Nancy Ruhling's Astoria Characters

The flute was not Guillermo Laporta’s first choice. Guillermo, the co-founder of the multidisciplinary music ensemble CreArtBox, would have preferred playing the piano. He was 8, and he didn’t have a particular reason for favoring the ebonies and ivories over the woodwind’s shiny keys. To tell the truth, he wasn’t even particularly interested in classical music, but the small village of Monzón, Spain, where he’s from, happened to be the home of the Conservatorio Profesional de Música…

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From the more than 250,000 pieces of Tiffany art glass at The Neustadt, Lindsy Parrott pulls out a rippled cream-colored sheet and holds it up to the light. It comes luminously alive, its drapery-fold waves forming a shining sea of shadows. “It’s my favorite piece,” says Lindsy, the director/curator of the museum. “It’s exceptionally beautiful.” Brilliant. Gorgeous. Dazzling. These are the adjectives she utters as she walks among the vertical shelves of opalescent sheet glass, mosaics…

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In a corner of her living room, in the shelter of a makeshift cubicle, Tracy Sayre sits typing on her 5-year-old black Toshiba laptop. The desk is small; the sign she faces – Writers Work – is large. Her cats, Reilly and Marla, stare as she fills the silent screen with the swirling sentences that have been struggling to escape her mind. Writing is a painstakingly lonely pursuit, the kind a lot of authors are expert at putting off. Tracy has had her share of writer’s block, but she’s trained…

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Ah, where to begin? Oliver Söhngen has much to say so he starts strumming a guitar. The notes literally help him find his voice: His forte is opera, and before long his robust tenor has joined the strings, filling the small room with an ocean of sound. Music has always been a part of Oliver’s life. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that music has always his life. Oliver, the founder and director of the Long Island City Academy of Music, was born in Siegen, Germany, surrounded by sound.…

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Izzy Weitzman is sitting at the kitchen table putting cards into packets for pricing. Each one, he explains, entitles the bearer in the role-playing game to acquire mystical creatures and sorcerer’s spells. Some of them, he says, are worth a lot of money: He saw the Invention Edition of Lotus Petal on eBay for $250. “It’s not a card I really like,” he says. “I’m only asking $150 for it.” Izzy’s been collecting for a couple of years. He thinks he has about 700 cards. He also…

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