Blog

Yay! My Zelensky action figure arrived just as the Ukrainian hero was shown on the BBC meeting with European leaders in Moldova. He is made by the very cool people at FCTRY in Brooklyn.  Photo J Molloy

The 79th anniversary of D-Day is a good day to give a shoutout to Tom Hanks for his hilarious, deep, and inspiring commencement speech at Harvard University. His crimson robe may resemble Superman’s cape, but he encouraged the 2023 graduating class not to emulate superheroes.

“We are all in a cage match with agents of hubris, apathy, intolerance, and braying incompetence as villainous as Lex Luthor, but there ain’t no superman to save us…. We are all but humans. But you are young and strong and super, and if you believe that the truth is sacred, and that that truth is: liberty and justice is for all of us, no matter our gender, our faith, our station, our heritage, the shade of our flesh, or the birthplace of our ancestors…. If you are someone who will fight for truth, justice, and the American way… if you are someone who will take on that work… together we simple humans will be able to create a more perfect union….”

If Hanks sounds Lincolnesque, maybe it’s in the genes: Via Abraham Lincoln’s mother Nancy Hanks, he is the great orator’s third cousin four times removed. If you watch the 22-minute video Harvard posted on YouTube, you’ll hear the actor’s imitation of his late pal Marlon Brando, and see Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates nod approvingly during Hanks’ oration. And after reading his new novel, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” I have no doubt that he wrote it himself.

As we watch the WNBA Finals, a friend was inspired to donate her tickets to Britney Griner’s first game back in New York since her release from a Russian prison when the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury plays the New York Liberty Sunday June 18th at Barclays in Brooklyn. The pair of Tix, available on CharityBuzz, will benefit a fantastic nonprofit tuition-free charter school in the Bronx for boys and for girls emphasizing basketball play, academics, and mentorships for varied careers in the game. The School was co-founded by the great New Yorker Dan Klores. Gotta love their motto: “A ball and a book can change the world.”

Here’s what it says on the CharityBuzz website:

Donated by: A Friend of Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School

Bid now to win 2 tickets to the Phoenix Mercury plays the N.Y. Liberty at the Barclays Center on Sunday, June 18th, and witness Britney Griner's first game back in New York City!

These seats are located in Section 24, Row 12, Seats 7 and 8!

Your donation benefits the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School in the Bronx, a 501C3 nonprofit co-ed school emphasizing academics as well as athletics. Students are connected with mentors and internships and receive counseling and membership in an anti-gun violence program. Family financial aid for shelter, clothing, transportation, and medical assistance is provided if needed. Students are exposed to many professions in basketball, including personal representation, marketing, law, nutrition, analytics, finance, coaching, and more. The school’s motto is: “A ball and a book can change the world.”

Team photo of Britney Griner courtesy of the Phoenix Mercury.

Photo J. Molloy

Barbie Fever heated up Cinema Village East in NYC on opening weekend.  Oppenheimer also opened on the 70mm screen at the palatial Cinema Village East, affording some a Barbenheimer opportunity. Some fans wore fedoras in honor of talented-to-his-toes Cillian Murphy, or they wore artist Norro’s Peaky Blinders-meet- Edward-Hopper tee shirts. 

 Happy Lunar New Year, Year of the Snake. The snake is associated with love, intelligence, and resilience, Professor Jonathan H.X. Lee told Kimmy Yam at NBC News online, adding that the Year of the Snake is about moving on by shedding the skin of negativity that’s been burdening you. “It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” Lee told Yam.

Lucky things in the Year of the Snake include orchids, cacti, and the colors red, black, and light yellow. The lucky numbers are 2, 8, and 9 and numbers that contain them, like 29.

New York City’s parade in Chinatown will be Sunday Feb. 16th. Today is actually a state holiday in California, the first state to do so, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022. Also known as Tet in Vietnam, people begin travelling home, like many in the U.S. do at Thanksgiving. It is dark at night, as there is no visible moon, and folks wish each other in Chinese “Chu Ru Ping An” – safe travels. They also wish each other Gong Xi Fa Cai, which I am loosely translating as “May the wealth be with you.”

This cool illustration is the cover of the book Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980 by Jane Livingston and John Beardsley, published by the University of Mississippi Press.

Many of us have seen the murals in U.S. Post Offices that were painted by artists under the Works Progress Administration [WPA], later called the Work Projects Administration, which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [FDR] established by executive order in 1935. Part of FDR’s New Deal during the Great Depression, the WPA invested what would be $230 billion today to give jobs to over 3 million unemployed Americans. These workers built the country’s infrastructure: roads, bridges, water mains, hospitals, firehouses, schools – even the Griffith Observatory.

But what is so mind-blowing is that the WPA also paid musicians and members of theatre groups to perform, writers to write, and artists to paint. I had no idea what great artists had been helped by the program.

That’s one reason why the Swann Galleries auction “The Artists of the WPA” going on now is so amazing, besides the inherent beauty of the art. Works by Thomas Hart Benton, N.C. Wyeth, Rockwell Kent, Berenice Abbott, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and most iconic of all, “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange, are included in this collection of paintings, photographs, prints, posters, and sculpture, I believe curated by specialist Harold Porcher. There are artworks featuring Boston, Philadelphia, New York, California, the South, and the farmland in between.

I was stunned by a photograph of the actual Joad family applying for relief, which was taken by photographer Horace Bristol, who accompanied The Grapes of Wrath author John Steinbeck as he visited Farm Security Administration migrant camps.