tuesday night...

I sit at the computer and look at google maps browsing through the eastern area of what we call "The South Bronx". I have joined a few groups of former Bronxites, most of them in their seventies or around there---they grew up in all parts of the Bronx, but are no longer there now. Why? Because the Bronx is a different place, dominated by poor people of color. But some posters were talking about a bar on the corner of Westchester Avenue and Simpson Street---where Westchester Avenue veers east and where the 2 train joins Southern Boulevard. Of course the bar is no longer there---when I tutored in the Bronx I would pass this station and see a gigantic Dunkin Donuts on the corner---I guess that is where the bar once was. It is like living in two worlds. What is going on there now, is of little interest to these posters--yet I am hunted by the dis-conjunction of the two worlds. If that was an all Jewish neighborhood, or close, when was the last Beethoven String Quartet played on a phonograph in one of those apartment. 63? 64? I grapple with these questions.
  I stopped tutoring in the Bronx about 8 years ago. Have I even taken the 2 train since? What about returning to Pelham Parkway, my old neighborhood, which is much more mellow then the neighborhood that I have just described. Perhaps when this is over, or close to over, I can do it.
  For two days, I have answered questions that my friend Sarah has posed to me about the history of the theater---50 to now. It has been an invigorating process--I have worked hard to give her a sense of what theater was like during the 50's, 60's, 70's and the next two decades. Sometimes I am amazed at how much knowledge I hold in me. I have e mailed her the answers to her questions; I have two more to go
    Tomorrow is the day that the woman who cleans my apartment (and does a great job) is scheduled to come to clean. But I have not heard from her yet. I wonder if she is okay. My apartment is a mess---definitely in need of a good cleaning--but if she does not come--well we will see.