The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most beautiful structures in New York City. Every time I go there I am amazed at the amount of ancient works of art and objects this museum holds. Besides the permanent exhibits, the museum often houses special exhibits for a brief period of time. On Friday I went to see the traveling exhibit called, “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy”.

            This exhibit displays works that were created in celebration of marriage. The objects and paintings in the exhibit provide insight into courtship, marriage, and the family during the Renaissance. This gives us a glimpse into the private lives of the people of that time. It is interesting to see Renaissance art that focuses on common life, rather than the usual religious icons or famous people.

            There were many unusual pieces of jewelry displayed as well. The Jewish Betrothal Ring from Venice in the 17^th century is quite unique. It was used in synagogues during wedding ceremonies. The groom would place it on the bride’s finger, but she would not wear it after the wedding. This was a prized possession that was kept in one’s home, not worn in the street. It is clear that this is something that would become a family heirloom, based upon its unusually large size and apparent weight. The gable roof is supposed to be symbolic of the Temple in Jerusalem and it opens up to reveal the words, “good luck”. This ring really gives insight into the importance of marriage in those times. A groom’s family invested the money to purchase such an expensive ring for the bride, so they surely thought this relationship would be a lasting one.

             The section of the exhibit focusing on children explained that during the Renaissance, the main reason people got married was to continue their lineage. Babies would often die during childbirth, so a successful birth caused much joy. There were many interesting portraits of children on display. One painting that stood out is called “Portrait of a Father With Two Children”, by Giovanni Battista Morani. This work is from the mid 16^th century, a time when family portraits were becoming more common. In the picture, a father is sitting on a chair and putting his arms around his two young children. Both the children are wearing long dresses, one yellow, and one red. In the caption, it says that the younger may be a boy, because at the time all small children, boys or girls, wore dresses. This portrait is gripping because it is clear that this father is extremely attentive to his children. It also left me wondering as to the absence of the mother. The image depicted the love and care a father has for his children. This is a universal concept, and it is still quite relevant today.

            The exhibit portrays the fact that despite all the technological, scientific, and cultural advances that have taken place, human emotions remain the same. Marriage, love, children, and family are still important in our lives today, and have not changed too much. 

www.motherjones.com

Since I was ten years old I have been reading biographies of famous people. I am not usually so fond of memoirs about ordinary people. Sam Freedman wrote a memoir, Who She Was: My Search For My Mother’s Life. Even though a son wrote this book about his mother, it is not written like a standard memoir, he writes it from a distance, rather than including himself in every aspect of the book.

            Sam Freedman decided to write about his mother many years after her death. He feels that time gave him a certain distance that enabled him to write more clearly about her. He was disinterested in her while she was alive because of her alcoholism. As an adult he wanted to explore her young life to discover who she really was.

            Freedman mentioned in his class visit that children often forget that their parents had lives before they had a family. Freedman uncovered his mother’s life during his research for his book, and wrote mostly about her years growing up. His book focuses on his mother’s romantic relationships as a young woman. Personally, I do not feel the need to learn about my parents’ past romantic relationships. I do not see why this is something important for a child to find out about his parents. I think it is even disrespectful, and people should think about who their parents became, not about the things they may have done in their past.

            Memoirs are often idealized versions of a person’s life. Freedman believes that, “Truth is subjective, but you can’t make things up about people. Treat them with the same rigor and high standards as you would when someone is famous.” This is an interesting approach to writing a memoir. However, I do not feel that it is respectful to the deceased person to uncover the dark secrets of his or her life.

            Freedman wrote this book to relieve his guilt and to try to understand his mother better. He says that he wrote about his mother’s sexuality because it was an important part of her life. She was angry that her cancer made her sexually unattractive. According to her son, “This was her life force, what she really cared about in life.” Freedman believed that by uncovering his mother’s sexual life he could understand a lot about her desires, personality, and interests.

            Freedman also told our class that he looked at photographs to gain an understanding of his mother’s youth. I have seen pictures of my own grandparents when they were younger, and they reveal a lot about them.

            Ultimately, by examining his mother’s life, Freedman uses it as a lesson in raising his own children. His final conclusion is that children should not be denied their deepest desires, or their lives will be unfulfilled. 

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              On a bitter cold evening my class met at BAM in Downtown Brooklyn to watch the final show of the semester, a dance performance called “Urban Bush Women”.  When I entered the building I felt a sense of awe at the beauty of the structure. BAM is a glimpse into the old Brooklyn, a place rich with culture.

            Dance is a completely different art form than writing, singing, acting or photography. It uses the human body to convey a theme through movement. Dancing allows people who do not speak the same language to communicate. I find the ability to dance especially fascinating because I am totally inept when it comes to dancing.

            The show opens with the dancers standing on the stage and repeating the names of their ancestors, not with dancing or music like I was expecting. The performers consisted of two groups, one African American women, and the other, Senegalese men.  Once the dancing began it was very impressive. I especially loved the dance where the men twirl the red scarves. This had a dramatic effect that made it seem as though they were waving fire around their heads.

            Throughout the show, the settings of the dances alternate from African American women in New York to African men in Senegal. Dance is not a narrative so the theme, movements, and technique are important. This performance represented the theme of slavery vs. freedom. The women are in the Diaspora and the African men are in their homeland.

            In the last dance, the men and the women performed together. This is interesting because these people do not speak the same language or share the same culture. However, the directors are able to organize the two groups and bring them together through dance. It was very funny when the Senegalese man in the yellow pants and one of the women danced together. The man tried to make advances toward her, and the woman rejected these moves. In the end, she gave him a slap on his behind. This was comical and I was never aware that dance sometimes contains humor.

            I really enjoyed this show. I have become more culturally exposed through the many forms of art I have seen. Dance is unique in that it everything is expressed through movement and music, rather than spoken language. 

     Today, my grandmother, Jeannie lives in a condo in Florida. Most of her neighbors are originally from the New York area. Among her friends, there are many who also grew up on the Lower East Side and the Bronx.

       Jeannie was born on Feb. 21, 1933 on the Lower East Side. Her parents were both immigrants. Her mother, Tillie , came from Lizhensk, a village in Eastern Europe, and her father Joseph came from Russian controlled Poland. Jeannie spoke Yiddish at home, and only learned English once she went to public school. She also grew up with her maternal grandparents living in their apartment.  They were very religious people; Baba Raizl wore a wig, and Zeida Shmeil had a long beard. However, her grandmother did not think religion was as important for the younger generation; she felt there should not be that burden upon Jeannie and her two younger sisters, Sally and Sharon.

            Jeannie was the redheaded daughter of very traditional parents. Tillie went to work to make feather hats for a while, when money was tight. Neither Joseph nor Tillie had gone to high school. They were both forced to work to earn money for their families as soon as they finished eighth grade. Joseph worked as a furrier.

            After moving to the Bronx at thirteen years old, Jeannie attended Theodore Roosevelt High School on Fordham Road. “Both of my parents made a big fuss over the fact that I was going to be a high school girl.” This school was 75% Jewish, and the Bronx at this time had about 260 synagogues. Jeannie loved to stop at Howard Johnson’s after school to buy ice cream with her friends Anna Berger and Anne Millchin. This was one of the exciting things about high school, to gain some sense of independence from her very protective parents and grandparents. However, Jeannie knew what her parents expected from her, and she followed their rules.

            High school was not about fooling around. Miss Groman, as high school teachers referred to Jeannie, took a job-training curriculum. This program included courses such as bookkeeping, accounting, typing, and stenography. Tillie and Joseph fully expected this young girl to get a job straight out of high school.

            At her high school graduation, the song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Rodgers and Hammerstein caused tears to well up in her father’s eyes. She graduated in 1951 at the young age of 17, and moved on to look for employment opportunities.

            The selection of which jobs Jeannie applied for was not her decision. Her father found ads in the newspapers and sent in resumes for her. He even went with her on the subway from the Bronx to Manhattan for job interviews. Joseph went up in the elevators of the prospective companies that Jeannie was interviewing for. He would sit outside in the hallway when she was talking to the interviewers. Eventually, he found her a job as an assistant bookkeeper in the garment center. Jeannie did not mind any of this, because she grew up with her father always being very protective of her. “I was an immature, naïve, and sheltered little girl.” 

            This company manufactured dresses for women. Jeannie, “a babyish girl” at the time, was asked to model one of the dresses. The bosses loved how she looked in it, so they began asking her to try on dresses in front of the buyers that would come to the showroom. She said,  “I was very sheltered, so this was very exciting to me.” She even got to keep the dresses she tried on. “I had quite a wardrobe,” she said Everyone in her apartment building in the Bronx would peek out of their windows in the mornings and whisper to each other about how nicely Jeannie
“goes dressed” to work. She would stop off at the Horn and Hardart’s Automat on her way to work and pick up a cheese danish and a coffee for just five cents.

            One night, her friend, Harriet Jacobs, called her and said that she met a nice guy in City Downtown, where she went to school. Harriet wanted Jeannie to come along on a double date with her. The boy Harriet knew had a friend named Herbie that Jeannie was set up with. They were also supposed to go out with another couple. At the last minute the girl got sick. Harriet called Jeannie and asked if she knew anyone who was free that evening to join Harold on a date. Jeannie called her friend Barbara Drogan and asked if she wanted to go out that night. Barbara said, “Sure I’ll come.”

            Right away, Jeannie noticed that Harold’s eyes were bright blue and she thought he was cute. The three couples rode together on the subway from the Bronx to Manhattan to see an off Broadway show. When they arrived at the theater they purchased tickets and made their way to their seats. First, Harriet and her date went in, and then Jeannie, but instead of Herbie her date following, Harold “accidently” ended up sitting next to her.

            Later that week, Harold called Jeannie to ask her if she would like to ride the subway with him to work, because they worked close to each other. Although Jeannie thought this was an unusual request, she agreed. They did this for a few days, and then they started meeting up for lunch, as well. Jeannie said, “I was just a kid, I didn’t know from liking and not liking.” She did not analyze her feelings, she just went along.

            A few months later the Korean War broke out. One by one, all of Jeannie’s friends were getting engaged to their boyfriends before they would leave for Korea. Harold wanted to get engaged to Jeannie as well, even though she was only 19 and he was 21. Jeannie’s father told her, “Wait till he comes back from the army and then get engaged, you’re too young.” Baba Raizl, on the other hand said, “ The best ones come along first.” Harold proposed to Jeannie in July after dating her for four months.

            After the wedding, Jeannie and Harold lived with his parents. A few months later, he was sent off to an army base in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. While he was there, Jeannie moved back into her parents’ apartment. She saw that all her friends were joining their husbands at army bases, and she wanted to be an army wife as well. However, she said,  “My parents thought Oklahoma was the wild west with cowboys and Indians. They thought there was shooting and horses there, like they saw on television.” Tillie was worried about sending her daughter across the country because ever since she came to America she had not left New York.

            Despite her parents’ concerns, Jeannie joined her husband at the army base. “I was kind of adventurous,” she said. Joseph worried about sending his daughter alone on a train, so he accompanied her to the station. Before Jeannie boarded the train, he asked a woman to keep an eye on her. For the entire three-day and two-night journey, Jeannie sat next to that woman.

            Jeannie lived in a very small house on the army base. During her stay, she met people that spoke differently than anyone she knew on the Lower East Side or the Bronx. One day, Jeannie was talking to another army wife who she became friendly with over the few months of living on the base. After a few minutes of conversing, the woman turned to Jeannie and asked, “Do you mind to show me your horns?” This woman believed that Jewish people have horns, and she wanted to know what they looked like. This really made an impression on Jeannie because she never realized that Jews would seem so strange to other people.

            Tillie sent Jeannie a jar of gefilte fish and a box of matzo so she would be able to eat this traditionally Jewish food even on an army base in Oklahoma. Jeannie loved being away from home. She gained some independence and learnt how to cook, do laundry, and wash dishes. All of these tasks had been taken care of by her mother and grandmother her whole life. This was the first time she had to make supper and take care of a home on her own. She also got to see a different America, a place away from New York City. She even took a day trip to Texas with her husband and loved it.

            After Harold’s basic training was over, he was sent to Korea. Before he left for Asia, he flew back to New York with a pregnant Jeannie on a 10-hour flight. Jeannie was excited about this because she never flew before. Her mother was worried and asked, “How will a plane stay up in the air so long?” Jeannie says about her mother,  “She did not know of such things.” When her husband was fighting in Korea, Jeannie lived with her parents, grandmother, and her two sisters. She gave birth to Steven, who did not see his father until he was a year old. Jeannie took care of her baby in the same environment she grew up in, and he had three mothers and two aunts taking care of him.

            After Harold came home, they rented an apartment around the corner from Jeannie’s parents. They lived there for a few years. In 1957, most of the young married couples began to move away from the Bronx. They no longer wanted to remain in the crowded apartment buildings where they had grown up. Harold and Jeannie moved to Bayside, Queens with Karen, their one-year-old daughter, and Steven, who was now four years old. Even though Tillie was worried about her daughter moving away, Jeannie wanted to move. She wanted to get out of the Bronx and move to a quieter neighborhood, to live in a street level, garden apartment, where she would not have to lug baby strollers up many steps.

            Jeannie’s experience in Oklahoma really shaped who she is today. She constantly thinks about this trip that she made, and the way she learned about the people living outside of New York.  This was the first real American experience she had in her life.

In America today everyone expects things to be instant. People want to get fast money without saving, they want to lose weight immediately without diets, and they want technology to work faster and faster. Society has no patience to wait for things to happen, and they want instant gratification. The collage is designed to have a congested feeling. We expect so many things to happen instantly, that our lives have become much more complicated. Even though everything is supposed to be easier and simpler, the instant culture causes people to try to do too much at once.         

I took lines from various advertisements in Time Magazine and Good Housekeeping, which are both widely read across America. In almost every ad, there was some reference to things happening at a faster speed. Some said, “Lose weight fast!” Others said,“Get the speed you need!” I pasted them in the word, “instant”, to try to get the message across that the culture today expects everything to happen “in an instant”. When so many things are competing for the same time slot, it becomes more stressful and chaotic, even though instant is said to make one’s life simpler and easier. 

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Initially, I thought that street photography was no big deal, just find some interesting characters and shoot their pictures. Nothing in life is that simple. Often, even the most basic shots take thought and effort to capture from the right angle, distance, and lighting.

            The theme for the photography project assigned to my class is cultural encounters. The isolated Chasidic Village of New Square is three miles away from my house. My theme is a subculture of Chassidism in America. New Square is .4 square miles with close to 5,000 residents. There is an average of 5.8 people per family and the median age is 14 years old.

Chasidim have many kids, so I planned to shoot large families. I wanted to capture mothers with five or six young children all in matching outfits. I hoped to see people rushing about. In spite of these expectations, when I drove through New Square on Sunday morning it was quiet. There were only hints of the large families-five tricycles on the lawn, three swings hanging from a porch.

I decided to just take pictures in the village and forget about the big family theme.  First I headed over to the main synagogue. I tried to capture the vastness of the structure, but it was hard to get the whole thing in the frame. Desperation caused me to be brave and photograph some of the men standing outside of the synagogue. One man approached me and asked, “Is there something I can help you with? Is everything okay?” He knew I was an outsider because I dress differently than the women there. I got frightened and walked away with a quick, “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

Next I saw an old woman crossing the street. Her clothing and headdress are typical for the town and the fact that she was all alone was striking. A few minutes later I passed by this woman’s house and I saw her raking the leaves. When looking at the pictures at home, I noticed that the woman’s walker and the large garbage can both are about the same size, and they are both situated on four wheels.

Next I went to the town shopping center to capture the scene. As soon as I got there I noticed loudspeakers on top of poles that looked 100 feet high. I also saw a mother and teenage son loading their purchases into a double stroller. I thought this would make a hilarious shot. I then realized it was a good way to illustrate the fact that the women in New Square do not drive as it is not considered feminine.

The image of the man talking on his cell phone in the middle of the road depicts the sense of security these villagers feel. They know that they live in an isolated town, which the general public does not drive through.  I also wanted to portray the small orange sign on the street lamp that says, “froyen”, meaning women in Yiddish. Men and women are required to walk on separate sides of the street because they do not want undue socializing between the sexes.  

I photographed two women with baby strollers leaving a multi-family home, and getting into a Haitian taxi. This highlights the fact that these women do not drive. It also shows that despite their seclusion, they are still reliant on the outside world. It is common to see Chasidim talking on cell phones. Many people think of them as the Amish, but in reality they do use electricity and modern day appliances, even though they dress in an old fashioned manner.

I discovered a fleet of school buses lined up at the entrance to the town. I tried to get a good angle of the buses, but there were so many that this was difficult. It was striking that this tiny village had enough school buses for a city. Even the buses have Yiddish writing on them. The parents want their children to grow up speaking Yiddish only. 

I wanted to capture the cultural diversity of the people who utilize Refuah Health Center, a local clinic. I knew that Latinos as well as Chasidim receive care there. The structure itself is unique so I settled for a shot of that.  

The park concluded my tour of New Square. I had no more time left to take pictures, because my father needed his car back. I was anxious to see how my pictures came out. When I got home, I was pleasantly surprised at the images I captured. A street photography project cannot be predicted, because anything can happen on the street.  

http://www.stevenkasher.com/

Rebellions against authority – government, parents, elders, and everything else were ubiquitous in the 1960’s. David Fenton, a teenager at this time, was an underground news photographer. He photographed the anti-war protests, civil rights rallies, and concerts. Now, forty years later, in the Steven Kasher Gallery on 23^rd St., these photographs are displayed in an exhibit called “Eye of the Revolution”. I found it interesting to see pictures from this time, when my parents were growing up, and to compare what they have told me to what I see in actual photographs from the period.

            In one picture, I was able to sense the extreme passion some of the young people had for the protest against the war in Vietnam. The photo was captioned, Central Park Peace March, April 5, 1969. This photograph shows a cop standing in the midst of a crowd of people at a rally. One of the protestors is disguised in a pig mask and is standing behind the oblivious cop. He is also giving the finger to the police officer. This graphically portrays the lack of respect for authority that young people had during the anti-war demonstrations. It was very different to see this in a photograph taken at the time, rather than to read about this in my history textbook.

            Another remarkable image was titled, David Peel and the Lower East Side- Central Park, NYC 1969. When I saw this photograph I thought that it captured the essence of what the ‘60’s music and culture was all about. In this photo, the singers all have long hair, and open shirts. Some of them even have the large framed glasses common at the time. This photo encapsulated everything that I imagined about the hippie culture – guitars, long hair, and flowery jewelry.  

             I find it interesting that what my parents consider to be recent history seems to me as no different than learning about the flappers of the 1920’s. These photographs opened my eyes to the reality of the time period and some of the events that were taking place.

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Only a few hours after spending the evening with my classmates at “Clay”, we met again in the morning at ICP, the International Center of Photography. This is a museum where famous photographers display pictures they took all over the world. Photographs that depict a culture that I do not know much about fascinate me. I find that it is much easier to understand and visualize another country’s political turmoil and struggles through images rather than by just reading about them in a newspaper.

            Susan Meiselas is a photographer who is most famous for her committed coverage of political conflicts in Central America during the 1970’s and 1980’s. She struggled with the representation of her subjects, about control over use and circulation of her images in the construction of history and memory. She also got very involved in the lives of her subjects. One of the exhibits in the museum was called Nicaragua. Meiselas traveled to this country in 1978 just as the political situation exploded. She photographed startling images in color of the lead-up to the overthrow of the Somoza regime, and the victory of Sandinista. These pictures were published in her 1981 book called Nicaragua.

            Some of the pictures in her collection were outlandish and almost did not seem real. For example, “Cuesta del Plomo hillside outside Managua, a well-known site of many assassinations carried out by National Guard, 1978”, is one such image. Next to the gorgeous hillside lies a dead body, which is missing the head and the arms. The spine of this person is covered in blood and is sticking out from his neck. This image depicts the horrid conditions that the political unrest caused in Nicaragua. People were brutally murdered in even the most pretty of places. This image is far more graphic than any verbal or written description one could get of such a tumultuous situation.

            Another image in the exhibit showed the sheer poverty and difficulty the people in Nicaragua had to deal with. In the photograph titled, “Children Playing Monimbo, Nicaragua 1979”, the sadness of the political turmoil is felt. This photograph shows two adorable children crouching down in the middle of a road to gather pebbles. The whole scene around them is one of desolation and destruction. It appears that these boys are somewhat oblivious to their surroundings and are happy to just play. It was very interesting to see this fighting and war scene through the eyes of small children.

            Meiselas continues to use her talent to capture images in Iraq. In 2007 she took a picture titled, “Pank amusement park for domestic tourism, Rowanduz, Northern Iraq.” In the middle of a sandy desert in Iraq, is an amusement park. This was a very striking photograph because the merry-go-round with little ducks for the children to sit on is an unexpected scene in such a place. I am not exactly sure why there are rides in this isolated desert, but Meiselas manages to capture this amazing image to show the world.  

            Meiselas likes photography that is striking and unusual. She tries to photograph things that most people are not aware of. I think she does an excellent job at this, and I definitely learned a lot from her images. Meiselas has given me insight into the lives of people living in the midst of war, something that here in America we do not experience. 

www.francesrichey.com

Poetry is a type of writing that requires more skill than other forms of writing. A poet has to convey a message in about 100 words, whereas a novelist can take 350 pages to say the same thing. On Veterans Day, our class was invited to the Macaulay Honors College building to hear from the poet Francine Richey.

 Francine Richey wrote a collection of poems called, The Warrior.  These poems delve into Richey’s feelings about her son Ben’s military service in the Iraq war. Richey, an anti-war liberal, had a hard time understanding why her son would want to fight in Iraq. At first I thought that Richey would go on an anti-war rampage, but she spoke more about her relationship with her son that she developed through the poems she wrote about him.

Richey writes in one of her poems, “Before he was a warrior he was a boy, before he drank blood he drank milk.” This line shows how hard it is for a mother to see her only son go to war. When I think of soldiers, I do not usually think of the anxiety that their mothers go through.

Tone and rhythm are very important skills to master when reading poetry. Richey had comfortable tone and rhythm when she read her poems. She did not read in an overdramatic way. The words sounded like they were truly from the heart and not tacky like other poems I have read. In the talkback Richey mentions that she feels that, “poetry is really music.” This is apparent in the way she reads her poetry aloud. 

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Walking through Times Square at eight p.m. on a fall evening is an electrifying experience. My class was there to see Clay, a show that is the polar opposite of Dr. Atomic, the opera we saw at the Met the week before. Dr. Atomic had many performers who sang to slow, soft opera music, while Clay had one singer, Matt Sax, who performed hip-hop.

            The show opened with a young man with blood on his forehead and bright lights beaming on the stage. This was gripping because the audience did not know who the character was and why he had blood on his face. The musical is a flashback to a teenage boy’s troubled childhood. Sax acts out the parts of Clifford, who is the main character, his father, his mother, his stepmother and Sir John. Sax’s ability to play five different roles in one show is a rare talent.

            The storyline is typical in today’s modern performances. A young boy, Clifford, is told that his parents are going to get a divorce. Clifford’s seven-year-old mind cannot comprehend the reality of the situation, so he finds himself making funny faces in the bathroom mirror of the courthouse. I remember making silly faces in the mirror when I was a kid, so I was able to relate to this. Clifford grows up with his father, and is estranged from his mother, except for a yearly happy birthday call. After a few years, Clifford’s mother commits suicide, and leaves Clifford completely to his father and his new wife. Clifford is angry about his mother’s death and the fact that his father does not care. He roams the streets, and he meets the hip-hop star, Sir John, who runs a bookstore during the day, and makes hip-hop shows at night.

            Clifford begins to take hip-hop lessons and he can only spit at first rather than make music with his mouth. It is hilarious to see Sax go from being the tough hip-hop star, to the young, quivering Clifford. He changes from one role to the next very effectively.

            The scenes became a little too graphic towards the middle of the show. I did not find it necessary for Sax to make out with the microphone or use such explicit language when singing about girls. It was humorous to most people, but I felt it went a little over the top.  Before Sax portrayed the stepmother stepping out of her underwear, I was enjoying the show. Once it got to this point I became disgusted.

            The final moments of the show portray Clifford as a hero, even after he is unfaithful to his own father. People who commit adultery should not be looked up to as superstars. Even though Clifford suffers in his youth, I do not believe he should be able to get away with his negative actions.