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The Write Side of 59

~ This is What Happens When You Begin to Age Out of Middle Age

The Write Side of 59

Category Archives: Concepts

Found Art

01 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by WS50 in Art, Concepts

≈ 1 Comment

Sidewalk Painting 2

By Julie Seyler

One of my favorite pleasures is finding a work of art outside the traditional museum and gallery venue.

There is something so satisfying in seeing the beauty in found art. Perhaps because it is unexpected. Perhaps because it is new. It doesn’t matter.

I had a painting teacher who told me “The more you see. The more you see.” How true. So when I amble, I look.

In the morning, when I leave the gym, I walk along the Hudson to the bus stop. For me, the rusted cement made fabulous abstract paintings.

IMG_4388

There is always a floating dock stationed at Pier 60 and looking west I can see through it to the northern New Jersey shore. There is a deep sense of space when framed in a photo.

chelsea piers

The pier in the background is being re-purposed into a super cultural/shopping mecca which will make the whole area a round the clock traffic jam. For now it still harks back to its history.

P1300212

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I am a Streamer Addict

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by WS50 in Concepts

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Streaming choices...

Streaming choices…

By Julie Seyler

For many years I have prided myself on the fact that I am unattuned to the television. While others have buzzed about their favorite shows and read me the riot act for bypassing Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and Transparent, I responded with “I simply do not have the time.” I have books to read and newspapers to digest and cannot possibly be beholden to the boober tuber.

And then we got a Smart T.V. and downloaded Amazon Instant Video and guess who is doing the cajoling now? I am addicted to my nightly ritual of pouring a glass of wine and curling up with dramatic T.V.  The newspapers are piling up, unread.

It started with Prime Suspect, starring the brilliant Helen Mirren as a homicide detective and then came The Wire starring Dominic West as a brilliant homicide detective. I just finished the first season and am thrilled there are four more to inhale. Endless T.V. viewing starring brilliant homicide detectives.

On a sleepless night there is nothing like cozying up in bed with the iPad and my head set on as Steve and the Boo (a.k.a. the cat) snore peacefully away, as I binge on episode after episode until dawn breaks. Due to recommendations from my 60-year old peers next up is Scandal and Ray Donovan. Streaming is the antidote to the folderol of the Republican debates.

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No More Minis

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by WS50 in Concepts

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Tags

Julie Seyler, Knees, The aging process

Bad knees bent mask the crepe

Bad knees bent mask the crepe

BY JULIE SEYLER

Have you noticed that people have good knees and bad knees? Or are knees completely off the radar screen of interesting body parts?

FYI, a bad knee has a crepe-y fold over appearance with a bit of puckering around the edges. To my knowledge there is no cure for bad knees. Unlike arms with a droop, where one can tether themselves to a weight lifting machine and do tricep curls ad infinitem, bad knees are incurable. Unless, perhaps, a botox injection would help plump them up.

The knee issue entered my consciousness because I am surrounded by lovely young ducks that prance the streets of Manhattan in the most adorable of thigh-high dresses and skirts. That used to be me. And then at about 57, I took note of some changes in knee action, (as well as a few other things), and adjustment started. Not that I do not don shorts, it’s just on a restricted schedule: to the beach and bbqs in my backyard.

And to be clear, I am not mourning that minis are off my radar screen because I am no longer in that age bracket of “young”. No I am simply remarking on the cliche that nothing stays the same. Who thought at 30 or 40 or even 50 that mini skirts or sleeveless shirts might have a finite lifespan in the closet?

However, I ought to quit worrying over the physical appearance of my knees and give thanks to my cartilage! At the moment no knee replacement appears to be in the offing. On the other hand, maybe that would provide an opportunity for a little nip and tuck on the pucker?

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An Unexpected Perk to Being Right of 59

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by WS50 in Concepts, Confessional

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Happy hour, Julie Seyler, Salvation Taco

Salvation Taco Rooftop Bar

Salvation Taco Rooftop Bar

BY JULIE SEYLER

Last Friday night, my way-left-of-59 office buddy and I headed over to Salvation Taco on East 39th Street for an after work cocktail. We had been there once before when she had taken me out for a pre-wedding fete. That night it had been pouring rain so we skipped the rooftop bar. But last Friday evening was exquisite. Drinking a chilled and salted margarita at a facsimile of a Mexican patio high above the streets of Manhattan was enticing.

We arrived and saw a line of Raybanned millennials hanging about the entrance and a hostess taking names.  We bypassed the crowd and walked through the glass doors to the elevator.

There was a sign posted “See Hostess for Rooftop Bar.”

We looked at each other and got in the elevator and emerged to see the cloudless blue 6:00 sky and started to head in. We were stopped by a bouncer.

“Let me see your stamp”.

“What stamp?”

“The stamp you get downstairs from the hostess to come up to the rooftop bar. You have to go back down and get stamped.”

We really did not have the time to trek back down to the ground floor, wait on line and then wait to go up. So I did the next best thing. I looked that bouncer straight in her unwrinkled eye and said sweetly,

Look, I’m old. Please let us in?

She saw there was some truth to that statement and kindly replied

Go on in.

That margarita tasted sooo piquantly delicious because being almost 60 had delivered an unexpected perk: entrance into an overpacked happy hour.

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‘Relationship’ with Computer Fraught with the Artificial

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by WS50 in Concepts, Entertainment, Men, Opinion

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Tags

Black Mirror, Frank Terranella, Her, Joaquin Phoenix, Netflix, Scarlett Johansson, Spike Jonze, The Twilight Zone

Me and my gal.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

The upside of Netflix being shut out by movie studios from streaming new Hollywood movies is that they have had to look high and low for content. The low has been some putrid indie films. The high has been some great British television. An example of the best is a British television series called “Black Mirror.” There are only six episodes available, but they are well worth your time.

Black Mirror has been described as an anthology series like The Twilight Zone, and it does have some similarities in that each episode is thought-provoking and often deals in moral or ethical issues. It’s set in the near future and technology plays an important role in each episode. For example, there is an episode called “The Entire History of You” that envisions a time where we all have video recorders attached to our eyes and implanted in our heads. This allows us to play back everything we experience at will on nearby television screens. While this instantly settles disputes about what people said, it also causes lots of problems. For example, the question “where were you last night?” is not simply answered by words any longer. Now we go to the videotape to actually see what you saw last night. It’s an intriguing concept and one bound to improve honesty. But a young couple with trust issues finds the pitfalls of having all this “evidence” to dwell on.

Another episode that really struck me was one called “Be Right Back” in which a man tells his wife he’s just going out and will be right back, but then gets killed in an auto accident. At the funeral, a friend tells the widow that there is a service available that takes all of a person’s online activity (pictures, emails, tweets, etc.) and creates a humanoid in that person’s form that has that person’s personality including memories, vocabulary and sense of humor. She urges the widow to simply re-create her husband from his online persona. After some initial misgivings, she agrees. The humanoid arrives and is indistinguishable from her husband and has all his online memories. But there are problems in any human-humanoid relationship and the episode shows them and how they are resolved. The episode seeks to explore the question whether a person is really just the sum of his online communications. By the way, the widow is played by Hayley Atwell, whom you may know as Agent Carter in the recent ABC television series.

The “Be Right Back” episode reminds me of another film that explored the romantic relationship between man and machine. It is the 2013 Spike Jonze film “Her” starring Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson. There, Phoenix plays a man who literally falls in love with the Siri-like voice of his computer. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. As computer assistants become more and more sophisticated, we are encouraged to think of them as persons. That’s why they have names. But any relationship between artificial intelligence and real intelligence is bound to be fraught with problems and that is what “Her” shows. Can a person be in love with a dis-embodied voice or is a body necessary? If you think about it, this is not a new question. In the past, there have been dis-embodied, long-distance relationships by mail or later telephone. Most of these did not work out once the parties met face to face, because real life is different from the intellectual life.

About six months ago I wrote about the peril of mistaking a life online with a real life. I urged readers to “Friend someone who lives in your neighborhood, rather than on Facebook. Deliver a Tweet in person. Interact with flesh and blood people and not just their avatars.” Television programs such as  “Black Mirror” and films such as “Her” show why artificial friends are as unhealthy as imaginary ones. It’s easy to be seduced by technology. That voice on your phone sounds so real. It’s always polite and helpful. Real people can be bothersome, rude and even hostile. But ultimately an online relationship is a fantasy. And living in a fantasy world, you always run the risk of a rude awakening.

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Martin Luther King Jr.

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by WS50 in Concepts

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Tags

Concepts, The Write Side of 50

MLK

His eyes reflected compassion, kindness, fearlessness and brilliance.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 86 this past Thursday, January 15. What would he think of the state of affairs that we live with today? Would he consider his “dream” for racial equality as somewhat undone, unraveled? Or still evolving?

The eloquence of his message is as relevant in 2015 as it was in 1968 when he died. Perhaps we could honor him today by examining present-day America through his eyes.

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Homeland Security

16 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by WS50 in Art, Concepts

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Tags

Art, Concepts, The Write Side of 50

IMG_1078

More and more, it feels as if our living rooms are the last bastions of true privacy, where we can uphold our rights to walk around free of intrusion.

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Anna Magnani Defines Sexiness

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by WS50 in Concepts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anna Magnani, Mamma Roma, The Passionate Thief, The Rose Tattoo

Anna Magnani.

Anna Magnani

BY JULIE SEYLER

Have you ever wondered what makes a person “sensual?” I don’t mean the superficial qualities of figure and face.

I am referring to elusiveness — a mysterious attractiveness, unforced; a wise naivité. It’s the enigma that arises from the inner core. For me, it can be summed up in two words: Anna Magnani, the Italian film actress. She died the year I turned 18. She was only 65, nine years older than I am today, but in her movies she lives on.

She seems to always portray women who are primal and of the earth. Whether she was the garrulous prostitute in Mamma Roma, or the overburdened widow in The Rose Tattoo or the actress desperate for a good time on New Year’s Eve in The Passionate Thief, her sexiness exudes: her humanity and her voluptuousness; her smile and her vulnerability; her compassion. She may be an over-the-top volcano, but she is never unreal. So what if she was merely a figment of someone else’s imagination. She never could have been as sexy as those characters are unless she possessed it.

And so my New Year’s resolution is to see more Anna Magnani movies.

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A (Smith) Spin on Christmas

24 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by WS50 in Concepts, Men

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night 2

BY BOB SMITH

Although Christmas is celebrated worldwide by millions, I believe little is known about the birth of Jesus.

A baby was born in the Middle East approximately two thousand years ago. His mother, Mary, was probably no more than 14 years old and either engaged, or only recently married, to a man named Joseph. No one knows how old Joseph was at the time – he could have been anywhere from 15 to 99.

The two had not yet slept together, so when he learned Mary was pregnant, Joseph planned to leave her and move on with his life. A compassionate man, he considered a private divorce because if he publicly denounced her as having been unfaithful, Mary could have been stoned to death. However, despite his reservations, Joseph relented and decided to stay – reportedly, an angel appeared in a dream and reassured him that Mary had done no wrong, and that, nonetheless, she was bearing a very special child.

The baby was born shortly thereafter, and they named him Jesus. Those bare facts aren’t seriously disputed (although many would quibble with whether an “angel” had actually appeared). But beyond that, little is certain about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth.

They say he was born in Bethlehem, but for the rest of his life, he was known as “Jesus of Nazareth,” which is eighty miles away. There appears to be scant or no historical support for the belief that Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem to be counted in the Roman tax census, when whatever property he owned (and on which the taxes would have been levied) was back in Nazareth. And it doesn’t make much sense for the couple to have embarked on a four (or more) day journey when Mary was so close to giving birth.

Many believe the Bethlehem birthplace was a fiction, created merely to make the birth of Jesus more closely conform to Old Testament prophecies about the coming of a great savior.

We don’t even know the exact year, or the exact month and day, when Jesus was born. Some say December 25 is unlikely for a number of reasons. For instance, the shepherds supposedly tending their flocks would not have had their sheep outdoors overnight during that cold and rainy time of the year. And December 25 was already popular as Saturnalia, a pagan holiday celebrating the birth of the sun god. Did the Roman Catholic Church pick December 25 as the date we commemorate the birth of the “son of God” (our very own “sun god”) as a convenient replacement for a holiday with which their doctrine disagreed?

It’s also unclear whether Jesus was born in a manger, as the story goes, or in someone’s home. And apart from Mary and Joseph, there appears to be little or no historical evidence for believing that anyone else attended the birth – if the magi were there at all, they likely arrived some time later. Some speculate that it could have been months before any “wise men” showed up bearing gifts. And while there may have been three of them, the historical record (the book of Matthew, the only known account of the magi and the “Christmas star”) merely refers to them in the plural, so there could have been two, four, or ten of them for all we know.

So what do we know? About two thousand years ago, a boy named Jesus was born in the Middle East. That’s not unusual – today, at least four people are born every second of every day. And his parents were poor; nothing new there. But we also know that the accounts of this boy’s life and death, and his teachings, have been preserved and passed on for centuries. And we also know that, whoever you think he was, Jesus has had, and continues to have, an enormous positive impact on the lives of billions of people.

Given the passage of millennia, and the fact that we’re talking about someone who many worship as the son of God, is it surprising that the story may have been “spun” by some, or that elements of fable have crept into the record? I think I can live with that.

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Christmastime in the City: It’s Palpable

11 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by WS50 in Concepts, Men

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Tags

Christmas, Concepts, Men, The Write Side of 50

Christmas tree. Rockefeller Center.

Christmas tree. Rockefeller Center.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

There has long been a dichotomy among Americans. Some love cities; some love the country. Over the course of the last 200 years, Americans have been voting with their feet and cities have been winning. Still many prefer the rural life, at least some of the time. But whether you’re a city or a country person, most people agree that at Christmastime our cities shine.

Tourism in our great cities like London, Rome and New York increases dramatically in late December. People flock to see the store windows, the churches and the Christmas trees. Christmas music and Christmas theater abounds. In New York, the Rockettes head up a Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. Our concert halls and churches echo the glory of Handel’s “Messiah.” The Salvation Army rings its bells on street corners. It’s the scene saluted in the popular song “Silver Bells.”

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks.
Dressed in holiday style
In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas
Children laughing, people passing
Meeting smile after smile
and on every street corner you’ll hear
Silver bells, silver bells
It’s Christmas time in the city

I think that Christmas time in the city is magical. It is the one time of year when avowed country people are willing to put up with the city crowds. In New York they flock to Rockefeller Center, to Macy’s, Saks and FAO SCHWARZ. They marvel at the decorations on Fifth Avenue. They enjoy ice skating, walks in the park, and of course, the sound of silver bells.
And as the song says, “In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas.” I swear, it’s palpable. There’s nothing like a city at Christmas.

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