July 2, 2023 (Song #2010): “You Are The New Day” written by John David, arranged by Peter Knight and sung by The King’s Singers. LYRICS & SONGFACTS APPLE MUSIC SPOTIFY
Happy Birthday to Tyra Fullam & Amy Granoff! xoxo
Here is a video of a portion** of the song
sung by Rich Pickett, Alan Strick, Bob Connelly, Greg White, Bob Austrian, Eric Seidman and Alex Sherman at our wedding at Gedney Farm.
**The videographer missed the beginning, but the middle and end are beautiful. Special thanks to Greg & Alan (whom we miss so much) for learning the song especially for us (Rich, Bob, Boz, Eric & Alex all sang it in the Colgate 13, which is where I first heard and fell in love with it.)
TMI-32* brings me to 1991, the year that Peter and I finally started dating. I’d played this song for many first dates: the date’s reaction to this song was the gateway to a 2nd date. Peter liked it.
“How did Peter and you meet?,” I hear you asking…
Feel free to skip today’s entry if you are not a blood relative; no one needs to read all of this except for, maybe, our future-grandchildren (no pressure, kids).
Our mutual friend, Steve Ochs, had been trying to get Peter and I to date for a while. I knew Steve from Colgate (he was my first college boyfriend’s roommate) and Peter was Steve’s high school friend’s roommate at Kenyon; Steve and Peter were roommates on Sullivan Street.
The first time I saw Peter, I was sitting in his Sullivan Street kitchen with Steve. Peter walked in the kitchen with his dark, curly hair, strong and sweet looking, with a cool black suede jacket and jeans (sort of a cross between Mark Ruffalo and Paul Rudd) and I thought: “That’s exactly my kind of guy,” but then, right behind him, came his girlfriend and she sort of looked like me: short, curly dark hair, pale skin (y’know, that Irish – Jewish look); I thought: “Bummer, he’s already met a me”.
Peter and I then met several more times, always with Steve, but one of us was always dating someone else:
- We hung out at a Columbia-Colgate football game in the fall of 1986 and even have a photograph of us sitting next to one another but looking in opposite directions.
- We met at “The Hunt” horse race in New Jersey (I was with Jeanie, Ann & Donald and Peter was with Steve, Jeff and Joe.
- Steve and I went to hear Peter’s band play (maybe at CBGB-OMFUG?)
- We all went dancing at the Limelight after watching Jeanie in a very sad play which Peter dubbed “The Exotic Adventures of Pinocchio” (actually “The Return of Pinocchio” starring Rob Morrow).
- After I started working at GRP, we met for lunch to discuss the music business and Peter drew a map of Kenyon on a napkin. I later sent the napkin back to him with some GRP CDs. He said: “I didn’t think you liked me because you returned the napkin.” I said, “Of course, I liked you…I kept the napkin in the first place!”
Finally, in the spring of 1991, Peter and I were both single at the same time. Steve called us both and said “Now! You’re both single! Go!”
“Is he Jewish?”, I asked, “I just think it will be easier if I marry someone Jewish; we’ll have one less thing to work out”.
“YES!,” Steve said, “he’s more Jewish than you are!”
“What does that mean??”, I was weirdly insulted by that. “Yeesh.”
Then I asked: “Is he a nice guy? I just want a nice guy.”
Steve sighed: “Peter Propp has the biggest heart of anyone I know.”
“Oh.” I said.
That seemed as good an endorsement as any, but, then, I said, childishly, “Well, if he wants to call me, he can.”
Steve huffed (rightfully so) but, fortunately, he was willing and able to persuade Peter to call me.
Our first date, we went to see The Doors movie and then to a restaurant near our upper west side apartments called “Positively 104” (named after the Bob Dylan song “Positively 4th Street”, a fact I didn’t know but Peter – a music history buff – did).
At the end of the night, we kissed under the scaffolding of my apartment building (275 West 96th St where I lived with my roommates Mark Goodman – son of George, host of “Adam Smith’s Money World” – and Andrew Stuart – son of Mel Stuart, the producer of “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory” ; I was star-struck by my roommates).
I said: “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
He said, surprised: “Oh…I’m having dinner with my friends Lauren Chattman & Jack Bishop and they’re amazing cooks. Would you like to come?”
I said: “Oh, no! I have a study group tomorrow night” (I was in my first year at Columbia Business School)
He said: “How about the next night?”
I said: “I can’t… I have blah-blah-blah” (I don’t remember EVERYthing, people.)
He tried again: “How about the next night?”
I said, hands to face: “Oh, gosh, “I can’t do it the next night!”
He said: “Then why’d you ask me???”
I said, bereft: “I don’t know!”
I was clearly smitten and desperate to see him again, but I was not going to blurt that out.
The next night, he did go to dinner at Lauren and Jack’s, but then came over and we listened to all of Joni Mitchell’s Blue album in my tiny bedroom.
Our next date was on May 1st and we met for dinner. I raised my glass and said: “Here’s to May!” Peter paused and said: “Okay…here’s to you!” I should have known then and there that I’d fallen in love with a chacham (Yiddish for “wise guy”).
Another date, we went to visit his friends Jill & Michael. Jill’s parents Lisa & Tom were one of Peter’s parent’s Vera & Richard’s closest friends. The whole night, I was chatting away with my typical hyper energy and Peter kept whispering “chill” as he sat next to me on the couch. When we left and got into the elevator, I turned to him and said: “If you ever tell me to chill out in public again, that’s it. We’re done.” He paused and looked at me and said: “Jill. Her name is Jill.” I’d been calling Jill her mother’s name – “Lisa” – all night. Cue Suzanne, head in hands, falling to the floor in the corner of the elevator in utter shame and embarrassment.
When Peter first came to Sherman’s Way, my father and he were in the basement and, for some reason, were folding up cardboard boxes. Peter quickly and efficiently folded a box and my dad said, admiringly: “Wow! That was great! You can marry my daughter!” I was mortified; my dad’s criteria for his future son-in-law was efficient box folding??
About a month into our courtship, while on a business trip to Florida on which Peter invited me to join him (he was working for Hill & Knowlton on the Florida Department of Citrus account), chef Pierre Franey took us out to dinner and, after chatting with us for a while, said, with his charmingly thick French accent: “How come you two aren’t married??” We couldn’t look at each other for the rest of the dinner, but, that night, on a midnight swim in the ocean, we said: “Should we discuss what Pierre Franey just said to us??”
At the end of the summer of 1991, we moved in together to a gorgeous walk-up, also on West 96th, but closer to Amsterdam (thanks to Peter’s roommate Giovanni Soro for helping us look for a new place). Peter proposed on November 4th, 1991 at “One If By Land, Two If By Sea” and we were married on June 27, 1992. I’m still so grateful to Steve; we showed our gratitude for his stick-to-it-iveness and foresight by asking him to be the best man at our wedding. 🙂
P.S. Our first dance was “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You” by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland; we heard James Taylor’s version in a grocery store on the upper west side and realized that it was perfect.