I went to the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in NYC to see Starry Night. It was on loan from MOMA for a special Van Gogh exhibit called Van Gogh’s Cypresses.
To be honest, if you’ve seen much of various Van Gogh works in different museums, it’s not worth the trip. The wait can be hours to get in.
Once you are in the museum, you need to get on a wait list for Van Gogh. You scan a QR code with your phone and wait and wait and wait and wait to be pinged for your arrival into the exhibit at your allotted time.
If you are willing to wait, you could be seeing everything else in the MET while waiting, but if you just intend to see Van Gogh, prepare for the wait.
Many people are crowded in and it’s more enjoyable to see his work, especially Starry Night, at it’s regular home at MOMA where it never is a madhouse.
I was in and out, but I did of course enjoy the rest of the museum.
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There’s this crazy phenomena happening in NYC these days – plastic flowers on buildings.
I think it started during the pandemic, I remember seeing these big plastic flower arrangements popping up, mostly to disguise or prettify, the outdoor wooden structures built for seating when people were unable to eat at indoor restaurants.
After a couple of years, they got nasty – faded and broken and falling apart. But these days, I don’t see any of the craggy ones, it’s all new ones – colorful, big colorful plastic flowers – everywhere!
I think they are ugly. Just my opinion.
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I went to MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC yesterday, only to not see my favorite piece of art – Starry Night. I had forgotten that it was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There’s some sort of Van Gogh exhibit going on up there and they loaned it out. Not a problem as I can easily get to the MET a few blocks uptown.
But I did find it uninteresting to see some of the new displays at MOMA. As you can see here, on display are soap boxes – no, not Warhols, something else – and there blocks of wood, a violin filled with corn, doors with bats. And some other weird things.
I did see so many of my other favorites by Picasso and Monet and so many others.
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I’m back in NYC for a bit of the summer. Had my first Mr. Softee of the summer – actually first of the year and to think about it, I haven’t had any ice cream of any kind since October, which was a Mr. Softee at a block party in Westhampton.
Ran into a Chinese food festival at Washington Square Park – delicious food, long lines. Wall to wall people. Summer is here in NYC!
That cute little guy was in my face in the subway. Luckily I didn’t have my Mr. Softee cone with me, he would have been all over it.
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Years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I asked a neighbor how she worked in New Hampshire and Miami – she and her husband, both lawyers, went back and forth between the two places. She told me, “Tom, all you have to do is answer the phone, the client/customer doesn’t have to know where you are, they are just happy that you answered the phone.” And I’ve always remembered that.
It’s so easy these days with all the digital things we have – iphones, ipads, etc. I’ve worked on planes, trains and at the beach.
Years ago, I think I mentioned, I was a printing broker and I handled school newspapers. I literally worked an hour or two a day. I picked up the newspaper ready for print at the schools and dropped them off at the printer and that was it. In between, I stopped at the office, but by 10 am, I was usually free the rest of the day. And this was before cell phones.
I was unreachable after 10 am. I don’t know how I managed to do this for 20 years, but I ran a very good business like this. Teachers occasionally would leave me voice messages on my home answering machine, but basically, that was it. I was free from 10 am until 8 am the next day. No fuss, no muss.
When cell phones came into play and websites and things like that, I seemed to be more tied to the office than when I was a printing brokers with no way of reaching me.
It’s always amazing to think and wonder how things got done in the past without being tied to our cell things 24/7.
I blogged about this one time – the fact that I would meet up with friends while traveling and we would just meet up at the appointed time and place without being able to text back and forth 100 times to arrange it all. I would tell friends I would be in NY on such and such date and if they happened to be there visiting, too, we would arrange to meet.
But how did we do it? I don’t remember. Did we say on such and such date at such and such time we would meet in front of this place and that was it? We always managed to meet up and we were always there at the appointed date and time.
Sometimes life was much easier and less stressful when we weren’t tied to wifi all day and night.
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I got this crazy note from my newspaper carrier. No joke.
I only bring this up now because I see the FTC is trying to make it easier to cancel subscriptions to everything. Right now you have to jump through hoops to cancel any subscription and that’s what happened here.
I called the paper to cancel my subscription and rather than just canceling it, they questioned me as if I was on the stand. Why did I want to cancel? “Well,” I said, “I never really read it.
You don’t read it? “Well no, like today. I didn’t read it.”
Why didn’t you read it today? “Well, to be honest, it wasn’t delivered today and I didn’t even miss it.”
It wasn’t delivered? “Well, no, that happens a lot . . . “
And then on and on, I go . . . “A lot of time it’s left out front where people pick it up off the street, other times, it just doesn’t come. It’s late, it’s this it’s that,” and I go on and on.
At the end of the conversation, I asked them to please not use my name and don’t say anything to the carrier, but of course they did, and I got the above note.
After the subscription was finally stopped, I got non-stop calls from the paper asking me to re-subscribe.
One day I was standing out front, very early in the morning, it was still dark out, I was waiting for an Uber to pick me up to take me to the airport.
Up comes a car, I think it’s Uber. It comes right up to me on the front lawn – right up on the grass. It’s the delivery girl! She has her usual music blasting and she hands me the newspapers for the whole condo, says, “Good morning,” backs up into the street and is off.
Since then I’ve resubscribed, but only to the digital version, not the printed paper. But I forget to read the digital paper and occasionally use it to read the tv listings only. I once read up to seven newspapers a day (no really), now I read none. I can read the comics online, which I do, I can get all the news online from social media, where all the stories are posted and I hate to not support the local papers. So maybe I’ll go back to print, soon.
By the way, about showing this letter to her boss. I know her boss, he lives next door to one of my best friends. I have his number in my phone and if I really had a complaint, I most likely would text him, not go through the subscription service.
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Still lots of things going on this season. I missed the Lake Worth Chalk Festival last weekend and a few other art events, but managed to get to this past weekend’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll, which is a block party in our village. It’s a yearly thing – 25th year, this year and it brings out the whole village. It’s like a tv show where the full cast shows up for an event and they are all in one scene.
It was also “305 Day,” on Sunday, which is the area code for Miami and on March 5 (3/05).
The hit of the block party is cucumber punch which is delicious on a hot day, which always seems to be the case for this event each year – it’s been a cool winter, but Sunday was totally hot.
The first year I went, 20 years back, I didn’t know the cucumber punch had gin in it, and I really had my fill, I was feeling no pain. Now that I know the ingredients, I take it easy.
They used to serve the gin at a friend’s house where everyone lined up outside his green door and he and his wife and friends would serve it up to thousands. I guess after 23 years they felt enough was enough with the non-stop traffic through their house, so they have it out in someone else’s driveway now. So last year, I went to the driveway for the first time and got some punch and people started talking to me. But the homeowner was not having it, she started yelling, “Tom, you have your punch, now get out of here!” I couldn’t argue with her, because she is 97 years old! She’s a spry 97, but still.
This year while it was outside her house, she wasn’t around. She’s an avid bike rider at her age, so maybe she was out bike riding!
Anyway, it was a great day, I think I saw everyone I know there which is always nice. There’s a lot of food, live music and kibitzing. A perfect day for a small village.
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I lived in the building years ago and loved that area and that building and I had a dream about it just out of the blue. And the next day I googled the address and a listing came up on Zillow. It was for this nice, large penthouse. And even though I lived in that building for 9 years, I didn’t realized this two story penthouse was there!
There are four penthouses and two are very large double-floor units, according to Zillow. I had been in the two smaller ones, which were the size of the rest of the units in the building, which were quite large, too.
Anyway, this unit that was for sale looked huge and was two floors and had a big kitchen, which I loved, even tough I don’t cook, and it had a huge terrace and had unobstructed views of east and south – downtown Miami and Coral Gables and I could keep going on and on. And the neighborhood is very quiet and quite convenient. It had everything going for it.
The price was a fraction of my current home, the monthly HOA/maintenance fees were much lower than my current ones and the city taxes were the same as I am paying now. it was a win, win, win.
So I excitedly went to see the place and for some reason I didn’t like it. For one thing – the photos on Zillow were exaggerated and made the place look huge, but in reality it had low ceilings and cramped walls and spaces. But thinking about it days later, I realized the reason I was not into it was that it had to much of the current owner in it and too much stuff. What I mean is I have seen enough real estate tv shows that say remove all personal things from the place, which was not the case here, and it made a difference, a negative one.
There was one of those stair lift seats which was a turn off for me and I noticed a walker in the corner, which was used by the owners late husband it was overloaded with furniture. There literally were two dining room tables just feet from each other, one in the kitchen and one in the dining room, but they were just about 10 feet apart, which really made the place seem cramped. The rest of the furniture was oversized and made the place look crowded.
There were photos of family all over the place and the dressers in the bedrooms reeked of old lady – full of so many things from a lifetime of living.
The kitchen was full of stuff all of the counters (it would have been best to put them away in the cabinets or draws) and there were two dishwashers which I guess are good for chefs, but seemed useless to me. They were different styles and were mismatched and old. And they were not near each other, they were separated. The dark wood in the low ceiling kitchen didn’t make it seem bright and open even though there was one full wall of windows.
There was a very large storage room that was part of the unit, a huge plus, which would have been best left empty to show all the space it had, but it was so crowded and full that you barely could walk inside to look around.
Things lay around on the big terrace outside, an unrolled up hose and other things just making it look messy. And so much more.
So this dream place ended up turning me off and probably others since on paper it looks like a steal and a palace, but in reality it turns you off once you enter; it’s been on the market for six months or more for that reason.
What could have been snapped up on the first week is just sitting there unsold due to the mess that they are trying to show to buyers. And even though I know all these things I mentioned above, I still can’t see myself living there, even though I know it would be a different animal if it was shown empty. It would show so much better with a couple of pieces of furniture and nothing else in the place and then I think people could picture themselves living there.
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Lots of art shows and boat shows and all sorts of things on President’s Day Weekend. I spent a lot of time out and about with family and friends. First day was hot and humid, second day not as bad and on the second day, I seemed to know every other person that walked by, it was nice.
I parked my car far away from the festival, most of us do, so that when we leave, we aren’t stuck in all that traffic which is on top of the events. When I walked back to my car Saturday, I was dying. I was telling people it reminded me of the final day of Naked and Afraid where people are trying to make it to the extraction point and barely making it. I have a habit of not drinking, or eating, and it catches up with me.
We spent a lot of time at the children’s area, both days, where I still have Baby Shark playing in my head, but one area I liked is where there were easels set up and small kids painted. Some of the work was amazing. One eight year old girl did this fish painting that reminded me of Matisse or something similar. Amazing to see how the children created things. I noticed one interesting thing – the kids draw a lot of trees and water, which is what we are surrounded by and interestingly enough, the trees are palm trees! We are in Miami, so they paint what they see, what they know.
I would have taken pictures of the art, but parents don’t like strange men taking pictures of their kids’ art and especially their kids.
The paintings take forever to dry and they don’t offer to frame them which would be a great little business in itself, so after waiting a long time for the things to dry, they just sadly end up in the trash. All that beautiful work just thrown away. Not a good finish to all that creativity.
We had our usual hot tea and scones at the English tea room which is always part of the event, and listened to fantastic music by local bands. One great band had five or six members and I personally knew three of them, which was cool.
I may pop over again today for day three. I usually go all three days only because it’s hard to get back into the neighborhood once you leave due to all the traffic. So we’re sort of stuck here until the circus leaves town.
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We had a parade yesterday – the King Mango Strut, started in 1982 it’s usually the last Sunday of the year, but this year it was a week later, on Sunday, Jan. 8.
It’s a great small-town event and the best part is that most people know each other. It’s like Cheers, where everybody knows your name.
It was put off a couple of years due to the pandemic, but it was back this past weekend and it was so much fun. There are bands and lots of parodies of things that happened over the year – statewide, local and national. All one big parody.
It started as an offshoot of the Orange Bowl Parade and took on a life of its own. The center of town is shut down and the Strut takes over. If you haven’t seen people all year, they are sure to show up here on this very day.
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