PareaGrooveBlog

We started PareaGroove in March, March 15 to be exact, so, somewhat notably, that’s nearly six months ago. Things are not quite normal yet and we still have a few among us who aren’t fully comfortable emerging into the world, which is understandable, especially since the US hit 187,000 deaths today. So no, not over. And so, we continue.

We began our chat talking about returning to the gyms. They are set to open today in NYC but not all of us are comfortable returning. Unfortunately, several of us have been charged for gym membership for this month even before it opened, and fortunately we could share our experience with that and how we are managing it, calling our credit cards, etc. One person told us he was happy to go back, but he returned to his apartment gym which seems a bit more private, safer. He also mentioned he was going in to his office a bit, but mostly to his New Jersey branch. Our returning French friend told us about how the South of France was looking now, which was mostly masked and mostly open. Some major roads require masks, others don’t, which he said people were finding a bit frustrating and inconsistent. We talked again about the increase in crime in our neighborhoods, to catch him up on what he missed while he was away, as well as how the Guardian Angels had made a difference and things were much calmer than they had been a month ago. Then we talked about the political polls, with Biden climbing, but with no one sure about whether polls are even reflective of a likely outcome. We expressed our hope for a peaceful transition and our fear it might be challenged. Then we talked about the Tour de France, which is currently happening, but with smaller crowds. We learned that sadly one biking team was knocked out because someone had COVID. We talked about probiotics and which were best when you’re on antibiotics and about how our dentists had different levels of COVID security, one dentist wore something close to a bubble suit for moon walking, and one just a little mask that kept slipping under his nose. We discussed the controversy over whether plasma helps COVID patients and promising PRP and monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. We progressed to talking about David Bowie, how we missed him, and how some people were lucky enough to catch last year’s Brooklyn Museum exhibit about his life. We Googled why his eyes were two colors and how to pronounce his name. We then wondered about when theaters would open up and how. We pined over fancy greenhouses in the backyards of large homes. A couple people then reminisced about having attended FDA hearings for new drugs and how those were more exciting than one would imagine. We returned to discussing our anxiety about the peaceful transition were Biden to win. Then we talked about the open restaurants and how live music was now illegal unless it was “incidental.” Then a few of us talked about which instruments we play. One said he had just spent a week in the Catskills on a much needed break from the City where he got to jam with family members. Then news popped up that Tom Seaver had just died of COVID complicated by Lyme and Lewy Body dementia, and so we talked about him and his legacy, about aabout Robin Williams who suffered from Lewy Body disease too. We talked about baseball games in general and what they looked like without the stadium. Then the discussion moved into memories of favorite tennis stars and tributes people had seen for them, and matches they had attended, Steffi Graff, Agassiz, Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova. People remembered the tennis camps they attended as kids, and talked about adult tennis camps open now and the growing popularity of tennis because it’s a socially distanced game. The U.S. Open is also happening now and Arthur Ashe Stadium is empty, and we talked about how it feels weird to watch it on television without the audience. We talked about watching basketball and the cheers added in. Then many of us shared our experiences of attending the locally produced late night shows, Colbert, Letterman, The Daily Show, and what that was like. From there we talked about dating comics, as several of us had (tried to). A memory of a particular date someone had led to a prolonged conversation about ping pong and who among us played it, when, and where, like on a ship, in the local table tennis clubs, on a childhood dining table. Someone shared a video of two young girls in Italy who were playing tennis from across rooftops during quarantine. And then we ended talking again about the opening of our gyms.

Sunday we had a chat with the regulars, many of whom turned up. We opened with the leaving do I attended downtown, my first foray into the East Village since March. The Pandemic, the City crime, the economic weakening in his sector, and the frightening progression of the campaign season and where healthcare is heading, has driven a friend back across the Pond to the UK. It took his leaving to motivate me to navigate the subways that far out of the neighborhood, so I had that adventure to report. A regular on the call followed up with his day’s journey, he had attended a cemetery that day. He had his mother’s headstone unveiling, something that had been somewhat delayed because headstone carving was never an essential service. He shared his feelings and the visits with family this motivated. It was nice he could be there with us for his difficult day. Then we went from funerals to bar mitzvahs, and a couple people shared-screen with pictures they had from theirs from decades ago. We talked about high school classmates we reconnected with on Facebook and how many of them really don’t share our views on things, especially politics. We talked about the current administration, our anxiety over the election and over taxes and how those were being used as campaign promises, and threats. We talked about spies, in the news and not. Then someone with experience at the United Nations talked about what she had experienced while she was there. We talked about the fun UN parties the young ambassadors would sometimes have, and then about far less tame parties we knew about in NY or “accidentally” attended. Then we discussed flu shots and whether they might be a good idea at this point, and perhaps how now might be a better time to visit the dentist. We talked about Ben Carson. And then about the quality and comfort of medical scrubs as pajamas. We remembered dating in our 20s, the banker culture of the 1990s, and then discussed the benefits of air fryers and our favorite bars we hoped hadn’t closed. We ended more darkly, and talked about the continuing Black Lives Matter protests, our concern over whether herd immunity was possible, and again, about the uptick in crime in our neighborhoods.

We were super lucky to snag a reading by Spencer Wolff of his debut novel “The Fire in His Wake.” Mr. Wolff is a renowned writer, attorney and filmmaker, born and bred in New York, and currently living in Paris where he teaches, writes and lawyers. He came back to the States for the national book tour, but the Pandemic put the kibosh on that plan. Consequently, through one of our regulars, we were able to persuade him to read for us. Mr. Wolff also produced a documentary in 2014 called “Stop” about the “stop & frisk” policy in New York City in the 1990s and the court case that resulted. As it’s currently streaming on Amazon I watched it before our talk, and I was amazed by how current much of the content is as the Black Lives Matter protests are very strongly informing our current conversation. The first half hour of our Zoom was about this most informative documentary, his experience making it in the city, the artistry of it, and his thoughts about the people whom he interviewed. The film is great to watch, visually interesting, and with a really good jazzy soundtrack and it certainly led to an interesting conversation. Then we had the reading, a colorful, entertaining, and very human passage from the book about a young American man’s first interview with a Congolese refugee for the UN in Morocco. The story is based loosely on Spencer’s experience working at the UN refugee agency in Rabat doing similar work just prior to a protest by Congolese refugees at the agency which turned violent. The story focuses on the friendships and humanity of people who have little in common but find connection and then share adventures. Mr. Wolff took our questions, and we talked about his experience, the politics of the refugee crisis, and the art and challenge of writing a book. It was a free flowing, exciting conversation. After we talked about the book we talked about everything else, like living under quarantine in Paris, and in Lisbon where he spent some months, and in our parts of the country, and where testing is there and here and what we’re all feeling about what’s next. We are all experiencing the same things, and our cities and countries are handling these same things a bit differently. Which is the better way is hard to say. This is a Global Pandemic indeed.

We had a surprisingly well attended meet up for a summer Sunday. The New Yorkers were tucking in pre-sunset as they were nervous about safety issues in our neighborhoods. Things are getting a bit better with more police presence and with the Guardian Angels in some neighborhoods, but sharp crime increase is still an issue, and this dominated the conversation for the first hour, discussing the relative safety issues across the city. I’ve gotten a bit more comfortable with public transportation and had met friends on the Upper East Side and down in the West Village over the weekend, and I found those neighborhoods were bustling with outdoor dining, some posh eateries with more tables outside than they had inside so reservations were more easily obtained. The other neighborhoods felt a bit safer than the Upper West Side, and went I came home I was harassed for a frightening moment by a guy wobbling down the sidewalk toward me on a Citibike. One of our regulars said they’re read one of the shelter guys had gotten caught stealing a Citibike, so maybe it was the guy. In any case, people were nervous. The second hour more cheerfully veered to shows we watch, clothes we wear, and pandemic survival skills in general.

Wednesday we were supposed to have a speaker, but due to a bit of a bug on his part, and the expressed enthusiasm over Kamala Harris’ official acceptance as VP nominee at the simultaneously scheduled virtual Democratic National Convention on the part of a regular or two, we decided to postpone our book talk to next week and watch the Convention together. Our first hour prior to the start of the DNC veered to politics, to our optimism and hope about a possible new administration and to our concerns about the current administration, and especially the seeming threat to mail-in voting and the health of our Postal Service. We don’t usually talk politics but today it was warranted, and we do all tend to lean Blue (and I suspect there won’t be such a call to watch the RNC next week). When the Convention started I asked my tech friendly regular to share her screen and we watched together, sharing our thoughts in the chat as talking over the speeches seemed a bit rude. I stuck around for the beginning, enjoyed Billy Eilish’s song, though we speculated and googled whether she was of age to vote (she was, just barely). The chat comments were on the whole positive, and the gents expressed their concern about comments on appearances and on the whole left the ladies to make those (mostly approving and sympathetic). Soon after the performance I passed the hosting responsibility to another regular who had kindly conveyed her appreciation privately in the chat for the opportunity to watch together as she was still quarantining herself in another state away from her close friends. I opted instead to snooze out early and watch the highlight speeches the next morning on YouTube. I did catch the entirety of the broadcast the next day. It will be good to have the PareaGroove to watch as all unfolds over the next couple months.

We held our regular Sunday Zoom earlier than usual, at 4:00 pm, as we had a special guest speaker, Franka Rauch, hailing from Germany. Trained in yoga, social work, and international peace efforts and conflict resolution, Franka has come to specialize in what she describes as “somatic conflict resolution.” We found her in coordination again with the New York Peace Museum, for which we provided a recording of the talk. We learned this somatic work can be applied at all levels, individually and for more global attempts of bringing peace. As we communicate non verbally in so many ways, she is teaching people to find peace in their bodies so they can approach conflict from a centered place of calmness. She started out leading us in a simple meditation to find the calm in ourselves, and she posited that if we take that calm into the world, focusing on calming the space between our hearts and our navel center, and face our conflicts from that stance we will have more success is resolving interpersonal trouble. She treated us to a very detailed PowerPoint presentation and took questions afterward. Generously, she stayed on well past her bedtime as the questions went on for a couple more hours. We brought up general questions, and then more personal instances of how to deal with interpersonal conflict, even the question of God and how can this non sectarian process jive with people who look to a higher power for resolution. She allowed that not everything is easily resolved, people are different from one another and you can’t control their response, and some issues are more difficult than others to fix. However, focusing on calming ourselves and our own responses, from our bodies rather than our emotions, helps us to respond rather than react. Very excellent advice as tensions are growing now with protests still happening and the election looming and the global pandemic still surging.

Among our regular PareaGroovers we have a microbiologist and a doctor. These gents graciously took it upon themselves to clear up some of what probably might have been our frustrating lack of clarity on what has been evolving in the area of testing for the Coronavirus. Our microbiologist, who worked with a guy who won the Nobel Prize for a test for devising the AIDS virus and others, gave us a very detailed PowerPoint presentation about how the different existing tests work, what they measure, and how reliable they might be, as well as the new tests that might be coming out soon. He’s also got a rocking sense of humor, so he put on a fun show about this otherwise very heavily detailed presentation about a very heavy topic, which for sure did not assume any ignorance among us (though there certainly was some, and I include myself). Our doctor backed him up with inclusive details and explanations of the medical connections, and they both patiently took questions throughout. This was a popular presentation, we were very well attended, in part out of loyalty to our two regulars, but also out of intense interest as we had several people join who aren’t regular attendees. We continued on into the evening far later than usual as the questions kept coming. I also took a stab at recording and posting it on our Facebook page, there were requests to do so, and it was my first time trying that tech with Google Drive and the like. This virus is going to be with us for a while, so the more we know the better.

I live on the Upper West Side in NYC where two weeks ago the government, in the dark of night, relocated 500 men from shelters into two hotels within blocks of each other and smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood crowded with schools, churches, synagogues, elder centers, young families, professionals and elderly. 300 men who are addicts and another 200 mostly men including about a dozen registered sex offenders, that is, known rapists and pedophiles, surreptitiously, per the mayor’s per orders, per COVID justifications, were just dropped there within hours. Since their arrival we have seen drug dealers and prostitutes in the neighborhood and have had several violent assaults and robberies occur, including two in our local subway station. The hotel residents have set up encampments on the street, rather than sit in their little rooms, and freely engage in lewd and scatological activity in pubic. As the police are, arguably justifiably, pissed off post the protests, there are not as many cops on the beat as there were prior. So we’re in a bit of trouble. I sent out the Bat Signal to a friend in the Guardian Angels and bless him, he contacted Batman himself, Curtis Sliwa, who then contacted me to help roll out the patrols. I am not a community activist, I just know a guy and have access to a couple of websites. So it came down to me to organize two events over the weekend, which we held at an entrance of Central Park, where Mr. Sliwa could speak to assembled residents in order that he feel the Guardian Angels were “invited” by the community, which they were, quite enthusiastically. As I was riled by what was happening in my neighborhood, by the weekend events, and by some of the new more awful facts about the situation dropped by Mr. Sliwa who had conducted some investigations prior to the presentations, of course our PareaGroove was focused, at first, on these events. We have a couple UWS residents, but also several in other neighborhoods who are seeing a deterioration of the street vibe. So we talked a bit about that, a bit about politics, and a bit about other ways COVID has changed our world. We continued for a an hour or so, and then we stopped to take a song break. One of our regulars can sing, I know this because I used to enjoy her regular open mic performances many years ago. I encouraged her, with our downtime, to polish up her chops again and get back to singing. We’re a safe, supportive group so I suggested she take a first step or two with us. So, we were treated to a lovely rendition of “Blue Moon” from her Zoom box, complete with a virtual background of yes, a blue moon. We have other singers among us, as well as artists and doctors, so we can look forward as more of them are encouraged to be our speakers and our presenters, perhaps a first practice with PareaGroove and then onward for them.

Phase Two of the quarantine in NYC started Monday, June 22 and Phase 3 on July 6. Other parts of the country from whence PareaGroovers hail are opening. Yet PareaGroove groups are still happening. We’ve had several speakers and a whole lot of chats since the last post nearly two months ago (time sure moves strangely now, it goes by so slowly while simultaneously flying by, and things like blog post updates slide into the ether of passed time.).

Saturday June 20 was the Solstice. We celebrated it with a Solsitce Special – “Cottages & Countrysides & Olde England & Ale.” We had a friend of mine, Professor Amy Smith speak with us. Dr. Smith is a Professor of Classical Archaeology at Reading University in the UK and the curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology. She’s a friend of mine from high school and so I was able to convince her to stay up late and give us a talk. Simultaneously we kept checking in with the livestream from Stonehenge of the Solstice sunset and sunrise, a first for them, but with the COVID quarantine the English Heritage Organization which runs the site opted to do that rather than have their traditional festival, which was a boon for us. In between Solstice updates, our professor friend, rather than talking about her expertise in Greek vases, opted instead to talk about an independent investigation she launched with a couple of friends of a hill near her home, in Lowbury. Two skeletons from the 7th century AD were found, a male and a female. She noted that of course more of a fuss was made over the male skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon warrior proudly buried with all his war gear, and so that skeleton was reassembled and put in a museum. The female skeleton, however, was arguably more interesting, although it had been piled back in its box in the storage center. The woman, whose skeleton it was, had been buried in the wall of the nearby Anglo-Celtic temple from the 2nd Century, and without an arm. Speculation was made that she may have lost the arm through an injury, or piled into the wall because she was a peasant or committed some crime. Yet interestingly a woman on the call, a person I hadn’t seen before but was a college connection, posited that skeleton may have been that of an anchoress, a religious woman who would wall herself into a cell built against the wall of a temple, an early form of monastic life, and being she had been considered holy her arm may have been taken as a relic to worship. Dr. Smith hadn’t thought of that, and she said that would be a great project for one her students to pursue. So that was fun, that on a PareaGroove we had a fun talk and at the same time we might have furthered historic research.

We also had an art talk from Ellen French a renowned artist who launched an art project she calls Cities of Peace which goal is to create peace by bringing together people from conflicted nations to collectively create large collage paintings, beautifully layered with gold leaf. I had learned of her art through the Pollack Museum talk our group was invited to, and I thought they would enjoy a tailored talk by her. I also thought I could use her talk for the New York Peace Museum, a project which is launching to create more peace in the world. The PareaGroove group loved her art, one woman even copied a painting into her virtual Zoom background. Our artist was peppered with questions and then became thoroughly involved with our post talk chat (as had our professor, and mostly all of our speakers, some of whom end up returning to the Grooves as members of PareaGroove). The artist has since become more involved with the Peace Museum, which is of great value and it’s nice PareaGroove could have made the introduction.

We also had another talk from our friend who spoke to us about the artist Christo. In this talk he titeld “Seneca Village, a New York Secret” he talked about an area in Central Park which in the 1800s had been a neighborhood of successful Black professionals and their families who were building a supportive and safe community. The area was destroyed by the City and the people living there forced to move because of the building of Central Park. There is a small sign in the Park I never noticed before, but now I see it every time I pass.

We had another book talk as well. A college classmate, a highly regarded, award winning and impressively prolific writer, teacher and blogger, Sophfronia Scott, who read for us from her newly published biography of Thomas Merton, a modern monk who left an impression on the Christian cannon, “The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton.” She talked about his life and philosophy and engaged us in a dynamic conversation where we were encouraged to find analogies to other thought makers (Leonard Cohen among them) and inspirations and connections to our own lives. Interesting especially since we are a motley crew of different faiths and backgrounds. And then of course we chatted.

Mostly we’ve been having chats. We’re doing a “summer schedule” now of twice a week PareaGrooves, Wednesdays and Sundays, rather than the three times a week Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, we had through the four months prior. Our talks continue to meander through all sorts of life issues, like COVID dating and what we’re watching on television and who’s traveling and how we’re managing the strangeness of post COVID life, as well as updates on what treatments and vaccines are being investigated. Some are still very hesitant to emerge from their homes except for an occasional doctors’ visit, and some of us, myself included, are enjoying the wonderful outdoor life on the streets that has sprouted up, since indoor dining is still prohibited. New York feels almost like a European city with outdoor tables and bar stools spilling into parking spaces, areas which are now protected by low sturdy wooden walls topped with flowers and plants which were built up remarkably quickly. The streets are still relatively quiet, but people are coming back and are out and about. Yet, we’re not back to normal, and there’s still a demand for a regular PareaGroove. Late nights are not encouraged as the police are cracking down on drinking without eating and standing at bar areas and lingering. To combat the crowding in shelters they have moved homeless into hotels in our residential neighborhoods resulting in a dangerous situation as they spill out onto the streets, set up unsightly Hooverville-like encampments, and many now are harassing people who pass or even who are sitting at the restaurants. So for whatever our reasons are for staying inside in the evenings, we’ll continue, and we’ll have speakers, and we’ll chat.

People are emerging from their quarantines into the protests and parks and outside bars and restaurants. We’re gingerly stepping back out, but mostly are retreating back to quarantine isolation after a few hours out. The Zooms continue to be important and they’re proliferating in the offerings of art and talk and otherwise.

PareaGroove has hosted a couple art events in the past week or so, in addition to a few chat-onlies. We had a wonderful demonstration last Saturday by gourmet chocolate maker Andrea Young of Sweet Vegan Chocolate who showed us how to make amazing Belgian style chocolates in an apartment kitchen. We pined a bit that tasting wasn’t possible online. Then on Tuesday a fellow PareaGroover give us a lecture about the abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, along with slides and videos. Zoom seemed to have some new bugs from their latest update which glogged up the presentation a bit, but everyone was patient and together we waded through the screen share confusion and the co-hosting blocks. It was sort of funny. Here we thought we’d gotten this Zoom thing down, but nope, it kept us humble. The show must go on of course, and it eventually did and it was very entertaining.

Prior to the Pandemic I frequently attended art talks a friend gave in his brownstone backyard, weather permitting, and sometimes in his adjoining little apartment. Since I started PareaGroove I have been trying to encourage him to do an art talk for us, but his doctor day job was keeping him too busy and he wasn’t comfortable with the tech (yet). He first did a Skype talk for his friends. Then he ventured into Zoom. He created an event on his own, and last night, Saturday, I successfully wooed him to our PareaGroove fold, which comes with my Zoom subscription allowing a longer talk. So, last night we were treated to a well researched and detailed talk about Christo and Jeane-Claude, of The Gates fame, as they were both born on June 13. We talked about other partnered artist pairs like Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner and Marina Abramovic and her former partner Ulay who showed up at her MOMA installation twenty years after dumping her for her translator. We on the call diverged into our feelings about Ulay’s seeming ambush, and at her work place. Her work place! Yes, some of us did not respond well to her teary response to his ambush and his trouble holding her gaze.

I started the evening, prior to the art talk, with a brief review of the life and poetry of W.B. Yeats, as his birthday was June 13 as well. I was reminded, and inspired, by a wonderful Zoom event I attended the day before in honor of Yeats’ birthday and Bloomsday, honoring James Joyce which is June 16, dubbed “A Transatlantic Celebration of Yeats Day & Bloomsday with the Embassy of Ireland, DC, the Joyce Centre, Dublin & the Yeats Society, Sligo.” The ambassador of Ireland Daniel Mulhall Zoom-moderated from his home along with his wife, both wearing appropriate hats. Readings from “Ulysses” and Yeats’ poetry were Zoomed in from from all over the country and the world. As Joyce references several countries Ambassador Mulhall invited the U.S. Ambassadors from Greece, Italy, Cyprus, France and Germany to all read portions of the book, which was especially fun when Joyce wrote bits in their language, especially in French and Italian. Margaret Brennan of “Face the Nation” chose to read Yeats’ Second Coming, which I found highly prescient and appropriate and in that instance I was inspired to do the same for my group. Mayor Pete Buttiegieg also read a portion of “Ulysses,” one that describes a river as he lives near a river in Indiana. So, all this inspired me to do my own little art talk. I Wikipedia’d Yeats’ life, focused on some of the more interesting, maybe more provocative highlights, and read four poems, “A Young Man’s Song,” “Leda and the Swan,” “Death,” and of course “Second Coming.” Interestingly people were more interested in talking about the “brown penny” in “A Young Man’s Song” rather than the more challenging issues of rape in “Leda,” our understanding of death in “Death,” or the seeming descent into anarchy we’ve been enjoying lately of which “Second Coming” well describes.

This week I also enjoyed another Zoom theater event, again by the Theater of War production company. It was Thursday when I generally do a Zoom, but I did only an hour of it in order to get to watch the show. They did bits from “King Lear,” again, really well performed, and then afterward they had a discussion about what this brought up for people. As the moderator noted, this Zoom format, and maybe this time we’re experiencing, inspired more personal, heartfelt shares about caring for elderly, being alone as an elder, and dealing with difficult relatives as they age. One very dynamic older lady discussed how she lost several people during the pandemic, and during her life, and she finds herself alone in her quarantine, leaning on her Zoom church meetings. Another young woman talked about caring for her ninety-three year old grandmother along with you five-year old son while simultaneously working in health care. Another, a Native American woman, talked about how her culture, which traditionally honors elders, is dealing with all this, and one of the last comments came from a New Yorker talking about dealing with the aging and death of a difficult relative, and a Holocaust survivor, drawing attention to that aspect of King Lear, that he certainly didn’t make things easy on his daughters. Again, a delightful surprise, I hadn’t expected to come away with the depth of these heart openings on top of some wonderful theater.