By Caitlin Hawke

I won't go much into my complicated relationship to my patriotism. Except to say, while I could have done without all the lapel pins that later ensued, when I saw the first flags appear in solidarity in the immediate wake of 9/11, it took a deep emotional toll. I don't think I'd ever before realized how powerful a symbol a cloth flag could be.

When I was in grade school, I remember learning "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and being awestruck by its beauty. It shook awake in me an explosively optimistic feeling, perhaps the birth of my complicated patriotism.

Today, cheering at my window, watching my partner cheer beside me, hearing his voice projecting over West End Avenue, listening to but not seeing my downstairs neighbor ringing her school bell, and seeing my counterparts across the avenue materialize from behind closed windows night in and night out: these are small moments of solidarity I never could have imagined would be mine. 

Like the flags after 9/11 and the voices lifted in song of my DC childhood, the evening cheers touch a deep nerve within. Collective and rallied around a single cause. A patriotism.

Here now come the airborne elite. In a military tribute to the legions who've kept our fates from a downward spiral -- the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy's Blue Angels will flyover our punch drunk city today at noon in a salute to the people whose debt we are in: our essential workers and the frontline Covid workers.

These glorious flocks of flying machines are guaranteed to take your breath away.

I can't imagine any aerobatics, but the metaphor of the jets passing in impossible proximity at impossible speed is akin to what our medical, city, and essential business workers have done these past two months. Lockstep. No margin of maneuver. In sync. All ramped up at full speed.

As I said at the top of this post, my patriotism has its complexities. But when it comes to the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds, when they fly over, all is forgiven and forgotten between me and Uncle Sam: I am American to my core. The sight and stunning sound of them, too, make a deep emotional mark -- like a roaring promise that anything is possible, anything achievable. If we come together.

Deep inside we know it's time to face the rising sun of our next new day. With the Blue Angels above, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

By Caitlin Hawke


A big hat tip to neighbor Win Armstrong for sharing news of this episode of "George to the Rescue" wherein the Bloomingdale School of Music gets the full "surprise reno" treatment that the show is known for.

While we are socially isolating and dreaming of the days of yore when stepping out to a concert didn't require biosafety level 3 gear, here's a feel-good story about how the little tuneful powerhouse known as the Bloomingdale School of Music gots its groove back. You may have seen the prodigious schedule of BSM concerts featured in our newsletters and website calendar. And you may have passed by this modest landmark just west of Broadway at 323 W. 108th Street, but never thought about what goes on inside.

Founded in 1964, this school is all about making music education accessible. It's one of those neighborhood gems like the temple of Shinran Shonin known as the New York Buddhist Church, or the Nicholas Roerich Museum -- institutions that quietly populate our residential streets and are getting on in years. Pushing 60, BSM has been so focused on educating, that sprucing up its backyard or performance hall has had to wait.  Until the angel-makeover show "George to the Rescue" got wind of its aspirations. Now that time has come, and the full transformation is unveiled in the video below.

On pause like the rest of the city, BSM will come roaring back one day soon because one of the things that makes us human is our need to make and experience music in live performance. Maybe this lovely little tale of its recent sprucing will make us all jump at the chance to attend one of their student or teacher concerts. That is, once we are delivered from our surreal sequestration. But it's something to look forward to in our Bloomingdale backyard.

Click on the image below to view the video directly on youtube (you know you have time!), or click on the blog post title to view this on our website where the video is embedded.  While you are thinking about it, now is a great time to share this blog with your neighbors while we are all in hyperlocal lockdown. It's easy to subscribe via the links below and receive posts directly to your email in box. So tell a couple of friends or neighbor about this site.

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By Caitlin Hawke

Neighbors, I feel more connected to you than ever. I can barely hear you. Can't see you, except at 7 p.m. when you fling open your sash.  But you are beautiful at the top of that hour. And your cri de coeur is mine, too.

I've been thinking about how we got here. 

Out of one, many. That's for the pangolin, or whichever creature this zoonotic nightmare leaped forth out of and upended the lives of billions.

Out of many, one. That's for us. U.S. This country, with all its fault lines and political red and blue blocks is, for better or for worse, now 'one' in a way it hasn't been since 9/11. The sooner we embrace that, the stronger we'll emerge from this catastrophe. Roughly a month in, it's not a moment too soon. But it's not just domestic. Our family of man is global. Have you ever felt the purely human connection across borders and societal divides more profoundly? And yet, here we all sit. Alone. Out of many, one.

When we come through to the other side, when we have metabolized how we have behaved, how we were led, for better for worse, who we have lost, and how we'll go on, we had better reckon with the Anthropocene. We're so busy saving ourselves, we've forgotten that the real work ahead is to save our planet.

And if we can do this, surely we can do that.

Reservoir
by Caitlin Hawke