Tag: USD

Families of Clowns

Sometimes I have dreams that are so clear and simple that when I wake up I am surprised that it didn’t really happen.  This morning I awoke after one such dream.

I was sitting in a booth in a dark dive bar in Williamsburg with friends looking at a 4-page color pull-out section of the newspaper about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Clown College Reunion taking place across the river.  The feature contained a full page of yearbook-like rows of small portraits of families of clowns, parents and children in full makeup and costume.  I felt sad and left out because I clown alone without my family.

This much is true:  As the New York Clown Theatre Festival was taking place, there was also a reunion of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clowns hosted by Greg and Karen DeSanto in Baraboo, Wisconsin (Not Manhattan as in my dream).  Jay Stewart was involved in the organization of the event.  Jay is married to Kristen and they have 2 kids who perform with them sometimes.  There are other couples I know, or know of, mostly former Ringling Clowns, like Tommy and Tammy Parrish who worked together on the circus and went back to the real world after they had kids.  They still perform, and sometimes their kids join in the act. There is a part of me who would love to clown like that.

However, my life did not work out that way.  Although I did meet my husband working in a theatre and he has an acting resume, that’s was never really his thing.  He was a director and uses the skills he developed in that capacity in a management role in the real world. (So we have insurance–yeah!)  The Kid we produced together hid in my arms in the kitchen when there was a clown at a birthday party.  She was not at all happy when I paid attention to other children when I was a clown at her preschool’s annual fundraiser.  As a dance student she refused to perform and would not even put on the little tutu for a photo with classmates.

During the recent New York Clown Festival I went to events on my own.  I didn’t see as many performances as I had planned.  I didn’t see many performances at all.  The nights I was scheduled to be on stage involved so much planning and jumping through hoops in order for My Kid to be picked up from school and escorted to and picked up from Brownies and soccer.  She requires frequent feedings and regular bedtimes.  It is considered bad form for an 8-year-old to hang out with a bunch of clowns in a dive bar in Williamsburg on a school night.  There were other complications.  The Husband was away on a business trip for much of the festival.  Although I’d visualized many evenings of passing the ball of responsibility for My Kid to The Husband the moment he walked through the door, hopping on the G-train on Lafayette and hopping off at Metropolitan for an evening of cutting edge clown performances from all over the world– that I would be able to see FOR FREE with my participants badge–followed by career promoting beer, shop talk and networking at the Lazy Catfish. Ha!.  I saw one show on a night I did not perform.  It cost me over $50 for a babysitter.   As I was leaving, I passed Ishah Jansen-Faith on her way to the theatre. Hey are you coming back?  No way.  I would have had to pay the babysitter over $100 if I stayed for the free cabaret.

That’s why people put their kids in their acts.

the morning after the NO

In her book, used by nonprofit workers, “The Ask: How to Ask Anyone for Any Amount for any Purpose,” Laura Fredricks presents “The 10 Guiding Principles For Any Ask.”
Using the guiding principles as a “road map” for all your asks, she wrote, will make you “ready, focused, and energized to ask for gifts in your own winning style.

The 10 Guiding Principles For Any Ask:

  • The more personal and sincere you are with the people you are cultivating, the quicker you will be able to make the ask.
  • Every prospect must be treated separately and distinctly.
  • Anyone asking for a gift must first make his or her own gift.
  • Ask for a specific amount for a specific purpose.
  • Consistent givers can and will make larger gifts.
  • Always use we instead of I in any ask because that connotes that the ask is being done with all the strength and backing of the organization.
  • Any organization’s planned giving program must be coordinated with all other fundraising programs.
  • Every campaign prospect must be asked for as specific amount, with guidelines on how to fund the gift and with a proposed time frame.
  • At the initial ask, stay committed to the ask amount.
*Hank Paulson didn’t do these things, no wonder the American people got to their members of Congress and convinced them to say “No”.
*He wasn’t personal and sincere–he was alarmist and threatening.
*He almost commanded Congress and the American people practically out of the blue to give him $700 trillion by the end of the week.
*He never said he was giving up any of his own personal net worth (between $500 and $700 million) towards this purpose but he expected taxpayers who make minimum wage to contribute.
*He didn’t say what exactly he was going to do with the $700 trillion and in fact didn’t want anyone to ask him.  The bill included the following text; “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” [RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG!!!!!!]
*Consistent givers can and will make larger gifts, (but at some point they have to look at their own budgets).
*Always use we instead of I in any ask because that connotes that the ask is being done with all the strength and backing of the organization.  So how come everyone heard; “Hank Paulson asks for $700 trillion.”
*Any organization’s planned giving program must be coordinated with all other fundraising programs. (Health, Education, Welfare; Highways and bridges; Farm programs; National Parks…)
*Every campaign prospect must be asked for as specific amount, with guidelines on how to fund the gift and with a proposed time frame. (These guidelines on how to fund the gift were missing.  (“Gimme $700 trillion by Wednesday or else sounds more like a character from The Sopranos”)
 *At the initial ask, stay committed to the ask amount.  (Well he did do that!)
Ask for what you want.
You just might get it.  
What’s the worst that can happen?
They may say no.
You’ll be no worse off than you are now.
Well, Congress did say “No.”
and
We’re all still here.

Yeah, I don’t see myself making it to the theatre again tonight…

After rehearsal, we came back to the apartment, Lorraine got to work  and I had a few minutes to check e-mail, then I had to go get on the train to go pick up My Kid at school by 3:00 o’clock.  I was a little late, but I slowed myself down even further when I ran into another mommy who was getting off the train with 3 large bags of art supplies.  So I walked to the school with her and helped her carry one of her bags.  She’s working on an art degree, and had just spent a couple hundred dollars at the art store because she has four paintings due on Monday.  (Last night I enjoyed sitting in the front room with Lorraine as she cut out shadow puppets.  I lapsed into reverie about the way I used to be able to work late into the night…  Since My Kid started all day school I have struggled with trying to “work” during the day.  For creative work, that has been difficult for me. Unless I’ve gone into a studio or talked through a project–as I read this I realize I can work with other people during the day but to work by myself–I work best in the middle of the night.  That’s not so easy when My Kid is on a school schedule.  Where was I…Oh yeah I was describing my day…Let’s see, I got as far as pick-up.  I was a little late.  Art Mommy and I collected our kids from the auditorium–where the kids whose parents or caregivers failed to appear at exactly 3 o’clock are contained. Then My Kid led me out to the damp playground where the usual suspects were assembled.  I gave postcards to some of the other mommies, but I don’t expect them to come.  This particular performance on 9/11 is not very parent friendly. I’ve invited some local mommies to come see my rehearsal in the same room where the local toddler “Music Together” classes are held at the South Oxford Space.  They may show up.  My Kid and I took the 2/3 train so we could walk away from the school in the same directions as her friends.  We stopped at Target to look for a gooseneck clip-on lamp for the shadow puppets.  No luck.  Bought some heavy cans of soup and spagetti-os to walk home with.  We found what we were looking for at Office Max.  When we got home Lorraine was on the front stoop applying paper mache to the alien baby head.  So we sat and talked, and chatted to the neighbors who passed by.

Now, pasta, beer and laptops for every adult in the room.  My Kid has her homework.  E-mails and phone calls continue, but our outside life is over for the day.  Time to wash the dishes and put My Kid to bed.

Without a shop…

Today Lorraine is building the shadow puppet frame.

We just got back from the hardware store where Lorraine had planned to have them cut the wood she selected her, but it was $2 a cut, and she needed about four cuts so it would have cost more than the lumber which was only about $3. It’s New York City and we live in an apartment so we’re being nickel and dimed to death.

Lorraine is down on the front stoop right now with My Kid watching her cut the wood. She has her own tools, but we don’t have space. Thank goodness it’s not raining.

It would be so much easier if we lived in a whole house somewhere like my home town where my father and brother both have houses with full basements and shops with table saws. The Husband is not the only person in this family who would enjoy a shop in the basement.

But, if we lived in a whole house somewhere I wouldn’t be able to get myself safely to a theatre space in Williamsburg to perform in a late night cabaret and then get home in time to sleep a few hours before getting My Kid off to school.

BPP

Idle chat turned to real estate during rehearsal, something that didn’t matter before we became parents and found out we don’t live in good school districts.

We were leafing through the glossy New York Family magazines available in the lobby of the Manhattan Children’s Theatre, there in Tribeca. They were full of ads for multi-million dollar apartments and private schools and articles about “Kid Culture in the Hamptons”.

One of the other mommies expressed frustration with her job and the difficulties of combining work and nursing a baby. She was incredulous that a co-worker blythely suggested she reduce her stress level by hiring a nanny. Classic BPP (Bitter Poor Person) thinking in the lexicon of New York urbanbaby.com

I once read a post on that message board asking: “How much money do you normally spend on personal grooming? The original poster confessed to “about $2000 per month including haircuts, manicures, waxing, and massages….” The UB chat rooms are famous for obsessive school comparison shopping. Other threads question how many people need to be hired to “staff a party” and whether it is physically possible to live in New York on less than 200 thousand dollars per year.

A different friend of mine was once asked at a job interview (publishing) if she expected to live on the salary. As a matter of fact she did. Now if she took the job, because she majored in English hoping to work for a publishing company in New York, and then ended up resenting her diet of peanut butter and ramen while others with the same job went out every night and wore fashionable clothes and then she would be a BPP.

New York is hard because there are so many people in this city who have sources of money other than their paychecks.

smug anxiety

Despite having a good time on the 4th of July I spent a good percentage of the next day filled with anxiety and stress.  I should have felt good that I had just had a paying gig, but then I watched re-runs of “I Love Lucy” with my kid and instead of enjoying them I thought about how when I first became a clown the knowledge that she did the “I Love Lucy” shows in her 40’s made me think I still had lots of time in which to make my mark as a clown.  I’m not feeling that way so much anymore.  (There is also the shrinking amount of time in which to clean and pack and get ready for our trip to Montana which must also include being ready to hit the ground running at Kendall’s rehearsals the day we get back to New York, –clearing and readying our bedroom for the delivery of a new bed, by far the biggest job on my list– and being packed and ready to go to Toronto the morning after the last performance of “Clown Axioms”.) I drank too much coffee until I suddenly had to eat or implode.  I quickly prepared a breakfast of vegetarian imitation bacon and fried eggs for the three of us while I listened to an NPR interview with Barbara Kingsolver talking about her book about her year spent eating in season food they had grown themselves.  People with the cultural capitol to write books that are published about such things generally begin their stories by describing the beautiful property that they own, this book is no exception.  And so a bitterness tinged the fresh berries, greens and apple juice I had purchased for more than twenty dollars at the green market in the park that morning.

In the afternoon we went to see WallE at Cobble Hill Cinemas (second time for My Kid and I, first time for My Husband).  We played in the park and ate an old-school Italian dinner at the Red Rose on Smith Street.   Wine and pasta in the company of my small family comforted and relaxed me even without the smug joy of preparing the dishes myself using homegrown produce.