Sans TV

Take away cable, television, Netflix, and video games, and at first what I had on my hands was a cranky and complaining little beggar in withdrawal, much to my chagrin. I'd like to think I don't lean heavily on electronic conveniences to pacify my kid while I get stuff done or take a moment to myself (or an hour, or an hour and a half). Alas, not the case. This wasn't an act in parental piety, but rather the reality of what it meant to land in a Parisian's apartment filled with not much more than 20 bookshelves filled with Marx en Francais. There have been a few exceptions, for example watching soccer in Arabic on Al Jazeera and a matinee- priced 3-D showing of Pirates of the Caribbean on the "MacDoe"-filled Champs Elysees.

Here's the fast working miracle of it all, a no-brainer to you strong-willed Waldorf, Rudolph Steiner adhering parents out there. He's reading now with a fervor that I've not yet seen before. It's hard to drag him away from a book now, as hard as it was to make him turn off the computer from the Marvel superhero games he'd somehow wormed his way into like a stunning Grand Slam that took everyone by surprise. The books have elevated from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series to Roald Dahl snatched up in huge bites. "Hey, Mom, Look. Chapter 21. Goodbye, Violet!" The type size on the Dahl books is quite smaller than the script font of the Diary series, but you're still rewarded with illustrations on every page.

We have a few left to move through: James and the Giant Peach, the Bridge of Terabithia, and Charlotte's Web. At the rate of one book every few days, we might be headed toward Galignani before long.

Into the Mainstream

I'm humbled and touched by the comments my last essay on the New York Times' Motherlode blog received from last week about Jamie mainstreaming. Only one person felt that they had to teach me that I wasn't a "special needs mom" and that Jamie wasn't a "special needs child." That's all well and good, but the truth is-- or should I say, my truth is-- adapting to this label and assimilating into that culture to meet my son's needs as a first time parent many years ago was overwhelmingly an identity-changing phase in my life. I like to think that it will forever offer me a sense of understanding into the particulars of every child's challenges, whether deemed "typical" or "special."

I don't offer any particular value to any title or diagnosis that labels a child, but what I have learned is that living as an advocate for mine has been an active choice that at times has required the support of those categories in order to push forward. I feel privileged that I was led, circumstantially, into the understanding that there was another way. Jamie didn't have to be ostracized in school. He's brilliant and sensitive, and most of all, valued in a school environment that recognized and gave him what he needed.

If you haven't had a chance to read my essay, check it out here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/into-the-main-stream/.

The Swapping Part of the House Swap

I don't care that there are near-strangers in my home for six weeks, because we're in theirs. I know what it means, because we're also rummaging through drawers looking for things, stumbling upon the surprising and sudden ant infestation in our new jar of honey, downloading a washing machine manual in English so I can figure out how to keep it from banging too loudly. Oops, there's not a stove after all.

In our New York apartment there is "a" mouse, and most certainly a few baby cucarachas. It's summer, after all. There is also a desk piled (neatly) with personal papers that I couldn't bother to put up, up and away, just like they didn't put away theirs. We swapped our good for their good. Our good is a bathtub after long days of walking around New York; their good is a kitchen window overlooking the entire city of lights, from the Eiffel Tower to the archway at Champs Elysses to the crazy and outdated colored pipes that wrap themselves so brazenly around the Pompidou. Our good is a large-for-New-York children's room complete with cozy comforter and toys; theirs is a child's bedroom complete with cozy comforter and toys. It's just that her toys speak French. "A bientot! A bientot!"

This trip we're not traveling up and down the country, which essentially doubles our length of time in Paris since last year we spent three weeks moving our way from Normandy to Marseilles to Anzio to Rome and back again. This year, we're recovering from the end of the semester (Jamie's and mine) slowly with lots of walks and cooking and climbing the stairs in Monmartre. It stays light here until 11 p.m., so the days are long. We work. Jim continues to steer jobs from far away ("you can find that color of paint at the Janovic"), and I already have a new pile of copy writing to hit. Somehow the work makes the idea of living here more real. The structure of it seems to be good for everyone, and I love the quiet mornings when I can wake up before anyone else and work for a few hours. Jamie loves visiting different playgrounds not once but twice a day, his scooter or soccer ball close at hand. We found mini frogs in a playground yesterday! Stick around somewhere long enough, and you'll spot some too.

Northern Dispensary, Founded 1827

My favorite thing about not working full-time for one person or company is that I can work where ever I want to. This means picking which cafe I want to work from in the East Village or West Village, the truth being that with a couple of rare exceptions I always head west. Coffee shops that cater to freelancers are like pop-up art exhibits: here one day, gone tomorrow. I've fallen for, and lost, a small handful of little communities who would gather to work outside of their apartments, usually because the rents are too high for these generous spirited cafe owners to support themselves from cups of coffee sold.

My latest find is a bakery called Corrado Bakery, on Stonewall Place where Christopher Street meets Waverly Place. In other words, I find myself smack in front of a giant picture window that overlooks the Northern Dispensary building, an old clinic that was founded to serve the poor in 1827, but which stands empty and neglected today, its future quite uncertain despite the sounding of drums from the Greenwich Village Historical Society. I've walked past this building for years and years, and always marvel at what a rarity it is to stumble into such a diminutive corner building, made from red brick. The streets that it finds itself woven in between create one of the more confusing parts of the Village, in large part because of this triangular plot of land which intersects three different streets into a cacophony of traffic patterns, the like of which I'm sure gave a few Urban Engineers quite a headache.

The lore of this building can't be underestimated: young doctors cut their chops by healing impoverished factory workers, most of them women who worked in the nearby factories. In fact, I just read and learned that Waverly Place used to be called Factory Street, which you can see in the old illustration above. Edgar Allen Poe was allegedly treated here while he was living on the block with his 13 year old wife. Click [here] to read more history about the building.

If I could close my eyes and go back in time, I'm sure I'd be astonished at how different the edges of the streets are now from what they were then, but also how very much the same they are with the tenement style apartment buildings surrounding the still-standing Dispensary. Most different would be the way the people look, milling about among horses and buggies and unpaved and squalid streets. It's possible that life was much simpler back then; maybe the factory workers wore optimistic expressions as they kissed their kids goodbye and left for their long shifts, leaving them to play in the streets and fend for themselves. There was certainly no PS 41 around the corner, the public school with the largest PTA coffers in the city. I think I'll come back to this window often, and hopefully not to the shock of large cranes and bulldozers, a site not uncommon under Bloomberg.

Welcome To My World

I just got out of my last therapy session until September. My therapist, who shares my name, has steered me through anxious waters for over a decade. One "theme" is that the expectations I have for myself are ridiculously high. I think most moms feel this way-- I'm trying to soften the conversational floggings I give to myself.

In getting ready for this trip to Paris, I've realized that being organized and being a perfectionist are not the same thing-- and yet being organized seems to alleviate my unrealistic perfectionist self-flogging. When I'm not organized, I feel like everything is getting away from me (which it is), and so the pressure mounts and I can't see things task for task. I bubble over into overwhelmed and unrealistic visions of what I'm capable of doing. Joan of Arc only without the helpful God voices? On the other hand, when I can plan far in advance and steadily chip away at trip planning, research and stories, not write a syllabus at the last minute but pull it out from time to time, organize a closet here and a drawer there, I'm much happier. So in the spirit of Holy BeJeezus there's just one week till we leave for six weeks, I'm going to acknowledge a few things I've taken care of far, far in advance. I still have a full week! Except for Saturday, which has sacredly been turned over to a wedding which is being held one day before we depart. Mail will be stowed at my post office for two weeks over the maximum time limit because Jimmy, the mailman, will have his palm greased when I see him next. The bank account that doesn't charge extra fees for every transaction abroad has been open since last summer. Housecleaners are coming on Thursday so I can focus on writing this feature for Parents before I go instead of... scrub the grout. Our house swapping French family is coming over tonight and we shall meet and have a glass of vin rouge (or rose? it's hot again). Did I lose twenty pounds and become fluent in French before this summer? No. Did I complete a semester of teaching three courses, publish a couple of handfuls of stories, get my orange belt in karate, work on starting a business with a colleague for the last six months (check out our beta site, a work in progress wordcitystudio.com), deal with my emotional misgivings and gently help Jamie embrace his cultural Catholicism to feel at one with his class in their year of First Communion? Yes, and I also found an Episcopalian Church with the same mass, practically verbatim, some booming Bach on their new organ, a priest named "Mother Shelley", and a diverse population who's "25% gay, at least-- we even hand out water bottles on Pride day!" (or so the coffee server Michael explained to me before I got a chance to ask). All the stodgy formal hymns from my childhood are coming back to me and Jamie can feel like he's doing his Catholic thing. A book may be born from this experience, and it's stewing. Oh, I even treated myself to my favorite cute summer dresses by finding a wholesale clearance sale at a Casino in the Poconos. I took a Casino bus from Port Authority, got $30 in gambling money, gambled away the $30, shopped, ate a crappy sandwich, and came home again. The quiet! It was lovely!

I have so much work to do, but it will get done because it always does.

On a bright note, I have an essay that's coming out in an anthology this July called Welcome to My World. It's written by moms who write. Some are working moms, some stay at home moms, some (like me) are work from home moms. Should be an interesting look at how women are finding balance (or not finding it). I can't wait to link to the book once it's out. It's an eBook; odd, since I don't have, nor do I want, a Kindle or nook. But that iPad... there's the rub...

Sleep

My sleep schedule has been severely whacked by my coffee intake.

It started with a messy apartment. I kept looking up from my computer in between copy writing bursts, thinking about the gazillion things I have to do. Piles of paperwork to file; clips to scan so I can stow my piles of magazines away; mice to escort out of my apartment; sorry geraniums to water (or do yellow leaves mean I'm watering them too much?); and piles of laundry.

So after much procrastination and frustration about not having enough hours in the day, I decided to pack it in every morning after the school bus pulls away to hit a cafe for a few hours. It helps me concentrate, and I've found several places that I seem to be welcome to hang out in for more than one cup of coffee, not to mention an endless stream of free electricity and Wi Fi, if I'm lucky.

My psychiatrist reminds me that I do better with half-caff. He's right, of course. After moving back in that direction, I found in just two days that I was able to sleep straight for 6 hours, rather than wake up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning, unable to get back to sleep for an hour or two. Just a few cups a day and it seems I wake myself up with caffeine withdrawal; most coffee drinkers underestimate the withdrawal and don't realize that it's not morning coffee that wakes you up and makes you feel better; it's the fact that you're not in withdrawal anymore. I learned that 40 mg of caffeine has the same benefit to those symptoms as 100 mg, so it's okay to cut in half. I won't feel better from drinking more caffeine; it's the same as half.

In the wee hours of the morning, I'm worried about a lot of things that add up to feel big. Packing for another summer away, going once again to a place where I don't speak the language, having a kid who's growing up so quickly, stories that needs to be written, including a huge feature that I need a solid chunk of time to devote to. Leaving my apartment in the hands of a family who I've yet to meet. In the daytime, these worries become tiny microcosms of themselves, and everything is solvable. I can chip away at work. I'm raising the white flag and getting some help around the apartment. I know Paris now so much better than I did last year, and we're going to the same neighborhood. We're choosing to keep things far more simple this time around by doing much less traveling, and far more exploring the strange-to-us urban backdrop.

I'll be blogging about our trip for several different places, wearing several different hats. My teacher hat will blog on occasion for Parsons. My creative and entrepreneur hat will blog at WordCityStudio.com, a new blog I've begun with my New School colleague Kathleen Sweeney about creativity, using New York City as a creative backdrop (and Paris, of course). I'll probably be picking up where I left off for PublishingPerspectives, and blogging about fun bookstores and book-themed ephemera. Finally, dear handful of readers, I'll be blogging here. Somewhere I'll find time to sleep, but whether I'll stick to half caff in Paris remains to be seen.

Frazier and Meacham's Conversation Spans a Century or Two

I'm playing catch-up in my life after attending the BookExpo all week. A couple of days ago, I attended the Charles Frazier interview at BEA’s Uptown Stage. He was interviewed by Jon Meacham, Executive Vice President and Executive Editor of Random House, author, TV host, and (who knew?), stand up comic. The audience was probably one third the size as it would have been were it a bit later, but as it was, the atmosphere was quite intimate and I got to sit in the second row—a good thing because Frazier brought with him a soft spoken Southern voice.

Frazier’s latest book, Nightwoods (pub date October 4, Random House) is set in the 1960s, a far cry from the 19^th century where he was parked for his two first books, Cold Mountain, and his second less hugely received novel, Thirteen Moons.

“Did you know you wanted to roar into the 20^th Century?” asked Meacham.

“I knew I wanted to get out of the 19^th century. I wanted people to drive cars, have radio and music.” The conversation turned very quickly toward the themes of his new book.

Meacham: “To what extent do you feel you have to bring things to a redemptive end?”

Frazier: “I tend to think of it more in terms of hope and despair. Cold Mountain [SPOILER ALERT] ends with the main character dead in the snow, but I wanted it to end with a sense of hope and damage….The role of hope in fiction… well, to me it seems like part of the job requirement. There needs to be some hope there … the enlargement of life needs to shine through, even if it’s a very weak glimmer.”

Meacham asks Frazier if he’s ever tackled non-fiction. “Well, I spent two years writing a book about Peru.”

Meacham: “Random House has just left to reprint the book. They’ll call it… Warm Mountain.”

The two shared more banter about how you move through writing problems in fiction that’s based in the present day as opposed to historical fiction.

Frazier: “It’s easier to go to a library for if you get stuck for a day or a week and do research and come out with new ideas than it is to sit down and make something up everyday that’s based in the present day.”

Meacham concurs: “If you want to know about February 1803, that’s where I was last night. Try not to rush the stage.”

At BEA, Book Expo of America

For about a year I've been writing features and blogging for the international publishing trade, Publishing Perspectives. So it was very exciting when my editor Edward Nawotka asked me and my Word City Studio compadre Kathleen Sweeney to cover the BEA for him. Free press passes, in exchange for a blog entry or two per day-- a bit like walking into an all you can eat buffet in Lancaster, PA, laid out by the Amish on their famous Groaning Boards, only... it's not gross like that. It's books, and actually more totebags seem to given away than books. People kept handing me totebags (and a beach ball of the Earth from the Lonely Planet crew) , but one woman stopped me and said:

"You need ChapStick." She pushed a red Chapstick tube toward me.

"I do?"

"Yes, trust me, you'll need this."

I looked at her booth's offerings, and it clicked. Ahhh, so this is how an erotic line with a focus on gay male offerings tries to get people interested in their table. Really? ChapStick? That, and candy strewn around the titles that sported illustrated '70s guys flirting on subway cars. So cute! Even cuter was the fact that there were four women snuggled into the booth, editors who were happy to let me in on a few Editing Tricks such as asking their friends and writers whether or not something was anatomically feasible. Oh my. Nice to meet you, and next!

I heard Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain) get interviewed by Jon Meacham (Random House Excecutive Editor and history geek), and the crowd was surprisingly tiny. I've blogged about that for Publishing Perspectives, and will link to it here if it goes up today.

I also attended a party for Harper Collins last night and saw my old boss Kate White, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan and author extraordinaire of the sexy girl detective Bailey Wiggins (or something like that). I got a nice "You were once my fact checker" wink from her and she went on to speak to the guy with the VIP tag, his title being COO or something. John Lithgow, who's just published a memoir, was there and is very tall! I saw him once at Carnegie Hall read Peter and the Wolf aside an orchestra, and from that angle didn't realize that he's probably 6' 7".

I also met two lovely children's authors, one, Rita Williams-Garcia, who's just won a Newbery Honor for her YA title "One Crazy Summer", and one of her student proteges, who's also going to be signing a book at BEA today.

I'm sneezing and beat, but it's been worth it. Today the fun continues with plenty of coffee and tissues, I'm sure.

Charlie, the Super Star Chelsea Girl

I call this blog New York Lost and Found because I love finding old things- stories, places, objects- especially when they're related to NYC. On Sunday, I lost my cat, Charlie, who I brought home back in February of 1994 after experiencing my first string of deaths. Don't deaths all come in a bunch? That February, mine did: my father figure of aeons had his neck broken in a car accident, my kitty Arthur Rimbaud slipped out of my fire escape window never to return, and my beloved Granddad died. His name was Chuck, but when he was little people called him Charlie. So when I went to the ASPCA and found the black domestic shorthair Siamese mix who wrapped herself around my neck when I took her out of the cage, I took her home and named her Charlie. I was 22 years old, and despite the fact that I'd been in my first job in publishing for two years, I was still an unmoored 20-something, and found life with Charlie not exactly grounding; rather, she was a great companion who greeted me after long nights out with friends, and who made me get out of bed at a decent hour. She slept by my head, and flicked my face with her tail, for years.

Writing the story of Charlie would sidetrack me into writing a memoir of being in my 20s in NYC- not a bad idea, actually, but ever since I became a mother my memory is terrible, and I'm too tired to tackle it in the right way, not the James Frey way. The one thing I'll say is that she was originally a He. When I found "him" at the ASPCA, the employee said, "Oh, he's such a Romeo." For a few years, my roommates and I took that literally, until she was back at a vet and officially became a She. I went back to look at the adoption card, and there it was: female Siamese mix. As shocking as it was- we'd always thought she was a particularly feminine Chelsea Boy- she took to her new gender with an ease that I can only wish for others going through the difficult process.

When I had Jamie in 2002, I thought I'd had a juicy sick baby who got one cold after another; turns out he was allergic to Miss Charlie. The pediatrician had assumed that he was the typical nursery school Kid Who Caught Everything petri-dish. After a tearful conversation whereby the allergist told us that we could keep her, but we'd have to give Jamie steroids twice a day indefinitely, my brother took her in and gave her a beautiful life in her last few years. You can read that full story [here], on the New York Times' Motherlode blog (Charlie was so classy she found her way into the Times). She was like a salmon swimming home; my brother lives in the old apartment that I brought her home to so many years ago, and once again she got to prance up and down the spiral staircase and sit on the bed in the sunny upstairs bedroom that had been mine (and hers) for so long.

Like me, Charlie had a long string of roommates over the years. Many loved her dearly, and the ones who I'm still in touch with have left lovely condolences on Facebook, including this one from one of her nearest and dearest, Amy Weaver, who now lives in San Francisco with her family: "I loved that cat so much for the two years I lived with you and will never forget her--the way she took a poop everytime one of us was in the bathtub, the way she'd join me downstairs for my 2nd cup of coffee (not first). I can only hope my black cat Bugsy has as long and rich of a cat life."

Finding Charlie on Sunday was very difficult. She had just died. She'd become a shell of herself, but it was still her, and it's honestly too sad for me to continue writing this part of the story. She was showing signs of late-stage kidney failure, and the plan was to have a vet make a house call at 6 p.m. to end her misery. Thankfully, that wasn't necessary, and I didn't have to go through that. I'm having her cremated and will put her under the ornamental cherry tree in my mom's backyard that overlooks Lake Kinderhook. She'll get to rest next to our other lost family members: Edna, the part Chihuahua, part Terrier Mix who I brought home in Santa Fe when I was 12 years old, running along side me as I rode my brown Huffy bicycle (and who died at 22 or something crazy like that), and Alley and Tulouse, my brother's longtime kitties. Rest in peace, sweet Charlie!

Picasso and His Guitars

I’m blogging from MOMA on a beautiful spring day. Today I played hooky with my four Parsons fashion students who bothered to show up to class. On our way from the classroom on 40th Street to 53rd Street, we found random, disconnected pieces of inspiration on the way to, and at MOMA. Our angle is always to see things through a prism of fashion, and following our jaunt around the museum we reconnected to have a discussion about form and function. We saw three people donning those odd “foot shoes” that seem to be a throwback to a time when cavemen hunted for their pray without shoes. We saw a metal hammock that looked like rope; Grace Jones videos; Starry Night; Picasso’s guitars. I was struck mostly by how simple Picasso made it all look, again. It’s 1913 and the guy’s locking himself up in Paris to make 3-D guitars out of toilet paper tubes.

Okay, maybe not toilet paper tubes, but he found himself carving out guitars from cardboard, paper, and twine. He worked out these sculptures first from sketches, then hung them on walls, invited photographer friends to come and photograph his process. Today I welcome the randomness of process, and am grateful for the creative sprawl of this city that so lends itself to spontaneity. I’m also grateful to my small handful of students who so willingly up and go on my whim.

No Nukes! Growing Up With WIPP

I find myself writing this blog at 3 a.m., because lately this is around the hour I wake up thinking about Japan and can't get back to sleep. Here's where my middle of the night mind has taken me tonight...

So, the last semester of my high school was spent at Los Alamos High in New Mexico, the town where the atom bomb was created by Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project. I grew up in Santa Fe, and for that first semester of my Junior year I commuted every day around the beautiful sharp bends of the carved canyons to Los Alamos with my mom, who worked for their school system. In Santa Fe it seemed that everyone around me had No Nukes! bumper stickers on their cars; in Los Alamos, my friends' fathers worked for the labs that built the bombs.

Growing up in New Mexico, the awareness of nuclear energy was huge. When I was there in the 80s, it was a very active time for something called WIPP (known colloquially as "whip"), the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, located outside of Carlsbad, NM. The WIPP project defines itself on its website in this way: "The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, safely disposes of the nation's defense-related transuranic radioactive waste. Located in the Chihuahuan Desert, outside Carlsbad, N.M., WIPP began disposal operations in March 1999." When I do the math, I can see that it took well over a decade for the government run program to begin their dirty business, which involved nuclear waste being driven in unmarked vans down New Mexico highways to their ultimate place of toxic rest. Let it be said now that New Mexico had at the time (does it still?) one of the highest drunk driving rates per capita, so driving nuclear waste down highways in unmarked vans wasn't the wisest choice, us hippie children in Santa Fe were taught to believe.

I'll never forget this short and pimpled nerdy kid arguing with me in my science class over how stupid he thought I was because I was vocally against nuclear energy; everyone in Los Alamos seemed to support the effort because for many, it cut their family's fat paychecks. Pimply Kid so vehemently wanted to make me feel ignorant that the next day he brought in a brochure from Pop's office about the difference between fossil fuel environmental depletion and nuclear energy. As an aside, I imagined his father's office as a heavily guarded maximum security shelter carved into a mountainside, a la Batman. I came to find out one late night, while driving around near the labs with friends, that I wasn't too far off the mark. The brochure he brought in to show me had a visual aid that was set up to look something like this: a chart which scaled of millions of trees next against a tiny pebble. Why wouldn't I want to be on the side of the tiny nuclear pebble? Well, I just didn't. It felt dangerous and reckless, even if I didn't have hard facts like he did to solidly prop up my fears. Even if this kid's IQ was 179 and he was the reigning Chess Champion or some crap like that. And even if the "Narple Heads" (which in Santa Fean translated to "hippie people with bumper sticker covered cars") who I stood in solidarity with at the age of 16 looked like throwback burnouts who drove beat up cars with No Nukes! bumper stickers all over them. In reality, underneath their long hair and their mandatory Birkenstocks they were citizen activists who would protest WIPP by laying down in the highways holding hands so vans couldn't pass through their human barricade.

Looking back on that discussion I wish I could recreate that visual aid today so that the image becomes thousands of beautiful windmills shown opposing the image of the tiny nuclear pebble. So here we are now tumbling down the rabbit hole of this modern technology, and I'm afraid we'll be in Alice's new nuclear WasteLand for aeons to come. I wonder if my high school antagonist finds himself waking up at 3 a.m worrying for his children's world the way I worry for mine... it's the same world, after all.

Girlbomb

This past Friday night I attended a party for the book Girlbomb, written by Janice Erlbaum, to celebrate it's fifth anniversary in print. I blogged about the event for Publishing Perspectives, and you can read my full account over there. Let me say first here, though, that it was a lovely crowd of Girls and Boys alike, in a beloved haunt, the Bowery Poetry Club. Going with my dear old friend Silvia, who traipsed down from Albany in that way that she does, just added to the whole bliss of the thing. I'm so lucky to live around the corner from this lovebomb of a place. It's kind of like having my own personal Fountain of Youth three blocks away. Walk in, and I'm 16 again. Only it feels better this time around... here 'tis: http://bit.ly/gGkcqt.

Grammy Turns 85

Today is my grandmother's 85th birthday, an occasion that makes me feel more grateful than I can ever convey in words. I'm so lucky that I still have her in my life; she's a touchstone for me daily despite the fact that we live so many states apart.

Last week I got to take Jamie to visit her in Arlington, Texas, and sleeping in the back bedroom of her house with him brought me full circle; I'd slept in that bed when I was even younger than him, and in fact was brought home to that bedroom after I was born because my father was in Vietnam. I moved around so much growing up, and my Grammy's home has been one of the few constants in my life, year in and year out. When I go there, it's a physical comfort, and when I don't, it's there in my deep consciousness offering me safety and emotional security when I need it. There were so many Christmases that I fell to sleep in that back bedroom in the four poster Civil War-era cannonball bed, so excited that Santa was somehow going to squeeze down her Chimney and leave us something. Waking up on Christmas morning and walking down the hallway to the early morning sounds of my grandparents in their antique playroom is a lucid memory that I can draw on and picture vividly: the hallway is dark and lined with family portraits, and there is soft carpet beneath my feet. At the end of the hallway there's light coming through from the living room, but the sounds are coming from even further, from the antique playroom where the player piano plays and the coffee mill stands and the old fashioned grain stand and cash register and doll house that lights up that was built by my granddad all sit waiting, aligned in some kind of Semper Fi fashion, because for me the Marines have landed, and sitting at the round "coffee table" is my own Marine, wrapping last minute gifts with a precision that must have been born from his service years.

I close my eyes and experience that short walk again and again. There's the smell of coffee and I love it, even though I don't drink coffee yet. Waiting for me and my little brother on the mantel are oranges stuffed in stockings and peppermint sticks that you dig into their peel to suck out the juice, very messily. One of the best gifts I've ever received in my life came from my grandparents; a little white Beatrix Potter bookshelf that holds the complete set of her books. I have been able to pass this down to my son with stories: My favorite game when I was little was to play Librarian, which meant dumping the poor books out onto the floor to see how quickly I could put them back in order. In the 4th grade, I stuffed a note I got from Zack Shandler in the back of the bookshelf because he told me I would be a writer someday and drew a picture of me holding a book. Nevermind that it one of the 22 birthday letters I received, one from each classmate, and he was obligated by Mrs. Garcia to give it me.

Going back to Arlington this year to see my extended family sprouted a dormant seed of comfort that I didn't realize I needed so badly. There are no words to express how much these relationships mean to me. That I can pour myself a cup of coffee (coffee holds a big presence in my Texas memories; Putting on a Fresh Pot was just the thing to do) and pick up the phone in the afternoon in New York and get my Grandmother on the other line, to chat or spill my guts, depending on the day, has felt like a having a life saver thrown into a turbulent ocean whenever I've needed it. Watching Jamie run around in her huge backyard; watching her birds come to the feeders as if on a timer; visiting with her and her little Yorkie Teddy until I can barely keep my eyes open... all I can say is Happy Birthday, Grammy, I love and adore and treasure you. xoxo

Twitter Book Parties

Today, Publishing Perspectives posts a piece I wrote about book publishers who are repositioning their marketing budgets (read: shrinking and possibly even eliminating) by throwing Twitter Parties to launch their books and new imprints. This was a fun story to write- I got to speak to @thebookmaven, Bethanne Patrick as well as other lovely book folks who are claiming this virtual territory to propagate authors and their livelihoods. Read it here. If you Tweet, I'd love for you to follow me at @Rachelrooo.

5:15 a.m.

I shouldn't be awake now- it's Saturday, and I'm up an hour before I normally am. I think I heard the mouse, which means that I need to "deal with" it. The vintage postcard above is of a Ukrainian village in the early morning. The East Village isn't exactly a Ukrainian village anymore, but I suddenly have Veselka on the mind, so in honor of waking up in the neighborhood that can still promise me borscht in my future, I tip my hat to the Ukrainian dawn.

My New School classes have all had some lift off after a full month of classes. If groups are going to gel, it tends to have happened by now. Freelance Features is an enthusiastic, smart group who seem interested in each others work, and who like to read a lot, always a bonus. Digital Media is waking up from a one-month slumber of sorts. Annemarie Dooling, one of my old CosmoGirl interns and now an online superstar with an amazing travel/culture/fashion blog called Frill Seeker Diary, came to speak two weeks ago, and as always I learned so much about the lightening fast changes in the industry from her. The 8 p.m. slot always seems to bring with it exhausted students, but who can blame them after a full day of work? It still would be nice if more than one person contributed regularly, but we're collectively working on it. A gigantic Earl Grey with milk and one sugar seems to be my savior for the 8 p.m.; but don't buy it the French Roast because it will cost you $3.25 for a large tea to go. Instead, cross 6th Avenue to the Korean deli and pay $1.25 for the same large tea with the same dependable teabag, and no need to tip the bartender for pouring hot water because you did it yourself.

Don't get me wrong--I love the French Roast. I've been going there for years and years, harkening back to 1994, when I had a crush (one of many, I'm sure) on the brown haired Muffin Guy who knew exactly how much milk to pour into my coffee to turn it that lovely color of Cancun Sand (okay, that's a Benjamin Moore color, but whatever). If there's a coffee border between too much milk for coffee to be strong, and just the right amount for coffee to be milky and strong at the same time, this boy hit it each and every day. This Muffin Guy sold me my breakfast every single morning before I went to work at American Heritage, back when I could eat a muffin the size of a cat's head every morning.

My Parsons Fashion Publishing students have started turning in their blog posts for the 560 Parsons online magazine that we contribute to every Friday. This process always takes a few weeks to get off the ground, but Fashion Week and Social Media Week lent themselves nicely for sending journalism pups into the woods to forage for their first stories. So far we've covered two Social Media Week events and an Oscar de la Renta show. Up next will be a Parsons faculty Q&A.

As far as my own writing goes, it's taken a backseat to the beginning of Spring semester when I always move from two to three classes, always a surprisingly exponential difference in the work load. I have, however, finished co-writing my first grant proposal with my friend Kathleen Sweeney, who also teaches for the Media Studies department. She's dizzyingly talented and smart and you can check out her work here. More details about the grant to come when the time is right, but I believe it promises to pull together our diverse but complementary backgrounds in print and video, so fingers crossed. I'm also pulling together a feature for Publishing Perspectives about Twitter Parties, which I hope to turn in within the next day or two. My editor Ed Nawotka has been beyond patient about this slipping deadline. In my spare time I've taken on a bread and butter copy writing gig for theknot.com, a wedding website, which reminds me about why I'm glad I didn't go overboard on my own wedding. Keychains for your bridal party? Pet tuxedoes? Awesome. Oh, and then there's that thing called living with a super cute 7 year old that I forgot to mention...Ciao!

Happy (?) Social Media Week!

I just attended a Parsons panel on the influence of Social Media in the fashion world. Four entrepreneurs in the fashion digital world spoke very eloquently to a room full of hopeful [fill in the blanks] about finding their passion, and utilizing social media to their advantage. They were full of helpful tips, and yet I found myself feeling like the bitter Kindle-hater in the audience. I sat, practically in rebellion, writing in a paper notebook with a pen, while everyone around me Tweeted live from the event using the same hashtag. Here was some advice:

Network, obviously. Write about what you love, do what you love, blog about what you love, and the money will follow. Be strategic. Taking swag is okay: Everyone's doing it and journalists have always sold out anyway, so who cares. Stick with one theme, and if you become a really successful blogger by pigeonholing your interests, you can hopefully find brands to be interested in you. They will give you money to have you write about them, and wear their stuff, and talk about the brand. Just look at this case study of Kenneth Cole, who will give you shoes after a cool marketing dinner that you'll be invited to personally by him (via video blog).

Oh, here's another thing: There are two oceans. A red ocean, where writers live, and a blue ocean, where the opportunities live. The red ocean is full of blood, so writers should consider moving over to the blue. Oh, unless you're an Author, and then you can perhaps make a living writing. Here was a useful piece of advice: If you're a fashion writer, you can "call up a fashion blog that is written terribly and tell them you'll write it for $5,000 a month." I'll get on that! Also, "there are no blogs for women over 35, so if you have something you're passionate about, you should get out there and do it! [They] need you!" Finally, "You need to pivot what you're doing if it's not working." Oh, and traffic doesn't even matter if it's the wrong traffic.

Years ago, I stood in the back of the Barnes and Noble bookstore on 8th Street and 6th Avenue (or should I say Avenue of the Americas), and felt shame spread over myself as I read the management survival guide "Who Moved My Cheese?" from cover to cover. My cheese had moved 7 or 8 times in the same job. You see, the business world is a rodent world where we go to eat cheese. When new managers come in, they like to move the cheese around. There are those rats who will only complain about it and end up starving, because they don't adapt to the cheese's new location. Those smart rats who remain enthusiastic and follow the new cheese will survive, and perhaps even thrive under the new management.

I need to decide to be that second kind of rat and follow the new cheese. Does anyone know of a crappily written arts and culture blog about New York City, or a blog about parenting in New York that needs to be rewritten? I'd be happy to do that for you for $5,000 a month.

P.S.: The optimistic blogger and writer will reemerge shortly, filled with a new vim and vigor. I need a moment to catch my breath.

New Bowery Hotel: I'm speechless.

I'll let the rendering of the new Bowery hotel to be built speak for itself (at day, an ice cube tray; at night, "glowing red tumors," as the NY Observer declared). Photo from Curbed, NY.

The Next Bowery Hotel

I follow a few New York blogs, some religiously (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, and EV Grieve). I like them because they're informative about changes going on in my Bowery backyard. This latest one has me extra bummed out: The Salvation Army building on East 3rd Street is going to be turned into a new, strange looking 74-room boutique hotel. Or to rephrase, the third hotel within a three block radius. More evening traffic. More red velvet ropes lining up models with cellphones glued to their ears. Another pricey restaurant.

I have let my curmudgeon out to play in this post, griping about How the Neighborhood is Changing-- but it's happening at such a rapid fire speed that I have trouble keeping up with it. As soon as one restaurant opens, it seems like it's papered up, only to welcome in the next failure. It's sad, really. For crying out loud, my new neighbor is John Legend, who bought a floor of the ugly new high rise (see above) that has blocked our lovely view of the ornate cornices on Bond Street. Can we retain even a speck of our neighborhood's historical grit? Or will the little that remains take on a strange Disneyland quality?

Missing Paris

I've been moving data over a new computer after my last one died, and I keep getting distracted by one little album on my iPhoto library called "France." If I had an ink pad and a stamp marked Heaven, I'd stamp it all over every photograph from this trip, across each of the six weeks that we stepped away from our life as we knew it. From Normandy to Marseille, from the Sacre Coeur to each and every curvy street whose pavement and cobblestones wore down two pairs of my shoes to practically nothing.

We're planning our second summer in Paris, and have found a lovely family to swap with. The mom has a post at NYU this summer, so our East Village apartment will be perfectly located for her. She and her husband have a three year old daughter who should feel very at home in Jamie's room. They live in the same neighborhood that we stayed in last summer, Monmartre, but are even closer to the little village at the top of the hill. I'll be casting my net far and wide for writing assignments to carry me through while we're away, because I'll need the work, for a multitude of reasons. I really enjoyed blogging about English bookstores last summer, so maybe I can drum up something similar- a regular gig. I'm also hoping to be in touch with English speaking parents over there to help me find something for Jamie to do where he can meet other children his age and make friends, beyond the chance encounter in a playground... a mini- day camp for English speaking kids? We'll travel much less and spend more downtime exploring the city and studying French (this is the plan, anyway). I may find a French class for us to take at the New School this semester...

Ellen Stewart of La MaMa Theater, RIP

This week saw the passing of another Grande Dame of East 4th Street, the amazing founder of La MaMa Theater, Ellen Stewart. Ms. Stewart, who died at 91, was always a kind presence on our block; always friendly and engaging. Whenever I saw her, I knew I'd seen someone Great. She was a celebrity's celebrity. So many hugely talented people found their bearings under her supportive wing: Sam Shepard, Landford Wilson, Robert DeNiro, Phillip Glass, Bette Midler, Al Pacino, and countless others who passed through her open doors.

Ellen was beautiful. Even when she became so ill that she needed a wheelchair, she had a commanding presence, larger than life. A makeshift memorial has popped up on our block in front of her theater. It saddens me to think that the votives and flowers have been washed away by the three inches of slush we've accumulated in the last 24 hours. Certainly, there will be a beautiful memorial to her in the days to come. For those of you who haven't attended La MaMa, why don't you? We take for granted that we live in a city where people are creatively supported, but behind these Off-off Broadway productions are a stalwart few who consistently put their money where their mouth is, who show up, who contribute and support. Ellen wrote the book, offering struggling playwrights and actors places to live over the last decades.

For those of you with elderly patrons of the arts in your own neighborhoods, frequent their efforts. Without them, the support diminishes. Without the support, often the inclination to create. I'm lucky that because of Ellen there are now at least a dozen theaters on my block alone, and without her, I can say with certainty, there would not be. Thank you, Ellen. You will be missed.

You can read the New York Times's obituary of Ellen Stewart here (http://nyti.ms/g9uePN).