to vittie as coordinator for the actors fund and the actors fund is a human service organization that provides support and services to everyone in the performing arts and entertainment industry in both in front of the camera on steve's baxi behind the camera in all aspects of of those fields in times of crisis and transition and  currently have a program here at the friedman residence called tuesdays it to you and to use it to is a terrific program where professionals sixty five and older got together and initially it was constructed as serve a coffee klatch where people could meet talk about what was going on and it's really become a laboratory where we talk about work that people are interested in doing different ideas for projects people bring work in all the time  and place to read monologues just all kinds of stuff and they can get positive supportive feedback and help with their projects we also go into cultural activities and explore the city and do all of the kind of fun things the city has to offer all together which is really great i love to see is it to it's the best part of my week and i love to do if you will bring it in and bring to the meetings it's great to see people come in and talk about you know i've heard folks say i love to come to the meetings because people listen to me which i think is a big issue as we age and get older we might feel like nobody's paying attention and nobody seeing os and i think it's important to be seen and heard we all deserve that and also in the group because of the creative aspect that everybody brings to the group it gives people a space to who exercise that muscle you know they've been an actor or a dancer or a costume designer and i shower and they get a chance to really talk about an explorer with  everybody talked about all the bad things that were going on in the world nobody said a anything pleasant at all and i finally said well one of these meetings we all have to bring in something happy and  today's the day anyway there's good there's bad news and there's good news on my way to the actors fund last couple of weeks ago i got off my bike took off my helmet grabbed my bag turned to go into the entrance and fell flat on my hips really and two two gentlemen helped me up and i said i've got to get to the tenth floor because i have an interview for the archival project and it's very important and good and he said no i work for the actors fund and i'm taking you up to twelve i said i've got to go to ted he said you're bleeding from your fo got off the bus but i fail to take my him back with me i was walking up west seventy eighth street and suddenly i heard someone yelling lady you forgot your pocketbook and a woman came running after me she had gotten off the bus to follow me all i could think of is in fact have been me at eleven thirty at night on a sunday on the bus i don't know if i would have gotten off i would have probably given the b the bus driver instead someone left this here please take it to last inside found and contact her so i was very thankful that this woman saw that i would have been in trouble if i didn't have my back and she fell look me up seventy it str that i feel like i've been around a long time trying things out and you have the fact that i'm still walking talking and looking after a decent is a blessing i must say although yesterday i was a fact that i walk everywhere i exercise a lot the fact that i have a lot of good friends i have a lot of social activities i keep myself moving and grooving baby moving and groov do have to work out a few things that people don't mind here i can work on it subjects type resentments and the people sometimes i have that but you know i feel like we're all human and we can not be we're  work in progress and i'm just i'm just working and i work at the best i can and there are some days and i resent a lot of people but i realize that's the poison if i drink while somebody else doesn't even know about i'm waiting for somebody else to die and i'm drinkin the poison so i turn around and i give that over to the higher power or to god whatever we call or whatever we feel is our higher power and then i can move on my legs slowly and as fast as i can and keep my thanks and be grateful be gratitude live in gratitude as much as i possibly can and i do a lot to be needy graduate about i have a nice place i have a nice place to live  as i said i do a lot of exercising and i have a lot of big interests i have a lot of interests i'm a playwright i'm a i have a book out called two blondes on amazon i have a play that has been going around doing things with their reading lives and that and i have a lot of upcoming things this gives me that i'm doing so you know the thing is to keep active and and if you have one dream that kind of fell apart the thing is to put together again another dream that you can latch latch onto and really work at trying to make that come true and that's what i'm doing now because i was an actress and now i'm a writer and i'm really getting my stuff out there so i want to thank you for having me on on this very grateful show that i'm very grateful to be on and carmen is the wonderful person said here when the actors find this terrific tracy everybody is just great and i really appreciate and grateful for all of you thank you just to tell you i'm grateful to be alive you know i had a lot of close calls when i was a younger person and i thought i was going to die and all my friends used to tell me oh you're go die young and beautiful well it's too late to die young now maybe i could still be beautiful anyway first thing i remember is sticking above the pin in the leg outlet and and i thought i was being electrocuted i remember screaming and my daddy ran into the room and yanked me away probably got a shock himself and another thing that really stands out is when i was in college and i had this cute red car little red barracuda with white leather seats well i was driving all my friends back home from school in the new york state thruway one day and it was a rainy rainy day in the trucks going in nobody knew now playing footsie with us well of a sudden this one truck comes in right cuts right in front of my fender and we were going way too fast for me to stop and i thought oh my god we're going to die and i thought we were going under the cab of the truck and i thought ok we're going to be all decapitated like jayne mansfield was and then all of a sudden it was as if of a super power reached down took the car lifted up and put it over the ditch on the side of the road and my friends all said oh oh you did wonderfully and i thought no what was it really me that god or whatever you want to call it the super power intervened and i wasn't meant to die now i haven't done all the work that i'm needing to do yet but i think i was left here to live a long life and hopefully do some good so i am so grateful to be a li that i am grateful to be not just a lot of but in one piece and functioning probably mentally because who knows the things that happened to me in my life it's it's it's a wonder good but that i should not play any athlete sports or nothing what did i do i became a boxer which is the worst thing that through a series of ram which is why it's a few pro fights many many more rounds in a gym you know traumatic kind of situation in my life and yet i kept my mother seventy three years she personality to where i was seventy three so after all that i guess i am fortunate when i heard that they were doing this about gratitude i said can i participate and the reason is because in my lifetime i had so much to be thankful  for i had a mother who was a widow and took very good care of me and saw to it that i could go to dance class and i became a member of the leicester horton dancers and i became another sister to comment a lot of and i and our wonderful husband a son that's just divine and a good career and then time passes and i'm old and i'm now now i'm eighty one years old and so i'm not working i'm doing a lot of other things but i can't afford to live any place because the rents are so high and somebody tells me about the free m my son people fills out paperwork because mom i don't know how to do that and here i am fifty seven street and temp avenue in manhattan and i feel like a million dollars even though i don't have a million dollars and thank you thank you for everything my name is frances ended when this project was first suggested i had just had a birthday and one of the things for which i was exceedingly grateful was the fact that  at long last my daughter has learned to cook beautifully and she prepared a feast which was a big surprise i knew look good to be  and state that the men in the party so that made me extremely grateful and apart from that in my overall  existence and i'm still here when it is mary rocco and i'm here to talk about things that i'm grateful about well one of th ings is that i've had a few falls and one day i fell down a whole flight of subway steps now the steps happened to be covered with rubber and when i landed on the  bottom people you know offered to help me and i said oh i'm just going to rest for a while and then i'll get up so i got up and i saw these people on the platform and they said my god are you ok i said yeah i don't know what happened i really didn't hurt myself i just felt a little pain so awfully grateful that i guess i relaxed with the fall down the whole flight of steps and decided to go on living so that's number one number two is currently i'm in a little tap dance review now i studied tap when i was in mt thirty five forty years old and i haven't done it since and i've had two new replacements so i'm not that steady on my legs but when i heard a tap dance i said why not i'm a senior what are they going to expect from me so i had a pair of taps put on my every day shoes and i'm tapping away to some songs i'm basically a singer so i'm singing and tapping to the best of my age ability so i'm very grateful for that and i'm grateful for myself to say that i was willing to do it and i about ten days ago on the sunday i experienced some tightness in my chest and that was not new so the next day i went to see my doctor and he said let's try a stress test and he turns out often turn on because it was not a major event but when i got to the hospital it was several people came to see me simultaneously and they asked me questions and one of the sectioned the other i think we should do it you know i think we should go forward so i think within the hour i was taken in and a suspect was put in over my heart and one was scheduled for the next day and then later very bright little spot droplets of blood on my leg and so on and then he went away and he young woman came to me and she said you know she said here i am very grateful for i'm going to sound a little strange ideas but for this group this is center stage group very much so i was looking for people around my up to be around people my own age who weren't necessarily always talking about their own what they were eating for the day and what was going into their system and what was coming out of their system later on so it was very fortunate to find this group which incredibly energetic fun filled people and we were always doing new projects and making new friends carmen a very close new friend of mine and i just recently came back from my hometown pittsburgh pennsylvania reconnected with friends there that i haven't seen friends and family that i hadn't seen for a while so i think it's people thing reconnecting with people finding new people and feeling good about those relationships dierdre channing i am so grateful just for being here in life being allowed to have so many choices it's extraordinary experience and being given more years to learn to have grown this you lose so many friends and you  realize how fortunate you are to be able to still be here and that's that's mainly how i fee wonderful thing i'm grateful for is that well first i turned seventy and i am so happy because here i still am and wants help with that who would guess i would fall in love the living room name for honey waltman who's our benefactor and i like to think of our sort of leader in the the idea of getting folks together and doing the things that they love and exploring different aspects of the city life activities with each other and sharing so that'll be coming up in january really start to get things rolling up there i have a wonderful group of folks that work with  freedom marries all my different skills interests and passions so as a career changers somebody who did all work behind the scenes and now as a social worker i get to put all those things together with like minded folks who are really interested in our community here and keeping people engaged and active it's pretty wonderful some very very fortunate and grateful for that more in that time of the year and that season where you time thinking about what you're grateful for what relationships are you grateful for what opportunities are you grateful for how have people in your life change your life how are you grateful for them thank you to tell them and let them know because here you can change their day and change the way that they think about your relationship so take care