In honor of World AIDS Day...

... I criticize the president.

Obama is not scoring well among AIDS activists.

Subway music

I heard this guy singing on 42nd Street platform of the N and R today. The song he was singing was very pretty. But watching people watch him was also one of those lovely New York things: when someone does something great and people see it and recognize it and take flyers and buy cd's and give their kids a dollar to put in the guitar case.

If you can see it

I went to see Disturbing the Universe tonight. It is about William Kunstler, the radical civil rights lawyer, made by his two daughters. It's very interesting look at his representation of the Freedom Riders, the Chicago 7, the American Indian Movements leaders at Wounded Knee, as well as his more reviled clients, like the defendants in the Central Park jogger rape case and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It doesn't gloss over his inconsistancies or his flaws, but does document his pivotal role in countless important civil rights moments.

If you are interested in finding out if it is playing in your area, you can find screening info here.

Like finding that long lost mix tape you loved so much in 1993

In a year dominated by conversation about sources of unrestricted revenue and hospital productivity, I forgot about the wonderfulness that is The Poor Man. Here he discusses the recent improvements to Facebook.

"I don’t understand this Facebook. There’s like all these people, and there’s a “News” feed and a “Live” feed, and they’re different, but hell if I know what the difference is, let alone what’s so newsy or lively about them. And I have a “Wall” for some reason, which I guess I’m writing on? Or something? Am I writing on a wall? Is this news? Am I live? Don’t anybody try to explain it to me, because I’m not listening, and I refuse to RTFM. This is supposed to be a web-site, and web-sites aren’t supposed to have FMs."

Cocooned

It's a raining autumn morning, during the first week when most of the leaves have fallen off the trees. I am happily ensconsed in cotton jersey sheets (the stretchy kind) drinking coffee, answering email. Later I will go to the office to do work, certain things requiring large of amounts of concentration eluded me this week. Jane went out of town for a meeting. It's one of those days where there is nothing too bad, nothing too serious.

My friend Erik wrote a book

My pal Erik wrote this book. I finished it this morning on the bus, and it's a lovely novel about a teenager whose father takes off to save the world, turning his world upside down. It deals with bullies, girls, bicycles, racism, warring parents, and also manages to tackle a conversation about right and wrong and good and evil. It's funny and sweet at times, but doesn't shie away from how grisly and violent the world can be. You can buy it here.

On my watch

During the last five or six months of my Mom's life, she wore this white watch with a rubber band that I unsuccessfully tried to convince her to not wear. It was ringed with plastic diamond things. The watch band had some sort of basket pattern, with silver retro numbers. It was hideous but she was very attached to it. I rescued it from her bag the week of her funeral and wore it to New York. It was one of those moments of unadulterated grief when finding one of her quirky, idosyncratic possessions and putting it on brought such relief for the feelings caused by her absence that I didn't care how it looked. As grief abated, I realized that I wasn't going to start wearing her watch, it would be too hard to explain to anyone else.

What happened after made me miss her in a different way. Jane went to a meeting at a large hospital where a wealthy supporter of a research initiative was present. In the meeting, Jane was speaking to the woman and looked down at her wrist and realized that this society lady was wearing the high-end version of the watch that my Mom's had been imitating. Instead of fake plastic diamonds, it had real ones.

My mom would have thought it was hilarious that there was a fancy version of it. The absurdity of the watch to begin with, the fact that there is a high priced iteration of her ten dollar drug store one, and the fact that Jane encountered an east side society lady wearing it would have elicited some wry and self-effacing comment about her brush with the well-to-do. I miss talking about things like this with her more than anything else.

Tanto tiempo

It's been forever since I wrote. In the absence of actual posts from me, people sometimes find their way to Jane's blog and are keeping up on recent events that way. For those of you who haven't followed the parts of my story there, I should explain that my mother passed away on August 14, 2009. It was sudden, completely unexpected and all happened while I was on vacation in Ecuador. We were at the top of the Teleferico in Quito when I got the phone call, killing time before going to the airport to catch a hurriedly changed flight.

This isn't meant as an excuse for not writing, the last post was after all two months before that. It is actually missing her that brings me back here again, I think. She was my most loyal reader and although the feelings of immediate shock have passed, her absence leaves a gaping hole in my day. She was one of my loyal readers and it seems a good space to talk a bit about the roller coaster.

Things that happen these days:

In my cell phone address book, the phone number still reads "Robert and Doris Calhoon." When my father calls me, I invariably think for a split second that she is finally returning my call, after so many weeks.

My June 14 post is now bittersweet, since it was about seeing Up. I recommended this movie to my parents, it is about aging and life changes, after all. It's the last movie she saw in the theater. When I cleaned out her purse, I found the 3-D glasses from the movie.

Here is the obituary.