A Night at the Armory

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A6WClffCAAAwytv.jpg:large

Been awhile since I posted and I almost deleted the Blogger app on my iPhone yesterday. Kinda glad I didn't. Yesterday hurricane Sandy blew through NYC, displaced thousands, and a few hundred of them, nursing home residents, from the Rockaways., arrived in my neighborhood, Park Slope, Brooklyn. We have an armory here (did they used to pass out guns to minute men in such a place?) that is now used as a really swank indoor track. This week those nursing home residents are lying on cots in the track infield.

Quite a scene.

Lots of things to note, but of note is my time spent escorting Lottie around. As a volunteer, my job is to be a watcher. I watch one row if residents and if they get up to smoke or pee I make sure they get there and back. Some you learn you don't need to follow like Murray who went to the deli for a sandwich.

But Lottie thinks a school bus is coming for her. So every 45 minutes or so she gets up to get on a school bus. I just walk along side her. There are school buses but they are just steadily dropping off residents not taking any away. I can't really explain this to her because she's not really that lucid. And I can't definitively say when she going home because no one knows.

While I type we've been standing out here for 30 minutes or so. Kinda cold.

I get really worried though if Lottie (or Rudolph, or Nicholas, or Yakov who were also wandering around disoriented) were to walk away they'd be lost. And trust me no ones watching them.

So I'm back outside with Lottie watching the buses (the line stretches down the block farther than the eye can see). It's also the smoking area.

Also of note is that publicly housed nursing card residents smoke brown cigarillos (standard issue I guess) kind of like a cowboy or, as I recall, my mom for a little while when I was a kid. Except for Lottie. She eats them.

best package under the tree

From 12/27/11

back home in brooklyn from a great xmas in connecticut with family i wanted to share a couple snapshots of my favorite gift this year: an original program from the 1963 march on washington which included mlk's "i have a dream speech." she and my grandfather, a methodist minister in bristol, connecticut, were in attendance that day...so much love for them for attending and for putting some of their good stock into my blood.

the best part of the gift, aside from the beautiful program (filled with artwork not words or propaganda), are the included treasures: clippings from the local papers covering their travels from hartford down to d.c. (see picture of the two of them sleeping on the train below). journalists along for the ride describe a train ride filled with rehearsals of song and non violent protest measures. almost unbelievable in a time of so much reported violence by police on blacks, the article reports that not one arrest was made on the 200,000 protestors in attendance. a lot of lessons to be learned from us today as we continue to protest injustice.

also a copy of a brochure of of king's letter from a birmingham jail. my grandfather also marched on selma - he didn't get arrested but he did a get a handshake from king.

wow, glad to still be able to share yet another meal with them this weekend, my grandfather's 95th christmas.

From 12/27/11

you are alive

"you are alive". lori and i bought a print of a photo with these words spray paint scrawled on an nyc wall. the prints for sale were all gathered, post september 11th, and the sales were a fund raiser for relief efforts. we had only been dating for 4 months, and while we were already pretty in love we couldn't have predicted then what a great future was in store for us.

on the 10 year anniversary of september 11th i have found it hard to decide how the event impacted my life. after all, as close as i was to the tragedy (i could see the second tower fall from my vantage point on 5th avenue and smell them burning for weeks), i was "still alive." we've started a family and i've been able to find success as an architect in new york city. my life couldn't be fuller, busier, or better. so looking back on the last 10 years it is hard to say how september 11th has changed my life.

i've read the commemorative journalism published this week - so many memories, some despite the infamous slogan, i had forgotten. i wonder along with some of the more intellectual musings if we are living in a post ironic state, how was being funny changed by such an event?

and then tonight i listened to a story corps collection, "we remember," recording stories of those lost in the attack on the world trade center. and i cried, which i haven't done too much of in the wake of the tragedy then or now. it's taken ten years passage for the gravity of all those lost and their legacies halted to understand the benefits (privilege?) of being alive.

and it is with that that i feel true sadness for the lost, their families, and the memories they were not able to create these past ten years. i'll be thinking of all of my friends and loved ones tomorrow...nothing like a strong reminder like this anniversary to never take a day of life for granted.

stand in the place where you work

if facebook is good for nothing else it is good for starting a stand up desk revolution. my friends ryan and chris have me thinking sitting is for sloths and they have the reference, and in ryan's case the experience, to prove it. ryan's lost 10lbs.

check out this great article chris posted.

i work in a brand new white laminate lined architect's office. it's not too stodgy but i will be falling out of line if/when i decide to stand. rather than acquire a dedicated standing desk i want to use a desktop converter. that way i can stand or sit and if i catch too much flack i can just stow the thing under my desk until the air clears.

since it is an experiment and i can't commit yet i want to spend a max of $100. this is a much bigger budget than chris and ryan who used bolts of cloth, reams of paper, and assorted plastic boxes. but at the same time ready made standing desks and converters can be hundreds of dollars!

here's my research:

cheapest...
standup desk
$69 black
only 15" deep.


here's a great article: standing desk shootout.

from the article the winner is:
giraffe desk.
$900.
beautiful in a 2003 kind of way but wtf! 900 bucks!
32x27x9" high


the other contenders are all dedicated standing desks.

i also looked at ikea hacker and then realized (since i have the ikea catalog memorized) that the billy bookcase height extender does the trick. $20, and i have one in the bottom of my closet!

***

(currently) the winner is: the billy bookcase top with a close second to the $69 stand maybe with a monitor stand on it to get the monitor a bit higher and let my keyboard live under it to help with the 15" depth.

should probably get an anti-fatigue mat too.

i'm targeting october 1...stay tuned!





photo1: ernest hemingway exemplifying standing desking

photo2: my desk. killer view of times square assuming my standing desk faces out the window.

vinny

It's my first post in awhile so i thought i'd write with news of the biggest addition to our life. vinny. a green 1999 acura sedan. the bad news is that after 80 years in the road, my nearly 95 year old grandpa has had to call it quits for driving. the good news is that he gave his car to our family of four. i'm kind of uncomfortable with being a car owner in nyc. you truly don't need one here and if you do they are easy to rent or car share (zip car and the like). but with two kids some of the train is pricey and kind of doesn't work so we are driving more. and on our last rental trip we spent a small fortune on a week and we had to hustle home lest we get charged for a whole 'nother weekend. so renting has become more costly and arguably more inconvenient than parking and car maintenance. or so i thought. cell phones go hand in hand (or hands free!) with car driving so vinny's first two weeks of adventure are pretty well documented... the car came to me with a brand new battery. but i left an interior light on for 5 days so the first time i took him for a spin was on a tow truck: I needed a new battery (to replace the one week old battery i killed) so $168 and warm and informative conversation with my friendly pakistani immigrant tow truck driver i was back on the road. that night, in fact, i drove to the grocery store. it pained my conscience to know i was increasing the carbon footprint of my park slope food coop groceries, but when i had the automotive might to carry a bottle of seltzer AND a six pack of beer home (when walking with cart i can only carry one or the other) i started to come around to the idea of driving to the store.

and then came the snow (again). good news is alternate side parking is canceled so you don't have to move your car. bad news is when you go out to your car it looks like this:
it took me and hour and a half to dig it out and most of that snow gets tossed into the street and the passing cars methodically push it back onto your car - just a little harder and denser! i also had to change plates and add some car seat do-hickeys.

i can't tell if the post is running over so i'll part with a couple lessons learned:

1. if you have yellow snow all over the trunk of your car you can wonder how on earth a dog climbed up there to pee without leaving tracks or you can operate under the assumption that the mini van owner behind you that you parked 1" from had to pee at the same time as he became very annoyed with me and killed two birds with one urine stream.

2. while changing over the license plates i learned that if you are a house mouse in suburban connecticut in my grandparents temperate garage. it might make sense to establish a nest behind the rear license plate complete with bird food from the nearby storage canister in the garage. but now you're in brooklyn baby!

an emotional argument

i posted the above status report this morning. the referenced piece by scott simon is here.

i don't intend this to be a post on the ground zero mosque (formerly known as the ground zero burlington coat factory i think). for me there is no debate - the building type is "as of right", americans have the second amendment right to the freedom of religion and for what it's worth - the mayor backs it. also the u.s. president. scott simon makes a better presentation of the same point of view i have anyway. the bottom line is, and as my favorite republican buddy, vin, would say, "it's a free country dude."

i want to say a word to the part of simon's piece that tears me up. it's the part that remains nine years later as distilled memory for anyone who was in town during 9/11 and it's aftermath. posters asking if anyone knew the whereabouts of their loved ones (a hope that they hadn't perished in the attack and the knowledge that even a big city like nyc would come together and help if it could). the barricaded line of latitude that was canal street from the day of to many months on. no unauthorized personnel allowed below it and many gathered there to support aid workers coming to work and those leaving a long shift.

the A train subway station at that same point that i reluctantly entered around 11am the morning of just to try to get home to lori in brooklyn. who were those heroes driving the trains and buses trying to get us home to our families instead of getting themselves home to theirs? that train literally runs under ground zero. the throngs of people already on the train that literally pulled me on and made room.

smells of burning building that carried for miles. whether at my home in brooklyn or my work a mile uptown from ground zero you knew which way the wind was blowing if you could smell that smell. the fire burned for weeks.

paper and ash fluttering through the brooklyn neighborhood of carroll gardens where i was eventually able to rendez vous with lori. a couple of miles away and across the river.

seeing tower 1 on fire, rushing to my office, watching the news, learning it was a plane, thinking it was a horrible accident, seeing tower 2 hit by the second plane, watching tower 1 fall. seeing all this like millions around the world saw on their tvs. but then walking out into 5th avenue and 26th street with a direct view of the burning tower 2 still standing. we knew what was going to happen and then we saw it drop. grown men including my boss fell to the pavement weeping.

so many firefighters were rushing down there and so many would die. i think it must have been months of funerals held - each fallen hero deserving their own ceremony. towards the end i remember they were looking for ny-ers to attend them because the families and fire department brethren were too tired and spread too thin to attend anymore.

i remember never really crying like so many did.

i remember going via plane to a wedding in north carolina a couple of weeks later and realizing how much sympathy other parts of the country had for new york.

they say it takes 10 years before you are a new yorker so i'm not there until 2011. i had only moved to town a few months prior to 9/11. given that fact, i'm not sure if i have the right to take the recent mosque controversy so personally. but i do.

the decision to build a constitutionally encouraged, legally filed mosque hardly warrants a emotional argument. but if i could offer one it would be that this a local issue - our issue. a place of worship (how many mosques must there be in nyc 50? 100?) for a religious denomination that hosts nearly 2 billion members (yes they have a few crazies included but don't we all?) to be built a rather healthy new york distance of 2 blocks away from ground zero isn't really too big of a deal. and i'm not alone when i think that. around the city this news story isn't even much of a news story.

this is why i take such great offense at the national right wing media frenzy (likely used to excite a sleeping mid term electorate more than anything else) focused on a local new york city issue.

i may not be a real new yorker until next year but this is our issue not the nation's. we've done a lot of healing in nine years but the memories persist. memories of a city coming together and healing ourselves ever since the tragedy occurred. we've been helping one another out since 9/12 and seeing this mosque built is just another step along the way.



additional listening:

- john stewart's daily show "extremist makeover homeland edition" from his 8/19 show. around 7 minutes in he uses a charlton heston speech (made famous in bowling for columbine) to illustrate , by association, how it is an american religious group's second amendment right to build a community center wherever law permits no matter how sensitive the area.

Coupla Good Recipes

veggie chili:

4 cans of beans (kidney bean, black beans, etc.)
1 medium onion
1 yellow bell pepper
2 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1-2 tblsp chili powder
3 bay leaves
1 pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tsp cumin (clutch)
2 cans tomatoes crushed

1-2 cups of cashews
1 cup raisins
grated sharp cheddar

heat a stew pot or dutch oven on medium - low - keep it there throughout. cover bottom in oil. saute finely chopped onion, pepper, celery, and minced garlic. sweat for about 10 mins.

add spices and stir.

add tomatoes, bay leaves, and beans. simmer for at least 30 mins. covered.

remove bay leaves

serve and top with cashews, raisins and cheese.

extras - a loaf of crusty bread. and if you want to meat it up for the non veggies serve over meatballs or fried italian sausage chunks.



***


stonyfield strawberry (or mangoes or blueberry) yogurt muffins:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup Stonyfield Farm yogurt
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped strawberries, fresh or frozen. Or mangoes as it were.

Preheat over to 375F. In a bowl, mix together flour, sugar, and baking soda. In another bowl, mix eggs, yogurt, butter and vanilla. Toss strawberries into the flour mixture. Then pour yogurt mixture into flour mixture and stir. Spoon batter into greased muffin tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Yields 12 muffins.