IT'S A DICKENS CHRISTMAS IN TINSEL TOWN (c) By Polly Guerin

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree you ignite the holidays all aglow, and an old fashioned Christmas welcomes everyone to celebrate the goodness that the Christmas brings with renewed hope, joy and love. Only in New York my dears, Only in New York. Here’s the scoop!!!

CHARLES DICKENS’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL Every holiday season, The Morgan Library & Museum displays Charles Dickens’s original manuscript of A Christmas Carol in the museum’s history library. Although Dickens wrote his iconic tale in a six-week flurry of activity, beginning in October 1843, the story still captivates the imagination of an old-fashioned celebration with conviviality and dancing. He wrote it in time for Christmas publication and had the manuscript bound in red morocco as a gift his solicitor, Thomas Mitton. The manuscript passed through several owners before Pierpont Morgan acquired it in the 1890s. During your visit travel back to Valley Forge on Christmas day, 1777, explore the impact of the handwritten manuscript of Truman Capote’s comical early story, A Christmas Vacation, and discover how the modern American concept of Santa Claus was shaped by Clement Clark Moore’s poem, Twas the Night Before Christmas. Through January 13, 2013. 225 Madison Ave, at 36th Street. Open Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

CHARLES DICKENS: The Key to Character Celebrates the power of Dickens’s characters to be imagined ever anew, examining important precedent for his art of characterizations as well as intersections between his personal life and his literary creations. His fictional creations represent a cross-section of society from law-clerk to crossing-sweeper, miser to midwife all united by the vividness with which they are described. The exhibit at the New York Public Library, Schwarzman building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue emphasizes how these characters, talk, dress and move. The exhibition features artworks by nearly thirty illustrators, including unpublished watercolors—along with rare translations, original sheet music, and the memoranda book the author used to jot down possible names for characters. Also on display is the 1867 pocket diary containing the code with which Dickens communicated with his mistress Ellen Ternan, along with audio-visual stations featuring unusual recordings from the period collection of the Library for the Performing Arts. Now through January 27th.

CHRISTMAS TREE and NEAPOLITAN BAROQUE CRECHE A long-standing yuletide tradition in New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art present the Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche on view now through January 6th. The brightly lit, 20-foot blue spruce---with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and cherubs hovering among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the Nativity scene at its base---will delight one and all in the Museum’s Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the 18th –century choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the background and daily lighting ceremonies…is a breathtaking tree of historical significance, not to be missed. The Museum will be open on two special Holiday Mondays December 24 and 31 from 9:30 to 5:00 pm. Lighting ceremonies on those dates will take place at 4:30 pm.

THE HOLIDAY TRAIN SHOW at The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx is back with more trains and landmarks than ever before. Within the enchanting setting of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, model trains zip over bridges and past replicas of New York landmarks made of plant parts such as nuts, bark, and leaves. Show favorites include the original Yankee Stadium, The Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and even the Collectors Club in Murray Hill. Bar Nights at the Holiday Train Show let you get into the holiday spirit while sipping a complimentary signature cocktail. To round out this holiday outing with a the Bar Car Nights ticket also provides discounts and offers for partner restaurants in Little Italy’s Arthur Avenue nearby. Hop on the Metro North train at 42nd Street and get off at the Botanical Garden stop, a mere 25 minute ride from midtown Manhattan.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! My favorite is the Neapolitan tree at the Met!!! Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon.net. Polly’s Blogs are best accessed at her website pollytalk.com. Just click on the link in the left-hand column for visonarymen, womendeterminedtosucceed, poetry or fashion.

FASHIONISTA'S HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS (c) By Polly Guerin

The glitz and glamour of fashion steals the holiday spotlight bringing with it a chance to take a diversion and revisit fashion at various venues around town. It’s the Best of New York, my friends, the very best!!! Here’s the scoop!!!!

FASHION and TECHNOLOGY A new exhibition in the Fashion and Textile History Gallery at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT) presents a fascinating review of how fashion has engaged with---and been altered by---technological advancements throughout history. Spanning 250 years, the exhibition is displayed in chronological order with a focus on technological innovations that had had an impact on the production, materials and function of fashion. The exhibit includes objects as diverse as an afternoon dress, circa, 1860, produced using synthetic dyes that resist fading, and Pierre Cardin’s seamless dress from 1968 that showcases his pioneering ‘Cardine’ textile. Also on view is Jean Paul Gaultier’s 1996 jumpsuit that utilizes the aesthetic of the “Cyber Age” as a decorative motif, and the LillyPad Arduino circuitboard, which allows designers to push the function of clothing further by integrating smart electronics directly into their garments. Free and Open to the Public. On view through May 2013. At 27th Street & Seventh Avenue. Image: Jean Paul Gaultier, jumpsuit, mulicolored nylon and spandex with Op-Art cyber graphic print, 1996, France.

125 ICONS Celebrates the work of Pratt alumni and faculty staged at the school’s Manhattan location at 144 West 14th street, and covers the past 125 years dating back to Pratt’s inception. Fashion’s favorites include snapshots of Norman Norell’s designs, as well as actual ensembles by Betsey Johnson and Jeffrey Banks. It was Pratt alumni, Kermit Love, who dressed Big Bird by figuring out the feather application for Jim Henson’s big-beaked friend. You’ll also see images of cartoon characters Betty Boop and Tom and Jerry, a 1995 Ford Thunderbird, Charles Lindberg’s ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ airplane and the Chrysler Building among the Pratt-related designs on display. More on view include Vera Maxwell’s ultrasuede dress, a “Fantasia” video with Bill Garrity’s sound engineering. The venue tells the history of art, design and architecture in America, just with the creations that Pratt produced. Worth your time! Ongoing.

DESIGNING TOMORROW: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s Breadlines and raging unemployment were a hard reality during the height of the Great Depression, but the world’s fairs of the 1930’s provided a spectacular diversion. Six American world’s fairs presented streamlined cars, models of skyscrapers, electric toasters, nylon stockings, and television, providing a vision of a brighter future for tens and millions of Americans. Visitors to the exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York will see sleek, modern furniture and appliances, vintage footage from the fairs, and futuristic drawings of the New York World’s Fair buildings, both built and proposed from advertising to architecture and domestic innovations and furnishings, all of the fairs’ most popular and recognizable attractions. Samples of tubular steel furniture, models of streamlined buses, and image of cities filled with light and color all illustrate the creativity and hope these fairs came to represent. At the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) 103rd St and 5th Ave. Opened Dec. 5.

THE EVENT OF A THREAD is Ann Hamilton’s large-scale interactive installation at the Park Avenue Armory where visitors will be able to hear live performers reading aloud, or listen to the sound on portable radio transmitters as they walk through the armory. Inside the Drill Hall take a leap into the future and hop onto swings that hang from the trusses of the cavernous space; your movement swill rustle a giant piece of fabric, generating a massive kinetic sculpture, a flock of homing pigeons, spoken and written texts and transmissions of weight, sound and silence weave through this expansive space to create a fabric of experience. Open to the Public till January 6 at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., at 67th street. Admission $12/$10 for students, Seniors, Groups. Tues.-Sun. 12pm-7pm. Closed Mondays, except December 24 and 31.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! It’s time to hop on a swing at the Park Avenue Armory. Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon.net. Polly’s Blogs are best accessed at her website pollytalk.com. Just click on the link in the left-hand column for visonarymen, womendeterminedtosucceed, poetry or fashion.

REVISITING ZELDA FITZGERALD (c) By Polly Guerin

The mixed media of cultural venues warms the chill of the holiday weather to do nothing better than to get indoors and revisit Zelda Fitzgerald. It’s the best of New York, my friends, the very best. Here’s the Scoop!!! Photo Image: Edwin Cahill and Gardner Reed by Carol Rosegg.

ZELDA AT THE OASIS The riveting new drama by P.H. Lin transports use back to tormented life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, the wife of the legendary American novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Portrayed by the glamorous, one and only Zelda, Gardner Reed imbues the role with spit-fire imagery while Edwin Cahill in the role of the bar man, emerges as the ghost of Scott and in other guises becomes Zelda’s ballet teacher and even her mother. The director Andy Sandberg keeps the interaction of these stellar performers synergistically meshed into high drama.

Set on a magical night in the 1930s, Zelda (Reed), engagingly dressed in a stunning evening dress, is ensconced in a New York City bar called The Club Oasis, where she escapes to drink alone…until a unique and unexpected friendship is forged with an aspiring musician who plays the piano and tends bar at the Oasis. Zelda wants nothing more than to be recognized as an artist in her own right but two things stand in her way: a growing mental instability and the overbearing shadow of her husband. Reed is the personification of Zelda and captivates with her dramatization of the tragic heroine. Vivid and haunting memories are triggered as Zelda transforms the Bar Man (Cahill)into those from her past who have shaped her self-image. Encounters with the ghost of her husband Scott add to the sad lament of her yearning to be published and recognized as an author. Reed is making her New York debut as Zelda, albeit a memorable one and Cahill as the bar tender demonstrates his versatility in role playing in this after-hours encounter. In the Club Oasis they share their dreams, missteps, and insights with one another, hoping to unlock the courage to go forward in their lives.

The show opens on Tuesday December 4th at 7pm at St. Luke’s Theater, 308 West 46th St., with shows also on Fridays at 5 pm and Tuesdays at 7 pm (with an additional performance on Sunday Dec. 9 at 7 pm.) Tickets $59.50 and $37.50 are available through Telecharge.com or call 212.239.6200.

Read Polly's Blog on Zelda at amazingartdecodivas.blogspot.com
Ta Ta darlings: Don’t miss seeing that riveting performance, Zelda at the Oasis. Fan mail welcome: pollytalk@verizon. Polly’s blogs are best accessed at pollytalk.com just click in the left hand column for a direct link to visionary men, amazing women, poetry or fashion.