Max and I are taking a romp in Central Park this morning when we overhear a super-spandexed lady of a certain age chatting up a much younger man walking three dogs.  “The first act was stunning and the stage went dark and there was, you know, like a long pause.  Then suddenly a rich baritone voice boomed out from backstage, ‘Occupy Wall Street!’ The audience loved it, but I don’t think it was actually part of the play.”  I give her a thumbs up and Max breaks into a dog-grin.   Is this a great city or what? (More)

I’ve been looking for God for a long time, so far finding only ephemeral shards of him or her.  But I’ve always been a non-believer who believes in believers and even in some of their beliefs.  I’m making an exception for Herman Cain. (More)

Karen Nussbaum has a remarkable family — three beautiful (and self-supporting) children, a husband who’s only marginally obnoxious, and a father who in his mid-eighties is still one of the most compelling actors in American theater and film.  This week he’s compelling in Imagining Madoff  (yes, that Madoff) at TheatreJ in Washington, and it’s an Actors Equity production you shouldn’t miss. (More)

/I started work on this many years ago.  It’s now the first chapter in a new novel I’m working on./

                                                                    Best Friends

                                                                by Ray Abernathy

September 11 wasn’t the first time Rafe Holbrook had slept through his alarm clock with no thought to its consequences.  He’d done it all through high school, two tours of duty in Viet Nam with the 1st Calvary and 20 years with the New York Police Department.  But on this morning, neither Callie Bacon nor Tom Hale had called to wake him up.  That’s because Callie was back on Deer Isle where she’d decided to stay on after high school and marry a cranberry farmer and raise kids.  And Tommy, his longtime pal, sidekick, spear carrier, confessor and crutch lay buried under 200 thousand tons of steel at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. (More)

/I was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11/.  I wrote this poem two days later./

                                                                      Body Parts

                                                                by Ray Abernathy

 A hand lies trembling in the street.

             It has no mouth, it cannot speak;

             It cannot run, it has no feet.

Up they went,   hats and boots and legs and heads.

             Down they came, no shouts or screams, already dead.

Bodies was dropping everywhere, Daria said.

Me and someone else saw a shoe under a piece of car,

so we lifted it up  and there was a leg with nothing else attached.

There were strollers with babies in them, turned on their side.

I saw a rescue worker with his arm and shoulder blown off.

He was screaming and running and the policeman

was trying to stop him to help him, but he was panicked

because the blood was coming out of him.

I saw so many people jumping and falling out the building.

One couple took each other’s hands as they jumped.

Up they went, young and strong and full of heart.

             Down they came, broken picks and body parts.

A hand lies decomposing in the street.

            The living stare, but rarely weep.

            The dead look down, but never sleep.

/Scroll down for 9/11: True Stories./

\Taken from video interviews I taped in March 2002.\         

Bobby Gray, an operating engineer, was working on a project in Midtown Manhattan when the attack took place.

I was working as a tower crane operator about 50 stories in the air on Forty-third at Eighth and actually saw the first plane hit.  I know my perception was off a bit, but it actually looked like it was going to hit the tip of the boom [of his crane].  My first reaction was: “Why is this guy so low?”  Then, before I could even get that out, I was like: “And why is he over Midtown?” (More)

I waited until this morning to post my Labor Day column, just so I could see if anyone else was writing that America’s labor movement is alive and well and doing good things for working families.  It seems I have an exclusive. (More)

What a fortuitous week! Libyan rebels stretch the Arab spring deep into summer. An earthquake rumbles, but fails to roll.  In Washington, Hurricane Irene has the good manners to visit only briefly.  The awful weather cancels a monumental dedication, but black Americans finally have a seat at the table of history on the National Mall.  However, for me all the big strokes were topped by a small show of human kindness that I witnessed, a grace note that resonated with hope for the weeks to come. (More)