sharonksobotta

The man on the sidelines--Lenny Boyette from the sidelines of the Today Show

Get to know to the people on the periphery of your life—whether they be the people who serve you in restaurants, the people who care for you when you are ill or those help you when you are down on luck. Collectively, these people represent all life experiences, religions and ideologies. If you watch the Today show on NBC, there is one man that you are likely to spot in the crowd at Rockefeller Center nearly everyday. His name is Lenny and he joins the outside crowd day after day. If you’d like to have your 30 seconds of television exposure, production interns recommend standing near Lenny. When, by chance, Lenny ended up standing near me last summer, I decided to seize the moment and get a snippet of this vibrant man who captures the world’s attention from the periphery of the Today show set day after day. Since I neglected to get Lenny's picture last summer, I knew I couldn't leave New York City without finding Lenny again. Hours before my scheduled flight out of New York City, while I was interviewing One Republic's Eddie Fischer, I spotted Lenny standing directly across from me. I kept my eyes on him and the minute he grabbed his duffle bag to began his daily stroll through the city, I dashed over to him. While I was chatting with Lenny, about a dozen people approached him to take pictures with him, telling him how much they appreciate his daily presence on the show. Lenny posed for several pictures and did a repeat interview, chatting until the security moved us out. As you'll hear, Lenny has a distinct routine--he wakes up each day at 3am, goes to the Today show, walks the city, shops and sips tea and says he is not a fan of change, but that he has observed a great deal of change over the years. Lenny is a very simple man, but one who has intrigued the world, none-the-less. “I used to watch the Today Show on Saturday and my sister told me that if I ever came to New York I had to go and visit the Today show. After I got here, I popped in one day and they sort of adopted me and it’s been quite nice ever since. When I’m not at the Today show I walk about and enjoy the city and I do lots and lots of shopping, because I’m retired now so I’ve got lots and lots of time. I was in the military for 25 years, where I did a bit of everything. I lived all over the U.K., but was mainly in Manchester. I enjoy being in New York. My sister lives near Connecticut, so I go and join her every Sunday for dinner, and it is really nice to spend time with nieces and nephews. Thank you so much for your time, God bless the world, all the best to the president and all the military people also. I’m very healthy, so I feel very blessed for that. My mother and father taught me that lesson. No spouse, no kids, no stress.” “Lenny” New York City Daily visitor of the Today Show

Maria Murnane--Author of Perfect on Paper

BEA--Karen Morgan

Serendipitous Encounters--A Chat with Jon Regen

I arrived at JFK International Airport just before midnight on Sunday morning. The familiar feel of humid summer air, the rows and rows of taxis and the sounds of honking horns were music to my soul and affirmed the fact that I had arrived in New York City. Alex, my brother-like- friend who came into my life at Saitama High School right outside of Tokyo after we each received Kikkoman Soy Sauce Scholarships more than a decade earlier, was waiting outside for me. As we began driving toward Long Island in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty about accepting my friend’s hospitality at such a late/early hour of the day and even questioning if it was the “right” decision to leave the city. True to my writer’s mantra, it was of course ‘right’ and better than anything I could have planned. After a few rounds of drinks and a case of the late night munchies, I retreated to my loft just before 4:30am. Several hours later, we grabbed breakfast at a diner and were en route to Sparkling Point Vineyard more than an hour away. Alex’s friend, who is a Steinway Piano sales rep, had organized a special event where a jazz pianist and singer named Jon Regen was playing. I’ll admit that while I’ve slowly come to acquire a taste for jazz, I was much more excited about sipping vino with friends than I was about hearing the musician. But, while sitting outside the perfectly green winery, sipping on champagne, I couldn’t’ help but tune into the music that set the ambiance. There was something charming about the music that Jon Regen was playing and singing, prompting me to purchase one of his cds. I would have been happy just to purchase a cd and give it away as a gift, but the wine servers searched for a pen and insisted I get Jon’s autograph. Since Jon was done playing for the day, I decided to squeeze in a quick interview with him. Struggling to hold back his Bronchitus-induced cough, Jon shared his story. Turns out, the now 40-year old musician took up singing only seven years earlier, when he noticed that conventional jazz just didn’t capture his experience as a man, as a hopeless romantic or as an artist. “It’s pretty amazing to be able to capture the human experience in a three minute song,” Jon said. “And, what is it that inspires the content of the songs?” I began asking. But before I could finish the question, Jon responded. “Girls,” he said with a smile. Jon described how the imperfections of relationships, combined with the strain his traveling musician career puts on relationships, inspires his song writing. As a serial dater, who compares men to shoes (I love both men and shoes, but have yet to find one of either that goes with all aspects of life) and have come to embrace relationships as the inspiration for writing projects and trips around the world to pursue random journalism projects, attend weddings of commitment-prone friends and continue to gather more stories, I found Jon to be a person of my own heart. I took Jon’s cds back to my tiny room in the Paramount hotel in New York City that I shared with my parents. And, the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been in a serious relationship with Jon’s music ever since. True to Jon’s words, each of his songs is a musical story about a phase of love—the beginning, the end, the starting over phase, the forgetting and moving on part and the longing part—that anyone whose ever experienced a relationship or a heartbreak can connect with. To get a sense of who the man behind the music is, listen to Jon’s interview.

About

Sharon K. Sobotta is a radio reporter, a writer and a feminist educator. Sharon believes everyone has a story to share and a lesson to teach. She strives to make all voices audible and to connect people from all walks of life to each other through narratives.

Sharon began working in the movement to end violence against women and promote gender equity in 2000, when she joined the Women’s Center at St. Cloud State University as a graduate assistant and has served as the Director of the Women’s Resource Center at Saint Mary’s College of California since 2002. Sharon specializes in making anti-violence, gender-equity, privilege awareness and anti-oppression work accessible and relevant to the masses, by integrating men and women from all backgrounds into the movement. Sharon presented at the first national men’s conference in St. Joseph, Minnesota about effective ways to integrate men into the movement to end violence against women.

In the radio world, Sharon covers a range of social justice stories ranging from the Justice for Oscar Grant movement and Code Pink’s actions for peace to the politics of midterm elections in the United States, the Indonesian elections of 2009 and the dynamics of globalization in Japan. As a reporter and producer for ‘The Women’s Magazine’ at KPFA and ‘See Jane Do’ at KVMR, Sharon produces empowering pieces about ordinary women living extraordinary lives.

Sharon’s mantra is that when life doesn’t go as planned, it’s best to embrace it as content—because whatever we come up with after all the detours and challenges will undoubtedly be better that what was planned in the first place. She applies the sentiment of that mantra to all of her work.

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Climate Change, green,

Global day of climate action--San Francisco

Love