Mary Novaria

As seen in Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl Friday night my husband and I sat on our deck overlooking the twinkling lights of the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley. After a glass (or two) of wine, tears of despair began to run down my cheeks. In the midst of a hurricane, the president had unleashed his latest round of intolerance by pardoning defiant former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and unveiling the specifics of his plan for booting transgender people from our armed forces. We were still reeling from Charlottesville and the “many sides” remarks of a man who also keeps trying to ban Muslims from entering our country, who won’t shut up about building The Wall, and who is determined to undermine the free press. It’s nearly impossible to come to terms with the profoundly hateful rhetoric and blatant white nationalist symbolism that is infiltrating our lives on a daily basis. I am the parent of an LGBTQ child. My daughter-in-law is Jewish. Over the weekend, a so-called Facebook fr...

Get the Picture? A Father's Legacy and the Love of Art BY MARY NOVARIA June 17, 2016 Published by The Good Men Project My dad was a first generation Irish-American who grew up playing stickball on the streets of New York. His father, a laborer from County Tyrone, had an 8 th  grade education, never took his family to a museum, and didn’t play classical music in the home. The radio, which was considered a luxury, was for listening to “Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy” and the New York Giants baseball games. My father was in his 30s before going to the top of the Empire State building—he took out-of-town guests—and was well into adulthood before he was exposed to the treasures that lay behind the doors of MoMA or The Met. Click here to continue reading... I'm Not Sally Draper But I Could've Been BY MARY NOVARIA March 27, 2015    Published by the Huffington Post             ...