Showing posts with label 1970. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1970. Show all posts
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Art Pants Company publishes Richard Grayson's BOY MEETS BROOKLYN
Richard Grayson has been keeping a daily diary compulsively since the summer of 1969, when he was an 18-year-old agoraphobic about to venture out into the world -- or at least the world around him in Brooklyn. His diary, approximately 600 words a day without missing a day since August 1, 1969, now totals over 9 million words, rivaling the longest diaries ever written.
But Grayson is not merely an eccentric with graphomania. His nonfiction has appeared in PEOPLE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, THE SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK POST and numerous other periodicals.
ROLLING STONE called Grayson’s first short story collection, WITH HITLER IN NEW YORK, published in 1979, “where avant-garde fiction goes when it becomes stand-up comedy,” and NEWSDAY said, “The reader is dazzled by the swift, witty goings-on.”
Grayson’s other short story collections have also received acclaim. LIBRARY JOURNAL called LINCOLN’S DOCTOR’S DOG (1982) “excellent” and said of I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ (1983) that “Grayson is a born storyteller and standup talker.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW said Grayson’s I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC (1996) was “entertaining and bizarre” and “consistently, even ingeniously funny.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called Grayson’s THE SILICON VALLEY DIET (2000) “compulsively talky and engagingly disjunctive”; KIRKUS DISCOVERIES termed Grayson “an audacious and wickedly smart comedic writer” in its review of HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES (2005); and THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, reviewing AND TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMER STREET (2006), said, “Grayson has a fresh, funny voice.”
Boy Meets Brooklyn begins in August 1969 and ends on New Year's Day 1971.
Grayson has already published the next six volumes of the diaries of his late teens and twenties as THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, featuring SUMMER IN BROOKLYN: 1969-1975; WINTER IN BROOKLYN: 1972-73; SPRING IN BROOKLYN, 1975; AUTUMN IN BROOKLYN, 1978; MORE SUMMERS IN BROOKLYN: 1976-1979; and A YEAR IN ROCKAWAY, 1980.
The second set of six volumes of his diaries have been published as THE EIGHTIES DIARIES, which include SOUTH FLORIDA WINTERS, 1981-1984; LATE SPRING IN SUNRISE, 1982; WEST SIDE SUMMERS, 1984-1987; INDIAN SUMMER: PARK SLOPE, 1985; SPRINGTIME IN LAUDERHILL, 1986; and EIGHTIES’ END: AUTUMN, 1987-1989.
Five volumes of THE NINETIES DIARIES published include SUMMER IN NEW YORK: 1990, LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY: 1991, FIRST FALL IN GAINESVILLE: 1991, SPRING IN GAINESVILLE: 1992-1994, and AUTUMN IN GAINESVILLE:1994-1996.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Richard Grayson's "BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970" Is #1 Best Seller for Children's 20th-Century American History eBooks at Amazon Kindle Store
Richard Grayson's BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970: Diary of an 18-Year-Old College Freshman is currently the #1 bestseller at the Amazon Kindle Store in the category of Children's Nonfiction Twentieth Century American History eBooks.
BROOKLYN, KENT STATE, MAY 1970 is also currently #3 Kindle ebook bestseller in the category of Childen's eBooks in U.S. History and Historical Fiction and #11 in the category of Biographies and Memoirs of Educators.
Here is the promo material for the ebook, published by Art Pants Company:
In the spring of 1970, college students across the country protested the widening of the Vietnam War after President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. On May 4, National Guardsmen, sent to Ohio's Kent State University to quell a student demonstration, opened fire and killed four students and wounded others. In the nationwide firestorm of campus protest that followed, colleges and universities were shut down as angry students brought a halt to the spring semester with strikes and takeovers of buildings.
Brooklyn College in New York City was no exception, and his account of the day-by-day events at the school, acclaimed author and diarist Richard Grayson (The Brooklyn Diaries, With Hitler in New York, Lincoln's Doctor's Dog), then an 18-year-old freshman, gives a young student's perspective to this scary, exhilarating time in American history.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Friday Afternoon in Williamsburg: After 41+ Years, Watching the Last Episode of "All My Children"
We were 18 years old and in our first semester at Brooklyn College on Thursday, December 11, 1969 when we read this article in The New York Times:
SOCIAL ACTIVISM GRIPS SOAP OPERA
Heroine on Serial on A.B.C. to Be a Mother for Peace
By George Gent
The daytime serial, or soap opera, is in the process of going activist.
Behind the agonized cries emanating from the traditional themes of troubled marriages, misalliances and fortune-hunting males, a soul engagé is apparently struggling to emerge and, if the signs are right, its time may have come.
The latest indication of what may be a trend comes from the American Broadcasting Company, which has announced that it will televise, starting Jan. 5 at 1 P.M., a new daily daytime series entitled "All My Children," whose heroine will be a peace activist married into a wealthy conservative family.
We were then involved in the antiwar movement, having worked in the New York headquarters of the Vietnam Moratorium in October, and active politically as a volunteer in Mayor John Lindsay's re-election on the Liberal Party line a few weeks before. The week All My Children premiered, we were in the viewing audience most days, except when we had our draft physical and French final.
We also loved soap operas, which had gotten us through some hard times in our teenage years and which we'd be watching for the rest of our life.
After a few weeks, All My Children didn't seem all that radical. A Sunday Arts and Leisure article in the Times dealt with the Vietnam War storyline, but clearly the usual soap opera plots held sway in Pine Valley. That was fine with us, too, and we kept watching -- not totally faithfully, but periodically and sporadically, as we moved into our twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.
Wherever we moved to, whatever our problems, we could turn on ABC at 1 p.m. or 12 p.m. or whatever time All My Children was on in that TV market, and we'd see familiar faces from our past.
Now we're 60 years old and All My Children aired its last TV episode this afternoon. (It will reappear next year as an online serial from Prospect Park (a different one than we've been going to since the 1950s).
Heavy rain and an age-related sports injury (torn gluteal muscle) prevented us from getting up to the Upper West Side to Soap Opera Digest columnist Carolyn Hinsey's farewell viewing party at Blondies Sports Bar, just a few blocks from the apartment where we used to watch the show in the 1980s.
But it was nice to see the finale at home by ourselves, the way we usually watched the show.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Tuesday Afternoon at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Hanami - Cherry Blossom Viewing Time
On this gloriously sunny and warm afternoon, we joined hundreds of people for Hanami, the monthlong cherry blossom viewing festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
A gorgeous day coincided with the last day of the Passover/Easter break for public school students, so the crowds were really big.
Everyone, including us (obviously), seemed to be snapping photos.
We heard a lot of Japanese, but also Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, Polish, and other languages.
Prepared to pay the admission fee, we were happily surprised to learn that admission was free to everyone today.
According to Wikipedia,
The Garden has more than 200 cherry trees of forty-two Asian species and cultivated varieties, making it one of the foremost cherry-viewing sites outside of Japan.
The first cherries were planted at the garden after World War I, a gift from the Japanese government.
Each spring at BBG, when the trees are in bloom, a month-long cherry blossom viewing festival called Hanami is held, culminating in a weekend celebration called Sakura Matsuri
which will take place this year on Saturday and Sunday, April 30 and May 1.
Cherry trees are found on the Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk,
in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden,
and in many other locations in the Garden. Depending on weather conditions, the Asian flowering cherries bloom from late March or early April to mid-May.
We've always loved coming to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. When we were teenagers and in our twenties, we especially loved the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden.
Here's a photo we took of our brother Jonathan there back in the summer of 1970.
Here is our then nine-year-old bro in the conservatory among the tropical plants.
And here's a pic he took of us 41 years ago at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, standing next to our favorite beverage, tea.
We're grateful for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden being there for us all our lives.
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