This cute cat is being walked outside on a leash.

New Orleans

Blue sky of Greenwich Village

Washington Square Park

Springtime for Brooklyn....

"The Boys" enjoying the first rays of sunshine in days.

Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn after the Nor'easter this morning.

In Great Barrington, Mass.

..with a little ZipCar Mazda 3...

We were about 150 miles north of New York...

Dinner party in honor of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center

for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, March 22, 2007

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at The Elizabeth A. Sackler

Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, March 22, 2007

John Ameachi at the NLGJA event last night

Happy Napping

Superheroine, where are you?

“Javits Center!” the M34 bus driver shouted into the microphone just before 4PM, on February 23rd, a Friday afternoon. “Join the line and enjoy yourself,” he said and his tone was unmistakably sarcastic.

The line of ticket holders, most of whom bought there tickets online in advance to forgo long lines like this one, was stretching around the block. In the cold wind, some of them were shivering in a single T-shirt, always black with some super hero printed on the front.

Inside, on three floors, the Comic Con Show, only the second of its kind in New York City, welcomed the first few hundreds of visitors on the first half day of the weekend- long program.

On Level 3, the exhibit floor, where 140 vendors offered their merchandise, a small being with green head and long green hands chased a boy about seven years old. The boy fought back with a laser sword. When another green headed being appeared, the boy ran to his father screaming “Damn, there are more of them!”

In what seemed like a paradise of commerce and consumerism, a few vendors and visitors stood out.

In the back, near the food stands, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, a Californian in her later thirties, exhibited her watercolors called Fantasy Art. The prints varied from Tarot cards to fairies, all gentle and subtle in details. She already sold out several $10 and $15 pieces, like the Empress card. “There is a lot of cross-over between comics and what I do,” she said. “I do a lot of comic conventions all over the country, and I have family in New York, so this way, I can combine business with pleasure.”

At the Atomic Comics booth, people in bright yellow overalls with symbols of radioactivity on their chests talked to visitors in such a nice and sincere way that it was clear – they were not from New York. “We are a bit sleep deprived,” Lou Louis, said noting that her parents had fun giving her her first name. “We drove out here in three days from Phoenix, Arizona in our mobile comic van. It’s the first of its kind!”

Lou had a great time on Thursday being a tourist in New York, riding the subway, visiting China Town, Ground Zero, The Empire State Building, and of course, Midtown Comics. “It was my dream to go to that store. It’s like the biggest comic store ever!” she said.

Atomic Comics was established 20 years ago by Mike Malve who is proud to be present with his booth at every comic convention in the country and with his new mobile comic van all over Phoenix. (He also likes to mention that he knows Steven Colbert.)

Robert Wilman, an Atomic Comic employee of five years answered countless questions in front of the van. “The van can get comics to people who otherwise would not be interested,” he said. “We go to air force bases, mall parking lots and schools,” he said. “Over the summer, we go to classrooms to tell the kids about the history of gaming and comics. People love the van!”

To the left, past countless commercial booths, the Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company presented one of its shows, Living Dead in Denmark, on a flat screen TV. The play was a parody of comic characters with Asian martial arts incorporated in the scenes. This small, five years old, Manhattan based non-profit alternative theatre company was able to afford the $1800, six-foot long stand only due to a generous donor.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to be here, to get out name out here, get people know who we are” Abby Markus, the young and vibrant managing director, said. “This is our target audience and if five more people come to see our show as a result of this booth, we had a successful weekend.”

Michael Timko, an overweight forty-something bald man stoped at the booth. “This is the coolest name I’ve seen here,” he said with enthusiasm. “I just saw a similar show a few weeks ago. Let me get your card, I love this stuff!” he said to Markus who talked him into filling out a form to win free tickets.

Near the level entrance, across from a few people playing card games, Claire Nelson, of California, sat on the floor, resting.

“This is my first time in New York; my friend talked me into coming,” she said. “I got a bit tired because we’ve been running around the city all day before coming here. But to be honest, the San Diego show is much better. It’s bigger and there are more previews of movies and shows with actors and artists talking to the audience.”

In the middle of the floor, Wendy Kelman, the executive director of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, dressed in a dark business suit, was not tired at all. Everyone, who stopped by the Museum’s showcase – and many did – received from her a poster, a brochure and even a map of Baltimore, where the museum is, with its location clearly marked. “It’s only four hours by car from here,” she said energetically.

“The older you are, the more you get out of it,” said of the museum that opened last September, Patricia Moore, sales and marketing representative. “We’ve got things that go back to the middle 1700s. You can follow the history of pop culture with us.”

Around 7 PM, at the $2 coat check, Frank Giella, waited for his coat with son James, 9. He was happy with his visit. “It’s bigger than last year and there is more comic related stuff, not just mass media. I like that,” he said. His son James liked his bag full of free give-aways. “They are trying to get kids back to collecting habits.”

Carlos Santofimia and his son Bastian, 8, from Florida, waited for the bus outside the Center. “I must tell you I was very disappointed in the organizers,” he said with a tick Spanish accent. “I bought the tickets online for both days for both of us and then I come here, wait in the line for an hour in the cold and learn that my son didn’t even need a ticket.”

A native of Madrid, Spain, this single dad did not really mind the inconvenience. “I think he has talent. He is eight now. I want him to be exposed to the best and here he can meet the artists and get some collectibles.”

“I hope it was worth it, Bastian!” Santofimia said looking at his son with a loving smile.

Empire State Building on March 1st, 2007

Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Notes on a Scandal

Obsession is sweet, especially when surrounded by secrecy. A secret object of desire makes a lonely life more interesting, fills it with action, drama and emotions.

When the young, beautiful, insecure and somewhat confused Sheba (Cate Blanchett) arrives as a new art teacher at a high school in a London suburb, the veteran teacher Barbara (Judi Dench) senses a chance. This woman could be the new object of her desire.

As their friendship carefully evolves, Sheba learns to trust Barbara, who buys flowers, gets a new haircut, and puts makeup and fancy clothes on, when she accepts an invitation for a Sunday dinner at Sheba’s.

Not surprisingly, she is bitterly disappointed when Sheba’s husband opens the door. Barbara did not expect a husband, and even less a difficult teenage daughter and a son with Down’s Syndrome.

They are so very different, these two women. Barbara is old, grumpy, lonely, poor and secretive. Sheba is young, elegant, sexy, wealthy and puts her emotions out even when it is to her disadvantage.

Whereas Barbara is closeted even to herself, Sheba is clearly straight and has no problem having sex with a 15-year-old student. He is young, handsome and pushy – a perfect antidote to her older, gentle husband. With this, the ‘scandal’ in Notes on a Scandal begins.

Barbara, like a good stalker, soon finds out about the affair and after her initial shock and anger, she recognizes this as her chance to chain Sheba to herself. Barbara offers empathy, an advice of a mature woman and Sheba promises to end the affair. But the affair does not end and Barbara is not getting what she wants.

She tries to blackmail Sheba into physical and emotional closeness, but Sheba resists. She doesn’t like Barbara’s touch and she put her family first when Barbara comes to her crying after her cat died.

When a colleague, the math teacher Brian, asks Barbara out for lunch only to enquire about Sheba, Barbara cannot contain herself anymore and tells him ‘the secret’: “Sheba likes younger men, you know. Much younger men. You are aware of her unusually close relationship with one of the Year Eleven boys?”

Brian tells the principal, the scandal gets into the tabloids, Sheba is suspended from school, thrown out of her house and lands at Barbara’s, where she finds Barbara’s notebooks. These notebooks contain everything that happened since Sheba entered the school – Barbara’s emotions, her judgmental opinions of colleagues, Sheba’s children, Sheba herself and her betrayal.

At the end of the movie, the principal, who is aware of Barbara’s previous stalking which ended in a restraining order, forces Barbara into early retirement.

Judi Dench does a superb job playing a neglected, narcissistic school teacher, who hates herself more than she hates everybody else in the world. Dench’s posture, her clothes and hair and especially her voice, which narrates throughout the movie in the form of her journal entries, reveal all that we can know about such a pitiful human being.

In an especially telling scene, Dench lies in the bathtub, thinking about the desperation that overcomes a person who hasn’t been touched by another human being for years.

Barbara’s conscious manipulations comes from an unconscious desire to have a companion, to have someone to love who would persuade her that she is desirable and lovable. It is impossible for Barbara to face her own sexuality, to get out of the comfortable and familiar lonely world of notebook entries to the world of real humans.

Blanchett’s Sheba is pitiful in a different way. After years of unfulfilled marriage and burdensome motherhood, she is ready to act on impulse and quickly falls apart under pressure. She trusts the wrong people and instead of getting out, falls deeper into a self-made trap.

Adapted from a novel by Zoe Heller, this movie has the best acting I have seen on screen last year.

Breakfast with Mayor Bloomberg in honor of Women's

History Month

Bohemian National Hall



On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Bohemian National Hall, a big neo-Renaissance building with its freshly renovated off-white façade and the sign Narodni Budova (National Building) proudly announces that the history of Czechs in New York continues.

The building, with its five stories, stands in the middle of the block on East 73rd Street, between Second and First Avenues. Not unlike the Czech state, which needed a full renovation after the fall of Communism, the Hall needed to be partially built anew. Modern conveniences (elevators, air conditioning, bathrooms on each floor) and safety features (wide emergency exit staircases, stronger walls) were added.

The renovation started almost six years ago and still continues, except for the third floor, which has been finished and is already used for gatherings and cultural events. Many of those in any way connected to Czechs or the former Czechoslovakia – about 26 thousand in the city - visit even now, before the end of renovations and the Hall’s official opening.

Near a typical New York parking lot and among typical New York tenement buildings, this impressive structure represents Czechness once again.

Inside, men stand on ladders, a Polish contractor works on wires.

On the third floor, the only floor already in use, two spacious rooms await their admirers. Four red leather chairs sit in front of wide windows, across from the wall covered with shelves of books in Czech and Slovak. The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, who lived in New York, looks down from the wall. A white lime stone fire place rescued from his former home sits in between two desks.

Everything smells of paint. The carpets and the doors, all new, so far almost untouched, wait for a history of their own.

Above, on the fifth floor, the great Ball Room is in ruins. Bare red brick walls surround the huge empty space, which once saw great theatrical productions. If the floor could talk, it would tell about balls, weddings and parties with music and dance. Now there is silence. A century is soaked into this structure, with both fame and decline. It is dark inside, only the construction worker’s bright light disturbs the heaviness, as if the old building decided to close its eyes and reminisce.

“The symbols of our presence in New York are disappearing,” Halka Kaiserova, the counsel general of the Czech Republic said. “Antonin Dvorak’s house, in which he wrote his symphony ‘From The New World’, was demolished. The Bohemian Hall was on the verge of disappearing as well and our government thought it was worth saving.”

Czechs and Slovaks began their emigration to New York in the 1870s; that influx peaked at the turn of the century. By that time, about 30,000 Bohemians lived on the Upper East Side, in Little Bohemia, located between 65th and 78th Streets.

Looking for places that would preserve their history and culture, the various organizations and clubs serving Czechs and Slovaks (under the umbrella name Bohemian Benevolent Literary Association) built the National Hall, at 321-323 East 73rd Street. The building opened in 1896, the ground floor with a restaurant and bar, the upper floors offered club rooms, a theater and a ballroom.

By the 1960s, the Czechs and Slovaks had moved to other parts of New York, mostly Queens and the building was used as a theatre and private studios. Liza Minelli, among others, performed in the building. By the late 1980s, rumor of demolition spread among the expatriates.

The Czech government negotiated with the umbrella of Czech organizations, buying the building in 2001 for $1, renovating it and selling the third floor back to the NGOs for $1.

Because of some unforeseen hurdles, such as the oil leak in the basement and asbestos removal, the renovation is still in progress. By the project’s completion, planned for the fall of next year, its final cost is estimated to reach $30 million.

“Everybody loves to come here – it’s a beautiful building and I am very pleased with the work done on the third floor,” said Jan Hird Pokorny, the 95-year old architect who prepared plans for façade renovation and who came to New York in 1940.

“The guests are a mixture of new and old immigrants, Czechs and Slovaks,” Pokorny, who participates on most events in the building, added. He is happy that the building functions even while the reconstruction is still continuing.

“About half of our visitors so far were American,” Pavel Semerak, who oversees the reconstruction on behalf of the Czech government, said. “For our Christmas show, Bethlehem, we had a full house four times, including a public rehearsal. We only had 120 helmets, which limited the number of visitors we could allow at any one time.” Visitors had to use helmets because this part of the building is still under construction.

The former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, celebrated his 70th birthday here in 2006; a festival of his plays began on the same day at the Bohemian National Hall. Tom Stoppard, the British playwright of Czech origin joined Havel in December to see the story of Bethlehem, in which the building played a very important role: scenes were staged on every floor, including the roof.

“The new mission of this building is to be a showcase for the Czech Republic,” said Margita Fuchsova, director of the Bohemian National Hall. “The Czech Consulate, the Czech Center and civic organizations will occupy this space, but we envision it as a place of intersection of European and American cultures. Our National Hall lives again!”

I volunteered at this wonderful event - celebrating truly
great journalism!

Albuquerque Airport, New Mexico

F.

I sat on a bench at the Ferihegy airport in Budapest talking to a young woman from London when I spotted him. He was pushing his way through to the front of the very long check-in line at the gate. I knew he had a business class ticket, he told me repeatedly that he only travels business, and when I saw the nice looking woman with him, I immediately thought that he got himself an older girlfriend.

Four years passed since I saw F.. He was in his late 70s then and had trouble with his lower back after a terrible skiing accident. Several operations later, he still could not sit still for a long time and had trouble walking. Now, in Budapest, he used a cane and I realized only much later, in the airplane, that the woman with him is probably his wife, who I never saw before, not even on a picture.

F. was recommended to me when I moved to New York. I wrote to him. We met on Park Avenue, close to his apartment on a weekday morning, in a small café. He sat outside, frail and skinny, rather short, as Hungarian men often are, with his white hair combed back and a cigarette trembling in his hand. He wore glasses. His profile was sharp. His nose came out of his face in an arrogant, aggressive way. This profile and the funny walk was how I recognized him instantly at the airport.

He still lives, I thought.

At first, F. was helping me make my CV look more suited for potential American employers. Later, he became a sort of a consultant in every area of life. I liked spending time with him, because he was very knowledgeable in politics and history, and all things US. Or so I thought at the time. He used to work for the CIA, spying on the Communist government, he said, and showed me documents supporting this claim. His brother was a famous inventor and the Times ran an obit on him when he died – I looked it up online; it was true.

F. was born in Budapest and went to schools there. He fled in 1956. His diploma in economics helped him get a job in a company that specialized in building industrial parks in the developing world. F. spent many years in these countries before he joined his father in New York in the 1970s. His first wife died in a car accident and he met his second in Manhattan. He got a corporate job and never missed a day of work, he said often with pride. He had enough money to retire and considered himself successful. “I write you letters of recommendation, if you want. My Park Avenue address will impress people,” he said early in our friendship.

It should have been a warning, when on our second meeting, he said: “I think you should change your name into something more American.” I didn’t pay attention at first, but later I realized that F.’ father was Jewish and F. was bothered by the fact that some might consider him a Jew too.

Now I know that not only has he been anti-Semitic, but also racist, sexist and homophobic. We walked through Washington Square Park one afternoon, when F. referred to leftist demonstrators from a few days ago as “a bunch of hooligans”. He thought blacks lazy but had respect for Asians as they were hard-working. When I explained that the red ribbon on my coat collar shows support to those with HIV/AIDS, he said I should take it off.

When we first met, Irina, F.’ girlfriend of a few months just broke up with him. She was a 35 years old Russian, who supported her family in Russia and needed a green card. “I can’t do it to my wife. I owe her so much,” F. said when I asked why he does not marry Irina. He would often dial the number of the guy Irina now lived with, and hang up, just to hear her voice.
Except when he was away, we met once a week. He treated me to a lunch and we sat somewhere and talked or he showed me something interesting in the city. In about four months into our friendship, I felt sick on the day we were supposed to meet. When I email him, canceling our meeting, he called immediately and said he would come over. I said no. He would not take no for an answer again, when I declined his invitation to the Metropolitan Opera.

In some way, F. was certain that I will be his new Irina. It did not matter that I explained very clearly at the beginning – I will never be his lover. He wanted to give me gifts, later he offered to “help me with my rent” or my tuition for a kiss or something more, but I always said no. Once he described to me how he and Irina used to make love in his son’s office, on the floor, which I took as a hint and started loosening my ties with him.

I started feeling uneasy around him. He wanted to control my life. He expected me to follow his every advice even when he was wrong. He insisted that the word “cleanliness” does not exist in English. He insisted on many things I knew were incorrect and he would never admit that he was wrong. I stopped returning his calls and after a while he stopped emailing as well.

And there we were - both on the same plane to New York not saying hello to each other. I was tempted to walk up to him and just ask how he was. He had obviously a hard time walking and his eye sight seemed worse too, but he was out and about just as well. I looked at his wife, a kind looking woman in her 70s and wondered if F. has a new, young girlfriend. I am glad I don’t know the answer, and I am glad it’s not me.

Mandala, Santa Fe, December 31st, 2006

Kristina

It was a very small place with a few tables upstairs and only two bar tables downstairs by the counter. We liked it there very much. It was one of the first places in Budapest, right next door to the arts academy, where lesbians, gays, actors, singers and dancers would come in to have a drink, a salad or a pizza. There were famous TV faces sitting next to unemployed under-aged runaways, next to future stars of Hungarian theatre. The Club 93 Pizzeria, the official name of the place, was owned by three gay guys. One of them, Misi, was an always smiling optimistic man in his 40s who competed, quite successfully in ballroom dancing, and waited tables regularly. He knew us all by fist name.

Kristina was one of the regular waiters in the Club, but she was much more than just a waitress. When she was there, she was in charge not only of the kitchen and the tables, but also, it seemed, of the guests.

The restaurant opened at noon. Kristina would come two minutes before noon, change quickly in the small room downstairs into a clingy white T-Shirt, black mini skirt and black shoes. Her hair was light brown with blond highlights, wavy with lots of hairspray in it. She used makeup at all times, but not excessively. She went to the tanning salon every week, and always looked like someone who just returned from an exotic vacation, but it also made people speculate about her being Roma. Her light green eyes and her professional smile were ready for the costumers at about 12.15.

Kristina knew she was very sexy and made great advantage of it. Both men and women tippet her gladly for she made them feel special. Guests who came in the Club just for her, sat at the counter. There were three seats, at other times empty, but when Kristina was there, they were taken, sometimes by the same people, for hours. She liked to entertain them, play music for them, dance to the music when downstairs was not crowded and to flirt.

At busy nights, and weekend afternoons, there were two waiters taking care of costumers. Kristina would take the upstairs tables, so she could get away from the other waiter and the kitchen and talk to her friends. She had many friends she liked to talk to. Time was not of great concern of hers, neither were hungry costumers, who, if they came at the wrong time, waited for their orders forever. The cook, Magdika, would sometimes lose her patience, and come look for Kristina or simply shut the music and scream Kristina’s name as long as it took for her to come down. Even in this case, Kristina made sure her descending the spiral staircase was something that turned all heads. Magdika, a plump woman in her late 50s, was not very fond of Kristina. She did not approve of the loud music, of the dancing, joking and above all, flirting with guests of either gender. Magdika also resented Kristina for her big tips and her refusing to take a burned pizza to a costumer. In the kitchen, Magdika was the boss. Or so she thought.

After moving to Budapest from a small eastern village at age 24, Kristina moved in with her boyfriend, Peti, only a few weeks into their relationship. Peti was a waiter as well. The two of them worked together for a while at a different restaurant. When the restaurant closed, Kristina came to the Club and Peti was unemployed. He spent his days watching TV, playing video games and, supposedly, looking for a job. But, as Kristina never forgot to mention, he was great in bed.

Many months passed until Kristina realized that she will not be able to support her boyfriend, her disabled younger brother in a special ed school and her mother in the countryside. She moved out and Peti miraculously found a job the week after.

But the relationship was over, mostly because Kristina fell in love with a young woman, Viki, who hung out with her friends at the Club. Falling for the charming waitress who looked a little like Madonna, Viki started going to the club on her own. She started sitting at the counter at lunchtime, when the place was empty, so they can talk. On weekends, she came back at midnight to go with Kristina to a gay club. A few weeks passed and Kristina moved in with Viki.

Being a young professional with a 9-5 job, Viki was quite comfortable in her life. She was out to her family, but not her colleagues, partly because she wanted to progress in her carrier. To be with woman in a relationship was new to Kristina. She had a hard time telling her ex-boyfriend, who she was still friends with and her family, but eventually, she did. She and Viki visited Kristina’s brother often, taking him out for dinner and movies, for which Viki paid. The couple seemed happy.

After a year, Kristina started complaining to her friends in the Club, “Viki is like a zombie. She comes home and sits in front of the TV all the time. She doesn’t want to go anywhere.” Viki started complaining to her friends, “Kristina always wants to go to dance or to dinner or to visit her mother, or movies, but has no money to do all these things. She expects me to pay for everything. I am tired of it!”

There were scenes at the Club. Viki was jealous, Kristina was even more flirtatious. They broke up in the afternoon and got back together by closing time. Due to their schedules, they were hardly ever home at the same time, so their love life happened in the Club. Tears, begging, screaming, dramatic leaving of Viki with Kristina running after her, neglecting her costumers; or Viki coming back the next day with a huge bouquet of flowers – this was our favorite soap opera. It went on for weeks, until one day, Viki did not come, did not call and Kristina did not smile. Viki stopped coming altogether and we, the audience, had to go back to our own pity lives. Until, Kristina’s green eyes fell on another costumer….

69 Fahrenheit today in Brooklyn.

Free Snapple give-away at Columbus Circle

Silly Puppets at X-mas market, 59th Street/Broadway

The signs in the window

Joe's Shoe Repair on 5th Avenue, Brooklyn

Joe’s Shoe Repair Shop


You may just pass by it and never notice that it’s there, unless the “Joes Shoe Repair from Union St/7th Ave” sing is placed on the sidewalk. But the wooden sign, black and red letters on a white board, is so old and weathered that you might easily miss it.

Next to an upscale French restaurant, across the street from a Natural Market on the busily gentrifying 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Joe’s store is like something somebody forgot here from the olden days. The store window’s glass is dirty. The window itself is full of randomly tossed shoes and leather coats. Two signs made on a white paper with three different color crayons are glued on glass: “October 13 2006, Soon we will be closed for renovation. Please pick up shoes promptly.” And: “We will not be held responsible for shoes left after December 22 2006. You must pick up any shoes left over 30 days!” Two plants are hanging from the ceiling, taking over the upper part of the window.

“I like to take it easy. It’s too busy here,” Joe said inside the miniscule store, where, if he wanted to spread his arms, he would almost reach wall-to-wall. But the walls are not visible, because they are covered with shelves and the shelves have mountains of shoes, sneakers, boots and sandals on them. Old sanding machines remind the guest that there is actually work taking place here. Dust covers everything. Its height determines how long nobody touched an object. A narrow path is kept free on the floor for Joe to walk around. The distinctive smell is of old leather.

The L-shaped counter right behind the door holds an ancient metal cash machine, the kind where a $ sign and a number jump up when a key is stricken. It does not give a receipt. Next is a small space on which customers can put the shoes-to-be-repaired. Around the corner is an area blocked by a white plaster panel behind which Joe works.

Across from the counter, a radiator heats up the room quickly, and above it, the wall is covered with souvenirs: A big, framed picture of Jesus Christ. In the corners of the frame is a picture of Joe’s two grandchildren, a girl and a boy; a picture of St. Giovanni; and a picture of Joe on his son’s motorbike. Next is a big wooden frame with a picture of a town in Sicily. Below is a picture of Joe with a group of kids in front of his store.

“It was about eight or ten years ago,” Joe said with a wide gesture of his left hand, while his right was holding a black leather boot. “They wanted to see what I am doing,” Joe said, obviously unimpressed.

Joe is one of the last of his kind. The cobblers, the picture framers, small appliance repair places, barbers, print shops and other one person neighborhood business are leaving the area and are being replaced by restaurants, French pastry shops, fancy coffee shops and upscale clothing stores. In the Park Slope area, Joe and another shoe repair store run by an Asian couple are the last two left.

A man in his 60s, Joe is short, with all white hair and a flirtatious smile. He moved to New York as a young man from Italy and never learned English well.

“I came and did this and that and then someone called me to help with shoe repairs. I did a little bit at the beginning. Then more. And then I took over the store. This was on 7th Avenue. Later, one guy bought half the block and started renovating. When my lease was up, he wanted $1,200 a month and offered me a 3 year lease. This was 18 years ago. I paid $500 before. So I moved here. This was cheap” Joe said while nailing a new heel on a black boot.

A store front rental on 7th Avenue nowadays goes for around $3000. No small business can survive with a rent this high.

5th Avenue started changing about 5 years ago, when many new restaurants opened and received good reviews in local and city papers. The avenue got a new asphalt coat. Dozens of luxury coop and condo houses were built during the recent real estate boom and new, wealthier occupants moved in. They too needed someone to fix their shoes. Joe had no complaints about not having enough costumers.

When he was done with a repair, Joe put the shoe somewhere on a shelf. Some of the shoes had little pink slips attached to them, but he did not put the shoes in any particular order.

A woman in her 40s came in. She had a pink slip. “This is my third time here,” she whispered to me while Joe was looking for her shoes. “He can’t remember anything. I left three pairs here and he couldn’t find them.”

Together, Joe and the woman finally located all three pairs and Joe added up on the old cash machine that she owed him $30. “You are lucky I don’t charge you for the times I came here in vain,” she said to him. “$30 even,” he replied and did not seem to notice that the woman was annoyed.

“They will now renovate this building,” Joe said after the woman left. “If they want a lot more money for rent, I will not take it.”

“I don’t know what I will do. I will retire,” he added. His sons don’t want to take over the business. One of them is a police officer and the other has a college degree. Once his nephew wanted to learn the trade and maybe take over the business, but Joe was the one discouraging him.

“I said, ‘Go do something better. There is no big money in this business. It’s lots of work. Many hours,” Joe explained. “If I have to close, I close. I don’t care. But I can’t stay home. What will I do?” he asked with a mischievous smile.

Sammy

The boys - Sammy and Max

Church on 6th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

Kolot Chayeinu – Voices of our lives

Marcia Bodenstein, a 56 year-old entrepreneur from Brooklyn, was mesmerized by the sight: Hundreds of people lining up in front of a church and around the corner. People didn’t have tickets; everything was orderly and nice. ‘Are these people really waiting for Kol Nidre, (one of the services of the Jewish High Holy Days)?’ she asked herself. It was October 1^st, 2006.

Bodenstein, who grew up in an orthodox Jewish household, in which on Saturdays lights were not switched on and the kitchen was kosher, was used to synagogues where women and men were separated, and people were obliged to buy tickets for High Holy Days, feared God and were isolated. She was 15 when she discovered ham sandwiches and pizza. As an adult, she never went to her old synagogue, except with her widowed father, but kept searching for a more progressive congregation. After finding one that she liked in Manhattan, she realized that it was simply too far from her home in Brooklyn to attend regularly.

At this Kol Nidre service, Bodenstein was surprised to see a woman standing on the podium as a rabbi. Moreover, the cantor was a woman too and the rabbi spoke English. The church was filled with people of all colors and socio-economic backgrounds. There were families with children, singles, straight and gay couples, lesbians, gay men, young and old. As a widow, Bodenstein felt at ease.

About 700 people came for the service that day with Bodenstein, organized by the progressive Jewish congregation in the upscale Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn. The rabbi, Ellen Lippmann, a lesbian married to an Irish woman with whom she has a daughter, created the group Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives after she was ordained in 1991. “Friends kept calling and saying, ‘Why don’t you start something,’” she said.

Lippmann, who was then the East Coast director of the organization MAZON – A Jewish Response to Hunger, invited ten friends for dinner to talk about a possible congregation in early 1993. The discussion continued over the following weeks and by the summer months, a once a month Sabbath dinner and a Saturday morning Torah study group were established. The congregation hired a teacher for the children the same year and for High Holy Days, Kolot welcomed 75 people.

The group started out on folding chairs in Kensington, Brooklyn, later moved to Windsor Terrace, and ended up on 8^th Avenue and 10^th Street in Park Slope, where Kolot rents a meeting and storage space from a black church, which was originally created for former inmates. Its school for children meets once a week at the church and in a synagogue few blocks down on 8^th Avenue.

“I don’t believe in tickets for High Holy Days,” Rabbi Lippmann said. “When the issue comes up, and it does come up regularly as a way to raise money, I always say, ‘You can have tickets, but then you have to look for another rabbi.’ We do ask for contributions, though,” she added.

The other principle on which Kolot Chayeinu was built, is that the group eats first, and then prays. Rabbi Lippmann came up with this idea when she was, as a MAZON director, traveling and giving speeches in synagogues around the U.S. She noticed that people seemed bored and uninterested in the service, but they came alive later when coffee and cake were served. With a reversed order, maybe the energy from socializing would come through to the service, she thought. After months of discussion, the practice was accepted and is appreciated ever since.

“I joined with four other gay men and lesbians who’d been active in AIDS organizing in New York City, and who were interested in turning toward a more formal spiritual learning,” Daniel Wolfe, 45, Deputy Director of OSI’s Harm Reduction program wrote in a recent email. “We met with the Rabbi every week for two years as we worked toward our adult bnai mitzvah. We wanted a bar mitzvah – she wanted a commitment from us all for membership,” he added. He joined the congregation in 2001, became a board member and later chaired the Fundraising Committee.

For Wolfe, it was more important to be in a synagogue which welcomes all people than to be in a gay synagogue. “As a Jew, it was great to see a 70 year old woman from Borough Park who had a completely different experience of Judaism, but who understood through worship at Kolot Chayeinu that both of our lives could be filled with Godliness despite our vast differences,” Wolfe wrote.

Wolfe’s bar mitzvah ceremony was the first occasion when his parents met the parents of his lover of nine years, and his grandmother came to visit the home he shares with his lover.

Lisa Zbar, the 51 year old former Kolot Chayeinu President, a documentary film maker and a mother of two, grew up going to a reform synagogue, still felt left out of Judaism. She knew that she wanted a place where her husband, who is from the Caribbean and who thinks all religion is voodoo, as well as her bi-racial children, would be accepted and could grow.

When in 1995 a friend suggested Kolot, Zbar went to talk to the rabbi and immediately liked what she stood for. “I liked the idea that my children would know all kinds of adults – from single straight people to lesbian couples” she said. Even though Judaism had always spoken to her, Zbar never imagined that going to shul would mean so much to her. She wanted to be on the inside of “this Jewish thing,” she said, and wanted her children to be part of it too. Now she attends Shabbat services with her family. As the media is projecting fear and the country leans towards separatism, Zbar feels that Kolot and her home in which religious practices become cultural ones, are the right antidotes.

Kolot Chayeinu, which now has 230 due-paying members, is a progressive congregation not only because it welcomes all kinds of people, doesn’t charge for High Holy Day tickets and eats before prayer, but also because of what is stated in the group’s mission statement: doubt can be an act of faith.

“Kolot’s members have a wide range of opinions about Israel, God, and doubt can be an act of faith,” Rabbi Lippmann said. In her sermons, the rabbi talks about immigration, hunger, war, social injustice, racial and other discrimination and her own struggle with God. Before the 2006 Rosh Hashanah service began, Rabbi Lippmann made all people who had cell phones send a text message to President Bush with only one word: Darfur.

“A congregation like this lets people live their social agenda through their religion,” Professor Ari Goldman of Columbia School of Journalism and a former New York Times reporter covering religion, said. “It has been a Jewish tradition ever since the Enlightment to reject the constraints of the old and reinterpret them – being Jewish on ones own terms,” he added. This is especially true for those who came from a family where they were exposed to an orthodox variation of Judaism, Goldman said.

It is indeed true for Marcia Bodenstein, who, after the initial first service came back the next day to a service honoring the dead. “We all stood up and said the names of our dead. I said the name of my husband,” Bodenstein said. “Later, a man read the names of all countries that were at war. I felt that my heart was there too, not just my body. I did not look at my watch once. I felt that this is where I belong,” she added.

Havel at Columbia University

My Former President's Presence At My Current School

Halloween

Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum Subway Stop

Lola, Max and Sammy

Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum Subway Station

Brooklyn Farmers Market

Picture Exhibit at Ground Zero, August 2006

Ground Zero, August 2006

9/11 and people on the streets of Brooklyn(School assignment)

Even if they lived outside of New York City at the time, passers by on Brooklyn streets felt their lives influenced by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The six people I interviewed on a rainy day in late August almost five years after the attacks said that the possibility of another terrorist attack was on their minds. But they still felt safe in Fort Greene, the multicultural neighborhood of charming brownstones and abundance of greenery.

“My sister picked up smoking,” said Jeremy Wooster, 19, of Canarsie, when asked about 9/11 and its influence on his life. “She was looking for my brother and me that day and couldn’t find us. She didn’t know what else to do.”

Wooster, now a Bard College student, was attending a high school at the time of the attacks just a few blocks from The World Trade Center. His school was evacuated and after four days off, he and his schoolmates were for a month sharing a high school in Brooklyn. “The Brooklyn kids hated having us there. It was a bad experience. They should have given us more time off,” Wooster said. Now working at the Jewish Heritage Museum, he still visits Ground Zero often and is not happy about what he sees. “The small businesses are all gone. The places we used to go for lunch, they are all gone.”

“Tourists coming to Ground Zero really bother me,” Wooster added.
“It’s a huge graveyard really. Thousands of people are buried there and [tourists] come to take a picture. It angers me. I think it’s creepy.”

Sunny Kim, 30, of the Lower East Side, lived and went to school near Ground Zero in 2001. After September 11, she quit her job and moved out of the city. “There were other reasons for me to leave as well,” she said, smoking a cigarette outside a Laundromat. “I have never been to the site,” Now working as a teacher, Kim said. “I have people who come visit me and they say, ‘Hey, let’s go!’ and I just say, ‘Here is a map, you go.’ I can’t. I just can’t. And I am not a very emotional person.”

Meg Forbes, a retiree of Fort Greene heard about the first plane crash on the radio and thought that it was a “bad joke”. Later, when her sister called, she looked out the window and saw the smoke coming out of the tower. “I sat in my chair and I stayed in that chair until about 6 in the evening. I called everybody I knew,” she said.

Forbes attended a jazz concert at the World Trade Center the Friday before the attacks. “I was looking at all those pretty young girls and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be nice to be this young, work in this beautiful building and make all this money. And look at it now, it’s all gone,” she said. When asked how 9/11 influenced her life, Forbes said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I look out the window and see the empty space where the towers used to be. You wanna know how it influenced my life? I tell you. It made me miserable!”
Despite her strong emotions, Forbes is now able to travel around Downtown Manhattan. “I take the bus and look at the construction from the window. I hear there is an exhibit there now. I decided to go see it,” she said.

The majority of people interviewed expressed that they don’t feel safer seeing police with machine guns around the city and in subway stations. “I think the money spent on manhours of all those cops standing around chatting, could be better used,” Wooster said, adding that another attack on New York City would not surprise him.

In a police precinct in Queens

Would you accept a Roma person for a neighbor?

Anti-rasism campaign in Dunajska Streda, Slovakia.

Fairy Anna

"He..."

Woolf’s Orlando and the Perfomativity of Gender


Orlando, one of its author’s best known works, is considered by some the longest love letter in the history of modern literature. Virginia Woolf, without hiding this fact, based the main character, the noble Orlando, on her lover Vita Sackville West. West’s pictures appear in the original print of the novel as illustrations of Orlando.

“He – for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it – was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters (13).” We meet Orlando, who is a man, in his early adulthood, when, as a noble man, he is introduced to the Queen and wins her attention, followed by many favors, because he is exceptionally beautiful. Just like in the first sentence cited above, Woolf gives frequent references to the body and the clothes in which the body is dressed, when she talks about the sex or in our modern term, gender of her characters.

Early in his life, Orlando is preoccupied with love of literature, especially poetry. Later, he encounters the pains of romantic love between young adults, when he falls in love with the daughter or niece of the Russian ambassador in London. At the beginning, Orlando does not know Sasha’s gender, but feels that he is attracted to her. “… a figure, which, whether boy’s or woman’s, for the loose tunic and trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex, filled him with the highest curiosity. The person, whatever the name or sex, was about middle height, very slenderly fashioned, and dressed entirely in oyster-coloured velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish-coloured fur (37).” In this part of the novel - which might be the only part where Woolf points this out directly - Orlando is scared that the person he finds highly attractive might be a male: “When the boy, for alas, a boy it must be – no woman could skate with such speed and vigour – swept almost on tiptoe past him, Orlando was ready to tear his hair with vexation that the person was of his own sex, and thus all embraces were out of the question (38).” Orlando, with this very simple end of the sentence, fully complies with the conservative tradition of his time and even though he is in despair about the possibility of Sasha being male, it does not cross his mind that love between two males could be acceptable as well.

Unlike Orlando, the character of Archduke Harry is one which does not think that loving another man is a cause not worth pursuing. When he fell in love with the portrait of Orlando, when Orlando was a man, the Archduke, of desperation, dressed as a woman to win Orlando’s love. Orlando flees England partially to get away from the Archdukes Harriet, who is Harry in disguise and they meet again only after Orlando became a woman herself, and came back to England. But Orlando had and has no interest in the Archduke or Archdukes, who as a woman, seemed rather grotesque in appearance to Orlando, suggesting that the Archduke did not perform the role of the female sex with much success. After Lady Orlando declines the Archduke’s marriage offer, he goes back to Romania with another woman.

Orlando undergoes his life altering transformation while being the Queen’s ambassador abroad. He is thirty years old, disappointed and hurt by both poetry and romantic love, lives his life as an important man of wealth when he falls asleep for seven days just to wake up as a woman.

“Orlando has become a woman – there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatsoever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory – but in future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’ and ‘she’ for ‘he’ – her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all.” (138)

Woolf uses the plural “they” to talk about Orlando in changing, as if she suggested that the person is now two people really, one male and one female, in the same body. Lady Orlando lived from this moment on not only with the face, but also with memories of Lord Orlando. With this turn, Woolf takes the opportunity to engage in social critique of the colonial English society of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Orlando, as a woman, questions the society’s attitude towards women, his/her own attitudes towards women in the past and her/his actions based on these attitudes. Similarly to Lord Orlando when it came to poetry and romantic love, Lady Orlando will examine the society with an open mind, just to find that as a woman, more precisely, as an unmarried woman, her status is not comparable with that of the former Lord Orlando and other men of the society.

After her transformation from male to female, Orlando spends time in Turkey among a group of gypsies. Woolf gives her heroine a transitional time to come in terms with what has happened to her. The mental state and the transition itself is helped by clothing, which is gender neutral:

“With some of the guineas left from the sale of the tenth pearl of her string, Orlando had bought herself a complete outfit of such clothes as women then wore, and it was in the dress of a young Englishwoman of rank that she now sat on the deck of the Enamoured Lady. It is a strange fact, but a true one that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought. Perhaps the Turkish trousers, which she had hitherto worn had done something to distract her thought; and the gipsy women, except in one of two important particulars, differ very little from the gypsy men.” (153)


Nonetheless, it seems that Lady Orlando will never forget that she was a man for many years and she will meditate about the importance and the many functions of sexual identity, clothes and gender performance in social life and her own feelings about identity. Woolf gives Orlando the very unusual choice - at least philosophically - to which sex/gender she wants to belong. Knowing now both, Orlando finds herself wanting to be of none.

“And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally, as if she belonged to neither; and indeed, for the time being she seemed to vacillate; she was a man; she was a woman; she knew the secrets, shared the weaknesses or each. It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in. The comfort of ignorance seemed utterly denied her. … Thus it is no great wonder if, as she pitted one sex against the other, and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities, and was not sure to which she belonged – it was no great wonder that she was about to cry out that she would return to Turkey and become a gipsy again…” (158-159)


Orlando was, despite all confusion, very much conscious of her gender and started learning how to perform it correctly. To stress the point, Woolf uses the verb “act” when talking about performing gender roles. One of the first instances when an occasion for this arises is when Archduke Harry unmasks himself to her.
“Recalled thus suddenly to a consciousness of her sex, which she had completely forgotten, and of his, which was now remote enough to be equally upsetting, Orlando felt seized with faintness. … In short, they acted the parts of man and woman for ten minutes with great vigour and then fell into natural discourse.” (178-179)


Other changes in her actions and behavior due to change of sex/gender, as well as comparison of gender appropriate social norms of the times, are illustrated throughout the second half of the novel, like, for example here:
“Some way out of the difficulty there must be, she supposed, but she was still awkward in the arts of her sex, and as she could no longer knock a man over the head or run him through the body with a rapier, she could think of no better method than this.” (182)


In the following longer passage about Orlando’s gender identity Woolf at first states that men and women are different in appearance and in the way they relate to the outside world. However, in the paragraph following, she disagrees with the previous statement. Woolf seem here to strongly suggest that everybody has a part of a woman and a part of man in them and often it is clothes that give the only clear distinction to an outsider, as to what gender a person is. This is, in my opinion, the single most important passage in which Woolf very clearly explains her views on the perfomativity of gender.

“So, having now worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain change was visible in Orlando, which is to be found even in her face. If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that thought both are undoubtedly one and the same person, there are certain changes. The man has his hand free to size his sword; the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same too.

“That is the view of some philosophers and wise ones, but on the whole, we incline to another. The difference between the sexes, is happily, one of great profoundity. Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath. It was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of a woman’s dress and of a woman’s sex. And perhaps in this she was only expressing rather more openly than usual – openness indeed was the soul of her nature – something that happens to most people without being thus plainly expressed. For there again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keeps the male of female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. Of the complications and confusions which thus result every one has had experience; but here we leave the general question and note only the odd effect it had in the particular case of Orlando herself.

“For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and something worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man’s love of power.” (188-189)


It is interesting that when Orlando was a man, at the beginning of the novel, it was clear that he was male. Now, after the change of sex, Orlando does not know who she is in terms of gender – although she knows that she is the same person she always was – and as Woolf puts it “cannot now be decided” what her gender is, even though, she clearly is performing the female gender role. He identity, it seems from this sentence, does not fully agree with the gender performance. Woolf seem to suggest that by achieving a certain age and acquiring certain experiences, Orlando transformed into a woman with the memories and consciousness of both male and female, Orlando’s gender must be ambiguous. As we mature and become more conscious of ourselves and the society which we live in, Woolf implies, we must realize that gender is not one or the other and set in stone.

“Whether, then, Orlando was most man or woman, it is difficult to say and cannot now be decided.” (190)


And to live like she felt on the inside, she used the outside to mirror her feelings, performing both sexes with equal ease. As she was both female and male, Orlando found herself changing sex/gender as frequently as she changed from a dress to a suit.

“Now she opened a cupboard in which hung still many of the clothes she had worn as a young man of fashion, and from among them she chose a black velvet suit richly trimmed with Venetian lace. It was a little out of fashion, indeed, but it fitted her to perfection and dressed in it she looked the very figure of a noble Lord.” (215)

And what is more, when she appeared in public dressed as a man, she was perceived and treated as a man.

“..for a man he was to her…” (216)


Orlando enjoys the advantages of changing identity with the clothes she is wearing, multiplying “pleasure of life” and “love of both sexes equally”, which is the only place the possibility of Orlando’s bisexuality is mentioned. Woolf also gives as a detailed account of Orlando’s day, in which she is a woman or a man, depending of the function she performs and the needs she want fulfill; and something in between or both, when in the privacy of her home, she is wearing a China robe, permissible for both sexes.

“… for her sex changed far more frequently than those who have worn only one se of clothing can conceive; nor can there be any doubt that she reaped a twofold harvest by this device; the pleasures of life were increased and its experiences multiplied. From the probity of breeches she turned to the seductiveness of petticoats and enjoyed the love of both sexes equally.

“So then one may sketch her spending her morning in a China robe of ambiguous gender among her books; then receiving a client of two (for she had many scores of suppliants) in the same garment; then she would take a turn in the garden and clip the nut trees – for which knee breeches were convenient; then she would change into a flowered taffeta which best suited a drive to Richmond and a proposal of marriage from some great nobleman; and so back again to town, where she would don a snuff-coloured gown like a lawyer’s and visit the courts to hear how her cases were doing – for her fortune was wasting hourly and the suits seemed no nearer consummation that they had been a hundred years ago; and so, finally, when night came, she would more often than not become a nobleman complete from head to toe and walk the streets in search of adventure.” (220-221)



Judith Butler writes in Undoing Gender: “Every time I try to write about the body the writing ends up being about language. This is not because I think that the body is reducible to language; it is not. Language emerges from the body, constituting an emission of sorts. The body is that upon which language falters, and the body carries its own signs, its own signifiers, in ways that remain largely unconscious (198).” When Virginia Woolf as a narrator of Orlando, meditates about the body, sex and gender identity of her hero/ine, at the very beginning, she writes about Orlando’s passion for poetry, literature, language. The only thing Orlando carries with her through centuries and on which she constantly works, as her body and the world around her changes, is the manuscript of The Oak Tree, the poem she started writing as a boy in 1586 and finished as a lady three hundred years later. But Woolf makes the point that despite the changes of the body and the language, the person of the writer is the same. “She had been a gloomy boy, in love with death, as boys are; and then she had been amorous and florid; and then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried the drama. Yet through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same (237).”

What is the essence of the sameness which Orlando carries with her through centuries? Woolf does not give an unequivocal answer to this question and maybe there is none (Benhabib 343). Woolf avoids identifying Orlando’s sexuality as bisexual, homo- or heterosexual, leaving open a variety of possibilities for her heroine, who does adjust to societal norms as much as her nature allows, nevertheless knows in her heart that she is always the same person who she was before.

Who is Orlando? Neither a woman, nor a man or both; someone who changes gender identity with her clothes and exists without one when she feels like it? Is that possible? “Gender can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither original nor derived. As credible bearers of those attributes, however, genders can also be rendered thoroughly and radically incredible (Gender Trouble 180).” Woolf does not tell us directly, who Orlando is and from all the clues she gives in the novel, one cannot conclude any one particular, rigid category Orlando could belong to as a gendered, sexual being. Even though some believe that “an ambiguously sexed, gendered, and racialized body is liberatory, because it ruptures dominant codes,” Orlando is far from liberated, trying to pass, get back her privileges and to fit in with the elite (Reed 31). And there is a big difference between culturally and legally sanctioned passing and the one that is not – Orlando could cross-dress and enjoy the love of both sexes, but even she could have not gotten away with wanting to “marry” a woman or wanting legally be a man to be able to marry a woman. “In some cases, cross-dressing may function to consolidate existing power relations, while in other, it may function to disrupt or displace power (Reed 32).” Reed also states that Orlando, the movie, but we might say that the same is true for the book, “examines the (visual) production of reality and questions the (non)correspondence between vision and knowledge in term of the ‘truths’ of sex and gender” (34). In the movie, Queen Elizabeth is played by a man (Quentin Crisp), though detected only by those who know this fact already, a song at the very beginning is song by the British techno-pop singer Jimmy Sommerville, and Orlando himself, is played by Tilda Swinton. Nonetheless, we couldn’t have imagined a better casting. The movie, as Reed points out, goes in great lengths to show how both genders, male and female are based on “manufacturing for public display” (34): “Men, including Orlando, dress and undress, don wigs, primp, and preen…Later, Orlando (as a woman) is fit into a very tight corset and secured with heavy string, her breasts crampingly bound and lifted. Such a juxtaposition present both masculinity and femininity each as elaborate productions of the body that require much effort, and actual work, to maintain (34).” By the end of the movie, the evolved Orlando has an androgynous look – she is a modern woman, who arrived at a state of sameness, as opposed to difference and the movie, as Reed points out, promotes this “naturalized androgyny” as it “denounces the polarities of masculine and feminine tout court without commentary about how these gendered positions – including the mediating term ‘androgyny’ (understood to be a ‘mixed’ and ‘neutral’ position between masculinity and femininity) – function politically and contextually (35).” Reed concludes her article by critiquing among other movies also Orlando for functioning within the dualistic thought of female/male, even if they present a space between the polar opposites, and are therefore “reinforcing existing social relations and cannot function as an ideal end point for a feminist politics” (36).
Gender is performance, Butler insists, a socially constructed one. “That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality (Gender Trouble 180).” It is true that Woolf does not go outside of the heterosexual matrix. She lets Orlando the man, love a woman, even though a man is also in love with Orlando at the time. Lady Orlando, though, in the nineteenth century, realizes the need for a husband and marriage. She meets an unusual man, one that comes and goes according to how the wind blows and who suspects Orlando to be a man (252).

Orlando and Shelmerdine are queer, but what does this mean in terms of their gender? They both perform, for reasons stated below, their particular gender, by which they confirm that the only way to be – even be queer – is to accept the male/female binary. It is surprising, as Biddy Martin points out, that “feminists have reduced the possibilities of gender to just two, that is, men and women, gender has come to do the work of stabilizing and universalizing binary opposition at other levels, including male and female sexuality, the work that the assumption of biological sex differences once did” (104). But some feminists feel constrained by defining women only as other than men and welcomed queer theory as relief from this category. However, Martin argues that “lesbian and gay work fails at time to realize its potential for reconceptualizing the complexities of identity and social relations…” and as Orlando, some queer thinkers rebel “against the normalizing constraints of conventional femininity”, which can easily lead to invisibility (105). Martin emphasizes that “subordination of women does not follow simply from the failure to conform to convention, but also from the performance or embodiment of it” (106).

If Orlando wants to fit in the heterosexual middle class white English society, she must perform all aspects of her gender. Through her gender performance, she must provide the society with proof of her racial, social and national character.
Nationalism, heterosexism, classism, and racism all appear as a subject in Orlando. Feminists like Jaime Hovey are very sensitive to the fact that “Orlando critiques whiteness and heterosexuality ambivalently and unevenly; it uses racially and sexually ‘foreign’ subject to explore the ambiguous national and social identity of a queerly gendered white Englishwoman, excluded from the nation by her polymorphous sexuality” (398). Moreover, Hovey speculates, Woolf lets Orlando “pass as respectable and heterosexual, by displacing her transgressive sexuality onto racial others” (398) and Woolf uses humor and sarcasm to undermine the masculine imperialistic identity of Orlando, which, she insists in the first paragraph of the novel, is without a doubt.


Through gender and the fluidity of Orlando’s gender identity, Woolf ridicules the compulsory heterosexuality by, on the one hand, giving Orlando the desire for a husband, and describing it as an unhealthy neurotic mania, on the other. Orlando enters into her marriage for pragmatic reasons: establishing her national and class legitimacy and restoring her status, land, and titles (Hovey 400). It is the honesty with which Orlando and Shelmerdine share their cultural values, “homosexual, interracial, and cross-class sexual taste” that brings their gender in doubt (Hovey 402). It is in 1928, when women in England, regardless of marital status were granted the right to vote. In this context, Hovey implies, “Orlando slyly invites readers to unmask the ‘joking’ terms under which femininity is produced – as gender identities are often, if not always, produced – as both an adaptation and a contestation of the constraints of national, racial, and sexual inclusion” (403).

Identity is the effect of performance, if, as did Bell, we consider performance as Butler analyzed it in Gender Trouble (3). Thus, it is possible that Orlando, in her transitional period with the gypsies, was not a “woman” yet, and only when she took on the clothes and manners of the women of her time, could she take on the identity of a lady as well. Orlando makes herself visible as a woman, even though, she merely passes as one yet and passing “is a mobile encounter that is not to be collapsed into a becoming, since the one does not become the other: there are two identities mobilized, that which one ‘already has’ and the identity one takes on” (Bell 7). Orlando already had an identity – that of a noble man of privilege - and now must pass as a woman, if she wants to have a similar place in society. “The production of the effect of identity, the effect (and affect) of various models of affiliation, is an embodied process”, Bell writes (8) and we saw that Orlando had to not only learn to wear different clothes, use different gestures and apply different manners from her previous life, but she also had to adjust to a different historical moment with all its technological (the amount of books available), political, commercial, and social realities.



Works Cited

Bell, Vikki. “Perfomativity and Belonging.” Theory, Culture and Society 16
(1999): 1-10.
Benhabib, Seyla. “Sexual Difference and Collective Identities: The New Global
Constellation.” Signs 24 (1999): 335-361.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge, 1999.
Butler, Judith. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Hovey, Jaime. “’Kissing a Negress in the Dark’: Englishness as a Masquerade
in Woolf’s Orlando.” PMLA 112 (1997): 393-404.
Martin, Biddy. “Sexualities without Genders and Other Queer utopias.” Diacritics 24
(1994): 104-121.
Reed, Lori. “Skin Cells: On the Limits of Gender-Bending and Bodily Transgression in
Film and Culture.” Educational Researcher 26 (1997): 30-36.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harc

Big Sky in Pecos, New Mexico

Sammy complaining

Charlotte Joy