Krakow leading the way

Not many people know this about Krakow: it is one of the few cities in the world that has created two major Hot-Spot neighborhoods, where you can take your laptop to any café or even outdoor bench and surf away to your heart’s content.

But today’s Krakow newspaper reports that thus far, the project has not had a high success rate: few people take advantage of the wireless option. What was intended as a ploy to generate excitement among both tourists and locals, results, on the average, in fewer than 40 hits per day.

The newspaper blames this on an absence of advertising. Letters to the editor express concern with theft. Petty crime is common in Poland and people feel rather protective of their expensive laptops.

These concerns notwithstanding, I have to say that it thrills me to see Krakow once again take a bold leap into experimenting with new ideas. The city’s main square is one of the most beautiful urban spaces on the planet. Filled with antiquity, with a vibrant city life, where cafés are so numerous that in the summer you cannot tell where one ends and the next begins, Krakow's Square is a place where it would be extraordinarily enjoyable to sit and write (blog, if that’s your preference) on a laptop.

To me, wireless services are yet another way of connecting with others. I spend a good portion of my days traveling alone and having my family and friends farther than I want them to be. To take the time to sit in a spot as supremely beautiful as Krakow and reach out to others through this new way of talking (i.e. email or blogs) is priceless (yes, I know I am hijacking an expression from an overused MasterCard ad campaign -- it fits).

Hats off to you, Krakow, for creating spaces where people can link with the world and share a moment or two, so that ours becomes less and less of a lonely planet.

Waxing lyrical

Everyone knows about my special bond with Jason. He may be one of the few men around that has complete power over me. He says run, I run.

In truth, he is not always very talkative and neither am I. Enjoying a quiet hour with him is equally satisfying.

Jason is half my age and he is in a committed relationship. That doesn’t matter. He and I relate in one limited way. Our encounters, for the most part,* are to consider and discuss and eventually deal with the length and color of my hair.

But yesterday, Jason introduced me to something that women the world over have known about for centuries, yet I have never even contemplated: waxing.

It turns out there is a whole subculture of people out there, all dedicated to the idea of waxing portions of their epidermis (beginning with the eyebrows and working their way down) to eliminate all signs of hair in places where you want there to be none.

When Jason says look into waxing, I naturally look into waxing.

I have never thought much about the shape of eyebrows, but as I stared at my fantastically rejuvenated (by Jason, of course) hair yesterday afternoon, I saw the potential there. Waxing ensued.

In Poland, women care about skin. In cities, there are as many cosmetic boutiques (where women come in for facials on a very regular basis) as there are hair salons. I am certain that my friends there would be amused that it took Jason to lead me to contemplate the finer points of waxing away undefined eyebrows.

And part of me just wants to wax and transform all possible surfaces with brittle stubs into peachy smooth terrain. The other part, the rational, unwaxed-for-51-years part, says I have strayed into a world that I don’t fully comprehend, where women think nothing of spending $100 for smattering mud, salt or seaweed on their faces.

Still, Jason was right. Of course. A pair of waxed brows makes more of a statement. The frown becomes more pronounced, the raised brow has more height and depth to it.

The buck stops there though. For now. Okay Jason?

* I admit that I have also been known to give him travel advice. We've exchanged emails on Paris hotels, etc. He looks after my hair, I pass on my views on Michelin rankings.

From summers in the deep Polish countryside to hot days on crowded New York beaches: didn’t I notice that suddenly there were people around me?

Is it the summer-like weather that makes me ask this question, or is it that, upon returning home to Madison, I became curious about photos from New York taken some forty-plus years ago? Here is the issue: at what age should children wear clothes suited to their gender requirements?

Because I came across several photos that I was tempted to post – thematically they fit into my New York musings about Coney Island, or even about Bulgaria (under the banner: I survived the flight to Sofia and here I am to prove it).

The problem is that in the vast majority of my Coney snaps and also on the Bulgarian beaches, I seem to have forgotten that girl-swimsuits have a top part to them. My sister, my senior by a mere one year, is jumping waves in a nice little suit with a ruffled skirt and a tight string bringing up the top part firmly all the way to her neck, and I am running around in some ratty underpants, enjoying the splash of water, in complete, immodest oblivion to my surroundings. On Coney Island beach, no less, with a crowd of several million around me.

True, I was only seven (six in Bulgaria) and so scientifically speaking, there was no reason to run a halter top to my neck. And I cannot imagine this was the work of my mother who had a habit of dressing her daughters in identical clothing, on the same days, up until the day my sister threatened to not leave the house if she had to look like me. (It was a fifties dressing thing I guess.)

I could print the photo and add a painted-in red bar in the place that matters, but that only draws attention to the embarrassing truth: I seem to have enjoyed having skimpy attire. Either that or I let the waves wash away that band of polka-dot fabric that should have matched the polka-dot bottom I seem to have worn that day.

No Coney photo then. Nor Zlote Piaski in Bulgaria. Ocean feels like maybe little Nina should have been a little less of a free spirit.

End of break

It stopped being fun three flights ago, in Colorado: the sitting on the airport floor near the one plug (for the computer) within ten miles of the gate, the so called bad-weather delays, the crowds, ill-tempered and ill-mannered, the babies who want you to smile at them even though you want to be far far far away from them in seat assignment, the cab drivers who do not have change for a ten thereby commanding a tip in excess of 40%, all our bulging suitcases of things, irrelevant things – if they fell off the plane over Lake Erie, who would miss them? – I am suddenly not a fan of the tedious process of getting myself from one place to another.

The above was written at LaGuradia where I waited for many many hours for my NW flight to Madison, connecting in Detroit. I’m home now and I want to put a more positive spin on things. No one likes a whiner.

DAMN IT! Why is the flight to Detroit delayed two hours? And why are there no seats available to Madison on any other flight today? I teach tomorrow (or: I have a guest coming to class tomorrow and I HAVE to be there), help me out here, Northwest!

La Guardia is one crappy airport. I admit it: I don’t really enjoy sitting on the floor, hearing some raspy CNN station recount the Schiavo story over and over and over again. I am well aware of what was at issue and where we’re at now. Leave me alone, I do not want a replay of it all.

I fly a lot. I mean, a beastly amount. But I can confidently say that the flight from NY to Detroit today ranked among the top five in terms of horrible turbulence. I think my maiden voyage abroad, from Warsaw to Sofia in 1959 was worse, but this one may come in as a close second. The flight attendants were ordered by the captain to sit tightly buckled for the entire duration of the flight. That one dip right in the middle was grounds for a lawsuit. Though I appreciated the captain’s words reassuring everyone that all the planes passing through New England were screaming at the air traffic controllers to get them out of the swirling air current mess. Our plane went up to 38,000 feet and still could not shake the storms.

Remarkably, I made my connection in Detroit (naturally; the flight to Madison was delayed, even though the entire Midwest is under a canopy of calm clear skies). So Mr. Pilot: explain why, in these perfect conditions, where you could see the Madison runway all the way from Milwaukee, why did you miss it? And abort the landing at the very last second?? I have lived through about a half dozen aborted landings in my life, but NEVER one this close.

Yes, of course, Northwest lost my suitcase. They have no idea where it is.

No, it does not end there: the only cab I could get was one of those communal ones. They are the biggest scam in town. You stop at all these horribly distant places, take forever to arrive at your destination and you still pay pretty much full fare. And you have to listen to everyone’s story. Because everyone gets all friendly-like and chatty. Not me. I was in no mood for reviewing my spring break for the lot of them. You want to know, talk to me tomorrow, or read about it on the blog.

So here I am, back in Madison, with no suitcase, worse, no sign of life in this huge empty house. Wee. Hoo.

New York break: don’t know when I’ll be back again…

When I was a kid and leaving a city like New York, I never thought about when I would be returning. Even when I left it "for good," (not really, but I should have believed it) I looked more at the place where I was next going, than at the place from which I was bailing out.

I’m leaving the city in the rain. A March rain – wet, trashy, sticky, cold, the kind that will cling to whatever you expose to it – coat, face, shoe.

When I was very young here, in New York, I never noticed the rain.

Late last night, the train pulled into Grand Central around midnight. It had been sunny in Connecticut. It was raining in the city. The train was crowded. It is always crowded. Who is returning on a Sunday night to the city by train?

Heads bent low, gray masses, pushing toward the exit, like in the movies: dark times, people moving rapidly and purposefully, pushing their belongings onto a train, leaving troubled cities. Only here, they are returning to a city, a closed up for the night city, where it’s damp, dark, with no welcoming noises, no bright flashing lights at all, just a few cabs pulling up.

And still, these images notwithstanding, I love trains now as much as I did forty years ago.

Mondays in New York are especially brutal. Museums close, businesses open for another week of work – who can be smitten with a Monday? Good Monday morning! That’s our Madison weather man, faking it every week. Sorry, Charlie, can’t trust that day…

March Monday in NYC: week-end trash, wet dog, cold owner... 

New York break: ...and you'll find that you're in the rotogravure (or blog)

An Easter parade? Of sorts. More like very many people walking. I did not know that this really took place: along Fifth Avenue, in front of St. Patrick's.

Hurry up, little one, we're going to see some cool Easter bonnets, just like yours... 

This is February and we're at the Mardi Gras, right? No??  

Don't mess with my girl, I mean guy, I mean... whatever. 

Step aside, cat-in-the-hat. 

It's all in the pearls... 

Dogs with hats? strange world... Men with baskets -- now that makes sense. 

New York break: the Cloisters, 2005

Exactly forty years have passed since I last visited the Cloisters in New York. To the month.
I do believe the Cloisters contain the finest pieces of Medieval European art on this side of the Ocean. But that’s not why I went there – not this day, not forty years ago.

On a bluff, overlooking the Hudson River Valley, they are magnificent.

I never understood, when I was little and dragged there by my parents, that the Cloisters were real – that the columns and the art within were brought over from Europe.

I remember going there in my childhood on the off-Sundays: when my parents hadn’t the will to go elsewhere (Bear Mountain in New Jersey! Miniature golf! Coney Island! Please, not the Cloisters!).

My last visit was when I wasn’t quite twelve. My mother’s closest friend in New York was dying of lung cancer and my mother had gone to see her one last time – to say good-bye. Afterwards, we went to the Cloisters.

My mother wore sunglasses frequently (she liked to imitate Jacqueline Kennedy in this) and so it was not unusual to see her hidden behind the dark lenses.

But that Sunday, she was also unreachable. Baricaded in her own grief, she was unavailable. I have pictures of her then – I always carried my little Kodak with me – and even those little snapshots demonstrate this side of her that I was only then beginning to understand: when tragedy struck, she accepted no consolation.

Exactly fifteen years later, again in spring, after freshly moving to Madison, my own good friend died of cancer. I saw it coming: soon after we became close, she said to me: I did my research, I will be dead within a year. She was.

The Cloisters are the most peaceful spot in all of New York, of that I am certain. I went there yesterday morning, the day before Easter. I went alone, but I was not as alone as on the day when my mother drew boundaries around herself or when my friend faded away. There are good and not so good ways of being alone.

To my Ocean community of family, friends, bloggers and readers -- if you celebrate Easter, have a happy one. And in any event, may we all stay happily connected to each other, in the many good ways available to us.

Finding spring joy, in a Cloister courtyard 

in her other hand, a bird... 

the Cloisters on the Hudson 

New York break

March 26th, Central Park:

one day snow, the next -- these: 

New York break: next time, do your research, kid

I mentioned in my previous post the invitation I got to join a couple of journalists* on their hike this afternoon around the jazz hot spots of Harlem.

I have actually not a thing to say about the walk.

Oh, fine, I will bravely post on, though I’ll limit myself to just four points:

1. It is remarkable (albeit depressing) how little I know about jazz (after the conversation moves beyond Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzie Galespie, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey and Benny Goodman, I’m out of it);

2. It is remarkable (and again, depressing) how little is left of the jazz scene in Harlem (the Cotton Club? The Paradise? The Savoy Ballroom? Rhythm Club? Mother Shepherd’s? – all gone, without even a single plaque to commemorate them; no wonder I could not find them on my own);

3. It is remarkable how much territory I had already covered here during my solo trek last week (in a state of jazz ignorance and in hellish weather conditions, true, but with time to take out the camera and shoot; today I was totally traumatized by having jazz journalists with me and so I kept my camera, for the most part, in its case, as I mumbled things like “that’s okay…” each time someone asked me if I’d like to take a minute for some camera work);

4. It is remarkable how beautiful the music is of the people whose work I don’t know at all (I was given a handful of CDs, I’m sure out of benevolent compassion for my state of almost complete lack of knowledge about almost everything).

Just two photos then: one of a row of beautiful houses that I had somehow missed last week, and the other of the Lenox Lounge – one of the few spots that is still up and running.

* One of the journalists, Paul Blair, does (as a hobby) walking tours with a jazz focus in and around the city. If you’re ever in NY and want to join his groups, look up his operation at www.SwingStreets.com. The guy knows a hell of a lot about jazz.