Deus Ex Machina

There have been some religious oddities happening around here lately.

Last night as I was walking home from the subway, nigh on 11 pm, I noticed that the Catholic church down the way (yes, the one that wouldn't let me use their piano) was all lit up. I could hear singing from a block away. I peered in the door and people were walking around the perimeter of the Nave, singing loudly. It looked like they were circling around, with a lot of arm-waving and feet stomping. I checked to see if it was a saint day of a special sort, but I don't think it was. I have never seen any of the churches on my street open at that time of night before, and the pentecostal one had all their lights on, too.

A few weeks ago I was walking to the library on a Sunday and there was a genuine procession from the Catholic church, but I looked that up and I think it was the Feast of Corpus Christi. Anyway, I was walking down the street, and suddenly there were all these people wearing full High Church gear--hats, dresses, and tights for the ladies, suits and hats for the gents. All walking along and singing, while the priests, in full vestments, carried the cross, high, at the front. All while it was 90+ degrees out. It made me hot just looking at them, and I admit to being a bit concerned about some of the people passing out.

Today on the subway a woman got on, dressed in what my father would call "Sunday go to Meetin' clothes" and she said something along the lines of "I'm not here to ask for money. I'm here to tell you that those signs you see on the street that spout hatred in the name of Christianity are wrong, because Jesus loves everyone. He loves all of you and he wants to let you in. 34 years ago I was ready to kill myself, but I prayed to him and he saved me, and if you want me to pray with you now, I will. Jesus is love and that is what Christianity truly is. Don't listen to the hatemongers who spread fear." She talked for about five minutes--quoting the New Testament, telling us not take drugs, saying more about her life and what Christ meant to her, but above all to trust, trust ourselves to something bigger than ourselves.

I was raised as a Lutheran (my current religious beliefs notwithstanding) and lemme tell you--testimonials, such as the one I witnessed today, are not our style. Touchy-feely religiousness, as a general rule, is not my style either. It was hard for me to listen to this woman without assigning an ulterior motive to her desire to speak to strangers on the subway. But I don't think she had an ulterior motive. I think she genuinely wanted to help people cope, to let them know that they weren't alone. Which is kind of nice.

Deus ex machina translates to "god from the machine." It's a device used in plays, of the Shakespearean variety, whereby a problem is abruptly solved in a contrived way, and things are made right for always, because god or something supernatural steps in. If you were a god(dess), what would you solve? A silly question, but mine would be 1. stop the oil leak so I don't have to look at pictures of oil-slicked pelicans and feel my heart break, 2. make it so my friends have jobs that they like, 3. make it so that I could be fluent in all languages, and 4. give each of my family members a superpower of their choice. And world peace and stuff.

Actually, I've been reading The Metamorphosis, and if I WERE a god(dess), chances are good I'd just be vindictive, changeable, and spending all my days attempting to sleep with attractive mortals. That's what they seem to have going for them, anyway.

Heat

I don't know if it's my Nordic blood (or what), but any time it gets to be 80 degrees or higher in NYC, I cease to be a valuable member of society (am I ever a valuable member of society? I suppose that is a valid question). I just want to watch TV and drink sweet tea, with a fan blowing directly on my face. Probably people in hotter climates would scoff at this pansiness (with good reason!) but I will say that it is not just me. People migrate out to their stoops and stairs to catch whatever tiny hints of breeze may be found. On the subway platforms, they seem to be wilting, their make-up melting, their suitcoats damp with sweat.

I can see why the upper crust, for the past 200+ years, has gotten away from the city in the summer months. It starts to smell--backed up sewers, food in garbage cans, unwashed clothes and people en masse. On the plus side, Melis got us egg and cheese sandwiches on hard rolls this morning--if there is one food I could live on, it would be egg and cheese sandwiches.

Anyway, the point of this post is to show you this painting:
Heat (1919), by Florine Stettheimer, from the Brooklyn Museum--thanks to them for the image!

I like this work a lot, but something about it also makes me sad. There is a sense of the sinister that seems to be lurking in it, especially with the trees in the back. It reminds me of Edward Gorey meets The Great Gatsby. Stettheimer was depicting her mother's birthday (hence, the cake on the table) and has painted herself, her mother, and her three sisters. She is the one on the lower right.

It reminds me of the wiltiness that I feel whenever I've eaten a big meal (ie Thanksgiving) and just want to pull up a pillow and lie on the floor. I like the composition and how the figures kind of echo and mimic each other, leading the eye to the matriarch on the top--but I mainly like it because it makes me feel sleepy and serene and a little bit creeped out. Plus, the colors are cool.

Heat is what Brooklyn feels like today.

Not an overly profound statement, but I stand by it.

Brighton Beach, Wednesday Evening

Now that I've lived in Brooklyn for almost a year (HOW is that possible??) I've stopped carrying my camera with me. This means that sometimes really great things happen and I have no photographic record of them. The next few posts will be about these great things.

It was Wednesday. It was 90 degrees and I was feeling sick-ish. My evening plans were to eat some Rice Krispies and then start a Dorothy Sayers book while wallowing in my surliness and sweat. And then, like a divine intervention (or whatever) I got a text from my cousin, something along the lines of: "I just got out of work and I need to be in a wide-open space. Wanna meet at Coney Island?" The answer to that is yes, of course.

And let me tell you, Coney Island is a great place on the first 90 degree day of the year. People were hilarious. The old men had set up their chess boards, the women were stripping, and the kids were running everywhere. The handball courts were full and the ocean breeze was, well, breezy. I took a few deep breaths, buried my feet in the sand, and felt immediately better. My cousin and I found each other on the boardwalk ("I could tell it was you from far away because of how you walk," she said. Huh.) and as she hadn't eaten in awhile, we looked for a place for dinner. And we found it. When you walk down Coney Island to Brighton Beach, there are a row of Russian seafood places with a lot of outdoor seating on the boardwalk. We picked Tatiana's, which was kind of in the middle.

I don't quite know how to describe Tatiana's. The menu is in Russian on one side and English on the other, and the servers all take their smoke breaks on the boardwalk about three feet from the tables. We both got kvas to drink, which is sort of a non-alcoholic beer. I really liked it--it reminded me of a strong, natural root beer (and I do love me some root beer!). I wasn't that hungry so I ordered the calamari, while my cousin got some concoction of seafood, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and about a pint of cheese, cream, and butter. The food was more expensive than we usually indulge in, but the portions were BIG. The calamari was enough for two meals, and was really tasty--the broccoli I sampled from the other dish was good too. A man came by and offered to sell us some pillows (my question was, who buys pillows while they're eating? while my cousin's was, who buys pillows from some dude on the street?)

We ate outside, but the indoor decor deserves a mention. Think Eastern European brothel meets Czarist Palace meets some sort of classy law office. A lot of mirrors and carpets, and outside the bathroom: two lamps which were womens' bodies with lampshades instead of heads; one black, one red. There were a bunch of weird figurines--I took a pic on my phone of the shelf containing a bikini-clad woman hugging a tiger, which was flanked by figurines of Santa Claus and a polar bear. The bathrooms themselves were really nice, in case you were curious.

The sun set and the full moon rose, and the twinkling Christmas lights came on under the awning we were sitting under. It was beautiful, quiet except for the other patrons chatting in Russian and the clink of glass and far far away the sound of waves. It felt like we were on another continent. A wizened man with an accordion wandered around, taking requests. We didn't recognize the first few songs, but other people were singing along. He eventually launched into, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," "La Vie En Rose," "Bicycle Built for Two," and any American patriotic song you can think of. Let me tell you, you haven't heard the "Star Spangled Banner" properly until you've heard it on the accordion!

If you're looking for a laugh, do check out Tatiana's website here. It's hilarious, and contains both a "morning after" drink recipe, and the suggestion that men shave before going there, because "there are plenty of people to impress." Perfect antidote to the mid-week blahhs.

What is Your Word?

I am in the midst of reading Eat, Pray, Love, which is crazy good. I was a bit dubious going in, because I wasn't sure how much spirituality-talk was going to happen (I tend to find that sanctimonious, depending, especially since I am untrained at meditation and when I do try and meditate, it just makes me nervous). But it is mostly not sanctimonious--it's about life getting really gross and having your heart broken in many ways and then working to make things right for yourself again, because that is what we all deserve. Balance. Pleasure. Meaning. Good food. Good friends. Travel, if you are fortunate enough to be able to do so. Happiness. Also, it made me hate Elizabeth Gilbert a little bit (even though she seems like a cool person) because I wanted to go to Rome so, so badly after reading her Italy section.

Anyway, there is a chapter in the Italy section where she and one of her Rome friends discuss how cities have one word which describes them or sums them up. He claims that Rome's is SEX, and the Vatican's is POWER. Gilbert thinks New York City's is ACHIEVE and Los Angeles's is SUCCEED. Her Swedish friend thinks Stockholm's is probably CONFORM. (Gilbert, 103-104).

My brain loves this idea. I spent most of my commute today germinating on this. What would my hometown be? I settled on BEHAVE. Although, since my hometown was founded by Swedish and Italian immigrants, maybe some combination of SEX and CONFORM would be apt (oh, it would definitely be apt). I discussed this with a friend, who thought her hometown's was probably WALLOW. What about Geneva? Maybe LEARN, or THINK. At this time of year, VERDANT. Or CONTRADICTORY. The house where I lived with my friends? LOVELY, or maybe RIDICULOUS. My parents house? WACKY. HOME. COMFORTING.

And what about Brooklyn? Today--SLUGGISH (my bus was stopped behind a semi for 10 minutes this morning). BLOSSOMING (well, the botanical gardens, anyway). HUMMING. CRABBY. I was reading Eat, Pray, Love over the weekend on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and was trying to wrap my head around meditating for 5 hours a day and how group meditation and all the energy might be able to help you commune with god(dess) (or whatever you want to call it.) Needless to say, I could not imagine how anyone meditates in Brooklyn, because I was having trouble concentrating on reading with everyone squawking around me. My neighborhood's would be COLORFUL. Or LIVELY.

Not all the words are good, though. What of those places or people that are DESPERATE, DANGEROUS, SAD, or DULL? Maybe though, even if you are those words, you wouldn't pick them for yourself. I feel like those are only words that others might label you as (you probably don't think you're DULL, but maybe I would. Or you might think I'm DULL. Very likely, actually.) I found myself doing that on the subway today--"guy in the suit. PRETENTIOUS. nurse. TIRED. man with the goatee. ENIGMATIC."

As for my word? Tricky, that. WANDERER, ROVER? Maybe, but also NESTER, HOMEBODY. Definitely LISTENER, but also definitely TALKER. SEEKER. STUMBLER (literally--over curbs, down stairs, and figuratively--into ideas, out of ideas, whatever). AWKWARD (yup). CLASSY (when the mood strikes). Mostly, though--CONTENT.

What is your word? What is your town's word? Do you wish your words were different?

Greenwood Cemetery

I've never consciously thought about this, but it turns out I really like cemeteries. I tend to visit them when I move or visit someplace new (much like other people scope out churches or grocery stores). As such, I have a hierarchy of cemeteries I like, based on sereneness, aesthetics, interesting statues, lawn beauty, and age of graves/amount of famous people. (Hey Jazz, remember that cemetery in Paris where we thought we'd get attacked by feral cats?) Based on my criteria, Greenwood Cemetery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, might be the best I've ever been to. It might also be one of my top three favorite places in NYC now.

The day helped. It was a sunny Saturday, I had just eaten a delightful lemon Italian ice, and I was with two people that I very much like (one of them, my cousin, took all these pictures. Thanks Melis!) None of us had been to Greenwood, but it's very neat. It was originally a 478 acre park, and is full of rolling hills, ponds with fountains, and lovely architecture, some of which was designed by Richard Upjohn (be excited, Genevans!). It is the highest point in Brooklyn and involved the first hills I've seen in awhile. A very calm, quiet, lovely place. And free, of course, which is even better.

We made it through about a third of the cemetery (in over an hour, mind) and saw a few famous plots. Louis Comfort Tiffany's was very unobtrusive (we couldn't find it originally, in fact) and Boss Tweed had an entire family plot. We were interested in seeing the Steinway Family Mausoleum and the guide by the gate told us, "you can't miss it. It is large enough for about 200 bodies." And yet, we did miss it. We walked by it, twice, both times because we spotted interesting statues farther away. But up close, the Steinway Mausoleum is about the size of a house. (for a cool Steinway story, check this out.)

There are plenty of other famous-ish people interred there: Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, DeWitt Clinton, Currier and Ives, Alice Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Lorenzo da Ponte (ack!!) and a few slightly less famous but still interesting people: William "Bill the Butcher" Poole (head of the Bowery Boys gang), Susan McKinney Steward (the first black woman to get a medical degree in NY), Laura Keene (actress who was on stage when Lincoln was shot), and Henry Bergh (founder of the ASPCA).

And here are some statues of note:


Greenwood is awesome; therefore, Brooklyn is awesome. It is one of those places that Manhattan doesn't have and never will. It's a beautiful place, especially in the May sun with good friends. After we left there was a street fair a few blocks away, and we got some roasted corn-on-the-cob and wandered among balloons and smoke and cotton candy, not to mention booming basses. Again: Brooklyn is awesome. But we all knew that already.

Bus Tales

There are certain points of Brooklyn that you can't get to by subway, and so you have to take the bus (like Red Hook, where I work, or Canarsie, where my cousin works). Ah, the bus. It's like a microcosm of New York City--the good, the bad, the funny, the nutty, it's all there, and it's all contained. I like it because I can look around outside. I don't like it because I can't read on it without getting sick. Also, I fell over the first time I took the bus, but have sorted myself out. Well, kind of.

So, a lot of bus riding has occurred of late, and some great stuff has happened. Here are the highlights.

B61 to downtown Brooklyn
Ahead of me boarding are two men with Fairway Market shirts on.
Guy 1: I'm sure you got the job.
Guy 2: I don't know man, I'm not very qualified, I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high..I could really use the money though.
They back away to find seats.
I swipe my card.
The busdriver, over the loudspeaker: Hey! I don't need that type of negativity on my bus! I'm sure you got the job, brother.
Guy 2 (who is now in the middle of the bus and has to yell): Well, maybe, but I don't want to get too excited about it.
Busdriver: Positive thinking, man. It works.
Guy 2: And I have a job now, so at least my family won't starve.
Busdriver: Good, that's what I like to hear.
Guy 2: Hey, maybe I want your job.
Busdriver: Brother, you do not want this job. They're cutting us all over the place.
[note: this is true. The MTA just cut a LOT of bus routes and jobs, effective at the end of June. It's miserable. And some of the bus drivers have started announcing some stops like, "Union St, transfer to the B71, FOR NOW, before somebody cuts it." Not a great climate with the MTA right now.]

10 minutes go by, and the bus has filled up a lot by then. People are standing a bit too close to the rear door, so the busdriver picks up the loudspeaker again.
Busdriver [in a deep and scary voice]: Please step away from the back door. The last man who stood that close is no. longer. with. us. Poor Tom. May he rest in peace.
[Pause]
Busdriver: That means YOU, gentleman in the blue jacket!
Blue jacket gentleman is either zoned out or does not understand English, because he does not move. The man next to me reached over and gently tapped him on the shoulder and moved him away from the door.

B65 to downtown Brooklyn
Quiet Saturday morning. I'm sitting next to a woman who has two daughters with her, probably about ages 3 and 6. They are adorable. There is a fashionable looking woman and her partner across the aisle from us.
Fashionable woman: I just wanted to let you know that your daughters are beautiful.
Mom: Oh, thank you. I had to stop telling them that because I didn't want it to go to their heads!
Fashionable woman (to the girls): just always know that you are beautiful and no one can ever, ever take that away from you.
Partner, squeezing her hand: No, they can't.
Older girl: Ok.

B65 to Crown Heights
Woman 1: did you ever have that moment when you were reading a book as a kid? And you were sitting under a tree on a blanket and thinking that you were suddenly in another world, and there was no where else you would rather be? Mine was The Secret Garden. That's when I realized what reading could do.
Woman 2: Mine was Little House on the Prairie. I felt like I was Laura. I never forgot that.
Me (in my head, not out loud): Mine was Walk Two Moons.

B65 to downtown Brooklyn
Early morning, and 3 girls get on for school; I presume they are sisters. The youngest is very young, probably 5, and the oldest is maybe 12, and the middle around 8. The 12 year old is in charge of them. She sits next to me, and they sit in the seats behind us.
5 year old: I don't like the way the brakes sound. They go squeeeeeeak.
8 year old: Me either. Hey, did you press the secret accelerator?
5 year old: No! Ready...NOW!! [they simultaneously kick the back of our seats]
12 year old: KNOCK IT OFF. Please don't embarrass me.
8 year old: Warp speed! We need the emergency break.
5 year old [poking her sister in the head]: We're going into space!! WE'RE GOING INTO OUTER SPACE!!!
12 year old: Oh, please stop yelling.
5 year old: BLAST OFF!!!!!
Me: [bursts out laughing]

B65 to Crown Heights
We are stopped at a red light and see a cab cut off a biker. It didn't seem like that big a deal to me--the cab wasn't anywhere close to hitting him--but the bike driver freaks out and punches the fender of the cab, while screaming. I can't hear anything through the glass. I think I'm the only one even looking at this scene. The cab stops. The bus driver whips out his bike lock and is waving it at the cab as if to go for the window. The light turns green and we go on.

B63 to Atlantic Avenue
The seats are mostly full, but the bus is not super crowded. An older woman gets on with a 2 year old, who toddles on while her grandma/aunt/babysitter hunts for her card. The girl is about half way to the back on the bus when the busdriver starts to pull away from the curb, and I'm not kidding when I say that every person within a 6 foot radius, myself included, lunged out to make sure she didn't fall. People stuck out legs, arms, canes, and one man held on to her until her grandmother could get back to her.

B6 to East New York, courtesy of my cousin:
A lady gets on, sits down for 3 seconds, and proclaims loudly in an amazing Caribbean accent: "Jesus is coming, people." She then continues on a rant about the state of the world. This happens on a daily basis. Finally, one day...
Lady: "Jesus is coming, people."
Random guy: "WHEN IS HE COMING? You've been saying this every day and he's not here yet."

And a bonus boat story:
I am eating lunch outside on the docks, and am walking to throw out my trash. I'm holding a bottle of seltzer in one hand. A wizened, shirtless man standing on his boat (which is called "My Lady") yells over to me, "Hey doll! Hope it's vodka in that bottle." I responded with, "oh, I wish it were," and then we waved and went our separate ways.

Lilacs

The lilacs are early this year. This is not something I would normally notice, but for the past few years the smell of lilacs have always been accompanied with finals. The building where I spent much time while at college has a lovely lilac collection, with many different hues of purple. One particularly bad finals period (I think it was my junior year) I turned in my last paper and skipped out of the building (I don't normally skip) and threw myself into the lilac grove and lay there on the ground and inhaled the scent.

Lilacs may be my favorite flower because of how good they smell. The purple doesn't hurt, either. Fortunately for me, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens have a sizable lilac grove, which is where I took these pictures. What totally surprised me was how people react when they see (or smell) them. Hardened New York types, whom I would assume would have no real interest in plant-life, barrel over and bury their faces in the bushes. I saw an older woman, bending over them, murmuring, "heavenly, heavenly, heavenly." People don't take as many pictures of the lilacs, but they certainly are interested in them. It's nice to see this type of love and devotion for flowers.

To me, lilacs mean school, and having silly finals adventures with my friends, that had nothing to do with books and everything to do with being outside. But my love of lilacs goes farther back than that. My grandmother's house had lilac bushes on the side of it and as children my sister and I and two of our cousins made worlds in there. Usually they were households, which each of us having a separate section or imagining different rooms. I spent a lot of time in those branches. My parents, too, have lilacs in their backyard. My sister and I would play badminton (and still do) back there without a net and would be forever trapping the birdie in the lilacs, and did not always take the proper care with getting it down. Lilacs are bigger than Brooklyn in my eyes, but they never cease to make me happy.

City Rhythms

Brooklyn has a special pulse to it, which is something I can't really describe and I think can only be felt after you live here for a little while. It is a sense of constant movement that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Here are some sensory examples from a sunny--yet ordinary--Wednesday morning.

I sat in a coffeehouse up the street from the apartment. I was there to wait out while my laundry dried, and to catch up on my correspondence (how very Jane Austen of me!) It used to be an old glass factory, and the decor is minimalist, but light and airy. The door and windows (the whole front of the building is glass) were all opened and I could hear two delivery drivers chatting in Spanish on the sidewalk. Bikes are tied to the railing in a jumble, and a bulldog sits outside while his owner gets an espresso to go. I was perched on a green stool, scanning the NY Times, reading about volcanic ash plumes, Long Island racist crimes, and health insurance. If I was a poet (which I'm not) I would write about the feel of the newsprint under my hands, the clink of the small silver spoon next to my glass cup of mocha, and the dusting of cinnamon that speckles the foam on top. I would write of the crunch of the croissant I am eating as I try to pick crumbs off my plate, and the clicking of the hipster next to me as he types on his Mac. The baristo (is that the male form of barista? beats me) hurried outside to yell a greeting to the woman on the red bike. He is wearing a denim shirt, jeans, a red neckerchief and his arms are covered with black and red tattoos. He has a mohawk and an Australian accent and has swirled a spiral into my drink before handing it to me. I may have a crush on him. The Beatles played in a ceaseless blend of calm and noise (Strawberry Fields Forever) and prisms of light bounced off the old, leaded windows and the scarred table where I was sitting.

The sidewalks are a pockmarked mass of gum stains, tobacco stains, and spilled juice, water, and beer. Last night as I was taking the subway I noticed the same phenomena at the 86th St station--the pavement takes on an almost polka-dotted appearance with all of these marks. The security guard at the hospital center says, "good morning, miss" as I walk by. Another older man, wearing a suit, hat, and pink shirt, taps his cane on the sidewalk. "How's it goin', baby?" he asks. "Good morning, sir," I say to them both.

I am the only person in the laundromat, other than the older, stooped woman and the younger, thin woman who work there. We exchange smiles, as they snap snap snap other people's clothes that they are expertly folding. I have seen these women every 2 weeks, and I will leave here and never know their names. The completed laundry in their colorful bags look like misshapen larvae in a large pile on top of the washers. I haul my maroon bag over my shoulder and walk home, my keys clinking in my pocket, which matches the clicking cadence of the woman who passes me, hunting for change in her purse, hurrying to catch the 48 bus. I slide open the windows of the apartment and sit down to write this, to put off folding my laundry.

Spring Forward

Brooklyn is, to paraphrase e e cummings, mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful at the moment. It got up to 60 today, and people went even crazier than normal (myself included). Prospect Park was filled with wishful thinkers in shorts and t-shirts. A man roller-bladed by me while simultaneously talking on the phone. I found myself beaming at small children and waving at tiny dogs. Multicolored girls in swirling skirts drew giant dinosaurs and flowers on the sidewalks. Kids wandered around with dazed looks and mud-spattered knees.

It smells like sewage, standing water, dirt, and petrol. It's not overwhelmingly a bad smell, but you can tell that things are trying to dry themselves out. I had to have the reference librarian get a book out of storage for me, titled Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (it's Roald Dahl's short stories, in case you thought it was something soppier) and he proceeded to sing me the song. I found a marble on the sidewalk--it's a bit cloudy, but with a shock of turquoise through it. I ate the first acceptable avocado I've had in Brooklyn.

The cars still skreetch their brakes and make me jump, and the sirens still blare, but it is sunny, so all is well.

Case Files of the Uninsured

It's been a surreal few days. A week ago I was in Atlanta, having lofty conversation about lofty things, and getting fed little goat cheese and roasted tomato sandwiches. 4 days later, I was in the Caribbean House Health Center in Brooklyn, soon to be en route to the ER. What happened, I hear you asking? Here is a break down. (And no, I'm not allergic to art history, Atlanta, or southern hospitality. Although people saying "hi" to me on the street did sort of freak me out. I'm such a Brooklynite.)

Anyway.
--I have been having some breathing problems since...Thanksgiving...but only when I'm in NYC. It feels like chest constrictions and my heart rate speeds up. The past few weeks this has been coupled with some sinus pressure in my head and throat. Tuesday night it suddenly got the worst it's ever been, while I was walking home from the museum, so I decided to finally do something about it.
--Wednesday morning, I went to the CHHC, which I picked because I don't have health insurance, it is about 3 subway stops away, and offers a sliding scale for treatment. Wednesday was also the start of "the blizzard" so there was no school, and a lot of places were closed (pharmacies, for one, I later found out.)
--so, the CHHC. It was clean, felt safe, and the people were friendly. Not much foot traffic, because of the snow, and only one doctor made it in, but I got seen fairly quickly. They deduced that I was not having a heart attack (and I had my first EKG! Wooo!) but decided I should go to the ER, as they didn't have x-rays. I said ok, but refused an ambulance, as the hospital was only 5 blocks away. I paid $40 the visit and went on my way through the snow.
--To my knowledge, I have never been to the ER before this week. So this is actually pretty exciting, I guess.
--And I can tell you all that the Kings County Hospital ER is surprisingly nice, too. This might be because there is a separate psychiatric ER, but I got into triage within 5 minutes, had to wait another 45 minutes (which I'm assuming is not terrible for an ER) and then got called back. Granted, the room I was placed into was effectively the storage closet for all the crutches and cast-supplies. But my physician's assistant was good, thorough, and my cousin came (giving up her snow day!! Sorry Melis, I owe you BIG) so I wasn't by myself. Which was really good. Because by that point in the day, I just wanted to go to Jamestown and have my parents take care of me.
--The verdict? My EKG (second of the day! my skin still hurts from having the electrodes ripped off) was normal, as was my thyroid test, chest x-rays, and my heart rate was normal-ish. They asked a lot of questions about my stress level, which I suppose could be influencing this, although it doesn't seem very likely to me. They deduced that it could be an untreated sinus infection, which is causing the head pressure, clogging my throat, and causing my heart to work a little faster. So I got hooked up with some antibiotics and a prescription for prescription level sudafed ("take it or sell it" said the p.a.)
--When we got outside it was still snowing, snowing, snowing. And people on the street were hilarious about it. Everyone was excited like they were little kids, it was great.
--I spent yesterday in bed (well, on the couch, really), surly because I was missing a Kiki Smith show, sore from getting poked with needles, and bored. Although I did watch 5 episodes of The Wire, so that was pretty excellent. And I could stare out the window at the snow removal, and feel like I was in Rear Window (minus a lobster dinner.)

Now, some analysis about the experience:
--I was the only white person at the CHHC, which includes the doctor and nurses.
--I was the only white person at the ER, not including the doctors and some of the nurses. Both my physician and physicians assistant were white. The physician also looked a LOT like my pediatrician, which as mom can attest to, means that he looked like a gnome. Or leprechaun.
--My cousin pointed this out, and the thought had occurred to me as well--the treatment and attentiveness I was shown could very well have been because I was white. And lucid and washed. For example, I said that I wasn't pregnant, and they took my word for it (granted I did get asked about 900 times). If I were 18 and African American? Might have been a different story.
--Being uninsured is a scary thing. I can testify to the fact that the health care system in this country is very, very broken, although I'm not sure how best to fix it. I do know that there is a serious race inequality about it, and a serious class inequality.
--I didn't see any gun shot wounds (thank goodness) as it was mostly older people, with a few younger, mostly male patients with broken bones. I think some of it was probably hypothermia too, from people who didn't have heat, or didn't have a home. The most heartbreaking scene was at the clinic. The only people ahead of me were a mother and her daughter, who was about 16 or 17. I think she was probably getting tested for pregnancy, as she went into the laboratory with a urine sample, and a few minutes later screamed. Not a happy, "I'm having a baby" scream, but one of anguish, one of "something terrible has happened, and I don't know what to do." A scream that made me want to put my arms around her and say that all would be well, although she is a child herself. And I couldn't promise her that all will be well.

It was quite the day. I am lucky to have had health insurance for so long, and to be (normally!) so healthy. It makes you think. It also makes grad school seem startlingly irrelevant.

The Dinner Party

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice of representation.
--Abigail Adams, in a letter to her husband John

Most of you have probably seen this painting (or read a terrible book about it):

(Leonardo, The Last Supper, c. 1498, image from Wikipedia)
I'm starting with it because Christ, both with and without his disciples, is well represented in Western art history, and this is historically what studying Western art was about (Jesus, Leonardo, perspective, and so on). One of the major problems when revising this art history is how to combine such important works of art with inclusiveness about women and their contributions (or if you even should revise history. My answer would be "OF COURSE," but not everyone thinks so). One response by contemporary artists is to address the history*, change it around, and make something new.

Enter Judy Chicago, 400 volunteers, and The Dinner Party (1979), the monumental work (both in size and scope) which has been on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum since 2007. Chicago's work came at a time when art history was shifting to be more inclusive of women's contributions, as scholars, artists, and patrons. This change is odd for me to think about, because the art historians I know are all (for the most part) very conscious of gender and a discussion of it within art history. Like good ol' Abigail Adams, certain scholars have been waging a rebellion to bring about this change, and they are awesome (y'all know who you are). Chicago's goal in the 1970's was to create a dinner party unlike the Last Supper, as the seats would celebrate women, not men.

(all images from here on out from the Brooklyn Museum's website. Thank you!!!)
The piece is rife with symbolism--it's triangular shaped (a shape associated with women) and there are 13 place settings on each side (13 being the number of Christ + 12 disciples). Each of the 39 women is emblematic of a certain period in history, and their respective sisters' names are written on the tile floor beneath--999 names, all told. The work is comprised of painted place settings and embroidered table cloths--chinawork and weaving were historically dismissed as "women's craft," and Chicago wanted to reappropriate them, as the artforms that they are. The silverware and glasses are all identical, which symbolizes the solidarity and unity of women's experience, which is a nice sentiment, but not really true. Most of the plates have flower and vulvic themes (think Georgia O'keefe) and they get progressively more defined and 3-dimensional as time goes on and progress is made.

The usual suspects are represented: Queen Elizabeth, Amazons, Sojourner Truth, Mary Wollstonecraft. However, here are a few of my slightly less well-known favorites (and in no particular order):

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) received her medical degree from Geneva Medical College, and so has a great deal of significance for my alma mater (there is a statue of her there, which people do creepy things to. Anyway.) Here's something I learned, though: she graduated first in her class, and then the college barred women from applying. Blackwell did a lot of amazing things with the sanitation movement, and founded a Women's Medical College, as she learned from her educational trials how hard it was for women to be accepted in the medical community. And I love the butterfly motif of this setting, and the spiraling stethoscope wrapping around the "E" in her name.

Natalie Barney (1876-1972) is actually someone I had not heard of prior to viewing this work, but I was initially drawn in by the colors, and the star design on the plate. Turns out Barney hosted a salon in Paris for over 60 years, and was an openly gay writer of poetry and other works.

Sophia was (is?) the personification of wisdom (Sophia means "wisdom" in Greek). She stands in for Athena, Minerva, and is a key figure in Gnosticism, which was then subsumed by Christianity. I like this place setting because the colors are muted and look like desert sands and skies. Also, this is one of the first plates, so it is pretty flat.

I am one of about three people in the entire world who cares about Marcella (c. 325-410), but I truly do. She was a colleague of Saint Jerome, and she did a lot of his dirty work (translating the bible, building monasteries, backing him up in Jerusalem, giving him a TON of money, etc etc) and she didn't get any of the credit. We owe contemporary Christianity to her work. That might be overstating it slightly, but I don't really care. The bottom of her place setting (the brown bit) is made of coarse material and looks like a hairshirt, which represents her piety and sacrifice. Marcella is the first figure in the second line of 13 plates, and this when women's contributions to Christianity (and culture, really) begins to be systematically devalued.

Do I have any criticisms? Well, yes. The work includes a lot of women, but very much focuses on white women. A few non-heterosexual women are included, but not enough. There are no place settings (to my knowledge) that celebrate African and Asian women, although there are a few African-American examples present (and some might make an appearance on the Heritage floor, but I haven't read all of those names.) It is very essentialist, and a bit segregationist, but at the same time, I think we have to give Chicago credit. This was a big undertaking, at a time when these things weren't really done. I walk around the table about once a week, and it is invigorating, and inspiring...and sad, because of how many things are still broken and need to be fixed. But it makes you feel--something--and that is important.

If you are in the city, I urge you to check it out. There is a neat system where you call a number (even after you leave the museum) and you can find out about all the different women (for more on that, see here). The museum guides that are stationed there LOVE it, too--they have read all the booklets and really want to help show you around. You have to enter in a specific way--past the heritage tapestries (which I also love), through the room with the table, and then back to an area with biographical notes about all the women. I like that there is a set path--it becomes a ritual, as you pay respect to people that were too long neglected.

For more info and a totally cool interactive guide, check the museum's website here. For the curators summary, check here. And for more on the Sackler Center itself, check here (they have rotating exhibits that are always worth a look.)

*the museum makes a point of substituting "herstory" for "history," which I like but which also feels silly to type.

Snippiness, and the Antidotes for It

I haven't written much lately for the sheer fact that my camera is being a bit dodgy, it is kind of cold, and I haven't been doing much. And, well, I've been feeling a little snippy. Here's why:
--unemployed, peppering independent bookstores with resumes, will probably have to resort to corporate succubus bookstore, *if* I can get hired there.
--going blind from looking at slides of papyri at the museum for 8 hours a day.
--starting of spring semester, and I miss school, my friends, Thursday wine/coffee/tv nights, and the general silliness that ensued. Yes, I was up until 3 am every Sunday night my final semester, and yes, I do sleep a lot more now, but everytime I pass the rowhouses in my neighborhood I think of S Main St, Geneva, and wish I was there instead.
--feeling in limbo, re. future, grad school, jobs, and feeling unable to help solve major problems in world, and in the city. I am spinning my wheels, and that gets old. Quick.
--impending grad school interview next weekend, must buy dress skirt, read a few faculty authored books, stop biting my nails, and relearn major amounts of art history and German verbs. Have so far done none of that.

However, there are plenty of antidotes to snippiness:
--today was sunny and although I was on a fruitless mission to buy a business skirt and find a job (see above) I had a nice amble through downtown Bk.
--I went to Greenpoint, which is in north Bk (on an indy bookstore quest.) It's a heavily Polish neighborhood, so it's a much different feel than here. It was a nice mini-adventure.
--I also got a bubble tea and sat for a bit and flipped through the NY Post, which features stories of people whose lives made me feel good about myself (the Kardashians!? Remind me WHY these people are famous.)
--PBS's new adaption of Emma is really good.
--We are currently watching White Collar, which is the best bad show on tv. And shortly the state of the union will be on, and we will probably watch it on mute and eat ice cream.
--Continuing the tv theme--the Winter Olympics will be on (comparatively) soon too. I love the Olympics!
--my friends and family are amazing at sending mail. AMAZING. It truly makes my week.
--I do still love the Brooklyn Museum, and especially love it when it's closed to the public and I can be in the galleries by myself. Not much better than drinking a cup of green tea in the half-light of early evening and looking at a row of Monets.
--I am attempting to cook more (I'm going to make bread soon! Zut alors!) and I made salsa this weekend which was waaay easier than I thought it would be.

So really, all is well. I do have some back posts (with pictures!) to get out into cyberspace, and will do some art reviews soon too. Truly. Just bear with me through my mini pity party.

Giving Thanks

I thought this wall-advertisement was appropriate for all you turkey eaters out there...I passed it on my walk to Target this morning, and fortunately had my camera with me. (and if you think that I don't crack up every time I see this sign, then you don't know me very well.) The craziest part about the building is that it stands alone in the midst of browning grass and barbed wire, as you can see:

I am closing at the bookstore tonight (blerg) and taking an early train up to my aunt's tomorrow for 3 WHOLE DAYS OFF. And I'm really, really excited to see my family, eat myself into a stupor, and play a myriad of board games. Perhaps I will even post some gratuitously cute pix of my little cousins on here. I am hoping the "fresh country air" will knock out whatever NYC pathogens have taken my lungs hostage (I have never had asthma or allergies, but in the last two days breathing has become a bit of a bugger, to be honest, and I'm not sure why.)

I hope you all have a wonderful family and friend filled day tomorrow. Drive safe. And right now I am thankful for huge William Smith sweatshirts, bagels with scallion cream cheese, the fact that I *don't* have to work on Black Friday, and all of you.

A Day in the Digital Lab

So in my other life, when I'm not taking germy money from germy people, I work for a stipend in the Brooklyn Museum's Digital Collections and Services Lab. (note: I have a cold, which I am surly about and blame retail for. However, I like it that my voice is an octave lower than normal, because now when I sing Billie Holiday standards in the shower, it sounds more authentic. In case you were curious.)

I am at the Lab currently, scanning, so I thought I would give you an account. I am being funded as part of a grant given by the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) to the BM. This grant is used for scanning and uploading on the website some areas of the collection (over 1,000,000 all told) which are underrepresented. Prior to this, most of the images on the website were "greatest hits" of the collection, which left out a lot of works. So, the curators went in and picked out the objects they liked and found interesting, and gave us a list, and we've been scanning them. My realm is the black and white photonegatives. (Photonegatives are film, like you would have in a normal, non-digital camera, except they are a larger size. And since they are negatives, what appears black on them would be white in the actual work, and what is white would be black.)

Anyway, here is what I do:
1. Consult the master list of the IMLS objects, and start pulling slides out of the boxes. They are arranged by their accession number, which is the year in which they entered the museum. For example, 12.53.2 would be something acquired in 1912. It was the 53rd group of objects acquired that year, and the 2nd object in that group. There are 89 boxes of black and white photonegatives.
2. Once I have a pile, I power on the scanner, which is a flat thing (technical terminology, ha) which opens and has two large glass plates. I clean the plates with a chamois cloth (which traps more dust than a regular cloth, allegedly.)
3. I put on one white glove, like Michael Jackson c. 1985. With the white-gloved hand (finger-prints = VERY BAD), you grip a negative in the corner by your thumb and forefinger. Drag the cloth across both sides of it to remove dust. Hold it up to the light--the dust will show up as white specks, and then you can keep cleaning accordingly.
4. Once the negative looks pretty clean, I hold it under the light to figure out which side has emulsion on it. You can tell which side is emulsion-ed because it will not transmit light. The non-emulsion side will reflect light back at you. In these scanners the emulsion side goes UP, but it's different for other machines (were I to put the emulsion side DOWN, the image would be scanned reversed, and I would have to redo it.
5. The scanner I use fits 8 images comfortably, so once 8 are loaded then it scans and I have a few minutes to get tea or blog (yo!) or email or wander around.
6. Once the batch is done scanning, you save them in very specific folders (there is a whole naming process for each image, involving "bw" and "IMLS" and "view 1" and "a-c" and a bunch of stuff that normal people don't need to know about.) Then you open them in photoshop and crop, straighten, color correct (which for the black-and-whites involves grayscale, curves and layers and little eye-dropper looking tools.) Finally you blow them up to actual pixel size and delete any imperfections/dust/scratches. My problem is I tend to over-edit and delete things which are flaws of the work, and not just flaws of the negative (like if a page from a manuscript is torn, I have a tendency to edit out the rip, when it is really a part of the work. If that makes any sense.)
7. After all that, you look up the image in a bunch of databases, make sure the accession number is right, update the info in Microsoft Access and email a bunch of people to let them know that it is ready to be uploaded to the website.
8. Repeat. Indefinitely.

Now, if you think this sounds boring and monotonous, you are darn right it is. However, sometimes you get either totally awesome or totally ridiculous images, which breaks up the boring. Like today, on the awesome scale, I got a Rothko watercolor. I've had a few Hoppers (mmm) and some Mary Cassatt's which were cool. The JJ Audobon nature prints are fun, because they are very stylized, and you can play with the contrasts--plus the foxes are CUTE! Some of the Asian collection's hanging scrolls are great, and there is one really fun one which is a series of insects, who all have little humanoid faces...some are grumpy, some are smiling, which cracked me up. On the ridiculous scale are the period rooms, which were photographed in the '70's (the BM has a whole floor of period rooms, mostly from the 19th century). The food that is displayed on the tables is usually pretty funny--today we got one that was turkey, pot roast (we think), shrimp, peas, mushrooms, and what looks like goblets full of jell-o.

In the next few weeks I get to start scanning papyrus slides from the Egyptian collection, so that could be neat. (What is neat is that the actual photographs are over a century old and on glass plates instead of film. So at least that'll be different.) And then next time you go on a museum's website, think about how many people it actually takes to get those images to you!

The Yankeeees Win!

I admit to being fairly ambivalent about baseball in general, although I prefer the Yankees over most teams. So tonight was pretty exciting, mainly because I live in The City and people are serious about their sports teams. I was at work and we put the game on in the cash office, and then intercomed it behind the registers. I felt like I was in the 1930's as we all huddled around the phone and shushed each other and tried to hear the radio through the static. Everyone working was a waste of space, and everyone in the store really just wanted to hear what was happening. It's exciting because everyone was into it. The Bronx, though, is crazy right now. As I was leaving work the security guard said, in his heavy Jamaican accent, "you walk safe, lady, and no getting boozey and tipping over cars." Sound advice. Hope other people follow it as well.

In other news, I had the worst customer I have ever had tonight, so the Yankees winning was a wonderful mood lifter. She was French, and didn't know how to work Traveler's Checks, and called me a pest, and incompetent, and as she counted out change she dropped a Euro in my hand and said, "this is a Euro. You've probably never seen one before." (you'll be happy to know that I responded with, "oh, the Vitruvian man? That's my favorite Euro design" and smiled in a way that would appear polite if you didn't know me.) It was dreadful. But then I had a guy later on who completed his transaction speaking in a fake-Cockney and then a Pirate accent. It made me laugh. The Yankees fans that are on TV right now are making me laugh too! Nothing like a good chorus of "We are the Champions" to put you in a good mood.

Bedtime. Goodnight, friends.

EDITED: Thursday 11/5. The NY morning news show (I think on CBS) made a bet with their Philly affiliate that whichever team won the World Series got to choose a song for the loser to sing on air. Which happened at 5:30 this morning, and I was half-asleep listening to it, and it was hilarious. Of course they had to sing "New York, New York" but it was completely tuneless and everyone was just laughing the whole time. If you want to watch it (and you really should), go here, type in "morning" in the search box, and pick the first one-- Hu-phili-ation: CBS 3 in Philly loses bet to CBS 2.

Hop on the Bus, Gus

I just got home (it is 12:30 am) from work and took a cab. I say this with a slight sense of personal disappointment, because now that I've finally figured out the buses, I try and take them because it feels like a distinction between a REAL NYer and a tourist. Real NYers take the bus, or in my case, two buses, home when they work late. They are tough and hardy, and I did it last night, but the cards were stacked against it tonight: it was raining (I am a baby when it comes to standing ankle deep in water, and am willing to pay more money not to do so) and the bus was half an hour late!! Which has actually never happened to me before, but my co-worker J and I waited and waited and finally gave up and she called us cabs. When my cab pulled up and I got in, J banged on the cabbies window (J is about 5 feet no inches tall, and has an impressive array of berets which she always wears over her short dreadlocks. "Don't be charging her more than $10!" she yelled at him. Then, to me, "if he charges you more than $10, you can tell him where to stick it." He charged me $10. And I was home in 10 minutes, as opposed to my usual 50.

To anyone who is parentally or grandparentally related to me and is concerned about buses in the middle of the night, all I can say is: don't be. There have been a few weekend nights when I felt not super-comfortable, so I took a cab then, too. Probably the most different thing about all of this, apart from the fact that I have no experience with public transport, is that I am usually the only white person on the bus. As someone who grew up in the vast majority, it's an interesting feeling. It makes you think about the tiny population of African-Americans where I went to college, and the 5 Asian kids in my high school. I knew I stuck out last night when waiting for my second bus with two off-duty security guards, one who was Haitian and one who was Venezuelan. (I know this because they talked the entire time we were waiting. I could tell you how many siblings they have, what kind of hair products they use, and what kind of earrings they think look dumb. I'm not even kidding.) At one point, one said, "well, you know, I'm not prejudiced at all. My sister married a guy who was as white as her." (the "her" being me.) I looked up and they were both looking at me, so I did an awkward wave (I'm a master of the awkward wave) and they laughed and then I was included in their conversation by unspoken agreement. (they also know what hair products I use.) This sense of difference was particularly striking coming back from the opera, when I went from being the only white person on the subway wearing turquoise tights to being the only white person, period. (it says something about perceived social class and certain cultural activities--the exact same thing happened when I went to the ballet--but I'm not going into that now.)

But I've gotten used to the maps and one-way streets. The downside to this is I've almost ended up missing my street because I was falling asleep, or texting and not paying attention, whereas before I'd be too hyped up and staring out the window, so I would prematurely signal a stop and get off a few blocks early. At any rate, I'm home, I'm going to bed, and I have tomorrow off. Whooo!

10 Commandments of Retail

Gentle Readers,
As someone who is employed in retail, and who has many friends employed in retail, I am offering a helpful list of rules that everyone should follow. Commandments, as it were. (feel free to add your own...my dogma is pretty fluid!)
1. Thou shalt not assume that anyone working in retail is inferior to you.
What we do is harder than it looks. It's a lot of standing, a lot of emotional grunt work, a lot of smiling when you don't feel like smiling, and a LOT of politeness, papercuts, and being helpful, all for very minimal pay. And by and large, everyone at the store where I work is very good at what they do: cashiers, booksellers, and managers alike. Most of us are there because we like books, and like telling people about books. When I help someone find something, and they are excited, it actually feels pretty good. Except when people treat you like you are an idiot, which happens too often. College degrees don't equal intelligence (the more time people spend in school, the less common sense they seem to have, I find), but we are (recent) grads from Columbia, Northwestern, Arizona State, Oberlin, U Iowa, NYU, Brooklyn College, CUNY Manhattan, and, ahem, William Smith. We know about a lot of different things, we speak many languages, we have kids, we have other jobs, and we really want you to read things. Conversely,
2. Thou shalt not assume we are mind-reading geniuses.
If you come into a bookstore looking for something, it is awesome if you know most of the title, or the authors last name (or if you are AWESOME, the ISBN.) If you come in and tell me you want the new book with the guy on it (this happened today), I might have trouble helping you. (I actually found the book, by the way.) Also, I have had people give me the wrong title AND the wrong author over the phone and then yell at me when I can't find what they are looking for. This does not endear you to me.
3. Thou shalt not talk on thy cell phone when at the register.
I want to help you. I am paid to help you. I cannot help you if you are talking to someone else. I do not care if your son is failing math, I do not care about the cost of your prescription pills, and I really do not care about your sex life. Common courtesy would dictate that you have have one conversation at a time, but you might be surprised at how many people ignore common courtesy.
4. Thou shalt not discuss thy political views.
In a similar vein to the third commandment, I just do not care who you voted for. It's not something I discuss with people unless I am friends with them (ditto for religious views) and frankly, it is really annoying. You can wear a Nobama button if you really want to, but don't go on about how he is socialist to me (this also happened to me today.) And it works both ways: when I was working in a bookstore last summer I had an aging academic-type liberal say to my (one) African-American co-worker, "well, I certainly hope you'll be voting for Obama!" Because they have a similar skin tone so they automatically think the same? Again, annoying, and pretty offensive at that.
5. Thou shalt not complain about the high price of books (shirts, groceries, etc.) while buying them.
We all have to eat, wear clothes, and read, and no one is forcing you to shop where you are. I know books were significantly cheaper 50 years ago, but there's not much I can do about it. There are alternate means of purchasing things if you are worried about prices (go online, buy used, use a library, etc.)
6. Thou shalt be patient.
When I am cashiering I am going as fast as possible, but if I make a mistake, it is very bad for me, and for you in the long-run. It is your fault if you double-park, and I won't rush so that you don't get a ticket. I would rather make sure you are charged the right amount, and that your merchandise doesn't get bent, and that you get the correct change. Bear with me.
7. Thou shalt control thy offspring.
The bookstore where I work is located in a yuppie, baby-heavy area (coughcough*Park Slope*coughcough) and there are some holy terror children, particularly when with their parents and not their nannies. I know it is impossible to "control" kids, but there are ways to discipline and minimize tantrums, screaming, whining, and running. Stop making empty threats, and stop, for goddesses sake, buying them stuff to stop them from crying. Learn to say no. Then your child will be adorable, and I will be happy to help you.
8. Thou shalt not abuse gift wrap.
I really like gift wrapping, but it's kind of something we do to be nice. Asking me to wrap 20 individual books, at 5:30 when the store is packed, is a little indulgent. Fortunately our security guards are also good gift wrappers, so we split it up. But at the very least, offer to help.
9. Thou shalt wash thy hands.
I'm not asking for constant handwashing, but if people could stop giving me damp, sweaty, sticky money, I would really appreciate it. I have started to over-use the hand sanitizer, since I am sans health insurance. I actually had someone hand me their dirty kleenex last week. Please do not do that.
10. Thou shalt be remembered--for good or bad.
If your kids are cute, I will remember. If you compliment my scarf, I will remember. If you are terrible, snappy, and condescending, I will remember. If you swear at my co-worker (this happened today), I will remember. And chances are good that I will mention it to my co-workers. One thing about retail is that you commiserate about good things and bad things, because that makes the time go faster, and makes you feel better if something really bad happens.

90% of people are nice, friendly, and fine. 10% might be sociopaths. Don't be in the 10%! And thus endeth the public service announcement for the day.

Don't you love New York in the fall?

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.
--You've Got Mail, 1998

Happy Saturday morning! We just made omelets and I'm going to work in a bit (blargh.) But I would just like to say: New York in the Fall is something pretty great. True, it is certainly not as pretty as upstate (there are not as many trees, for one thing.) There is a smell in the air that I love (honestly, it's probably the mustiness of dying leaves...pleasant.) That plus the coziness of being inside and drinking tea just makes me feel like humming. I once had a professor who described Edvard Munch and his art as having a "morose Northern temperament," which is kinda ridiculous, but it could be applied to me as well. Probably in two months I will be browbeating the cold, but for now it is ok. Besides, anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE scarves, so any opportunity to wear them, I am happy with.

And You've Got Mail is an awesome movie, and it's like a New York City valentine (well, Manhattan anyway.) Plus, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are just cuteness. And it's about bookstores!! Except in this scenario, I am allied with evil Fox Books, the superstore that crushes indie bookstores in its wake of cheap books and cappucino. My parents actually refer to where I work as "Fox Books." Ah well. It's a delightful movie regardless.

Nostalgia

The problem with going someplace really lovely, and having a really lovely time, is that eventually you have to leave. I guess that is a problem with vacations in general, but I've never gone on vacation and had to come back to "real life," ie job(s), chilling weather, and missing my friends like I would miss a limb if it was cut off.

To recap: I have been on hiatus since I went to Geneva last weekend for 4 days and have been not in the best mood since being back here. The fact that I have to consider Geneva (and by extension the Finger Lakes, and Western NY in general) as a vacation spot and not my home is creeping me out. I had a massive sleepover with 5 of my best friends, who I hadn't seen since May (we missed you, Jersey girl!!). I watched quality chick flicks, ate about 900 pounds of candy, talked and talked, had tea, saw a lot of people I care about, and now I am missing it terribly. I hate transitions, probably like everyone else does. So to preempt my current one-person pity party, I am going to make two lists. Enjoy.

5 Rad Things about Geneva, NY
1. Community. Yeah, yeah, I know communities are everywhere. And I really haven't been here long enough to create one. And I hated Geneva when I first moved there (I wanted to transfer my first semester of college, but I think that was probably more homesickness than any major problem with the school.) But it is that comfortable way of being that I miss the most, and I miss it about my hometown, too. It was the nicest part of the visit. I think I saw someone I knew everywhere I went (which has its bad side..at one point we were costumed for an early Hallowe'en celebration and were outside the art department, and I should really know by now not to be traipsing around in butterfly wings because someone is ALWAYS there.)
2. The Food. I really like The Coffee House, which has the best scones, outside of England, that I've ever had, and the Red Dove Tavern is just groovy (shoestring fries = major mmm), and there is a Wegmans, which I maybe went to every day I was there. Plus, APPLES.
3. Watkins Glen. Technically this is half an hour from Gtown, but it's gor-ge-ous, especially this time of year. And here we are, thanks to Karen's super awesome camera (and super awesome photog skillz!)

(lots of smiling went on this weekend..and laughing so hard that I felt sick. And does that shot of one of the Falls remind you of the Mines of Moria?!)
4. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, particularly Houghton House. For those of you not in the know, Houghton House is where the art department at WS&H resides, and let me tell you: it is a cool place to be normally, but it is SUPER nice when you don't have work to do. (I spent freakish amounts of time there my last year of college, and got kind of grumpy about it. Not anymore.) And the people there are some of my favorites anywhere, speaking of community. Besides, I just like to learn stuff, and I like places where I can do that, and where there are people willing to teach me.

5. The way Seneca Lake looks at any time of year. It's pretty in the Fall with the leaves, it's pretty in the winter (at least, I think so) when it's grey and the snow geese hang out on it, it's pretty in the spring (when my top picture was taken) when everything smells green and growing, and the lake is astonishingly blue in the summer.

5 Rad Things about Brooklyn, NY (in the past 5 days)
1. My cousin got some really, really good dark wheat bread from a bakery by her school and I just ate some with honey. (Honey, incidentally from Geneva. One of the people I housesat for last year has started beekeeping--hi Nan!)
2. En route to Brooklyn, we stopped by the relatives and got some squash, green peppers, hot peppers, onions, a pumpkin, gourds, and carrots from my aunt's garden (HI AUNT SUE!!). Not to go all Michael Pollan on everyone, but it's nice to know where your food is coming from.
3. I have gotten 3 pieces of mail in the past 2 days, which is always, always, always wonderful. Except when it's from Sallie Mae. Then it's not. But this was good mail.
4. I just found out that the chain bookstore I work for lets its' employees "rent" out any hardcover book with a dustjacket for two weeks. They keep the dustjacket and loan it out to you, so I now have Nick Hornby's newest in my possession. It's good so far. And I like that they do that.
5. Today while at the Brooklyn Museum (I am interning there...have I mentioned that on here?? More on that another time) I cut out of work early (whoops) and walked through the American Art floor, and they have a new Native American exhibit up, and that was neat.

Well, I don't feel that much better. But back to our regularly scheduled programming next post, eh?

Oh, and more importantly:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!

Food, Glorious Food

This is a post I wrote awhile ago, which has now been cross-posted at Cooking With Ideas, a blog authored by one of my ex-professors (she is still a professor, I mean "ex" in that I am out of school...) And besides being a genuine rockstar human being, she also has a cool blog, where she writes about food in the Finger Lakes, murder mysteries (especially food involved ones), restaurant reviews, and a lot of other good things (and yours truly is listed under the Geneva-related blogs). Check it out!!

Today I’ll be bringing you food news and reviews from the neighborhood. And that neighborhood is Crown Heights! Some qualifiers before starting: 1) I have only included stores and restaurants within 10 minutes walking distance of my apartment (there is one exception, but I’ll explain that later). 2) Each entrée costs less than $10 (because that is my budget). 3.) In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a vegetarian (as my mom says, “I would be one, if bacon didn’t count,” which about sums it up), but since I am living with a vegetarian, all the places I talk about will be vegetarian focused or have strong vegetarian options. 4.) I’ve never really written about food before, so bear with me!

Well, it ain’t Wegmans: Grocery Shopping
As a born and bred Western New Yorker, I have a freakish, life-affirming devotion to Wegmans, which also includes trying to shoehorn it into any conversation whenever possible (We all know this is true. But who can blame us??). There is a Whole Foods somewhere, and I think a Trader Joes, but that’s not my scene. Since I am sans Wegmans, the store I usually go to is walkable, and has the basics. The produce is on the iffy side—which is supplemented by going to a farmers’ market—and though there are holes in the floor, the music they play is danceable Spanish, and the cashiers have a tendency to sing along. The organic section is literally one shelf at the end of an aisle, which would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing (no social hierarchy of food, my foot). Although cereal and other staples tend to be much more expensive than I’m used to, big jars of curry powder and other “unusual” ingredients tend to be less. I’ve also started eating things like guava yogurt and plaintain chips, since this store is stocked for its predominantly Hispanic and West Indian customers. I can’t attest to the meat quality or price, since I haven’t purchased any here.

Eating Out/Taking In
Some categories to consider:
Pizza—like bagels, I think it is generally hard to have a bad pizza experience in NYC, although I’ve had slices that are certainly superior to others. The best, in my opinion, is either Slice of Brooklyn on Franklin or Ginos on Washington, both which are about 2 blocks from my apartment in opposite directions. Slice of Brooklyn has a good deal on slices (2 + a can of soda for $5) while Ginos is more economical if you’re buying a whole pizza. Interestingly, I have yet to see pineapple offered as a topping anywhere, which is my favorite (I know, it’s weird). The standard pizza is thin-crust with not-overly sweet sauce, and not too much cheese.

Mexican—There is a Mexican restaurant on my street, but the one I have been to is one street over, and is delightfully called Taquería de Los Muertos. The menu isn’t huge, and I’ve only tried their burritos, but OH are they good, as well as being roughly the size of a human head. I think my favorite filling is pollo rojo with the black beans, and I usually pay the extra 50 cents to make it a “super,” so it includes guacamole. They have good vegetarian fillings, like squash, peppers, corn, and mushrooms. They also make sure to tell you which bean choices are vegetarian, too.

Thai—If I were recommending just two restaurants in Brooklyn for someone to check out, it would be these two: Udom Thai and Wild Ginger. First, Udom Thai: it is next door to the Taquería de Los Muertos, and the ambiance is great. It’s small-ish, but cozy, and there are really neat wire figures on each table (each one is different) which all hold a different colored silk flower. And the food is just dandy. My standard so far seems to be the ginger noodles, which are soft, wide noodles in a spicy, gingery sauce, with shredded chicken, eggs, bean sprouts, scallions, sliced ginger, and lettuce, which provides a good crisp element. They also have food delivery-ready in a crazy fast time. I recently tried one of the curries, and that was also really good. The second Thai restaurant, Wild Ginger, is the exception to my geographic criteria. It’s in downtown Brooklyn, and therefore a bus ride away, although they *just* opened another Brooklyn branch on Flatbush Ave, only 5ish blocks from me. I am including this restaurant not only because it was delicious, but because it was the first time I’d been to a Vegan restaurant, and it has amazingly low-priced lunch specials. I got Mango Soy Protein (I didn’t know this, but soy protein has a consistency kind of like chicken and, just like tofu, tastes like whatever you cook it in). It was served in a sweet plum sauce with generously big mango slices, green beans, peppers, and asparagus, and came with brown rice with bulgur, plus miso soup. I got a ginger ale, which I think was just club soda with shredded ginger. As someone who really likes raw ginger, I loved the tanginess. Also, they get extra points for having a really cool bathroom.

The Art of Snacking
--Mr. Softee is the usual neighborhood ice cream truck (I have seen fancier ice cream trucks with lemongrass and green tea confections, but I’ll take my vanilla soft-serve with rainbow sprinkles over that.) The best part is that a Mr. Softee truck drives by the apartment at 11:00 nightly, and parks someplace nearby. One night I heard its obnoxious siren/jingle/ice cream truck call constantly for half an hour while I was trying to read, and it began to seem like an experiment to see how long the average citizen could hear the song without turning into a raving sociopath. It just adds to their charm.
--Further up the road from the grocery store is a mostly vegan (can something be “mostly vegan,” or is that like being “mostly pregnant?”) Jamaican restaurant called Natural Blends. They have substantial food too, and my cousin swears by their veg lasagna, but all I’ve had is a smoothie and a chocolate chip cookie. The smoothie was tasty, as smoothies often are, and the cookie was large and dense, with carrot and sweet potato in it and lots of cinnamon. They have a lot of really good looking baked goods there, which I plan to test out.
--Also very important to the consummate snacker are the small convenience stores, often called bodegas, which are on nearly every corner. I have the delight of living next door to one such store, which is usually staffed by a trio of brothers, the youngest of which is probably 15 and the oldest of which is probably my age. They are dysfunctional, and it’s always an adventure stopping there (for example: everyone will be outside and the youngest one will be working the cash register and he won’t know the price of something, so he’ll take candy bars from under the counter and throw them at the window until one of the other brothers comes in to help). Corner stores are good for getting deli meats, cheese, milk, and late-night seltzer and Doritos, which is my usual purchase. I also have no shame about going there in my pajamas, and in fact have done so today. Twice.

Some of the neighborhood places that I haven’t had time to try yet boast cuisines from the Caribbean, Senegal, Vietnam, France, China, Korea, the Middle East, and Japan, not to mention bagels, burgers, fried chicken, kosher groceries, pastries, organic specialty stores, and all manner of coffee. Come to Manhattan for the culture—although Brooklyn has plenty of that, too!—but desert the island for dinner. Brooklyn will be eagerly awaiting your arrival.