Metropolitan Diary

DEAR DIARY:

This happened to me the other day, and I was so moved, I thought New Yorkers should know about this.

I was crossing Lexington Avenue to catch a bus downtown when I noticed a bus waiting at the stop. As a visually impaired person with a cane, I tried to walk as quickly as I could.

When I arrived at the bus stop, the bus had already pulled away.

I was waiting for the next bus when a man approached me.

“May I help you onto the bus?” he asked.

“But it’s already moved on,” I told him. “It’s gone to the corner, so it’s not likely the driver will let you take me aboard.”

“I am the driver,” he said, and I realized he’d left a bus full of people waiting while he helped one astonished and grateful passenger walk half a block to climb aboard.

Would Ralph Kramden be proud of the softies of his profession driving our city buses? I am. Eleanor Roth

From the New York Times. This seems extraordinary, but it is much closer to typical. I have been amazed by the kindnesses people perform for me, embarrassed that I was probably not so helpful before.

Baptism

by Ted Thomas Jr.

Singing With the Dead) -->

Cold wind.
I help my father
into the shower
with his good hand
he grips my arm for support.

Inside he sits like Buddha
on a plastic stool
and waits for me
to begin.

I drench him
with warm water,
soap his head, his back,
the flabby stomach,
the private parts
private no more.

I had not before seen my father's
nakedness, nor the changing
contour of his being,
his growing helplessness.

His brown skin glistens
and I think of him
as a young man on the night
of my conception:

Panting, capable, shining
with sweat and definition,
the soft hands of my mother
grasping his shoulders.

I pat him dry,
he lets me dress him
in the white
hospital clothes,
oil his hair,
put him to bed
and forgive him.

All too familiar. Rings true to someone who's suffered a stroke.

1000 Cellphones and 2000 Text Messages Playing Tchaikovsky

I don't know what is crazier: This video of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture played with 1000 cellphones and 2000 messages, or the videos showing how the whole thing was made.

People from Vodafone New Zealand, I can't wait for you to do other classics, like:

[Engadget]

Gwendolyn Brooks’s neighborhood library. Union Stock Yards, where Chicago became Carl Sandburg’s “Hog Butcher for the World.” The Green Mill, home of slam poetry. Maxwell Street and Chess Records, inspirations for bluesy poets. Haymarket Square, memorial to the labor movement.

The Chicago Poetry Tour, produced by the Poetry Foundation, is a chance to explore the history of the city through poetry. The online version of the tour features archival and contemporary recordings of poets and scholars, local music, and historic photographs. You can take the tour in numbered order, starting downtown, or jump around from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Or, if you’re in Chicago, let us take you on a guided tour: download the downtown portion, tour stops 1-6, hosted by NPR’s Scott Simon, into your MP3 player and take the walking tour beginning at the Chicago Cultural Center and ending at Harold Washington Library. You’ll hear poets Lisel Mueller, W.S. Di Piero, and Haki Madhubuti, and archival recordings of Gwendolyn Brooks, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, as you experience Chicago’s iconic architectural sights, including the Art Institute and the Fine Arts Building. You can also take a side trip to other neighborhoods and landmarks featured in stops 7-22: listen to poems by Quraysh Ali Lansana at the DuSable Museum, Srikanth Reddy at Danny’s Tavern, or Harriet Monroe at Graceland Cemetery.

Whether virtual or actual, the Chicago Poetry Tour is a unique new way to introduce yourself to the Windy City and its great poetry.

Don't know if my journeys will ever take me to Chicago again, but just in case. This is probably interesting listening whether I'm in Chicago or not.