A Big Little Heart

This is a more recent picture of my big brother Mike ...just out of the shower.

I recently found a stack of index cards Michael wrote on when he was 6. Some thoughts, some advice, some wisdom.

1) "When the sun rises in the sky and it is summertime, the little caterpillars wake up and start eating the leaves on the trees."

2) "Who is the fattest teacher in the school? Who is the skinniest teacher in the school? Which teacher yells and screams the loudest? Which teacher eats the most ice cream and candy?"

3) "Never leave your bicycle all by itself or somebody will take it."

4) "Someday, when Michael is older, he will have an automobile, a large house, a wife, some little children, and lots of bubblegum."

5) "People shouldn't hurt people smaller than themselves or people larger than themselves or people the same size or animals."

Favorite Film

My mother had an improvisational theatre company in San Francisco that began in 1966. Before making the film, "The Candidate," Robert Redford had seen the group perform and was so impressed with the talent that he hired many of them to play roles in the film. Though my mother was the director of the company, she had also been an actress and Redford put her in the movie as well. She had one line and it was, "As I always say, handsome is as handsome does." When the director shouted "Cut!" Redford said, "Is that all she gets?!" The director said, "Yeah, it is," and Redford replied, "That's too bad."

"The Candidate" is a wonderful film and my mom rocks in about 8 seconds of it.

Annieouncement

Annie created her own blog yesterday and she asked me to let you all know about it. Since she is unaware of the insightful and sometimes brilliant things she says, you can still find those things here at The Half Note. Annie's blog will be devoted to stories of her friends and her pets, and perhaps an occasional complaint about her teachers and parents. Please see links section.

Cowgirl Up

Yesterday I took Annie and her friend to the barn. It was the first time I’d seen my horse since he removed me from his back like a pesky fly. That day that I lay flat on my back in the dirt, when I had yet to feel the pain, I must admit, I actually liked being there. I could see my jeans below me and my cowboy boots saluting the sun. And not far from sight, was my big Palomino, heading toward me to check out the damage.

I was born part city girl and part cowgirl, for what reason, I don’t know. I’ve had many more city girl moments than cowgirl moments, but that day on the ground, I was all cowgirl.

It’s power and nature, skill and competence. It’s spiritual and romantic. It’s an agreement between horse and rider, no matter what happens. It can be image and ego, but if those things are let go, it’s a feeling of connectedness to the deepest part of ones self.

A cowgirl rejects conventional beauty but embraces what is unique to her. Her wide hips help her move when her horse moves, her thighs hold her to the saddle. The weight of her body lets her fearful animal know that someone is there. A cowgirl makes choices every moment. Her mind is alert and her touch is light.

She is who I aspire to be.

Blog resumes Monday.

He Speaks

"...If you truly understood what I am saying, you would realize the importance of encouraging optimistic, jestful feelings of faith, of cultivating them—for it is far more important to collect them than money. They represent far greater security, defense, and strength. They are far more practical than any negative considerations, regardless of how realistic those might appear at any given time."
--Seth, The Personal Sessions.

And We Said It Couldn't Be Done

My brother Michael is an eccentric. He's 48, a perpetual bachelor, a coffee drinker, a cigar smoker, slightly obsessive, and he rides a Harley through the streets of New York City. If he sleeps, it's an hour here and there. He eats one meal a day. His energy is off the charts and his charm is real. Women love him. He can piss people off, but he doesn't mean it. He's as smart as they come, but he's also an innocent with a heart of gold.

Michael is the founder and producer of the Michael Chekhov Theatre Company, operating from a Lower East Side space he created called The Big Little Theatre. A couple of months ago, I was downtown having dinner with David and a group of friends when Michael burst into the restaurant, sat down, ordered his meal and enthusiastically told us of his latest great idea. Now Michael had come up with countless ideas and plans in the past. A family boat business in Hawaii, all of us selling our homes, moving to San Francisco, investing in an old church where we would all live and build a theatre and nightclub. He’s also come up with premises for countless television shows, and you know what? Years later they actually end up on TV. "I knew it," he’d exclaim a million times. After September 11th, he sat us all down and discussed in detail his elaborate plan for our family to escape New York in life rafts if need be. So at the restaurant, when he announced his plan to produce all 45 of Sam Shepard's plays, we all looked at each other. Yeah, like he'll be able to pull that off, we were all thinking.

Well shame on us! Not only has he pulled it off, he did something absolutely unheard of for a tiny unknown off-off-Broadway theatre. He single-handedly managed to get the New York Times to come see a production of Shepard's "Buried Child," which they DID, and gave it a RAVE review!

But it doesn't end there. Brother Mike was seeing his friend Bernie White in the recent production of John Guare's, "Landscape of the Body," and who should be backstage, but Guare himself. When Bernie introduced Michael to Guare, the playwright told him he'd heard about Michael's theatre, was quite interested in it etc., etc. (JOHN GUARE FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!)


My brother Michael is flying around this earth like a hawk, and the only times I know for certain he'll come down is when someone is in need. He's always been there for me, and though he's pissed me off plenty, he has never once let me down.

Maybe I'll listen to him more closely next time he has a grandiose scheme. Maybe that nightclub in San Francisco isn't such a bad idea. Maybe, if my life is ever in danger, I will board that life raft with him.

(Photo of Michael taken a LONG time ago. Imagine the same face, but hair all over the place, a crooked cap and the eyes of a wild tiger. Please see links section of blog for the Times review.)

The Belle of the Ball

This is Annie's African Pygmy Goat, Tinkerbelle. When Annie arrives at the barn Tink comes running, follows her all day and cries when she leaves. Annie recently tried to play hide-and-seek with her goat but later complained to me. "Mommy," she said, "I close my eyes, I count to ten, but when I open them, she's just standing there looking at me!"

He Loves Me ...

Annie took these pictures of Oakley watching me get work done around the barn. It's nice to be adored in such an uncomplicated way...

Favorite Film

Bad Mommy

Is it wrong that I woke up in a cheerful mood this morning because my 8-year-old daughter is going on a field trip today? We’ve been together almost around the clock for seven days and she has once again taken to talking incessantly. She is constantly expressing all that she wants and all that she doesn’t have. She won’t quit and I’m at my wit’s end.

So I'll drop her off and get myself a cup of coffee. And when I return to my quiet, empty, sun-filled apartment, and before I begin my workday ...I will finish Friday's blog. (She just shouted to me from the other room, "Mommy, I love you!)

See, I'm bad, a bad, bad mommy.

Stay tuned.

Had to ...

Let's Be Pigs

He Speaks

"The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. The spirit becomes flesh. Part of each individual's soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world's soul, or the soul of the earth.

"The smallest blade of grass, or flower, is aware of this connection, and without reasoning comprehends its position, its uniqueness and its source of vitality. The atoms and molecules that compose ALL objects, whether it be the body of a person, a table, a stone or a frog, know the great passive thrust of creativity that lies beneath their own existence, and upon which their individuality floats, distinct, clear and unassailable." -- Seth, The Nature of Personal Reality

Miami Mama

When my mother was a teenager, she used to spend her summers in Miami Beach. She and her friend Pauline would rent a room for $15 a month but had little money left after that. Every night they'd hitchhike back and forth across the bridge until they'd find someone to buy them dinner. One night, two Mafia guys picked them up, took them to dinner and invited them to order anything on the menu. Pauline always ordered the most expensive thing, but my mother, regardless of the offer, always felt funny about it and ordered the cheapest dish. After dinner, the gentlemen asked Pauline and my mother if they wanted jobs and could they turn around and show their backsides (clothed). They complied and were hired on the spot. They spent that summer cocktail waitressing at a Mafia joint. My mother was pretty naive back then, but the girls were well paid and no one asked for any "special favors." She never saw anything unusual so it all worked out well. Mom had a thing for Italian guys, and she admits that she liked them on the tough side. One such boy would sneak into her room each night and they would kiss. He'd end their time together the same way each night. "You’re not my type," he’d announce, and then he’d walk out. My mother didn’t care, she just liked the kissing andnd it continued that way for some time. He'd climb through her window, they'd neck a while, he'd tell her she wasn’t his type, and leave. Then one night he came in and said to her, "I've gotten used to you!" So they kissed some more, but, of course, eventually parted ways. He wasn't her type, after all.

This photo was taken that summer. She was 17 and hated having her picture taken even more than I do. You suppose it's genetic or somthin'? You must click this one to see it large.

New Yorker Cartoon

Quote

"It does not matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you do not do it in the street and frighten the horses."- Mrs. Patrick Campbell, film actress.

Favorite Film

When Will The Break Be Broken?

It's Wednesday afternoon and here are some of the things I want to do and must do: Edit 20 ESPN pieces, create a final cut of my short film, digitize hours of footage, edit my reel, get new glasses, do the laundry, shop for food, drive to New Jersey to see my horse, call my 97 year old grandmother, paint the bathroom closet, meditate, read exercise and listen to music. And here's how much of that I've done since Annie has been home on spring break since last Thursday. NONE. In fact, it is she who begged me to post these photos on the blog. I would have done it, in fact, they would have been just fine for tomorrow’s blog, but the child has become impossible. She has read every book in the house; she even reads the SETH material (and really well, might I add). She's watched a dozen DVDs, ridden her scooter in the park, hung out with her grandma, and still, she wants MORE. So here Annie, here are your adorable dog and cat photos. I love you, I worship you, now leave me ALONE!

Confessions of a Feminist

There's something that's been bothering me and I'm hesitant to share it, but I will anyway. I see it on the streets of the city, I see it in the supermarkets, but mostly I see it on neighborhood playgrounds. Fathers have become like mothers and mothers have become like fathers. Don’t get me wrong, I'm a feminist. My father was a feminist and so is my husband. I'm all for mothers working and Daddies staying home. Mothers should be strong and fathers should be soft, so please don’t get me wrong here. It’s something else.

Yesterday I saw two dads walking in the park together. One was pushing a stroller with an infant inside and a toddler hanging on the back. An older child ran beside them and in addition, another youngster was tightly strapped in a sling on the man’s hip. This middle-class New York City father seemed agitated and slightly angry, as bottles were dropping and the diaper bag kept getting tangled in the wheels of the stroller. His friend had two kids, one on a tricycle and a baby strapped to his back as well. They were talking about a Barney episode that was on that morning when one of the men asked his son what he wanted for lunch. “Lamb burger!” Cried the little boy. And for the next several minutes, dad number one went on discussing his killer lamb burger recipe with dad number two. Ground lamb, goat cheese … can leave it on the stove for hours … will never over cook …

I like to cook, but I can’t stand hearing women talk about the best way to steam vegetables, roast garlic, or broil fish. I had just as hard a time listening to the dads discuss such matters. God bless these guys for taking an active role in the raising of their children, don’t get me wrong, I approve! But I can’t help wondering, wouldn’t they rather be doing something else? Because aside from the positive move men have made to stop watching their kids grow up from the sidelines, something has been lost. There’s a kind of neutralization amongst couples. The way families are negotiating their daily existence has also become more focused on diplomacy and equality, rather than one partner grabbing the bull by the horns and getting the job done.

A marital partnership should not be a business, and regardless of all that needs tending to, it’s not a production. I believe all the negotiating couples do these days is more about how they think they’re supposed to “behave,” and it ends up taking the place of getting shit done and moving on.

Once couples decide to “merge,” I think things become even more neutralized. It’s almost as if men and women really do become one. But personally, I don’t want to be “One” with anyone. Where’s the mystery and wonder in that? When a couple has become neutralized, what happens in bed? When people become “one” in this way, what happens to the sex, the intensity in lovemaking?

I am a mother and a wife, a thinker and an artist. But I am a woman first. Inside and out I am different from a man in most ways. I like to have my nails done and my legs waxed, I like to be held close and talked to tenderly. I also like to go to a Knicks game and down a beer on occasion, but even when doing that, I’m still a woman. A chick, a babe, a honey. And I want my man, whether he’s a linebacker or a nanny, to be a dude, a macho, a glorious man. There I said it!

Favorite Film

A Daly Dose

Quote

“By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.”

--Duke Ellington

Let's Stay Together ... For Now.

My mother has a box and inside it are scraps of paper that she and my father would jot down funny, clever, or just things of interest that my brothers and I would say when we were kids. Here's something I found on one such piece of paper:

1972, Katie is 9 years old.
Katie: "I'll never leave you Mom."

1 year later--Katie: "I'm going to have a house in the country and you'll live with me and help me take care of the animals."

1 year later-- Katie: "I'm going to have a house in the country and you'll visit me three days a week and help me take care of the animals."

A Baby On Your Hip

What's Cooking?

A few weeks ago Annie was at her babysitter's apartment down the street. Food was left on the stove, it caught on fire and the fire department came. Although it was a relatively minor incident, the apartment did fill up with smoke, the babysitter's husband had to receive oxygen, and Annie was shaken and upset. Since then, she has had a slight preoccupation with fire.

A conversation at dinner:

Annie: "What do you think the worst place would be for a fire?"

Katie: "A high-rise?"

Annie: "Nope, a hospital."

Katie: "True."

Annie: "Yeah because there are all those people there, paralyzed and armless. I sure hope they don't do a lot of cooking in hospitals."

Cartoon

Invasion of the Teenagers

For a brief period of time my brothers and I all lived under the same roof as teenagers. I was 14, Daniel was 13 and Michael was 19. And on the bathroom wall of our Los Angeles home, Mom and Dad hung an original framed lobby card from the cult film, "Teenagers From Outer Space." Back then the joke was lost on all three of us, but thinking of it in retrospect, we can laugh right along with the folks.

Favorite Film

A great film, like any work of art, can change you. It can inspire you to take action, it can alter your beliefs, or it can simply make you laugh harder than you ever have.

I'm going to start posting films that have affected me in these ways.

Listening to at the Moment

Joke by David Kosh

Q: Why did the Inuit see a psychiatrist?

A: His parents were cold.

Pictures From Saturday Night

They Say it's Your Birthday

Happy Birthday Gary! And here's a shout out to Nikita Krushchev, Thornton Wilder, and William H. Holden as well!

Love, Katie

The Limits of Love

Friday, Annie is reluctantly giving me a back rub.

Annie: "Can I go now Mommy?"
Katie: "Come on Annie, you know I would do anything for you."
Annie: "Would you kill a baby kangaroo?"
Katie: "Why would I do that?"
Annie: "So I could get some ice cream?"
Katie: "No."
Annie: "Then you WOULDN'T do anything for me."

You Get What You Need

It's a real treat for Dave and me when my mother takes Annie for an overnight visit. We can stay out all night, we have the apartment to ourselves, we feel like kids whose parents have gone away for the weekend. So this past Saturday we dropped Annie off and away we went.

We wanted to go to one of our favorite restaurants, Josephina's, but the movie theatre was a bit far from there so we settled for Pieter's on Columbus Avenue. It was okay Italian food and we left in high enough spirits. We were in the mood for something simple so we went to see the movie, "Friends with Money," but half-hour into it I started feeling sick. It wasn’t the food or the wine, it wasn't even the cinematography style I so detest. You know, the hand-held camera swinging all around the place, trying to make things feel “real?” I won’t say the movie was a piece of crap; I just hated it. Each character upper middle class, unappealing and unhappy, living in muddy and muted marriages, all created in cinema with the intention of being clever, edgy and entertaining. Now, I have never had a problem with walking out of a movie. I value my time intensely and would rather sit on a street corner reading an Archie comic than sit through some pretentious piece of crap film (oops, did I say that?). But David, on the other hand, will not leave a theatre for anything. A true movie buff, he lives and breathes film. For him, seeing a bad film is a learning experience. For me, it’s an assault on my psyche. But I would never ask him to leave with me; it's perfectly fine for me to go for a walk or sit in the lobby and organize my wallet. So I told David I would meet up with him later. But he, for the first time in the 17 years I've known him, got up and left with me. He didn’t hate the movie like I did, but he didn’t like it. And there was something so lovely and unexpected about him getting up so easily that I was overcome with appreciation.

So there we were on our Saturday night of freedom. The meal was so-so and the movie was bad. But the night was the kind of New York City spring night that should be talked about, sung about, at least written about on a blog. The air was fresh, the breeze was warm, and David and I had nothing to do and nowhere to be. I had my camera in my bag so as we walked through the city, we talked and I took pictures.

When we eventually got home it was quiet and we lay in bed and talked some more. It turned out not to be the night we had planned, but it was just the night we needed.

I'll post the pictures later today.

Here's to You Cowboy ...

Quote

"You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old." --George Burns

Good Friday

My mother is very Jewish in a cultural sense but not religious at all. Her parents were immigrants from Russia, card-carrying members of the Communist Party. Not much room for faith there. My father, whose ancestors came to America on the Mayflower (David likes to joke that I'm related to a bunch of thieves, rapists and murderers), was raised Protestant, but rejected all religion and was a self-proclaimed atheist. (David also jokes that declaring oneself an atheist is also a belief, therefore making it no different than being a person of faith.)

When I was a little girl, I remember approaching my father on the subject of religion.

"Daddy, what is God?" I asked.

"God is a mythical person people choose to believe in because they're too afraid to believe that they are alone in the world," he replied.

"Oh," I said, and walked out of the room.

Another time I asked him, "Daddy, what is heaven?"

"Heaven is a mythical place that people choose to believe in because they're too afraid to believe that when they die, they’re buried in the ground and that is where they stay."

"Oh," I said, and walked out of the room.

My mother didn’t do Jewish holidays. But it wasn’t as if we protested them. If an invitation was extended to us, we gladly attended celebrations like Passover and Hanukkah.

My father celebrated Christmas as a boy. It was one thing in his not-so-happy childhood that he enjoyed, so we always had Christmas. But I never knew it had anything to do with religion, and I never really knew who this baby named Jesus was. I just liked the presents and the tree, the cartoon specials and the smell of the season. On Easter, I loved getting dressed up, going to someone's house and hunting for eggs. Even when I was a young woman, my father took pleasure in making a basket of chocolates and other nice things, which he joyfully presented to me on Easter Sunday, a day, I also must admit, I had no idea had anything to do with Christ or his resurrection.

A month before my father unexpectedly died, he and I took a trip to Providence, Rhode Island, and we visited the gravesite of his parents. There were two empty markers there, one reserved for my dad, and one for my mother. The cemetery was beautiful and cheerful -- acres of green grass and tall trees, and flowers of every color. As Dad and I sat on the ground beside the grave, he looked peaceful and he smiled a big, easy smile. He said, "Kate, it gives me great comfort to know that one day I'll be here. That you and your brothers will come to visit me, and your children will run around the grass and you'll all talk about Grandpa."

Well, he's there now, but if he were here, I know he’d be enjoying this Good Friday. He might even be making baskets for the three grandchildren he never knew.

I don’t believe he’s in heaven walking with Jesus, but neither do I believe what he believed -- that all that remains of him are his ashes buried in the ground.

During the nights following my father's death, I’d fall asleep for brief moments at a time and dream of him. In most of my dreams he’d be standing silently before me and I’d be pleading with him to come back. But in one dream, I felt from him a surge of joy and I heard his voice. “Yipeeeee!” he shouted.

Perhaps he’d gotten it all wrong -- perhaps his life didn’t begin with his birth or end with his death. And from the sound of things, I believe he’s somewhere … having one hell of an interesting time.

Happy Holidays, blog resumes Monday

Easter Bunny

New Yorker Cartoon