the weekend (long)

Saturday---came back from my sessions---pooped! Could not do much. All plans for movies or plays scrapped. But did finally eat a nice salad at the hotel bar on 77th and Broadway, while I watched the end of the Knick game. I like that place---lots of energy, even if this time, no conversation. Still, it made me feel vital and alive. Other choices, a few Greek diners that are left (and overpriced ) in the area, would have been cheaper, but I just did not want to sit there. So the hotel was a good choice.
  Sunday---a nice day---as I expected, went to Cobra for the first playoff game---had a chance to read Michelle Alexander's interesting piece on page 1 of the News of the Week in Review. Enjoyed my stay at the bar---some good conversation---afterwards watched the first part of game 2 at La Flaca. The bar was filled at the time I came in, so I sat at a table---very rarely do that, but enjoyed watching the first part of the game. I knew it was all over by the first half, so I stopped off at the newly created big center near the restaurant and had a really nice ice cream cone. The returned home.
  Monday, perhaps the most interesting day of the three.Around 9:30, left the house for Brooklyn to participate in an action against a landlord being cruel to tenants in a changing neighborhood on Dean Street in Crown Heights. Joined the group on this very cold day. We marched (about 20 of us) to the subway and arrived at the landlord's office in about a half hour. On the train, I had an interesting talk with a tenant at another building in the area---who says her landlord withholds heat and installing a new gas line is leaving a forever hole in her kitchen. Disgraceful! For about a half hour in the cold, we marched outside the landlord's office, around Kings Highway and Avenue P. I noticed a few new buildings being built around the neighborhood---I was surprised---I did not think that gentrification was coming this far south. I assume most of these buildings will be market rate. During the march had an interesting conversation with a fellow marcher named Grace. The group returned to the Crown Heights neighborhood---I left them early---got off the Q train at Cortelyou Road. It is right near a school, P.S. 139, that I subbed in from 02 to 04. A very diverse group of students, I really enjoyed my time there---sometimes I miss subbing in the public schools. Hard to believe that my last day there was in November of 04. Seems like a very short time ago. At Cortelyou I grabbed a pizza slice that was really good and then went to the neighborhood Connecticut Muffin for a coffee and (of course) a muffin.
  Still, it was early, so after a stop at the Fiction Center then decided to go to the Film Forum. The movie that I saw there was called Mephisto. Made in 1980, it was about an actor who becomes hot in the early days of Nazi Germany. As the Nazis become more powerful, he is forced to make more compromises in the name of his own survival--so he supports them. His reward is to head the German National Theater in Berlin. But what is the reward worth? The movie unfolds like a garish nightmare--full of amazing off kilter colors. Intense but very glad that I saw it.
  Then I returned home--nothing more to say---will report soon.