She So Funny

I'm a teacher again. When I have lots of days off, I start to find it hard to believe I teach classes of adult students. Today, Tuesday, was the first day of the new cycle. Aside from getting to know each other and each other's names, we spoke about the stigma of The Bronx, why our borough has "The" in front of it, and we read and wrote about excerpts from Daniel Hauben's Inches From My Easel. It is a beautifully uplifting experience to experience the words of someone who sees the beauty and humanity of where you call home. These are some of his paintings.

In a Bronx-phobic society, I am grateful to Daniel Hauben, his vision, and his passion, and so are my students. This isn't the first class to whom I introduced his work. His paintings make my heart smile.

So I guess I am a teacher. But I'm the kind who is more like a coach, a sister, a friend, a neighbor.

This site is called "She So Funny" and I'm often quite serious (the multi-faceted person inside the comic), so I'm going to include the humor that truly comes from not necessarily funny life circumstances. This video includes a bit about me as a teacher. It is about a minute and a half. (I don't know how to make it end after that bit.)

Remember, my students are adults.

Sometimes It Takes a Poet to See

I celebrated a friend’s birthday out in Brooklyn on Saturday night. I am glad I went. I am especially glad my buddy Bob joined me and even drove. The birthday woman, Jean Lehrman, is a poet among other things. That is how we know each other – through the poetry circles in NYC. Some years ago, when I curated a poetry reading series called Hidden Treasure, it was held at a bar in the Bronx called Johnny O’s. Jean once featured for us and then my friend drove her from Castle Hill to his Norwood neighborhood, so she could get on the D train. We got to talking about the Bronx getting such a bad rap. I remember her statement about her Bronx experience, and I will always appreciate this about her. She said, “The Bronx is a place where people live.”

Such a plain and simple truth sounds revolutionary when living in such a prejudice society with the Bronx as a scapegoat.

Many think of the Bronx as a battlefield where you dodge bullets to go here

or here

…but there’s also plenty of this

Students at Lehman College working toward a more peaceful world.

This is Daniel Hauben, a fantastic local artist who has honored the borough with his wonderful depictions of the Bronx. He's had numerous shows and won numerous awards and chooses to make the Bronx his home.