The Third Eye …

looks back to the future … back to a world that will never be again … and foreshadows a world that is yet to be.

Corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, 1910

 Current day picture of the same corner   

I sometimes go on about the best gifts and the most special moments of my life when someone gave me something that is so-me, I wonder if they did a walk-about in my brain.

That is what my dear friend,  Laura Drake did when she sent me an email with eighteen one-hundred year old black and white photographs.

Today, I will feature seven of those eighteen photographs … those of my beloved city … New York. All the captions under the old photographs were written by Laura in her email.

Anyone out there who is a photography lover, knows that what your naked eye sees is nature’s kaleidoscope. But through the photographer’s eye … what I call The Third Eye …  little compares to the depth of black and white photography.

 View of Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn in 1909. 

 

The Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn side today

Images from another time … 

One of my early memories is of standing in my parent’s room in our cold flat in Sunset Park and wondering what this strange three-sided box attached to the wall might be. It was the big guy’s make-shift dark room, a tiny structure containing his chemical bins, a thin cord tacked across one wall, and two extension cords; one with a 25 wt red bulb that hung inside, and a second with a red Christmas light that hung over the door. No one dare enter when the red tree light was on.

From the age of twelve, until he was almost eighty my brother constructed various types of homemade dark rooms, the last, a darkroom he built in his basement in his Scarsdale home. He gave me my first Brownie Hawkeye when I was seven and taught photography in the high school where he was a math teacher for thirty years.

He fostered the love of photography in several of the children of the family … my daughter catching the bug when she was eight. With a point-and-click Canon I gave her when she went off to summer camp the first time, my baby girl began an odyssey that she continues today.

Purist in the field of photo-art and all photojournalists will attest that even today, with digital available, the old school needs to be taught and revered, and is still considered to be the best way to develop black and white prints.

If you don’t know … photographers never developed their chromes (color shots) … those were sent to a special lab. But all black and white photographs were developed in the seclusion of a dark room.

Fire at 55th Street, New York, 1915

On January 6, 1915, an electrical short in a manhole started a fire that filled the subway line under Broadway at West 55th Street with smoke, resulting in chaos for a quarter-million commuters. The New York Times reported that one person, Ella Grady, was killed. We note that photographer George Grantham Bain, like many of us writing checks just after January 1, was a year off in dating this photo. 5×7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

 

Along that same street today

The passion that drives us …

She rose early, brewed a small pot of espresso coffee, and closed herself in the dark room to work on some of her new negatives. Antoinette loved the colors of darkness, found comfort in their shadows. The thrill of watching an image rise, draped in red light, rising from the primordial soup, a face, a hand, life beginning, images stolen, moments frozen and forever still in her hands. (From Frozen in Black and White)

 Much of what we write when first the need grabs us by the throat … when like a lioness on the kill … her teeth dig deep into the throat of her prey … she shakes it … bares down and brings her kill to its knees.

So often, those first thoughts become the hardest to write.

Antoinette became my alter-ego long before I knew I was going to write stories.

What you see with your inner eye, those images you fashion when you are in that zone are the same images that a photographer struggles with when he gazes through the lens of his camera. Patiently, often for days, a photographer will set up his equipment and wait for that perfect moment.

Fifth Avenue, New York, 1913

 

The corner of Fifth Avenue and 5oth Street today

 

The New York Public Library, New York, 1915.
Didn’t realize they had 4-laners in those days.

 This was the New York Public Library main building during late stage construction in 1908, the lion statues not yet installed at the entrance.

Yes, Laura … the extra lanes in those days were to accommodate the trolley tracks. Today, they accommodate the burgeoning traffic.

New York  Public Library today

We all need to do our homework … 

I have researched the art for years … not only because I will eventually do that one story of Antoinette …but because the look I saw on my brother’s face has remained with me all my life. I had to find a way to know what he felt, what was going on in this mind. I’ve read triple digits of books, seen a half-dozen documentaries, and read countless articles on the internet … studying the art of photography and the quest of the photojournalist.

What drives us to translate the images our inner eye sees … what need to translate into something tangible we can give … a true gift … a story … a black and white photograph?

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn … March, 1967

Toni Gallucci did not believe the old cliché about a thousand words. She knew some pictures were only worth one word she could barely whisper. She fixated on a print hanging in the red darkness, and whispered one explicative. A sound broke through her solitude. She stopped to listen. It was the phone. She ignored it. (From Frozen in Black and White)

Wall Street, New York, 1911. The 2 sidewalks together are as wide as the street in this pic.

 The sidewalks were later cut so that it is impossible for three people to walk side-by-side … yet the streets of the business district are still so small,  and curve in such severe angles, it is difficult to reason why they have never cut off the district to traffic period.

Not much has changed today

The inhabits of those buildings and what goes on behind their one-hundred year old bricks is quite different today. Along this famous street were the captains of industry and the giants of Wall Street. The now defunct Bache & Company, Kidder Peabody and a dozen more have vanished … like the Grand Daddy of them all … Merrily Lynch … that after a hundred years was sadly sold to Bank of America during the 2008 financial crash.

Fifth Avenue, New York, 1913.Look at those top hats!

 

This photograph captured by a photographer for the Daily News, shows a much different scene on Easter Sunday.

Honor those who came before us …

Writers, musicians and poets … composers, sculptors and the pioneers in photography, reproduce our world. From etchings on cave walls to our present day, preserving history has been the quest of all artists. Photography has evolved from clunky, fat cameras with the man under the black drape … to the photo-shop and i-pod wonders of selfies. The desire to capture moments of our history in words and images has driven us for centuries.

There a over two thousand world famous photographers who are known for their extreme photo art, photo journalism, and op-art. They worked with United Press International, Associated Press, Life Magazine, Look Magazine, The New Yorker, and of course, the famous Vanity Fair photographer of our generation … Annie Lebowitz.

They have left us a legacy … an opportunity to look back on our future.

What cuts you to the bone?
What drives you to write that one story?

And what can we learn when we look back to our future?

fOIS In The City

Note: A big thank you to Laura for the inspiration of the eighteen black and white images. She called it Kismet. I agree. I do believe that her Kismet is her soon-to-be published women’s fiction story.

A change of plans …

Nope, no Part Three of my Misfits today. Say goodbye to Maxine for a while and hunker down for wonderful news worth celebrating.

 

Graphic credit

Today, I would like to celebrate two women I consider talented and inspiring, women who encourage and cheer others, women who worked harder and longer to accomplish what most of us aspire to achieve. I am honored to count them among my writing friends and to highlight their good news here today.

Like so many of you, I met Laura Drake on line. She has generously offered her friendship, critique of my lame synopsis and waning plots, and she has encouraged me to keep on during those times when I wanted to quit. I borrow her short bio from Writers in the Storm, a group  blog she helped to form and where she contributes monthly.

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women’s Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central. The Sweet Spot (May 2013), Nothing Sweeter (Jan 2014) and Sweet on You (August 2014). The Sweet Spot has recently been named a Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® Finalist in both the Contemporary and Best First Book categories.

Her ‘biker-chick’ novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin’s Superromance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town. The Reasons to Stay will release August, 2014.

This year Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She’s a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

 

I could not break the link to show you, but this url will bring you to the video of Laura accepting her RITA at the RWA Nationals this weekend. And tingles all around, she was hugged by NORA. list=UUexKC_mroN5YluFQ2pDJjHw

The purpose of the RITA award is to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas.

The award itself is a golden statuette named after RWA’s first president, Rita Clay Estrada, and has become the symbol for excellence in published romance fiction.

 

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Christi Corbett was the first person to subscribe to my blog and she has been a loyal reader for over four years now. We met on-line in a Writer’s Digest group, we exchange comments, emails, and phone calls. I can’t ever list three items with an “and” and forget the comma because she has drilled the Oxford Comma into my brain.

I have taken her bio from her blog.

From a young age, writing was an integral part of Christi Corbett’s life. It was a skill she further developed during her career as a television writer. Now, Christi continues to broaden her writing horizons with her novel, Along the Way Home, a Historical Western novel about the Oregon Trail.

After graduating from Western Washington University with a degree in Communications, Christi took a job with a CBS affiliate in the Creative Services Department. Over the years her lifelong love of writing was put to good use; in addition to writing over three hundred television commercials, she earned the position as head writer for a weekly television show. Furthermore, she was responsible for writing over one hundred press releases detailing the station’s various special events, community programs, and news department awards.

Currently, Christi lives in a small town in Oregon with her husband, and twin children. The location of the home holds a special place in Christi’s writing life; the view from her back door is a hill travelers looked upon years ago as they explored the Oregon Territory and beyond.

Christi is a member of Women Writing the West and The Ridge Writers, a local writing critique group.

 

 

This is Christi this past weekend at a book signing. She was unable to attend the RONE awards in person, but the thrill was certainly the high point of her family’s week. The RONE … Spotlighting the very best and rewarding excellence in the 2014 Indie and Small Publishing Industry.

Congratulations to both of these amazing women.

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How many times?  I mean, count to yourself and tell me … how many times have you heard … all good things come to those who wait??

I would amend that to say … all good things come to those who work hard, believe in themselves, and never give up. I mean don’t just sit there and “wait” for the knock on the door. Prince Charming never knocks and opportunity is inside your soul … listen for it … know it when it comes … and grab onto the gold ring and never let go.

 

This will be my last blog post until September 3rd. Read, write, play and enjoy the balance of your summer.

Do you have good news to share?.

Yours or a friend. Tell me.

fOIS In The City

 

Part Three-So long, it’s been good to know you …

Graphic credit

Pulling up stakes …

I introduced Part One by mentioning the major move Laura Drake took recently, pulling up stakes in SoCal and moving to Texas, the land of the Sweet Cowboy. Like my move to Southern Florida, Laura’s move was one of the benefits of retirement and thus it was welcomed and met with open arms.

What if you didn’t want to move away from the known into an unsure future?

Well, if you’re a kid, you have no choice. Someone packs up your marbles and moves the game across the borough, or to the burbs, into the hills or along one of our winding river banks. You go to sleep in one location and by night fall you are tucked into bed in another location.

Today we visit Antoinette and her friend, Michael the day their families are leaving Sunset Park. It is two weeks after they graduated from the eighth grade at St. Matthew’s Parochial School.

Michael will live in the burbs of Long Island, Antoinette in the posh neighborhood of Bay Ridge, accentuated by the Brooklyn Narrows and the Staten Island Ferry.

Moving day …

Antoinette and Michael sat on two milk crates from the old Olympia Diner, their heads moving like spectators at a tennis match between the two houses and the two trucks moving their families. Neither of the teens spoke. Antoinette was so quiet, Carmela rushed twice to the medicine cabinet to shake out her thermometer to take the girl’s temperature.

“She hasn’t spoken a word in hours. The only time that child is quiet is when she’s sick or she’s been into mischief. And since there is no mischief to make today, even for our Antoinette, I’m certain she’s coming down with a terrible cold.”

Andrew leaned out of Antoinette’s bedroom window and watched his sister raise her camera. “Will you pack this and stop worrying. She’s upset because you’re moving.”

Michael was the first to break the long silence. “I’m happy. That’s what I keep telling myself.” He shook his head slowly. “So how come I feel so rotten?”

Antoinette shrugged.

At one point she became agitated and marched to the back of the truck carrying the few possessions she was moving to the new house.

Michael followed her. “What’s  wrong?”

“If you were like a normal boy, and not the dough-head that you are,” she rolled her eyes, “I wouldn’t have to tell you. You’d know.”

He pulled at her arm. “You could humor the dough-head and tell me anyway.”

She started walking in a circle and held up one finger. “First of all, I don’t want to play hide and seek with boys all summer. Bobby will be chasing me all over and Tom Conti will be following suit. It drives me crazy when they act like that.”

She held up her other finger. “Second, I need to get used to the new place and some of the kids I’ll be going to school with.”

She held up the third finger and frowned. “And third, I feel like it.”

Two hours later the trucks were gone and on their way to their final destinations. Carmela rushed down the steps holding two shopping bags and a lamp shade. Andrew was behind her with two more shopping bags. “I don’t understand why you couldn’t pack this stuff and send it ahead.” He motioned to the lamp shade. “And why would you want to keep that hideous lamp shade?”

Carmela ignored her eldest and pointed to Michael and Antoinette. “Look at them. You’d think they were being sent to refugee camps.”

Andrew smiled. “It might have more to do with the fact that this is the first time since they were born, they’re not going to the same school and won’t be seeing each other every day.”

Angelina and John Russo came out of their front door as Carmela was putting the lamp shade on top of one of her shopping bags. One look and they both broke down.

Antoinette used the last of her third roll of film to capture the precious moment when the two women finally separated, the moment when the two men hugged and kissed each cheek as was their Italian custom.

Michael laughed. “At least we aren’t getting all wet and silly about it.”

Her head bobbed. “Sure, we’re not going to act like them.”

John Russo barked at his son to get into the car. It was time to say good-bye. Angelina reached out to her best friend for one more hug and the two teens watched as John Russo and Big Frank separated them.

Michael play punched Antoinette and said. “I have to go. You know how he gets.”

She gave him one back. “We can still see each other when you’re working with Andrew, or on weekends.”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“And we can always do stuff on school holidays, like the Music Hall.”

He nodded again. “Sure we can.”

Antoinette shook her head. “It’s a good thing you always had me to get you out of trouble, Michael Russo.”

He stepped back and smiled. “What does that mean?”

This time she wasn’t clicking on her camera. She reached over and touched his face with the palms of her hands, as though she wanted to memorize each curve, imprint his smile and hold this one single moment in her memory. She kissed him on both cheeks and told him in Italian. “Because you’re still the worst liar on the planet.”

Without another word she ran to her brother’s car and slipped in next to the shopping bags. Big Frank pushed Carmela into the backseat and motioned to Andrew. “Do it now.”

Andrew gunned the engine, jumped off the curb and made a U-turn to get onto Third Avenue, heading for Shore Road and his parents’ new house. Antoinette turned and got up on her knees, watching Michael climb into his father’s new Buick. She watched until her brother’s car made the turn on Third Avenue. Only then did she turn and sit.

Big Frank moved his body around in the front seat until he was facing his wife and daughter. He pulled a clean hanky from his back pocket and handed it to Antoinette. No one spoke during the fifteen minute ride to Bay Ridge.

When Andrew stopped the car in front of the new house, Antoinette turned to her mother. “Funny, isn’t it mom?”

Carmela sighed. “What’s funny, Antoinette?”

“It only took us fifteen minutes to move from one world to another.”

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How about you reader, did your family pull up stakes,

and force you to leave behind a childhood friend?

And has that friend remained a part of your life?

fOIS In The City