tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52294800542582798712024-03-12T18:46:30.544-04:00Midlife MamboDaily, baby-boomers wade into the messy waters of middle age. By chronicling our inner lives, both the everyday and extraordinary, we can begin to appreciate this crazed and amazing dance that begins our second, or third or fourth, phase of life.Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comBlogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-17236718475503861572010-06-07T18:06:00.004-04:002010-06-07T18:11:52.945-04:00READ ME AT A NEW LOCATIONHello gang who may come to read from time to time.I do not want you all to think that I have been idle sitting on my typing hands, or not thinking. In fact I began a new blog this January called Memory and MovementFind me at www.wixboyle.wordpress.com I like this project. It has gotten me to walk some, in honesty that is the least successful portion of the project, but I have committed to Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-1300479460663043492010-02-01T16:36:00.002-05:002010-02-03T08:32:35.416-05:00Movement and Memory January 2010<!--StartFragment--> A year of walks and poemsChapter One January: Makes One Little Room an Everywhere This is the year I turn 60. I want to give an overview of the reasoning behind my Movement and Memory Project. I want to find a way to move more and to use my brain. I want to pursue adventures, which are difficult for me, meaning out of my comfort zone either psychologically or skills wise.Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-77712148372111890142010-01-25T11:16:00.002-05:002010-01-25T11:19:40.349-05:00The Bike Fund<!--StartFragment--> When I started riding my three-speed bike after graduation from college in yes it’s true, 1972, I never thought to bank the money I saved every day. Instead I began buying fresh flowers, with what I intuited was my extra cash, all because I biked everywhere. Now 38 years later I am still on my bike, it is one of the great loves of my life. I have ridden home from work twiceWickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-45654251961566769682010-01-04T08:01:00.002-05:002010-01-04T08:06:05.798-05:00Sled Alone<!--StartFragment--> It has been said that man does not live by bread alone, but I found that woman can live by sled alone. You can trudge up the hill and carefully, painstakingly, carve a firm path down by inching your way in a snow coaster, or flying saucer, as we used to call them. After a few slow, snow packing trips down the hill, where you walk up hill breaking another path in fresh Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-14624584432403607742010-01-02T15:52:00.002-05:002010-01-02T15:56:07.560-05:00XX X Triple X New Year Resolutions<!--StartFragment--> January 1 XX X As you can see that I have decided that this will be the triple X year. In Roman numerals one X is ten, thus two are twenty, a space and another X is ten again. Making it the year XX X or 20 10. Oh my dyslexic self loves the look of this; without the space it is another perfect palindrome year like 2002. This stuff makes my heart soar and my differently Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-19629540761018502292009-12-21T21:39:00.001-05:002009-12-21T21:42:43.723-05:00Winter Solstice 2009<!--StartFragment--> Today is the shortest day with the longest night and we had a blast of sunshine during the peak hours and I ventured forth. I did nothing of consequence, I went to the bank and the super market and I ran into my Italian teacher from ages ago and actually turned my bike around after hearing his voice. It was clearly him, even though I hadn’t heard those dulcet tones in Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-45800344618238608012009-10-15T14:11:00.001-04:002009-10-15T14:13:31.831-04:00Time To Write . . finally, maybe<!--StartFragment--> Oct 15, 2009 As I left my loft downtown, bouncing my bike down from the loading dock and donning my slicker, while coughing heartily into my hand, I encountered my neighbor. Wow even in the rain, this cold, the bike . . . really ? Oh well if you give your self a day off, or an excuse you are done for. . . NO EXCUSES With that I pedaled off coughing and wheelingWickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-67143303569501948922009-10-07T11:49:00.001-04:002009-10-07T11:51:37.217-04:00Let Me Down Easy Anna Deavere Smith<!--StartFragment--> Let Me Down Easy Written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith Anna Deavere Smith is a genius, and she even has a MacArthur fellowship to prove it. Anyone who is lucky enough to take a seat in the Second Stage Theater on West 43rd Street and be regaled by the 20 real life characters created by Smith in For Let Me Down Easy will burst out acclaiming her bravura intensity for Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-86963433879261352472009-09-28T15:03:00.002-04:002009-09-28T16:37:23.961-04:0059 for the First Time (day 1)<!--StartFragment--> September 26 the very day I ran away yesterday, by myself, almost by myself. I took a fat cat named Huey Newton with me, and as two chubby felines we drove to the county. Why? Well I was in meltdown mode and my husband was nervous about work. I was all a twitter with the same old twits of why I am not more in some ways and less in others. Not more in career and not Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-21222992257063706812009-08-25T16:08:00.002-04:002009-08-25T16:10:30.602-04:00Aging Downtown Experimentalists Shine Uptown<!--StartFragment--> I came of age in experimental theater. Ellen Stewart the doyen of LaMama dragged me, in 1972 at 21, to see Philip Glass in concert under one of futurist Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, perched on a hillside in Spoleto Italy. Stewart crooned,“ Baby you have to hear this cause Phil is another LaMama baby, just like you.” After so many decades, there are many ageing Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-52158255851483909452009-08-11T15:56:00.001-04:002009-08-11T15:57:29.853-04:00Making a Home Make Money<!--StartFragment--> Making a Home Make Money By Wickham Boyle ⋅ 2:06 pm August 10, 2009 From Recessionwire.com I love having a house in the country and a place in the city—so much that I have chosen country abode over health insurance. But even that sacrifice has not saved me enough to be able to hold on to my second home year round. On the last day of July, I drove to my beloved little Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-41919985838452129072009-08-08T12:21:00.001-04:002009-08-08T12:23:12.348-04:00Machine Mania<!--StartFragment--> I have harped, ranted and griped about this before and will again, but I am overwhelmed by servicing and serving an army of machines. Yesterday I lost my IPOD Touch, a machine I call SHINY. I never wanted SHINY, sad to say, but my husband, a techno fan, gave her to me as a Christmas gift two years ago. I filled her with pictures and some music and came to value her when Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-81435744648843983592009-08-04T13:19:00.002-04:002009-08-04T13:21:33.272-04:00Gardening in a Time of RecessionThis is from the wonderful siteWWW.recessionwire.com Look for other posts from your trulyLIVINGNo New Plants, Period.By Wickham Boyle ⋅ 3:03 pm July 27, 2009 ⋅ Gardening, after storms and the economic downturn, is akin to living with the dogged devotion of a Mets or Red Sox fan. As I wander through the garden and see the places crushed by the ice storm or rotted by the ceaseless rain I say to Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-59370627612880388912009-07-30T10:05:00.002-04:002009-07-30T10:09:07.989-04:00The Power of Laundry and Polish<!--StartFragment--> As a woman of the liberated sixties and seventies I never thought that at near sixty I would scurry to my writing device, AKA laptop to write a blog post, well hold on . . . who thought of blogs, the internet, OK other than Al Gore. But to write, in whatever modern fashion, a musing on the power of laundry and polish, that would have been unthinkable to me back in the day. Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-31257872389467742672009-07-18T14:20:00.000-04:002009-07-18T14:25:41.830-04:00Generation DRINXI am a lightweight drinker. I never learned to drink. Who knew that had to be on the TO DO LIST for life ?My father was an Irish alcoholic and it worried me, as I seemed to possess many of his foibles and gifts. We had the gift of gab, and rage and humor and strength and irony and sadness. And so I eschewed drinking, thinking that would inoculate me from all the other pejorative traits we Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-45915059926637025762009-07-15T09:18:00.002-04:002009-07-15T09:22:25.260-04:00I Spawn SpoiledI Spawn Spoiled, Except in the GardenJuly 13 2009It must be me. I see that all around me there is a trail of spoiled. My cats, my kids, my co-workers and friends; all often seem too coddled and catered to. It has to be me. I must spawn a kind of spoiled hierarchy that I seem incapable of escaping, except in the garden.I didn’t start gardening with a vengeance until I was 55 years old and by then Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-10477249880261686352009-06-25T11:02:00.004-04:002009-06-25T11:38:23.903-04:00In Search of Whirled PeaceAs someone who’s been pegged a whirling dervish on numerous occasions by friends and foes alike, it was no surprise my announcement of an assignment to go cover the real-life spinning mystics was met with chuckles, chortles and knowing winks all around. Not that anybody ever meant to imply I was a Turkish dancing mystic and follower of a charismatic philosopher-poet born in 1207… Many of us who Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-36996001856874012322009-05-26T13:40:00.002-04:002009-05-26T13:45:27.758-04:00Fragility: Look it upYou can see a word endlessly and never notice it, until you look it up. Then as if by magic, it is ubiquitous and it seems as if there is numinous haze surrounding it, the equivalent of highlighting. Every book, every New Yorker article has the word: limn, palimpsest or numinous. And you say AHHHHHHH I know that word.I feel that way about fragility. I know the word, I know how to recognize and Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-3389643341105533742009-05-19T19:16:00.000-04:002009-05-19T19:17:06.744-04:00The Aftermath of DisasterToday I went out early to try out my new light, strong weed-whacker and I wept. I didn’t cry at the efficiency of the machine or its ability to cut clean swaths through my over grown acreage. No, I cried because I had snipped a snake in two.The temperature dropped and it rained hard last night, not ideal circumstances for a reptile, but great for a middle-aged gardener who likes to work hard whenWickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-48896109888565270602009-03-31T13:54:00.002-04:002009-03-31T14:00:53.005-04:00Travel: Vice of ChoiceIn my house, we say travel is our vice of choice, which means a voyage takes precedence over trinkets, gadgets, fancy dinners or fashion. Apparently we are not in the majority because in late March, the U.S. Passport office announced that the applications for passports dropped by 25% auguring that many consumers have decided to dedicate their hard earned dollars to other corners of the market.My Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-674187000548829422009-02-19T20:59:00.000-05:002009-02-21T21:00:48.531-05:00Mantra for a troubled timesAs I was riding home, down Broadway last week in the bright winter sunshine, I was attempted to boost my spirits by taking some solace in my health, family and general robust nature. You see I had just had a dispiriting job interview. I am not alone, but that does not necessarily make things better. It does make them different. Sometimes the fact that we are all in it together, mounts Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-30511419610391521362009-01-21T13:28:00.001-05:002009-01-21T13:30:06.862-05:00They wouldn't sell me my home... nowThey wouldn’t sell me my home now. I know this for a fact because I just got off the phone with the mortgage specialist who was recommended by my broker. “Oh we don’t have mortgages like that any more,” she demurred.I am a consultant who works in the arts, my husband is also a consult, but he works in sports. Meaning we both make money some times and have long dry spells. We also have no health Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-7589001569529719642009-01-19T13:27:00.000-05:002009-01-21T13:28:33.976-05:00Obama Day in TriBeCaWe considered going to Washington D.C. for the big day; my African American husband grew up in D.C. so we have places to stay and invites, but my husband wanted to be home. And home is TriBeCa. He wanted to be home to hear every word and cry and cry when he needed and wanted to. And so we watched and held hands and then, overcome, I had to go out for a walk.The streets of downtown Manhattan, or Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-30845768924317680582009-01-07T09:11:00.002-05:002009-01-07T09:14:38.548-05:00Enough wallowingI decided enough wallowing and wailing and weeping.After all, it is the Epiphany. Thousands of years ago, wise men in long dresses schlepped through the desert using a star and found their way to the manger where a baby named Jesus lay with his surprised mom and dad.And so we took this day as an auspicious one, and the name Epiphany morphed over time to mean a great awakening, a happening that Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5229480054258279871.post-50377622996393570892008-12-26T15:25:00.002-05:002008-12-26T15:54:12.522-05:00The Day After ChristmasI suppose I keep waiting for the day when I feel clam and safe and whole. I know it is never coming. I am the only one who can dispense with the fear, the dangling shoe waiting to fall and unseat whatever morsel of fearlessness I have cooked up in my kitchen.Here it is again. The holidays, and I have been searching for work: in the arts, teaching, upstate or in the city, but to no avail. Then Wickham Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09796072580790295865noreply@blogger.com