Celebrating Community
’Tis the season—to get lots and lots of packages! Before you flatten the boxes to put out with your recycling, consider transforming them into holiday crafts. Here’s a step-by-step guide to turn empty cardboard boxes into festive gingerbread houses. Choose your box. For this project, look for boxes that already resemble the shape of a house. Think rectangular rather than […]
The idea of the “star,” a celebrated and famous performer, isn’t new in and of itself. It goes back at least to the career of pianist Franz Liszt, who in the mid-19th century caused such public sensations during his European tours that he begat a new word, “Lisztomania.” And before Lady Gaga and even Barbra Streisand, there was the first, […]
I’ve known Louie Gasparro for over forty years. We both grew up in Long Island City, Queens. In my earliest memory of Louie, he is wearing a red pinstripe baseball uniform. We were both about eleven at the time. “Who’s that kid?” I ask my best friend, Lan. Louie looked like a jock. “That’s Louie Gasparro. That kid does it […]
Art that endures is art that evolves, that speaks to us across time and experience, that fully reveals itself only when we mature into its sensibilities. As Anthony Lane wrote in 2012, “The Portrait of a Lady that I read in my late teens bears the scantest relation to The Portrait of a Lady that I read today.” A book […]
To be an F-boy or a Trife-gyaal So what the heck is an F-boy or Trife-gyaal? Pronounced, [eff- boy] and [try-ff-guh-yaal], shortened versions of, F*ck Boy and Trifling Girl. How do either of these terms impact your fall/winter? Ladies, gents and distinguished non-binaries, you’re about to find out. An F-boy and their Trife-gyaal counterpart are creatures that live all over […]
Italian linguistic scholars were caught off guard by a wave of criticism of the lack of a neutral form in Italian to call non-binary people, who feel discriminated because of it. While a solution to this has not been agreed upon, proposals include the usage of a schwa (a backwards ‘e’)or an asterisk to replace the ending vowel, which for […]
On a cloudy November afternoon, a small crowd gathered at the southeast corner of 7th Avenue and 3rd Street in Park Slope for a street naming event. It was the kind of ceremony I suspect Joe Ferris would have liked. Just family members, close friends and political allies. No press, no podium, no seats, no blocked traffic. Bobby Carroll kicked […]