Surfer Dudes and Divas

Me and Seth after jumping in the water

Every time I get in the water after Labor Day I am thrilled.

There were surfers everywhere on this beautiful October weekend and I am very tempted to take surfing lessons next year so that I can ride waves into Indian summer too.   I appreciate living so close to the beach and want to share a recent post by Beth Kanter about the great work being done to protect our beaches and oceans by the Surfrider Foundation.  I didn’t realize that it was because of their advocacy efforts that Rockaway now has dedicated surfing beaches.  They also have a very cool game.  Here’s an excerpt:

Surfrider is a global network of surfers who want to protect the world’s beaches and oceans. Their use of social media to support and leverage their network is filled with great examples of best practices. They recently launched an Iphone app called “Trash-Tetris.” The goal is the same as in regular Tetris, except you play with trash. It is a virtual beach clean up game. It’s on itunes here (free).

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

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Beautiful Letters

me and the theater members of Adhikaar’s Art & Activism Program

There are worlds and universes beyond the curve of the road ahead and the edge of the rear view mirror.  Beyond and yet stubbornly between the covers of a book that you will never read.

Why?

The elusive link – the thoughtful translator.

Think about it.  A maddening 3% of what is published in America is translated work.  Our literary experience is a Barnes & Noble balloon fueled by Starbucks and nudged into place by the New York Times Book Review.

What about the voices we have never heard?  The pacings, the cadences, spaces and breaths of other imaginations?

I am excited about watching a literary community in Queens grow.  Queens in Love with Literature is a program of the Queens Council on the Arts which will kick off this month in the Transilvanian Cafe in Sunnyside and feature, among other cool things like a gypsy band and true Romanian fare under a portrait of Dracula, readings by the Queens Poet Laureate, Paulo Javier, writers Dorothea Lasky, David Mills and others.

Our last event in June celebrated the multi-faceted voices of South Asian women in Queens and what it means to be heard across distance.  Distances as complex as the ones between mothers and daughters, asking “Aama did I ever tell you, I want to sing?” and performed by poets Arun Storrs and Amy T. Paul. Shardha and Megha Lama—theater members of Adhikaar’s Arts & Activism Program.

Stay in touch and join us for a bite at the Transilvanian Cafe later this month!

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If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Creative Real Estate

This post first appeared on the Queens Council on the Arts blog

I sat in a room on Monday morning with some very smart and experience people for a conversation about creating spaces for artists and creative entrepreneurs sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Center for an Urban Future and Grey Advertising.

So here we are.

Hanging on to the edges of what we know and looking for what we dream of.    In a real estate downturn, looking up for opportunities.  Lower construction costs, higher vacancy rates.

What do we really want?

Rebecca Robertson, President and CEO of the Park Avenue Armory,  expressed the need for a “culture czar”,  someone who could pull out an inventory of properties and a warchest of incentives.  A centralized hub to connect people interested in creating artistic communities.

I liked how my friend Elizabeth Streb, Action Architect of STREB Lab for Action Mechanics, describes the individual artist as “a generating force, mildly untameable” in the mix of community.  Creative growth is a “rhizome, not arboreal”.

Don’t you just love that?  If you want to be on the cutting edge, you need to live on the edge.  Better to be  rhizome.

Heard people mention the waterfront in Sunset Park  in Brooklyn,  Jamaica, Queens,  anything north of 96th street on the west side as places rumbling with potential.  And movement just shy of legal according to Mary Ann Tighe, CEO of the New York Tri-State Region, CB Richard Ellis.  “Art and illegality” is the pairing as per Elizabeth.

Also heard Seth Pinsky, President of New York City Economic Development Corporation, argue passionately for capacity building in arts groups and for a whole sector vision.

Many spaces share a common history of  “accidents and missteps”  that eventually lead to artistic use.  I wonder if Patricia Cruz, Executive Director of Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall was referring to her own journey.  With a mischievous smile, she did say,  “Older is good.  Older and abandoned is even better.”

I think she was talking about buildings.

This is what I think we all want to make it possible to live in vibrant, creative and energetic places.  Let me know if I’ve left anything out.

• A culture czar, wizard or quarterback who can run plays
• A strategic advocacy effort
• A way to support and strengthen cultural infrastructures
• A public/private policy of cultural development

Check in with the Center for an Urban Future for a transcript of this session.

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Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

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– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

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Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Living the Law of Five Things

Labor Day sunrise

I don’t know about you but for me this has been one hell of a week.

Labor Day, my twenty fifth wedding anniversary, Sky’s first day of eighth grade, Rosh Hoshana and Fashion Week!

I am fei cheong (Cantonese for extremely) fatigue.

But enough about me, what about you?  Is it hurricane season in your life?

Before the winds start whipping you around into a frenzy, you must take a deep breath and remain the mistress of your ship.  Do not allow yourself to get tossed about in the waves.  Stay on course.

For me, this is only possible if I follow the Law of Five Things.

Surely you remember that ancient law of the universe?  Well, if you don’t, here are a few of them to help you stay on course:

• If you hold more than five things in your hands, you are going to drop one of them.  Guaranteed.
• If you get up at 5:00 am and begin your day with a sunrise, you are going to have an great day.
• If  you get up at 5:00 am and run 5 miles and begin your day with a sunrise, you are going to have a fei cheong fabulous day.
• If you have a big lunch and stop eating at 5:00 pm, you will be thrilled with what the scale says the next day.
• If you can look back over the past 5 days and recall something you did that made someone’s life brighter,  I want you to tell me about it!

I know.  Some of this is hard to do.  Let me confess that I have many days where I am clutching my pillow under my blanket and not up running 5 miles at 5:00 am.  These laws are not for the faint of heart!  But when I do manage to put it all together and catch that sunrise, my life is a heightened experience and I feel thrillingly alive.

It helps if you simply decide what it is important for you.  Then revolve your life around it.

For me, that is running towards a sunrise.  Here is one to guide your ship.

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Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

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Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

Facebook and My Sister

Hoong Wei, second from the left and me, far right at our tap dance recital in Queens

Me and Hoong Wei running along Boston Harbor

My sister’s birthday is July 28th.

She would have been 54 this year but we lost her to lung cancer in April.

Today I spent some time on Facebook with a friend who knew the both of us when we were very young.  It was startling to hear from someone who was such a part of our lives and who could recall wonderful heartbreaking moments for me.

Facebook foreverness

In this world of Facebook where everything is forever,  I see her vividly in the remembered world of our childhood, in the schoolyard of P.S. 179, the Lewis Carroll School, in the Oak Grove in Fresh Meadows, all these places that are now alive in animated connected memories of when we were children together.

Yes, I remember being terrorized by Mrs. Hodes, the crossing guard but wasn’t it fun running away from her down Peck Avenue!  The two of us could not bring ourselves to look at her as we crossed the street for fear we would explode into giggles.  And oh my God, if we tumbled into the schoolyard late – a warning.  Not that!  The dreaded warning that could land you in the office across from Mr. Sussman, the principal.  We were so careful not to let that happen – as if two little Chinese girls could ever do that and live to tell the tale.  Remember, we are descendants of dynasties stamped with the drive to do well in math and to suffer in shame if we did anything less than excellent.  So we did what we could do – grow up together trying to make sense of a world in a quintessential Queens neighborhood with other kids, some of whom bring all of this back for me in a dizzying Facebook flash.

And yet, now when its time to run home, I am achingly alone.  She is gone.

Until the next time I log in to Facebook and check in with my childhood friends.

Does digital trump death?

Does Facebook overcome forgetting?

I wish I could tell her that my friend’s brother always thought the way she wrote the W in her name was cool and tried to copy it.

She would like that.

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Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

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Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?