There are many activities in which to take part when one first lands in the Indonesian city of Jakarta.  Some travelers will find that shopping or night-clubbing is their ideal way to experience the city, which is true to an extend.  The social, political and cultural history of a city or a country however, is best captured in a walk through the art museums. All of the arts, be they the performing arts of music and theatre, or the visual arts provide an in depth look into the people and their history, must more so than spending all of one’s time in the trendy and hip bars and discos.

One of the most public and most noticeable pieces of the evidence of the history of Jakarta is located on the streets, in the architecture of the office buildings and the apartment houses.  Fine hotels offer historical luxury, of which many may be found online here.  For a modern look at the current artistic vibe of the city, one will want to head over the Arts Hub of the city, the Taman Ismail Marzuki Center.  This is a multi-arts complex which houses a variety of the arts, from music and dance, to film and street performers, and from the traditional to the contemporary.

The entrance of the center is guarded by Ismail Marzuki himself, or a likeness of him rather.  Marzuki was an incredibly respected and well loved Indonesian musician.  The Jakarta Institute for the Arts is located within the center, the only college of its kind in all of Indonesia, the first one dedicated to the study and the practice of visual and performing arts.  This is too, the location of the Jakarta Planetarium, combining the arts of the heavens with the arts of the earth.  It is quite possible to spend the entire day walking through the center, having a taste of the cuisine of the country, the spirits, and the conversations found in the cafes and the bars.  This is not only a tourist attraction, but a meeting place for the local artists, a place to feel the history, and to see history being made.

Years ago, I had a commission for a painting.  The man who commissioned the painting, lived in New Jersey.  He wanted a large painting, to include his four children, three sons and one daughter.  Large paintings are expensive to ship, and as I had a friend in New Jersey, I decided to fly out, buy the canvas and supplies there, and paint.  Shipping me to New Jersey via United Airlines, was far less costly than shipping a three foot by four foot canvas via UPS, go figure.  I planned to take each and every Sunday off, and head into the city of New York, to explore-to find inspiration-and to eat some very fine Italian food. 

I had been wanting to go to the neighborhood of Little Italy for as long as I could remember.  I went online and found a different hotel for each of my Sunday night visits at http://www.4starhotelsnewyork.com. One night in Soho, one night in the East Village (of course), one night close to Central Park, and one night in the borough of Brooklyn.  I wanted to feel like a bohemian, I wanted to feel what it was like to simply follow one’s own nature, one’s soul calling if you will.  I had remained in one place for far too long, finding inspiration from books and documentary television shows. 

In those four Sundays, I found what was necessary for me to finish the commission, and found so much more.  It was the beginning of my own personal tradition of a Month of Sundays.  The art galleries of Chelsea and Soho, the street musicians and artists of the East Village and the character of the people in Brooklyn brought me back to Manhattan for many years to follow.  Next month I celebrate my 74th birthday, and a few days after that I will return once again to the city of New York, for my first one woman show. 

This trip will not however be simply a month of Sundays.  It will be a full month.  And yes I will wear fashionable square, black rimmed glasses, but I will leave the classic black beret hat and turtleneck shirt to those waiting for their first show.  They need those accessories after-all, to prove perhaps that they do have artistic and bohemian blood running through their veins, but for me…that kind of thing is no longer necessary, as I do, finally have a one woman show on the island of Manhattan.

There’s a lot of concerts that are worth missing, and there are occasionally shows that you just can’t miss, but then there are shows that you don’t hear about until much later, and wish you’d seen them so much that it’s almost as if you were there, anyway.  That’s the kind of sentiment that few bands can evoke, and TV on the Radio is certainly among these, if not at the very top.  Their musical output has been tremendous in the past few years, and if you add the multi-tracking together in the mix, there’s hundreds of hours of sound in each album.

Their show in Central Park last summer was one that I would have had every intention of seeing, if I’d only known about it.  But I can’t blame anyone but myself.  It was a weird year, there was this girl, and then there were problems with my bike, and there are lots of reasons why I couldn’t read the listings.  But if you’re traveling to New York and looking for a hotel, Central Park is a great location to search, just because bands like this might happen to be playing.  There are plenty of other reasons, but this is the only one that comes to mind right now.

This is probably still completely connected with that girl, for me, because we first listened to TV on the Radio together, and we couldn’t believe what we were hearing.  They still have the same effect on me, when I get the chance to listen to them with the attention they need.  It’s great background music, but when it’s right there playing on your current sate of consciousness, strange currents begin to move through you, and you might forget about what was bothering you a few moments ago, and you might even forget that you’re standing in the rain.

Your room at a modern hotel in the city of Hampton www.hotelshampton.com Virgina, is the only the beginning to a wonderful adventure of all things that fly in the sky and beyond. Located in Hampton are some major research and command centers that have been a major part of the process from a small airplane flying over town to a massive space shuttle flying past the moon. You can start at he Virginia Air and Space Center. It is the visitor center for the NASA Langley Research Center as well as the Langley Air Force Base. This center offers an extensive display of air and space crafts as well as many ways to interact using multi media and gaming technology.
You can get a glimpse of what the men and women of these incredible programs had experienced. You can launch a rocket and get your chance to pilot a space shuttle. You will have the opportunity to see the Apollo 12 Command Module. This module was launched to the moon in November of 1969 and circled the moon 31 times in sixty one and a half hours. You can learn more about the jets we fly everyday across the country and the world. They have a DC-9 opened up and ready for you to get a closer look than you would get by being a passenger in a tiny seat without a movie. Speaking of movies, there is a 3D IMAX movie theatre and if they don’t have the latest blockbuster hit playing they more than likely have a great movie about flight and space flight. This is the most amazing place to visit. It is a little harder to get tours of the Langley Research Center or the Langley Air Force Base but they have brought all their history to you with this incredible museum.

This is the moment that the two sides come together, for one brief moment, and the moment goes on.  And it goes on.  This begins with a night spent listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain, and ends somewhere on the other side of cowpunk revivals.  This is the moment where the smell of sage and mesquite mix with bus fumes in a testimony to how sweet love can be, and how short the moment is.  This is the moment when the best hotels in Manhattan are all playing the same song at the same time, because someone somewhere decided that the world should play their song at some moment.

This is a story of awkward love in an awkward time, when he was somewhere between bare feet and boots, and she was somewhere in between a tie-dyed decor and a black fingernail.  This is the part of the story where every detail was remembered, but in a different order, and without a sense of balance.  This is the moment when he should have been wearing boots, and should have seen the other punker kid about to step on him.  This is the moment when she decided to make fun of the Grateful Dead girl in her head, while she moved to the Isadora Duncan goth revival.

This is the moment when they both forget the movie song, and the time was wrong, the time was wrong.  This is not an anthem for a new generation, and it’s not an anthem that drips of sentimentality for a generation that passed into the uneasy zone where signs of middle age start to show up whenever the seasons change again.  This is the moment when the boy remembers the girl, when the punk rockers in the city and the hippies in the desert have moved on and become other versions of themselves, stuck somewhere between desire and breathing, and unstuck in some other place that we, the mortals, can never reach.

I spent one holiday season, 1998, in New York City.  I had visited a few times, but never the week preceding Christmas, so there were a few holiday big city traditions that I wanted to experience.  One was to see the tree at the Rockefeller Center, and another was to walk along 5th Avenue, and Madison Avenue…just looking at the window displays.  One of my many misconceptions of the city, was that people would simply be walking by, checking out the windows as they continued on with their last minute Christmas purchases.

This is not the case, as people line up around the corners, and slowly move past the windows.  Window displays in New York City are works of art, and one of the finest artists of this medium in the city, is Barneys.  Along these famous avenues sits not only the iconic stores such as Barneys, FAO Schwarz and Tiffany’s, but many fine restaurants and boutique hotels.  New York during the holiday season provides you with not only the memories of your trip, but with a rich history of all that has happened before, from the “Miracle on 34th Street” to the wearing of an Easter bonnet for the Easter parade.

Whether or not any US citizen has been to New York, we all have “memories of New York”, provided by the entertainment industry, and the vast amount of national icons that exist and reveal a bit about American history as a whole.  The year that I saw the window displays, led me on a search of the past years of displays, all rich with a theme.  2006, the theme of Barneys’ displays was Andy Warhol.  In 2007 the artists created displays that centered around the environment, and in 2008 the theme was simply Peace and Love.

These are not just displays that are intended to draw customers into the building, but displays that really do reflect the times, and the meanings behind those times.  It is a grand gesture that far exceeds commercialized notions.  Christmas 2010, my destination is New York City…for all of it, and for the chance to see what the artists of Barneys will come up with next.

Clive was sweating as he made his final preparations for his flight to Miami for his upcoming audition at the New World Symphony Orchestra. This prestigious establishment is the only one of its kind in the country and it was been Clive’s dream to work with it for many years. He placed his viola in its case for the last time before he left and made a little wish before tucking away and extra set of strings and rosin. If Clive could gain a seat with this orchestra and play with them he was sure he would be able to gain a more permanent position with a major professional orchestra when he was finished.

He had just graduated from Oberlin in Ohio and while he was eager to begin his professional career he was equally interested in gaining as much credit and pre-professional valid experience as was possible. He felt confident as he settled into his room in one of the hotels Miami Florida and wanted to head straight for the beach. However, and is true for most musicians, dedication to his instrument and music always had to come first. His audition was tomorrow and he would devote himself to some quality last minute practice that night before a solid warm up the following day.

The symphony was established in 1987 so it was two years younger than Clive. The purpose of this symphony is not only to provide excellent music but to continue the development of talented young musicians and prepare those who had recently graduated from universities and conservatories for a life in the professional classical music world. It was established in large part through a generous donation from Ted Arison, who is the Carnival Cruise Lines founder. Clive was excited about the different programs the symphony offers and was really hopeful to play in someday in its main venue at the Lincoln Theatre, which is located in the middle of the art deco district of Miami’s South Beach neighborhood.

Echo has been here, once or twice, and her footprints leave white powder tracks.  She can only be found right before it rains, then, and it rains a lot more here than most people expect.  I came to New York to look for her, like so many others, and I came to find her in a mirror at the bottom of a body of water that I will not name here.  It’s in a park, though, and it’s smaller than you would expect, and smaller than rain.  For all the unlikely places where I found evidence of my own twin, New York business hotels have been the most inspiring to me.  If I can find her here, I will find her anywhere.

There is only one night, out of a thousand and one, where I found a mention of her sister.  That was the most exciting clue I’d ever gotten, and I have not seen nor heard any signs of life since that one night.  It look like this.  I am deciding to dress up as if I were Kilgore Trout, going incognito into a room filled with all of my fans.  I don’t recognize a thing, but neither can I see a thing.  My glasses are dark, and mirrored, and worse, mirrored from the inside.  I have to see myself so that I can feel okay.  I have been terrified of disappearing ever since we met.  She’s not an easy lover by any means, and hard to hold her close when she is always unseen.

That’s these days, though, there was a time when things were different.  But today, it’s not different, and I’m looking at my reflection again in the bathroom mirror.  I have to check for myself wherever I go, because I do have a tendency to disappear.  There is someone I know, someone I think I’ve seen before, standing behind me, and he is telling me that her sister is supposed to be coming in tonight, and she might sing.

I tell him that I did not know she had a sister.  He tells me her name is Rhodia.  I never expected any of this, not on a rainy night in New York.

With the Austrialian Open Tennis Championships coming up, it gives tennis fans an opportunity to brush up on their history of the sport and of the legends who have made the sport what it is today.  Though there are many great female players today, perhaps none of that would have been possible for them if it had not been Billie Jean King that came on the scene.

Her life has been one filled with many firsts.  Perhaps the most important first in her life was her first tennis racket bought when she was eleven with money she had saved up doing little jobs here and there for family and friends.  It was about eight dollars, but would soon provide her with much more than that.  King has always had a drive to be number one and to be great at something, namely tennis as she later found out after a set of tennis lessons that were free.

She has had to fight discrimination throughout the years due to her nonconformist attitudes.  For instance, she was not allowed in a photo with her peers in ’55 because she wore shorts and the skirt women were expected to wear.  She was playing at the Los Angeles Tennis Club at the time for the tournament being held there.

However, such discrimination did bring her down.  Rather her pushed her harder break down barriers and boundaries for women in sports.  In ’71, another first for any female in any sport, she won prize of one hundred grand.  Yet this was not good enough for her either, because the prize money for men and women had been disparate for quite a while, the male tennis player money being more than the women’s.  After fighting for equal money, she won in ’73.

Perhaps more than any other player in tennis, she has had the most impact due interest in not only making tennis more interesting but also more fair.  Her politicizing of the sport has helped to make it a more diverse and gratifying one to watch.  She will no doubt be mentioned during the commentary for the Australian Open in passing, such is her influence still.

I’m in Manhattan for the first time in my life, what a fantastic place. I had my first taste of the subway system and it was an unpleasant taste, but at lease the cars are air-conditioned. I usually have a good sense of direction, but the New York subway system threw me for a loop. I did manage to find the right station that was not too far from Allans office in midtown. Allan took me to lunch with some other Human Resource guys who were a stitch! We had sushi, once again, a first for me and I loved it! Raw fish! Me! Ha!

Allan managed to take the day off, so he took me to see Grand Central Station, the New York Library and a small little bar where the waitresses were corsets. The temperature was almost 100 degrees, so we did our best to hide from the heat. But, he did have to take me out on the street to see more of NYC and all the skyscrapers. My neck, I feel, is permanently stuck arched towards the sky. I’d never seen buildings so tall. I know I definitely looked like an out-of-towner, but I couldn’t help but look up all the time. The sheer height of the buildings is truly stunning.

We ended up at Times Square and I was again went all ga-ga over all the huge advertising signs. The shimmery shiny billboards were way too much for my mind to take in. I was overloaded, then all of a sudden my mind snapped and all of a sudden I was back to normal again. I must have looked like a total country bumpkin for a few minutes. We stopped in some shops just to cool off, but that’s when the sales people take full advantage of their air-conditioning and try to make sure you don’t leave without buying something. Luckily, Allans a pro at just walking out of shops without a purchase, I just followed his lead. We walked a bit more downtown and came across Macy’s. Allan told me that these department stores are a big deal here because there aren’t shopping malls like the rest of America has, like Los Angeles for example.

We made it back to the subway all sticky and hot. He took me to one of the New York luxury hotels where he had made reservations for me and where we preceded to each take a shower once I checked in. Allan had a previous engagement that night, so he bid me farewell and said he’d meet back up with me tomorrow.  I flopped on the luxurious bed and marvelled about America, especially New York. What a cool country. What a fascinating place!  Too bad New York’s my last stop, I will be daydreaming about my wild six month tour for years and I’ll refer to them as the best time of my life.