Beyond what the Founders may have thought about church and state entanglements - which is what they were trying to avoid - the courts have consistantly ruled that the first amendment bars government action that leads to the endorsement, repression or entanglement with any religion. Government is defined as any agency of the state including schools, city hall, the court room or the DMV.
It is a misnomer to say that God cannot be mentioned in the school system. The courts have ruled that religion can be discussed as it relates to holidays or histroy, if it is germane to the overall discussion. That is why you CAN mention that Christmas is the story of the baby Jesus and his brith, and that Chanuka celebrates the oil lasting 8 days etc. They have also ruled that as long as religious holiday songs are part of a broader, SECULAR holiday celebration then it is ok. Same with the menorah or creche’ at Christmas. In and of themselves they are not illegal as long as they are part of a Secular display.
Notice in every case the state is not endorsing RELIGION (note the government is NOT allowed to endorse the concept of religion over non-belief), rather including religious beliefs with other beliefs. Even teaching ID, if carefuly done probably will fit the bill on legal issues - though an scientific issues its kind of like showing cavemen with dinosaurs.
I really wish those on the fringe left would understand what the courts have decided and quit baiting those on the other side who just want to be happy with their faith. More so I wish the blow hards like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the like would understand that in this country they get to choose for themselves and NOT for me. When both sides respect the other and play within the rules then maybe we can move off of this issue and onto the very real problems facing the nation.
Stumble it!
My computer’s been drinking not me. Sorry Tom Waits I just love corrupting “my piano’s been drinking not me.” Been corrupting that song title for 25 years now, and most people never get it.
I could probably write a whole post just using song titles and phrases by Tom Waits, and Warren Zevon. It would read beautifully, and nobody would get it, including me.
Sorry had a pity-party type of day, and I need to entertain myself. I enjoy my own company, and am not in the mood for TV, movies, reading, company or anything fun but writing in my blog(s).
As I have already said somewhere, I’m a perfectionist who can’t do anything perfectly. I’m a true obsessive/compulsive, but I hate being obsessed about things so I indulge my compulsive side by letting myself write until the cows come home, which is pretty difficult in the Upper West Side, of Manhattan.
Also I have never found a medication for obsessive/compulsives that doesn’t have side affects such as depression and massive weight gain. I hate being depressed, and I was always kind of known for my looks, so I enjoy being hyper now. It lets me be productive and lose weight at the same time.
What does this have to do with my computer, the recovering alcoholic? It began crashing often months ago. Then it became corrupted with spam that I kept on finding everywhere. It was like sweeping shattered glass; I kept on finding more things for weeks. I installed a heavy duty virus program; it became much worse. I had always kept up with maintenance, it had all the latest Microsoft patches.
Bad moves. You can never really uninstall all of the programs, and they can play havoc. It took me awhile to understand that my computer, like me, is no longer 30, in computer years.
My computer is a thing of beauty with its 20 gauge steel chassis, okay LCD screen, mouse with charger, and streamlined cordless keyboard that does many things. When people see it for the first time they’re amazed by its beauty, and how it blends into my surroundings.
I had the earliest version of XP; after a disc reinstall I now have the newest version. It’s like having a new computer. One that actually works, and has new icons and features that I’ve never seen before.
But there’s the me factor. I’m the person who can write great training manuals, but can’t follow directions. That was the reason I was so good at writing manuals; when I first began training people I had one of the few eureka moments in my life.
I realized that other people thought sequentially and in steps. This had eluded me for 27 years. I only began doing well in school in my last two years of university when I took interdisciplinary classes in Urban Studies. It was then that I discovered the magic that writing a good paper brings.
But the knowledge that other people thought in sequential steps was probably the biggest thing I ever learned. I learned to put directions into their most simple form. I began to write like Hemingway if he had lost the machismo, and didn’t tell stories.
I was a project supervisor in a project that had begun with 240 employees, was reduced to a 120, in a giant lay-off, none of us will ever forget as we partied for days. I still feel the hangover.
the project was expanded to over 1200 employees. There were 80 groups with a supervisor and fifteen employees. I was close with everybody in management. The human resources manager swore that they interviewed one person and another person showed up. We had some rather unique employees. God it was fun at first.
One day I asked the human resource manager aka Elena, one of the original Blenderbusters, if the project manager watched the new employees and picked out the ones who were (truly, sadly) brain damaged, and the behavioral problem employees, and saved them for me. Elena, who has a wicked sense of humor, just laughed.
It couldn’t have been more obvious, because as soon as somebody learned t
Stumble it!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Many people interpret this as meaning that people are free to practice any religion that they wish to. I totally agree. The second part of the, first part, of the sentence specifically states that.
What I disagree with is the inference that, therefore, separation of church and state isn’t specifically spelled out.
IT IS IN JAMES MADISON’S ORIGINAL DRAFT. HE WAS INFLUENCED BY THOMAS JEFFERSON {Read National Religion)
I believe that the first part of the sentence means that the government plays no part in establishing a religion. If that doesn’t separate church from state,what does?
Is the new argument going to be: my religion is already established; the government had nothing to do with establishing it, therefore the government should subsidize it, and declare it to be the national religion?
Or: all religions have already been created outside of the government and therefore each religion should be subsidized prorata to the amount of their members? I really can’t see anybody arguing that and yet it could be a valid argument. Think about the amount of national holidays we could get. Don’t forget all the displays outside the courthouse.
Okay that’s really sick, but…So I decided to take the phrase apart.
What does the word “respecting” mean in that phrase?
I went to the oldest dictionary I could find Merriam’s 1913 editionRe*spect”ing, prep.
With regard or relation to; regarding; concerning; as,
respecting his conduct there is but one opinion.
Choose a definition. Usually we would use the first two, and they both fit. I personally like the third:
We are of one, and only one opinion that Congress shall not pass a law establishing a religion.
We’ve already established that the second part says that people are free to practice any religion that they choose to.
You’re right, all of you who have corrected me, it doesn’t specifically separate church and state, yet the intent couldn’t be plainer.
I don’t often think that I’m right but I sure do in this case. One of the first things that I learned in school was that the United States was founded upon the principle of separation of church and state. All those teachers in Queens NY and Nassau County, Long Island, couldn’t have been wrong could they have been?
You mean all my teachers lied to me? Omigod, I have to give back all my degrees and return to kindergarten!
Stumble it!
I read a comment this afternoon on www.cantkeepquiet.com post, on Who’s Your Daddy on that sickened me. THE COMMENT SICKENED ME, NOT THE POST, that I loved.
Sorry have the hyperlink on Blogger problem, and can’t get back into cantkeepquiet at all. Also probably have the Time Warner Cable-it’s-icy-so-we-can’t-function-problem, as I haven’t been able to get into many sites, and my computer was just fine-tuned and has been acting like new. Now back to the subject….
Wish that I could get into the comment and paste it as I can’t do it justice. Basically it said that Mulligan of Cantkeepquiet.com had prejudged as classless, a Fox show where a woman would pick her birth father out of eight possibilities.
The commenter, Matt T, (remember the name, I hope; won’t give him the satisfaction of a complete names and a Google entry) said that it was a very classy show where the woman not only met her birth father but three half-siblings (think there were more people) but had chosen to, and Mulligan should concentrate on more pressing matters like the Tsunami, the state of the world, world peace–you know all the important things.
A little lesson for Mr. T: Life, is made up of everyday happenings, and in times of tragedy, life goes on for the rest of us. We can feel the pain, we can give until it hurts, we can risk arrest for protesting the current administration, but we still live.
We still work, eat, sleep, get married, get divorced, have kids, lose people to natural death during disasters. In New York we learned that all the hard way.
Currently we are wondering why we even care about answering a comment by somebody who finds anything on Fox classy–except maybe The OC.
Because as an adoptee, I find it adoption “reunion” shows to be pandering, disturbing, unrealistic, insulting and the ultimate in classless behavior.
Occasionally I would tape an Oprah reunion show. They made me sick–especially when Oprah would smile at the camera and say, at the end, “not all reunions end like these.”
Nor should any sane adoptee, who had “decent” parents want them to. They’re feeding into a fantasy that should have ended somewhere in adolescence. I’m not a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Maybe I was lucky; my parents told me that I was adopted along with my name. They shared the story as they had been told it with my younger sister and me. They did leave out the illegitimate part until I was twelve and would have figured it out soon.
I was going to turn this into a homage to my mother, but that will be in her own post. My mother was my best friend; we could communicate without speaking. She had an uncanny ability to know what I was feeling before I even realized it. I left home at eighteen, but our friendship continued to blossom, and became one of equals. It’s been over three years, since she died, and I still go to call her when something, or nothing, happens.
My parents encouraged me to search for my birth mother so I always felt empowered, in many ways. They were my parents in every sense of the word.
I have nothing against meeting birth parents. I think it’s normal to be curious and it’s good to find out as much as I can about my DNA.
I’ve only had one set of real parents, and to meet a birth parent on TV, and “feel a sense of completion I’ve never felt before,” would be a lie. How could I meet people I feel no connection to on TV?
To make these meetings glamorous is cruel to all the people who were adopted from foreign countries and never can meet their birth parents.
It’s cruel to everyone who wants to meet their birth parents but won’t be able to for some reason or another.
It’s cruel to their families.
More than that it’s one of the most private of encounters.
Would you want to meet your parents on TV?
People talk about Extreme Makeover being cruel as the people have only two months to make a physical transformation.
Meeting a birth parent entails a psychic transformation.
It can be awkward, scary, and leave a person emptier than before she found her birth parent.
I know. Meeting my birth mother was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. My birth mother is a good woman, but she’s my mother in DNA and birth only.
I always thought of my birth father as the sperm donor since she had told the agency very little about him, and what she told them turned out to be made up.
My birth mother can never take the place of my mother, and when we met she began to understand that I wasn’t looking for the original. If that sounds harsh it’s the truth. i have room for many friends but only one mother and one father.
I’m aware that many people don’t like their adoptive parents and/or have had horrible ones. Let me be harsh about this. How many “natural” children don’t like their parents and/or have horrid ones?
We don’t always get the parents we want or deserve. Nobody is more aware of that than an adoptee.
Adoptees are always aware that it’s the luck of the draw. We’re, all of us, randomly made. A random sperm meets a random egg–except in modern technology.
I was proud to be my parents daughter; but I knew adoptees who had parents I would want to ditch in a cabbage field.
I knew more adoptees who loved their parents. I went to a progressive sleep-away camp where there were more adoptees than usual. Or more kids who had been told that they were adopted.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to learn that you’re adopted from a cousin or a neighbor. It’s difficult for me to imagine parents being so insecure or suffering from other problems that keep them from telling their child. I consider it a form of child neglect.
But is any good served by meeting your parent(s) on TV? You become a public figure. What happens when the relationship goes south and the local newspaper decides to do a follow-up?
Do you refuse to do the interview, tell the truth or perpetuate another lie? I told my friends that I was adopted after we moved to a garden apartment development when i was four. They told their parents. Their parents called mine and asked if I was a chronic liar as I said that I was adopted but couldn’t be as I fit in my family too well.
My parents didn’t tell me this until I was an adult, but I sensed the undercurrents. Yet I remember how much their friends and family loved me. I was a welcome addition; not somebody who anybody ever thought of as being adopted.
Reunion shows deserve to be talked about.
Over 140,000 people died last week.
For the rest of us, life and all its little wonderful, horrible happenings go on.
Would anybody really want it any other way?
Stumble it!
I wrote three posts on me for my new site. The site’s up; I’m still feeling my way; this is one of the posts.
I am a study in perpetual motion.
I am hyper. Somebody told me he had found it endearing. I wish I had known that when I was younger.
I’m extremely self-conscious
At the same time I don’t give a damn as to what people think.
I thought that I was fat when I was a perfect size eight
To one person in the world I will always be nineteen and perfect
When I’m bored, tired, anxious, angry, I play with my split-ends. It’s better than yoga.
My mom always told me to be positive. I told her to stop being Miss. Mary Sunshine. Now I understand.
I have turned into, to my great surprise, a very happy person despite the horrible condition of the world.
In eighth grade I had to give a speech. I lost my voice and thought that I would never speak again.
I can be a compulsive talker
I thought that I was the most unpopular person in the history of the world in Junior High.
People made fun of me a lot then. They called me names and much worse.
I got more than revenge in high school, the later years, and college.
I’m physically awkward though it seems to bother only me
People like to make fun of me (in the good sense) because I can act like such a ditz
Then I give it back to them
I’m a perfectionist who can’t do anything perfectly.
I have fooled many people into thinking I’m a paragon of perfection
They confuse compulsion with perfection
I want to get married again when I’m in my 60’s. I have awhile to think about that
My parents were convinced that I was going to become an actress. They neglected to tell me until I was 40
My father was more into finding my birth parents than I was
He was naturally curious about everything
So am I.
Oh yes, I was adopted. I’m glad my family (adoptive) and I found each other.
I strongly believe in a woman’s right to choose. So did my mom.
My mother thought that a perfect mother-daughter activity was shopping at Loehmann’s. I begged to differ as I hate shopping for clothes
I have always been known for the beauty of my best girlfriends; I wonder what that makes me?
My parents thought I was the most incredible baby and kid on earth except for my sister.
I peaked at eight
I have multiple learning disabilities that weren’t diagnosed until I was in my 30’s
Disabilities don’t make you a better person; they’re not a different able or any stupid cute expression.
They do make you stronger.
I had three serious marriage proposals by the time I was 21, I had been on about ten real dates in my life.
We didn’t date then, we hung.
I lived with a crazy man—well he was crazier than the others
I like making people laugh, and that’s good as I seem to do it without thought.
Sunday night is TV night; it’s the only time I watch live-not DVR’d TV.
I make exceptions for weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and funerals.
I’ve never been to a funeral on a Sunday night
My hobby is collecting sky miles. Somebody already wrote a book about that.
I love to take long walks. When I go on vacation I walk a minimum of ten miles a day.
I should be in great shape.
I’m sort of fit; I guess that’s something
Stumble it!
Two hour Fox TV program tonight: an adoptee wins $100,000 if she guesses which man is her “real biological” father.
In my vocabulary “real biological” is a cruel oxymoron when used in conjunction with adoption.
When I was a child adoption issues were swept under the carpet. Except that my parents could never get with the program and made being adopted seem like the greatest thing in the world to me and fave-sis who wasn’t.
You know what? Being adopted was great. I lucked out in my family choice.
But I had multiple problems that grew worse with puberty. I went into pre-menstrual hormone rage at age nine two years before I got my first period. I was clumsy; I was the last to be picked for a team; I was shunned by former friends. It was no longer enough that I could make up games and had an imagination.
I won’t go into the myriad of therapists I saw or how they all focused on one factor–I was adopted. I’m sure that I have writings about it in my blog somewhere. (I will archive according to subject on my new site.)
The point is that they were wrong and instead of focusing on how I could learn to spell, be organized, not care about being able to sing, not care that I was awkward and much more, they tried to get me to admit that I hated being adopted and resented my parents for having adopted me.
I couldn’t admit to what wasn’t true. Even as a child I knew that. But so much time was wasted because my family was more honest than other families, and therapists weren’t used to a very verbal child who refused to give them what they wanted, but still wanted them to like and respect me.
Then the adoption movement began: Some facts I learned. I had never bonded with my parents that was impossible–I imprinted with them. I didn’t have true learning disabilities or ADHD–I chose to have these problems as a way of resolving my inner anger.
Would any bright kid who had always been happy have chosen to be the kid the teacher picked out as the most disorganized, the sloppiest, the this, the that? I don’t think even subconsciously I picked these problems.
I learned that meeting my birth mother would immediately solve all these problems. Then I learned that of course I needed time to heal and spend with her.
You know what I really learned? That many people are incredibly unhappy and want to push their unhappiness on others. They develop “schools of knowledge,’ to back their absurd hypotheses. At one point “The official dictionary of Adoption” defined “adoptive parent’s’ as slave owners. I rest my case.
It took me many years to understand that i had real problems that I hadn’t chosen subconsciously and therefore didn’t have to feel guilty about them. “Guilt” is something else that adoptive parents are supposed to make their child feel. Doesn’t every parent in someway or another?
I stopped feeling guilty after I bought my first computer and realized that the playing field was more level. With a computer I can spell, organize my thoughts (somewhat), keep files and my life in order.
I have horrible hand-to-eye coordination. Another problem that was supposed to have been caused by my being adopted. Amazing the problems you can get from the mere act of being adopted.
Computers have improved my hand-to-eye coordination immensely. I refuse to play the if only computers had been around in their present form when I was younger. I know that there was no limits to how high I could have flown.
Guess what? I’m still relatively young. I can still soar. I’m just learning how high I can fly. It’s fun and I love almost every moment of my life. Sue me if I’m happy in a horrible time. It’s fun to feel in charge of my life. I could never feel that way before I never felt organized enough. Though I seemed to be at work and other places.
But when something Like Who’s your daddy comes on TV I regress. This isn’t choosing a potential mate you could break up with. This is trying to idealize your biological father.
It’s sick.
My daddy thought that I was brilliant.
My daddy shared child raising chores with my mom.
He changed his share of diapers.
He would take me into the city to show me his world.
He thought that I had unlimited potential, if I only knew it, and if I could be a little more organized, this and that.
My daddy wasn’t perfect.
My daddy loved his family fiercely.
My daddy sought out challenges and adventures. He taught us to do the same.
My daddy mixed metaphors and made up his own:
“There are four burners on a stove for a reason. Live a four burner life.”
My daddy never talked down to me.
He didn’t believe in some of my beliefs, but he never tried to impose his views on me.
“If you weren’t rebelling against me, you would be rebelling against the world.”
He wanted me to see the world and made sure that I saw much of it.
He grew to talk to me as an equal.
I grew up enough to listen.
We were constantly giving each other advice.
He wanted me to stand up for what I believed in, and was proud of me for doing just that.
He thought that I was brilliant and that I was making too much of my problems.
I was.
He didn’t believe that most guys in my generation were worth anything and taught us to be self-sufficient.
All he really wanted was for his daughters to be happy.
I am.
He was a “compassionate conservative” who believed in free speech, a woman’s right to choose; and that I had every right to find my birth parents.
***************
I don’t owe my parents anything.
They chose to help me become an individual worth knowing.
They were just doing what they believed was their job as parents.
They would have been gravely insulted had I acted like I owed them for the privilege of having adopted me.
Somehow they thought they were the privileged ones.
Thank you mommy and daddy.
I know who my parents are.
I will never go on TV to pick out my “real biological parents.”
I might not share my parents DNA, but I share their thought processes.
They were my only real parents and I thank them for that privilege.
They would have said the second part of the above wasn’t right.
Thank you my parents for thinking that.
Stumble it!
I tried linking an article from The New York Times “Evangelical leader threatens to use his political muscle against some democrats,” and the hyperlink didn’t take. Still have a few related-to-my-computer-problems to work out.
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, says that there will be “a battle of enormous proportions from ’sea to shining sea,’ if President Bush fails to appoint ’strict constructionist” jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block Conservative nominations.’”
Understand something. I don’t hate Christians or people of any religion. What I hate are people who try to put their views onto me.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that this is a Christian country. I keep on saying that because many people seem to think that it does say that. I will keep on saying that until the day I die, or people understand, or I’m silenced by people who don’t believe in the concepts the United States of America was founded upon.
Our country was founded upon the principles of freedom. Religion is one very big freedom. Let’s take the old creche in front of the courthouse argument. Personally I couldn’t care less, let people display their religious symbols. But then Jews would have to be allowed to put up Menorah’s or Stars of David’s, and Muslims would have to be allowed and so on, even if no non-Christian asks because:
Separation of church and state is specifically spelled out in the The First Amendment to The Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. I hate guns, but it’s a Constitutional right and therefore….Though I can understand people will argue that the Constitution can be amended.
The problem with that argument, that even I who has absolutely no understanding of logic–in the LSAT way, is that the Constitution is amended to further freedoms not to take them away.
What has always separated us from other countries is our Constitution. Yes it’s based on the British Magna Carta but it goes much further. We are the country of last resort. We’re the country people have traditionally wanted to come to in order to seek freedom and riches.
We’re the country that guarantees the pursuit of happiness.
What other country has ever said in the document declaring us to be independent: “the pursuit of happiness?” That’s an amazing phrase. It’s telling us to seek enjoyment of life. What other country has ever included that in its Declaration of Independence. What other country has ever had a Declaration of Independence?
Don’t you get it? We were the first country in the history of the modern world to guarantee a person rights. “Certain unalienable rights…Among these are life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” “Among these,” I assume and know, means these rights are just the beginning.
Yet the far right (and I include ultra Orthodox Jews in that) basically wants to amend the Constitution to make it suit their agenda. Shouldn’t “strict constructionists” want to keep separation of church and state if they’re talking about the Constitution? If they’re talking about The New Testament please let me know because I don’t live in a country where that is the official Bible.
I’ve testified in court about five times, several times as an expert witness. Only once was I given a New Testament and asked to swear to it. (Usually there was a Bible with both the Old and New Testaments, that I didn’t have to touch.) I felt strange; I also felt a little giddy.
Because as a Jew I’m not supposed to swear to anything, and The New Testament was after our time. I thought about how if I was religious and wanted to change the outcome of my testimony-and maybe the case I could have lied because my swearing would have meant nothing in the eyes of G-d. We’re not supposed to write out the word.
I could have asked for an Old Testament and had the word “promise” substitute for “swear,” but I knew what I was going to say, was testifying on behalf of a Catholic institution, and it wasn’t important to me. I don’t mean that the Catholic institution was unimportant to me–it was very important to my life as it employed me. I mean that the actual case I was testifying on was a proforma case that I won’t go into here.
Maybe it was more important to me than I had thought as I felt a little sick for days afterward. It felt as if I had done something illegal and/or dirty. Enough about my one personal experience swearing to a Bible not mine.
What really scares me is how people don’t want good old fashioned arguments. They just want what they know to be right–whether on the left, the right, the middle, whatever. When did arguing go out of style in this country?
When did everything become so malicious?
Think about this: the words “under God” were not added to the Pledge of allegiance until 1955, I think, the end of The McCarthy era and the middle of The Cold War. My parents talked about Joseph McCarthy a lot. I’ve read many books and have seen many movies on the era. I don’t want to go back to a time where people were encouraged to spy on their neighbors or report suspicious activities.
And for my clever remark of the year, oh yes, we’re back there again. This time, though, more of us aren’t afraid to speak our minds–on every side. That’s good.
We don’t have a Father Coughlin to listen to on the radio every Sunday night. (He was a noted 30’s anti-Semite).
But more of us are sprouting malicious sick comments every day. We have so much talent in this country; so much diversity; so many different countries converging into one. I believe that’s the true beauty of America.
Why can’t debate be somewhat civil?
Stumble it!
I began this blog as an easy way to keep my writing organized and to practice. Then it grew and took on a life of its own,
Since Blogger can only archive but not organize each post into categories, and I didn’t want to go the different blogs for different posts especially since half the time I have no idea what’s going to come out, I began to get my own site together. It’s up but not in really great shape yet. Still tweaking it. WWW.Courtingdestiny.com–hopefully it will be tweaked and ready this coming week.
One of the things that is taking so long is my compulsion to do things correctly, once and then let things just happen. I want to archive my old work that’s on Blogger in categories, and that’s taking awhile. Plus I’m having a hard time thinking up categories. I will stay on Blogger and BE under the current URL so that people can find me, because I haven’t said Courtingdestiny.com 30,000 times and believe that nobody will find me.
My computer was drinking a lot, has been hung over, and is now in recovery. It had many problems most caused not by viruses, but by virus protectors, general old age (three years old–I thought it was young/middle aged) and some by a person who installed a browser she liked that I don’t use that left its footmarks even after the uninstall.
Why do kids always listen to me and adults never do? That’s generalizing and maybe rhetorical, than again maybe not.
Anyway the whole point of this post is to ask a couple of questions:
1) Is compulsion a bad thing?
2) Do other people go this compulsive when setting up a new site or even on Blogger
3) Is this a productive way to spend time or am I hiding from sending out query letters with published works?
4) Does anybody really care that the three films on my semi-permanent DVR collection are School of Rock, Love Stinks and Secretary?
5) Is blogging the almost ultimate narcissism?
6) Is it a major revolution in the way people communicate?
I’m truly curious.
Stumble it!
Happy New Year. It’s a beautiful day. I hope that bodes well for the coming year. Were my mom on this earth she would tell me to get out and take a walk. But I was in Central Park until one Am last night, so she might have excused me on those grounds.
We walked passed Tavern on The Green. Last year there had been ice sculptures and everybody was allowed into the grounds. This year it was balmy and Benny E King was singing outside in the courtyard of the restaurant. Remember him from early childhood “There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.” and other great ’50’s song.
At the band-shell there was a DJ who basically played techno music when he wasn’t playing Frank’s version of “New York, New York.” There was hot chocolate, tea, coffee, a mini-marathon, and the night reminded me of everything that’s good about New York. The crowds were further downtown. We had our own fireworks in the park.
I’m the dodo who asked Lucia and Little Luce what time the fireworks would be. Glad I could be of some amusement value.
I had a bottle of Moet left over from the election. It was the bottle of champagne we were going to celebrate with. (Not the double L’s; it was a school night and Lucia usually stays home when Little Luce has to go to school the next day.)
When I was growing up my parents would go out every New Years to a fancy dress party or costume party. My parents went out every Saturday and I assumed that I would when I grew up.
Well I got married without ever having been on a real date and we had known each other for four years so I don’t know why I thought I would live a sophisticated life.
Okay, we had gone out on about five real dates, but even back in the late ’60’s early ’70’s we traveled in packs. Our idea of a big evening was sitting around looking at each other; our idea of a really big evening was sneaking into the Fillmore East before the main act. (I know that we girls passed for groupies; but I’m not sure what the boys passed for, probably roadies–I mean rock stars, of course.) Or going with a minimum of 20 people to Hong Fat in Chinatown at two AM and running into 40 more people we knew.
I’m thinking about this because the first time I remember meeting INYTBA (an affectionate acronym) was at the Band-shell though we lived on Long Island; and had met there many times. I think the Jefferson Airplane was playing.
The spring before, when I was still in high school, I had seen Country Joe & The Fish “One two three four what are we fighting for,” there. I thought about those lyrics a lot last night. All these years later and I’m wondering again, and the country is polarized once more. I thought about the Band-shell, Central Park, the Be-In’s, the many concerts I have seen there and all the other ways Central Park has been important to me.
I did end up living a somewhat sophisticated life for a number of years. When I lived across from the park in the East 60’s I would have a small New Years Eve party every year for six to ten of my best friends. Then I would have a
First Saturday After New Years Party or Lucia’s Annual Surprise Birthday Party for anywhere from 75 to 200 people. The parties would end somewhere about dawn. I don’t pine for them or the times but sometimes think that somebody else was living my life. I couldn’t have known all those people. Me? But I did.
My friend Patrick would have fancy dress dinners with five courses, and many forks. As my father had been a waiter summers during high school and college, I could set a perfect table by the age of eight.
But Patrick would get so crazed that Lucia or I would use the wrong fork, I would use a wrong fork on purpose just to see his reaction. Patrick and his lover would buy huge tins of Beluga caviar something I proudly hate, and I would feed Patrick my portion by slipping him my portion, by putting my spoon into his hand under the table, so I was never uncouth. It was fun watching Patrick being scared that we would embarrass him in front of his friends from Sutton Place.
I thought about Patrick last night and all the free operas and symphony’s we had attended in The Park.
My Central Park history goes back so long I don’t remember ever not knowing it. My dad would take fave sis and I to climb on rocks–just like the ones he had climbed on when he was growing up in East Harlem, and Central Park was his backyard. Only we wouldn’t go to the northern part of the park then because it wasn’t safe. It is now.
It felt great to be in a place that brings back pleasurable memories and to know that Little Luce was storing her memories in her memory bank to be handed down to still another generation.
It felt great to get away from the real world and its problems for a few hours.
Even the anti-war memories were filtered through a hazed over moon.
Stumble it!
