Visiting with the Dearly Departed

I know it's getting near the Celtic New Year, when I start having vivid dreams of my parents.  I had such a wonderful visit with them.  In my dreams, I went to visit them in Florida. They lived in a modest, suburban style house. The visit was mostly with my mother, who was beautiful, but wasting.  She said she was living with lung cancer, and had 6 months to live.  Jess was there too, and was so happy to see his grandmother.  She was so happy to see him.  Jess was about 10.  I said to my Dad, who was living happily with my mother that we could move down to Florida.  He didn't really like the idea.  I went to the basement, and there was a studio apartment, but a woman with a bouffant hairdo was living there..but she was sort of transparent, not as vivid as Phil and Terry.  Who was she? Was she a part of Beverly?  Was she my Aunt Gini?  She seemed like she was living there only partially, perhaps in a parallel universe.. I told Jess I would have to pursuade Grandpa to let us come stay.  It was so beautiful to see them, since they're so gone..They were in their thirties or forties, and looked vibrant..alive..My mother is gone almost 30 years..My sister sent a picture of them playing makeup sillyness..I think my sis had made Mom up to look like a clown..they loved each other so much..Mutt and Jeff..

Long Island Goddesses

My cousin Bruce and I went out to visit our cousin Linda out on Long Island, Lindenhurst to be exact. When I was a young girl,I thought that they named the town after my beautiful black haired cousin. I idolized Linda, who was two years older than me. Our moms were housewives, and we did a lot of visiting in the summer, especially. I would go out to that house with my mother and my sister in tow, to visit Aunt Betty, Uncle Davy, Kevin and the twins. It was prototypical 50s and 60s suburbia, created by the GI Bill, a lot of fast building on hastily converted farmland. We lived in a "development" out near Riverhead, while my cousins lived in the more civilized South Shore. We spent days at the beaches, clamming at low tide and running down sand dunes. On our way to and from the beaches, bare feet still dragging sand, sitting on the back seat of the giant old black Buick my Uncle Red gave to my mother when he and Aunt Ann moved to 33rd and 3rd and didn't need a car any more, eating sandwiches with lettuce and tuna and sand and laughing at everything, we would pass the Pilgrim State mental hospital, the home of many a late nite ghost story.
My cousins Susan and Linda were twins. Susan was the quiet one, and Linda was the Alpha twin, smoking first, dancing first, kissing boys first, going out to the scrub pine to drink beer first. Linda put on makeup and teased her hair. Linda argued with her parents,while Susan tried to stay out of trouble. Kevin blissfully avoided all this teenager stuff by being sporty.
Nowadays, Susan is married, with the same guy since highschool. Her oldest daughter just had a girl, so she is a grandmother. Kevin was a year younger than me, three years younger than his sisters, and was good at math, so he became a stock broker, living the good life until a crash crashed him. We lived in a working class paradise. Vincent, Kevin's best friend, and soap box car racer, the kid across the street, became the town constable of one of the tonier beach towns on the South Fork. Linda married three guys in succession, working in real estate and at a biological testing lab along the way
I went to college far far far away, and became a singer and songwriter and a drunk, far away from the Suffolk County of my girl scout childhood.
My mother and Aunt Betty are both gone, ghosts in this Celtic drama, (we are for better or worse, an Irish American family, mostly) lost to cigarettes, and in my mother's case a measure of booze, and prescription drugs. Mom lived to 50, Aunt Betty live longer than any of her siblings to the ripe old age of 55. Their brother Jim, who had moved out to Long Island, after marrying my mother's best friend Mary, from beauty school in Brooklyn, won the award for dying youngest at 38, and Claire Ann and Kitty died at 51 and 43 respectively...

Alone, again, naturally

I've got a lot of time on my hands now.  It's an oddly luxurious feeling.  I don't have a job, and have a hearing coming up in order to reinstate me as a new york city teacher.  somehow, tho' i feel that the divine hand of god was there to give me this time and space to myself.  i don't know if i've used it wisely.  i've written a lot, done a film treatment, done some blogging, promoted my band with facebook, developed crushes on (and gotten over) two people.  I've sung with 4, no five bands, and still haven't recorded anything. , which will be a strong way of maintaining my independence indefinately.   I should go on the road to film with Shari.  , now that we've skipped over spring and have bungie jumped right into summer...My son is in his own world, and I don't see him for days at a time. I have empty nest syndrome, with not  quite an empty nest.  Maybe I should just move, while he's not looking, and put everything into storage. That would be nice., so that I could go on the road.. 

Tuesday nites at the Sapphire Lounge

I don't live in NYC because of the glamour or hipness. I've got enough internal hipness to last me through a few lifetimes in Hershey PA, or Cleveland Ohio. The reason I live in NY is so that I can sing with great musicians. They are here, like diamonds in South Africa. They're not easy to find, but they are here..I'm working with Roger Bartlett,who spent his youth working with Jimmy Buffett. Now Buffett makes $60,000 per show at the White House, and Roger is scrambling after a divorce left him stunned. I get to sing with Jimmy Satten, who was the guitarist for Mary Wells, my favorite Motown Diva. He can play "2 Lovers" even when noone else knows the tunes. I get to sing with Roderick Kohn who's trying to pick up the pieces after the death of his band leader, Buddy Miles, and a bike accident which left him with about 3 unbroken ribs. I think we music makers are a little like whalers in the North Sea,, who have no life insurance, little property and a daily brush with death. I stopped drinking and carrying on 20 years ago, so I only have to deal with the aftermath of the high life, the bad liver, and bogus music contracts. Anyway, the one beautiful thing that I do get to do is to sing with all these wonderful people on Tuesday nites, when we record the show for local cable. My cousin Pete, who was in the original Beatlemania and I do a piece called Channeling John Lennon, where we summon the spirit of our dearly departed Celtic brother bard, and ask for suggestions and opinions. In the last channeling sessions, we found that he needed Yoko Ono to heal the wounds of his life, and to inspire him. We found that he thinks Larry Summers is a lousy financial advisor, and that Barack Obama needs Paul Krugman on his staff.. We found that being dead isn't completely without problems, he still works on his art. (or was I channeling my mother?) Anyway, we'ere at the Sapphire Lounge every Tuesday nite at 8pm 249 Eldridge Street..right off E. Houston, where my great great grandmother grew up...

How to LIve Beautifully (like a NY ARTIST) in Tough Times!!

Looking for a job, any job, or almost any job

Hello, I've got a bunch of blogs that I write just to keep from yelling at the TV screen.
Here are some titles:

AlzheimerDad.Blogspot.com
ChristianLefty.blogspot.com
JoyRyder.net
Delta88.blogspot.com

I've been an impoverished musician most of my life, and know what's going in in the poor/working class community. I could have told those idiots in the financial community that the morgage subprime lending practices were reminicent of the techniques used by Brooklyn loan sharks, and would come to a bad end.

I could have told those "Captains of Industry" and "Masters of the Universe" that when you send all the jobs overseas and when a nation brings in one dollar for every six it sends out, somethings gonna collapse.

Oh yeah, I've got a newly minted Masters of Science in Teaching, from Pace University, which I earned while a part of the NYC Teaching Fellows. I am now an unemployed school teacher.

I'd like to work for your outfit, as an associate editor.


Thanks, Joy Whelan

Johnny was a fireman- PTSD

JOHNNY WAS A FIREMAN

they were running out as he was rollin in

rollin to the rescue on the 99th floor

but he was knockin on heaven's door

johnny was a fireman but he played guitar in the bullys band

down at cbgbs on a saturday nite

they loved to drink and fight

HE WAS YOUNG AND HE WAS PRETTY 

A ROCK AND ROLL SON OF NY CITY

HE WAS TOUGH AND HE WAS GRITTY 

THE ROCK AND ROLL SON OF NEW YORK, NY

never had no bigtime fame, but all the fans at cb's yeah, they knew their name'

Bullys were electric, yeah they rocked the show, and everybody had to go'

playing rock n' roll just to get some thrills

working in the day just to pay the bills

million dollar deals slipped thru their hands

so johnny was a fireman

ChoRUS

September morning, 9/11/01

A Five alarm sounded, calling every son

rolling to the rescue on the ninety ninth floor

but they're not there no more

What greater love lives in this land

Who would lose his life to save a fellow man?  Just a punk musician from the Bully's band, cause Johnny was a fireman

He was young, and he was pretty the rock n' roll son of NY City

HE was tough and he was gritty, the rock n' roll son of New York, NY

Go Johnny go

Roll johnny roll

Go, go Johnny

Roll, roll johnny

go johnny go

TWo MINUTES OF HATE - A RANT

file:///Users/Joy/Desktop/i%20hate%20rich%20peepo.rtfd/3197665796_22ba699c00.jpgI hate rich people.  i hate their values, their pettiness.  i hate their liposuction and their narcissism.  i hate their lack of brains and refusal to look deeply into things.  i hate their fish faces, their lacquered fingers, and their fat jewelery. I hate the men with big cars and little dicks trying to impress.  I hate the skinny old ladies with bleached out hair and wind swept faces teetering on high heels.

I hate women who dump their kids for a boyfriend.

i hate their dumb empty faces

i hate their lack of compassion

I hate the lack of conversation

i hate the  fat men who boss around empty women

i hate the women who chase rich men like vultures

I hate women who have plastic in their breasts and in their minds

i hate the kids who only care for clothes and trying to be popular

i hate the neighborhoods full of people whose minds are full of popcorn

i hate people who spend hours choosing wine and meats and organic vegetables with moral superiority

I hate housewives who do nothing all day and want to be considered interesting

I hate people who shop as a hobby

I hate people who ask if they look fat.

If you have to ask, you look fucked up.

i hate rich old women who buy young dick with their money

i hate rich ugly wrinkly men who buy young women from former communist countries

i hate american fags who go to brazil to pay to fuck kids for fun

i hate american straights who go to bangkok to pay to fuck kids for fun

I hate men who go to the phillipines to pay to fuck kids for fun

I hate third world men who sell their daughters 

I hate third world men who sell their sons

i hate young russian women with cruel faces and designer pocketbooks

i hate old white men who buy young asian women and think that they are loved

i hate drunken white men who careen around in public

i hate women who try to poison their old husbands 

i hate poor people who deify the rich

i hate poor people who will kill for a thousand dollars

I hate poor people who will kill for 40 bucks

i hate groupies who try to make friends of friends of rock stars

i hate gated communities

Some say eat the rich, I say they would be tasteless, tough beef jerky

Something you'd want to spit out.

Everybody's entitled to their 15 minutes of hate, Rod Harrod

ONe more Heartache

I truly don't understand why I can still feel heartache at my age. I'm post puppy love, have been married and divorced, have raised a child, have had boyfriends, .  .  I found an old boyfriend who had been a major  heartbreak in my twenties,  apologized to him for my bad behavior, found out that he was on the latest  of four bad marriages, but wants to make a go of it , but now instead of just retaining a distance, i've gone all romantic..  what a bitch.  it's very ego killing to have a bad love affair late in life. when you're young, you figure you'll learn from your mistakes., but to let my guard down this late in life just makes me sick at myself, makes me feel like a fool...like Marvin Gaye once wrote

One more heartache baby, I can't take it now. my heart is carrying such a heavy load, one more ache could break it. just like the camel with the heavy pack one last straw broke the camels back .  One more heartache, I can't take it now

One more heartache it would turn me right around.  First you build my hopes up, then you let me down. Like a house that's built with toothpicks sittin up on a kitchen table, one last toothpick tore it down, the foundation was not able  Oh, one more, one more heartache, I can't take it now., .