Pursuit of Happiness @sgoodyear-blog - Tumblr Blog

Time was frozen in this place for many years. Now it is flowing again. People are being people. They have been released into the imperfection of normal life.

"Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them."

Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1976

Seville, March 25, 2014

The power to forget is part of the created thing too. It comes back from the unconscious in another form. It's a difference in a way between the job of a reporter, and that of a novelist. It's yours to remember, mine to forget. In a way what one forgets becomes the unrecognised memory of the future.

Graham Greene, 1971, in a piece by Alex Hamilton in the Guardian.

I think that in order to be an artist, you have to move. When you stop moving, then you’re no longer an artist. And if you move from somebody else’s position, you simply cannot know the next step. I think that everyone is on his own line. I think that after you’ve made one step, the next step reveals itself. I believe that you were born on this line.

— Agnes Martin, via @brainpicker

Capturing LOVE in NYC.

The perfect poem for NYC today. Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!] by Frank O'Hara Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20394

Farewell, Miss Cangiano.

One of the great things about living on a block like mine is that you get to know your neighbors, even if only to speak to them in passing. We just lost one of ours. Her name was Lena Cangiano. She was 92 and she had lived on this block all her life. She still lived on the top floor of what was once her aunt's house and is now owned by a nice couple of gentlemen who have fixed it up and live in part and rent out part.

I know all this because a couple of months ago, she let me carry her groceries home from the store for her and walk them up to her door on the third floor, and we had plenty of time to chat. I had tried to get her to let me carry things for her many times before that but she never let me until then. She was a perfectly lovely woman and I will miss her presence among us.

This is the sixth of the older generation we have lost since I moved in 13 years ago, and I think of them all still when I pass the houses where they lived for so long. I think of all the souls who have called this block home. Tonight I will go to Raccuglia Funeral Home and bid this one farewell. RIP, Miss Cangiano.

Artist Kat Eng crouched outside Times Square's H&M for eight hours, sewing on a hand-operated machine.

"It usually starts with the simple enough 'I had no idea they were so big’ -- which is telling, that something so current in contemporary affairs still has no physical reality for most people."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/12/military-drones-street-art/7898/

#drones #street art

"All these cars are unbearable. There is no space left."

Dutch children speaking out about the oppression of traffic in Amsterdam, 1972. They changed things. Will we?

lconaway

sgoodyear-blog

What's shocking is how little has changed, as lconaway points out. Except there are more kids living like this now.

It is right and good to drop everything and read “The Invisible Child,” about a homeless girl in New York City.

She likes being small because “I can slip through things.” In the blur of her city’s crowded streets, she is just another face. What people do not see is a homeless girl whose...

Moss-covered hillside, Harriman State Park. #ineededthat

For many residents, living in a more affluent city hasn’t meant living in a better city. Being the next hipster haven, after all, doesn’t matter much when you’re just trying to survive being Oakland.

housing-first

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases? MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS? Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.) Q: No, I don’t. MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question. Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President— MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.) Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke? MR. SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester. Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry? MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any— Q: Nobody knows? MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester. Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping— MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is. Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what? MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that. Q: Didn’t say that? MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.) Q: Because I love you, Larry, that’s why. (Laughter.) MR. SPEAKES: Oh, I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.) Q: Oh, I retract that. MR. SPEAKES: I hope so. Q: It’s too late.

The parents of a 3-year-old killed while crossing the street speak out.

lconaway

Lately I’ve been reading a history of early attempts to establish colonies in North America. “The Barbarous Years,” by Bernard Bailyn, is long and rich and every drop as bloody as its title suggests. This might sound obscure, but the section on real estate in 17th century New England is just...

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