Observations

Friday morning I was on the subway, heading to the orthopedist when calls started coming in from my very sick client, three in rapid succession. I couldn't answer on the train. and I was worried because he doesn't normally call that early. By the time I was off the train and crossing Washington Square Park, Jeff the volunteer was testing me, "he's in an amulance on the way to the hospital," he wrote "they think he might have had a stroke. They had to call me because he couldn't remember his door code to let them in." The next call is from the Allen hospital ER, so I sit down on a park bench, edging away from the guy with the tiny dog in his lap who says "she's NOT friendly, she's really NOT friendly." "What is he like at baseline?" the PA asks me. "He's not communicating with us, just repeating everything we say." I knoe echolalia is a sign of brain damage, so my heart sinks as I tell him "He's...

I had to be up at 5:30am for today’s action, so I tried to get to sleep early. It turned out to be a crazy night where I got woken up by the weird noises and vibrations of road repaving, then by Connor, who had not shown up for dinner, meowing for food which he barely ate. Then I was woken up by a weird feeling like my heartbeat was doing strange things. And then finally noisy drag racers and garbage trucks. I groggily launched myself out into the early morning, leaving behind a bunch of puzzled cats not used to getting breakfast so early. I found Ben in the crowd in front of the Main Library, and we gathered with our assigned group until it was time to march. To keep from being arrested too soon, we marched on the sidewalk filling both sides of 42nd St. As we marched to 2nd ave, I told Ben that I thought all the remembering I have been doing has to do with turning 50 and the feeling that there is more life behind me than there is ahead now. We talked about his mother and my d...

Finishing up a bunch of unnnecessarily complicated paperwork for one of our funding sources, I look up and a headline catches my eye “NYC Mayor Eric Adams targets transgender student bathroom access." I knew when he was first running that Eric Adams was no friend of the LGBTQ community. I was one of the Grand Marshals of Brooklyn Pride in 2003 and there were several events with Adams, who was then the Brooklyn Borough President. You could tell he did not want to be there in the way he stood stiffly a little too far away from the rest of us and in the way he arrived late and left early. He knew he had to pretend, he needed our queer votes to win Brooklyn and, later, the City but that’s all it was. I tried to tell people but with progressive candidates getting knocked out right and left, too many people took the bait. And now here we are with the corrupt Adams sucking up to Trump to save his own ass, throwing the immigrants and queers who make up the heart of this city to the MA...

Lenny Heading to the subway to work, wearing my Fuck Trump shirt, a young woman coming out of the train says “I like your shirt.” Once you would never have heard that in conservative Bay Ridge but things are changing as younger, more progressive people get priced out of places closer to Manhattan (or The City as people from Deep Brooklyn call it) and wind up in Bay Ridge. As I’m thinking this, an older man across from me is studying my shirt and I stiffen a little because it’s the older folks who usually give me shit, but he too says “I like your shirt,” and when I hear his Brooklyn Jewish accent I relax. So I tell him “there’s a big march on Saturday and give him the details.” He moves over to the bench next to to me so he can hear better and we begin a conversation. When I hear his Brooklyn Jewish accent, I start to relax. We talk about Jimmy Kimmel and how all these behemoth institutions are cowering. “Trump is a bully,” he says. As the conversation continues, I notice a man...

Once in a while, when I have time, I like to take the bus from the beginning of the route in downtown brooklyn all the way to the end on my corner in Bay Ridge. Something about the long ride helps me think. I was in downtown brooklyn today speaking to Ben’s class of budding helping professionals overflowing with questions and eagerness. Afterwards I was going to join an environmental rally, but it was cancelled because we were badly outnumbered by hostile burly guys paid by the construction unions who booed when we raised our signs for a photo op. We could have done it anyway, but the optics would have been bad. With unexpected time on my hands, I decided to walk down to Atlantic Avenue and get the bus. On the way I thought about the changes in the neighborhood. Sid’s hardware, where I used to get lumber for my sculptures cut to size, long gone. The Board of Ed, where we did so many actions, some of which I told Ben's student's about, converted into luxury apartments where ...

I called Mikell a month or so ago because one of my clients had heard about his program which connects formerly incarcerated people with jazz musicians for lessons and my client wanted to know if he could particpate. This was not a one-call referral because the client has some complications and needed my help naviating those in this context. So Mikell and I were talking about the client and he naturally asked about New Alternatives. I explained, but then I did what I often do - invited him to come by on a sunday to see the program in action. Not only does this give people a better sense of our nontraditional agency than I could ever convey, it also gives me a chance to watch how they respond. Some people thank me and never come, and others take a while to schedule a visit, so I was surprised when Mikell showed up the following sunday. I was even more surprised when he stayed for hours on an August sunday, although he must have been sweltering in his sunday suit in our unaircondi...

It’s Saturday, my day off, and I’m back from the Hands Off NY protest at Trump Tower trying to make my way through a never-ending list of household tasks ranging from “give cat chemo” to “pay con ed”. The phone has been ringing periodically throughout the day- my very anxious client has been getting more and more out of control as the days pass without a definite move-in date for his new apartment. “Do I really have this apartment?” he asks me. “Yes,” I tell him, “you’re accepted, it’s paid for, we’re just waiting for one more piece of bureaucracy.” This is followed by a litany of what ifs, reasons he can think of for losing the apartment, some closer to reality than others. I shoot down each one, knowing we’re likely to have the same conversation in a few hours. By late afternoon, he is vibrating with anxiety so much that it is causing him physical pain. We have discussed going to the psych ER to get medicated few times in the last couple of days, but tonight he’s ready to d...

I'm groggily eating breakfast next to the bubbling cat fountain on my table when the phone rings. It's my very anxious jewish trans punk client. He is very close to getting a move in date for his new apartment and the anticipation is making him melt down. On his way out of the shelter today, a guard making small talk asked him if he was coming back. He told her was going to the coffee shop to work on some stuff. But now he is completely convinced that she thought he wasn't coming back and they are going to cancel his bed at the shelter. I explain that even in the unlikely event she thought that, it takes more than a casual remark to a guard to remove yourself from a Safe Haven. His anxiety in overdrive, he can't absorb this, and keeps repeating the story and his fears. I decide to distract him by asking him what he was working on at the coffee shop. Suddenly, like the sun coming out after a storm, the anxiety fell away and he calmly said "Oh! I have an op...

I woke up this morning with a mystery pain in the outer part of my left ankle. I have no idea what you can possibly do to your ankle while in bed, and I hope it will fade as I go about my day but it doesn't, I feel it with every step. But today is Labor Day and the Workers over Billionaires protest, so I take my painful ankle to Trump Tower and find a spot where I can lean against the barricade and take the weight off that ankle. A variety of activists start gathering in two awkward rows down the side walk with a space in the middle for people to walk through. One man has an excellent handmade marionette of Trump, and another woman is wearing a hat in the shape of a naked, headless chicken. A guy comes with a drumset, tries to set up in the bike lane but the police shoo him onto the sidewalk. Karen comes along, very irritated and tells me a cop has threatened to arrest her for sidewalk chalking, apparently not too familiar with free speech. She uses the crowd to shield her fr...