A Young Writer's Diary Entries From Early September, 1984 | Thought Catalog

A Young Writer's Diary Entries From Early September, 1984 | Thought Catalog

Thursday Morning on the Upper West Side: Peter Woytuk's "Falling Apples" at Dante Park

It's a busy fall semester for us, teaching seven classes six days a week at four colleges. Today, for example, we teach a composition class at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus from 8:30 to 9:45 a.m. and then have to get to Hunter College to teach American literature from 11:10 a.m. to 12:25 p.m. (and we later today substituted for a Baruch College professor, teaching some of our favorite Yeats poems from 5:50 to 7:05 p.m.) -- but we stopped in mid-morning on our way to the M66 bus on its crosstown crawl from Broadway through Central Park to the East Side to admire Peter Woytuk's bronze "Falling Apples" at the north apex of the Dante Park triangle.

This is one of many of Peter Woytuk's terrific sculptures being presented by the Broadway Mall Association between Columbus Circle and Harlem.

Thursday Morning at Lincoln Center: Breakfast on the grassy steps of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Lawn

It was sunny and pleasant at Lincoln Center just before 8 a.m. today when we took our oatmeal and iced tea from Starbucks to the grassy steps of the sloping Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Lawn.

The lawn, just south of the new Juilliard School building on Lincoln Center's north plaza, forms the top of a restaurant, Lincoln.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, "It was forced to close just two weeks after opening last June because of mysterious brown spots that turned out to be dehydration caused by irrigation problems. It reopened about a week later and stayed open until November."

They've fixed whatever problems the lawn had, and the grassy steps were lush and so pristine we felt a little guilty sitting on the third step with a police officer or security guard the only other person in the facility. But he just smiled.

The Kentucky bluegrass is held in place by geoweb cells as well as its roots. It may look worse for wear later in the season, but this morning it made for a gorgeous spot to have an al fresco breakfast before giving a final exam at a great metropolitan Jesuit university. We're just sorry we missed the puppets from War Horse, who were around the other day.

Monday Morning at Lincoln Center: Before the Groundbreaking Ceremony at Fordham University

When we arrived at 7:45 a.m. at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus for our morning classes, we saw that things were already in place outside for the groundbreaking ceremony later,

when they'd start the process of building the new home for Fordham Law School and the new undergraduate residence hall.

The red and yellow tulips on the plaza looked especially nice.

We're grateful for the privilege of teaching at Fordham these past five years. It's a really nice place to work.

Thursday Morning in Hoboken: Breakfast at Pier A Park

Usually on Thursday mornings this spring semester, we teach two classes at fantastic Fordham University, but today is Holy Thursday so New York's Jesuit University gives us the day off. It was a perfect sunny morning for a quick ride to Hoboken

to join others with the great idea of having breakfast at beautiful Pier A Park between Sinatra Drive and the mighty Hudson River.

Our PATH train was almost empty except for a middle-aged Asian woman with shopping bags from the Union Square Whole Foods, this gum-chewing young lady who looked at her smartphone

and this guy who picked his nose quite aggressively during the entire ride. He was reading The New Yorker all the while.

We got provisions for breakfast at Chock Full o' Nuts Cafe on the corner of River and First Streets when we got out of the terminal. Across the street there's a Brooklyn Bread place which either is about to open or recently closed.

We love Chock Full o' Nuts -- everyone our age remembers "That Heavenly Feeling" jingle sung by Page Morton Black, the fabulous wife of the company founder --

and who can forget the cream cheese on datenut bread sandwiches you can't get anywhere else?

At the park, it was breezy -- okay, windy -- but not too cold. These guys were practicing soccer on the lawn they had to themselves.

Just outside the terminal is a statue of Sam Sloan, president of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad for 32 years. (He lived in Brooklyn, too.)

The trees were pretty bare at this point in spring. It is spring, right?

We enjoyed walking around the park anyway. It was not raining. We've been teaching Twelfth Night in three classes, and we keep thinking of Feste's final song and the line, "The rain, it raineth every day." Almost.

Some kids were here with their school.

The gazebo, right by the water, must be wonderful in the summer.

According to Wikipedia,

Many people witnessed the September 11, 2001 Attacks from Pier A because it had good views of the World Trade Center. On March 11, 2002 a memorial service was held on Pier A. On September 11, 2003 a section of land was created as a memorial for the September 11, 2001 victims (by planting trees).

Currently, there is a temporary memorial to victims in the form of a tear drop. A permanent memorial, called Hoboken Island, is planned to be built.

A park worker was cleaning up the memorial garden dedicated to the memory of Annette Illing, a Hoboken civic leader who worked on making this waterfront available to all the people, lobbied for open government and advocated for affordable housing in the city.

This is the World War I American Expeditionary Forces Memorial Boulder, honoring the three million troops who embarked from Hoboken to fight in Europe.

We're grateful we got such a nice morning off to have our iced tea and sandwich and walk around Pier A Park.

But it was time for us to get back to New York City. We'll be back in Hoboken when we can.

Early Wednesday Evening in Williamsburg: Sign of Spring? Outdoor Tables at Famous Gyro World on Metropolitan Avenue

We were wearing thermal long johns under our jeans this morning at 7:30 a.m. as we exited the Columbus Circle subway station to go teach one of our favorite novels, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, to the brilliant students in our Texts and Contexts: Cold War Literature class at Fordham University at Lincoln Center. The CNN sign said it was 20 degrees and the wind-chill factor was probably about 12 degrees, so today still feels like the heart of winter to us.

One of our students walked in singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside." We asked him how he knew that song, and he said, "My parents are very old. My father will be 60 in June." When we mentioned his teacher would also be 60 in June, he said, "I meant to say my parents are very young." (Happy 80th birthday today, Mom!) Anyway, we old people OG types seem to feel the cold more sharply than the young'uns.

So we probably shouldn't have been surprised when we ventured out just before 6 p.m. to get some yams (one garnet, one jewel) for dinner at Sunac -- unlike Ellison's IM ("I yam what I yam"), we don't have Petie Wheatstraw on the street selling down-home sweet potatoes -- when we passed Famous Gyro World on Metropolitan Avenue near the L train entrance and saw two tables outside, each with a glass of water and a straw. We wondered who'd be crazy enough to think anyone would sit outside eating souvlaki or a gyro in this cold. Sidewalk tables are for spring, after all.

So a few minutes later, one old man was surprised to see that on his way back from the supermarket, someone was sitting at the outside table with his gyro and drink. Maybe spring will be here sooner than we think.

Forty Years Ago Today in Brooklyn: May 6, 1970: Brooklyn College reacts to Kent State

From our diary:

Wednesday, May 6, 1970

A cold, hairy day. I relaxed for a change this morning. I did pass by Midwood [High School, our alma mater], which was on strike. When I did get on campus after 2 p.m., I went to the office and did some work. We'll have to postpone, or as things turned out, cancel the elections.

Paul and I went to a crammed meeting of concerned faculty who voted to strike indefinitely. The black and Puerto Rican students want the school kept open, however.

I was in the liberated President's office when a bomb threat call was received, and Boylan Hall was evacuated. Meeting were held everywhere: Student Government in SUBO, strike steering committee at Whitman, blacks at Roosevelt.

Kneller called the Concerned teachers "unrepresentative" but called off classes for the rest of the week. We had to lock our office so that it won't be taken over.

Things are pretty confused. Strikes are going on all over the country and there's a Washington demonstration scheduled for this weekend. Various people around the campus that I've been speaking to - Richard Pontone, Esther, Mitch and others - are not sure of what's happening, and neither am I.

Dad's Bronx store [on Fordham Road] was closed due to the Fordham demonstrations.

The New York Times the next day featured a story by McCandlish Phillips, "City High Schools Join in Protests," which began

Demonstrations, protests and boycotts hit at least 20 of the city's 90 public high schools yesterday.

Thousands of students reacted with anguish or anger to the military sweep into Cambodia and to the deaths of four Kent State University students, shot by National Guardsmen at the school on Monday. . .

High schools situated near college campuses were the most heavily affected. . . Lines of pickets from Brooklyn College formed outside Midwood High School in Brooklyn, affecting attendance there. About 1,500 students from Brooklyn Technical High School went to the Long Island University auditorium on the downtown Brooklyn campus, at the invitation of L.I.U. students.

Best Sellers reviews Richard Grayson's LINCOLN'S DOCTOR'S DOG

The May 1982 issue of Best Sellers has a page 47 review of Richard Grayson's Lincoln's Doctor's Dog:

Grayson, Richard
Lincoln's Doctor's Dog & Other Stories
White Ewe Press (PO Box 996, Adelphi, Md. 20783),
187p., $11.95

Despite my initial reservations regarding this volume when it reached me, I must confess I like Richard Grayson and his work. Yes, we are told that Grayson labored as a messenger at the Village Voice, a clerk at the Brooklyn Public Library, a delivery man for the Midtown Florist and the Canarsie Laundry; but Richard Grayson is a writer, currently transplanted to Broward Community College in Florida, but still a writer whose With Hitler in New York caused Rolling Stone to map it as the place "where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy."

These twenty-two fictions display a versatility which commands attention. And they are very much in the American grain -- that vein of autobiography which has been a constant from the beginning of our literary history down to the confessional mode of the recent mode of the recent past. The title tale, which is certainly captivating, pretends to be the biography of Lincoln's doctor's puppy who grows up to be elected to a state governorship and achieves fame as a lecturer. Grayson can parody human excess and human frailty, parent-child relationships, and recreate a 1960s scene with poignancy. There is even a dazzling memoir of George Washington's step-granddaughter. And in "Diarrhea of a Writer," Grayson exposes that pride and pain which are the nutrients of a writer's growth. The questions he wanted to ask Saul Bellow: "Did you ever doubt yourself? How do you know when you've written something important? Did you ever want to give up?" -- these all fade when the Nobel Laureate tells Grayson, "I'll look for you."

Richard Grayson has been found, at least by this reader, and found-out, too. From the evidence he is serious and comic, charming, given to outrageous puns, and a sharp-eyed observer of and participant in life's absudities. Permit me one academic correction -- it is Edwin (not Edward) Arlington Robinson, as found on page 75.

NICHOLAS J. LOPRETE, JR., specializes in American fiction at Fordham University, Bronx, New York.