BATBLand.com

A leisurely green sigh at the heart of the city...

We were all children once...and so were our fairy tale characters.

http://nymag.com/news/features/childhood/

I read this because Mr. Perlman tweeted it. At 32, I find it chock full of common sense and street wisdom...for folks of all ages. I imagine it would be so for the title thirty-somethings of our fairy tale as well.

KAREEM: 20 THINGS I WISH I’D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 30

~ Z

A beautiful dreamer stands up to one of the world's cruelest assumptions.

http://youtu.be/VSrAJsWvEIc

~ Z

The girl who silenced the world for five minutes: Severn Suzuki, 1992.

A voice for the children of the '80s and '90s. She still deserves to be heard. And listened to.

http://youtu.be/TQmz6Rbpnu0

Beauty often waits for *just the right time*...a moment when she is most needed...before revealing her presence in the midst of ordinary life.

The Photography of Vivien Maier

Voices coalescing in the Whispering Gallery...

The Six Attributes of Courage

Listening to everyone is an essential skill in Tunnels life...

...and ought to be so in our own world as well.

A courageous exercise in listening and being listened to:

"Normal People Scare Me": Learning to LIsten Louder

I don't know that this speech is truly earth-shattering, but it is selfishness-shattering. So it definitely offers a path to improved life together on Planet Earth.

The Earth-Shatteringly Amazing Speech That’ll Change The Way You Think About Adulthood

I fell in love with their cloaks...

"Beauty and the Beast" - George Barr

Yes, the title says it all.

A History of New York in 50 Objects

When dancers play...youthful skill meets pizzazz.

http://youtu.be/YSjQajzyAF4

The life and art of Anthony Dominguez

http://thevillager.com/2013/05/09/artis ... he-street/

I'm thrilled they got Little Fugitive (cheers for the child's-eye view) and Wolfen in there (go inner city werewolves!), but I do not understand why An Unmarried Woman and Working Girl (at the very least) did not make it onto the list. Or maybe I'm just a postmodern feminist who is interested in solid stories about strong women. Be that as it may, it's still a neat survey of NYC flicks. (I know, I know, "No one says flick anymore," but it sure is fun to wink at the phrase...and the B&B reference. )

100 Best Films Set in New York City

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

• by John Donne (1572-1631)

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.