Tag: Queens

Author Bob Brody on “Playing Catch with Strangers”

Bob Brody speaking at his book signing for “Playing Catch with Strangers” at the Forest Hills Library on September 16, 2017. (Courtesy Bob Brody)

In “Playing Catch with Strangers,” an essay published in The New York Times in 2015, Bob Brody writes that he played catch with his father only once in his life.

“That summer afternoon, I felt about as happy as I’d ever felt. That’s how it goes when you’re 8 years old and playing catch with your dad,” writes Brody. “But then my father got busy with work, too busy to play catch with me anymore, always leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, and that turned out to be that. He had to do what he had to do.”

Although short-lived, that special day ignited a flame in Brody’s life that would never extinguish – one that would continually remind him the importance of having fun and nurturing relationships throughout his life. In addition to becoming a public relations executive and a writer, Brody, now 65, still makes it his joyous duty to play catch with anyone who is interested.

His memoir, comprised of the many personal essays he’s written throughout his life about family and special moments, is similarly titled, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age,” and hit shelves this past June.

“My new book covers my whole life…It’s a celebration,” says Brody. “It’s about my struggle to overcome immaturity. I resisted responsibility for a long time…It wasn’t until I was 35 [when my daughter was born] that I developed a real hard work ethic.”

He says his whole life he’d only wanted to be a writer.

“That ambition took shape when I was 12,” recalls Brody, who ended up writing for his junior high, high school, and then college paper. “My grandfather bought me a New York Daily News subscription so I could read about the Yankees. I appreciated the directness of the language. I really didn’t get serious about writing till I was 18 – in college. Writing for the school paper, I became infatuated with words. I was not much of a storyteller at that point. I was just looking to see what I could do with language. I used to use big words – words that I will probably never use again. I’ve come to recognize short words can be good, short sentences can be good…I like street language too.”

He says if he had to do it all over, he really doesn’t know what else he could’ve become.

“I guess I could’ve become a lawyer, but then I would’ve written about being a lawyer,” says Brody, smiling.

Born in the Bronx, Brody lived there almost three years before migrating to the suburbs of Fair Lawn, NJ. He was always smitten with NYC, however, as he would often sleep over his grandparents’ house there, and his grandmother would take him to all the museums and concert halls, including Radio City Music Hall.

At 23, after majoring in English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he moved to Manhattan. This momentous occasion also led to his proudest career moment at 26 – getting published in The New York Times.

“I wrote about the time I got mugged five weeks into living in New York City,” laughs Brody, who has since lived in Forest Hills, Queens for the past 40 years.

Since his big break, Brody’s work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and more. He also wrote the book, “Edge Against Cancer,” which profiles 12 athletes who survived cancer and were able to return to competing in their respective sports.

He says it was when his son and daughter were born that he realized he needed to find another source of income.

“The only option I considered was public relations, because a lot of it is writing,” says Brody, who has now worked in PR for the past 26 years. “I majored in English, but I never trained for public relations. It was a tough adjustment, because for one, I was used to working on my own. I was used to being a solo act. When you work for a public relations firm, I had to learn how to be a teammate.”

At his full-time job, he says his work partly entails writing pitches, ghost writing op-eds, white papers, or memos.

“My ideal life would be to write whatever I wanted for at least three hours a day, but I think PR is good for me,” says Brody, adding that he usually enjoys writing first thing in the morning. “If I had to write only what I wanted, I might get sick of my own voice.”

His first love will always be writing essays though. The very first short story he wrote was about a haunted house when he about 8, and currently, he writes approximately 20 essays a year.

“I love telling a story that’s going to hit people where they live – make them smarter, or get them excited about something,” says Brody. “If I can write anything inspirational, that’s the holy grail. I also like the sense of control. It’s me and the blank screen. Me and the words, and how I want to tell the story. It’s fun to get published. I write to be read. All these years later, and I still never get tired of it.”

He says his five year plan entails writing three more books — the first being called, “Letters to My Kids,” of which he already started an online blog (where he urges others to also write journals to their children), another would be a memoir honoring his deaf parents, and the last would be a memoir about working in public relations.

“When I’ve written about something, I really feel like I’ve lived it,” says Brody about the necessity he feels to document his life with words. “I think I have much of it there in my new book– and it’s about the people closest to my heart.”

There are two pieces of advice about life he’s learned thus far that he would’ve liked to share with his younger self:

“On family – I wish I knew years ago what family means to me now,” says Brody. “I feel I failed early on to realize the importance of family. In some respects, I’m too late and in some, I’m just on time…and work harder. You have less time than you think. The world is never going to come to you so take nothing for granted.”

September 25, 2017
Bronx poet uses storytelling to educate others about their history

Bobby Gonzalez (Photo/George Malave)

Bobby Gonzalez has had practically every job you could think of — from a medical records clerk in a hospital to customer service at a utility company. However, he says it was at age 40 that he discovered his life’s calling and passion – storytelling. His favorite topic is his Puerto Rican and Taino heritage, which in turn, challenges his listeners to get curious about their own roots.

Ever since that moment of enlightenment, storytelling is what Gonzalez devotes his life to. At 65, he still resides in his native Bronx, NY, with his wife Maria, but sometimes he doesn’t even know where he’ll end up the next day giving a workshop or lecture. So far, he’s spoken in 42 states — in the past two weeks alone, he’s been at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina speaking about the racial and cultural diversity of Latinos. Next week, he’ll host his monthly spoken word event in Queens, NY.

“When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, I’m an educator through lectures and poetry,” says Gonzalez, who has also authored two books, “The Last Puerto Rican,” and “Taino Zen.” “I don’t know what’s going to happen the next minute. Occasionally, I get a phone call asking me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I do it. I’m not afraid to fail.”

His second favorite job in life, he says, was working at his family’s bodega, which they owned for more than 30 years.

“That’s where I really polished my speaking skills, and I heard a lot of great stories,” says Gonzalez, about the place which birthed his purpose. “It was quite an experience.”

He says his parents also played an important role.

“We were very fortunate, my brothers and I, to have had two Puerto Rican parents who always made the point to tell us where we came from and instilled in us a great pride of who we were,” says Gonzalez. “That inspired me to embark on a lifetime of personal research. I got my information from books and oral traditions – here and in Puerto Rico. When I was a little boy, my parents would take me to Puerto Rico, and I would sit at the feet of my great grandfather. He would tell me the stories of the old days, and I would roll my eyes, but I wish I listened more carefully.”

Gonzalez can see clearly now that his ancestors grew up in a different world, and that gives him the incentive to tell their stories. One story in particular which has marked him is one of his mother’s arrival to New York from Puerto Rico via a train from Miami in the 1940’s.

“She was very light-skinned, and when she got to Miami, the conductor told my dark-skinned grandmother to sit in another car,” recalls Gonzalez. “I have to remind young people they take a lot for granted – even the right to vote.”

Gonzalez remembers the exact date he began documenting his family roots by writing poetry.

“It was February 9, 1964,” he says without hesitation. “The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the day after, millions of kids around the world bought their own guitars and started to write their own music.”

Storytelling came very naturally to him, he further explains.

“Every day, I would go to the library, get some books, and then go down my block and tell stories,” says Gonzalez, who still has the same almost involuntary instinct years later. “I spend a lot of time in the Manhattan and the Bronx libraries,” where he sometimes also hosts spoken word nights for teens.

He says one of his biggest career challenges also took place in a library while he was telling stories of his ancestors, the Taino people, who are an indigenous people of the Caribbean.

“Once I was speaking in a library in Queens, and a man told me, ‘There are no Tainos left. I don’t know why you’re doing this.’ At the end, he came up to me and said, ‘I’m proud to be a Taino.’ I was taught by my parents never to say ‘You are wrong.’ We were all raised differently, so it’s important to dialogue in a civilized manner. We are all one.”

Gonzalez says he used this parental wisdom when speaking at the University of Mississippi last year, as well.

“We can’t have the same perspectives, and that’s okay, as long we listen to each other with respect,” he adds. “I meet students from Latin countries, and they don’t know about their indigenous heritage, and people who lived here their whole life don’t know American history. My favorite moment is always when people say, ‘I didn’t know that.’”

Education is primordial for Gonzalez, even though his father only finished 2nd grade and his mom, 6th grade. He admits he never finished his bachelor’s degree in marketing, but he believes through his natural curiosity, he has learned so much more by devouring books on his own. And now he loves to share that knowledge with kids as young as pre-k, all the way to seniors.

“I don’t have the sense of fear,” says Gonzalez about what has helped him the most in life. “The times now are nothing compared to what my parents went through. Police brutality was a lot more common back then, there were no bilingual services, and immigrant groups lived in one neighborhood. My brothers, and I went to college. We didn’t finish, but we did it, because my parents sacrificed for us.”

What is the one piece of life advice he wishes he could tell his younger self today?

“It gets better every day if you make the conscious effort to improve yourself passionately and persistently.”

April 25, 2017
From “Thunder Cats” to acupuncture and following your gut

Anthony Giovanniello (Photo/Adam French)

Anthony Giovanniello grew up in an Italian-American household in Queens, NY, but for as long as he can remember, he says he’s had an affinity for Asian culture.

“My parents thought they picked the wrong kid up from the hospital,” says Giovanniello laughing. “We were Catholic. So Friday nights we used to order all these vegetable dishes at the Chinese restaurant. They always sent me to pick up the food, but I would take so long because I would spend so much time talking to the owner about China.”

His parents let him embrace his love of everything Asian, however. Giovanniello started his first yoga class at 15, and then took martial arts, and finally when he was 19, he took his first trip to Japan.

“It solidified my understanding that my love of Asia was more than this life,” says Giovanniello.

Today, at 60, he is an acupuncturist at a clinic in Nashville, Tenn., as well as the founder of the non-profit Acupuncture Ambassadors which organizes sustainable acupuncture schools, training programs and treatment clinics for the care of refugees, victims of violence, and the poor around the world. In October, he will be going to help heal the trauma victims of the Nepal earthquake.

“I love Nepal – it’s one of my favorite places in the world,” says Giovanniello. “Thank God my friends are alive, but most of them are homeless.”

He says he’s been to Cambodia, Vietnam, and many other places throughout Asia, but Nepal is where he goes most often.

“I’ve been four times years in that past 10 years,” says the soft-spoken healer. “I feel at home there. The first time I went there was in 1998. It was this incredible feeling. There was a square where the King of Kathmandu had his court, and when I walked out of the taxi, I started crying like I came home.”

Giovanniello says he knew he wanted to be an acupuncturist when he was 20 – right after he had his first acupuncture treatment.

“But then I realized there were no schools to study acupuncture in the U.S. around 1980 – you had to go to China,” says Giovanniello. “You probably spend 5 or 7 years there, and then you come back and maybe you don’t find a job. So I put that idea to the side.”

Since he grew up playing music and was in a band through his 20s, he was very familiar with recording equipment. It made sense to start a career in audio production. Eventually, he became a soundtrack supervisor for the animated television series, “Thunder Cats.”

“I loved the animation which came from Japan, but late in 1999, I was in a place where life didn’t work anymore,” Giovanniello remembers. “I thought, ‘If I don’t do this acupuncture thing it’s never going to happen.’ I was 45. I went back to school in January 2000…I was determined to graduate by the time I was 50, and I did. I have a skill, but I feel it’s more of a calling, because I’m passionate about it.”

He explains that acupuncture – a form of alternative medicine involving inserting thin needles into the body at specific acupuncture points – was originally created side by side with the Chinese religious tradition of Daoism.

“You embrace the earth and nature and believe that mankind is at one with nature,” says Giovanniello. “Most won’t say it’s a spiritual practice, but it can be if you allow it. It works on animals and they have no belief systems. Most thoroughbreds have their own acupuncturists.”

He says the most memorable moment of his career so far was when he was working on the streets of Nepal, and a woman brought her 30-year-old son who had been such a severe alcoholic that he ruined his liver and was crippled.

“They came in a cab, and he needed four men to pick him up. He screamed the whole way being carried,” remembers Giovanniello. “We thought the needles were going to hurt him so I thought the best I can do is do ear acupuncture. He laid there for a couple of hours with the needles in his ears. The second day he came, and he was a little better, not screaming. He came every day. By the fourth day, he got himself onto the bed himself. By the fifth day, we were putting needles everywhere, and by the sixth day, he was walking himself to the cab. Acupuncture allows your body to kick in the hormones we already have to heal our own bodies. At the end of 7 days, he was still very weak, but he was able to get himself into the cab. It was an amazing transformation.”

Anthony performing ear acupuncture in a monastery in Nepal.

He says he started his non-profit organization, right in his living room, when he realized that acupuncture was more of a calling than a business.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” reflects Giovanniello. “My first ‘get my feet wet’ mission was in a Navajo reservation in Arizona. I went there, and it solidified everything to me. It is interesting, fun and helpful..it gets me up in the morning.”

Currently, Giovanniello works five days a week at the clinic, and his two days off he spends fundraising for Acupuncture Ambassadors.

What piece of advice about life would he tell his younger self if he could?

“I would tell my younger self never to be afraid of doing what you thought was right.”

June 10, 2015
Cooking With Granny: Mattar Paneer with Indian Grandma Sahni

Grandma Surinder Sahni about to cook her famous Mattar Paneer

This is a New York immigrant story cooked into Grandma Surinder Sahni’s mouthwatering mattar paneer (vegetable curry with homemade Indian cheese). Find out how an Indian Sikh family and an Orthodox Jewish family came together in a surprising intersection of their religions in Kew Gardens, Queens. And learn how to make mattar paneer from scratch straight from a Granny master chef.

Caroline Shin is a multimedia journalist based in NYC. Recently, she launched “Cooking With Granny” – a Web series in which grandmas teach how to cook traditional dishes from their cultures while simultaneously sharing their funny, sad and surprising experiences with immigration and multiculturalism in a world that’s very different from today’s. Shin was previously a video editor at New York Magazine and holds an M.A. from Columbia Journalism School.

April 16, 2015
A Greek immigrant tells stories to bring people together

Barbara Aliprantis (Photo/ Kaitlyn Elphinstone/ Cayman Cultural Foundation)

Barbara Aliprantis jokes that she started listening in utero. She was born with a superb memory, an expressive voice, and a vivid imagination – the recipe for the perfect storyteller.

“I remember the day I left the fishing village of Paros, Greece, when I was two and a half, as though it were yesterday,” she says. “I was on a donkey and my sister was on another donkey…my mother was crying – everyone was crying – that image stayed with me all my life.”

It was 1937 when Aliprantis left her native island in the Aegean Sea with her mother, brother, and sister, to join their father in New York.

“I found myself in a neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn…I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood,” says Aliprantis, explaining her Jewish-NY accent.

Her immigration story was the first she ever told. It all started when her first grade teacher asked her to introduce herself, and her different background, in front of the class – and she’s been telling that story ever since.

“I didn’t even mind an audience even then,” she says, laughing. “I loved to tell stories and put on a show at the drop of a hat, and I’m doing that now. A teacher affects your eternity. It’s so important to let children know it’s good to be different.”

Aliprantis did not know at the time that telling her story would eventually lead her to becoming a professional storyteller who would produce workshops and events, in voice and sign language, in theaters, schools, libraries, community centers, and festivals all over the country.

“I have worn many hats in my life,” she says about her life before professional storytelling. “Being a Greek girl growing up in a Flatbush, Brooklyn [in the 1950’s] I [was expected to be] a nurse or a secretary. Three months into nursing training at Brooklyn College, I decided it wasn’t for me. I went to business school to study typing – it was probably the saddest part of my life.”

She then went to business school for six months, while what she really wanted was to get a job in show business.

“My first interview was at CBS,” recalls Aliprantis as if it were yesterday. “I was so nervous, I failed the typing test.”

She says she ended up getting a job at a corporation working for six men.

“Being a girl of the ‘50s – oh my God – it was whatever they wanted,” she says about the job that paid $85 a week – enough to pay the rent for her apartment in Queens. “It was a different time.”

Aliprantis married at 21, and 10 years later – in 1968 – she quit her job and went to Greece to adopt a baby boy. Three years later, she gave birth to a son. She says it was one of her dreams to be a mother – so she decided to stay at home and dedicate her time to raising her two boys.

In 1980, when her boys were bigger, she took a full-time position as a storyteller at a school for the deaf in the Bronx.

“I fell in love with it immediately,” says Aliprantis. “I started learning sign language on the job. I loved it. It changed my life.”

After 10 years there, she left to work with high schoolers in Queens.

“I will be forever grateful to the students and staff at both schools who taught me new ways to listen to the world and tell my stories,” says Aliprantis.

Back in 1985, while working at the school for the deaf, she had enrolled in Queensborough Community College to finally study acting and theater production – what she had always wanted to pursue as a young girl.

“I was the oldest one in the class, and the only one who did all the assignments,” says Aliprantis, who two years later enrolled in SUNY Empire State College and graduated in record time. “I got 89 life experience credits, and graduated in a year and a half with a BA in the performing arts and concentration in sign language and performance.

After graduation, Aliprantis taught an introductory course in sign language communication and storytelling at QCC for almost 30 years. Throughout the 1990’s she was a member of QCC’s Professional Theatre Residency Program and co-founded a not-for-profit community organization called the American Center for Theatre and Storytelling – now called the New York Story Exchange.

“In 1997, I established the Second Tuesday of the Month Evening Series at the famous Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village,” she says. “It is the longest running evening series for adults in NYC.”

The program entails three featured tellers, plus ‘Open Telling’ for three or four volunteer tellers to share a 5-minute story.

“The biggest misconception about storytelling is that it’s just for children,” says the woman who was honored at NY City Hall for her work. “It brings people together.”

What advice about life would she tell her younger self if she could now?

“Nothing is ever lost,” says Aliprantis.” Everything happens for a reason. Every obstacle is for a reason. Sometimes the reason doesn’t reveal itself until later on.”

April 9, 2015