Hiromi

East Village
Manhattan

On gossamer wings
a butterfly
arrives from across the ocean

I taught English in a junior high school during the three years I lived in rural Japan, from 1995 to 1998. During that time, Hiromi was one of my students. She was about 11 when we first met. Now she is a beautiful young woman of 23. Watching her grow up has been such a wonderful experience for me. I've also become friends with her mother and younger sister. They are like a second family to me.

Hiromi spent 10 months in Manhattan studying English at a language school. She returned home in February. On Friday, I had the good fortune to pick her up at the airport for a one-week visit.
Yesterday, we spent a great day having lunch and exploring Greenwich Village and the East Village, two of her favorite neighborhoods.

Her visit has rejuvenated me. Yesterday I was able to walk with little pain or discomfort, and her enthusiasm and fresh perspective on things were like a restorative tonic.

The timing of her visit was exquisite because I don't know if I will ever have the chance to revisit Japan, circumstances being what they are.

But seeing that her adventurous, indomitable nature and free spirit are thriving is really all I need to see.

Sage advice

I found this poem by Nanao Sakaki to be especially skillful. Sorry, the Wikipedia entry is in French.
One interesting thing about his life is that while in the Japanese army in World War II, he saw on his radar screen the B-29 that minutes later dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
That's heavy stuff.

Just Sit Here

If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot

Giving thanks for inspiration: Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder,
at Columbia University
Manhattan

I came face to face with Gary Snyder, one of my icons, at a poetry reading Wednesday night at Columbia University. The Pulitzer Prize winner spoke about the influence of Japanese poetics on his work and read selections from his early and more recent poetry to illustrate this influence. It was wonderful to hear his measured cadence reading poems I had read many times before but which now came to life.

Snyder was a friend of Jack Kerouac, who based the autobiographical novel "The Dharma Bums" on his relationship with Snyder, portrayed as protagonist Japhy Ryder in the book.

Reading "The Dharma Bums" and Snyder's poetry years ago stoked my growing interest in Japan and figured big in my decision to move there in the mid-1990s.

After Wednesday's reading and after I took my photographs of Snyder, I shook his hand and thanked him for his wonderful poetry. I told him how his work inspired my own journey across the Pacific, which seemed to please him. "And how'd it go?" he asked. "It changed my life," I told him. "I went there expecting to learn lots about Japan, which I did. But I wound up learning more about myself." He smiled.

There was a reception going on in the room behind where he spoke. I saw him sitting at one of the tables, patiently signing the books and photos that people were placing in front of him. Earlier, I saw a star-struck but earnest fellow give him a manila envelope with his poetry for Snyder to critique. Snyder pressed it to his forehead and thanked the man with a gassho, a Buddhist bow with palms pressed together.

I wanted to go over and chat some more with Snyder, who seemed absorbed in thought even in the midst of this throng of admirers. And then I thought, what more did I really have to say? What could I tell him that he hasn't heard 10,000 times before from fans and friends over the decades.

I had expressed my gratitude to him. What higher compliment could I pay than to acknowledge his influence on my life?

I decided to let it be.

Just to let it be.

Animal instinct

Sculpture by Kate Clark

Kate's work is on display at a temporary space at 169 Ave. C at 10th Street in the East Village hosted by the arts organization Chashama.

Check it out!

Wisdom and courage

Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely,
Community Mayor of Harlem
Taken in TriBeCa, Manhattan

In addition to Queen Mother Blakely's role as a mentor and community leader in Harlem, this wonderful woman also served as queen mother of the naming ceremony at the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, a national landmark and treasure discovered in 1991 during the construction of an office building. This land has since yielded thousands of remains of slaves and freed men and women of color and is a direct link to Manhattan's role as a slave center in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it ...

The world just got smaller

On occasion, the blogosphere and the real world intersect in wonderful and unexpected ways. For some time, Ted Taylor and I have visited each other's blogs and have kept up an e-mail correspondence. Ted makes his home in Kyoto, Japan, with his fiancee. He has lived in Japan for more than a dozen years. He teaches yoga and English and also does translations.

This world traveler, cut from the same cloth as Gary Snyder, recently wrote to tell me that he would be returning Stateside to visit family out West and in Vermont. Part of his itinerary would include a stop of a couple days in Manhattan, where he was born (though he grew up mostly in New Mexico) . He suggested a get-together, to which I happily agreed.

We spent Saturday and Sunday traipsing through the East Village and Greenwich Village, revisiting places that Ted hadn't seen in years and exploring new ones that may inspire future sojourns in the city.

We met my friend Jim "Mosaic Man" Power, who asked Ted to contribute to an artwork-in-progress on a light standard at Astor Place. Ted cemented a Japanese 1-yen coin into the mosaic. This most insignificant piece of small change -- worth just a fraction of a cent -- has bought Ted a permanent place in the East Village landscape. Hopefully, in years to come it'll serve as a beacon for Ted's further forays into Manhattan.

The rent has been paid.

Ted Taylor

Ted adding to Jim Power's artwork.

Ted's contribution: A Japanese 1-yen coin

Courage to tell the truth

Bolivar Arellano is a retired New York Post photographer. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was directly under the Twin Towers when one of them collapsed. To this day, he doesn't know how he survived.

When he was a photojournalist in his native Ecuador and filmed the death squads doing their dirty work, someone tipped him off and told him he was a marked man, and he was advised to leave the country immediately. To this day, he marvels that he survived.

When he was a photojournalist in Colombia, he was accused of being linked to anti-government guerrillas. He was told to leave the country immediately or be killed. To this day, he marvels that he survived.

When he was a photojournalist in Nicaragua, he was kidnapped by the Contras for three days, only to be set free without explanation. To this day, he marvels that he survived.

What this fine and gentle man and talented photojournalist couldn't survive was the greed connected to the gentrification of the East Village. His landlord, who is on a list of the 10 worst landlords in New York City, raised the rent on his modest gallery on Ninth Street by 400 percent.

Arellano survived the greatest terrorist attack in U.S. history and the senseless violence of repressive regimes. But greed has done him in, or at least his dream of owning a gallery. It closed for good this weekend.

He'll survive this unfortunate episode in his life, too. But the East Village just lost a wonderful artist and gentle soul whose exhibitions breathed life into the neighborhood.

Better look over your shoulder. You could be next.

Sucker-punched by the truth

I respectfully dedicate this post to Mathew B. Brady (1823-96), the first successful photojournalist and, by extension, street photographer in the United States.

His images of the carnage wrought on the battlefields of the Civil War shocked a nation to its core. He (and his various assistants, including Alexander Gardner) gave those who saw his photographs a much-needed dose of reality -- straight up, no chaser.

People ran from the galleries in which his images were displayed, unable to comprehend the scope of what they were seeing -- unable to comprehend the scope of the bloodshed they helped bring about through inaction and apathy.

There's no room for complacency, my friends.

Michael goes to market

I took a magical and much-needed road trip Friday to Ephrata in Lancaster County, Pa.
My two dear friends and I wanted to photograph a livestock auction at the Green Dragon market, an outdoor extravaganza at which you can buy anything from cattle feed to clothing to electronic gadgetry and everything in between.

The auction turned out to be a bust. Instead of cows and steers, small animals destined to be kids' pets or 4-H projects were to go on the block. The bidding wouldn't begin until 6:30 p.m., and it was just 1:30 when we arrived at the fair. With lots of time and no plans, we strolled around and took photos of other things.

My attention was drawn to a long, low shed for Amish and Mennonite families to park their horses and buggies while shopping. Inside, there was a lone, spirited horse hitched to a black buggy.

The horse, as with nearly all buggy horses, was wearing blinders, so I approached with gentle footsteps and a soothing voice so as not to startle him. I snapped away, slowly gaining his confidence. Turning to leave, I nearly walked right into the owner. The wiry man, who was about my height, stared me right in the eye with a look of mild amusement.

I stammered out an apology, assuring the man that if I had known he was there, I would've asked his permission before photographing his rig. "Oh, don't worry," he said in a friendly voice. "The horse don't mind."

We introduced ourselves. "I'm Melvin," he said. Meanwhile, my friends had struck up a vigorous conversation with Annie, Melvin's wife.

Melvin and Annie's transportation

Melvin is 69 but can easily pass for someone far younger. Years of farmwork followed by years in carpentry and construction work had shaped him into a powerful man, but with the easy, gentle, confident manner of one who knows his own strength. As with all old-order, or Wenger, Mennonites, he wore plain dress -- unadorned linen shirt, dark trousers, black suspenders, black workboots and dark straw hat. His conversation was straightforward and simple, guileless and engaging.

I wish I could share with you a photo of Melvin and Annie, but you'll have to form one in your mind's eye. Wenger Mennonites eschew such trappings of vanity as posed photos.

Clipper the horse. He has worked up a froth by chewing on his bit. Melvin said Clipper is a retired trotter from a race track in Canada, if I remember correctly. Clipper is 4 and is, in Melvin's words, just "a fair travelin' horse." Melvin is thinking of selling him for a horse that is easier to work with.

We spent about an hour talking about horses, farm life, family life. I learned that Melvin and Annie have five children. Two sons had moved to Wisconsin to farm in the Mennonite tradition because land prices in Lancaster County were just too high. A third son was farming in upstate New York. Melvin had been a farmer but now did carpentry and construction work, common trades for Mennonite men who have left farming. Bicycle repair is another frequently encountered livelihood.

As Melvin and I chatted, my friends, one of whom is a plain-dress Quaker, found common ground with Annie through hymns, which provided background music for this wonderful encounter. Annie wants to visit Manhattan someday and has great curiosity about the ways of other people. Formal education for her and her husband stopped after the eighth grade, as is the custom for Wenger Mennonites. But their learning never stopped and their accumulated knowledge transcends what can be gleaned from mere books. They are wise, and wisdom is cultivated through living with one's eyes and ears and mind open.

My Quaker friend and fellow road-tripper Lorcan. He and Melvin and Annie share the plain-dress custom.

As far as I could learn, Melvin and Annie's major concession to modern ways is a telephone, which Annie says is a necessity these days. "You can't just drop in on the doctor anymore," she said. "You have to make an appointment over the phone."

Melvin and Annie are extremely comfortable with themselves and their beliefs, and so they are comfortable with people from outside their community. Rather than being seen as threats to their customs and way of life, my friends and I were seen as fellow children of God who have chosen a different path up the same mountain.

We had such a lovely time that the couple invited us to their home the next time we're in the area. And so it is that we'll soon find ourselves on the road to Ephrata once again.

A keeper of the flame

Richard Rohrman-sensei
BudoKai Okinawan Goju-Ryu dojo
River Edge, N.J.
(taken with Nikon FM 35mm SLR, 50mm lens)

MagiKat

Astor Place
East Village, Manhattan

Kat O'Sullivan is a talented artist in a variety of media. She also designs beautiful clothing. She has traveled the world, and these days parks her psychedelic bus in the East Village, where she sells the fruits of her imagination. You can see the fire of creativity burning in her eyes.

May the road rise with you, Kat.

Please adopt me!

This is Jada the pit bull mix.
She's a mellow, 7-month-old beauty who oozes love, and she desperately needs a home.
She gets along with other dogs, but it isn't known if she likes cats.

If you live in New York City or in the metropolitan area and would like to make Jada yours, send me an e-mail (click on my profile photo at right, and then click on the blue e-mail link in the left column) and I'll put you in contact with the ASPCA executive who is working to find Jada some new digs.

Giving due props

My mentor, friend and co-worker Bill has taught me more about the art of photography than just about any other person.

Through him, I've learned how essential good cropping is to crafting a good photo, and how an effective crop can reveal the picture within the picture, thus opening the door to something that wasn't perceived when the shot was taken.

Bill has also shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop photo editing software. Bill works digital alchemy with it. To watch him free a photo's hidden potential is to watch a master at work. And he's just as adept in a traditional darkroom.

If this man were paid according to the worth of his skills and his mastery of not only taking images but bringing out their full beauty, he would be vacationing in Hawaii a couple times a year.

He's a damn good photojournalist and technician and an equally good mentor and friend.

I can be pretty cocky and irreverent, but when Bill talks, I just shut up and absorb what he's saying.

Thanks, Bill.

Reality check

Lorcan Otway, left, and Bob Arihood
East Village, Manhattan

Whenever I get to feeling overconfident about my photography, I look at Lorcan Otway's portfolio and my ego is given a quick and decisive reality check. Lorcan's compositions highlight the capabilities of the human eye to portray beauty and pathos in ways that make me jealous as hell.

Similarly, Bob Arihood has an amazing ability to tell a compelling story through photographs. Sometimes it's a story of beauty. Other times it's an account of injustice and iniquity that makes you want to holler. Always, it's compelling.

I'm very fortunate to have become friends with both artists. My own work can only improve and my own horizons only broaden as a result.

They are my older, wiser brothers in photography.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Turned 87 years young on Saturday

I got the keys to the highway

I took a road trip Tuesday to Philadelphia to visit my first karate teacher and to pay homage at Geno's, makers of the best cheese steaks on the planet.

The rain fell in torrents as I headed down the New Jersey Turnpike, but the clouds parted almost on cue as I approached Philly.

The temple of Geno's was my first stop.

"Gimme a wiz wid'out" (Translation: May I please have a cheese steak with Cheez Whiz, and please hold the onions, if you would.)

As I sat down to eat, two youngish priests were chatting at the next table. One was from a Pennsylvania parish, the other visiting from India.
The Pennsylvania priest was telling the Indian priest about what he thought the differences were between Philadelphia and other parts of the country.
"Here," he said with a sweep of his hand, "people will ignore you in the street. They won't make eye contact, they won't exchange pleasantries."
"That's because we can spot the tourists," I chimed in, my freshly purchased souvenir Geno's Steaks T-shirt displayed prominently atop my table.
The American priest gave a curt, polite laugh pregnant with meaning, and he and his friend continued eating in silence.

Can you spot the tourist table? Hint: It's the one with the souvenir T-shirt on top.

I don't know, but in the 10 years I lived in Philadelphia, from 1985-95, I never found the place particularly aloof or unfriendly. Yeah, some days it was the City of Brotherly Love, other days it was the City of Brotherly Shove (to quote Gil Scott-Heron), but on the whole it wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't the Soviet-era East Germany the American priest was making it out to be.

I felt bad about my off-the-cuff, unsolicited comment to the priest. So, I finished my cheese steaks (I ate two and bought one to take home), walked up to the Indian priest and gave him my poly-bagged T-shirt. "Here, please take this as a memento of your visit to Philly," I said.
His face beamed. "But I have nothing to give you," he said.
"But you already have: the smile on your face," I said.
I knew fences had been mended when his friend said with a smile that would melt granite, "God bless you."

Bainbridge Street near Seventh

***

Fully sated by my cheese steaks and side order of humble pie, I headed to the home of Gerald "Ski" Evans, who taught me karate from 1993-95 and who has been my treasured friend and mentor ever since.

Teaching kata Tekki Shodan

As always, going to see Ski isn't just something to do. It's an event. A special event.
We talked about life and its challenges and blessings, as we nearly always do, and after we took a break while he taught a karate class, we headed back to his house and chatted some more over Scotch, even though I'm not much of a drinker.


I'm all for change in my life and for trying to embrace it as graciously and gracefully as I can. But I'm also thankful for certain rocks of continuity, chief among them Ski.

***

You can watch 1970s-vintage video of Ski in competition in Japan. Just do a Google search using the terms "Gerald Evans," "karate" and "youtube."

Home sweet home

I got home from the hospital about an hour ago (it's now about 2:30 p.m. Saturday), and boy, is it great to be back amid familiar sights, sounds and smells (remember, I have two cats).

The doctors were impressed by the absence of lingering effects from the surgery and agreed with my entreaties that home is where I should be.

Friday: The day after

The surgery itself wasn't as successful as was hoped for, in that my serum calcium level didn't drop as far as my surgeon and his team would have liked. But the level came down just the same, and we're hoping it will continue.
I'm to report back for tests in a week's time.

I was operated on at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, and the level of care, compassion and empathy were incredible. ("Yeah, just wait till you get the bill," joked my roommate.) But, joking aside, I was made to feel like a person, not a number or a statistic, by every staff member I met, and the activities and diversions they provide for patients are as impressive as they are broad.

One such activity was a Las Vegas Night on Thursday night, following my surgery, at which I won a bottle of Ralph Lauren "Blue" men's cologne at the blackjack table. As I noted in a response in an earlier post from the hospital, this cologne would've been a true godsend if I hadn't been allowed to shower Friday and today ...

The other activity was a copper enameling workshop at which patients were given precut copper blanks in different shapes and sizes with which to make jewelry.

I made an enso, a circle that in Zen Buddhism represents continuity, no beginning and no end, and reality:

I never claimed to be an artist

But the highlight of my hospital experience was meeting a remarkable, courageous and inspiring woman, Jen Goodman Linn, and her equally friendly and gracious husband, Dave.
I was walking the corridor Friday morning for exercise when I heard a voice behind me say, "You're walking pretty fast."
I turned around and this charming woman was there. We did laps around the hallway together and learned about our respective situations.

Jen Goodman Linn and me

Jen, too, is battling a rare cancer, and her fight inspired her in January to host, with her husband, a fund-raising event at a downtown Manhattan gym to raise money for Sloan Kettering. The event, during which individual riders and teams rode long stints on stationary bicycles, raised $215,000. The couple plan to make it an annual event, and I'm on board for this January.

I mentioned to Jen that I believe the encounters we have with others really aren't random, in my opinion. We meet the people we meet for a good reason, sometimes evident, sometimes not.
The bottom line is, we're all confronting and enjoying and sometimes battling life together.
We can choose to do it together or alone.
I've chosen togetherness.

Once again, I can't begin to thank you all for your good vibes and good wishes and heartfelt comments. My gratitude is a challenge to put into words.

Adama update

Washington Square
Greenwich Village, Manhattan

My friend Adama Dembele is returning to his native Burkina-Faso this month for what he expects to be a yearlong effort to raise funds and devote time to his children's center.

Since 2002, he has traveled the world for six months a year to raise money for the center in Ouagadougou, his hometown. There, children receive education in academic subjects and in music.

To learn more, contact him at adembelefr@yahoo.fr.

Mosaic magic

Saturday was repair day for a vandalized Jim Power mosaic at Eighth Street and Broadway in the East Village.
I came across Jim at about 3 o'clock as he was assessing the damage to the light standard and deciding the best course of repair. We struck up a conversation -- I hadn't seen Jim in a couple of weeks -- and I began taking photos.
Soon, a throng of passers-by stopped to ask questions and take photos of their own.

What began as a solitary project quickly turned into a community effort as Jim offered pieces of tile to people to patch the battered artwork.

Jim is a living legend in the East Village after crafting a 25-year-long trail of mosaics throughout the neighborhood in the form of decorated light standards, storefront signs, benches and more. Many of Saturday's onlookers were intimately familiar with Jim's work but had never had the chance to chat with him.

As always, the Mosaic Man's youthful exuberance drew people like a magnet.
"HAHA!" he exclaimed. "I'm living one crazy existence!"

Jessie Jane, Jim's ever-present sidekick

Tools of the trade

My newest friend (and a sample of his music)

Adama Dembele playing the kora he made by hand

Wandering the streets of Manhattan, I've heard sidewalk musicians play just about every instrument under the sun, from harmonicas to hurdy-gurdies, saxophones to steel drums.
But I never heard someone playing the kora until Saturday, in Washington Square Park.

Adama Dembele is a griot from Burkina Faso, West Africa. He is descended from a long line of griots and has brought centuries' worth of this tradition of musical oral history to America.

Dembele's wonderfully intricate music is exotic to be sure, but there's something vaguely familiar about it (click here for a sample, but read my note first*). The phrasing, the rhythms seem to embrace Western sensibilities like an old flannel shirt.

And with good reason: West Africa is the mother of most of the music we hold dear. Rhythm and blues, gospel, rock, blues, rap -- they all have their roots in West Africa and they all started shaping our music the minute the first slave ship landed on these shores.

My personal favorites are the richly textured music of Senegal and Gambia, the sounds of which echo in music as diverse as Muddy Waters, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Mahalia Jackson, Elvis Presley and Chuck D.
And today, I discovered Burkina Faso's wonderful contribution to the mix.

_____

*This is a 5.2MB .wma sound file, so it will take about a minute to download, depending upon the speed of your Internet connection. The song is 5 minutes, 37 seconds long. If you would like to learn more about Adama or buy one of his CDs, e-mail me at henro1962(at)yahoo(dot)com and I'll send you his e-mail address, and you can work out the details between yourselves.