I'm Escaping New York!

Bob Hauk, "There was an accident. About an hour ago, a small jet went down inside New York City. The President was on board." Snake Plissken, "The president of what?" ~ Escape from New York

Yep, I’m getting out of New York this week. Heading west for brighter skies and a warmer clime.

I can’t say I will shed any tears although I loved where I lived, not in the city, in the countryside, near a charming little town. I will still be spending time there, just not so much.

New York City under terrorist sympathizer Zohran Mamdani isn’t my idea of a place where I want to live. I just wrote about the ISIS inspired terrorists who threw a bomb and weren’t even called out by the mayor. Does anyone think things will improve? They’d have to be sticking their heads in the sand if they do.

I remember the first time I visited NYC. I had just started InsideOUT Writers, the creative writing program for incarcerated youth in Los Angeles. I had been invited to meet with Cis Corman, on behalf of Barbra Streisand. I had applied for a grant of $7,000 from her foundation and it had been accepted.

Those were different days, the late 1990s. The first thing I did upon arrival in New York was take a walk in Central Park and three was Madonna, strolling along with her kids. It was so cool. Of course, she didn’t look then like she does now. Scary.

I was excited to be in New York City, filled with hope for the future. I couldn’t believe my application had been accepted and Cis Corman had invited me to meet with her. Cis was the president of Streisand’s Barwood Films and Barwood Television production companies, executive producing on countless projects including “Nuts,” “The Price of Tides,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” and more.

I knew nothing at that time of the world of film and entertainment or the nonprofit world. I learned everything as I went along, putting my heart and soul into building InsideOUT Writers into a respected nonprofit.

I had never written a grant before, and this was my first attempt. Being approved for this grant was instrumental in achieving my vision for the writing program. I mean, when you start from nothing and actually get somewhere, especially when your goal is to help High Risk Offenders, youth who are facing life sentences for serious crimes, it isn’t exactly easy. Cis said she and Barbra were so impressed with what I’d written that besides awarding the grant, they wanted to use my grant application on their website as an example of how to write a successful grant. I was overcome by their enthusiasm. It gave a much-needed boost to my confidence.

We talked in Cis’s beautiful, wood-paneled office. I told her the story of how I started IOW with a nun and the wonderful work we were doing. At one point, her assistant came in to tell her that Donna Karan was on the phone. I fully expected Cis to cut me off, but she waved her assistant away. “Tell her I’ll call her back later,” she said.

I was so ignorant of that world, I only found out later how unusual this was, for a person as famous as Donna Karan to be put on the back burner for a nobody like me. I’m forever grateful for Cis’s enthusiastic support or who knows, maybe I would have become discouraged and not persevered. That first grant, given by such an iconic star, gave others the confidence to donate money as well. And so, InsideOUT Writers grew and became a highly respected nonprofit.

Artwork I did for a piece of writing by one of the girls in my creative writing class, Central Juvenile Hall, 1996

As time went on, I came to hate that Hollywood world, discovering too many unsavory things about the people involved. But I only have positive memories of that first encounter with Cis Corman and will forever be grateful to her. She passed away a few years ago, one the last cultured and gracious, yet unpretentious and down-to-earth, old-school Hollywood personalities.

I went on to visit New York a few more times, invited to dinners with movie stars and film directors and spending time in recording studios with rock and pop stars. It was a world I never felt comfortable in. I wrote about some of it, the underbelly of the nonprofit world, in a book I titled “A Dangerous Woman.” It was almost published back in the early 2000s by a prominent New York publishing house. At the time, I was invited to a meeting with my editor and the marketing people, and I remember thinking as I walked through Manhattan, wow, maybe I’ve really made it here. But in the end, my book was deemed too controversial and despite the full support of the editor, the publisher passed on it. I was disappointed but also felt some relief. I wasn’t ready to publish such a book. Besides, too many things happened afterwards that needed to be added to the story. It is much better now. I intend to publish it after The Seduction of Islam.

New York is still a vibrant city filled with fantastic museums, theaters, stunning architecture, historical sites and so much more. But I have never liked crowds of people and the last thing I want to do these days is take the train for forty minutes from the countryside, so I can battle crowded streets surrounded by tall buildings that always give me claustrophobia.

New York, like Los Angeles is dirtier than ever and looks like a city under siege, with police and national guard roaming the streets, armed to the teeth. There is an anxiety in the air, a feeling of unease, an expectancy of the next bad thing happening with everyone thinking, “I hope it doesn’t happen to me.” I’m thankful for the police, especially at the entrances to train stations and the underground. But once you’re on a train or the underground, you’re stuck with no one to protect you and no way out. And that is a situation I never like.

I guess NY doesn’t just look like a city under siege. It is one. I’m waiting for Mamdani to condemn the ISIS-inspired terrorists but I’m not holding my breath.

And so, I am escaping!

I will still be back to visit the countryside, not the city.

In conclusion, what all of this means is that I’m quite busy this week and plan to only focus on my book when I have a few free minutes! I am also preparing for promoting and marketing it, which is extremely important.

God bless you all this week and I look forward to telling you more later!

You can read more about how I started InsideOUT Writers in this Los Angeles Times article: Juvenile Hall Writing Class Gives Troubled Youths a Creative Outlet