still tired after....

two days work at Friends, with two more coming up. Also, a lot of sessions, which I did not expect.
Hardly remember what I did this weekend, after last post, but will try
 Saturday: after leaving library attended my friend Liz' open studio in the Navy Yard. Always interested, Liz's paintings for me are so strong because of her amazing sense of juxtaposition and color. All mostly objects that don't have any connection with each other on the same painting. What is exciting and challenging to me is the way she juxtaposes color so that the viewer is assaulted with complexities. There is a harshness in her work---an unwillingness to reveal itself, that is very challenging. Anyway, I was glad I could visit the studio, after that walked south on one of the Fort Greene streets, my destination: Mullane's a bar where I could watch the first part of the Yankee game. Did so, even if my body was not that hungry for a beer---but strangely, after two innings, I felt restless, and left. What movie for the evening. Well, at BAM, in addition to the normal movies that had just been released, playing was a documentary called "For Akeem". I decided to check that out---it is a riveting documentary about a 16 year old living in a poor area of Saint Louis, who has just been remanded to an alternative school. An interesting school, run almost completely by black educators, who enforce strong discipline on the students, the young woman has some problems adjusting and with her temper, but essentially does well there. At the same time, she becomes pregnant, and decides to keep the baby. The baby arrives in the middle of the movie, and to my surprise, it gives her a purpose and a focus that she did not have before. The movie ends with her graduation in spring 2015; no statement at the end of the film about how things have turned out for her since then--hopefully well, but watching the movie made my sad; the film never tries to sugar coat the young woman's experience. For me it was intense, but I was glad I saw it. Afterwards, pretty tired, I would have liked to go into Junior's for a chicken salad sandwich, but at $11.95, it was, of course, too much. (It really would have been about $13.00, because the tax is never included on a menu), so I went home, and grabbed some chicken at the local supermarket.
   Sunday---really interesting--I attended a rally outside a private house in Flatbush--really a protest and a talk-in---protesting the lack of protection for unregulated tenants living in private houses. In the area where the talk in took place, Flatbush, private home owners are evicting long term tenants, because of the influx of "young professionals" who can pay more then the current tenants. Some of those tenants have been living in those apartments for many years. The discussion that we had, and the information that was shared was for me, invigorating. Several people who live in the area told of older tenants---mostly people of color-leaving and being replaced by younger people. And so it goes. One neighborhood turns after another. One of the guys there who works for a displacement agency seemed almost cavalier as he described how he has moved further and further south in Brooklyn. I was a little disappointed that he did not seem to have a way of fighting this trend, but he did not.
I wish there were more discussions and talk ins with activists then there are now.
  The rest of Sunday was ordinary---I ended the day at South fourth, always a good idea, discussing some football with two guys who live around there. Any yesterday evening, while watching the Yankee game at Wallace's a bar near the library where I tutor, I met two interesting guys, one a teacher at a charter school, and the other a principal at a Catholic school in the Harlem area. Good conversation about the city. But that is all for now--will report again probably on Saturday.