Category: Uncategorized

My friend Jenn took this shot of her cat Max (RIP) when they were moving a few years ago.

You know how cats love boxes? You leave a box out and a cat jumps in it? Well, to a cat, drumbags count as boxes.

Yesterday, while I was researching the building on 5th Avenue I came across a October 9, 1851 story that went: An Infant Found Drowned. At an early hour Tuesday morning while Patrolman Houston of the Sixteenth Ward [the Chelsea area] was patrolling his beat, he discovered the dead body of an infant floating upon the surface of the water, off the foot of Twenty-Third street, North River [the Hudson] which he brought to shore and fastened to the dock to await a Coroner’s inquest. The little creature was wrapped in a woolen blanket, and had a large stone tied around its neck, which was evidently done by the inhuman mother.

Hello?? America? Innocent until proven guilty!! Although it probably was the mother OR THE father (the writer was sexist on top of it). Ah, life can be so sad. We’re all living the Wisconsin Death Trip.

Anyway, I hope to see the movie Hancock today. I also started a lovely little book called “The Secret Life of Bees.”

Walking down Fifth Avenue I couldn’t help noticing building after building that just looked kind of sad. You know they were once someone’s fabulous residence. I took a quick snap of one group and focused on 603, (this is between 48th and 49th streets). Then I did a search through the Times. There’s a rundown after the photograph.

Photo lost! I don’t know where it went, alas.

What I found doesn’t really get interesting until March 5, 1925, when there’s an article about a woman named Mary Desti who fights with a thief who was trying to steal shawls from her. They both fall down a flight of stairs, and he takes off and gets away. Tough lady (she was 54).

Then on April 14, 1930, there’s an article about Eleanor Hutton, granddaughter of C. W. Post, who “Elopes With Playwright; Weds Preston Sturges Over Parents’ Protest.” Preston Sturges is Mary Desti’s son! (I didn’t know he started out a playwright.)

Not one year later, on April 13, 1931 there’s an article, “MARY DESTI IS DEAD; DUNCAN BIOGRAPHER; Succumbs at 59 to Illness Which Began Soon After Death of Dancer in Nice. FATAL SHAWL WAS HER GIFT Was Visiting Isadora at Time of Last Auto Ride–Son Is Preston Sturges, Playwright.”

Turns out Mary Desti was good friends with Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer who died when her scarf got tangled in the car she was in and she was strangled to death. From Wikipedia:

“Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti (mother of 1940’s Hollywood writer-director Preston Sturges), and some companions, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais — la gloire!” (“Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!”); however, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan’s body in the morgue (his diaries are in the collection of the Beineke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan’s last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, “Je vais — l’amour” (“I am off to love”), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend’s final utterance, especially since it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation. Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan’s immense handpainted silk scarf, which was a gift from Desti and was large enough to be wrapped around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle’s open-spoked wheels and rear axle. Duncan died at the scene.”

A year after Mary died, Preston and Eleanor were separated. She was his second wife, he would have four before he died.

After that all the articles are real estate articles, and soon the building, like most around it, turns commercial, a shoe store mostly, it seems.

My band, Manhattan Samba, always does the Gay Pride parade every year. I almost didn’t go this year because it was so oppressively hot. Thank God I did because this year there was a torrential downpour. It was so thick and hard and freezing cold at first, and you’d think that would have felt great, but it was shocking, like when you first jump into a cold pool. Plus my eyes were stinging from all the sunblock that was pouring into them. AND, I had to take my glasses off and therefore could only see the people around me. But once I got over the cold and the stinging, and surrendered to being completely drenched, it was positively ecstatic. It is just so completely liberating. Nothing matters, only joy. I wrote about going out in downpour in Waiting for My Cats to Die. Going out to play in the rain and letting yourself get completely soaked is one of life’s best gifts. And it’s free. If you’ve never done it before you must try it.

The next time you have the opportunity, don’t come in out of the rain.

You’re going to want to, and at first you will be cold and unhappy and thinking about your clothes, and dry cleaning bills and how unflattering your hair must look now, but make yourself hang in there and wait for that all to pass.

Here we are, before the rain. I wish I had a picture of us in the rain, but I couldn’t find one. (Picture posted by scottbx on Flickr.)

Everyone probably already knows about this place, but I wanted to mention a website called PostSecret. The first time I went, the first few secrets were about awful things people had done and I just immediately went away. I didn’t need more reminders of how much we can suck at times. But I went back a few months ago and, well, it’s hard to describe. Yes, people admit to mistakes they’ve made or the not-so-great stuff they continue to do, but taken as a whole, it’s more about vulnerability, and being human, and there are all kinds of other secrets, large and small, and most of them, in their way, show endless beauty in the very frailty they reveal. I always feel much better after having read them. I can’t thank the guy who created this site enough (Frank Warren), or the people who send in their secrets.

I must have one I can share. But I have to say, I went into therapy when I was in my twenties, and after experiencing the joy and “the truth shall set you free” feeling of telling secrets, I don’t usually keep them. Although knowing how people are, I’m sure I have plenty I’ve conveniently forgotten.

In other news, I went to a West Coast Swing class yesterday. I tried to learn before about ten years ago and had trouble, and guess what? I’m still having trouble! I walked home thinking, “Is there NOTHING I am naturally good at??” The answer was a big fat NO, but I decided there were worse problems than having to work hard at everything you want to do.

[Videos removed because the link no longer works.]