One Year Ago Today…

/0 Comments/in , , /by

One year ago today, July 15, 2023, was a Saturday. I had strapped on my helmet—and as is typical for me—taken a late afternoon bike ride around Riverside Park and the upper west side in Manhattan. As I got close to home, I rolled up to the edge of the crosswalk where W. 103rd Street crosses the northbound single-lane service road that runs parallel to Riverside Drive, and stopped to see if any cars were coming. I spotted a black car which seemed stopped at the intersection, which is marked on both sides of the road with red metal stop signs, with the same command  painted in white on the pavement. I waited to see if I could safely cross to the sidewalk on the other side. There were no other pedestrians or vehicles nearby, so I gave a wave of my hand to get the driver’s attention in the black car to indicate I was going to pedal across. Unbeknownst to me, the driver had apparently only come to a rolling stop, and may not have seen my wave at him. Suddenly he hit the gas and the car began accelerating through the intersection and into the crosswalk. In fragmented milliseconds, I experienced the sinking thought, “Oh, god, he’s probably gonna to hit me. I’m glad I have my helmet on!” I pedaled harder and almost got through to the other side of the crosswalk, but the car hit me with what I think was its left front bumper. It struck me on the right side of my body and I landed on the pavement on my left side—knee, elbow, forearm, shoulder—getting dragged along the road for several feet. I had almost gotten through the intersection, but the car’s speed had overtaken me before I could get through. I think he was going about 15 mph. He definitely did not observe the stop sign,

I bounced up as quickly as I could manage to get away from the now idling car and squatted on the curb, hauling my damaged bike along behind me. I started inspecting my body for injuries, immediately finding a bloody knee and calf. (I was wearing shorts so my leg was scraped raw.) The driver stopped and got out of the car, presumably to see how injured I was, looking mortified at what he’d done. In a controlled but raised voice I said: “You had a stop sign, but you didn’t stop, you rolled through it and hit the gas! Do you know you did that?!” He sheepishly agreed, though he later claimed to the cops when they arrived that he had stopped at the stop sign. This was false, and in the immediate aftermath of the collision that he caused, he admitted it. Later, I learned from the guy’s driver license, issued by the state of New Jersey, that July 15 was his birthday, and he volunteered to my son that he had been looking for a parking space as he drove around the neighborhood. There is no legal parking on the Riverside Drive service road, so he wasn’t going to find a spot there.

Since I was close to home, I phoned my wife and son who were alarmed of course and said they would come right over.

While waiting for my family to arrive I called 911. When I told the dispatcher that I had been hit by a car which knocked me off my bike and I landed on the pavement hard, they said they would send an ambulance and the police.

I found that a neighbor woman had been walking by with her husband and she told me she saw it all happen. She confirmed to me what I wrote above, including that the driver hadn’t stopped, and added that she had actually seen me under the car for a moment. She gave her name and phone number to my wife and said to call her if we wanted her to speak to the police.

The ambulance arrived first so the EMTs put me on a stretcher in the back of their vehicle and drove me to Mt Sinai Hospital, at the Morningside Hts. location, while my family waited to speak with the police, or so I hoped. Had I known better—and this is the #1 lesson if you’re involved in a collision—I would have asked the EMTs if I could wait to give a statement to the police at the same time as the driver. As it turned out, the driver changed his story and lied to the cops, claiming he had stopped at the stop sign.  The cops wouldn’t take a statement from my family, because they hadn’t been there at the moment of the crash, and by then, the neighbor woman had also left.

About an hour later, by which time my wife had joined me in the ER, the cops came in to to take a statement from me. By then the ER staff had put me through a full body trauma checkup and given me some painkillers. They had also put a stabilizing collar around my neck. I was laying flat on my back, a bit woozy and very uncomfortable laying there with the stiff collar which made it difficult for me to talk. They asked me what happened and I told them the driver hadn’t stopped. They told me he claimed to them that he had stopped, and it was my word against his. Through the haze I became agitated and as forcefully as I could, insisted that what he had told them was not truthful, that he hadn’t stopped, and he’d admitted that to me. I remembered the neighbor woman and they said she wasn’t there when they arrived on the scene. This ended with the cops telling me that if I wanted to, I could go to the 24th Precinct Station House to add to my statement.

The doctors decided I could go home and I was discharged without being admitted to the hospital.

I rested a lot the next few days and called a family friend who is also a lawyer. He agreed to represent me in a claim against the driver and his insurer. When I felt well enough I went to the 24th Precinct with a copy of the incident report and explained that the driver’s claim that he had stopped was false. My contention was duly noted. I added that a witness had also seen the crash, but the police declined when I asked if they would take a statement from her. Their attitude seemed to be a driver and a cyclist are on equal terms, and the latter deserves no special deference from the former, even though they’re operating a machine that weighs many multiples more than the cyclist.

It took well over a month for the deep purple bruises, like the one on my arm shown above, to fade, and my knee was sore for months. I also had an internal problem a month to the day after the incident—I developed a kidney stone—which I thought might have been hastened or precipitated by the car crashing into me as it did, and from the resulting stress on my system. Suffice it to say, I had some health issues in the second half of 2023!

A few weeks after the crash I took my mangled bike—a sturdy Trek I had bought more than forty years ago, just as the fabled Wisconsin bike maker began selling bikes outside their home state—in for service. As is recommended after bike crashes, I also bought a new Bontrager helmet, which has a special “wave cell technology,” that is said to direct impact away from the head. and soon began riding again, albeit very carefully, with a skeptical eye cocked toward all drivers at stop signs and traffic lights. The wheels of compensation grind slowly, and a year later, we haven’t quite completed the process with GEICO. I’ll be relieved when it’s all settled.

Given the driver’s blatant disregard of the stop sign, and then his false denial of that to the NYPD,  I had hoped to see the incident report revised to reflect his violation, but unfortunately that’s not how things turned out. Even without that, I’m hopeful that the claim against his insurer will be apt to raise his cost for continuing coverage, a consequence he should have to endure for his reckless driving that injured me, and could have hurt me much worse than it did. I also hope it will deter him from further reckless driving.

I’ve been riding my bike in New York City since I came here from Cleveland in 1986, and I’m happy I can say I’ve only been in the one collision over all these years. It could’ve been a lot worse, and I hope it’s the only one I’ll ever have.

Read more

A Citizens’ Initiative in New York City—Ending All Non-Essential Helicopter Flights in the Five Boroughs

/0 Comments/in /by

Chopper hearing, April 16 2024. (I’m seated second from the left.)

If you live in New York City, you’ve probably noticed the growing plethora of noisy helicopters flying above our five boroughs, often taking wealthy people to area airports and to second homes in the Hamptons and Upstate. I engaged in some local civic activism on April 16, going to a rally and testifying at a City Council hearing, advocating the end of all non-essential helicopter flights.

I’m glad Spectrum News NY1 covered the rally and hearing. I’m pictured here in a screenshot from their coverage, with New Yorkers like me who testified about the damaging impact of non-essential helicopter 🚁 flights over NYC.

I was there with members of a group called @StoptheChopNYNJ. After the rally at City Hall, we attended and testified at a hearing chaired by City Council Leader Amanda Farias and other City Council members who presented details of six bills and resolutions they’re sponsoring to stop the choppers. Representatives of the aviation industry were there, as well as staffers for the Adams administration.

While the industry reps (no surprise) shilled for companies like Blade (whose celebrity pitchman is the actor Liev Schreiber, to his shame), Adams’ people came ill-prepared with no ready administration response to the proposed laws, wrongly claimed there’s no good way to measure chopper noise, touted an absurdly high figure for the supposed economic benefit to the city from the flights, and overlooked real damage to quality of life and the environment from the thousands of non-essential tourist and commuter flights that are taking place every year. Shockingly, though it’s been many years since lead was removed from automotive gasoline, many of the choppers are still powered by leaded aviation fuel. The hearing also discussed the possibility of electric-powered helicopters, which it is hoped would be far less noisy, the advent of such an alternative is still at least a couple years in the future, and meanwhile the noisy choppers could continue apace, if nothing is done by government officials.

If your tired of your peace of mind and quality of life being disturbed by these incessant flights, I urge you to let your NYC City Council member know how you feel, and urge them to vote affirmatively on the six proposed bills and resolutions shown here. You may also consider volunteering with Stop the Chop NY/NJ. Other people you can contact to voice your opinion include FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg; Rep Jerry Nadler; NY Governor Hochul; NJ Governor Phil Murphy; NYC Mayor Adams. Shoutout for their good work to City Council Majority Leader Amanda Farias, plus City Council Members Lincoln Restler, and Gale Brewer. #noisepollution

Read more

“Sitting in a Grove Reading Shelley” by M. G. Turner

/0 Comments/in , , /by

I sat this afternoon in a grove reading Shelley. The sky was bright and the heat of the early spring a portent of things to come. The pages turned, the poetry passed, the phrases came to me with ease. I saw ancient lands that dissolved and rearranged as quickly as clouds. I saw fleeting glimpses of storied citadels and fiery furnaces. I saw riders on horseback pushing themselves toward an infinity of grandeur. My breath halted; I had finished the book.

Sighing to myself, it was lucky I had brought something else to read on this happy warm day. Another work sat beside me on a bench, of related and equal importance.

This new thing was the novel of his wife Mary, an immense book in some respects, a little book in others. I thought of them together, I thought of the dinner party with Lord Byron in Geneva when they’d each agreed to write a frightening tale—in her case, a classic to be. Had it come to her easily? Was it in some respects a presentiment of her approaching grief, Percy’s death at the age of twenty-nine, in a dreadful sailing accident? How do we remake the ones we’ve lost? Can they only be demonic when we’ve cobbled them back together by fragments, and by memories? The sky was turning a brighter shade of blue as I thought of Percy and Mary and their antique love; then I thought of my own lost loves, some that had drifted away, others that had collapsed in on themselves like ailing stars. Being alone was now a balm and not a travesty—at least not when Riverside Park was green and the sun shone down on me so freely.

Oh grief, which makes its home in human hearts, art thou not a monstrosity? Cursed be Prometheus who stole fire from the gods and raised us from our lowly origins. Cursed be the phantoms and phantasms that haunt our quiet moments, when all we would like to have is the peace which I, for a brief moment, experienced in that golden grove at the start of the spring, as I began to stitch together the many severed pieces of myself.

Soon enough I left the grove and went home, both Shelleys tucked snuggly under my arm. Reunited at last.

“The Funeral of Shelley,” Louis Edouard Fournier, 1889. Edward John Trelawny, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, l-r. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Read more

“On Browsing in Bookstores, a Pastime” by M. G. Turner

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

There is something uniquely magical about walking inside a bookstore, preparing to browse: you cross the threshold and suddenly you have been transported, quite literally, to a world of books. As the atmosphere settles, you notice there is a quiet here that reigns supreme, a quiet comparable perhaps only to that of a library; a pregnant hush fills the air and instills a state of calm that you would be unlikely to find elsewhere. Especially in New York City where the aggressive frenzy of life never ceases, the bookstore—and its ill-treated cousin, the library—can be an oasis, a place of refuge, a second home that can be utilized when other options of play or fun or drink have been depleted or appear uninviting.

When times are tough the world of books calls to us, and if we’re lucky we heed that call—the call of what we must do and not what we ought to. There is no greater pleasure than going to a bookstore with an objective in mind, say to purchase some work or other by Balzac and leaving inexplicably with a Faulkner. Bookstores divert our expectations. The shelves in many of New York’s finest are crammed high to the ceiling with both old and new tomes that at first speak to us in voices we may only hear subliminally. Thus visuals are our calling card, our way in. Often it is the seductive glint of a spine or the flicker of a cover that catches our eye, and as we pull the book off the shelf, and stare at it, a love affair begins. The eye tries to comprehend what the soul sees clearer. We know there is some future here for us, our paths will diverge together, we will save that spark and let it grow—that is, if we are lucky and decide not to put whatever work we have found back on the shelf where it will be consigned to wait a while longer for the coming of its true owner.

But if we hold in our hands the book we are meant to read, then we are giving ourselves over to something unconscious and in some ways very powerful. What we are giving ourselves over to is Fate. For reading books, and at the outset, buying books, is very much like making friends. The object itself transcends the lucid boundaries of paper and ink; it is so much more, and because of that the weight of a decision rests heavily on our shoulders. Do you buy another Nabokov? No, you’ve already read four of him. Another Tolstoy? You haven’t even finished Anna Karenina. A new edition of Ulysses? You have two already, dog-eared and disgruntled and waiting to be finished. You walk on aimlessly, through the aisles, dodging people taking on a similar pursuit: beautiful girls in faded jean jackets and sunglasses on their foreheads, old men stooping over dangerously to get a look at some old and beaten Melville, and the others like yourself trying to work themselves up into a state of rapt determination, studying the walls, trying to discern the titles of famous works, squinting as if at the hieroglyphics of Luxor.

The weight of a book in hand is equivalent to the weight of gold. You measure it, test it, consider whether you can withstand the flurry of its pages, the emotional impact of its premise. Stories are contained within stories, characters within characters, subtlety gives way to novelty, novelty to extremity, enjoyment to a cessation of pain. For that is what all the browsers, including yourself are looking for: a place to stop and sit awhile, to direct thought consciously toward a more righteous purpose, feeding the imagination a meal it cannot make on its own.

The shelves are calling to you. You know not to make a mistake. Occasionally you do make one and you are back at the register the next day making the same hurried, nervous claim: “I bought this for my friend but it turns out he already had it.” Several Hemingways have found their way back to this bardo. Tolstoy’s What is Art? was too polemical for your taste. A copy of the Master and Margherita whose translation you utterly hated was happily parted with. Silently, the cashier, gives you store credit and with this slip, handed over with a subdued frown—half-judgement, half-dismay—you are now able to go back to the walls, back to the drawing board as it were, to feast your eyes over the multitude of possibilities, the bold, broad scope of world literature staring you so determinedly in the face.

And finally you find what you’re looking for. And that pain does cease. Until of course you finish the book at a remarkable clip and opt to do it all again. The energy to read recycles, reincarnates, reinvigorates, and you hope never to give up the journey; even after you have lined up your finished books like the proud trophies they are, there is always a little more room, another book case to fill, another story to sink into. Finished Mann’s Buddenbrooks, well there’s always The Magic Mountain or Doctor Faustus. You’ve read those two Flauberts but there’s more Proust to dig into, a seemingly endless supply of it. Turgenev always wins over the other, more popular Russians, but there is not much of him along the walls, save the obvious in Fathers and Sons. You’d read more Dostoyevsky if you didn’t hate his guts and think he was an anti-semite and in many ways a difficult and stifling writer. You need to read more women, it’s a fault of the whole system, the whole structure, but for your part you do love Woolf, Chopin, Cather, Stein; Wharton is an undeniable great but her meanness never ceases and it’s not clear she even likes her characters.

But no matter who you choose—or rather who chooses you—the point is never to give up on books or decline what they have to offer. The point is to never cease searching for some little taste of paradise that we had previously lacked, to find the good in the bad, the large in the small, the mediocre in the great. You can see in three dimension and you can read in four. To live other lives is to live your own more fully. You can’t believe it sometimes, the depth, the brevity, the longevity, the incalculable gifts given to us by people who worked sitting down. It is connection that we are looking for when we pace like ghosts up the hallways of some magnificent temple of literature, filled to bursting with every voice; male, female, Black, white, and all varieties of humanity. Nothing can touch us, and by the same token, everything can. For we want it to. We will it to. For if Fate has deemed it, we go home happy—and if we’re lucky, stay that way.

M. G. Turner

Read more

Sold—Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater
by Gail Merrifield Papp

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Delighted to announce that our literary agency Philip Turner Book Productions has sold PUBLIC/PRIVATE: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater by Gail Merrifield Papp to Applause Theater and Cinema Books. News of the deal appeared first in Publishers Weekly’s Deals column today.

The author has worked in the theater world for most of her career, starting at the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, and then at producer Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater from 1965-1991. As Director of New Plays and Musicals Development, she was responsible for some of the Public’s best-remembered productions. Gail Merrifield and Joe Papp married in 1976 and were together until his death in 1991. She lives in New York City.

To offer readers of this blog a sense of the book, below is a portion of the pitch letter I sent to publishers.

Gail Merrifield Papp has written an engrossing and highly entertaining book that blends an affecting memoir of her life alongside the founder of the Public Theater Joe Papp with a behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential theater’s dazzling history. She opens with the Public Theater’s beginnings more than a half-century ago in a narrative that spans the decades-long association the couple enjoyed until Joe’s death in 1991. During that span, the Public mounted hundreds of productions, from Shakespeare in the Park to such plays as for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Sticks and Bones, to the musicals Hair and A Chorus Line—with many actors whose careers were launched at the Public, including James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Gloria Foster, George C. Scott, Diane Venora, Morgan Freeman, and dozens of others.*

In a witty conversational style, the author paints a comprehensive portrait of the creative process of one of America’s most acclaimed theater artists, highlighting the innovative ways the Public operated, driven by Joe’s ambition to create a year-round producing home focused on original plays and musicals from new voices, while employing non-traditional casting which made it a home for scores of the most creative people in American pop culture. In  Public/Private she traces the founding of the Shakespeare Festival, when its role was for a time limited to small venues around New York City, later moving into Central Park where its Shakespeare renditions became an indelible feature of summer in the city, and the Public’s evolution toward cultural renown and national significance, a beacon for social change.

New aspects of Joe Papp’s many battles with the establishment are also highlighted, from tilts with Robert Moses to theater critics to conservative poohbahs in the US Congress. The scourge of AIDs is also documented, in the form of people close to Joe and Gail, Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, and in the toll it exacted on Joe’s son, Tony.

Her touching remembrances lend the narrative a keen, emotional edge, which will captivate readers and bring a human side to the legendary figure whose theater continues to thrive today, operating at both the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in the theaters on Astor Place and at Joe’s Pub, a live music venue dedicated in his honor.

At a time when America remains divided over issues of race, identity, and sexual orientation, Public/Private reminds us that theater is a powerful force for social change and community-building, a place for people to gather.

*A marvel of the book will be its impressive appendices of more than thirty pages appearing under the headings: Featured Actors, Choreographers, Composers, Directors, and Playwrights.

To read more about Gail Merrifield Papp and what you can expect to discover in her upcoming book, visit GailPapp.com.

 

 

 

 

Read more

Remembering Publishing Pal Peter Warner, RIP

/0 Comments/in , /by

I am happy I can revisit a blog post I wrote and published almost nine years ago, when publishing friend Peter Warner was launching a book of his own, The Mole—The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates: A Novel. It was a clever turn on meta spy fiction, and I loved it reading it back then. I share this today, to honor Peter, who died last September, age 79, and for whom there will be a memorial tomorrow which I’m going to attend. Peter was for years the chief in NYC for Thames & Hudson, the publisher of illustrated books, where he was a participant in dozens and dozens of international co-publishing arrangements. The occasion for my post was the novel’s launch party, hosted by Will Balliet, a longtime editorial colleague of mine when we were both at Carroll & Graf, who succeeded Peter at T & H.

Peter and I were members of a monthly lunch club, Book Table, where I always enjoyed conversing with him. His literary skills were prodigious, and extended to this engrossing thriller, a historical narrative that spans the Suez Crisis, the downing of an American U-2 plane, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Watergate, all told in a faux memoir by Canadian protagonist Winston Bates. I loved it, and so did readers like author Stacy Schiff. She blurbed it thus: “Who better to trust for a through-the-looking-glass tour of Cold War Washington than a short, self-doubting Canadian with a photographic memory? A rich, buoyant ruse of a novel.” I am glad I can share word of it again with friends here.

Read more

New York City Winters, Then & Now—Climate Change Reflections

/0 Comments/in , , /by

I moved to New York City from Cleveland in early March of 1985, almost 37 years ago. In many of the winters I’ve experienced since the move east, the Hudson River would become icy, as attested to by these pictures I took in January 2015.

Sometimes the ice would be close to shore, as seen here, with the tidal nature of the Hudson ensuring the river didn’t freeze hard. But in the ’90s, I remember extended runs when temperatures didn’t rise above freezing for days or weeks, and temps in the twenties, teens, and single digits were common. Then the ice would become more solid and fill in across the middle of the river. With the tidal shifting less impactful, the ice could stretching toward New Jersey. Someone foolhardy might’ve thought they could walk across, but that would have foolish indeed.

Despite the blustery cold, it was thrilling to watch and listen as the floes heaved, ground, and pitched against one another. I used to feel like I was in my own private Shackleton expedition. If you’ve read Alfred Lansing’s stirring narrative about that sojourn to the South Pole, the ships became trapped amid colossal bergs that stoved in their sides and collapsed their masts. The sailors were driven to near madness by the grinding and gnashing of the ice.

The past several winters? Not so much, a function of planetary warming, I believe. Our winters are definitely becoming less cold. More evidence of this? Flocks of geese used to visit the Hudson shores seasonally, and leave for months at a time, flying further south for warmer climes. Now they’re resident year-round.

 

Read more

“Easy Living,” an Anarchic Depression-Era Fantasy

/0 Comments/in /by

I didn’t move to New York City until 1985, after the Automats were gone, and I wish I could’ve seen them. Here’s a hilarious movie clip with an Automat scene from “Easy Living” with Jean Arthur and Ray Milland (1937), a kind of Depression-era anarchic fantasy where all the little food doors swing open to hungry New Yorkers.

Assuming the above clip made you laugh, I recommend the whole film, linked to here in a good print via youtube.

Read more