A Very Stroock Christmas

The publishing house waiting for our Pershing short story has asked us if we're on track for the 12/31 deadline. 

We are on track and will try to wrap it up tomorrow. After all, for us Jews Christmas means time to get Chinese and go to the movies. 

Actually in the Stroock family from 1980 till 2003 Christmas meant visiting Mom's relatives in Western Kentucky. Here's our grandfather's grave (from whom we get our middle name, Thompson, and why we went by Tom till college). This is cemetery hill, Livermore Kentucky. The first time we've laid eyes upon it since 2004. Decorated and photographed by our cousin Molly:

In 2004 began the Stroock family tradition of Christmas lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC. Always we sat at the famed Algonquin Roundtable. It was a tradition beginning with our grandfather's grandfather, Jacob Loeb (b. 1869), who used to take him to lunch there after going to the George Washington Bridge construction site.

Here's four generations of Stroocks, at the Algonquin, our last Christmas there (probably ever) in 2017.

Monday Metal

I got nothing folks.

Here's my grandfather's second wife playing his favorite song at the Algonquin. I'm pretty sure he's holding the camera. That's bassist Jay Leonhardt in the background.

Percolating

One of the ways I write is to sit back and let the idea percolate in my head. It's images mostly, right now I'm seeing a line of Australian Leopard Tanks along the tarmac at Haiphong International Airport. Opposite the Aussies are masses of Vietnamese tanks readying for a desperate counterattack to reclaim the airport.

The idea bubbles and simmers and becomes solid and takes form and the battle unfolds.

I do this with plot and character too.

Also percolating is Patricia Bloom's thirty eight year old character, sitting on the back deck of her Sarasota home, sadly strumming her guitar, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. She's going through an epic conflict with her neighbor, worried about her teenage daughter who is absolutely smitten with her boyfriend, and wondering if the long times of separation with Jake will ever end. 'Don't ever fall in love with a soldier,' she says out loud.

It's really an all day, everyday process. If I'm sitting in a doctors office, I'll be imagining story lines. I've been doing this since I used to get sent to sit on the Black Cushions at Furnace Woods Elementary School. I am never bored.

Today my family and I will be driving into Manhattan for my Barbara Carroll's funeral, my grandfather's wife. Along the way,, well....

Ave Atque Vale

A bit of sad news:

Barbara Carroll, the jazz pianist and singer who for seven decades was a beloved fixture of Manhattan night life, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death was announced by her husband, Mark Stroock.

A pioneer in a field dominated by men, Ms. Carroll was frequently introduced as “the first lady of jazz piano.” With her bright red hair piled high, she embodied a timeless bohemian elegance and artistic grace.

Until December, she had been performing regularly at Birdland in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday afternoons with the bassist and singer Jay Leonhart.