new years resolutions

View from the porch

By EVE MARX

It’s that time of year when people normally make New Year’s resolutions. Over the years, I’ve made some doozies, including vowing to drink less caffeine and consume less chocolate (failure), swearing to use the elliptical equipment at the gym (instead I quit my membership), and vacuum less frequently, this last after an Electrolux home service repair man told me he’d never encountered a more heavily used machine, a comment I found to be somewhat humiliating and a negative judgment. What was he saying? That I was a clean freak?

I wish I were the kind of person who could say with a straight face that my resolves for 2012 were of a noble nature, like that I would do more volunteering. Sad to say, when it comes to organizations in general, I’m just not that much of a joiner. I couldn’t even handle being in a book group, for Heaven’s sake. I was a candy striper in a nursing home for geriatrics for about six months when I was a kid, and that cured me, I think, of overestimating my abilities. I did love working in the prison, but then again, I was doing it for pay; even so, the first time I got stuck in what was the beginning of a lock-down, it was scary/freaky. I think my first resolution for 2012 should just be to stay out of jail. What’s the old saying? “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” That’s a good place to begin.

Here’s what I hope is a brief list of my other resolutions. Go ahead and make your own. It’s a fun thing.

My first resolve is to keep my glasses on my face. I’m terrible about wearing glasses when I don’t have to and I have to most of the time. The fact is, I’m blind as a bat now, and, to boot, extremely light sensitive. So if you see me somewhere wearing shades in the shade, it’s not just because I am doing an impersonation of Stevie Wonder or playing secret agent. Although I do like that punk rock look of sunglasses at night. Goes with my stormtrooper boots and leather jacket.

I resolve to never, ever, get another pet except from a shelter or animal rescue. This is not a call to arms that I want or need more pets. With two dogs, a cat, and a horse to feed, exercise, groom and board, I don’t need more animals. I’m already a borderline hoarder.

I firmly resolve after this orgy of holiday eating that has been going on nonstop for the past six weeks, to stop eating. Or at least eat less. As I get older, it seems that every morsel or sip that passes my lips now counts in terms of calories. No more, “Oh, it’s just a meringue,” or jokes about barfing it up. It took me years to get over the fact there is no such thing as a low calorie avocado. Also my metabolism, despite lots of exercise, apparently has taken a nosedive in the past couple of years. Which means I’m back to the Happiness Is “you can never be too thin or too rich” lifestyle theory, although I do think if you are very rich you should do your best to spread your wealth around and not just by buying gifts or helping out your rich friends.

I resolve to wean myself off Facebook. It’s a bad, bad, additive habit. I’m on it a dozen times a day. I cannot say strongly enough that while Facebook is terribly entertaining, it’s also keeping me from doing other things. Like cleaning the bathrooms or dusting. I’m not going to pretend I’ll be giving it up entirely (after all, why bite your own nose off to spite your face?), but, speaking honestly, this is probably the resolution that won’t even last a week.

I will begin to entertain the option of a Smartphone. The main reason I’ve stuck with my razor phone all these years is that it easily fits into the slim, not very deep pocket of my riding pants. I also like that my phone has no keyboard which discourages texting and its outmodedness means that it cuts down on more time I’d be spending in front of a screen, surfing my phone on the internet. But now friend of my son who is a champ phone salesman at Radio Shack has offered to help me with my Verizon. So I’m thinking about it. A Smartphone may be headed my way. I have to enter the 21^st century someday, don’t I? Don’t I?

Last but not least, my very wise son told me the day after Christmas when we were discussing resolutions that he makes the same one every year. “Don’t die,” is his resolution. Makes sense to me.

Happy New Year!

Price is Right - TownVibe Bedford - Holiday 2011

Price is Right - TownVibe Bedford - Holiday 2011

Good Fat, Bad Fat - TownVibe Bedford - Holiday 2011

Good Fat, Bad Fat - TownVibe Bedford - Holiday 2011

Every picture tells a story

In light of the fact that my new novel is almost finished which means I have to shop myself to a new agent, I was forced to own up that I needed a new picture of myself, given that the last time a professional portrait was taken, I was still menstruating. Like every woman my age, I've become quite camera-shy, although in truth I was never crazy about having my picture taken. Even when I was young and sexy and could go bra-less, it was difficult for me. These days even looking in the mirror is tricky, unless I'm armed with a tweezer and hunting for stray hairs.

A friend who is a professional photographer put the screws to me. She offered to quickly take my picture. I should say here that over the past few years, quite a few professional photographers, some of them even acclaimed beings, have been interested in me. They say my face is "interesting." Interesting is not pretty. A lot of times it means cock-eyed. When I say a woman has an interesting face, it's not usually a compliment.
But I digress.
The photographer emailed about a date to take the pic. Knowing I couldn't put it off any longer, I made a plan. Included in this plan was a session with a professional make up artist since I wanted all the help I could get. The make up artist is another friend. I love her even though she's always trying to get me to wear blush when above all other makeup I hold in contempt, what I dislike the most is blush. I don't even like the word blush and I'm certainly not the blushing type. The type I am is aging kitten with a whip, which is why the lone prop I had to have for the shoot was my riding crop.
While I was at the make up studio, one of my enemies was there. This is a woman I try to avoid at all costs, but there she was, having her brows dealt with. Her presence didn't seriously throw me for a loop, although it made me realize that if we stayed in the make up studio, I would be on strange display. I had hoped that the photographer and I might have a nice mosey along a woodsy road outside. If I couldn't be with my horse, at least I could do a little tree hugging. Instead, as it turned out, the photographer loved the light in the make up shop and immediately started pulling out golden foil refractors and other professional equipment. Before I knew it, I mugging for the camera and feeling quite the idiot.
"Say chardonnay," the photographer advised in an aborted attempt to get me to hold my mouth correctly. "You've got a furrow," she said about my forehead, which was unsurprising. Between worrying about how not to squint or show too much tooth or what was happening with my hair, I'm surprised we were able to get any pictures at all, not to mention the attention our photo shoot was attracting.
There was a constant stream of females coming in to get their make up. In my neck of the woods, Saturday in the fall is high bar and bar mitzvah season. An annoyed teenager awaiting her turn in the make up chair said to no one in particular, "Why is there a model here?" I was pathetically grateful she didn't say "old model."
Somehow we got through it. The pictures are great. Now if somebody would just put make up on me more often, I wouldn't mind having my picture taken.

Desperately seeking justice in Bedford Town Court

Desperately seeking justice in Bedford Town Court

By EVE MARX
It’s hard to know where to begin discussing Ethan Weibman, the 20-year-old Bedford man accused in Maryland of killing and torturing kittens and cats. No matter how you look at it, it’s a sad situation because Ethan, if he is guilty of these allegations, is undeniably sick.

He is due to appear in the Baltimore courts next month facing charges of animal cruelty that occurred on March 22 and again on April 5. Documents from the Baltimore court case accuse him of selecting cats to adopt at several shelters before breaking their teeth, beating and cutting them, and shooting them with a B.B. gun.

What many people locally don’t know is that Ethan, who is a graduate of Fox Lane High School, has been appearing in the Bedford Town Court since 2010 for his behavior behind the wheel. Appearing before Judge Kevin Quaranta last year, Ethan was charged with driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. His driving offenses have dragged through the Bedford court for quite some time. His attorney, Andy Rubin of Mancuso, Rubin & Fufidio in White Plains, months ago brokered an arrangement with the Bedford court to have all three counts against Ethan rolled into one complaint. He was advised at the time to cooperate with the probation department and keep his nose clean.

It was while on probation for the driving offenses that Ethan moved to Baltimore and allegedly began abusing cats. He was arrested in Maryland on May 29, mere days after Judge Quaranta set the conditions for his probation in the Bedford courthouse on May 26.

Last week, on Thursday, Sept. 15, Ethan, his lawyer and his parents appeared again in Judge Quaranta’s court.

Although his case was called early before the bench, the family delayed the proceedings for an hour and a half. When he finally got in front of the judge, the assistant district attorney, Nicholas DiCostanzo, requested Ethan be remanded into custody for violating his probation. According to the district attorney’s office, he had been an hour late for an appointment with the probation department, and he seems to have completely blown off another appointment. But the worst thing he did to violate the terms of his probation was to be accused of committing these other crimes.

As the family huddled in the courthouse hallway, Ethan was visibly upset. In the hall when I tried to speak to him, the young man said, “I want to tell you my story,” and trust me, it’s a story I would like to hear. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll get the chance, as his lawyer and father intervened, stating that Ethan had “no comment.”

In the midst of this drama, Ethan’s psychiatrist from Manhattan appeared. The doctor’s role in the courthouse seemed to be to inform the judge that Ethan is ill and requires special handling. And Ethan did get special handling. Although another man who appeared before the bench 20 minutes earlier for breaking his probation was told to report the next night to jail for months of weekend incarceration, Ethan was sent home for the weekend, advised to take his meds, and instructed to come back to Bedford court on Monday.

On Monday, just like Ethan, I returned to the courtroom. It was there Judge Quaranta said a number of things that struck me as rather remarkable. In response to the assistant district attorney’s repeating of the information that Ethan has trouble showing up for his probation appointments, the judge said, “Mr. Weibman appears to be a person who might not have it all together.” He also said he was aware of the several charges facing Mr. Weibman in the Baltimore courts. He said, “At first blush, these charges seem disturbing.” That was a showstopper. Really? At first blush? How many times do we need to “blush” at the thought of repeated acts of animal mutilation?

Judge Quaranta said he is adamant he “will not try the Baltimore case” in the Bedford courts. Baltimore is Baltimore and Bedford is Bedford. At first blush, to borrow Judge Quaranta’s phrase, the two cases are apples and oranges. One is about driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and breaking probation; the other is about torturing and killing cats. Beyond the blush, however, they are related because when Ethan was charged in Maryland with animal cruelty, he was on probation, probation meted out to him in Bedford.

The allegations against Mr. Weibman are particularly disturbing because you don’t have to be a psychologist or work in law enforcement to be aware of the connection between extreme violence toward animals and extreme violence toward humans. A growing body of research indicates that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals rarely stop there. People who abuse animals are not only dangerous to animal victims but may also be dangerous to human beings, according to most experts in the field.

The Westchester County district attorney’s office would like to see Ethan in custody. As it stands, he’s currently living in his Bedford home.

“Stay on your meds, report to your probation officer, and don’t be wandering around,” Judge Quaranta said on Monday.

In court on Monday morning, Ethan appeared calm and serene. His mother was with him, but not his father or psychiatrist. The judge told him, “Any further incidents that alarm this court or probation will advance this matter and possibly remand.”

I thought about last summer when I went to court to see Lisa Turkki, the mentally disturbed woman visiting her family in Bedford, accused of stabbing her nieces. Ms. Turkki was remanded to a psychiatric ward where she remains in custody. Ethan will get his day in court in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, he remains relatively free in Bedford, despite breaking his probation and accusations of new and heinous crimes. He is scheduled to appear in Bedford Town Court on Oct. 17. I guess I’ll have to be there.

Thoughts on hurricanes and 9-11

By the time you read this, Irene will be a distant memory, and hopefully your basement didn’t flood again in the wake of Lee and Katia. While September is often a beautiful month, it can be wrathful. As a kid, I remember Hurricane Esther, a Category 4, Cape Verde-type storm sweeping through the mid-Atlantic in September 1961. Where I lived in Atlantic City, winds gusted 69 mph, and parts of the boardwalk were destroyed, a stretch of homes and businesses by the Inlet took 30 years to rebuild, and the seals and sea lions and porpoises that made up Captain Starn’s maritime circus were released into the ocean days before the storm so they would have time to swim away from certain harm. For months afterwards, I spent hours every day meandering through the heaps of seaweed and debris that littered the shore, debris heaved up from the bottom of the sea that included old suitcases and mattresses and bedsprings, dead animals, and tar, tons of tar.

Thankfully our home in Katonah survived Irene very well. We took in no water and no trees fell on our house. It was a nuisance to be without power for three days, but that’s all it was: a nuisance. After Day One, where we grilled everything from our refrigerator that could be grilled, Mr. Sax and I agreed to mostly starve ourselves and eat dinner out. During the day, we got by with easy finger food, like dried fruit and nuts. From now on in, we will keep a stash of “survival food” in the house, which will include almonds, prunes, dried apricots, flax seed granola, water, and chocolate. Mr. Sax insists beer and cola are essentials, too; beer because it’s wet and has nutrition, and cola because it’s medical. How do I know this is true? I once saw a vet tubing it into a horse with a mild case of colic to relieve tummy trouble.

It’s inescapable that September 11 come and go without a nod to 9-11. Everyone’s first memory of the day was that it was so beautiful. I must admit that 8 or 9 anniversaries of this date have come and gone for me without much attention. Still, the 10^th anniversary seems particularly affecting. Certain memories of the day remain vivid; walking down the road to see my neighbor outside on her cell, trying to reach her husband who that morning had an early meeting downtown; driving into Katonah and watching the first people coming off the train, some of them still covered in ashes; talking to a man who had walked out of a smoldering tower into the ravaged streets where he walked over to the West Side highway to hitch a ride north with a truck driver. A small thing that no one will remember but me is that 9-11 is also when my book, “View from the Porch” was released. I remember feeling a lot of despair because the book is, at heart, domestic comedy, and at such a time, comedy seemed inappropriate. Much later, people told me that they found solace in my book, because after so many months of pain and grieving, they were ready for something cheery. A few weeks ago I was on the phone with the attorney for Judy Clark, the civil rights activist who had a secondary, non-shooting role in the attempted robbery of a Brinks truck in 1981 that left three people dead, and who is currently in Bedford Correctional serving a 75 years to life sentence. The attorney told me she had read “View from the Porch,” and found it “poignant.” I was touched by that. Part of the poignancy, I said, is because the book was written well before 9-11. “It seems innocent, even naïve, to me now,” I said, a bit sadly. “A relic from a time before we were consumed by terrorism.”

Anyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with popular idioms. For the better part of a year, I keep hearing the phrase “moving forward,” being uttered. I hear it from the general public, on TV, and from politicians. I did a little research and it seems to be a corporate-speak idiom that, like, “best practices,” originated among suits around 2003, and has since drifted into the common vernacular. The phrase at first bugged me. It seemed a glib way of saying you didn’t see any point in rehashing any old business, when to my mind, old business is usually of significance. We learn from our mistakes. History repeats itself. Not to mention, I love a good blast from the past.

Lately I’ve made peace with “moving forward,” although, like Albert Einstein said, I never think of the future; it comes soon enough. I was freaked to see how many fun, even frivolous events around town this year are taking place on 9-11. That seemed irreverent. But then people who experienced serious losses 10 years ago on that day told me they were ready to “move forward,” and that was a head changer. I’ll leave you with this thought from the poet Maya Angelou, who said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, they’ll forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” So hug someone this Sunday. Or make them laugh. That’s what I call moving forward.

Hawley Cow - Town Vibe Bedford - September/October 2011

Hawley Cow - Town Vibe Bedford - September/October 2011

Hurdles; how to handle 'em

Sometimes it seems life is just a series of hurdles that must be gotten through. Many people tell me that when they were young they thought everything would get easier when they got older. I don't know that I ever thought that; it's far more likely that I knew already many things would become harder, and worse, I'd have to pay for them.

My father died when I was 7. I scarcely remember him. My memories are mainly two: one, he brought home a French poodle he'd bought off a show girl to be my pet, and two, he showed me a car he'd just bought and I cried because I thought it was stolen.

Lacking two full time adults in my life, teachers became important, although some of them were cruel and some turned out to be a disappointment, while still others paid me scant attention because I was so bad at organized sports or maths. In general, though, teachers were my role models and not just from an academic point of view. Mrs. O as I'll call her was my Home Ec teacher. She was small and shapely and I had her in 7th grade. One day she handed me a bag of clothes she grown tired of wearing. They were good wool suits, some tweed, some boucle and designed to imitate the style of Chanel, the beautifully sewn jackets featuring covered buttons and toggle closures. The skirts were a little dated; one I recall was a dirndl. Still, they were beautiful clothes and I really appreciated Mrs. O for giving them to me, even though I had no place to wear them as we didn't belong to any church or temple and while my mother was out on dates, I spent my evenings home alone watching Roller Derby and spreading melba toast with cream cheese.

Another teacher I liked in high school was Mr. H. who kept a bottle of booze in a metal locker. The locker was at the far back of his classroom and at regular intervals during history, Mr. H. would go to the back of the room to take a swig. He was moderately discreet, hiding the action behind the locker door, but we all knew what he was up to, and depending on where you sat in the classroom, you could even smell it. Out of deference to Mr. H. and his needs, I always sat in the front row and steadfastly kept my eyes trained on the blackboard. Some of the boys in my class brazenly asked if they could have a sip.

A few, three exactly, of my college professors who I adored upset me. Two of them asked me if I would sleep with them, while the third just sort of hinted at it. Maybe I'm being too harsh. It was the 70's and freewheeling times and some of the young and some not so young professors often socially mingled with students. I had some very happy times with other professors who invited me to their homes to meet their families, or to a party they were having where they thought I might enjoy the other guests. Those professors helped to open up the world to me, and for that I am still grateful.

I can't remember a single professor I had in graduate school except for Robby McClintock who ran a seminar at Columbia University. At the time, I felt mentally and socially deficient to the other students in the class. I don't know why I felt this way other than I was matriculating at Teachers College and Robby's seminar didn't have anything to do with my program. I just wanted to take a class with him because I'd heard he was a genius. I can't remember anything at all now about the class, only Robby sitting at one end of a long rectangular wood table in one of Columbia's hallowed halls. He had such a mild manner and he listened so attentively and politely to anything a student said that I immediately decided if I ever were to be a teacher, I'd just mimic him.

By profession I am a writer, but also a teacher, sometimes, at Taconic Correctional Facility, where I teach creative writing to female inmates. Taconic is a medium security prison, and also a transitional facility where felons who have served 20 or more years at the maximum security prison, Bedford Hills, across the street are often sent to see how they will fare with less intense supervision, Some do well, some don't. The women who take my class take it seriously even if it's not for college credit. I offer it because I think creative writing is a way for them to get outside the walls for awhile, if only on paper. I also do it because I think "there but for the grace of God go I," given my personal history and background.

Every time I go in to the prison to teach, I have to overcome some kind of hurdle. I don't just mean the hurdle of the entrance gate, where you must have on proper clothing (nothing low cut or sleeveless or form fitting and certainly not anything that is green), carry only your car keys and I.D., be able to remain quiet and patient when the officer behind the desk makes you wait for half and hour, and do not mind having your pockets searched or your entire body wanded. Once inside, you must still wait for doors to be buzzed open and gates to be remote clicked, and then, after you're passed those barricades and hurdles, be able to contain any residual rising panic about that you're walking alone in a prison in the dark and you don't know exactly where you're going or what will happen when you get there. Then your class begins and there are all these strange new faces and sometimes exotic names to learn and the need to not be boring. Nobody will let you know faster if you're a lousy teacher than an inmate. They smell fear and fake-ness faster than you can say one, two, three. They require you to be completely genuine, which is another hurdle for me.

Today I taught 4th and 5th graders in a workshop at a local elementary school. It's all part of a special day the school puts on alternate years called, "Do the Write Thing." I've been a participant for a long time now, ever since my now 23 year old son attended school there. My workshop is called "My Life, My Story," and I tell every kid in my class they've got a story simply because they're alive. Using prompts I've created, the kids write about their pets, their vacations, their brothers and their sisters, and their parents. Today one child wrote an entertaining James Thurber type of tale about her mom who snores in front of the tv, while another wrote about her heroic pregnant mother who pulled her and her little brother out of an icy pit they'd tumbled into this past winter on their sleds. The mother passed them down a rubber garden hose and while they clung on to it for dear life, hauled them up. Take that, Jack London.

Before "Do the Write Thing" started, I was dreading the day. It's late March now but still snowing and merely leaving the house is both a hurdle and a chore. But then the young children gathered around their desks and pulled out their pencils and their composition books and I conjured up my teacher self and we started talking. Within minutes, the kids were busy writing. They wrote for the better part of an hour and then shared. Well, not everybody shared, but everyone wrote and they wrote pages and pages. The words just poured out. Not unlike the prison ladies, the kids showed me that you really can write through your hurdles, despite the reality they keep coming on.