Barbra's Old Brooklyn

457 Schenectady Avenue

365 Pulaski Street

3102 Newkirk Avenue

Loew's Kings Theater on Flatbush Avenue

site of Choy's Restaurant, 1850 Nostrand Avenue

Oscar's Restaurant, 1157 Third Avenue

320 Central Park West

Barbra's Barn

Mishkin's Paradise

Shortly after I retired, I auditioned for and won the roles of "Rose/Sadie" in Fred Feldman's "Mishkin's Paradise." We performed the play at the Producers' Club in NYC. I am delighted to learn that the play will once again be produced and performed, this time on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

WHAT WAY TO GO TODAY

Here's my poem that won Rick Dale's Beat Poetry Contest on December 3, 2009.

WHAT WAY TO GO TODAY

Almost dusk:
Last summer on one Wednesday, in July,
I sat on a bench, a grey wooden tired
Bench on a boardwalk out at old Long Beach.
In the sky a lonely and lost grey kittiwake tipped
As the hot pink sun set in blazing technicolor over
Hot pinkish sand and the fading blue ocean water.

That morning:
I had thought about seeing great art...
Vermeer, or Courbet, or maybe Monet.
But, I drove to the beach instead to think
To think about everything creative that had been
Created before I got here, and when I was here,
And what will be created when I leave this place.
When one day I leave my place and all places in my
Consciousness that is now in this time and was
At a past time and will be in some next time;
Maybe all time exists at the same time.
The great minds of theoretical physicists search
For the "Theory of Everything" as they sit
In their cluttered rooms, their great thinking rooms.
In universities, they ponder the mathematical equations
And Schrodinger's cat and all those mysteries.

In the evening:
It is during the quiet and still and sad night when
I miss most the people I never met:
Edie Beale, and the Rat Pack, and even Rod Serling
Who made me want to time travel: to go back to simpler places
Like Nedick's, or the Belmore, or Bickford's, and Willoughby.
Then the longing, a longing when distant sounds and faraway
Foghorns drive thoughts to reflect on a life visible through some
Smoky cracked mirror, a haunted and haunting steamy mirror.
As I am sort of old now and getting older
There is a vague and odd feeling that I,
Like the kittiwake, somehow must have lost the way.

© Marjorie Levine 2009

Searching for Sugar Man

A Class Picture

I repost this class photo because the former students from this class at PS33M seem to bump into me all over NYC and remember me. And I fondly remember them.

We presented some amazing productions at school assemblies. They helped me tap into my creativity and I hope I inspired them to discover their own sense of artistry during our many rehearsals for the school performances.

At almost 66, I am winding down a bit... choosing activities to enhance my own level of fun. However, there is not a day that goes by that I do not wax nostalgic about my long teaching career... and in some way feel I was productive and hope I made a contribution. But, most of all I want to think my students are "paying it forward" and letting others know the important value of education.

A Rich and Rewarding Life

Here are some class photos of my long career as a proud teacher.

Jon Hamm, in Parade magazine: “I got into acting because my teachers kept nudging me into it,” says Hamm, who taught school himself for a few years after graduating from the University of Missouri with an English degree. “The power a teacher has to influence someone is so great. I can’t think of a profession I have more respect for.”
from: Parade magazine

I was a teacher in NYC for almost 35 years. I have close to 35 class pictures to help reflect on my long career. I had read in the UFT paper, "The New York Teacher," about the long career of Regina Sayres, who is now 100 years old. She was a teacher at PS 41M in 1968 during the time of that long teachers' strike. I was a teacher at PS 41M during that time when Ms. Sayres was there, and at a place when she was perhaps ending her career... mine was just beginning.
I looked through all the class photos in my collection, and I selected many for inclusion in this blog. They represent the four schools in which I taught... and the memories come flooding back. (please click on each photo to enlarge)








The year was 1973, and I was teaching grade 6 in a public school in the theater district of Manhattan. I entered my class in an essay contest sponsored by Bella Abzug and one of my students won. She went to Washington, DC to read her essay. I found this photo: Charity goes to Washington. And I also found the (now very wrinkled and faded) letter I received informing us that she won. That was over 35 years ago. It seems like so long ago. I guess it was.

This was my fourth grade class at PS 33 in 1986. The next year, when they were in the fifth grade, these students were chosen by Eugene M. Lang for his "I Have a Dream" college scholarship program. Over twenty years later... I am wondering: "Where are they now?"


And most bittersweet:


The year was 1974. I was teaching at a small school on West 45th Street. I had a wonderful 6th grade class. The students were bright, creative, and they had a real sense of humor. The school was on the same block as the Actor's Studio, the Manhattan Plaza had just been completed, and on nice days I could walk home. I loved going to work.
One day, a student named Christopher came to school a little bit late. I asked him the reason for his tardiness, and he told me that the night before he had attended an opening of a movie in which his father had a role. I asked him the name of the film, and he replied, "Godfather 2." "Oh," I said. I asked, "What part did your father have in the movie?" He replied, "Frankie Five Angels." I did know that Christopher's father was the playwright who had written "Hatful of Rain." But, I did not know that he was in the film, "Godfather II." So! Christopher's father was "Frankie Pentangeli;" interesting... Godfather II, was released and it opened at a Loew's theater on Broadway. It received phenomenal reviews and I couldn't wait to see it.
Soon thereafter were parent-teacher conferences. I am lucky Christopher was an excellent student. I do not think I would have had a comfort level sitting across from that father and giving a bad report. Mr. Gazzo had written a note to me during that school year asking permission for his son to be excused early on an October day and I saved the note. It was not just a signed note, it was an autograph.
A few months later, the Gazzo family moved to Los Angeles. Christopher kept in touch with all of us through letters he sent to the school addressed to me. In one letter, Christopher asked me if I was still singing because I was awful. I was a teacher who sang while she taught? He said he was going to a school 20 times better but he would rather be going to our school because he missed all of us.
I think about all of the students I had in so many classes over the years. Eddie, who died of a drug overdose. David, who fell off the roof of his building one hot summer day when he was up there with his brothers playing ball. Debbie, who was crossing 9th Avenue and was hit by a car. Brenda, whose mother we saved.
Larry David was asked why he still works. He clearly does not need to work. He said his mother had told him many years ago that we all need to always wake up in the morning and have a place to go. I had a place to go.

Didn't Mr. E's secretary leave out the 's' in comprehension in #4? He should have proofread that letter!

Say My Name

I See Bored People

"Don't bother me now. I am trying to annoy people on the computer."

"I am trying so hard to get a total stranger's goat on the computer, but I seem to be an epic fail."

Grammar checks

Once a teacher always....

Incorrect: You done it yesterday.
Correct: You did it yesterday.

Incorrect: I seen that show.
Correct: I saw that show.

Incorrect: Your going to the store.
Correct: You're going to the store.

Incorrect: I could care less.
Correct: I couldn't care less.

Incorrect: Mr. Thomas' shoes
Correct: Mr. Thomas's shoes

Incorrect: She don't go there
Correct: She doesn't go there

Incorrect: She don't go there no more
Correct: She doesn't go there any more

Incorrect: I didn't do nothing
Correct: I didn't do anything

Incorrect: She have told us the news.
Correct: She has told us the news.

Incorrect: You should have went there.
Correct: You should have gone there.



More to follow...

Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up

It just doesn't get any better than THIS!

Demographic Life Choices

Do you choose this:



or this:

Electrified

David Blaine, one million volts always on

David Blaine drowned alive in Lincoln Center

David Blaine frozen in Times Square

  

The Center of Attention

I was walking down the street and I was recognized by some people who saw me at a NYC comedy club. I appreciate it, but there is always a downside to fame. 

Suggestions for Bored People

I am amazed that some people are so bored and have so little to do that their only recreation seems to be hanging on computers in sophomoric attempts to annoy others who are total strangers. It's a vacuous form of low level entertainment, so in an attempt to provide a service... please allow me to share a list of activities I intend to attend:

October 2012
Mantegna to Matisse: Drawings frm Courtauld Gallery Frick 10/02/12-01/27/13
Bernini terra cotta models & drawings Met 10/03/12-01/06/13
Turkmen Jewelry frm Marshall/Marilyn Wolf collection Met 10/09/12-02/24/13
Wade Guyton midcareer survey Whitney 10/04/12-01/13/13
Picasso Black & White Guggenheim 10/05/12-01/23/13
Szapocznikow, Alina: Sculpture Undone: 1955-1972 MoMA 10/07/12-01/28/13
Faking It: Manipulated Photog before Photoshop Met 10/11/12-01/27/13
Durer to DeKooning: 100 Master Drawings-Munich. 16c-19c Morgan 10/12/12-01/06/13
Trockel, Rosemarie: A Cosmos New Museum 10/24/12-01/21/13
Artschwger, Richard: retrospective Whitney 10/25/12-02/03/13
Princely Furniture of the Roentgens, 18c Met 10/30/12-01/27/13

November 2012
Rogers, John-American sculptor 19c NY Historical Soc 11/02/12-02/17/13
Potter, Beatrix: the Picture Letters Morgan 11/02/12-01/27/13
Modernist Indian Art: Radical Terrain. 3rd exhibit in series Rubin11/09/12- 04/29/13
Orozco, Gabriel: Asterisms. sculpture-photography installation Guggenheim 11/09/12- 01/13/13 Bellows, George (frm National Gallery) Met 11/11/12- 02/18/13
Sinister Pop Whitney 11/15/12- 03/xx/13
Fiorentino, Rosso. 16c Florentine Drawing Morgan 11/16/12- 02/03/13
Meta-Monumental Garage Sale. Martha Rosler MoMA atrium 11/17/12- 11/30/13
Tokyo: 1955-1970 A New Avant Garde MoMA 11/18/12- 02/25/13
African Art, NY, Avant Garde (re: Armory Show anniversary) Met 11/27/12- 04/14/13

December 2012
Matisse: In Search of True Painting (48 ptgs) Met 12/04/12- 03/17/13
Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925 MoMA 12/23/12- 04/15/13

January 2013
Drawing Surrealism. 90 artists (Dali, Miro, Ernst, etc) Morgan 01/25/13 04/21/13
Hashmi, Zarina: Paper like Skin, retrospective Guggenheim 01/25/13- 04/21/13


The Heiress

Motown, the Musical

New York Film Festival

You Betcha!

Coney Island Baby

In Avalon

Around the World

Clara Barton School

My "aha" moment!

It happened, and my jaw dropped. I realized I could with no doubt confirm that the people with whom I am interacting in one area of my life are total morons... idiotic beyond belief.

They are infantile bored fools who attempt, like tireless energizer bunnies, to displace and transfer their unresolved angers to others who unwittingly tap into their frustrations. They are insecure, easily threatened, feel diminished, and have very low self-esteem. They try to insult others so they can feel better about themselves. It's not rocket science.

When a moron calls attendance at an author's presentation and book signing "stalking" and is doing that in some childish attempt to annoy... I realized that there is nowhere in my life that I would allow such an imbecile to impact my senses. And if it was said with serious intent because she believes it, I feel so sorry for a person with such a sad and limited life. When total strangers have such weird and almost pathological fixations on me and my projects, it's time for distance.

It's one thing to admire a blogger's body of work... or to not admire it and close "the book." It's scary when the interest is almost obsessive in order to put "spins" on the pieces for borderline sociopathic reasons. It's creepy. The participants seem to be never self-involved for productive purposes.

THAT one sentence was my wake-up call. I may be a slow study, but I don't suffer fools and I do not tolerate adults who think it is fun to "do stupid..." unless I am a willing subject on the dais and it is my roast. I actually adore self-effacing humor.

There exists in the demographic about which I am speaking a strong relentless ongoing need to try to insult and ridicule others in the most vile of ways. And the participants are missing a filter, something inside proactive normal people that makes the activity ludicrous and a total waste of time or at best good for the short term. The lemmings and sidekicks are so way beneath my level of intelligence that to associate with them in any way within any paradigm renders me the jackass in the dynamic.

It's an "aha" moment... and the only choice is to cut them loose and not allow their layered sophomoric agendas in any way to impact my visual world. Misery loves company and flotsam and jetsam seeks it's own level. There's an expression: "they deserve each other." Nothing else needs to be said.

One cannot control what others say or do, we can only control the choices we make in deciding how to handle the actions and behavior of others. And if one can easily "get rid of them," it is asinine to consider anything else. The walls are firmly now up so the Shield of Gardol stays securely in place.

In real life we selectively choose with whom we will socialize. Now, with twitter and Facebook and all sorts of other interactive live social media, we must activate other measures to make certain that those with obtuse and suspicious agendas are kept away. They must be designated invisible... because misery does indeed love company and each day I wake-up and find my smile.

Yeah, it's sorta like THAT... it was so an "aha"moment.

And if the severely frustrated still attempt to engage you in interactions so they can feel they have won some imaginary battle that exists only in their own minds... never give them the opportunity. Just remember, they are fighting an old fight that has nothing to do with you. At some point in their lives they felt powerless and out of control. They need to "win" so their hurt feelings from long ago can heal. But it never works, because you are just  surrogate... the total stranger to whom their unresolved angers are being displaced and transferred. They will never feel satisfied because they need to work it all out with the person who initiated the feelings long ago.