00:00Women, black people, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and all the minorities, that all of us must
00:07stand up together and say, no more.
00:12I suspect because I was a 1950s person, I assumed that I would have to get married,
00:18have children, and live a life more influenced by someone else.
00:24And it took me a while to realize that actually we can make our lives in all kinds of different
00:29ways.
00:30What I think of is how important it is for women to be able to have a home without necessarily
00:40also having children, husband, you know, a home of our own.
00:50Home means safety, shelter, friends, sleep.
00:59Home may be, I don't want to say it's more important than love, but it's more permanent.
01:06And I feel that especially now because there are so many people in the world who have no
01:11home.
01:16I had been living in New York even before getting this apartment with my friend Barbara
01:22Nessim, who's an artist, and we were living in a one-room studio.
01:26So to find this that was two big rooms was like heaven.
01:31And in order to have two places to sleep, we built this balcony, which actually is the
01:38front porch of some unknown person in Connecticut and was in a wrecking yard.
01:44So whoever got in first got the balcony, and whoever got in second got the couch in the
01:49other room.
01:51I was just happy to be in Manhattan, happy to be out of Toledo, Ohio.
02:06This floor was the only floor that was open, and it was also very cheap in those days.
02:15Years later, I bought the downstairs and made a staircase.
02:19I always think of anthills.
02:21Have you ever seen a real anthill?
02:23I mean, they're very complicated.
02:26They're like huge apartment buildings, and all the ants have made different spaces.
02:31So I feel that that's what's happened here over the years.
02:40This room has been for a lot of years, I'd have to figure out how many, a meeting place.
02:46And I always thought that we had kind of invented this style of sitting around with
02:5112 to 20 people in a circle.
02:54And once Wilma Mankiller, who was the chief of the Cherokee Nation, was here.
03:00She said, we have a talking stick, which we pass around.
03:03So when you're holding this, you have the right to speak.
03:08So I think in a lot of ways, we're always reinventing something that's universally human.
03:17All these pieces have different memories.
03:21There's a still life on the wall going up those stairs to the balcony that my mother
03:27painted when she was a teenager.
03:29Those are the arms of the Mona Lisa protecting the rainforest.
03:34That is President Obama's inauguration with their two daughters.
03:40This was the Madonna I bought on a trip to Latin America because she was the only Madonna
03:48of color.
03:51My older sister was a gemologist, so I had access to all of these amazing eggs that are
03:57semi-precious stones or enamel or many different things.
04:02This coffee table was a door in India someplace.
04:07It reminds me of India.
04:08I didn't buy it in India, mind you.
04:09I couldn't have brought it back.
04:11But it helps, I think, when each thing has a story.
04:18There actually was a wonderful painting hand-done on the wall by an artist from London.
04:25Then there was a kind of flood that damaged the painting.
04:29So now this is actually wallpaper, but it's the same idea of a vista.
04:35On this floor, where I, with a roommate often, have lived for a very long time, what is now
04:42a kitchenette here was the only kitchen.
04:46When I bought the downstairs, there is now another kitchen.
04:53My ideal of cooking is dialing.
04:56And now even dialing is old-fashioned, so it's phony everywhere.
05:06What is now my bedroom on this parlor floor was the shared workspace with me and Barbara Nessim.
05:13So it's been through many reincarnations.
05:17It's both more bedroom and more living space now.
05:22I remember seeing in London a library ladder, I think in a club or something, and I thought,
05:27oh, how great is that?
05:29And in that room, since the ceilings are so high and the bookcases are so high,
05:35I really could use and did find a library ladder.
05:39So I'm very proud of that.
05:43Those tassels, their origin was women who were working in a factory in Afghanistan,
05:51and their bosses made them cut their hair off because they thought it was a safety hazard
05:56to get their hair caught in the machinery.
06:01They, meanwhile, missed the whole feeling, as we can understand, of having hair that
06:06you could toss back.
06:09And so they created their own kind of headpiece with something they also could toss back.
06:17It makes me think of those women.
06:19And the peacock feather was assembled for me because I'd been living in India, so that's
06:24a kind of magical thing, and peacocks walking around your lawn.
06:32Downstairs is much more meeting and workspace, plus a guest room.
06:41I always wanted to have a space for people who were visiting New York, so it allowed
06:47me to create what is often a guest room downstairs.
06:50Meanwhile, organizers, workers, political people, friends, whoever it is, need to have
06:58So it always seemed right to be able to contribute at least a guest room for one or two people
07:06with its own bath, and that's my contribution.
07:29There was someone I met here on the street, I think, and he was an artist, so I'm not
07:35quite sure how it happened, probably it was his idea, but to have painted bookcases because
07:42it allowed you to memorialize favorite titles, and it also increased and lengthened the vista
07:48of the room.
07:53Women in the mountains and hills of Afghanistan wear these tops with lots of embroidery.
08:01They pass them down from mother to daughter to onward, and every generation adds more
08:07embroidery or more little silver bits added.
08:13And I was, at the time, going around to auctions to try to find cheap things like those two
08:19chests, and when I saw this desk that says on the front, look into thine heart and write,
08:25I mean, how can you resist?
08:26So I had to have it.
08:39The garden, well, ironically, I don't spend much time in the garden.
08:46The trees have meaning.
08:47I mean, I had a friend who's no longer with us, Irene Neves, who was a journalist, and
08:53she adopted my garden.
08:55But just the ability to have an outdoor space seemed important.
09:00That sculpture is beautiful in and of itself, but it's also universal because it, for me,
09:08connects me to Africa, where we all came from in the first place, and means travel, means
09:15creative women.
09:17The Cherokee chief dogwood means a lot to me because it symbolizes Wilma Mankiller.
09:25In my garden, I have a Mary Wollstonecraft plaque, which reminds me that various current
09:34living generations of women who are trying to democratize a patriarchy can identify with
09:43their courage, you know, when they had not even a separate legal identity from daughters
09:50or wives, could not vote.
09:53So it's definitely an inspiration.
09:57Sometimes people think she's buried out there, and I have to explain that's not the case.
10:12It's very comforting to live in rooms that have been lived in by many other people, because
10:17you feel a companionship.
10:31When I was building the staircase from this floor to downstairs, I discovered a penny
10:38from the 1800s that some workman had left in the bricks as a trace.
10:45It is also great to live in the midst of stories you gradually discover.
10:55Where we live, if we're lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are
11:01like bird's nests.
11:03You know, we have carefully chosen each little twig and brought it home to weave it into
11:09our nest.
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