Eileen St. Louis

Marthalicia's art Process took place as scheduled at Five Points in Long Island City where astonishing tags covered a giant old warehouse and where new taggers felt free to create new art on the walls. At the last cooking class I conducted at rainbow heights, we made "power balls" made of ground nuts, dried fruit, bits of semi-sweet chocolate, oatmeal, brown sugar, peanut butter, maple syrup and dusted with cocoa, cinnamon or color sugar crystals. Hudson River Festival was complete with Little Netherlands at Battery Park and free water taxis to Governors Island where art installations bathed in the sun or inside houses. Shari and Kyrk took me to the Gizmo Gallery where latest in technology was on display and for trying such as the 200 pancake machine and 3D etchasketch. We attended the afterparty involving free brooklyn lager, planet earth on the biggest liquid screen tv and dancing to jams.

I love Portland in the evening. This is the West Side of the city along Hawthorne and Belmont. There are so many great signs.

The public scrutiny of Michael Jackson's death has almost made me forget that he was simply, a man who had just as much troubles as any of us but unfortunately, had to live them all out in the limelight. If there is a lesson to be learnt here, its that as rich and famous as he was, MJ could not escape the terrors that lurked in his soul and I wonder perhaps, if he was surrounded by good people who really looked out for his best interests. I mean, who was MJ's bestfriends? Elizabeth Taylor? Diana Ross? Can White Diamonds and Drug Diva keep it real? As much as I respect the Grand Moonwalker who stole my heart with his charismatic and innoncent smile while he sashyed down lit squares in "Billie Jean," I can't help but feel a great sadness for the man that was exposed to so much personal abuse at a young age and then public ridicule as he aged, despite his phenomonal successes. I think MJ's heart was always in the right place. I truly relate to his strugg...

So, pride month coincided with Swizz sweetheart boys on their first tour of NY. Though Brooklyn Pride was drizzly, we managed to do a lot of outreach and have funvwhile doing it too. To "kick" it off, I attended a very timely workshop at APICHA about how to deal with unwanted advances during Pride. The boys brought chocolate and beer courtesy of Switzerland and we spent many a night attending Spanish bar, drinking mojitos,calperinas and listening to jazz.