I flew to the East Coast a week ago, staying with my sister Jeannette in East Brunswick NJ and with my friend Phyllis in Manhattan. In the last few days I did three readings, two in Manhattan and one in Philadelphia. Spent a lot of time driving around New Jersey, walking around the streets of NYC, and riding various buses and trains. Below I’ll link to a video of the event at the bookstore of the Gay Center–my reading, plus a presentation by six of us old time GLF members. The place was packed, crowd very enthusiastic. You can see it on YouTube.

(Also spent a lot of time talking with friends, GLF comrades, and relatives about the horrendous events in the Middle East–but you can read the news for yourselves. Everyone has an opinion. I have two. First, quoting Yeats, “the best lack all conviction/while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” I disagree with what he said about the best, but certainly agree about the worst. Second, I can’t begin to understand how a grown man can pick up a gun and shoot a baby. Yet men have been doing that for millennia, though in the old days they used swords. The Bible records plenty of such instances. More recently, we have the My Lai massacre and myriads of other unpublished, unpunished such crimes…)

Click on this link to get to the video, or watch it below. We wore masks when we weren’t speaking, as some of us have conditions that make us extremely vulnerable to Covid-19 (OK, me and my wife.) Please share it with your friends.