The Bird Lady

It’s a simple task: Carry the seltzer can outside to the trash can. Lynne with Jiminy Cricket. This is not something that Lynne Enman can do right off the bat. She has to plan it out. She usually takes her power chair, but she hasn’t done any walking today, so she really only has to decide whether it will be one crutch or two. She settles on the single, leaving her other hand free to grasp the can as best she can. “I only have two speeds: slow and not fast at all,” she says…

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The Cooking Coach

It’s flu season, and Joann Pandolfi comes carrying a care package for me. Her Little Red Riding Hood basket contains homemade chicken soup, meatloaf and green beans garnished with ginger. Joann grew up at the kitchen table. “My nonna always used to make me chicken soup when I was sick,” she says. “And the ginger is a great antioxidant.” Joann, a personal health coach and passionate cook, makes it her business to educate eaters. “What you put in your mouth matters,”…

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The Sax Player

A pair of pinstriped pants is hanging from the lamp. A breakfast bowl of oatmeal, half eaten, sits at the desk. A mini-trampoline, turned on its side, issues a challenge to a pair of five-pound free weights. A keyboard, clarinet, flute and a couple of saxophones are aching to band together to sing their stuff. Carol is the founder of Astoria Big Band. Carol Sudhalter, the founder of Astoria Big Band and the quartet that bears her name, walks into this improv stage, which is her living room and the…

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The Soloist

Why? Even for Yomar Ramirez, who is an introspective woman, it’s not always easy to come up with a simple, satisfying answer. Sometimes it’s better to shrug and go on, which is what she does. Yomar, a blithe blonde, is sitting in her living room, clutching a 30-ounce beer stein of raspberry tea. Yomar is from Bogota, Colombia. Actually, it’s only a section of her living room. Hers is a one-bedroom apartment. She erected a wall down the center to partition her twin bed, giving her…

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The Man Who’s Redrawing His Life

The painting, a brooding tattoo of black and white shapes flowing together like a raging river, is wrapped in a cage of thin clear plastic. Anthony Cardillo releases it and holds it in front of his body like a warrior’s shield. Anthony’s art gets him through life. expresses what Anthony felt like when he was painting it. Happy. Sad. Scared. Depressed. Angry. The painfully personal painting possesses a precarious off-kilter balance that slyly shifts with each viewing. “It glows,”…

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