Month: September 2013

It’s been a long time since Yulia Lopshitz has talked about any of this, and it makes her think she’s been to see a shrink. She’s a pianist, and thus far, she’s gotten through every day of her life simply by playing the scales. Her mind on autopilot, she hits the notes by rote, so nothing hurts. She was little more than 5 when she first felt the ebonies and ivories. This was an easy thing to do because her family possessed a piano. It was crammed into the one-room apartment…

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The colorful cardboard art on the walls is dwarfed by the baby grand piano. Dave Smith, who made the paintings, plays his rhapsodies religiously. For the last year, his fingers have been feeling their way through Bach; the black-dotted sheet music from his latest recital is still spread open on the stand. Dave shows his art on street signs. Actually, music was Dave’s first love, the one he fell for before he started posting poemed pictures on Astoria street signs over the summer. “I…

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Colette Conlon and Jenny Lando, moms on a mission, are sitting at the kitchen table. Its white-tile top holds coffee, cookies and croissants, but their attention is momentarily focused on a pint-sized voice coming from the living room. Shane, Colette’s son, is trying to be quiet, but he’s only 5 so sometimes he forgets. Shane doesn’t know about the Christmastime massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Neither do 8-year-old Nora and 4-year-old Josie, Jenny’s…

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The garage door is up, and Pierre Zimmerli is sitting on a stool playing a hand of solitaire. This is what he does when he doesn’t have anything else to do. When you get up at 3:30 in the morning, as Pierre does, you have to learn to amuse yourself. He’s already had two cups of coffee — one from home, one from the shop across the street — and a bowl of cold cereal. His first cigarettes have gone up in smoke, and when the mom-and-pops roll up their gates, Pierre will take to…

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