Do the Right Thing response

To answer the question ‘what is the right thing?’ requires the consideration of all it’s possible responses. The catch-all answer is that the right thing is different for every person and that one cannot say what the right thing is for someone else. In the case of Mookie, destroying the pizzeria [seen at times as a symbol of his own repression] was freeing himself. That was possibly the right thing for him, but outside himself it was a horrible thing to do and certainly not ‘the right thing’.In the movie, all the characters appear to exist only within the shells of their own stereotypes, but upon closer examination, it is evident that much like in real life, not all is what it first appears to be. Small things make these characters people, not stereotypes. Sal, pizza shop owner and father, explains to his hot tempered son that even though the people in the neighborhood who are different [ex- the Korean grocery owners, Mookie's friends, etc.] anger him, they are not bad people an have never given him any trouble, and have only helped his business to prosper.I assume that when the characters in the movie tell eachother to ‘stay black’ 

Midnight Cowboy

As always, whenever I am about to be shown a new movie I’ve never seen, I am always bitter and pouting, thinking ‘there is no way this will be better than MY favorite movies’. Rarely I am wrong (tough critic), but this time I will happily admit that I was. Midnight Cowboy was utterly incredible in every way possible. The best part, I think is Dustin Hoffman. He is really great all the time but he was especially good at playing Ratso (also he was quite attractive in his younger years, much more so than John Voight who I hear was quite the heartbreaker back in ’69). Ratso is the kind of character who you get stuck to. Despite his seedy exploitations and being a total con man and thief he is likable (lovable, even). This could be due to a number of reasons; he is sickly and subsequently vulnerable, he is a con man so he has the power to trick others into seeing what he wants them to see, he is played by Dustin Hoffman (how could you not like any character played by him?). His character is so fully developed that the way he talks, facial expressions, how he dresses, and where he lives fit the image perfectly. The same goes for Joe Buck, the clothes, the naivete, the accent, the politeness. 

Reading Response #3

Something about this poem stuck with me. After reading some of the other Lunch Poems, this was the one that I could not forget about. As I went about my day, stepping on and off the subway, walking to places, I thought about how O’Hara describes his day in a way that is somewhat similar to how I sometimes self-narrate my days to myself. I liked the numbers he used, the time, the date, it’s all very precise, as if he were keeping track of his day on a chart. I like that. But somewhere in between the meticulous bits of the poem, there are very human moments ["...I will get off the 4:19 in Easthamptonat 7:15 and then go straight to dinnerand I don't know the people who will feed me"]. Those lines make me love this poem, and want more, yet if the piece were longer I don’t know if I’d like it as much. It’s hard to say.After researching, I found out that ‘Lady’ is Billie Holiday. This name, ‘Lady Day’ was given to her by Lester Young, a Jazz musician. 

Reading Response #2

The poem Summertime by Charlie Smith does two things. It delicately yet accurately portrays an older New York during the summer. It talks of the sun at it’s most intense ["like a ripped white shirt"], the sound of a radio that you can hear but are not really listening to ["on the radio dismantles certain soft pleadings"], the presence of the ocean beyond the city. The poem also talks of the aspirations of inhabitants of New York.The parts of the poem that I interpreted as aspirations of New Yorkers are “a young man dreaming of a fortune turns in his sleep fitfully “, “It is vague near the sad declarations lovers make, and the tools of an appropriate diversion fail to persuade“, “derelict students caper and preen, longing for night. The streets shine after rain“, “Those who draw sustenance from the reflection of beauty, pull the shades, like men who have returned from prison, and weep into their hats”. These excerpts indirectly describe a longing for a better life, possibly one that the changing of the seasons will bring.

photos of urbanism

Bedford & N7 107 N7 104 N7  

 These black & white  photos are of Williamsburg from 1910. The colored ones are [obviously] from today. I thought they were interesting because if you’ve ever been to Williamsburg, you’ve more than likely seen these places. These photos show how some things change & others stay the same.  

adventure at Brighton Beach

This past Saturday, my friend and I went on an adventure to Brighton Beach. We drove down towards the direction of Coney Island and stopped on the side of the road right by the Verrazano bridge to draw. Once we got into the beach area, all the streets had aquatic-themed names. That was kind of cute. I was aware beforehand that the area was heavily populated by Ukrainians [part of the reason why I wanted to go there], but once I looked out the window and started reading signs, I realized just how populated it was. Most signs were in Ukrainian alone, and when there was a chain store & the sign was in English, there would be a handmade paper sign underneath with the Ukrainian translation. We parked & walked towards the beach. I caught fragments of conversations as we climbed on the rocks by the water. We collected shells, then returned to the car [it was way too cold]. After a ten minute break we decided to go out and explore some more. We walked down what seemed like a main road looking for a restaurant, but every time we walked to the door, crowds of people inside looked at us outside, as if they knew it was our first time here. That pretty much killed any desire we had to go eat. Luckily we passed a bakery with many cherry-filled pastries [our favorite] in the window. We went inside & probably bought about a million pounds of pastries for only $10. My friend was doing that thing that I hate, the thing where you talk to someone who doesn’t speak English louder, as if that will somehow make them understand. I got to speak Ukrainian for the first time in my life, and somehow the woman at the register understood. Researching the history of Brighton Beach, I discovered that in the late 1800′s, it was decided that Brighton should be like Coney island, and a racetrack was built, along with sideshow curiosities, and hotels. For some time, it was a popular destination. Once the Nazis started doing their thing, a large amount of Russian and Ukrainian Jews fled to Brighton, which was now considerably run-down. Over time, conditions worsened, neighborhoods became overcrowded, buildings fell into disrepair & the youth turned to crime. 

lecture response

Even though we didn’t get to have the full lecture, and the images were small, I recognized many of the photos from when we were studying New York history in school. The images I recognized instantly were the crime scene photos of Weegee [whose name, by the way, I found out "was a phonetic rendering of Ouija, due to his frequent arrival at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities. "] they possess a special power that allows them to make you sick to your stomach the second you realize the pile of clutter you thought you were looking at is actually a crumpled up, broken, dead human body.

Where to go in Jericho

The only good thing to come out of Jericho (besides me, of course) is the Jericho cider mill, where really good pies are made. The school is in a swamp, next to a deserted horse farm, the ruins at the preserve are overgrown and unrecognizable, the people aren’t anything you haven’t seen before. The one other mildly interesting location is the pedestrian bridge, crossing the parkway, and connecting two neighborhoods. It is always very loud up there, like the sound of the inside of your ears multiplies by fifty. 

feeling estranged

The only thing that makes me feel estranged when traveling is seeing locals move around in a way that suggests that they are totally comfortable in that location. Seeing that makes me feel as if I don’t know where I’m going/doing [which for the most part it probably true]. Public transportation in new cities is a funny thing. It intimidates me beyond belief yet somehow I always manage to find my way around, navigating foreign subway maps in other languages [sometimes being incredibly new & seemingly complex can seem like another language]. It’s a really great feeling, to make it to your destination in one piece.

Reading Response #1

            I found the passages by White, Kazin, Abbey, Didion, Schulman, and Jackson to all have several elements that unify them. The feeling that New York, in general is a scummy, rough-around-the-edges, multicultural, lonely, stifling, desperate, desolate, metropolitan, shining, industrial, metallic, living place was present in all the passages. Yet despite these mostly disparaging qualities, it is loved and looked upon as THE CITY to be in.  The authors not native to New York came searching for something out of a movie, TV show, stories from friends. They found lonely apartments, dirty streets, and unfamiliar places in general. Didion, being from the Midwest was constantly aware of the fact that she was not from New York, and never would be. This was not to say that she didn’t love New York, she loved New York “the way that you love the first person that touches you”.  This feeling of being an outsider is also shared by Abbey, living in Hoboken, not one of the boroughs but always wanting to be a part of the city seen in the distance. To Kazin, a native New Yorker, he felt at home not by the presence of the city and its energy, but by the places and people that held specific memories for him. I identified with this passage the most, living only half an hour away from Manhattan, I have my own set of very specific memories in certain places scattered around the city. He feels he has arrived when he sees the old women sitting on their stoops, sees the old church [the last of it’s kind], walking by the house of a girl he loved.

            In a way, I can also relate to Didion’s piece, in it’s loneliness and how the city can make you crazy if you are not in the right state of mind/attitude. Several summers ago I took a summer class and stayed alone in an apartment in Manhattan. I didn’t know anyone, all my friends were away for the summer, so I was on my own. In my apartment, all I would do was sit in front of the air conditioner and talk on the phone to friends. Walking around the city alone, I felt frantic. This was not because I was unfamiliar with the city and felt lost. I felt overwhelmed by possibilities, unexplored corners.  I wanted to share all the things I saw and felt with someone but those people were gone. Despite all my complaining and self-pity, I enjoyed being alone. Depending on myself for my own sanity was a very different experience, as was being totally alone.