Ithaca’s own Burns Family, Jeannie and Annie of the Burns Sisters, and Patrick, Co-Producer of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, will present and moderate a Q and A with Harvey Waldman, reading from his new book of poems, Shopping Lists for the Apocalypse; filled with lyric memories, travel notes, laughter and tears on a journey over the last 70 years, one from his childhood in the Bronx, through a life in Greenwich Village, the Catskills, California, London and Italy. Experiences of nature, family, friends, work, births, deaths, and elections in our times, recalled with pathos and humor. Employing metaphors from history, pop culture, physics, gardening and the Tarot, Waldman makes the case for hope and survival.

Harvey Waldman was born in the Bronx after the Second World War. He fled to Northern California as a teenager in the “Summer of Love”. Street theatre anti-war activist, dishwasher, farm worker, oil refinery boilermaker, taxi driver, barista, librarian, Santa Claus. Lead actor in 1976 feature film Off the Wall. A father in need of a more sustaining career, he spent over forty years in film and TV production, culminating as Producer of the mini series Mildred Pierce for HBO, Blindspot for NBC, and Manifest for Netflix. All while poetry lurked, awaiting its turn — passionate, unkempt cousin long ignored. He and his wife, film editor Camilla Toniolo have homes in New York and Northern Italy.