distraction

We have a day of no court proceedings. The witnesses for the respondent (the respondents being the bad guys) aren’t available until next week and so there you have it. A hush settles in. It’s as if it’s a snow day, only without the snow.


It’s our walking up and down Manhattan day. I can’t remember a visit to New York that doesn’t include it.

Fortified with a Bruno breakfast of lotsa eggs and breads and butter, we set out. From Bleecker Street...





...and, well, a few steps later, we stop. There is a display of photos of West Village homes (including a number of Bleecker Street brownstones) where artists lived and died at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

It would be a somber way to begin our walk, but for the posted quotes from the men and women, commenting in their final months on the worth of life and their pleasure at having lived it. (I am unfairly generalizing here, but the messages are quite beautiful and positive, without the bitterness that surely at some level these artists must have felt.)


And now our walk takes us to Washington Square. And we realize, as do others, that this is going to be a very warm day.









We continue north on Broadway. At 32nd street we stop for a couple of hours. I visit a friend who is recuperating at the Hope Lodge after a difficult medical procedure. She’s doing well and expecting to be back in Madison at the end of June. It's greatly reassuring to have this chat with her, as if it were any noon chat that we are likely to have on Bascom Hill.


Ed and I continue on Broadway, to the newly jazzed up Herald Square. You have to have somewhat mixed feelings here. Broadway becomes partly pedestrian and then almost fully pedestrian at Times Square.





Having lived with the Times Square of taxis and traffic nightmares, I should be thrilled to see this freshly created communal space. And yet, it’s only partly that. The cross streets still have traffic and the pedestrians still must pay attention to streetlights and cars. But the boundaries between sidewalk and street are fluid now. A bike path, weaving its way through the nightmare of people, cross streets and food vendors is trampled over by unseeing pedestrians, at the same time that brazen cyclists will give perhaps one warning, if that, and then speed into the crowd.

And so it feels like a loud and brutal place, at the same time, as so many have pointed out, it has also the aura of a mall.





Still, I appreciate the freedom of movement. The walk across Broadway, the easy access to better vantage points.

But it is also true that we are quite happy to move on. Many a stronger person succumbs to the exhaustion of merely being here, on Times Square.





We ramble on. And it is not necessarily a speedy ramble. Occasionally I stop with my camera... (I mean, who can resist recording ads referencing New York’s current plague?)





And very often Ed pauses to make a note. Because he’s not really taking a day off at all. He’s thinking of what still needs to be said at the trial. I know he wants to fill in gaps, his good narrative at the cross exam notwithstanding.


We’re at Lincoln Center now and I want to spend time at the fountain. I’ve read a lot about its recent installation (think Peter Kopik, fountain genius of the world, the man who gave us, on a smaller scale, the fountain at the Detroit airport). I watch its varying streams of water. Ed takes notes. His mind is now officially elsewhere.









Across the street from Lincoln Center, several dozen cooks and chefs are congregating on the sidewalk. A convention? No, actually a bomb scare, emptying out a local restaurant. This, too, is New York in the spring of 2010.






We walk up Amsterdam, and I pause for a coffee and cupcake at Magnolia Cupcakes. Expensive Magnolia cupcakes.





I’m surprised they don’t offer what I am used to seeing at (expensive) cupcake places in DC – fresh ingredients in strawberry cupcakes, or lemon cupcakes, or coconut cupcakes. I ask about the pink creamed one. Oh, that’s just our standard topping, but in pink. Ah. I settle for the blueberry crumble.



We’re ready for the park. It is so warm now that I am down to an undershirt. I’m hesitant, because I know it is an undershirt. Ed walks up to two women – brassy looking women, I have to add. Listen, this lady here – he points to me – thinks maybe she should not be parading in that undershirt. What do you think? Ed knows how to make me blush. Not because of the shirt, but because of the question.
Oh for God’s sake, this is New York! Wear what you like! -- they respond. Predictably.






I tell Ed that I think Central Park has changed. For the better. It’s greener, fresher, less trampled down. Attention is paid to directing people toward spaces that wont be smothered by their presence.










It’s a lovely afternoon. For dogs, men, women, children. For those who speak and look like they just stepped off the plane from the old country. For those (like me once, here in NY) who walk home from school with a book that needs to be worked on at home but who prefer, instead, to dally and eat a pretzel.










We are weaving south now. Past the dazzling and energetic street show of gymnastic movement.





Past crowds of Fifth Avenue tourists (and there are a lot of them), but we are hurrying a little now, because we want to get to the Museum of Modern Art's Friday evening special: free entrance.





Because we are there during the no fee hours, the museum is packed. But we don’t mind. It’s always cool to see people enjoying a museum and there is so much to love now about MoMA.





I had wanted to split our time between the special exhibitions (the photography of my absolute travel-with-camera hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the live art of Marina Abramovic) and the paintings of the early twentieth century, but the special exhibitions were far too wonderful to walk through quickly.

The photos – what can I say, photojournalism doesn’t get much better than that. And the live art, too is fully mesmerizing – much of it is bold, even by New York standards. Take the two very naked and very still women standing less than a foot apart, facing each other, inviting you with their presence in the doorway to squeeze through (a guard is at the side and discourages big people from attempting this). Or the artist herself inviting anyone to sit on a chair facing her, for as long as you want.





Most of this can’t be photographed. By the time we reached the regular collections (where you can take photos), we are spent. A few (far less crowded) rooms, and we are done.





We cheat after the museum. It’s not that we’re tired of walking, even though we’ve been more or less steadily on our feet for some six hours. But it’s Friday and we want to get back to the Village before the week-end crowds make eating dinner difficult. We take two stops on the subway and then walk to the bar at Fish.





For the oyster and wine deal. And for one small lobster roll. Because it looked so good on the plates of others.





In our Bleecker Street apartment, Ed goes back to reviewing court transcripts and taking notes. It’s not time for us to talk about the trial yet. I leave him to his work and take a midnight stroll around the Village.

his day in court

The trial starts earlier. 10:00 a.m. It’s an important day, because Ed is on the stand again, to be cross-examined by opposing counsel. The attack comes, of course, during this part of the drama.

In stark contrast to Wednesday, the day is brilliant. One of those moments when the wind blew away all upper air disturbances and left behind deep blue skies and sunshine.

We arrive a few minutes early. I know Ed is well prepared, and I also know he wants to do more than just give the correct answers. He wants badly to squeeze in a narrative – that forest – and there may or may not be questions that’ll permit it.

Five minutes. I have time to run up to the 6th floor bathroom. I hurry. And once again, the ladies’ room door is locked. Women in the court? Maybe, but the bathroom rights remain very oddly stacked against them, here in the court house of New York City. Never mind, the men’s room door is wide open. No one is there, no one is even on this upper floor, in I go.

No sooner do I close the door to the stall than I hear the tap tap tap of a cane. Oh God! I know that cane! It’s the respondent – the man behind all the litigation. I make not a sound. I think – he cannot find me here. Tap tap tap. I feel as if I am in a scene from the Godfather. That there will be blood on the walls soon in this ancient bathroom with the small tiles and the heavy wooden gates to the stalls.

I peer below the gate. He’s still there. Washing his hands. Drying them. And then washing them again. Loud running water, paper towel dispenser lets out more towels... How long, for God’s sake? And what if a stream of others comes in?

The door bangs, he’s gone.



The cross exam begins. From the start, Ed is slammed with questions intended to throw him off. We talked about taking time with answers and he does. I am hoping he is not unnerved. I know he is very goal directed. I know he can get back into his own words.

He does. Brilliantly. The opposing counsel, a litigation expert at a top NY firm, thinking that he may weave in uncomfortable issues long forgotten, actually opens the door and invites the very narrative Ed was hoping to work in.

After, Ed catches my eye and grins.

His lawyers beam.

We break for lunch.


There are other facets of the proceeding that I’ll leave aside. But I’ll say this much – it really helps to have good counsel, a good client, and to be on the side of right.


Ed is too full of adrenaline for a sit down meal and so we take a walk – to the park across the street...





...then up the Brooklyn Bridge, and back again.





He is going through the cool down period. You know how it is after the exam. Thoughts of phrasing you may have used, other details you should have mentioned. We walk and intermittently talk of the cross, and of the bridges around us. Of previous trips to New York, of being here as kids. Same years – the 1960s, he, up on 68th street, me down on 46th street, but of such different worlds! And still, traveling companions now, of sorts.






In the evening, we take the subway up to another bridge – the George Washington. Ed’s friends are meeting us there and taking us across the Hudson...





...to a Jersey restaurant. A small, neighborhood Turkish place with excellent salads and spinach pie and a warm, honeyed cheese desert.





We ride the subway back to the Village. Tired, but in a good way. Not in the New York life is a hassle way. Not like this mom I saw earlier, with three little girls, frustrated with their inability to get a cab, even though the little girls wont stop trying...





... and not like the tired faces I see all the time on the subway. Closed eyes to shut away the screaming noise of the cars, the crowds, the bills, the missed opportunities.






The mattress is low. Ed blows it up again.

bubbles and eating establishments of lower Manhattan

Ed suggests we apply suds to the air mattress. Standard way to find a leak – he tells me. I’ve seen him do this with bicycle inner tubes. But we’re looking at a big mattress with a very small leak. Though perhaps not so small. The air loss is considerably faster now. We can’t even make it halfway through the night without feeling the floor.

He sponges over the surfaces and we watch for bubbles. Nothing. I feel for the trickle of air with my hand. Nothing.

Where’s the closest Walmart? Target? Sears? Kohl’s? The thing about Manhattan is that it has none of the above.

It’s been a long day...



On the up side, on this miserably cold and wet Wednesday, I met the last of the missing Ed brothers. They haven’t been missing really, but what’s been missing is the opportunity to see them all in the same room at the same time. The last such occasion was before my time and I doubt that another will happen in my lifetime.



And here’s another upside: I found Bruno’s for breakfast: a place of great Italian pastry just three blocks from the Bleecker Street apartment, of great espresso, and of great New York attitude. (They wont crack a smile if you paid them for it.)





The trial continues...

We pause for lunch as always, and as always that pause is long enough to accommodate a sit-down meal at any number of the restaurants within walking distance of the courthouse. The attorneys like the old Italian establishment -- Forlini’s. I’ve sat with them there (Tuesday, for example) and watched them put away plate-loads of comforting food among the comforting presence of other similarly situated attorneys and judges whose adrenaline needs to settle down and take break.

Today, however, we are eating with a brother and without attorneys so we head in the opposite direction – to the Odeon, which is a pleasant cross between French bistro and New American food. I have a very good warm goat cheese salad and think how after this week, the white table cloth is again going to disappear from my dining experiences.


It continues to be an unpleasantly drizzly day. My camera stays mostly in my bag. I concentrate in getting from point A to point B in a timely fashion.





The wheels turn, the day moves gracefully along. The answers are solid. The vulnerabilities diminish.




By evening, I make a miscalculation. Last week, I had read in the NYTimes a fairly good review of a new, hip pizza/Italian place in the Village – Pulino’s. Everything about it sounded right for a meal with my occasional traveling companion: fresh, reasonably priced food in a casual space. I glossed over the restaurant critic’s one line that should have given me pause: Pulino’s can be punishingly loud.

Ed hates loud. Especially restaurant loud. The wince never leaves his face until the check is paid and we are out the door.

Or maybe it was a good thing that we ate there. I let him drift in his own thoughts.





...and allowed him to run out with my cell phone to take scheduling calls from the attorneys. And only at the end does the unrelenting speed of the day manifest itself as I pounce on Ed for waving a credit card sky high to get the waiters attention.  

Rude! I scream at him (screaming is a way to be heard).
Ed shakes his head. No. Not here it isn’t, right? This to the waiter who is trying to figure out whom he needs to appease in this one.  
No, not here. The waiter takes Ed’s card.  
You lose! Ha! Loser! Ed roars.  
Bullshit! I shout back.

The two tables to our sides stare at us. Ed and I, the quiet duo with cell phone attachment disorder, have come alive, the adversarial blood ripping through the veins, pushing us to a level of explosive excitement over... something stupid.

We’ve been enmeshed in this courtroom saga too long.


We return to the sagging mattress to quietly mull over what we can expect from the cross exam on the next day.

among people

The trial proceeds. One side has the legal arguments, the other side feels aggrieved by the legal reality. The testimony is interrupted by attempts to settle, but settlement seems impossible when one side has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to spread their own pain.

It is a difficult case to track.

But there are lighter moments. For instance, the walk to the courthouse. Sullivan, Thompson—these are the mellow streets of the Village, where life unfolds in small ways, but such New Yorkish ways!





I keep focusing on the people. And there are a lot of people. Indeed, visual clutter -- people, cars, signs, all of it -- makes photo grabbing (on the run, always on the run) a challenge. It can get very crowded very quickly, so that isolating anything for a shot -- the Chrysler Building, a woman with an interesting hairstyle, a kid eating a Mr. Softee – is not easy. But sometimes the story of New York is in the crazy rush to get to the corner before the light changes.





At other times, it is the quiet moment, by a city "playground," with one dog owner admiring the dogs of another.





Two blocks from Bleecker, I find the café (Once Upon  Tart) with the excellent baked goods and so I pause there for a morning espresso. There are a few conversations – a woman has just found out she is pregnant and she tells her friend how she has grown more comfortable with that reality. Mostly though, people are reading. Things on paper, not on a computer screen. Perhaps New Yorkers will never understand why newsprint is so close to being obsolete. In a café, on the subway, a newspaper still makes sense.






In the evening we eat at the Havana Alma de Cuba. At the table by the window, a man is rolling cigars. The waiters look Cuban and speak Spanish. It’s a warm, friendly place. Very different from the hostility and arrogance at the court house.





We fall asleep early, but not for long. By 2, we’re discussing the case again. Did the attorneys lose sight of the forest in the rush to get the detail correctly stated? I think of the buildings with the fire escapes. A New Yorker considering this for a home may notice the trim around the windows. An outsider would inevitably say -- hey, it's a building with a fire escape, for God's sake!





At dawn the pigeons are at it again. Forget people. The city belongs to the pigeons.

a day

Last night we returned to a favorite place for dinner -- Fish. Ed likes it because we can eat at the bar. There’s a Yankee game on, though no one really pays attention. In fact, the sound is muted. Ed will keep an eye if he needs the distraction, in much the same way that he prefers to have something to read at his side in case his mind needs some external prompt to stay active.

We both like the oysters there and it is a terrific deal: a half dozen plump blue points plus a glass of wine (or beer), for $8.





Notice the peanuts. They’ll give you all you want and Ed will surely get half his caloric input from the nuts alone.

I have a bowl of fish soup, he has the mussels and we’re happy. We’ll return there. We always do.

We’re staying just a few blocks down from Fish, on Bleecker – a street that surely defines the West Village. You could not ask for a better location (if you like the Village, and we do). You could ask for better quarters, I suppose, but I knew what I was in for. We’re in a brownstone – in a top floor apartment that hasn’t been rented. I could spell about a dozen reasons for why it hasn’t been rented – dirt being the least important. After all, you could clean the place (and to give Ed credit, he did go out and buy a sponge to at least wipe it down).

What can I say, It’s a place that maybe has seen better days, though Ed assures me that the building has a long history of neglect and that I am seeing it in a finer moment. Still, the windows don’t really close and floors that have holes underneath the radiators. There is running water, so that’s good. The view? Perhaps somewhere between West Side Story and Sesame Street, except without the color. The noise is definitely pigeon song. I have a city person's dislike of pigeons.





Ed brought an inflatable mattress, which is an upgrade over rolling out sleeping bags on the floor. The mattress leaks, but it carries us through at least half the night and after that – well, who cares.

In my carry on, I have managed to squeeze in clothes for six days of hearings and two week-end days of hanging out, plus the sleeping bag, a small pillow, and a towel. I think I am an accomplished packer.

Off to court now. If you think it’s kind of a late start, then you must not know that trials in New York proceed in this way: we start at 11:30 (or 10:00, or noon, depending on the proclivities and inclinations of someone or other), break for lunch at 1, resume at 2:15, always at 2:15 and finish sometime around 4:30.

So I’m on schedule. Though I’m in a hurry. There are a million places to pick up an espresso on the walk over. Choosing one will take time.

looking at New York

When I hear mention of the “rule against perpetuities,” I think -- Law School Property class. Today, though, it came up in court.

I’m in New York, sitting in on a complicated case that has all the requisite elements of a trial drama, even as the issues are tediously convoluted and not at all dramatic.

Sometimes, I merely watch the faces of the participants – multiple lawyers on both sides, the judge, her clerk – they all want an outcome and of course, none of the desired outcomes overlap, or there wouldn’t be a trial.

In a case of this nature, it is said that, like in divorce, there is no good resolution. Except that I think that a good solution would be for there to not be a case of this nature at all.

Okay, that’s all I’ll say about the trial for now.

On the upside, I am learning a lot about courtroom dynamics.

And I am in a city that is an eyeful, from whatever position you look at it.





The flight attendant asked me if I knew the city well (it was her first trip here and unfortunately she would have only an hour, all of it at La Guardia). I hesitated. I have lived in New York for a total of maybe ten years, but I want to say now that I am not anymore part of its fabric. It’s no longer my city. Cool to look at, every now and then, but not mine. You could say in some significant way I've turned my back on it. And that's okay.

Mother's Day

Wszystko dla mamy, My mame kochamy!

It’s a little jingle that I remember from Polish TV in the late sixties. Mother’s Day was a big deal then and probably remains a big deal today, since it encourages a kind of commercialism that Poland seems to embrace in its race to better economic times.

I like how holidays shift boundaries of inclusiveness and pick up different subsets of the population, giving various people “favorite status” on one day or another. All people born on this day – feel special! You, who gave birth, or adopted a child – stand up, it’s your day! Americans, eat those grilled burgers and watch the fireworks – it’s Fourth of July! And so on.

(Best are the days that are most inclusive: everyone who wants to have a tree up with colorful lights and painted glass balls – go for it! Not a Christian? That’s okay, you can still buy a tree and listen to Jingle Bells.)

Mother’s Day is significantly inclusive. If 80 % of American women have children by age 44 (US census data) (and another small number adopt), and 100% of everyone at one point had a mother, you can admit that motherhood is big. So think mommy thoughts today. Or just give a nod and smile to the moms all around you.

Then go about your day and enjoy the sunshine. There is so much of it today, in southern Wisconsin. My daughter and I took full advantage of it in Governor Dodge State Park.

































...Followed by a quick run to the place where we always, in younger days, celebrated the mommy holiday. As others did today.









Dinner at home. With chocolates to make it completely wonderful.