Let the Vacation Begin…

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today marks the official beginning of our summer vacation here at Deitch Studio, although Kim has the jump on me having started last week. I have become bad at vacationing I am afraid. Especially since taking my current position, somehow vacation has not really panned out for me.

My first summer at this job I was very new and I went to Shanghai on business after only a few months in my job. (A post about that extraordinary trip can be found here.) It was fascinating, but I was learning so much about the organization and everything was so new that it was exhausting and as far from relaxing as I can imagine. The subsequent summer my father was sick and then died in August and I was largely preoccupied. Our pre-pandemic summer was spent preparing for the window replacement in our apartment and a September business trip to South Africa. (Posts about these events can be found here, here and here.)

*Window installtion, fall of ’19 and immediately after a lengthy trip to South Africa.*

Last summer we were in the cautious reawakening of New York City after being truly housebound and were just forming newly found pleasures in re-opened restaurants serving booze on the street and eating outside. My days which were routinely more than 12 hours, cut back a bit but the pace could not really stop. The organization needed money and my job was to keep that ball rolling forward.

Therefore, I can say I am hitting this few weeks pretty exhausted and with low-key expectations. I do not plan to travel further than to see mom on the Jersey shore, although I have some other interesting ideas about ferry exploration which I gather can now take us up to the Bronx, but also to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Day trips! There is a cartoon show hosted by Tommy Stathes in Brooklyn tomorrow night which, if not interrupted by hurricane, I would like to see. I had planned for us to take the ferry there too, but will likely employ the subway if stormy as predicted. (Details on that show for other locals can be found here.) Kim seems game for all my nascent schemes.

*Where I run in the mornings, along the East River and FDR Drive.*

In addition, I have pledged to do my best to purge the moths and moth eaten clothes (still largely from the winter of ’20) from the closets and will clear off my desk. I also have numerous sessions of physical therapy for my hand to be completed – hopefully getting it back into shape for the fall!

My other vacation goals are few. I have been reading the Red Cross Girls series by Marjorie Vandercook (a few of my myriad posts about her Camp Fire Girls and Ranch Girls books can be found here and here) and I think you all will be hearing more about those when I finish them. (I am currently in occupied Belgium, volume three.) I would like to get my running back on track now that I am back from a six or eight week lay off for the broken fingers on Memorial Day.

*Don’t own this one – and hoping to continue reading them for free online!*

Also due largely to the broken fingers, I haven’t been lifting weights in recent months. I would like to start to get that part of my workout back on track although the bad hand is still weak and I have to be careful with free weights. It would be nice if I could get close to my diet goal before going back to work, although vacation should be about good food too.

A few moments of sound from Dizzy’s Club, last Wednesday night at our soft opening.

I have an eye toward thinking about the fall, although our plans at work are uncertain like most people’s right now. We re-opened our jazz club, Dizzy’s, last week. It was a joyous return to live music indoors and wonderful to be back. Herlin Riley and his band could only be described as ebullient and exuberant – exactly what was needed. It was good to exercise the muscles of in-person interaction. Still, it was a night informed by Covid protocols and the reality of the new world never really left us.

Our return to full time in the office has just been deferred by a month, into October, in deference to the rising rate of the variant. Meanwhile, our concert season doesn’t begin until November so perhaps our timing will be good. It is hard for someone like me not to be able to plan, but I am trying to loosen my grip on the need to do so in this environment.

*The joys of hand physical therapy will continue for the foreseeable future.*

I am in the midst of hiring staff to shore up a team that has dwindled over the past 17 months, and also in the process leading up to asking for a very large contribution, all which must continue forward over the next few weeks so I doubt my vacation time this year will be pristine. Still, my OOO message is on my work account and at a minimum I see some strolls with ice cream along the waterfront, some late nights watching old westerns accumulated by Kim for this purpose, much cat petting and sleeping late in my immediate future.

Returning: Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Although I am presently reveling in a sea of newly acquired Felix photos, I am pausing today to take stock of my nascent (albeit partial) return to our offices this week. Although I have occasionally had reason to go to Columbus Circle throughout the fifteen months (and counting) of the pandemic, this week I asked my (remaining, greatly reduced) staff to join me for a day of clearing out and organizing in advance of a full return in September. We met first in Central Park for breakfast and a farewell to a favorite staffer who is leaving to pursue his PhD in musicology full time.

As an aside, I have set the goal of walking to and/or from work as often as possible. This regime found me walking two six plus miles trips this week. Let’s see how long I can keep that going. We’ll put the pin there for now and return to that in a future post.

*From a morning walk through Central Park this week.*

Meanwhile, I had seen some of my colleagues when the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra opened Summerstage back in June. (A post about that can be found here.) Others I had made visits to, an outdoor drink or coffee here or there, just to have an in-person meeting with them last summer or as vaccinations had eased restrictions. However, even with that there were two I had not seen in person and it was altogether incredibly lovely to have everyone together in person for a bit. Being together has meaning and does make a difference.

*This Le Pain Quotidien has re-opened in Central Park and we scarfed down treats from there for our celebratory Central Park visit.*

Energized and armed with tummies full of carbs we re-donned our masks and headed over to our building to spend the afternoon tossing out dated paper, old food and reorganizing our work spaces. Despite periodic visits into the office for specific needs throughout this period, I for one still had a desk piled with paper from the middle of March 2020, not to mention a cabinet with bags of nibbles such as dark chocolate and boiled almonds. We’ll assume a mousy fiesta was had as I also cleared some mouse dung off my desk.

*As an aside, has anyone else noticed that the sparrows have gotten extremely friendly and, well, assertive?*

I was deeply struck by a few things as I created piles of documents to keep for files, shred and throw out. The first was how very little of all of that paper I ultimately kept. I created two small files – one concerning a trip to South Africa and the other which was research for a project I have picked back up. Piles of paper went out. Everything else I disposed of and after more than a year of working at home, almost all of it without a printer, I have finally broken the paper habit.

More subtly, I realized that I work in an entirely different way overall now. As always, necessity has been the mother of invention and I learned to raise money differently over this period. While I know it, can see and feel it, I am not sure I can put my finger on exactly what it means for going forward.

Looking at some of the lists and paper left time capsule-like on my desk (I have been thinking of it as Miss Havisham’s desk), much of it seems incredibly ineffectual to me now. Gosh, why had I been wasting my time chasing this or worrying about that? Why did I think that would go somewhere? It made me wonder if the evolution was a natural one that might have occurred anyway, but I wouldn’t have had a chance to revisit this way – this snapshot of 15 months prior. Or has the change really been that radical? Probably a bit of both.

As I try to unpack how to bridge what used to be and what will be going forward, at least for now, my brain aches with the effort and I find myself exhausted trying. What was working, is working and might still work? I do believe part of me really was thinking that when we returned that we would pick up doing what we had before and of course that is not possible. While I understood that on some level, I don’t think I saw the divide as clearly and I have finally started to let go of that hope. But what is worth devoting time and resources to? Raising money isn’t like making widgets and cause and effect does not always tick and tie, but of course some analysis will help. Still, I continue to work my brain going over the mental territory over again.

*The lobby of our building. Familiar yet new again.*

Of course, in addition to this thorny knot, the future remains a great unknown. While that has always literally been true, the last year and change have underscored this reality and we weigh possibilities like angels dancing on the head of a pin – if this, then that, if not, perhaps this? Fundraisers are by nature long-term planners and being thwarted in my attempts to plan is frustrating to all of us.

I credit this period with making me more skilled at my job, but can those newly acquired skills transcend the nature of this ever-shifting tide? While there seems to be a great deal of discussion simply about working remotely or in-person, I wish there was more about how we might take the best from both rather than an either or – back to the old or remain in the nebulous new. It isn’t just about where people work from, but how they work and forge a new way of working. Let’s take the lid off and dig into to it a bit. Perhaps everyone isn’t having these sorts of revelations, but I would be interested to know if they are.

Annual

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It is a remarkably wet start to the July 4 weekend here in Manhattan. The coffee is perking, Kim is reading a heavy tome (Thomas Wolfe) on the other side of this table, Cookie was last seen curled up in an odd small corner between a closet door and the entrance to the bathroom, and Blackie is snoozing on my desk chair, curled up with my black sweatshirt which has grown greatly tatty with use over the past 15 months at home.

This simple hoody was originally purchased with for the specific purpose of being a warm layer, easily washed, to protect me from the elements when coming home from the gym sweaty. While I have not employed it for that use in a very long time, it is frequently pulled on against the apartment chill of all seasons which, along with a much-worn pair of Addidas sweatpants, I will probably look back as the uniform of home pandemic wear. (I sport a looser sweatshirt – better for many layers – with my alma mater, Connecticut College emblazoned on it, when running. In fact I was wearing it when I fell a few weeks ago and was glad I had the presence of mind to change before going to the ER so that I didn’t need to cut it off to get around my heavily bandaged hand later in the day. I opine on the comfy sweatshirt as part of a post on running to be found here and of course my fall and subsequent broken fingers here and about my nascent running career here.)

Blackie blends into the sweatshirt, his white chest badge tucked under him and his glowing eyes shut. He is in danger of getting sat upon when perched here and we spent a lot of time this week fighting over this chair. He doesn’t trust my weekend defection to the other desk and computer.

*My former stomping ground, the Metropolitan Museum, on a recent morning.*

Rain or shine, in my fundraising life this holiday weekend has always marked the close of one fiscal year and the fresh start of a new one. Since taking on the role of head fundraiser the battle to meet an income budget has become paramount in my mind. At the Metropolitan Museum and during my many years there, it was also a busy time which combined tying up my own program income and in later years working through compensation, performance reviews and tracking the progress of the other fundraising programs, but the ultimately responsibility did not fall squarely on my shoulders as it does now – and the responsibility of the past two fiscal years has been, to say the least, substantial. (A post written upon leaving the Met after 30 years can be found here.)

So for me, this holiday is always about considering the prior year while starting to shrug it off in order to start over. Raising money is a sort of annual miracle which has to be built from the ground up every twelve months where we rise from the ashes of the prior year and build the new one. And although I always say it is at least as much science as art and of course good planning helps, I suspect it is a bit different than, let’s say the supply and demand of making and selling widgets. No one has to give money and fundraising is mercurial under the best of circumstances. And, as for many people and industries, the past 15 months of raising money for a shuttered performing arts organization have been extraordinary and stretched my creativity in ways I didn’t suspect I had. (Prior posts about my first year at this job and my pandemic work life can be found here and a recent one about contemplating the return to the office, here.)

*Blackie is among the pets of the world who will need to adjust to no longer being a routine member of the staff.*

In addition, like many managers I am facing a staff of folks who are trying to figure out how they will shake off the exhaustion of these long months at home and re-imagine the next phase of their professional careers. I think for many the difficulty of morphing back to the pre-pandemic world is so hard that instead they are deciding that instead they will open a new chapter somewhere else and start the story over. I can appreciate the inclination although I also believe that in the end you take your problems with you so you might as well face them where you are. Nevertheless, they are peeling off in record numbers and heading to graduate school, to support other causes, or to remain near family they have spent the last months with or caring for.

It isn’t just my staff obviously – we are reading about it constantly in the news, and I am also being asked to serve as reference for many of the colleagues I have remained in touch with over the years as they too shift and morph.

*Whatever form post-pandemic work takes I would like to make sure I still spend time outside and in the park. I have really enjoyed that early morning time outside, in all weather, over the past year.*

I was reading a response to a friend’s post on Instagram which addressed the overwhelming lassitude of returning the world and how she, as a busy professional had once balanced so many competing needs daily, now found herself exhausted just by making a grocery list. While the pressures of my job only increased over the last year and a half, it has all been performed from a command central here aloft in a high rise apartment on East 86th Street where I forced myself out the door just to get some exercise after the first six months were spent with virtually none.

*Lobby of the Milwaukee Art Museum, taken on a break to visit a friend while on one of my last business trips shortly before the shutdown.*

As we begin to plan for a rapidly approaching season of revived live music, events and related travel, I look askance at my now moth eaten wardrobe, assess the excess weight I am still in the process of losing, have endless discussions about what a return to the office will look like, and a pre-emptive exhaustion rolls over me. I try to exercise the weak muscle by making in-person appointments, first with friends and increasingly for work. Part of me is also trying to figure out the next chapter too – do I need to travel in the coming January? How many nights a week do I need to work? Which of the tools I was employing was actually working and which can I let go of? Does any of that matter now as we all rethink our world and try to form it in a new image?

On the other hand, I arrive on the shores of the new world with a renewed sense of purpose and appreciation for my capabilities. Damn, I am good at this and have achieved against the odds, albeit certainly not alone, but with the undeniable hard work and commitment of so many colleagues. Still, I will return to the world with a new sense of my own capabilities and resourcefulness, more confident than before with less of a tendency to be apologetic. As I relax over this wet holiday weekend and allow the sense of relief to roll over me briefly, goals finally met, year closed, I will relax with Kim and kitties, grab a (fake) hotdog, pour a drink and gently cultivate thoughts of the coming next chapter and what I chose to make of it.

The Wild West

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: The world is slowly returning to its pre-pandemic axis, at least in some ways, and the sheer delight of seeing people we haven’t and even conducting business in person is a process of rediscovering a forgotten pleasure. Yesterday we had an early dinner with our friend Bill Kartalopoulos. It was so lovely to sit outside on a beautiful evening (and not because we had no choice but to be outside), and catch up with him in person after more than a year.

*Bill took this photo of me and Kim while we were together yesterday.*

Meanwhile, last week I had an afternoon to myself and headed over to the Upper Westside of Manhattan for drinks with a fundraising colleague of many decades. Karen and I have never worked at the same place, but we have been a part of professional groups together and loosely tracked each other through work and life changes, our careers running along an unusually close parallel, these folks help you along – sending prospective staffers your way when needed, assisting when you need to unknot thorny problems, and of course having a drink and a giggle over what is going on in your respective organizations or cheering you on when you are just frustrated and losing your perspective.

I was early to meet Karen and strolled east on 84th Street. These days of too much desk sitting in a small apartment has pushed me to add on a few blocks here and there of walking whenever I can. Scratching at the back of my brain was a shop I often walk by, but either it is closed or I haven’t had time to go in whenever I have found myself in front of it.

*Plates so nice! I wish I had space to add one or two.*

I have peered at its interesting windows, chock a block full of fascinating bits, frequently over the years. Recently, when late for a haircut, I had taken note of a wonderful array of jolly painted doorstops, mostly of flowers in the window. (One tempting cat doorstop, in the shop.) I will say, I am relieved to see that this establishment had made it through the pandemic – oh the frustration if it had disappeared and I had never darkened its door!

It turned out it was my lucky day and John Koch Antiques was open for business. (The link is here in case you wish to peruse a bit of online antique furniture buying.) It is happily the sort of place where you should expect to have to squeeze through stuffed aisles sideways in places. Furniture piled high, cabinets full of china and trinkets worthy of notice though. Just the sort of place to spend some happy time perusing and digging around. So little of this sort of thing left here in Manhattan!

John Koch himself was seated behind a desk, approximately right in the center of it all. He was carrying on an animated conversation with a customer about a museum reproduction of a Rodin’s The Kiss.

I had half an eye out for silverware – we need some in a not especially urgent way and I like to pick up old, odd silver pieces or bakelite handled ones. Meanwhile, I gave a look at a silver (plate? painted?) tourist cup of New York which appeared to feature Grants Tomb. (I was unable to see what else was featured.) However, when I wandered into the furtherest room I saw this towel rack, on the wall with companion piece. (Apologies that I cannot remember the subject matter of the other one, but whatever it was I found it less dynamic than this one I purchased.)

Perhaps it was my latest reading project, The Ranch Girls by Margaret Vandercook of Camp Fire Girls fame – clearly more to come on this series – however, thanks to Kim’s interest in the Western genre, we are in general a very cowboy friendly household. Mr. Koch didn’t miss a beat when I interrupted his conversation to inquire about it. He immediately named a price I found agreeable and shouted for a man, working nearby in the same room as the piece, to unscrew it from the wall. It was wrapped and in my hands in a few moments and I was only five minutes late to meet Karen.

Made of some sort of resin to resemble carved wood, this fellow is caught in an action pose on his rearing bronco. I like the little ranch on a hill behind him which gives the ‘scene’ a lot of dimension. I am a fan of the faux stone design at the bottom, as if he is perched on this ledge. Arguably, there is something odd about the turn of the cowboy’s foot, and the proportions between his figure and that of the horse are a bit off, but we can’t really blame the designer for cheating it a bit, he or she caught the spirit of the thing nicely. The textures of his chaps and coiled rope, the stony terrain and the definition of the horse give it texture.

It is my assumption that it was made to hang on a kitchen wall where hand towels and pot holders could be kept handy. (Let me know if you know otherwise!) My thought is to hang it away from the stove in case it is inclined to melt a bit, nor do I want it to get gooped up with grease. If I thought it was necessary ongoing I might designate it for holding our masks by the front door of the apartment, but we are very much hoping that our mask wearing will soon be a distant memory of a time gratefully gone-bye.

Progress

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: My friend Eden gave me the tag line to this blog, All Pam, All the Time and I liked it because many of my readers, especially at first, found me through Kim and it seemed fair warning that, although you will get some Kim, Pictorama is a heaping serving of me. Some days are more me than others and this is one of those unabashedly me days.

In a quiet way, this week lurched forward significantly and was sort of a landmark week. To start, it was made public that Jazz at Lincoln Center was one of 286 recipients of extraordinary and unsolicited donations from MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist ex-wife of Amazon titan, Jeff Bezos. (As one colleague said, I feel so much better about all the money I spent with Amazon over the pandemic.) It is a gift that will have a profound effect on the organization and as a career fundraiser it was a once in a lifetime gift to experience. Truly it is a testament to the hard work of Wynton Marsalis, especially his tireless work over the last year plus, as we struggled not only to survive but to be present for people who needed music and community during this time.

However, much like when Kim has a new book to promote, psychologically I had moved on once it was done (there is always more money to raise and we are still closing this year) which for me happened a few weeks ago, and I was drawn back into it with the public announcement, which lead to announcements to Board and staff.

*On the walk over to Summer Stage Thursday. Cedar Hill, Central Park.*

The other events of this week included my first hair cut in a year. Although I had gone last summer, the timing and location are bad for me working from home. However, my newly broken fingers have required first Kim’s help and then my own awkward efforts to put it up and I realized it was time. (I wrote about my longstanding decision not to dye my premature – at first anyway – gray hair in a recent post here.) It was nice to catch up with David who co-owns the salon and has cut my hair since our wedding back in 2000.

Unlike last summer’s cut (short, short because I didn’t know when I would come back) somehow this one transformed me back to a semblance of my pre-pandemic self. The pounds I have dropped (still some left to go, but many gone) probably help in that regard and the recent purchase of a sundress which I was sporting contributed to the overall effect.

*Summer Stage opening in Central Park on Thursday.*

The timing was good because shortly after I headed over to Central Park where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was opening Summer Stage. Many of my colleagues from across the organization had booked tickets and it became an impromptu reunion – complete with hugging and elbow bumps for those not ready to hug. (There’s a lot of hugging in jazz.) The outdoors meant everyone was pretty comfortable being without a mask, eating and drinking. I can’t say the year melted away, but it was like salve on a wound.

As the sun was setting in the west and the orchestra struck up the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue I looked around and realized that coincidence had it that I was seated with many folks I sit backstage with during countless concerts in the hall and elsewhere. I stretched out in my chair and watched the sparrows ready for the evening, a few bats. My eyes welled with the sheer pleasure. The weather and the night were perfection. It was the first time I felt like maybe we really are back.

Friday dawned with a trip to Dr. Mir (hand surgeon – my Memorial Day hand exploits can be found in a post here) and my first session of hand physical therapy was later in the afternoon. I admit to being squeamish about pain and I can’t say I was without some trepidation. My hand is healing, more or less on schedule it seems though. With a little luck I may be allowed to take the splint off at home in another week – maybe even be cleared to run and work out a bit by the end of the month.

Seeing my hand without the splint really for the first time was a bit discouraging. It remains black and blue (quite green actually) in the extreme, still swollen in places. Being allowed to wash it was a huge relief however and that made up for the discomfort of it making its debut, splintless for examination and therapy. There isn’t much to say except that therapy is slow and hurts – almost by definition. I am a chicken about pain frankly, but a realist so I am focusing hard on making each movement count as I remind my fingers that they know how to bend. How could they have forgotten in a few short weeks?

*Tucked into a tiny space on 87th near Lex. Hand rehab doesn’t take up much space.*

By the end of forty minutes with the therapist we could see some, small improvement. I was reminded that my original purpose in taking up running (at least in part) was to tackle something different and hard during a time when my waking hours seemed to be confined to a desk chair in our one room apartment, working. While hand therapy will not get me outside, nor help me lose weight, it is unintentionally providing me with a new challenge to meet.

So I end the week with some renewed optimism about our impending nascent return to the office part-time next month. I think I am starting to shake off my Covid cocoon and if not the old Pam, at least the latest model of her,

Jersey Girl

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I am writing from mom’s house in New Jersey. It is Memorial Day weekend and I am reminded that Memorial Day (much vaunted in this beach community as the start of the summer season) is almost invariably cold and wet. This weekend is a great entry in the annuals of lousy weather on Memorial Day weekend.

In high school there was a small town parade (which has continued with the exception of last year; I don’t know if they are returning to it this almost post-pandemic year or not) which required the services of our high school marching band and drill team. This means I know something about standing around in the wet and chill in a brief uniform, toting a faux weapon. (That alone is probably news to Pictorama readers – yes, drill team. Loved the noise the fake rifles made as we slapped them and hit the ground in unison!)

Most importantly in a summer community like this it means the opening of the beaches and the green light for tourists and after our last (pandemic) summer I am sure they are quite anxious to get back to it here. We’ve had some glorious days recently so even old hands were tricked into a false sense of security, but man, that Jersey weather is having a good laugh at us. We Jersey shore folks remain ever optimistic however.

*Ferry landing at 35th Street in Manhattan. Looks nice but was very cold!*

Upon arrival in Fair Haven, I paced the backyard while taking the remainder of work calls that needed winding up. Meanwhile I enjoyed my mom’s absolutely gorgeous garden. She is housebound and enjoys it via the windows, and what gets brought in, but Mike who works on the tiny garden and yard does a great job. The peonies below are from plants I gave her in 2019 and they have grown nicely!

I am actually not technically here to celebrate the launch of the season. I arrived yesterday in time to attend a live gig with Wynton Marsalis and the septet for work. I invited three friends and it was a dinner club set-up, much like we did in the fall. (You can find that post here.) The ferry ride was very cold (and the water rough) yesterday morning. I chatted briefly with a young man with a bike who was preparing to ride to some area north of Philadelphia. (Yeah, I don’t think this must have worked out too well for him.)

The concert promoters assured us that the concert would happen rain or shine so we bundled and layered up and off we went. True enough, there was a tent and we were protected from the (hard) rain and wind, at least for the most part. I did see the music start to blow off the stand on stage until secured. It was 51 degrees and despite having spent the past year dressing for outdoor dining in all weather, I was layered but cold in my scarf and down liner. (My friend Suzanne lent me a large waterproof outback hat which helped keep the rain off.)

*Wytnon Marsalis and the Septet last night in Eatontown, NJ.*

I felt for the guys playing and knew they must be freezing in their suits. (Let’s face it, brass instruments can be cold!) The music was great despite the inclement weather though and it was a real treat to hear them in person again. In particular, our pianist Dan Nimmer was having a memorable night.

I came back to the house, got rid of my soaked clothes (trousers still wet this AM) and had some hot tea. Soon I was happily ensconced in pj’s in bed watching television while the storm raged around the tiny house. Gale force winds and rain were pounding when we heard a loud bang and the entire neighborhood went pitch black. I decided it was my cue to head to sleep and luckily this morning the power has returned, although the storm continues. Sadly no running here today, but a day with mom ahead so enjoy and more tomorrow.

Without the Net

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The other evening our usually dependable Wifi sputtered during a meeting. I was able to get back on it, but yesterday we woke to the realization that we didn’t have Wifi. After two calls to our provider, RCN, our “box” was declared dead (well, dying, it has a few meager lights blinking) and a technician requested for later today. It was also, as it would happen, Kim’s birthday and so thoughtful wishes are piled up, as I write, in the world online, an internet connection away.

Kim, who is immersed in the latter stages of his next book spent yesterday tracing off pages which will then be tightened and eventually inked. (A post with the specifics of Kim’s process can be found here. It is a great favorite!) I still had online access, via my phone (and my ipad which decided it could operate off my phone) which meant I could do some work including attending meetings with my little Italian Felix toy avatar in my stead.

I have my own policy of trying to be on camera for most Zoom meetings, at least at the beginning of each, and I try to stay on for all meetings with staff. I think it is more humanizing even if I am just in from my run and admitting that I only make it to even nominal make-up about once a week these days.

Nonetheless, the lack of Wifi slowed me down mightily – if you are reading this it means either I posted it via my phone (a skill set that may well be beyond me), or the technician has come and restored us to full function. It makes me realize how much I depend on the internet for casually adding things to these posts as well. My fingers twitch to check references and add links and photos.

In case the day needed more complications, I had an appointment to get a new phone. Like many people, I beat the heck out of this thing over the past 18 months. The screen is cracked from dropping it from the elliptical at the gym, years ago now. (There was a time when I didn’t take my phone into the gym, preferring to listen to a tiny and somewhat finicky ipod instead, but when my dad was began his decline and was hospitalized I started bringing it with me to workouts. It bounced off the moving machine hard and it is lucky it didn’t hurt someone.)

It has been giving me warning signs that it is breathing its last (screens turning into strange shadow screens, no longer holds a charge) and so while making another change to my account recently (prophetically changing my date plan), I committed to a new phone. Suffice it to say, given the day that yesterday was, after more than an hour at the Verizon store, I left sans phone transfer complete – alas, I must return later today.

Evermore than even a year and a half ago however, I am tethered to the internet like it is a favorite child!

Simultaneously, this week I was encouraging my office to help inform a return to work plan and being met with recalcitrance, fear and assorted resistance which evinced an insurmountable level of exhaustion in me. Like many managers, the decision about a return to the office is an institutional one and Wynton Marsalis has made his feelings very clear throughout this period – we will not be an organization that operates remotely. We need to be together and to see each other as humans again as soon as is safely and reasonably possible.

*My first work-out at the gym. Man, I swear the weights are heavier here than at home!*

Like a good manager, I have been trying to gently exercise the muscle of in-person meetings and discussing our return. Our policy is to return to the office in person two days a week over the summer and then moving to full time mid-September. Having to decide on dates was like ripping the band-aide off for many folks though. It is hard to balance their variety of concerns, an institutional mandate while keeping any of my own feelings to myself. I am impatient with my own impatience.

The day finally concluded with Kim and I eating some excellent Vietnamese food which greatly restored me. Then, with the premiere of a concert for our virtual season, our full Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, with the founder and head of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. It was a great marriage of spoken language and jazz and spoke very directly to the topics of freedom and inequality and history. (Freedom, Justice and Hope is available on-demand until May 26 and you can purchase tickets to watch it here). It is in my opinion by far the best concert we have produced for online viewing and I am so proud of my colleagues who created it and how far we have come. It left me with the very real hope that we will come out of this period with a new way of continuing to reach audiences far beyond those in our hall and on our tour destinations.

Afterward, I watched the first part of a PBS documentary on the Metropolitan Museum. Long-time Pictorama readers know that I spent most of my career, thirty years, there before leaving for my current gig. (I wrote about my departure in a post called Leaving the Met which can be found here.) I gather that the documentary was originally meant to follow the museum through its 150^th Anniversary Year. Instead it is half about that and half about how 2020 played out with the pandemic and the closure of the museum, the ultimate re-opening and then grappling with the new re-emerging world.

It was moving for me to see many former colleagues as well as some objects I know like they had spent years in my own living room, so they too are like old friends. But overwhelmingly for me it was so touching to see the conservators, curators and other colleagues I had worked with for so many years. I was graphically reminded that yes, despite our discomfort, Wynton is right. In the end it comes down to the people. People make organizations like these great and that will suffer if we do not make the effort to come back together again to work with each other in person. When I interview people I always ask them, what will you miss most about where you work now and almost to a one they say it is the people.

Me and Eileen Travell, Met buddies and long-standing friends, having our first post-pandemic in-person meal earlier this week! Sheer bliss to see her again. It helps to do some of the nice aspects of getting back into the world as well.

In her remarks, Carolyn Riccardelli, one of the conservators, kept coming back to the metaphor of the conservation work that had been done on the Tullio Lombardi statue of Adam. Many years ago, it famously fell spontaneously from its base and smashed into an almost infinite number of pieces, fragments, and some reduced to dust. Like a crime scene, the pieces were photographed in situ and logged where they fell to aide reconstruction. That reconstruction took ten painstaking years (it has been documented in a video called After the Fall and can be found on their website here) and is back on display. It looks flawless, but of course as part of the team who restored it, Carolyn must see her years of handiwork beneath the surface every time she looks at it. She talked about how sometimes you just need to move forward, even if you have no idea how you are going to do it, making progress and claiming small victories until finally, you are there.

Shown at top: Tullio Lombardo (Italian, ca. 1455–1532). Adam, ca. 1490–95. Italian, Venice. Marble. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Fletcher Fund, 1936 (36.163)

Softball

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I write this it is developing into a soft spring day here in New York City and if it doesn’t cloud up too much I hope to get out for a run in a bit and enjoy it. There is something about this photo of women playing softball or baseball, which makes me yearn toward summer. On the back of the photo, in pencil script, it says only, Backyard NH Aug 1945. The stately farmhouse in the background and all these trees, it is a regular idyll. It fed directly into my desire for the outdoors this spring as I observe every new sign of growth and progress toward summer daily. (I snatched it up via a sale by @_wherethewillowsgrow_ a favorite photo friend.)

I am very fond of the suspender style shorts worn by the pitcher and the short skirt of the catcher is pretty cute too. There is a protective fence between them and that lovely house so this is a well-used baseball diamond. The photo has a haziness, as if some how the humidity of that August afternoon and the visual incarnation could reach out and frizz my hair a bit, all these years later. The trees seem to fade right into the whited out sky. It is trimmed with those wonderful scalloped edges, the way photos often were at that time.

By August of 1945, I guess WWII was just about to be declared over officially. Of course people would have had a pretty good sense that it was ending, but I wonder if after all those long years they really believed it. Were things already hopeful in August of 1945 or were they just beyond exhausted by it all? Probably both by turns and that six years and the devastation of millions dead is among the world events that greatly overshadows even our current world-wide woes.

Yesterday I made a trip to the East Village for the first time since fall, to see about getting my eyeglasses repaired – they broke just as I was leaving for New Jersey a few weeks ago and I have been living in my spare pair. It was a riotously beautiful day, sunny but windy and still jacket weather. There is a wonderful glut of tulips this spring – speculation in the paper about if New Yorkers are just enjoying them more or if there are more. As a tulip lover I would vote for there are more of them – but we are definitely loving them all.

*Masses of tulips in front of a building on 85th and Second Avenue.*

Meanwhile, East Village residents were out in force on the streets and packing every outdoor hut and cafe. Manhattan has changed I believe for the long-term, in this way, and New Yorkers have claimed the sidewalks and streets. I think it has given birth to a new sort of cafe society outdoors. Temporary huts gradually giving way to more permanent structures and perhaps like Paris, our restaurants will largely open onto the streets.

*Veselka’s has established this substantial outdoor space which now dominates the block.*

Looking more carefully however it is easy to gloss over the vast number of empty retails spots, like a growing gap-tooth smile. Some old friends are among the missing. A favorite toy store has disappeared after 38 years, heart breaking, but not unexpected. I wrote about them in a prior post which can be found here.

*Dinosaur Hill Toys is sadly gone! They had elegant, new toys and I always stopped in to pick up some small token.*

I stopped in at a clothing store on the same block on 9th Street, DL Cerney (@dlcerny, their site can be found here and I have written a little about them before) which I am very fond of. Their men’s trousers have been the only “hard” trousers I have worn since March of 2020 and it is them I will look them to dress me in some sort of return to the world clothing. Their designs, fabrics and tailoring is exquisite. I found them in a little storefront tucked between McSorley’s and a friend’s apartment on 7th Street many years ago. At the time I could only afford the occasional item and they were selling a mix of vintage and their own designs. (I had a pair of heavy, men’s black Cuban heels I wore, resoled and wore through again in my 20’s. Maybe best shoes ever.) Eventually, sadly they disappeared and it was literally decades later that I rediscovered them in a storefront on 9th, further east by a block, having taken over a storefront from another shop I frequented.

Since then, over the past several years, I have been happily clad in their lovely button down shirts and men’s trousers which make me feel a little like Katherine Hepburn, or sometimes just a well-dressed man. My feeling is that I am always perfectly attired (if also very comfortable) in their clothes. I have taken the trousers to London and Johannesburg and worn them endlessly. Having said that the trousers are fairly indestructible and my elderly tailor admires them each time I bring a new pair in to be hemmed with cuffs. For me they are a reasonable starting point for a transition out of daily workout clothes, thinly veiled with sweaters and the occasional necklace or earrings for a shoulders up appearance on Zoom.

As I tried on a few things I talked to Linda St. John, who along with Duane Cerney, are the principals of the business, and a bit of shopping there is also a nice visit with whoever is in the shop that day. We talked a bit about where New York seems to be in the recovery process, and for them it is still a bit discouraging I think. Like those of us in the performing arts (trying to re-open our hall and our club Dizzy’s at Jazz at Lincoln Center), retail continues to lag and in their case the loss of tourism and students (not to mention the subtle migration out of small city apartments to bigger digs for those who could afford it) continues to erode business. They have challenges with suppliers. We are all trying to stay afloat until we reach the shores of better times.

We discussed, as I have with Wynton and my colleagues, whether we are poised at the beginning of the end of this long pandemic haul or not. We may be or is it just the next bend in the road? The end of the beginning rather than the end – I hope not! However, none of us knows what our corner of the world will look like in six months, let alone another year and I think we’ve learned the hard lesson that we only thought we knew before anyway.

It wasn’t too difficult for Linda to talk me into a spring dress, although I had arrived hunting a linen version of the trousers I love, but in a slightly larger (post-pandemic) size than I am in possession of currently. Nonetheless, a dress, even a casual one, is like a stake in the ground, hopeful that there will be summer meals and drinks outdoors and maybe even days at the office as we inch our way forward.

Pinned

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: One of the strangest byproducts of the past year was a developing penchant for pins. Backing up a bit, allow me to assure you that I have long been a joyful purchaser of jewelry. However, pre-pandemic, I was decidedly more of a ring gal and my preference was almost exclusively gold. My taste did not especially run to gem stones, although with occasional exception. It wasn’t unusual for me to wear four rings on a typical day, including my simple gold wedding band which I wore every day, along with a few gold bangle bracelets. Really, fingers were for decorating.

Coinciding with staying at home my fingers began to swell. I have mentioned that I have psoriatic arthritis, (related posts can be found here and here), but it has typically not been fully resident in my hands and my fingers remain fairly straight. I assume the swelling is in some way tied to less cardio exercise – the lack of the daily walking around town of the sort that used to be normal. Anyway, that combined with rarely leaving the house to do more than shop for groceries or hit the drugstore, meant that for the most part I took my rings off last March and have rarely worn them since.

*This one also from Wassail_Antiques contained a Felix mug as well! Future post there!*

And yet some time around last fall my photo buying interest on Instragram (the purchasing of photos and other ephemera has been documented in posts here and here) lead me to a few select, vintage jewelry dealers. These are folks, mostly women from Great Britain, deal largely in turn of the century items. At first it just fascinated me that these items were not things I typically have seen in looking at vintage jewelry in this country since I was a teenager or younger. While it wasn’t wildly different, it was different enough to capture my imagination – sort of a parallel universe to the vintage jewelry I have been looking at and purchasing for years in the US. Almost entirely silver, this is strangely like a mid-life, British version of the early vintage jewelry I boasted in my twenties and early thirties.

As an aside and bonus, these folks all seem to live with access to the most stunning British countryside and an additional benefit has been the gorgeous photos of their surroundings which feed a craving for some non-urban views in this narrow New York City life. Folks like Mia – aka @therubyfoxes treat me to almost daily photos of her ambitious (if often muddy) morning runs through the farms and woods there. She also has two adorable cats and recently posted a great series of nighttime hedgehog videos from her garden. (In addition she makes a darn good looking Friday night pizza for her husband and son and was kind with encouragement about my nascent running career.) Marco, of @fiorisfinds, and the purveyor of the heart pin (shown further down) and more recently a pretty faux aquamarine ring, has a pair of mighty fine looking bunnies, Basil and Dinky, who have their own account, @abunnycalledbasil.

*Photo credit to Rachel from Wassail_Antiques. I wore this to a rare in-person lunch yesterday.*

Because many of these sellers also deal in early photos, a photo or two often shows up with the package. Rachel in particular wraps her packages in a layered and luxurious way and it is a bit like Christmas or your birthday when one of her packages shows as shown below. (The recent purchase of a necklace from @marsh.and.meadow came with a tiny early photo worthy of its own post – watch for it and a related Easter post tomorrow.)

*My most recent package from Rachel at Wassail_Antiques. She and most of the other dealers mentioned can also be found on Etsy.* *Am especially loving the Rinty card here!*

Slowly I began to purchase an item here and there. Given the swelling in my hands and that rings are generally best tried on, my interest wandered to pins. I have never worn many pins and consider getting them attached attractively to clothing a challenge and a talent, like tying a scarf, I do not readily possess. Nevertheless, I have acquired quite a few. Among them a jolly horseshoe to be placed upward to hold the luck in, congratulatory messages on hearts, and most recently two beaded butterflies.

*I definitely have not done these butterfly pins justice. Hard to describe but they are very lovely indeed in person.*

The butterflies are more beautiful in person than they photograph. I purchased them from a favorite seller, @Wassail_Antiques who is also a talented photographer and I have treated you to a few of her photos here. Therefore it is rare that an item arrives and Rachel has not fully captured its beauty, yet these fellows pleased me even more in person than they had online. These butterflies languished in her shop long enough to gnaw at my brain which was looking for a fix of spring, just waiting for me I guess. They have done the job and the gorgeous pics of her dog and the sheep and meadows around her house as spring blooms help too. (In pulling together photos for this I realize that rings are not entirely absent from my purchases and several necklaces, very short for good Zoom viewing, bright and cheerful glass “stones” have also been acquired and gone into rotation. Zoom jewelry is, oddly kept on a shelf near my computer rather than with my other jewelry.)

*This double heart feels like it is shouting encouragement at me.* *This style of silver pin is very available and I have to resist the temptation to just keep buying them.*

The butterfly pins were evidently made by prisoners of war, I believe during WWII, but perhaps in the first World War as well? I was unable to find any real history about the practice. Butterflies were also a symbol used in mourning jewelry in Victorian Britain, but I will mostly ignore that fact and focus on spring I think. For that matter insect pins in general have begun to interest me – Art Deco fat insects with paste or gem stones. I had to control myself over a large cicada pin which of course would be a nice way to celebrate the little fellows on their once every seven year appearance coming this spring. I do not know where the vision of me sporting many insects crawling up my shoulder has come from or why exactly it now appeals.

*Cropped photo from Wassail_Antiques on Etsy.*

Like most of us, the shoulder and neck view of Zoom has meant that my colleagues and associates have largely seen a long line of dark scoop necked tops with the occasional cardigan (or frankly sweatshirt) thrown over them. I don’t have pierced ears, but a tiny pair of bright blue glass earrings that were among my early purchases from Rachel make an occasional appearance. Meetings with Board or non-staff might encourage me to pull out one of two soft sweater jackets that I acquired for that purpose as well. For some reason though it seems weird to sit in my apartment in a fitted jacket with lapels of the kind I used to wear almost daily. Yet somehow in the back of my mind I have been formulating a vision of a time when I will sport lapels again, boasting multiple pins on them. Hearts will gather together, horseshoes will provide good luck, and butterflies and perhaps other insects will flit across my shoulder.

Springing Softly

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Those of us in the New York City area we were treated to an early and unexpected few days with temperatures in the high sixties and seventies. Windows were thrown open and thoughts of ice cream started to dance in my otherwise strictly diet-minded brain. Suddenly the idea of eating outside appeals rather than making us reach glumly for the long johns and down. I am rethinking my running attire which has been a many layered affair until now, knowing that soon it will be a question of stripping down rather than staying warm.

It is the end of March and we are sincerely hoping to hold onto the out-like-a-lamb part of the saying, but experience tells us that even early April can have some nasty weather surprises so I am trying not to get too attached. Nonetheless, we are like insects delayed too long in our larvae stage, now finally thrust into a metamorphosis. We were in a sense deprived of spring last year as it was the beginning still of our pandemic year – I know that the weather must have turned with the same appeal come hither temps, but the other aspects of last April have wiped spring from my memory. Only a long hot summer remains when I look back.

*Spring beds coming to life in the park.*

This year we emerge both tentative and with the power of pent-up desire. Discussions about how to build the bridge back to normal fill my work days now, although the terminus of this marathon is not yet really quite in sight. My brain struggles to work on a duel track of finishing the next leg of this quarantine period and setting an agenda and plan for moving forward. Part of me just wants to loll like a kitty in the sun by an open window, the other part is all business.

I don’t switch gears quickly so I am trying to allot time for this process and to imagine what that post-Covid life looks like. Twinkling reminders of the before time and the joys of it bounce into memory and then out. My brain gets swamped immediately though as I try to sort through and I can’t quite get a purchase.

*Trees starting to bloom on an otherwise gray day in the park this week.*

I gently remind my office colleagues that being out in the world is a muscle, somewhat atrophied, that we must start to exercise, encouraging them to meet me outside but close to them, to begin the process. It is hard for me and it appears to be difficult for them too. So far I have very few takers. I understand their reluctance.

The upcoming advent of Easter and Passover are harbingers of the season and turn my mind habitually to thoughts of renewal rebirth as they do in any year – just as fall will eternally remain the turning over of another back-to-school type leaf.

This year though we relive the launch of the pandemic as the wheel of the year turns to our second one, meanwhile straining to see the end of it. Is everyone experiencing the same simultaneous desire and reluctance to cast off our cocoons? I feel like everyone wants me to go faster than I can and I admire the people who seem to be better at it. However, I admit I struggle with the mental exercise of being in two places at once and of two minds. And of course it isn’t going back to the before time that we are weighing now, but thoughtfully attempting to create an entirely new world after and what we want it to look like.