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Ode to October

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: October is a favorite month for weather here on the East coast of the US. It is when we start to pull our sweaters on and jackets, but we have not yet moved to burrowing in our warm coats and many woolen layers. The holidays and the end of the year still seem pleasantly far in the future. (This year with an anxiety fraught election in the offing, we are staving off thoughts of November.)

When I was a kid it meant you were weeks into a new school year and while the shine was still on the year and the slogging had not started, it wasn’t so new that you were adjusting to it all as you had been in September. All those back to school clothes that were a little warm in September were working better come October and by now your stiff new shoes were getting better worn in.

Late strawberries and the olive tree, residing in the blue pot, which has much bright green new growth. Am hoping it is willing to be coaxed through the winter inside.

Having spent my whole professional career in fundraising, it is the signal to the tumult of year end which is always very busy. (If it isn’t something else is entirely wrong as it was my first year at Jazz.) The summer has been spent laying plans for these last months of the year and we execute them at breakneck speed. My new gig combines the end of the calendar year with the finish of the fiscal year and tops it off with a Gala at the beginning of December – dizzying. (Driven by the close of the tax year for donors, many not for profits will bring in 25 to as much as 50% of their annual income in the last quarter of the year.)

Given my choice (although I rarely have been), it is the time of year I would travel and sometimes I have booked my business travel in the fall when I had an option. (I often did not – fundraisers tend to do things like go to Florida in the winter, or in my case formerly, follow the orchestra somewhere in February and March.) I had the good fortune to travel to Germany on a trip with the Met in the fall once. Lovely!

A friend suggested cutting some of these and drying them to keep inside which was a nice suggestion. These hydrangea have turned this lovely pink late in the game.

But New York is hard to give up in October as it is the time the leaves on the trees start to change which never fails to enchant. The City has whipped itself up for the fall, exhibitions opening, concerts scheduled and more, and is in full tilt. All of the dates with people I had deferred far into the future are appearing on my calendar.

For that reason I am especially pleased Kim and I got married in October. It was an event I got to schedule and choose and October was a lovely day and is a lovely moment for our anniversary. Although our level of celebration is low-key (watch for a maybe post next week) fall is a nice time to be out and traipsing around a bit together.

A friend staking these in my absence. The apricot one is the first I have seen from that plant!

I head to New Jersey tomorrow (the heating system needs to be serviced and turned on), where I get reports that the dahlias are full tilt. One I had never seen bloom before has turned out to be a favorite apricot color. Zinnias which took their own time about flowering are finally hard at it. I will plant more (and perhaps earlier) next year though as they are very jolly.

Cabbages – thoughts anyone?

Some errant cabbages have taken hold and I am not sure what to do with them – will they become more like heads? How do I cook these? Also, something is eating them. Sadly the cucumbers may come to much fuss about nothing and not produce that much in the end. Maybe I will even get to sit out with the fire pit tomorrow night. I never seem to be there for the right weather.

My vulnerable young fig tree needs wrapping in burlap soon and the hibiscus and olive tree, in pots, will need to move inside for the winter. The dahlias will need to be dug out and stored too once they are done, but that is more like a trip in November.

Saved this hibiscus from a damaged half-price shelf at Lowes and it is lovely.

However, I find this fall haunts and chases me a bit with hints of sadness for the waning year. Perhaps just too much change with mom passing, job shift and the like – I don’t respond to change well in general. The fall is not filling me with optimism and energy the way it usually does. However, a day in the garden tomorrow, cuddles with kitties and a anniversary day with Kim next weekend should do much to set me right again.

Commute

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a bit of a day in the life of post, back to toys tomorrow! As ongoing readers know, a few weeks ago Kim and I packed kitties and a few bags and headed to our house at the Jersey shore for a few weeks. With a new job I don’t have a lot of vacation so I am commuting these first weeks.

My new digs for work are way over on York Avenue and 62nd – an ideal daily commute from our New York apartment and I walk to and from most days. Occasionally I hop on a slow moving bus that wanders up and down York – and then oddly meanders across 57th Street.

Over the river heading to NYC just as the sun is coming up.

I am paying for my being a hop, skip and a jump from work with more than a month of a Jersey commute which is an hour and twenty minute train ride, with another twenty to thirty minutes on the subway and walking on the other end. It is a bit of a shock to the system – being at the mercy of the NJ transit system and back in the clutches of the Q train daily.

On the other hand, as I write this from my deck this Saturday morning I just saw a hummingbird take a long, long drink from a flowering tree and that is part of my summer reward. As I write, I am perched on my deck in full view of some ripening peppers and tomatoes. Cicadas buzz in the background.

My commuter mug, a great gift, but it did turn on my earlier this week.

It may be worth it but there is a cost for my slice of paradise! Our morning, always an early start, is even earlier. Cats (so many cats!) need to be fed, litterboxes cleaned and Blackie needs his shot. Kim tackles much of it but there’s a mad flurry of activity for a bit. The train ride in is an easy one and I get on early so always have a seat. As long as I don’t have an early appointment to make me crazy if the train has a hiccup, it is generally a time for some extra work or reading.

Sunrise on the way into the city – sort of the dividing point where it becomes more urban.

A friend christened my commute with a travel mug for my coffee, which I now fill religiously and think of her as I drink my piping hot coffee on the train. However, the other day in my enthusiasm I filled it too high and the steam popped the top. When I threw my bag onto my shoulder to run out the door hot coffee streamed down my back! Ouch and a pause to change my top layer (and put some soap on it so it wouldn’t stain!) and I was out the door. My back smarted all the way to work and I couldn’t take my jacket off as my tank had a coffee stain on the back! I have learned my lesson and I both allow to cool and don’t fill quite so ambitiously.

Heading into Red Bank station, we slow through these woods and then over the river. I love this few minutes coming home.

This route to and from the city is a well worn one of course and I have been traveling it on and off since reaching adulthood. It was the first and last leg on my trips to and from college for the holidays. Eventually it was the trip I took to visit my folks once I was living in New York, and ultimately to my dad in hospice during his long illness. Aside from the time of the pandemic (I have written about my time taking the ferry here) and just beyond when I indulged in a car to and from my increasingly lengthy visits to mom during her illness, the train was my main conveyance here and back. (I wrote about those trips with a lovely comfort dog, Cash, here.)

Where the view turns urban as we approached NYC the other morning.

The trip on the Jersey side starts out with water and woods. A third or more of the way there, houses start to emerged and are closer together, over some marshland (my mom used to talk about the wildlife in those marshes!) and then it becomes increasingly urban. Before you know it you are in Elizabeth and Newark and then the City is in sight before a ride through a tunnel (used to terrify me as a kid, these tunnels) where my ears pop, and then into Penn Station on the other side.

Mom always talked about the birds and other wildlife in these marshes.

Of course the trip back is the same in reverse going back. Getting to the train is always more stressful in the evening and I struggle with the discipline to get out of the office with enough time to do the reverse path to the train. It is generally boarding when I get there (unless delayed) and I hop on in the nick of time. The evening by necessity is more work filled as I have left things I can deal with on the train for that time and it is largely work time.

Weather permitting a quickly assembled dinner can be had on the deck – twinkling lights on and Radio Dismuke (more about that here) playing popular standards of the 20’s and 30’s. Tempting to stay up, but an early to bed with the early to rise to commute on the horizon again!

The Three Month Mark

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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.

Not Moose, but somewhat like him.

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?

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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

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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

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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!

Pams-Pictorama.com.

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!

Tuning In

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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.

A young Phil Schaap.

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.

Swimming

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This photo has been on my desk for a long time and it drifted to the top of the pile today. As I write on a chilly November morning, summer and swimming is already a distant memory while the long winter days of January, February and March lay, daunting, ahead. It reminds me that it has been many years since I have been swimming in the ocean, or even a smaller natural body of water.

I thought about taking up swimming during the pandemic. I think I would need a few lessons to get to the point where I am swimming laps successfully. I may still do it. Long term the low impact of swimming may make better peace with my arthritic body than the endless pounding of running.

This photograph has a remarkably dreamy quality. The way the definition of the water disappears, yet there are just a few people going way out to the horizon line. The four women are wearing old-fashioned bathing caps, but even the somewhat saggy bathing suits don’t mar the timeless quality of the image. We see their reflections, but not below the surface. It manages to reach across time which is what the best old photos do for me.

Years ago I wrote a post (found here) based on the quote, save something for the swim back, and that quote comes to my mind when I look at this photo. The post was about the struggle I was having in the fall of 2019 where I did feel I was drowning at times. Little did I know how much would change in the next six months when March of 2020 rolled around.

This image feels like the liminal space between things – those times where we are parked in one of the great waiting rooms of our lives. That’s not to say those periods are fallow. I wrote several times about the time I spent caring for my mom during her final illness. (One of those posts can be found here.) While it was a world away from everything else, it was a time I learned a lot. Time seems to slow and morph. It is a period that seems to be outside of the ongoing time-space continuum of my life otherwise.

I have been in a similar space again recently as I began to commit to leaving my current position at Jazz at Lincoln Center and moving to another, very different one. That weird period when you realize that you are probably leaving, but you haven’t committed yet and are not ready to tell anyone. You stop investing in the future of what you are doing beyond a point because you won’t be there to do it so you are mentally treading water. However, after six and a half years I gave notice right before the holiday and more about that adventure in coming weeks for readers who stick around.

Lastly, to note: this is a photo postcard, but it is mounted on another piece of cardstock. I did not purchase it so it has the rare distinction of not being of my choosing as is virtually everything posted about here. Pictorama is pretty much wholly curated by me. However, this card arrived in the mail last December and there is a note from the fellow cartoonist Robert Crumb to Kim on the back. And we decided however, that the photo merited its own place here in Pictorama.

Morphing

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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!

Opening

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: As most of our readers know, I work for a well known performing arts organization and you may remember that last year I missed our opening weekend, pushed late into November to avoid inevitably Covid related early fall issues. My mom landed in the hospital and needing to be with her trumped even our long-awaited post pandemic opening. So for me, although I attended concerts later in the season last year, this was my first opening weekend since the fall of 2019. While it lacked the heavy emotion of last year, last night was more than suitably festive and, despite masks still dotting our landscape, came close to feeling like at least the return to a new normal. There was a real joy in the room.

For me it also marked the launching of many colleagues who joined the organization recently and wonderful to see them each fully assume their new roles. (I have written some about the interview process and the overall state of the office here and here.) Like the slow forward movement of a mighty ship, the gears slowly turned and it was something close to full speed ahead by the end of the evening. For my folks the weeks and months of getting to know the organization and about our supporters was like the musicians and their hours or practice and rehearsal.

Birthday cake for mom earlier this week. I started the week working from New Jersey so I could be there for a small, but festive birthday celebration. Being able to work from there periodically is a post-pandemic blessing.

An evening like this is marked with a certain expected stress and mishap as is the nature of our business. Tickets gone missing (and a supply chain issue with ticket stock having made us crazy), introductions needing to be organized and executed, catering issues. (Last night a vegan sandwich made with beets appeared – which oddly looked remarkably like corn beef. They were enormous – and well, made with beets. Ultimately we had them quartered which made them more approachable and in the end they were surprisingly good.)

I was endlessly pleased to see my folks embrace their new roles, talking with guests, moving the reception along seamlessly. Our fundraising work bounces back and forth between the administrative and in person, a delicate dance really between the two. It is a a miracle when it all meshes into a successful evening like last night and fascinating to see the new people embrace their roles, each in a different and singular way. The trained singer who came to us to be back in this milieu taking obvious pleasure in the music and in meeting the musicians, the talented and personable young man who has taken a flyer on working for an arts organization for a totally different experience finding his voice. Our events manager fully in charge and in his glory after a few spring trail runs.

Mixed in of course remains a core group of hard working and great long-standing colleagues who have stayed through it all and helped introduce the new people to their roles while continuing to keep things afloat, as we have for months and really years now. It was a moment to glimpse the future and how a new team will work together and for all the bumpy starts see how the road ahead will shape up. It is just the start of the season, but I return with a new sense of swing to my step.