The Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. After a rainy, windy, March-like May, the unexpected kiss of a perfect day. Met friends for brunch in the East Village, walked them over to the West Village, to my favorite bookstore in the world, then wandered lazily, contentedly, sun-kissedly, down Sixth Avenue. At the corner of Houston and Sixth, in the playground parking lot, we saw some teenaged girls performing drill team-like dance maneuvers, to the unintelligible urgency of a way-too-loud boom box. They were dressed identically. Some of their brethren, dressed in the same color combo of t-shirt and pants, pressed upon us (I was the one who accepted it) a tract enumerating the different ways HELL is described in the Bible.

“A lake of fire,” read my friend M. as we crossed Houston Street. “A bottomless pit, a horrible tempest.”

On the other side of Houston Street, similarly-clad followers awaited us, with outstretched tracts in Spanish. We smilingly held up our English one, strolled on. We sought a spot in which to sip soothing drinks in the sunlight. Note the alliteration in that sentence, the sibilance similar to the serpent who tempted Eve into sin.

“A place of everlasting burnings,” M. read. “A furnace of fire, a devouring fire.”

I have never been much of a fan of Hell (“a place of torments, of everlasting punishment”). I grew up an itinerant Protestant (depending on who was paying attention in my childhood). I was a Presbyterian (Sunday school), an Episcopalian (confirmed), a Lutheran (baptized) and attended services of the Methodist and the Christian Science churches (just good friends). None of these disciplines required drill team-style dancing in a parking lot, accompanied by the threat of Hell (“a place where people pray, where people cry for mercy, where people wail, where people blaspheme God”). But you know? To each his own.

You ask me, as a marketer, I would gear my religious conversion techniques towards the positive. “Hey, here’s a way to govern ourselves and to treat other creatures, here’s how to work towards spiritual strength, here are some guidelines out of misery” – but if others hope to bring passersby to their own chosen Savior through harsh threats (“a place of no forgiveness, of filthiness, of weeping, of sorrows, of outer darkness”), and military-style dance, that is the right they have been granted by the Constitution, a freedom they have achieved by the sacrifices of others.

The ones we’re supposed to remember on Memorial Day.

Labels: drill team, Memorial Day, Partners and Crime, Protestants

posted by Elizabeth at 9:22 PM   0 Comments

The Write-a-Thon took place on May 17 at the library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, which is a cute little library and apparently the best-kept secret in midtown Manhattan. It began at 10:30 but I arrived around noon and immediately began whispering to the nice young women from the New York Writers Coalition. They pointed me to the table of gift bags, refreshments, and the “prompt station” where you could pull phrases like “his mother’s eyes” from an idea jar, or sign up for a workshop.

I did not sign up for a workshop. I came in with my notebooks, one of the few, the very very few, in the library space without a laptop computer. I wrote in my notebook, planning what to write for the day. When I got tired of that, I worked on a short script. When I got tired of that, I worked on a short essay. When I got tired of that, I went back to my notebook to “free write.”

What is a “free write”? I like to think of it as a form of literary throat-clearing, or perhaps vocal exercises. Here is an example from that day:

Everyone has a laptop but me. Is anything else actually “writing”? Wait, she has a pen in her hand, so does he, and so does that woman behind me. But that’s all. Should I get a laptop? Just one more thing to lug around, though, and do I need another keyboard in my life? Look, that woman is surfing Google, she’s not writing, although I wish I had internet access for just a sec, I could look up “illness other than cholera which arises from contaminated water,” although I think I’ll just give her malaria. Can I call her Maritzka? Or is that just ridiculously character-y? Melanie? Is anyone named Melanie anymore?

So you see, that’s why it stays in the free-write notebook.

By the end of the day, I had a first draft of a short script, “Grandparents: The Director’s Cut.” I had made considerable headway on a short essay called “Dear Me,” which is a letter to my 14-year-old self and hence quite tragic. I had a very sore hand.

And thanks to my sponsors -- Cecily, Mayte, Brian, Leo, Linda, Deborah, Terry, Kevin, Michael and Jody -- I had raised $410 for the New York Writers Coalition.



The top fundraiser was this girl



Thanks to all of you!

Labels: free writing, General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, New York Writers Coalition, Write-a-Thon

posted by Elizabeth at 1:14 PM   0 Comments

My dear friend Chris (of "Chris and Kris and Hyperhedonism") who works for a certain government agency because of his certain expertise, forwarded me the below correspondence. (BTW, Chris, because of his special government knowledge, tells me that NOAA stands for National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency or something along those lines. When the National Weather Service warning of severe weather crawls across the bottom of your screen while you're trying to watch Jon Stewart? The National Weather Service's dad is NOAA. But don't tell your friends you know this. It's not that it's a secret, it's just one of those things you shouldn't really know if you want to maintain your image as one too hip to know things like this.)

The amusing email:

Dear NOAA Employee,

This week I asked my brother, who is a SCIENTIST, why what happened in Myanmar (formerly Burma) is referred to as a "cyclone" while what happened in New Orleans (formerly New Orleans) is referred to as a "hurricane." My brother, although he is a SCIENTIST, initially gave me a somewhat incorrect answer involving the northern and the southern hemisphere and wind currents going clockwise and counter-clockwise and all that sort of thing that always makes my attention drift away. I thought if it was the same sort of weather pattern and the only difference was hemisphere, there was no need to create a whole new word for it; they could have just said "norricane" and "surricane."

My brother and I then questioned how an Iowa basketball team and a minor-league baseball team based in Brooklyn, New York, could be called the Cyclones when they are in the wrong HEMISPHERE. My brother suggested that the Iowa team be renamed "The Tornados" while I offered the "Race Riots" as an appropriate name for the Brooklyn team, since race riots are the type of disaster that occurs most often in that borough. Despite the reasonable explanation of my suggestion, my brother emailed back, "Nice comment, Don!" which means he thought my comment was racist and is a private family reference to my father, but you don't want to hear about that.

ANYWAY, NOAA Employee, after this bit of sibling banter, my brother changed course (a metaphor you will appreciate!) and thought maybe the hurricane/cyclone issue had something to do with an east/west division of the globe, rather than a north/south one. In other words, even though he is a SCIENTIST, and always harping on accuracy, he did not know for sure! In my hour of need, I turned to the NOAA website, and learned the accurate terminology for all manner of windstorms occurring on coastlines! I promptly cut and pasted this information (I hope the govt doesn't mind!) and sent it not only to my brother, who was grateful for the information, but to all kinds of my friends, who have not yet emailed back yet to tell me if they were. Grateful, I mean.

Some of my friends seem to think I am odd for insisting on knowing why things are called what they are called. Isn't that funny? I would think everyone would want to know that. For example, if you lived in a place called Silver Spring, wouldn't you want to know if there was a spring, and if it was silver? I f you lived in a town that had a street called Steinway, wouldn't you like to know that that was because the street ended at the Steinway Piano Factory, the last remaining piano factory in New York City, which was once home to 86 piano factories?

Maybe you would not.

But I think you would, NOAA Employee.

Yours very truly,

A Devoted Taxpaer

Labels: Brooklyn Cyclones, Burma, Hurricane, Myanmar, New Orleans, NOAA, Silver Spring, Steinway Street

posted by Elizabeth at 11:18 PM   0 Comments