memorable of my patrons yesterday was Tony, a 75-year-old wearing dark sunglasses, who came in just as the crowds were dying down. I got him his food and found myself with nothing else to do, so Andrew and I decided to sit down with Tony. We hated the sight of someone eating alone. I wasn't sure if we were intruding or not, but I stopped worrying when Tony began offering up his life story in broken English. Born in Puerto Rico he came to New York in his 30s and spent the past 40-something years on the west side of Manhattan between 93rd and 133rd Streets, a stretch that encompasses the tail end of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights (home of Columbia University) and Harlem. Tony told us he'd worked as a dishwasher and played the drums in a band. Then Tony removed the dark sunglasses he'd been wearing to reveal a black eye and face full of broken blood vessels. Tony said he was an alcoholic 5 months clean and the injury was from his rougher days. He was close to sobbing when he described becoming addicted to alcohol, but laughed when he told us that his granddaughter was recently arrested for marijuana. Perhaps embarrassed by his honesty, Tony hurried out of the church basement, hobbling along on his cane, without saying goodbye.

posted by Tina @ 8:56 PM 1 comments

I'm on Poynter!

As any journalist knows, Poynter Online is the place to go for journalism news, tips, jobs, gossip, and everything in between. The site has several blogs for each of these topics and when I recently became a member of the site, I subscribed to Writing Tools, a blog by Roy Peter Clark on how to be a better writer. When Clark wrote last week about the joys of dialogue in stories and asked for our own uses of dialogue, I responded with the scene from my Master's Project (Is there anything wrong with pink?). Clark posted an excerpt from my piece on Poynter! See it here (scroll down, I'm the last one in the first post).

posted by Tina @ 4:44 PM 1 comments

NYC (New York Christmas)

posted by Tina @ 3:16 PM 1 comments

Santa

Andrew tagged me.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot Chocolate

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? The elves help with wrapping.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? White

4. Do you hang mistletoe on the house? I'd like to. Have to look into that.

5. When do you put your decorations up? We don't decorate the tree until I come home, so usually about a week before Christmas.

6. What is your favorite holiday meal (excluding dessert)? Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. That's an easy one.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Christmas Day and Grandma and Grandpa's house in Philadelphia. Everyone was there, surrounding the huge tree, unwrapping presents.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I'm still not convinced either way.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes, PJs from Plump.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Ornaments handcrafted by Joe and I as children, ornaments with memories (Baby's First Christmas 1984!), ornaments we've collected (miniature houses for me), gold beads, white lights, and a star on top.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? LOVE IT

12. Can you ice skate? I can ice stand.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? There have been many wonderful gifts.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Being thankful and showing the ones you love how much you love them.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Plump's Christmas cookies!

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Christmas Eve at our house

17. What tops your tree? A gold star. Dad used to lift me up when I'd put the star on. Now I have to stand on a chair we drag in from the kitchen.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? Giving

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Feliz Navidad (haha) I'm not sure...

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or yummy? Yummy

21. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Muppet Christmas Carol, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story, Home Alone (who can choose just one?)

22. What would you most like to find under your tree this year? A puppy (Andrew, I want a PUPPY!)

23. Favorite Holiday memory as an adult? Coming home.

posted by Tina @ 11:17 PM 1 comments

They all come alive at midnight!

Last night Andrew and I ventured out of our comfortable little borough to attend "First Saturdays" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It's the one night a month when admission is free and the museum brings in musicians and other events. The photo at right is the sight as you're walking up the steps of the Brooklyn Museum subway stop.

We saw Egyptian art, Islamic art, Oriental art, etc. etc. But I'd say the two best parts were the Annie Leibowitz exhibition, dozens and dozens of her photographs from the past 15 years, and the Ron Mueck sculptures. These were larger (and smaller) than life pieces that looked more like real human beings than any sculpture I'd ever seen. When we entered the museum, we turned a corner and were confronted by a humongous baby girl lying on a platform with the umbilical cord still attached. She had strands of wispy hair, creases in her neck, her little (big?) toes were clenched. Upstairs was the full exhibit. A thin, naked man with scraggly brown hair holding onto a chair with a frightened look on his face. A woman lying in a bed with a pensive stare and her knees pulled up to her chest. A fat, bald, naked man sitting and staring angrily at the crowds gathered around him. A couple spooning. We almost expected fat man to blink back at us or the woman to wipe her hair from her eyes. As one onlooker said, "They all come alive at midnight!" See a great slideshow of Mueck's work here.

posted by Tina @ 1:54 PM 0 comments