The Three Month Mark

Pam’s Pictorama Post: It seems like an odd moment perhaps to have a progress report today, but my mind is deeply there right now so here we go. I have been writing all week – an endless litany of editing and producing so perhaps it is just hard to turn that part of my brain off.

I have had reason to reflect on how in fact the discipline of writing this blog twice a week every week (since summer of 2014) has formed and honed my nascent skills over time. It has its own voice of course, and that is different than most of my writing for work, but it does help me add a lighter tone to some of the newsletter things we produce and just produce the sheer volume required.

Weirdly fundraising work is a lot of writing. I am not sure it is ever presented that way to aspirants in the field and no one gave me a writing test back when I started. (We still took typing tests! It was at the very end of that era however as computers were just phasing in.) However, unless you work in an enormous shop where all of the proposals and materials are produced by dedicated staff, you end up writing a heck of a lot. (My friends in those large shops assure me that they need to do a lot of editing of that work too because they understand the particulars best.)

*Little girl I was holding was a bit smaller yet than this one here.*

I give a basic writing test to most applicants – as much to make sure that they transfer information accurately and follow directions as anything else. Folks who will need to do a lot of more complex writing are asked to either do a more advanced test or submit previous proposals or writing samples. When it comes to the basic test I am often shocked by the errors. I mean they could share it with a half dozen of their friends before submitting and I wouldn’t know, yet many don’t seem to bother and there are often egregious errors.

On the other hand, I have also had excellent writing tests submitted by people who were less engaging during the interview process – and let’s not even start with what Zoom has done to interviewing. (Although now it is the accepted first step for every interview.) I try very hard to have an in-person with finalists, although I just hired someone who was moving back to NYC from San Francisco. He seems to be a good hire, although about six inches taller than I had anticipated. He sent a photo of his cat Moose along with his application which of course I found endearing. Moose is a marmalade tabby.

Leaving the writing of others aside, the demand has meant that I have been writing a variety of things pretty much since I walked in the door back in January. While much of this kind of writing and editing is second nature to me, being in such a different organization and trying to capture it has been a challenge. I find myself writing proposals to fund medical equipment I didn’t imagine existed (a 3-D printer which could be used to create everything from a new beak for a Great Horn Bill or a replacement joint for a pup) to writing direct mail copy for an appeal.

*A turtle like this one, but not this one!*

But how to capture the essence? What’s it like to stand in a back hall and see a tiny turtle no bigger than a half dollar being rushed by for care by specialists in exotic animals. (It was so moving to think someone cared so much for this tiny guy and could even tell he or she wasn’t well.) Or to cuddle a scared tabby kitten from a rescue group which is being evaluated for surgery on a malformed leg so she will be adoptable. (We raise money for the funds to pay for such surgeries and it was my first real encounter with a beneficiary.)

The vets and techs (and really everyone there) love these animals fiercely and they are single-minded in the best outcome for the animal.

Pre-pandemic I bought flowers weekly for my office, but gave it up when we returned to work. This week I bought some in memory of my mom and the one year of her passing. Reminded me how nice it is to have flowers around!

Meanwhile, I have written previously (read it here) my own office is a block away in a somewhat decaying residential building which leaks and lacks public access. (The photo at the top was taken from the rooftop space at our building.) My staff yearns for the ability to have pets in the offices as is allowed down the street in the main building. I hope to negotiate this at some point and install an office comfort cat, but fear at best in reality it will add a cat to my own menagerie on the weekends. (This is the only place I could ever work where the response to I have seven cats is not shock, but more along the lines of – Oh, eight would be great!)

So that is a small slice of life at the new gig – more to come I am sure.

Springing?

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Things have been quiet on the acquisition front so I thought I would spend today with just a bit of a life update. Here on the east coast, spring made some real inroads recently, only to roll back temperatures. New spring dresses and trousers hang in the closet with a come hither appeal and anticipation, however temperatures have not risen much above the mid-50’s and the windy morning chill has been more like the 43 degrees it is as I write. Still, the cherry and other flowering trees are in bloom and daffodils and other harbingers of the season are here.

Photos from the NJ garden are coming my way and I am anxious to get there and see them in person, the fruits of some later summer and early fall labor, an afternoon of planting stolen one day. Given some work commitments it will be another couple of weeks before I am out there. I hope to grab a couple of consecutive days though and it will likely be around the anniversary of mom going at the end of the month.

*A picture of daffodils from my NJ garden, sent by a friend.*

The new job is going well, but it is new which is tiring I think by its very nature. Still learning who is who and where to go for what and how to get anything done. Deciding what the right style for leading this group will be is part of it. They are few but seasoned professionals which is very different than the young green kids I found at JALC when I got there. It is a complex organization and that kind of learning is slow – I was lucky to have grown up at the Met and didn’t have to learn it cold like I am here and it is unlike Jazz where I was thrown into the deep end with a great sense of urgency about raising money immediately.

To date I’ve hired three staff people so the dynamic is already changing before I got at all familiar with it. Having many openings meant people were doing too many jobs and hiring as quickly as possible seemed like the nicest thing I could do for them. The energy is very different and the pace is undeniably slower and more sane.

The job pulls more on my experience at the Metropolitan Museum than Jazz at Lincoln Center did so I also find myself immersed in that period of my life as I sort through files I brought with me when I left there, adding to the layered confusion of what period of my past I am spending time in. I even see more people from the Met these days so I am rolling back time in some ways. (I wrote about my long history working at the Met here.) However, the world has certainly changed in the past seven years and work and managing staff will never go back to being the same. We will always be somewhat hybrid at an office now and need to be nimble and agile in new ways – some of which I, like many managers, are still figuring out.

A low calorie version of French Toast I am fond of these days, perched on a plate I bought on my birthday this year from Fishes Eddy which specializes in selling off whole sets as well as individual dishes.

Meanwhile, in the past twelve months and since caring for mom before her death, many good habits have fallen by the wayside I am afraid. I am picking them back up the best I can. Running has been sporadic and has been put entirely aside between oral surgery and the new job at the top of the year.

I have instituted a diet (when I diet I count calories, although I will grant that what you eat does also make a difference) and I exercise. However I have to rebuild the real habit of either lifting and the gym or get back to running now that the weather is better. I am doing my best to tame my new work schedule to figure that out. It is the first time in years I have not had a steady workout routine and fell the loss of it without quite being able to reconcile it. I am hoping for muscle memory when the time does come.

*Pot of soup simmering is always cheerful!*

I realized the other day I haven’t made soup in months (two of my recipes can be found here and here) and stocked up on the fixings to do so tomorrow. Nice to get a few pots in before the weather largely grows too warm for it. Soup can take a big bite out of a week of meal planning. I have wanted my weekends away from the stove, but am ready to get back on it. (As I write bags of food from Fresh Direct which just arrived sitting at the front door, awaiting my attention.)

So despite best efforts I have not quite yet emerged as the new next version of me and continue to work on it. As one friend said, I am still in my larvae stage, a gooey not quite moth and not yet butterfly. On a larger scale I think about the looming total solar eclipse in a few days, the comets and planetary activity surrounding it that seems to be in play. I don’t think it is a coincidence that here, in the path of the upcoming eclipse, we would have a rare earthquake as we had yesterday; even the heavens are changing and realigning themselves this spring.

New

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Seems impossible to write about anything else while my mind is so full of the first few days at the new job so here I go. As some of you know, I have only ever had a handful of first days at jobs in my adult life. (Meaning beyond the days when someone handed me a uniform or an apron and said have at it in high school and college!) Since one of the few was returning to the Met after an absence of two years and doesn’t really count, I am inexperienced at this for someone my age and who has worked continuously for decades.

*Frosty view on my way to work on day 1. It has been in the teens and/or snowing all week!*

When you leave one place and go to another you shed much of your day-to-day expertise about who does what and how things are done. I remember at Jazz there was a bi-weekly meeting that was held to discuss Wynton’s calendar and upcoming events and for the first couple of months I just sat there marveling at how I had no idea in the least what they were talking about. You lose the place where you got coffee in the morning, not to mention where lunch could be found.

At my new gig it is the discussions around oncology and neurology for kits and pups and a surgical floor opening that flummox me somewhat. I have seen a new MRI for small animals (I gather we are more or less the only game in town for this) and I have chatted with an angry orange Maine Coon cat who was waiting his turn for radiation. While kitty was very mad, next to him was a pup whose tail wagged continuously despite his circumstances when he heard our voices. Dogs, for whatever reason, make up the larger lion’s share of our practice. I can already say a lot of dogs get attacked while being walked. Be careful out there folks!

The first weeks require wandering around looking for the necessities of life – where to grab lunch, a drugstore, a post office. Considering we are in Manhattan you would think these are on every corner, but the animal hospital is perched near the river and the on and off ramp for the FDR highway. Much in addition to us is under construction and it is an island of traffic and construction, the amenities of life are at least a block away.

*The origin of the Animal Medical Center, downtown, back in 1914.*

By its very nature, as an animal emergency medical center and the only Trauma 1 center for animals in the area, it is a place that must look constantly forward. Having said this, it is housed in a building from the early 1960’s that we are renovating while still going full tilt. I too was built in the early 1960’s and I think both of us are showing our age. Luckily for the animals (and all of us) the hospital is in the final phase of a massive renovation of said building. Unlike a museum, a hospital has to stay open and fully operational during its renovation and space will be tight for almost another year. Our cramped quarters and the valiant unfailing efforts of the docs inspires me to get in there and raise some money to help finish the job.

As a result my team and a smattering of other folks are camped out in a block away which makes it hard to immerse myself in the life of the place although frequent trips in and out are helping to permeate my consciousness. Meanwhile my team doesn’t really exist in a place where I can easily gather them, although I am doing my best to perch among them on and off and pepper them with questions. My first few days were a morass of equipment that wasn’t quite working with passwords that needed to be established and a persistent problem with sound on my computer which I believe we finally resolved late Friday. This is what first days of work in the 21st century are made up of I guess.

Unlike Jazz, which had moved back to working entirely in person, I am back to a combination of online meetings and fewer in-person ones. I feel I have lost the cadence of working that way and am struggling to regain the skill set even once my equipment is functional.

*If I had a window my view might be close to something like this of the 59th Street bridge and Roosevelt Island tram.*

My new digs are pleasant enough. We are on the East River and while I have no windows skylights add some natural light to my office. (I have been warned by the pathologist next to me that they leak however – her microscope is covered.) There is a pile of fluffy dog beds in one corner from our recent Gala and I admit on a chilly late afternoon it is tempting to pull one out and curl up like a Great Dane in one.

My boxes of files and personal office effects have yet to arrive so it is a bit sterile for now and I twitch for files that aren’t there as I start to think about materials that need to be produced. It will seem more like home once I am fully installed, hopefully in the coming week. Despite the internet I still keep a dictionary and a thesaurus on my shelf and a few other office touchstones from my past – although I let go of the actual rolodex years ago after moving that around a couple of times.

*Large fluffy dog beds are tempting. There’s a bag of cat toys too in case I get bored.*

Some readers know that there’s always a Chinese lucky waving cat in my office to help attract money. I will definitely feel better once he is back on the job. (I wrote about my affinity for these in a post here.) I could use his reassuring tick, tick. I may need to bring one from home if there’s going to be a delay! No one has invested themselves in the space though, despite having been there for years and the likelihood of at least a year ahead. I hope for my team my being firmly grounded there brings them some measure of comfort. I like to take root in a space wherever I am. I like my stuff.

*One in a series of lucky waving cat statues.*

Because our space is open at the ceiling and we are crammed in together I cannot play music in my office, but Radio Dismuke is still on my earphones daily. (I wrote recently about finding this now beloved radio station online and posted about it here.) I am just getting to know the few existing members of my team and they are friendly if a bit wary. I have interviews with potential staff to fill existing positions already set up for this week.

So that’s the state of me as my first few days at the new job draw to a close. Much more about this adventure to come. Thank you for those readers who tuned in!

Open and Closed

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Pictorama readers may remember over the summer when I headed upstate near Poughkeepsie for a long weekend of work with the summer session of our youth orchestra. (That post can be found here.) We rented an Airbnb home and on the last day had a several hour gap between when we needed to leave the house and when we would need to arrive at someone’s home for an afternoon event. Luckily my colleague likes an antique store as much as I do (she is also the person who sent the cat puppet in yesterday’s post) and we filled the morning with visits to several as they opened.

We were not disappointed! She was decorating a new apartment, a converted stable space I think, and was looking for pieces of all sizes. I, who had taken the train to Poughkeepsie, was trying to confine myself to smaller objects. I failed to some degree, as I ended up purchasing this item and a lamp and my colleague brought them back to Manhattan for me. (A post that mentions the lamp, part of a lamp buying madness that is upon me, can be read here.)

*One of my recent lamp additions – purchased in Poughkeepsie last summer.*

I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with this item, whether it would maybe live in New Jersey or in my office and I settled on my office (in part because it arrived there!) and it recently came to the apartment when I was cleaning out my office at Jazz.

I am not sure what establishment this would have been used for. Something about the black and white enamel makes me think a medical office, but I don’t know how that might of worked. As you can see, a wooden knob at the top changes it from Open to Closed. I did develop the habit of turning it to Open in the morning when I came in and Closed when I was leaving – or tired of people coming into my office!

My office possessions are all packed up in boxes, still at Jazz, until I decide what is being sent to the new office and what is coming to the apartment. There are several things I am extremely attached to in those boxes. Among them is a small wooden box Kim painted with elephants (a special post about that here) and other items given to me over the years by various colleagues.

This Waldo mug was another item that came home with me. Someone made Kim two in exchange for being able to sell the design. I don’t know what happened to the other one – I think it was in rotation in the house and got broken at some point. This rather pristine example was my coffee mug at work. I think it will go to the new office as well. I always wonder if people in meetings are slowing becoming aware of Waldo’s tiny penis in the drawing.

The Farmer, Kim’s occasional avatar, appears on the other side, chasing Waldo.

It has a patina of dings on the enamel and the handle at the top is worn. There’s something about items like this, that had a very specific life before, used daily in some capacity, however never meant to be in a home or even the sort of office I had either. I enjoyed having it there and if there’s space I will bring it to the new office. If not, I will decide if it stays a part of my home office here or makes its way to the house in New Jersey.

This brings us to the new job, a new work space and not even know what that will be like yet. I have requested a desk in the animal hospital itself so I can immerse myself in the activity of the place, but I gather my real space will be across the street where they have offices. I asked several times to see it, but there seemed to be a number of reasons why that wasn’t possible.

*Cookie who has re-assumed her spot on the couch and as Queen of Deitch Studio.*

I do hate not knowing as I would have liked to start imagining myself in the space, I can’t say I like the unknown. I am like the cats, hating being uprooted and taken some place strange. (Incidentally, Cookie is reveling in being back in Manhattan and Blackie seems to have fallen back into his routine as well. If he misses NJ he is largely keeping it to himself.) As for me, some fairly major oral surgery last week has occupied my final days of vacation before starting fresh this week.

Somehow the Open and Closed sign seems like an appropriate post for today, my last before starting the new job this Wednesday. I will report back in full in the coming weeks – here we go!

An Ending and the New Year

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a personal post. For those of you who are just in it for the photos and the toys, you might want to go back to finishing the holiday cards (ours coming up next weekend!), but for others you might want to get that second cup of coffee and settle in.

As I have alluded to in recent prior posts, I am finishing my last few days at Jazz at Lincoln Center. For almost seven years I have been their chief fundraiser and occasionally chronicled my work life here. The early days of figuring it out, nascent traveling with the orchestra, learning the rhythms and pace (very fast) of the place. I have likened it to leaping onto a speeding train.

*JLCO taking a break outside of a Cracker Barrel restaurant during BBH Tour 2017.*

Tonight I will attend my last Big Band Holiday concert as staff. Early in my work life I toured with the orchestra for Big Band Holiday, through Florida and much of the southeast. (That post can be found here.) I had made a nascent trip to Shanghai (and wrote about that here) in the first few months, but it was the Big Band Holiday tour that really made me understand what it was like for the orchestra when they were on the road and what was and was not going to be possible in terms of fundraising on those trips.

I wrote occasionally about the long Zoom-filled pandemic days – especially hard at a performing arts organizing which can no longer perform. I had to dig deep into my creativity to fundraise successfully, always hand in hand with Wynton Marsalis who proved to be an invaluable leader. Coming out of those pandemic days have been hard on managers. We are expected to mitigate both the needs of executive leadership and our staff. First the Great Resignation as folks settled into new careers and lives sometimes across the country from where they started.

*Final evening at Dizzy’s this past week. Mary Stalling and the amazing Emmett Cohen Trio.*

The longing to return to a pre-Covid office life is understandable, but not entirely practical as our staff has become accustom to more flexibility. Ours was a great office culture before Covid so it has been sad to see the office anemically filled, no longer teeming with musicians and bustling with energy. Sadly, longing for something doesn’t make it so. You need to create something new instead. A September mandated five day return to office was not the right catalyst.

As many of you know, my time there also morphed into the period I cared for my mother who had her final illness in New Jersey over the first four months of this year. I am beyond grateful for the thoughtfulness of Jazz at Lincoln Center and my colleagues while I traveled back and forth, frequently working days from there weekly until for a period at the end when I stayed in New Jersey. (Those days and that unusual time is in posts here and here.)

****

Mom died in April and left me her house with five cats (plus Hobo, our outdoor pal). With the addition of Cookie and Blackie (the New York cats) that bring us more or less to eight. I became a crazy cat lady overnight – but I like to say mom had me in training for years! Kim and I packed the cats up and we spent five weeks in Jersey at the end of the summer. (A few posts about our lazy summer days can be found here and here.)

Without realizing it, I guess this brought me to the end of one period of my life and to the threshold of something different. I am not sure I knew that until late this fall someone put me in touch with the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center which was looking for someone to develop its fundraising arm. As I spoke with them I began to get excited about the opportunities I could see for them and my brain started shifting gears.

*Paying a visit to Blackie at AMC. Was crawling on the floor trying to get him to eat tuna from my hand.*

Some of you will remember that a year ago, Blackie was very sick and spent (and very expensive) week there while they saved his life after a dramatic infection suddenly took over his body. Although I mentioned it, I never posted about the very dark week we had while he was there. He was, in their words, a very sick kitty indeed and we are of course very grateful patients.

*Blackie sporting a bright pink bandage after he came home.*

The Animal Medical Center was founded in 1911 by a group of women who were volunteering for the nascent ASPCA and recognized the need for veterinary care for animals as well as their welfare. I plan to dig into this lore and I’m sure I will be sharing tidbits over time.

Today it is the largest animal hospital of its kind in the world, serving more than 50,000 animals a year. It is an elite veterinary facility where young vets train and research is done. I hope to help them expand what they do in these and other areas, including funding the free services they offer to the City’s police dogs and horse, our zoos and rescue animals which need surgical intervention.

*Yoda the police dog being honored at the Top Dog AMC Gala this week.*

I will miss my colleagues at Jazz, especially the endlessly talented musicians in the band, not to mention the nights at Dizzy’s – listening to Bill Charlap while the summer sun sets over Central Park – and the concerts in the hall. Dinners planned around the music and the stunning views of Columbus Circle. I will miss the daily encounters with folks who know me and I know them and we are part of a well-oiled machine together.

I find change painful and as I navigate the first holidays without my mom, this additional parting of the ways has sometimes overwhelmed me. Change is hard. Growing is hard, but you need to pay attention to the voice that urges you forward to the next thing.

Tonight, a final Big Band Holiday concert in the hall. Then we head to New Jersey for three weeks at the end of this week. Obviously I will post from there, but I am hoping it can be a few weeks of cookie baking and reflection. The new gig starts mid-January. So we gently close one chapter and head to the next.

Tuning In

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama.com: Last week I mentioned stumbling onto Radio Dismuke in passing. While in Cold Spring over our anniversary we happened into a shop where it was playing. They had thoughtfully provided a printout page by the register with the log on info. I snapped a photo. Later that week I remembered it and tuned in while at work. It is a glorious discovery.

From what I have gathered, the station started as one man’s hobby, programming and playing his vast collection. The documentation of it online seems to mostly date from 2016 when he (Dismuke) made the decision to place his collection and the station in the hands of an Austin, Texas archive. There is a Board and donations can be made to it as a 501(c) (3) organization. He continues to program it, although I gather there are evidently occasional guest programmers (I haven’t hit on those yet). It rolls along 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like an alternate reality.

Although occasional period commercials play and there are periodic station identifications, there is no disc jockey or voice of. The playlist is vast and the throughlines can be mercurial. The quality of the recordings is fairly universally good. There are radio transcription, 78’s and who knows what else. The variety is blissfully wide. I bless Mr. Dismuke for having the foresight to attempt to ensure and secure the future of his station this way.

Today while wandering around the site I discovered that there is a section of program notes and essays with music as well. I have to explore further. I have also subscribed to their emails so we’ll see what that brings.

As a young adult, even a teen, I shopped around for a music that suited me. Of course as a Jersey girl of age in the 1980’s, I listened to a bit of Bruce and other contemporaries of the time. My sister Loren had a prodigious interest in music and collected albums of both popular and classical music. She was musically gifted. Violin was her primary instrument, but she played piano and flute, and was even known to hop on bassoon in a pinch. Music both from her own making and from her stereo issued forth at all hours and whenever she was home.

I am old enough that radios were certainly ubiquitous and hugely inexpensively available. While there was a kitchen radio for family consumption, it sat atop of the fridge where we couldn’t reach it until we were old enough, tall enough. It was generally on news radio, (CBS News radio where mom’s brother worked), but mom would give into music occasionally.

*This is remarkably close to the model I had.*

I had a transistor radio that I was extremely proud of when I was about 8. It was a small black Sony. It really seemed like the height of technology and vaguely magical. It was later replaced by, in turn, a very swinging 70’s model that was sort of a twisting plastic donut that kept its radio bits where it swung apart. This was very cool, but didn’t have legs. At some point I found or was given a white table model with gold trim and all were eventually replaced by a series of clock radios. (We were a clock radio family – my father rose to one daily and I guess he figured we all should. In New York I still use one, although in New Jersey and for travel I depend on my phone.) This eliminated the need for batteries and as I often listened in my room I only missed the magic of portability slightly.

*Found on Pinterest. I think mine was even yellow…*

I loved finding radio programs where stories were told or books read. Think Jean Shepard. I’m not so old that I remember dramas or series acted out on radio. However, there were shows where snippets of books were read or the sorts of things that would be podcasts were broadcast. I wasn’t very good at remembering when these shows were broadcast so it was hit or miss, but I’d go looking on a weekend afternoon or lazy summer day an occasionally be rewarded.

*In true Butler tradition I still use a clock radio and this Sony cube has long been the current incarnation.* *I wake to WQXR classical music.*

Jazz started to interest me fairly early on, but what I heard was sort of largely to one side of what really appealed to me. Almost without realizing it became apparent that what I liked was early jazz, pre-1940, but it was awhile before I think I entirely put that together. And it was hard to find. Like the stories, I would stumble on it here or there, but certainly didn’t find anything dedicated to it until I was in college.

I have written at length about the period of listening in college and ultimately discovering Rich Conaty’s show. (That tribute post to him can be found here.) Therefore, I won’t go over that territory again. Rich helped me quantify that it wasn’t only jazz, but really all popular music of the 20’s and 30’s (and perhaps a bit on either side) that I most coveted.

*Rich Conaty. While researching this I found that WFUV has made his shows available digitally on their website.*

However, with Rich’s death I never found a radio replacement. His station, WFUV, is an eclectic college station and there is, to my knowledge, no attempt to replace his show, nor to play the many decades of archived material. Phil Schaap filled the bill, if differently, at Columbia University and on their station. Kim and I became weekend listeners to his show, trading Rich’s Sunday night spot for a longer one on Saturday nights. Sadly, Phil lost his battle with cancer in 2021. His daily morning show Birdflight, about the life and music of Charlie Parker, is still played in its morning slot.

Phil was also a fixture at Jazz at Lincoln Center where he had taught their Swing U adult ed courses for many years. I would catch up with him in the kitchen and chat – always jazz or baseball. (I know nothing about baseball and very little about jazz compared to Phil. He’d quiz me and I would fail.) Once in awhile he’d lope into my office and have a chat. That was more rare. His presence accounted in part for my interest in taking the job there. Despite my inability to remember dates and details, Phil was overwhelmingly supportive of my fundraising efforts on behalf of the music and always expressed his gratitude with enthusiastic abundance.

I find it hard to listen to Phil or Rich now, both their voices so very distinctive, without getting sad so I don’t listen to the rebroadcasts of Phil’s shows. WKCR continues dedicated presentations of jazz beyond Birdflight, but I lost the habit of listening while I work entirely during the pandemic. Kim loves the music, but he finds it distracting when he’s working so unlike my office, I didn’t play it while working from home during the pandemic years.

Ironically, my discovery of Radio Dismuke has come as I finish my time at Jazz at Lincoln Center and popular music of the 20’s and 30’s pours out of my office there again for now. (The internet has of course long replaced the desktop radio that I had while at the Met – although I still have it and could probably put my hands on it right now.) It is of some comfort to me that when I am sitting in a new chair in a different office in a few months that I will take Radio Dismuke along with me. In recognition I made my first online gift to them. I hope that it will be the first of many.

Morphing

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am writing this from Livingston, NY where, some readers may remember, I am spending a work weekend with our Summer Jazz Academy which is held over a two week period at on the campus of Bard College each summer. This is my first experience in an Airbnb and it is a very nice one – however I cannot take any credit for selecting it, my colleague did. It is a bit sterile, but utterly professionally appointed and has fulfilled all our needs.

*The water lily laden view out the back porch.*

The requisite view is a fresh water pond which appears to be somewhat manmade. The water goes virtually all the way up to the backdoor which makes me nervous, having grown up with river flooding. (The view of the deck chairs and floating dock as above is literally also just out our door.) A run yesterday revealed very steep hills – and I like some hills in my run but these put me to the test. Whew! This morning I just devoted myself to the cleaning and organizing of the Airbnb before our 10:00 am check out time.

*Along the route of my run – some mighty tough hills here!*

Incoming news from New Jersey this AM is that our stray, Hobo, who has been amongst the missing, showed up at long last. We were concerned that perhaps he had met his maker and was roaming with Mom in the cat over-the-rainbow world, but nope. He showed for his three cans of food the other day and has returned at least daily since. Long live Hobo.

In other news I am told we need cat food. With five resident cats there this is hardly unusual, but it is tricky to track what they are eating, preferring and needing if I am not there to see. I think the folks over at Chewy.com must think I now run a cat farm, which in a sense, I do. I carefully check and double check that this order is going to the correct locations – cats in New York eat different food than cats in New Jersey and although all will be mixing and socializing soon, I don’t need a couple of cases of the NJ food in NYC’s tiny apartment.

*We avoided rain up here in Tivoli until we were pulling up stakes Sunday night. Rain clouds moving in over the Hudson.*

Today I pen a bit in advance because next weekend (when you are reading this) we are committing to moving the contents of a long-employed storage unit (think decades in storage) of Kim’s possessions to NJ. I have been planning for it, but we are anxious about the potential difficulties. These are the contents of Kim’s long ago former apartment in Brooklyn, prior to him bringing the Deitch to Deitch Studio here in Manhattan, many years ago. We are sure to find all sorts of treasure – and trouble.

*A colleague put me up at their wonderful cottage in Cold Spring on Sunday night on the way home, to break up the trip. This is their stunning view.*

It is a coming together of worlds that although thought out seems a bit awe inspiring to actually executed after such a long time. And it is a serious stake in the ground this merging of stuff and place. Shelving has been ordered! Bookcases acquired! I have tried hard to calculate what needs a home and be stored, but here we go!

And the Season to be Jolly Continues…

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have a red velvet jacket, trimmed with a bit of black silk braid, that is probably a good decade (or even more) older than me. My guess is that it made its appearance on the scene in the late forties or early fifties. It is short and hits me just above my hips. It is a boxy cut so there is never a question if it will fit during and waxing and waining of weight. Mercifully the moths seem disinterested in it.

Since it is such an elder statesman of a jacket (showing some wear on the pile around the elbows) I only take it out for a few holiday runs a year, but without question it is a fan favorite and I always get so many compliments on it. Needless to say it dozed quietly in my closet over the pandemic years, and last year was a very abbreviated festive season with my mom in the hospital up to Thanksgiving and then with the time I stayed there. (A post from that time can be found here.)

*Self-portrait in Christmas bulb on my run in New Jersey earlier this week.* *The NJ suburbs, as above, exude more holiday spirit.*

So this year was the first in many years that I pulled it out again to wear yesterday, paired with high-waisted navy trousers and a silver (yes, silver – hotsy-totsy!) silk tank top. I have long found that dressing the part will get you part of the way to feeling it and I needed to pull out all the stops to find some ho, ho, ho this year for a dinner after work.

My evening out was preceded by a very long, frankly arduous and frustrating day at the office. As I alluded to in my post last week (it can be found here) fundraising is reaching a fevered pitch by this time in the calendar year. Some large events and important proposals have been layered on top of the usual frenzy truly making my head spin to the point of migraine meltdown early in the week. Yesterday I was sweating out the final version of a document right up until I had to leave to head over to a holiday dinner at our jazz club.

The evening was a mix of people I know and a few I did not, although even those I didn’t know only had a degree of separation really. I was a guest last night and so while I can never entirely stop my work brain when I am in our venues, the evening was not mine to run and fret over. Drinks and fried food eased us into the evening, always a good start.

*Marilyn Maye performing at Dizzy’s Club last night.*

The set featured Marilyn Maye. For those who do not know her, Marilyn is a 94 year young jazz and cabaret singer who is still belting out standards and last night with a sprinkling of holiday classics. Marilyn had her start as a truly tiny tot in talent shows in her native Kansas. Over time she moved from Wichita to Kansas City, and then later to the big time in Chicago where she began a long recording and successful performing career.

Evidently dinner club cabaret eventually gave way to more stage and theater work, and although I have seen her in our other, larger halls, she seems most wonderfully at home in the club atmosphere. In her sparkling sequin jacket, trousers and decked out in glimmering earrings and bracelets, she is every inch a dinner club diva.

As I settled into the music, my phone tucked away for the evening (although I did sneak this photo), which is rare for me because often when I am at a dinner in the evening I am working and need to be available to the staff who are also working. Last night as a guest I was able to focus entirely on the music.

*The enthusiasm of these decorations inspired me to make my run past it so I could get a photo.*

The love songs lulled me into musing over my own good fortune to have found Kim (as they always do) and that put me in a good frame of mind. By the time she got to some holiday music (a medley with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and Santa Claus is Coming to Town among them) my harden, cold, Grinchy little heart had melted. Somehow even as it was unfolding I knew it was an evening that I will remember and look back on – just a very special moment in time which will stay with me. Thank you Marilyn!

‘Tis the Season

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: WordPress has a new feature where each time you sit down to write it offers up a question – I guess for inspiration? For example, today’s was What is your favorite cartoon? (And last week it was What did you dream last night?) Since I have devoted a fair amount of posting space to cartoons, I’m not sure it is the inspiration I might be looking for, but nice to know they want to help on a difficult day when getting started is hard.

I have had the opportunity to pepper my posts with many marvelous toy acquisitions lately and coming off that fete I admit to being a bit betwixt and between. So today I am reflecting on what is most on my mind and as we find ourselves solidly in the holiday season and I am doing my best to keep up with it I will share some of those thoughts today.

As I survey my mid-December perch, the holiday cards are done and going into the mail this week. (Look out for a big card reveal post next week!) I have purchased no gifts yet, however I don’t live in much of a gift giving world any longer. There will be gifts for my mother’s caregivers this year and a rare few for friends and of course Kim. I gave mom a new floor for converting her garage to a room (nothing says love like vinyl plank), but will try to find something additionally cheerful for her.

*Woods are becoming bare already in NJ.*

If you are a fundraiser like I am the holiday season merges with an exponential increase in work since most annual gifts will come in the last six weeks of the calendar year. (At the Met it was I think a full third of all gifts.) This against a fevered pitch backdrop of holiday events (two dinners under my belt with three more and a series of concerts to go as I write) and like the season or not, at a minimum you need to have a lot of energy to get through it.

I can be depended on for holiday cheer – after all as a toy collector it is sort of my season. I am the person who wants to celebrate a moment of first snow, to set up a three foot light up Santa or a small tree for the cats in the incredibly small apartment. I love tinsel and sparkle and bubbling lights! I will have drinks with you to toast the season at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel and used to enjoy doing it with a view of Central Park from the Plaza when that was an option. I will systematically buy gifts with joyful anticipation of giving them. I was the kid who would volunteer to wrap all the gifts because I liked doing it so much.

*Some low-key nascent holiday decorations in New Jersey a few weeks ago.*

As stated, I like holiday decorations. I am heading to New Jersey tonight for a few days and I look forward to running in that neighborhood this week and taking in the burgeoning decorations of the ‘hood. Giant motorized snowmen and Santas are wheezing gently on front lawns amongst wonderlands of twinkling lights, elves and sleighs. Instagram followers of my running journal can look forward to those – although to really do them justice I would have to do a turn at night I think. The city is tame by comparison, although here I have the joy of running past the lines of Christmas trees awaiting purchase and breathing in their evergreen goodness.

*Trees in Manhattan were being set-up the day before Thanksgiving this year.*

However, the several sobering years of the pandemic changed my relationship to the festivities and in some ways I am finding it hard to resume my mantle of cheer. The mountain of work has climbed to tsunami proportions and sadly a full scale memorial needed to be inserted right after Thanksgiving (for a former Board chair, shortly after two large scale dinners) and has me and the team flagging. The idea of adding a single additional thing to my calendar taxes me beyond credulity. Collegial and friendly imbibing will have to wait for the New Year.

Endless discussions occur about whether or not people want to eat from a buffet table now and how many people is too many in the living room of a small townhouse are enervating. Concerts have sold well, but occasionally the purchased seats go empty if the people do not show which seems to happen more frequently than in the past, giving the hall a slightly gap-toothed look. I have written about our altered universe before (see one of those posts here), but never is it more evident I think than than this time of the year.

Me and my (small but determined) staff will continue our march through the holidays, right through New Year’s when we can finally come up for air and fall into an exhausted rest. I will bribe them with cookies and all manner of treats when I am with them in person and rally them virtually when online. I am hoping that amongst the extraordinary generosity of the season that I will find that gear again, or maybe while listening to our orchestra, or to Marilyn Maye belting out holiday standards at Dizzy’s, or catching a final show with Matt Wilson and his Christmas Tree-O there.

*Winter-ish scene from a recent run in NJ.*

Regardless, shortly ’23 will be upon us and another holiday season behind. Last minute contributions will have been booked, concerts completed and parties concluded. We will head into January with our resolutions firmly in hand and see what we can make of the New Year.

It’s Back

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: I’m realizing that one of the signs of being back in the office and our hall more often is my aching back. Immediately preceding lockdown in March of ’20 I was routinely seeing an acupuncturist to relieve the lower back pain which was climbing down my leg and I was attributing to long hours in concert hall seats, airplanes and office chairs.

Over time at home, with a lousy “temporary” office, the back pain grew worse until I finally analyzed my computer set up and chair, added an external keyboard and a lift to the monitor as well as a carefully chosen chair, which I purchased after much reading and consideration. In addition, instead of my weight lifting regime as my only exercise, I began running and that made a dramatic difference too.

*Cookie taking advantage of a light warmed space on my home desk.*

My father’s back pain was a part of family life so I am no stranger to the concept. Dad was about 6’4″ and his career as a news cameraman meant he spent hours with heavy equipment on his shoulder (one ending up considerably lower than the other later in life) and straining his back. In addition, he drove for hours on end for domestic stories, and of course airplane travel when they went that route wasn’t much kinder. As a result my father’s mercurial back would go out reaching for a salt shaker at dinner or even sneezing, leaving him in bed or on one dreadful occasion, on the bedroom floor.

*According to Blackie, the home desk is good for napping too.*

There was the summer he was on the rigging of a tall ship in Newport for work (perhaps in 1976 as part of the Bicentennial) when his back went out. It was evidently a painful and prolonged trip getting both him and his equipment down in one piece. His colleagues then packed him in a car with pillows all around to enable him to drive the straight five hours or so back home in New Jersey. He spent the rest of the summer recovering, mostly in an ancient rocker which now sits in my apartment. At the time it seemed like the longest period he had ever been home with us which was probably true.

So I am no stranger to back pain, although I suppose if it came right down to it mine is a bit different than his which seemed to have been linked to discs that were being crushed by weight slowly over time. I have touched on my own psoriatic arthritis and exercise (a post can be found here) and at least some of my back pain is attributable to the inexorable advance of that disease, which expressed itself first in my lower back. And a recent hiccup with my longstanding meds (no one needs to hear an insurance company rant from me) has also exacerbated the problem again.

*Cookie on the old desk chair which was killing my back. She still enjoys it however.*

But one of the culprits is a byproduct of our return to the office (hybrid, three days a week) and sitting in lousy chairs. I realize now that my desk set up there is also a bit jerry-rigged, the chair (even with a back cushion added) is less than desirable and my feet at an odd angle. Add to that conference room chairs which seem to be down a notch from the one in my office and we have the recipe for worsening if not instigating said back pain. A long Board meeting on Zoom from there on Wednesday seems to have pushed me over the edge this week. Ironically now the home office is the better set up.

*There’s always a certain amount of fighting over the new desk chair, regardless of whether I am in it or not…*

I have always felt that the weird part of back pain is that there is a subconscious preference for maintaining the postures that in reality make it worse and perhaps helped to cause it. Back pain does not make me want to be at a standing desk for example. It makes me want to sit on my couch or curl up on the bed – neither exactly great for back pain. It makes me want to not move, when exercise and movement is the best thing to alleviate it.

So I will start to fight back today. It is a sunny crisp fall morning and I will be out for a run shortly and perhaps that and stretching before and after will start me on the path to recovery. (The stiffness and pain has dampened my desire to run this week, although I was out on Monday.) Meanwhile, I will see what I can do about improving my work office with some implements to arrange me in a better position. Not much I can do about the conference room or concert hall seats, but I will hope that this combined with a resolution around my meds and that issue, will tip the scales back in my favor. I will let you know.