excellent walker

Stopped in My Tracks: Oh Just Cut It Out Already

2010-04-27T21:45:00.005-04:00

Outside Madison Square Park, the verbally abusive sign wearer again. Next to him, a woman, also wearing a sign:

It's not a hoax.
I was verbally abusive.

No, it didn't make any sense to me, either.

As I passed the VASW he was saying to someone who'd stopped, "It's been great. We're really touching people." The woman added, "I'm Megan."

Of course she was. Since the VASW showed up last week, he and Megan have been in the news a lot -- he was being sincere; he's an actor looking for attention; they're both actors with day jobs. Looking for attention.

Well, you've got it, Megan and Jeff. Not sure what you plan to do with it, but here it is, your attention. Now go away.

Stopped in My Tracks

2010-03-23T11:35:00.004-04:00

I passed this sculpture being installed Saturday outside Madison Square Park in the new pedestrian island in the confluence of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Apologies for the crappy cell-phone quality of the photo.

It turns out to be part of an installation called Event Horizon -- figures by British artist Antony Gormley. This guy is on the ground, but several of them have been or will be placed on rooftops and ledges in the area around the park. The park always has at least one major art installation in the spring-summer, and since I'm there a lot, it's something I look forward to.

Apparently, the rooftop men have already been making people nervous:

Police are trying to reassure New Yorkers that life-sized figures placed on rooftops by the British sculptor Antony Gormley are not people contemplating suicide.

The New York police department issued a statement after the first of the 31 figures started going up around Madison Square Park in lower Manhattan.

The police are trying to avert a spate of emergency calls similar to those made after the exhibition went on display in London in 2007.

“We were notified because of concerns the public might misperceive what they see and call police. We will respond no matter what because you can have an actual jumper at the same building,” a police spokesman said.

Well, yes. In a city where people routinely jump or fall from roofs (not going to link to any of the recent examples, since they are uniformly upsetting), I can imagine why people might be disturbed by seeing these figures without warning.

That said, I passed through Madison Square Park again last night, and looked up at the surrounding rooftops. If you know what you're looking at, the men -- none of the sculptures appear to be female -- are graceful and haunting. You can't help but look again and again as you pass by, to see if they are watching out for you, too.

More, and better, pictures can be seen here: Event Horizon New York.

Walk to Work: Peeing in the Corner

2010-03-19T09:18:00.006-04:00

New York has not really taken to the public toilet concept. They've been introduced and rejected over and over. I guess people think they're gross, despite the fact that the designers have gone to some length to make them self-cleaning. I guess I must think they're gross, too, because I've never used one. For any given neighborhood I'm familiar with, I have a mental map of where all the Barnes & Nobles or other pee-friendly places are, but I understand that not everyone is as, er, anal as I am, and that not every coffee shop is going to throw open its stalls to bike messengers. Which is how you get scenes like this morning, me minding my own business on 35th street, that guy urinating in an irregularity of the Macy's building.

I See Famous People

2010-03-18T19:15:00.005-04:00

Those of my readers who are not from New York, or wait, not New York, Tennessee, might not know who this handsome fellow is. Former Tennessee Congressman, once potential New York Senator, present Morning Joe contributor Harold Ford crosses my path from time to time on the walk home from daycare. Weirdly, given how much he's been in the news lately, no one else seemed to notice him. Then again, given how badly he messed up that potential Senate run, that's probably a good thing for him.

Stopped in My Tracks

2010-03-10T13:52:00.006-05:00

At the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones, a somewhat oddly colored door.

I wouldn't have noticed it as much for the color, though, as for the sign affixed to it.

Because this is Manhattan, and people will have opinions, and my guess is that whoever painted that door that color just did not want to hear them.

Chooseday: Swings or Slide?

2010-03-09T19:33:00.001-05:00

On the walk home today, A. and I stopped at the playground. We had enough time for him to go on the swings or the slide, which did he want to do? Advanced kid that he is, he looked at me and said, "ducka ducka duckaaah," which I took to mean swings. Good thing, too, since there were some older kids on the slide and I really didn't want to have to muscle them out of the way.

A. has never really been on the swings before -- we stuck him in once when he was four months old, and in danger of slipping through the leg hole if we let go -- and his reaction was just what I had hoped for: pure joy. He was in between two other boy babies being swung by their nannies, who were both very friendly to A. and sweet with their charges. Then the mother of one of the boys came charging up to the fence. "Esther, how do I get in here?" Esther turned towards her to tell her and gesture to the gate. "Keep your eyes on him!" the mother shrieked. Sigh. The baby was, of course, fine in the swing for the two seconds Esther looked away.

This is one of many reasons I'm glad A. is in daycare. It's incredibly hard giving up control of what happens to your child when he's not in your direct care. Daycare can be chaotic, with its many children and several caregivers, and after the first few days, I realized I just had to go with it. But when you have a nanny she is, technically, your employee. And as a manager, you can be of the micro variety, which sadly for Esther, hers seems to be.

What Did I Tell You?

2010-03-07T07:15:00.000-05:00

I knew that as soon as the temperature got close to 50 degrees, we'd be seeing feet, and my neighbors didn't let me down. I saw no fewer than four people shuffling along in flip flops yesterday. Most of the rest of us still needed our winter coats.

Walk to Work: No Hats

2010-03-02T09:26:00.004-05:00

The walk to work was lighter by several hundred head coverings this morning. People are cavalierly exposing their heads to March's sunshine and warmer temperature... of 37 degrees. This is what New York is like. The least little encouragement from the weather, and we go nuts. Another ten degrees, and we'll be seeing flip flops.

Splat!

2010-02-25T19:00:00.007-05:00

I stopped at the fancy deli near daycare last night, to pick up some fancy prepared food, since my husband was working late. I took a little longer than I needed to figuring this out -- why are there so many offerings with tomatoes and corn, both far out of season? Is the spinach cous cous any different from the regular kind? I ended up with a brie-and-onion quiche that already feels like a disappointment, and it's still warming up in the toaster oven.

On the way out, I was startled by a big wet heap of snow falling on my head and arm. It was heavy and hard enough to feel like there might be a rock in it. The man behind me laughed.

"It's not actually funny," I said to him.

"No," he agreed, a little too jovially, "but sometimes it just happens."

Well, sure, and a minute or two after it happened, I was over it and planning to tell the internet. Two seconds after it happened, I realized that the wet heap was something that had slid off the awning of the fancy deli. Three seconds after, I realized there wasn't more to come.

But one second after it happened I thought: someone is throwing snowballs at me from the building above. Kids, maybe teenagers. I had a flash of that panicky sick feeling in my stomach that I got in elementary school when someone was picking on me.

What? You don't still get that?

I don't remember any specific incidents of being targeted by snowballs, but I do remember there were the throwers who were jovial, "hey let's just aim for trees and lob at people's backs"-sort, and there were the "take no prisoners, heads are fair game, we actually want to hurt people and a snowball fight gives us a modicum of cover to do so"-types. They probably grew up to be Rush Limbaugh fans.

Hard to say whether the man who laughed at me was in the latter group, but since I walked behind him for the next block, I got to target his back with my laser-like stare of indignation until he turned to head uptown. That'll show him.

We Need a New Term for This

2010-02-18T18:13:00.004-05:00

A was crabby, the bus driver was doing that annoying driving-slow-so-we-don't-catch-up-to-the-bus-in-front-of-us thing, the temperature was above freezing, so I got off the bus a few blocks early.

A promptly fell asleep, as he has been doing a lot lately. (Note to self: Tell husband to confront daycare people about getting baby to nap more.) Despite the fact that I am doing all the carrying either way, there is something about a sleeping baby on your chest that feels heavier than an awake one. At these times, he's a dead weight.

Except you really don't want to use the words dead and baby in the same thought, do you?

Completely Unsolicited Advice for Job Seekers

2010-02-17T09:05:00.003-05:00

I do a fair amount of hiring in my job, and in our current economic situation, every time I post a new position, I get hundreds of responses, enough to draw some conclusions about the quality of our work force. I am a little scared. I don't mind honest mistakes -- in New York City, a lot of people don't have English as a first language, which can lead to some interesting sentences. ("It was quite fantastic to see the posting as I have been looking to work more of a corporate type of responsibilities with a great business morality.")

But there are some basic things you can do that will help you keep out of the automatic 'no' pile. So:

Unless you are applying for a graphic design position (in which case you'd have a portfolio anyway), don't design your resume too much. There are standard templates that are fine; if you are ambitious you can create something yourself, but it just has to be clear and readable. Make sure there is enough white space to make this so.

If you have less than 10 years experience, your resume should almost certainly still be on one page. After 15 years, it should almost certainly run to two, but those kind of resumes require more advanced advice than I'm giving here.

Your resume and cover letter should have your name in the document title. Attach them to your email as PDFs rather than Word files if you can.

Your cover letter should be in the body of your email as well as in an attachment and be a brief rundown of your experience. If you don't know a lot about the job you are applying for -- because it's a generic posting on Monster or Craigslist that doesn't list the name of the company -- please don't tell me how much you want to join my organization.

Your cover letter should also tie together any disparate experiences that don't logically flow one to the next. If you don't have a lot of relevant work experience to the job you're applying for, foreground anything in previous jobs that might be applicable, or is generally good -- increased responsibilities, strong work ethic, willingness to learn.

Have an email address that is not stupid, and preferably has your name in it. Not everyone can get JohnSmith @ gmail.com, but you can certainly get something better than crazeejohnnie or bigguyjohn. Those are the email equivalents of wearing a t-shirt and sneakers to a job interview. Nothing wrong with them per se; they're just not right when you're asking someone to hire you. Save your casual clothes and online presence for your friends.

If your address and all your work experience is in a city far away from the one you're applying for a job in, explain that fact. There's probably a good reason -- maybe you just moved here or are planning to -- but without that explanation, I'm going to assume you can't be here for an interview tomorrow.

Spell check. Grammar check. By which I don't mean that you should run Word's grammar check, which is pretty silly. I mean you should actually read what you are sending before you send it. If you are still in school, your high school or college probably has a career office that can help. If not, get a friend to read your resume and cover letter. If you don't have anyone, send them to me with RESUME HELP as the email subject line.

There's more, so much more, perhaps for another post. Good luck out there!

Facing the Music: Pants Edition

2010-02-15T21:02:00.009-05:00

When I got pregnant, I complained to my best friend that I was gaining too much weight. I didn't want to look pregnant months after giving birth, so if I could keep to the lower end of the 25-35 pounds recommendation, most of it would come off with the baby, right?

I have never been able to not eat when I'm hungry. Even in college, when friends flirted with eating disorders, and skipping meals seemed like an easy way to fit into my semi-formal dress, I couldn't do a starvation diet for more than a half a day, which is basically just having a late lunch.

And I was hungry, really hungry while pregnant. All the time, even while nauseous. In fact, the best remedy for my upset stomach was a huge bowl of mashed potatoes. 25 pounds? I wish.

My best friend was very patient with me, and repeated the adage for our baby-weight obsessed age: nine months on, nine months off.

Nine months? Maybe for you, sister! I have lots of friends who were more or less back to their old size three months post partum. I'd be breastfeeding, and everyone knows that just makes the weight fall off, right?

Except. Those friends who lost the weight easily? All naturally thin to begin with, or people who genuinely could not wait to get back to their daily run or yoga class. Whereas I take more of a, I know it's good for me, I guess I'll go to the gym, hey, this isn't so bad, I should do this more often, but, nah, I'm really tired tonight-type approach to it.

It's been nearly a year, and I'm still 10 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight. Breastfeeding? I'm happy to do it, and A could not be healthier. But as a weight-loss plan, it sucks. I'm ravenous all the time, except when I've just eaten. Then I'm merely hungry. And not for lean protein.

I'd be lying if I said I'd made my peace with my current size, but it is what it is. But those 10 pounds? All concentrated in the spot where my pants should be closing. I bought larger sizes when I returned to work last summer, and when the weather grew cooler, was able to sausage myself into the fattest of my fat pants, but now I’m stuck.

I'm tired of being uncomfortable and having ill-fitting clothing. My solution? Certainly not to diet. I don't want my milk supply to drop, and anyway, ravenous, remember? So, new pants!

I'll save you the details of my sprint to the shops today, but suffice it to say, Banana Republic, I was willing to pay full price for a pair of pants that fit, and all you have on offer is the skinny variety? Ann Taylor Loft, you're no better. You're supposed to be the fall back for women like me -- not trendy, but reliable when you just need something to fit. If you're trying to compete for fashionistas, with your two-and-a-half-inch-rise jeans, I'm doomed.

I found one pair -- ONE -- that fit, looked good and didn't need to be hemmed. I plan to wear them a lot. But hopefully only for another few months.

Come Here Often?

2010-02-11T20:13:00.007-05:00

In my previous post, I may have implied that the baby was preventing me from walking in the cold and dark that is February. In truth, of our little family of three (five if you count Luca and Oz, the heat-seeking cats who crowd us out of bed every night), A is the most equanimous in the face of freezing temperatures.

With the later sunset, a clear sky and a temperature slightly above freezing this evening, I thought we could brave the walk home after work. A few blocks in, it was clear A wasn't having it -- he was tired, cranky, in need of a nap an hour previously. I sang a few rounds of Doe, a Deer, and he was out.

(Tangentially: why can I only keep one or two songs at the ready at any given time? Lately, we've had a lot of Doe, a Deer; She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain, complete with the "kill the old red rooster" line which is a little shocking, but absolutely necessary to the sense of the song; and the Wheels on the Bus, god help me, a song I swore I'd never sing to my children after suffering through it with my younger nieces and nephews, but which turns out to be a crowd pleaser.)

I kept going, despite the sleeping baby, through Madison Square Park, past the Shake Shack that had no line -- I could have had my daily limit of delicious sodium, no waiting -- past several snowmen of the three-lump variety. Then there was this duo, delicately carved, lounging, enjoying the twilight.

Snow Day

2010-02-11T11:51:00.001-05:00

I haven't been doing much walking, or Excellent Walkering for that matter, for lots of reasons, most of which have to do with the cold, and the dark, and taking A in the cold and dark is a pain, plus yesterday, there was snow. So much snow, or so much promise of snow, in fact, that there was an official Snow Day -- NYC public schools were closed. Our daycare follows their closings, so despite the fact that only five inches fell and the city did a bang-up job of keeping those plowed away as soon as they fell, the baby and I stayed home.

I love daycare. I can say many positive things about it -- A has always been a sociable little guy and being around so many different people every day has only reinforced that. He's has some separation anxiety from time to time -- not when he's left there, but when I leave a room -- but never any stranger fear. This could be a bad thing later on, but for now, when he's charming the tired after-work bus riders into a smile and a ba ba ba, it's great. Plus, I assume he'll effortlessly learn to wait his turn and share his toys at some point in toddlerhood, saving his father and I from actually having to discipline him.

I need to work for the usual reasons, so don't spend a lot of time second guessing our daycare decision, but if there's anything that brings on my deep-seated guilt reflex (Catholic upbringing, see), it's this: A takes huge developmental leaps every time he spends a day with my or my husband's undivided attention. The multi-consonant chattering, the tentative steps clutching on to our hands, the commando-style clawing his way across the floor -- these all happened at the ends of weekends, not the beginning.

Yesterday was no different. Around 6, I was starting to get weary, playing on the floor of A's bedroom, waiting for it to be bathtime. I put my head to the carpet, in Child's Pose. I looked up to see him doing the same. I bent down again, he bent down again. Over and over, my little yogini followed me.

What could he be doing if he had me home all the time? Reading? Sorting the recycling? Saying more than one word, or applying that one word to only the thing it actually represents and not several things it doesn't? Then I remembered. In addition to other kids and sharing and French lessons for god's sake, daycare has a yoga instructor in once a week. Maybe the snow day was keeping him back.

Too Sad

2008-11-03T16:47:00.003-05:00

Several election-related deaths today are making me sad.

Terence Tolbert, the Obama campaign's director in Nevada died yesterday of a heart attack. He was on leave from his position as a New York City Department of Education official, and was only 44.

Christine Durbin, the 40-year-old daughter of the senior senator from Illinois Dick Durbin, died today from congenital heart disease. Senator Durbin, who is up for re-election tomorrow (which he will win easily) has been a major supporter and mentor of Obama since he entered Illinois politics.

Finally, word that Madelyn "Toot" Dunham, Barack Obama's grandmother, who had an enormous role in raising him, died this morning in Hawaii. This was obviously coming soon, but how I wish she could have held on just another couple of days. I'm sure she did, too.

Call Now

2008-11-03T09:34:00.003-05:00

I just got my first Obama-related robo-call of the election, from Jon Carson, the Obama campaign's national field director. He was urging me to spend the next 24 hours helping with the get-out-the-vote effort (print shorthand is GOTV, which always makes me think it's a Republican television station we're talking about).

Look, I know none of the stars could campaign in NYC these last few months. There's nothing to be gained from our little city everyone takes for granted, other than big bucks and comedy show audiences. But they couldn't have gotten Barack himself on a robo-call asking me to help out the day before the election?

(Voting starts in about 20 hours. I CANNOT WAIT.)

Barack Obama Hates Me

2008-10-15T13:52:00.003-04:00

From this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine article "Working for the Working Class Vote"

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

OK, so I like a latte occasionally, and you pretty much have to sip it, because Starbucks coffee is always really hot. I read the New York Times (self-evident by the fact that I just quoted from it). I don't own a car, but my husband has a fondness for vintage Volvos, so if I did, it might be one of those. I don't own a gun. I wouldn't describe myself as effete exactly, since that adjective is generally applied to girly men; maybe I skate by on that one. Politically correct? I'm sure when I don't laugh at the sexist jokes my boss tells during staff meetings there are one or two people who think so. Arrogant? Yes, about certain things. Liberal? Definitely.

Does that mean I shouldn't vote Obama now?

Things Are Not Looking Good for Our Dow

2008-10-06T14:36:00.003-04:00

As of this writing, the Dow is down 694 points, or 6.72%. Don't they halt trading at some point if it goes down far enough? Yes.

In a nutshell, it's too late in the day for them to halt trading, unless it drops another 3,306 points, which does not seem plausible. However, before 2:30, it only -- only -- needs to drop 1350 to trigger a half-hour pause.

If Obama Loses

2008-09-23T09:45:00.003-04:00

With six weeks before the election, and the silliness of the post-convention weeks behind us, it seems a good bet that Obama is going to win this thing. The country's focus is now on the tanking economy, and that's usually good news for the Democrats, particularly when it's increasingly clear that the Republican candidate has no idea what to do about it.

(Of course, now that Bush appears to be going after Osama bin Laden in a big way, there is the possibility of an October Surprise that tips the election towards McCain, though I don't know why it would. It'd be great to eliminate bin Laden, but seriously, seven years after 9/11 and we're supposed to be impressed by this?)

If Obama wins, though, it's not going to be the unqualifiedly good thing his supporters are hoping for. Treasury Secretary Paulson is about to bail out Wall Street using close to a trillion dollars of tax payer money, and it's unclear to everyone whether it will even solve anything. Whoever is president in January 2009 is going to have to deal with the mess for a long time, and it seems fairly certain that very few of the big-ticket items on Obama's to-do list -- health care, energy research, tax cuts -- are going to be easily achievable.

If McCain ekes out a win, though, because of his "experience", because of Palin, because of the Bradley effect, he will be the one who is stuck holding the Bush bag, and there will be little danger of the Democrats getting the lasting blame for it. Of course, that's what we all thought about that other close-to-a-trillion-dollar expenditure Bush foisted on us -- the Iraq War -- but somehow, Bush got a second term, and McCain is still competitive.

Single Issue

2008-09-10T09:29:00.003-04:00

I'm not a single issue voter, and I don't know anyone who is. Except, by proxy, my friend's 70-year-old neighbor who told her that, though she'd been planning to vote for Obama, with the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket, she's going to vote for McCain. Despite against everything they stand for. She's old, she doesn't think there's enough time left for her to see another woman in the White House. She's been fighting for abortion rights all her life. She's not going to need one anymore; let the young women take over.

If I were a single issue voter, I might, for instance, object to the fact that Obama voted to authorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with its provisions for warrantless wire taps. In fact, I do object to it, but not enough to keep me from voting for him. I have to hope that as a former constitutional law professor -- one of his former jobs you didn't hear mocked at the RNC, I guess because it's kind of hard to make fun of someone for being an expert in the document that guides, or at least is suppose to guide, the way our country is run -- that he understands that FISA can never be allowed to become part of the landscape.

The only issue that comes close to singularity for me is homeland security. By which I don't mean building more walls to keep out undocumented Mexicans, though I accept the fact that terrorists could be intermingled with those future landscapers and restaurant workers. (Remember, however, the 9/11 hijackers came in not over the fence, but through the front door, step right this way, sirs, and please do attend all the highly unusual, but apparently not at all suspicious flying lessons you like.)

Homeland security means one thing to me: preventing another attack on my and other big cities. America may be voting small-town values this election, but oddly enough, 70% of us live in urban areas. A New York Times op-ed yesterday talked about the high likelihood of a nuclear attack on Manhattan in the next ten years, and how each of the candidates are likely to prevent it. The author was not particularly sanguine about either Obama or McCain, but did say that of the two, Obama understands the threat better.

That's what I want. Someone who understands first, then acts. Not someone who, like John McCain, believes the 9/11 terrorists had ties to Iraq, then gets us into a long war with massive casualties and distracts us from the real tasks at hand: finding Osama bin Laden, dismantling his organization, and preventing a new al Qaeda from forming.

I only had 500 characters

2008-09-08T11:42:00.001-04:00

So this is what I sent to ABC News, trying not to sound like the crazy person this race is turning me into (and the liberal nutbag they will assume I am given my zip code, which I had to provide before they'd let me submit):

Dear Mr. Gibson:

Now that you've been granted the first interview with Sarah Palin, I want to encourage you to be a tough advocate for the public. You may have heard speculation that you were chosen because you are perceived by some to be a "softball" interviewer. If yours turns out to be the only interview with the Governor, it would be a tragedy if this were the case. Please press for substantive answers on broad range of issues. The American people will respect and thank you for it.

Let's Get Something Straight About Hillary

2008-09-06T10:59:00.003-04:00

There are a lot of people Out There who think Sarah Palin wouldn't be the problem she is if Obama had choosen Hillary as his running mate. True, she wouldn't be. Palin wouldn't be the Republican VP candidate if Clinton were on the Democratic ticket. We'd be looking at Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, or maybe even Joe Lieberman, God help us.

A subset of these people are still fuming that Clinton wasn't even vetted for the VP slot, which they see as an insult to her and proof that Obama is a sexist asshole.

Here's the thing. Hillary Clinton did not want to be the VP candidate. No way, no how, as she herself might say. She wanted to be the presidential candidate, and if she can't be that this time around, she'll hope that Obama loses this year and wait until 2012. Proof of that came in a New York Times article yesterday in which "advisers to Mrs. Clinton" tepidly noted "that she stood ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged the campaign not to overestimate the impact Mrs. Clinton could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates."

That being the case, why put herself -- and more importantly, her husband -- through the rigorous VP vetting process?

Don't forget, when you run for president, the only official (and it's not even really official, just customary) vetting you get is in the release of your financial and medical records. Clinton waited until fairly late in the primary game to release hers, possibly because she didn't know how well it would resonate with voters that she and Bill had earned $100million since he left the White House. She needn't have worried. People don't hate you for being rich; they think they might be rich some day, too.

But in submitting to a VP vetting process, you open yourself to whatever the presidential candidate's team wants to ask you, and if they don't like your answer, it's over. Financial questions, sure (and do we know everything there is to know about Bill Clinton's business dealings with Ron Burkle and the Dubai Investment Group?), but also questions about what we euphemistically call a person's "personal life," in this case code only for "has Bill Clinton been screwing around outside his marriage in the last eight years and if so, with whom?"

Maybe the answer to that question is no. Maybe Clinton could answer no and the presidential candidate would believe her. But if it's not no, if there's any hint of it not being no, and you're not a lock for the VP slot, and you don't want the VP slot to begin with because you want to be president (for which, by the way, I don't blame her), why would Hillary Clinton put herself through that? Put off the Bill Clinton stuff another four years, by which time things might be different for him.

So stop being all up-in-arms self righteous about why Obama didn't pick Clinton. He may not have wanted to, but for her, the feeling was entirely mutual.

Just a Couple of Northeastern Elites

2008-09-04T10:18:00.002-04:00

Overheard on my walk to work this morning, one truck driver on the sidewalk to another:

"She was not nice. It was just really mean spirited."

Now, I don't know that they were talking about the Sarah Palin speech last night, but I like to think they were. In any event, I'm fired up. I gave more money to the campaign this morning -- the Obama campaign, that is. I'm also contemplating a career change -- to community organizer.

Why It's Going to Be Obama

2008-01-04T11:25:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that only 227,000 people voted in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses last night -- oh, sure, record turnout, whatever, I can't get behind .07% of the population having any influence on who I get to vote for -- everyone is reading the tea leaves this morning. So I'll do it, too: Obama is going to win.

Not just the Democratic nomination, but the whole thing.

Here's why. People always say they want change, but they're deluded. Real change is scary, unpredictable, sometimes painful, and, this is the important part, almost impossible to achieve in our current political system. That's actually why it's set up the way it is; we're not supposed to be able to change things too quickly. (It's also why the Bush Administration has been aggressively asserting its right to broader Executive powers; if they played by the rules, they couldn't do stuff like warrantless phone taps.)

We all know, deep down, that whomever we elect is going to be playing by the same rules as always -- hopefully not by the expanded Bush rules, though I wouldn't put it past Giuliani -- and our best hope for significant change in the war in Iraq, or national health care, or global warming, is to let the system grind its way through a new set of priorities. Maybe in four years, or eight, things will be a little better and the United States can collectively look itself in the mirror again without hating itself.

But Obama. Now there's some real change, no matter how he governs. The combination of his youth, race, and relative inexperience in the entrenched Washington culture are, by definition, change. Yes, electing the first woman president would also be a big change, but it feels like that is canceled out by the fact that Hillary is a Clinton. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton -- she'd do a decent job, but I think we're all tired of that crowd by now.

If we elect our first Black president, that's something to be proud of. It will no doubt help our image internationally, but within the United States, whether he makes civil rights a priority or not, a President Obama will change the way we view each other, and ourselves. We need that.

Iowa is practically an all-White state. I'm not as big on hope as some people, but the fact that so many of them chose a Black man as their first choice, is pretty damn heartening.

The Price of Feminism

2007-12-06T09:56:00.001-05:00

I am getting married in February, but not changing my name. I wouldn't have thought that was a controversial decision in this day and age, but a couple of relatives have been surprised.

But that's nothing compared to my surprise when my fiance told me that, when he called Verizon to have them put my name on the account (in case, you know, someone calls information trying to find me), they told him that they are charging us $2.50 a month for this "service". If we had the same last name, no charge.

Are you kidding me?

I'm sure they have some super-acceptable rationale for this numskullery, having to do with the extra millisecond or two it might take their computer to parse the two names when someone calls just looking for one of us.

But really, isn't it time for the Verizon to accept that more and more households have different names these days and their system needs to keep up? My mother can manage this, but the phone company can't? Oh wait, they're a monopoly.* They don't need to do anything.

*Yes, Ma Bell was broken up 25 years ago, but if you can only get local phone service from one company, that's pretty much a monopoly. And don't talk to me about cable phone.

The Price of Oil: What Are We Talking About Exactly?

2007-11-12T09:59:00.002-05:00

The rising price of oil is on a lot of people's minds these days. It hasn't quite hit $100/barrel yet, but it's getting close ($94 as of this writing). I was reading Elizabeth Kolbert's article about extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands in the New Yorker this morning, and it occurred to me, as I read that 4500 pounds of tar have to be dug and separated into their constituent parts to get enough of the bitumen that can be refined into one barrel of oil, that I had no idea how much oil was in a barrel.

I'd always pictured it like the one here -- it's the size we think of when we think of a generic barrel -- but that couldn't possibly hold enough oil to justify the expense of digging up the 4500 hundred pounds of tar, could it? An official barrel of oil must be much more massive.

Turns out, that barrel in my mind is an official barrel of oil, the one that costs nearly $100 now. It holds 42 gallons of oil, about half of which is destined to become gasoline. The rest is made into things like jet fuel, fuel oil, asphalt and lubricants. So, one barrel of oil yields about 21 gallons of gasoline, or about two-thirds of an SUV's gas tank.

The reason it's at all profitable to convert those 4500 pounds of sludge into a barrel of oil is that, all told, it costs about $30 per barrel to do so. It was only a few years ago that oil was at $38, making tar-sand extraction unattractive. The process isn't nearly as efficient as conventional oil extraction, though, so the environmental impacts are much worse.

Can I Have My Money Back?

2007-11-06T09:19:00.000-05:00

There's a story in the New York Times today about the abysmal conditions at the barracks Iraqi Police Academy, built by an American contractor. The company, Parsons, did such a shoddy job that the building is "largely unusable".

That's an understatement. How would you like to live in a building where the bathrooms have human waste dripping from the ceilings? Is it any wonder the Iraqi Police Force isn't yet up to the job of policing Baghdad? We -- the American taxpayers -- paid them $72 million for this.

There is, of course, as there always is, a Congressional investigation underway. But there's no word yet as to when the company plans to issue its refund checks -- 55 cents for each of 131 million income tax filings last year. OK, that might not sound like much; but considering that the entire Iraqi reconstruction effort to date has cost $45 billion, and is, according to the Times article, and any sort of common sense, "widely considered a failure," a refund on the whole thing would be $343 each.

Alright, $343 isn't going to get me very far, either. But on principle, Parsons, Blackwater, Halliburton, and the rest of youz on this list of war profiteers, please make the check out to Cash.

Happy Goddamn Halloween

2007-11-01T10:39:00.000-04:00

OK, sure, every other woman on the street last night was a slutty barmaid, or a slutty referee/umpire, slutty pirate, baseball player or cat. I even saw a slutty Sherlock Holmes. We get it; Halloween is firmly established as a safe time for otherwise only mildly slutty woman to become full-fledged slutty fantasies for men whose most creative costume attempt is carrying a football while wearing a football jersey and sneakers. If I were 15 years younger, I might think it was fun to do, instead of just funny to ridicule as the sluts pass.

But when the slut parade interferes with my ability to get home quickly, that's when it's gone too far. The cab we were in after the theater last night was held up for several light cycles and meter clicks too many on 42nd Street. The cause of this late-night traffic jam? A Halloween party at Cipriani, to celebrate the launch of Roberto Cavelli's new vodka line (doesn't he know that designer vodkas are so 2004? but get this, it's filtered through crushed Italian marble), at which there was a line of black SUVs standing in what would otherwise be a no-standing zone/bus stop, funneling the traffic into one lane instead of two, their drivers napping while the D-list celebrities they were waiting for slutted it up inside. People like Petra Nemcova and Katrina Bowden. Who? Right; exactly.

At least Petra's costume is a little beautiful. What's Katrina supposed to be? A slutty Donald Trump? Ew.

Sometimes It's Just Not Your Day

2007-10-25T09:53:00.000-04:00

I knew I shouldn't get out of bed this morning. I lay there, awake, for at least a half hour, trying to work out how I could avoid it. Why does my job have to be an every day affair?

But I finally did get up, too late to make breakfast at home. I stopped in the bagel store, so far so good. Decided I should have coffee on the way to work, since I hadn't woken up yet. Asked for, as I always do at a deli, hazelnut with milk.

There are people who think flavored coffees are evil. But my thinking is: if I'm not going to have a very-high-quality cup of coffee, in a ceramic mug, sitting down at a table that doesn't have a computer screen on it, I should at least have the softening effects of the toasty hazelnut.

Except that the woman who gave me my coffee gave me regular coffee, which I didn't find out until I opened it several blocks away, too late to do anything about it. This is also the woman who, when I once asked for "not too much cream cheese," gave me the amount you would put on if you were putting on butter at home, i.e., not very much at all. Sure, it's probably better for me that way, but if I'd wanted better for me, I would have gotten up early enough to make my own damn breakfast at home.

Where was I?

Right, so I chucked the coffee, figuring life was too short to drink bad bagel-store coffee and I would get a cup of hazelnut at the deli in my office building. There they make you pour your own coffee, which means you always get what you want, even if what you want is half caffeine/half decaf, with a drop of half-and-half and a swush of skim milk. Not that I would ever want such a thing.

Up at my desk, bagel at my left hand, coffee at my right, I settled in to a day in front of the computer, when, whoops! I knocked over, no, I flung over, the coffee, all over my desk, underneath my monitor and keyboard (fortunately not on the keyboard, or I wouldn't be writing this now), leaving myself with approximately one sip of coffee.

And then, and then, I get a message from the bridal salon I went to last night to try on wedding dresses, telling me I'd left a pair of Spanx in the dressing room. Insult indeed, added to injury.

So I have had a total of three sips of coffee today: two of the bad-woman-bagel-store cup, one of the knocked over hazelnut. Where is my bed?

Gore for Four?

2007-10-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

I'm not the only one who would like to see Al Gore run for president in 2008. A "Draft Gore" group placed a full-page, $65,000 ad in the New York Times, which you can see here.

Now, I don't think Al's going to go for it. But let's fantasize a little and say he did. Say he won. We get four years of good governance, repaired relationships around the world, serious headway in the development of alternative energy, even, let's dream big, an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a major reduction in the deficit.

Then it's 2012 and he's up for re-election. You know what's going to happen then? Karl Rove will slime his slimy self back into the equation and declare that it's unconstitutional that Gore run for another term. After all, the 22nd Amendment bars anyone from being elected to the presidency twice.

And we all know Al Gore was elected in 2000. (OK, we don't all know that, but it's a very strong possibility.)

Just you wait. The one thing you can never accuse the Republicans of is insufficient chutzpah.

Two Things I Want To Know About Britney Spears

2007-10-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

I'd like to be able to say that I haven't the slightest idea of what's going on with Britney these days, but that would be a lie. I know about the head shaving. I know about the flashing of the unmentionables. I know that she lost custody of her kids to her ex-husband. The "news" about the Britney car wreck is everywhere, and it's hard to look away.

But here's what I don't get. All the media converage has been: Oh, she's so crazy! She's out of control! Just like Lindsay! And Paris! Girls gone wild! Doesn't she care about her children at all???

But there are two things that are never mentioned. The first things is this: At 25, Britney is around the age that, if she were going to have a giant mental disorder, it would appear. Schizophrenia anyone? Manic-depression? She's cut herself off from her family. She's self-medicating. She's acting completely irrational, paranoid, delusional (her performance on the MTV awards was proof of that last). I think she's not "crazy," but actually mentally ill.

Which leads to the second thing I don't hear anyone talking about. Isn't anyone worried that she might kill herself? Especially after her children have been taken from her, possibly her last tenuous tie to real life, if I were her parents or anyone who actually knew her, as opposed to all of us who just read about her in the tabloids every day, I'd be keeping a close eye on her.

God help me, I feel sorry for her. Plus, the entertainment shows have just about wrung out all they can out of Anna Nicole. If Britney commits suicide, they'll be feeding off her for the next five years. And I'll probably have to watch it.

How World Peace Is Ruining My Life

2007-09-28T09:28:00.001-04:00

There's a lot I could discuss about the UN General Assembly that was held this past week. The controversial Ahmadinejad speech at Columbia University: Should they have invited him? Having invited him was it appropriate for PresBo to excoriate him in his opening remarks? The anti-George Bush protests: Can activism ever be effective when the movement doesn't have a leader with the oratory skills to whip up a crowd? The stupid-ass global warming meeting W held in DC when all the other world leaders, not to mention President Clinton and his gang of billionaires, were meeting about it in New York: no comment. The Senagalese president: Why didn't he honor his commitment to meet with a group of Senagalese citizens living in Harlem?

But those are questions for another blog. This is about me, and my pain.

What I want to know is not why security has to be such that the stretch of Lexington Avenue from the mid-50s through the mid-40s has to be barricaded and surrounded by police, funneling vehicles through one lane and diverting all east-west traffic to my street -- after all, there are world leaders staying in those hotels, any one of whom could be the target of an assassination attempt (except maybe Norway's Jens Stoltenberg; no one would want to hurt the leader of the most peaceful country in the world, right?), so while it inconvenienced me greatly, I can let it go and think of the greater good it's serving.

No, the worst of it was this: our cable television was out last night, and when I called Time Warner to find out whether it was just us, or the entire neighborhood, I learned that the security equipment in use because of the UN meetings was so substantial that it was interfering with the cable signals in the area. Can you imagine? No television?! Oh, the humanity.

Saving the Environment, Smelling Like Salad

2007-09-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

I don't have much personal vanity, but for my hair. It's of the tousled/wavy/curly/frizzy/ messy variety, depending on the weather, which makes it impossible ever to look sleek and sophisticated unless I pay someone a lot of money to style it for me. I'm constantly looking for the shampoo/conditioner/gel/ spray/lighter-fluid combination that will make it look presentable on a daily basis, but every person who has ever cut my hair has exclaimed, "you have great hair!" as if they really meant it, and while I demurely thank them, inside I'm kvelling.

The perfect set of products may actually be those made by Devachan, a Soho salon that specializes in curly hair. The beauty world is actively hostile to curly hair. Before I started going to Devachan, the "great hair" comment would nearly always be followed by a plea that I should try it straight. At Devachan, they would not only be insulted if you asked to have your hair dried straight, they'd probably kick you out. They're hardcore, but it's nice to look around the salon and only see people with crazy hair like yours for a change.

Devachan is a bit cult-ish, though. God forbid you not want to sit under the low heat lamps for an hour with a quart of gel squished into your hair to achieve maximum Shirley Templedom. Their products, though, actually work better for curly hair than anything else, starting with something they call "No Poo", so called because they don't believe in shampooing curly hair, which they believe strips it of... something... essential... to curliness. I generally tune out the dogma while I'm getting my hair washed beneath the graceful mosquito netting that hangs above their sinks.

But the products are expensive, they come in big plastic bottles (recyclable number 2, yes, but I'm trying to cut down on my plastic consumption), and they're not organic. I don't know if a bunch of chemicals you smoosh on your head for a minute or two every morning have much of an impact on your health, but it stands to reason that less of them can't be bad for you, and might even be good.

There are several natural shampoos, but they're all in plastic bottles, too, and once you start down that path, you're into the "frees": cruelty, parabens, petroleum, FD&C color, SLS/SLES, etc. If you buy a bottle of something that doesn't have this list on the front, maybe you're not really going organic after all, and you could drive yourself crazy trying to work out which of them matters. Plus, they're all expensive anyway.

Oh for the days when I blithely used $1-a-bottle Suave and was done with it.

I work at an engineering firm, and we like to debate the NASA imperative to launch missions "better, faster, cheaper." Is it ever possible to get all three? You can get things that are good and fast, but you'll pay a lot. Fast and cheap, sure; but how good is, say, a McDonald's hamburger compared to a three-course meal at a four-star restaurant? And yes, you can get things that are good and cheap, but they often take a long time to procure or execute.

Which brings me to my evolving hair-care routine. It started with baking soda. Devachan is right that you don't really need to wash your hair. Every few days, my scalp gets a little itchy, though, and a handful of baking soda, turned into a paste in the shower and rubbed through, feels and works great. A big box of baking soda is cheap, plus it's cardboard, which seems a better environmental bet than plastic.

But curly hair can't not be conditioned. I'd read that people follow their baking soda with apple cider vinegar to soft and shiny effect, but I didn't believe it. How could something acidic do anything other than strip your hair? And since the claims made on its behalf seemed too miraculous to be true -- drinking it will cure allergies! acne! arthritis! and that's just the a's -- I couldn't help but be skeptical.

Ha. How wrong was I to have waited so long to try this? A few swishes of some organic acv from a glass bottle (not sure of the environmental impact of glass over plastic, honestly; it uses more oil to transport because it's heavier, blah blah blah), and my hair magically detangled. Once dry, it was softer and maybe even a little shinier than before. And though I used more of it than I probably needed to -- it's harder to control than a goopy conditioner, though I suppose I could put it into a squeeze bottle -- it's far cheaper than anything else I've ever used, except the Suave, and that's more expensive these days anyway. I even swigged a little of it to see if it would cure me anything, but so far I don't think it has.

My new routine doesn't take any longer than regular shampoo and conditioner, it's much cheaper, and it's better for the environment, possibly my own personal health, and dare I say, the loveliness of my hair. Ta dah.

Unfortunately, it makes my hair smell like I've been wearing the salad bowl as a hat.

My fiance said he hoped I wasn't going to start adding olive oil. Oh, but do you know my hair stylist said I should coat my hair in the stuff at least once a week and sleep through the night that way? My cats attack my head when I do it, but it does seem to do something nice to my hair. You don't mind, sweetie, do you? Pass the tongs.

Back to it, again

2007-09-04T09:43:00.000-04:00

According to a study released last week, nearly half of all American workers are dissatisfied with their job.

However, the study went on to find that only 13% of people who reported making "post-Labor Day resolutions" were planning to look for a new job. I guess we're all (I count myself in the nearly half referenced above) discouraged about the prospects of finding something better.

I also count myself in the group of people who make Labor Day resolutions. I doubt I'll ever stop feeling that this time of year is "back to school," and back to school means getting down to business.

To wit: walk to work every day (this is a gimme, because I moved over the weekend to an apartment exactly one mile from my office, and the cross-town bus takes longer than walking); get up earlier for writing and stretching (not at all hard this morning, because the cats are still getting used to their new apartment, and were climbing on my head at 5am); no more deli coffee (oops; drinking a cup now); go to the gym, go to the greenmarket, go to yoga (I'll let you know); less freaking out, more finding ways to soothe myself and transcend stressful situations (ditto).

Sad

2007-08-14T12:40:00.001-04:00

I was at my lawyer's this morning, signing some contracts (don't you love the way I write "at my lawyer's" as if I have a lawyer independent of this one very specific transaction I hired him for? I always love the moment on crime dramas when, as the Lenny Briscoe character is putting the cuffs on, the bad guy says to his secretary or his girlfriend in the cut-off shorts and tank top who made the mistake of opening the door to the cops, "call my lawyer," as if that person is on speed dial. Who are these people who have personal lawyers?) and while I was waiting for him to get off the phone, I read the top page of a contract that happened to be within easy sight.

The contract was unusual looking, in that it looked typed instead of printed, which was explained when I saw the date in the first paragraph -- 1988. Though there was no heading on it that said this, as I read it it became clear that it was a pre-nup, because it outlined what property would remain in individual ownership after the marriage. I can only imagine it was on my lawyer's desk because the signatories were getting a divorce.

Not Said in All of This

2007-08-10T10:40:00.000-04:00

It's raining again this morning, and while the subways are all running normally (except mine -- there was an "earlier incident" at 125th Street that took out the 1/2/3 for a half hour), the MTA is on high alert.

In the first days of the post mortem of the GFof07, there's one thing that keeps coming up that I find really interesting. One of the reasons for the track flooding was that the MTA didn't have enough workers on the tracks to clear debris that was blocking the drains. Newspapers, principally. There's a reason you use newspaper for elementary school papier mache projects. It takes a long time of sogginess before that stuff disintegrates.

So the MTA has to put more track workers out to clear tracks, is the conclusion that seems to have been reached, by the MTA at least. But you know what? How about asking -- or even telling, there's a crazy thought -- passengers not to throw newspapers and other trash on the track? How about sending a bill to the publishers of the Metro and AM New York, the two free newspaper that are pressed into your hand outside of every subway station?

Yes, it feels like we pay a lot to ride a subway that's dirty and hot and breaks down in the rain. But does that give everyone the right to treat it like their personal dumpster? Has the concept of personal responsibility completely evaporated in this city?

The Great Flood of Aught Seven

2007-08-08T14:17:00.000-04:00

It's hard to be an Excellent Walker in August, particularly the hot August we've been having. But I had no choice but to hoof it to work today, since all the subways were shut down after the three-inches-in-an-hour of rain we had this morning. By the time I got to the office, sweaty and on my way to a sunburn, I was in no mood for the cheery greeting I got from the receptionist, who, on a normal day has a problem getting here as early as 10am, so who is she to be all "I'm at work before you" on me?

People are complaining that the MTA should be better prepared for these situations (apparently many of the water pumps date from the 1930s, though I can't find a source for that), and I guess they should be. I think it's unrealistic, though, to expect a fully modernized system when that system is over 100 years old, operates 24/7, and transports millions of people a day. If you've tried to take the subway on the weekend, you know that they are always working on it. There's only so much they can do, though, without shutting the whole thing down. With that kind of daily use, they might as well be bailing water out of a sinking ship with a teaspoon.

What I do think is possible is a better communications system, both in terms of the hardware in the stations and the updates on the website, and getting instructions to the MTA workers who are -- rightly -- interrogated by commuters when something is wrong. All of those things failed this morning, and are still in failure mode at 2:45pm. The best information I got was from the media, who had dispatched reporters to various sites to, you know, report what was happening. Considering how likely it is that we'll have a true emergency in the subway one of these days -- i.e., a terrorist attack -- and that it's been six years since we've put urban terrorism on the top of our "to worry about a lot" list, you'd think we'd have at least made some progress there. You would, however, be wrong.

Four

2007-07-23T10:49:00.001-04:00

That's the number of dorks holding onto my subway pole on the trip to work this morning reading the new Harry Potter.

Full disclosure: one of those dorks was me.

When Your Nose is in the Yogurt, Have You Reached Rock Bottom?

2007-07-18T10:56:00.000-04:00

I told myself that if, when I emerged from the subway at the southeast corner of 35th and Eighth, there wasn't a line at Starbucks, I would treat myself to an over-priced, and overly precisely ordered (non-fat, half-caf, blah blah blah) iced coffee. There was a line, which, according to my prior agreement with myself, meant I should have just walked on by, but a man sitting in the window caught my eye. He wasn't so much sitting as shlumped, face down into the cup of granola and yogurt set in front of him. Was he dead? It was my responsibility to find out.

I paused for a few seconds inside the doorway; he took a breath. Not dead. But at least three-quarters of his nose was in the yogurt. If he hadn't been sitting in a Starbucks with a six dollar cup of yogurt in front of him, I would have said he looked homeless. I got on line, over precisely ordered, keeping half an eye on the man as I waited. No movement. Maybe he'd had a heart attack? A stroke?

As I was about to leave, I shook the man on the shoulder. He startled, lifted his head about an inch, cocked it my way, gave me a look that said, "ehhhh, leave me alone," then turned and dropped back into the yogurt. No one else seemed to notice.

Things You Don't Necessary Like to See on a Friday Morning:

2007-06-29T09:49:00.000-04:00

Eighth Avenue is blocked off at 34th Street. There is a phalanx of fire engines clustered at Port Authority, and helicopters circling overhead.

Maybe it's just a fire, but the helicopters aren't there for that. If they're News, it's because they wonder whether it's a bomb. If they're Police, it's because it might actually be a bomb. An explosive device was found this morning in the middle of London, after all.

I think those of us who were here six years ago expect a terrorist event at any moment. We go about our normal lives, and aren't even necessarily anxious about anything -- though a loud truck backfire sends me jumping. But we know the possibility always exists, and we're waiting for it.

It's probably just a fire.

If Only

2007-06-22T09:14:00.000-04:00

Walking down Lexington Avenue last night, I walked a little more briskly than usual in order to keep up with a pair of 20-something women having this conversation:

"There've got to be guys like that who like to read, who are interested in music."

"There are. I see them on the subway every morning."

"You know, someone who makes a lot of money but still likes independent films."

"Right, or who is totally into that world, but has this other life, too."

Good luck, ladies.

What Happened Next

2007-06-04T09:22:00.000-04:00

You may be wondering what happened to my entry in the Smallest Coolest Apartment contest.

In brief, I didn't win.

However, I did spend a full day as the "most viewed" post on the site, several days after my initial posting, a fact for which I have no explanation.

I knew I wasn't going to win by the time the announcement party rolled around a couple of weeks ago, but I went anyway. It was held at Design Within Reach in Soho -- a fancy furniture store that sells Herman Miller chairs and Philip Starck Bubble couches and the like. A few years ago, around the time the store opened a branch in Cambridge, I had brunch with my friend Sam at a restaurant next door. I mentioned that another friend of ours, Will, who is very design conscious, must love it. Sam replied that in fact Will didn't like it at all; Will would prefer design to remain a little bit out of reach. But I digress.

The winner was London Urchin's Jewelry Box, shown in the picture above. There were many details to like about this apartment -- I particularly like the blue of the kitchen, and the fact that the owner used black rubber flooring -- but come on. Since when is London part of the East Coast of the United States? This entry should have gotten an honorable mention and a promise to include a international category next year.

Or perhaps I am too rules-dependent.

Still, it was surprisingly fun to enter the contest. Though the pictures I submitted looked really simple, it took a whole morning to stage them just right. And reviewing all the other entries, which I did obsessively to size up the competition, gave me a lot of great ideas to try in my apartment. Next up, I'm thinking of entering the Fall Cool Colors Contest. I'll win something yet!

Is this really necessary?

2007-05-30T20:36:00.000-04:00

I took this picture from M11 bus this evening. What you're looking at is the frame of a tow truck that was parked and setting up to tow a car in the next lane. For some reason, the tow truck driver had this bag on the back of the truck -- can you read what it says? It's Pigeon Feed.

PIGEON FEED.

He had another two bags on the front seat.

Ouch

2007-05-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Even a casual viewer of " What Not to Wear," the television series dedicated to showing women how wrong their fashion choices are, knows that the shoes make the outfit. You can have the sleekest black dress on, but with a pair of chunky, one-inch, unpolished jobs on your feet, you pretty much look like the trash collector. Or at least, that's what Stacy and Clinton would like you to think.

I am more than a casual viewer of WNTW, and I agree with them. Unfortunately, the three+-inch heels they generally recommend are an impossible daily choice for the average New Yorker, let alone an Excellent Walker like myself. Add to that the fact that I need to wear orthotics, which can't be worn in most shoes, and you'll understand why getting dressed is a daily frustration for me.

This is a transitional time of year for most women's feet. The weather is warm enough for sandals, i.e., bare feet wrapped in narrow straps of leather. Those places where the straps meet the skin are still tender from being swaddled in socks and stockings all winter; you'll see a lot of band-aids on the backs of ankles for the next few weeks.

I made the huge mistake of stepping out on Saturday in a pair of shoes I thought might bridge the gap between fashion and comfort. (Aside: this cannot be done; I should really throw in with one side or the other and be done with it.) After walking a mile in my shoes, the backs of my ankles were rubbed raw. Instead of stopping for some socks -- which would have looked stupid, but who cares -- I kept going. Even after changing later in the day to real shoes, with socks, the damage was so extensive that every step just made it worse.

I am left with one footwear choice until I heal: backless. What kind of an idiot am I? Not only are the clogs I'm wearing not Stacy and Clinton approved (I bought them to wear on long airplane flights, I swear), they are impossible to walk in for more than a few blocks.

So, to recap: during a beautiful spring week, when I would otherwise be walking everywhere, I both look like the trash collector and am taking the subway.

I Have the Coolest Apartment

2007-05-04T08:45:00.000-04:00

Apartment Therapy is running their annual "Smallest Coolest Apartments" contest, and since I have a very small, very cool apartment, and since, a few weeks ago when I looked to see what the competition was like, I discovered that my apartment was much cooler than the others, I sent in an entry on the last day they were accepting them.

Then I discovered that everyone else had also waited until the last minute, and AT had gotten a ton of entries. I was disappointed not to see mine chosen, but since the quality of the others went up signficantly, I wasn't that surprised.

Except that yesterday, on the next-to-last-day of the preliminaries, they posted mine!

This is where you come in. The way it works is that the entries that get the most popular votes go on to official, professional-type judging. There are so many fantastic apartments up there that I don't think I have a chance of actually winning, but I'd like to get to the "it's an honor just to be nominated" stage, so I need votes from the site's viewers. And you. And the person who sits next to you at work. If you were inspired to leave a comment, like "gee, that's kind of amazing that she fit a bed into that small space, " or "wow, that green wall is so cheerful; that apartment must be one pleasant spot," so much the better, but it's not necessary.

You have some very limited amount of time in which to do this -- I think until Saturday. If I do end up winning, I'll be sure to mention you all in my acceptance speech!

Fun Sounds

2007-04-30T10:24:00.000-04:00

As we turned on to East 97th Street off Fifth Avenue yesterday afternoon, a propos of I can't remember what -- it's weird that I can remember where this happened, but not why, and I'm sure there was a why -- my boyfriend asked if I knew the name of former Providence, Rhode Island mayor and convicted felon Buddy Cianci's wife's name. I didn't, but because whatever it was we were talking about was goofy, I guessed: Nancy Cianci.

Better, he said. It's Nancy Ann Cianci.

Say a few times. Say it during the day when you need to laugh. It's addictive.

The New York Times Hates Me

2007-04-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published an editorial about how Americans needed to use fewer plastic bags. Ireland, South Africa, San Francisco (that's not really America, is it?) have all either banned or taxed them.

I am very keen on this issue. It seems such a simple way to start to cut down on waste (and petroleum-derived waste at that). But here's the thing: Yes, state and local governments should encourage people to bring reusable bags to the store. But the bigger problem is that stores need to be willing to accommodate those customers who do that, and apart from Whole Foods, I've never been in a store that hasn't tried to snatch up my purchase before I can protest that I have my own bag, or don't need one at all.

Which is what I wrote in my very first Letter to the Editor.

I know they get hundreds of letters, and the fact that I hadn't heard from them within a couple of days made it pretty clear they weren't going to publish mine. But they weren't publishing any letters on the subject, so at least I didn't have to feel personally rejected.

Until today, when they belatedly ran this, from someone named Nathalie (there doesn't need to be an h in Natalie, does there?) in North Hollywood, California.

"Nathalie" thinks we need to be more like the French, who she recently visited and was impressed with. Well sure, be like the French, but the French have a long history of shopping at markets and such with a basket tucked under their arm; they may have Les McDonalds, but they do not have the vite-vite-vite culture so ingrained in their tetes that it's much of a stretch for them to stop using plastic bags. Also, "Nathalie" emphasized the role of the individual, which is what the editorial did. I tried to take the conversation a step further.

But no, the New York Times will not be challenged. Plus, they hate me.

"I Hope You All Are Cozy"

2007-04-27T12:22:00.000-04:00

On my warm, damp subway car this morning, just past 72nd Street, the conductor's voice came over the PA. "I hope you all are cozy," he began, and right away, I felt people tense up. This is one of the newer subway cars, the ones with the recorded announcements about the upcoming station. It's unusual to hear the live conductor's voice, except when there's a problem.

"I hope you all are cozy," could mean, "we're going to be stuck in the tunnel for a while." But he went on, cheerfully, about how we all needed to be considerate of each other, and make sure to stand out of the way to let people on and off the train. To a sodden and cranky group of people -- I describe primarily myself here -- he struck just the right tone of friendliness. Too much of that and you want to stick things in your ears. Like pencils.

"If you are traveling in a crowded car," he continued, "look at it as an opportunity to get to know your fellow New Yorkers." I heard only one person groan at that; the rest of the car was laughing (though not taking him up on the getting to know your neighbor part). He wished us to have a safe and pleasant day, to get to our destinations and be happy to be there.

There's something about an unexpected deviation from the script that we seem to like here in the city. Maybe it's the idea that the conductor might actually like his job, instead of being one of those resentful civil servants who hate everyone. Maybe it's that it reminds us that no matter what very serious thing we're thinking about, we are, after all, traveling in reasonable comfort around a reasonably safe city. What do we have to complain about?

Whatever the reason, I ended my journey at 34th street in a considerably better mood than when I started, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

Climate Change

2007-04-24T13:16:00.000-04:00

The weather finally changed over the weekend, and we're now enjoying sunny days in the high 70s. And you know what that means. Instead of bundling on layers when I go outside, now I'm bundling on the layers when I get inside, in the office. The over-a/c'd office.

Seriously, if someone came up with a solution to the office air-conditioning problem -- why does it always have to be so cold and breezy? -- we'd probably save enough electricity to solve global warming within three years.

Confirming the Superiority of New York

2007-04-19T09:51:00.000-04:00

I'm not usually one of those people who boasts about how great NYC is compared to other places. I think it's partly because I grew up here -- I'm so confident of the fact, I don't need to prove it -- and partly that I've lived other places, and so realize that there are a lot of other fine places in the world to live.

But today's report on New York City's Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which states that NYC produces 1% of the United States' greenhouse gases, while housing 2.7% of its population, seems to suggest we've really got something good going here.

Closer examination of the report, which I am still reading, reveals that our enviro-friends out in San Francisco emit 11.2 metric tons of greenhouse gases per capita, to our 7.1.

But then, the number for London is 5.9, so we've clearly got a way to go.

I Can Die Happy Now

2007-04-17T09:23:00.001-04:00

I met Soterios Johnson last night.

Anyone who listens to WNYC in the morning knows how big that is. (For those of you who don't, he hosts the morning news.) He doesn't sound anything like what he sounds like on the radio. I told him I sometimes cursed him by name when I left my apartment in the morning to find that it was raining, instead of lightly misting as he had reported a few minutes earlier. He gets that a lot, apparently.

I spoke to him for a good twenty minutes, and he turns out to be very nice. Which, thank goodness. There's nothing worse than meeting a celebrity -- even a minor, geeky, New-York-only celebrity -- and finding out he's an jerk.

(I was at dinner last night at a new Greek restaurant on the Upper East Side, 60th between Park and Lex. It's called Retsina, and if you like Greek food at all, you should go. I can't tell you how expensive it is, because it was one of those dinners in honor of someone where someone rich and generous picked up the tab, but I'd say it's probably moderately expensive.

Also, I don't plan on dying any time soon, kenna hurra.)

Back

2007-04-12T09:17:00.000-04:00

After a week's absence, the car alarm is active again, probably because of the rain. The guy parked next to the McDonald's exit, too, insuring a steady stream of cars passing close enough to set off the alarm, in those rare intervals when it's off.

There's a twist this time: In addition to the "whump, whump, whump," of the horn alarm, there's a "dooey, dooey, dooey," squeal on top of it.

We've already called 911 for the day, but based on what happened last week, i.e., the alarm didn't stop until late afternoon, when the guy came back to his car, I think we're in for a long, headachy day.

Feh.

Driving -- or Rather, Parking -- Us Crazy

2007-04-04T10:11:00.000-04:00

I hear a car alarm going off right now. Not so unusual for a busy city street, even if I am seven stories up. What is a little unusual is that it's been beeping -- it's one of those horn alarms, rather than a squeal -- for the past three days.

One of my colleagues timed it yesterday. On average, it goes off for thirty seconds at a time, every two and a half minutes. A sample survey taken by me standing at the window indicates that it is set off by either a person or car getting too close to it, which, considering that this is Tenth Avenue near the Lincoln Tunnel, happens at least every two and a half minutes.

Here's what's weird: the owner of the car comes back every day at 2:30, and drives off. He gets the same spot every day because he's a city employee. The same colleague who timed the alarm yesterday took down the car's license plate this morning, and it's an official city vehicle. You'd think in the time it takes for the guy to approach and enter his car the alarm would go off, and he'd realize something was wrong. Maybe he does and doesn't care.

Another colleague called 311 this morning, who put him through to 911. The dispatcher asked, "it's been going off for three days and you're just calling," which is a fair point. We watched a police cruiser pull up to the car five minutes later. A cop got out, took down a number from the car's windshield, and got back in the car. The alarm went off a half dozen more times while the cruiser idled next to it. Then the cruiser drove off, presumably because the alarm was driving the cops crazy, too.

The alarm is still going. We're hoping for a tow truck soon, or maybe an out-of-control semi.

Neighborhood Changes

2007-03-21T13:26:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago, I wondered what was happening at the demolition site at 100th and Columbus, and figured it would be more luxury condominiums.

I turned out to be right about the condos. No big surprise there; condos are the only thing being built these days. But what was a surprise was that the real estate developers responsible for them have signed Whole Foods to be their main retail tenant. Meaning that instead of being able to get paper towels and shower curtains at the dollar store formerly in that spot, the neighborhood will now have easier access to overpriced, out-of-season produce.

Obviously, I will be there every day.

My Head Itches

2007-03-19T18:32:00.000-04:00

I could post an overheard cell phone conversation every day, but so many of them are of the "What? Wait, when did she say that? No, you're kidding," variety, that it's hard to imagine rendering them any more interesting than that in print. Today on the bus, though, I got 20 alarming minutes of a middle-aged woman talking to what turned out to be her mother, that began, "I have to take Jamie to get a really short hair cut tomorrow."

The Jamie in question was undoubtedly one of the two little boys she had with her, who were chatting about video games and telling each other dumb little-boy jokes, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was a lice outbreak at Jamie's school, and while Jamie's classroom wasn't affected, he shares a table with Katie, and Katie's little brother Sean, you know, Melissa's son, has lice, and they didn't even know about it.

"I'm going to have them cut it like a Marine," the mother told Jamie, when she finally got off the phone -- the conversation with grandma had included a lot of F's and A's and D's, presumably standing in for words she didn't want little Jamie and his brother to hear, but inexplicably, it also included a lot of "shits" -- and asked "do you know what that means?"

I couldn't hear whether Jamie did know what getting a Marine haircut entailed, but I did hear his mother warn him not to talk about it at school. I guess she didn't want Jamie to tell Katie that Sean, her brother and Melissa's son, had lice. But telling the entire bus? That's okay.

Two Feet

2007-03-18T16:31:00.001-04:00

I was almost killed yesterday.

That's a little dramatic. What really happened was a chunk of ice from Friday night's storm slid off a building on Lexington Avenue just as I was walking past, and missed me by only two feet. It was about the size of a basketball, one that was completely flattened by its landing. Thud.

Whenever I almost get hurt like this -- and maybe the ice wouldn't have killed me, just given me a very bad headache -- my immediate reaction is one of shaky relief. Then I think: Thank God I didn't die in such a dumb way.

I know, dead is dead, and none of us want to die any other way than in our sleep at a very old age. But the idea of dying in a way that's so completely random, so governed by just one step here or three seconds delay there, feels ridiculous. Wasteful. Ignominious. And yet, the opportunities for that kind of death in New York are infinite.

But despite the ice, I kept walking up Lexington, albeit further away from the building line. It was a nice day for a walk, and if I'd gotten on the bus you just know that would have been the day the driver couldn't brake in time to miss the taxi turning in front of it. Bam.

Make Up Your Mind Already

2007-03-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

I am not one of those people who, when the temperature hits 50 degrees, breaks out the flip flops and tank tops. There were plenty of those people on the streets last weekend, though, when it really did seem that we had left February's frigidity behind and sprung forward, with the clocks, into Spring.

I don't need to pretend it's Summer. I was just happy to walk around all day without a hat and gloves. I don't ask much.

And yet, here we are, enduring yet another few days of "wintry mix". Another few days of hat hair and damp feet; red noses, lumpy coats, and grumpiness; gray slush at every corner.

The hardest part for me is the indecision, the hesitation. Be Winter if you have to; but then don't tease us into thinking it's going to be Spring.

Last night, I took the bus home from work. It came within a minute of my hitting the bus stop, the bus wasn't crowded and Tenth Avenue was clear enough that it didn't get stuck in traffic. If you're a bus-taker, you know what that means. Not a speedy arrival home, no. It means the bus driver goes 5 m.p.h. and rests a full minute at every stop, trying not to get ahead of schedule.

Stuck in traffic, I can take. This is Manhattan; we have traffic. Speeding through yellow lights trying not to fall too far behind, no problem. But this wishy-washy, sightseeing-tour, pretending-anyone-thinks-you-keep-to-the-
schedule-anyway-not-taking-advantage-of-an-empty-street-for-a-change-like any-normal-New-Yorker stuff? It kills me.

SOlipSism?

2007-02-15T16:01:00.000-05:00

My hero Al Gore announced plans today for a 24-hour concert called Live Earth, taking place on all seven continents this July 7th, to raise the visibility of the issue of climate change. Though the acts have not been announced yet, it promises to be chockablock with big names. After all, is Madonna really going to turn down the opportunity to play a concert in support of a campaign called "Save Ourselves"?

I have mixed feelings about this idea.

Firstly, do we really need to involve Antarctica here? We already gave it a big hole in the ozone layer right over its head. Why not give it a break from Bono and his big sunglasses and all the carbon emissions they'll bring with them?

And really, Save Ourselves? (The campaign itself is labeled Save Our Selves, in order to get the neat SOS acronym, but I just can't bring myself to write it that way.) Could that be any more cringe-inducingly narcissistic?

I have very fond memories of the 1985 Live Aid concert this is clearly patterned after. Tell me you didn't sing along to "We Are the Champions" at the top of your lungs. Oh, poor dead Freddy Mercury; he was such a great performer.

At the time -- I was 17 -- it really did seem like we were, just by watching the concert, doing something about the famine in Ethiopia. And it did raise awareness of the problem, and funds to help alleviate it, and put pressure on governments to act.

But it's not like Ethiopia's problems were solved by it, and the public's attention soon moved on. A lot of big stuff happened later that year: Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time; Microsoft released Windows 1.0; Michael Jackson bought The Beatles catalog.

I wonder if Live Earth is going to be similarly inspiring and forgettable?

I don't know why I'm so cynical today. I had a lovely Valentine's Day, and the sun is still shining at nearly 5 o'clock. And if Live Earth introduces the idea of dangerous climate change to 2 billion or so people, it's to the good. Certainly anything that raises awareness, and potentially inspires action, is helpful. I just hope we don't have to sit through too many earnest appeals from Britney Spears (I smell a comeback!), who might not be able to find Antarctica on a map.

You have to figure Phil Collins isn't going to replicate his two-continent appearance this time. Even if the Concord was still flying, it wouldn't exactly send a very pro-enviro message, would it? Also, does anyone know who Phil Collins is anymore?

$3600

2007-02-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

Last October, The New York Times published an article about child slavery in Ghana. It featured a six-year-old boy named Mark Kwado, who had been indentured to a fisherman, and who worked off his parents' debt by paddling a fishing boat on Lake Volta. Other boys interviewed described 100-hour work weeks, and liberal beatings.

A six year old, who in the United States would be in kindergarten, and getting in a boat maybe a couple of times a year while on vacation with his family, is performing hard manual labor for 100 hours a week.

Or he was until last month, when an American couple flew to Ghana, and, working with a local charity, negotiated Mark's release (i.e., paid off the fisherman), and the release of six other young boys as well, for $3600. The boys are now living in an orphanage -- with the consent of their parents, who, if they'd been able to take care of them in the first place wouldn't have sold them to the fisherman -- and going to school.

There's a couple of things about this story that get me. The first is just the sheer admiration I have for this couple, Pam and Randy Cope, who are from a smalltown in Missouri, and who have been making these kind of direct interventions since their own son died suddenly seven years ago. Of course that's a devastating event in any parent's life -- they were able to turn their grief outward and that's amazing.

The second thing that gets me, though, is that it only cost them $3600, plus the cost of going to Ghana (about $2000 roundtrip these days, which is not cheap, but in the realm of possibility for a lot of people). Whereas you and I just read the article, had whatever horrified reaction to it that we had, then turned the page to something else, likely equally horrifying, they said: "let's do something."

I helped start a company in Ghana several years ago, and have spent a lot of time there. The story had perhaps more resonance for me than it did for you on that account. But did I say to myself, hmmm, maybe I could get in contact with my friend Lynda, who runs a foundation in Accra, and she and I could come up with a way to rescue little Mark Kwado and his co-workers, and I could hit up my friends for the money to get it done?

No, I did not.

Thank God for the Copes, who did.

What Will Never Cease to Amaze Me

2007-01-31T09:28:00.000-05:00

I've reconciled myself to the fact that most smokers don't seem to regard their cigarette butts as trash, but instead throw them on the sidewalk or in the street when they've taken their last puff. (Though I was incredibly touched recently, when out with some guys from work I discovered that they'd all taken up smoking -- that wasn't the touching part; they were all over-stressed from working late nights and weekends -- and when they were done with their cigarettes, they each of them walked to the nearest trash can, stubbed it out, and put it in.)

I'm even over the fact that people spit their gum out on the sidewalk, leaving it to be stepped in by the next person who walks by. The black blobs the size of a Oreo you see on every sidewalk, street and subway platform? Those are all from people spitting out their gum. Don't ever contemplate how many there are; on an average block there are hundreds. If I were capable of being amazed by this, I would be amazed that a) so many people chew gum in the first place, and b) that so many people think it's okay to spit it out where they stand rather than wait to get to a trash can, of which there is one on practically every street corner. Oh, you say you have a job interview in this building in the middle of the block, and you're worried there won't be a place to throw out your gum before you get up to reception? That's what the tissue in your pocket is for. Or the corner torn from one of the five extra copies of your resume you brought with you, which, I can assure you, no one in that office building will want to see.

But I'm, uh, over that. No, the thing that will never cease to amaze me is that smokers, when they have taken their last puff will not only throw the butt on the sidewalk, but fling it out to the side, or behind them (as happened to me on my walk to work today, and yes, I realize that not everyone does this), still lit.

Don't mind me, or my coat, or my hand, or my EYE, Mr. Smoker Man. You just get that butt away from you as fast and as far as you can.

This Has Been a Metropolitan Diary Moment

2007-01-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday afternoon, the M72 bus after a few hours of sale shopping. We're stopped at the corner of 66th and Fifth, waiting for the light to change, to turn into the park, homeward. On the opposite corner, a group of five nuns wait for the light to change as well. I didn't know there were young American nuns anymore, but there they are, in their long black-and-white habits, laughing, having fun on their afternoon off. I look down at my black-and-white Barneys bags; my afternoon off cost me $159.

Time to Get the Donuts

2007-01-30T09:33:00.001-05:00

My excellent graphic designer at work, Chris, is leaving today. We have only been able to give him two days of work a week for the last year, and oddly enough, that wasn't enough for him to live on. I'll miss him. Working in an engineering firm as a non-engineer, I am always speaking a second language, one I learned too late to be completely fluent in. But having worked in publishing for a long time, I understand designers, and Chris and I have a good rapport. He understood what I wanted; he always took everything in a direction I could never have thought of on my own; he inspired me with his focus and discipline in a chaotic environment.

The only thing Chris complained about was that, since he didn't work on Fridays, he felt he was missing out on the donuts that sometimes appear in offices on the last morning of the week. We're not really that kind of office, the donut-in-the-kitchen-on-Friday kind, but for his last day, I decided we could be.

Where was there a Dunkin' Donuts near my office? Despite their popping up all over the place in the last few years, I never go into them. I have a weakness for donuts; if I told myself I was just going in for a coffee, I'd inevitably come out with a Bavarian Kreme as well. I keep my donut consumption to two a year by just pretending they don't exist.

I looked on the Dunkin' Donuts website, and would you believe that there's no direct mention of donuts on it, apart from the name? It focuses on their coffee, where it comes from, how you can buy it online, what kind of subscription services they offer. In tiny type on the upper right hand corner, you can click on "nutrition." The chocolate donut I just finished eating had 270 calories, less than I would have suspected. I hope they weren't sneakily claiming that one donut is actually two servings.

There was a long line at the Dunkin' Donuts on Eighth Avenue and 36th Street. Most people were just getting coffee, but a few tacked on a low-fat blueberry muffin to their order. None of the 10 people ahead of me ordered a donut, and when it was my time to order, I felt a little self conscious about it. Everything is fast in Manhattan, but nothing so fast as the morning coffee line, and I was about to slow it down by deliberating over a half-dozen donuts. Jelly, fine; glazed, fine; what kind of donuts do people in the office like? Too much pressure. I ended up asking for three chocolate glazed in the end, just because I could feel the people on line behind me going into caffeine withdrawal.

My friend Marianne volunteers at The Adaptive Design Association, which occupies a street-level space on 36th Street, just around the corner from the Dunkin' Donuts. (I've written about them before.) I knew they were there, but was still surprised when I passed their window, which had on display several of the cardboard chairs and stools that they make for children with physical disabilities. Also on display was the tiny chair Marianne had given me to paint for the ADA to auction. If you're passing by, it's painted to look like a park bench, with flowers at the base. The label tells you that it is for sale for $150, and that it was painted by an artist. Considering how I've been feeling about being a non-engineer in an engineering firm lately, seeing that was a nice way to start the day. That, and the chocolate donut.

Two Minutes to Go

2007-01-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

The Doomsday Clock has been moved forward for the first time in two years. We are now at 11:55pm.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists invented the clock in 1947, as a symbolic representation of the danger the world faced from major man-made catastrophe, namely nuclear war. If we get to midnight, it's because the world done blowed itself up.

In 1947, near the beginning of the Cold War and its concomitant arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, the clock's big hand stood at 11:53. The closest it has come to midnight was in 1953, when both countries tested nuclear weapons. The Atomic Scientists then set it forward to 11:58.

The clock has moved forward and back over the years. The earliest it has been was 11:43 in 1991, when the US and USSR signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the official end of the Cold War. 1998's nuclear bomb tests by India and Pakistan and the United States' withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, among other things, brought the clock forward to 11:53, where it had started back at the beginning.

These two minutes announced today are the result not only of increased nuclear instability in the world -- North Korea, Iran, the U.S. and former-Soviet Union's non-diminishing stockpiles -- but of global warming.

So, for 60 years, this group of concerned scientists has assessed the main threat to the world's safety in terms of nuclear weapons, which, even in the democratic United States most people don't have any control over. But today they tell us that we're two minutes closer to total destruction in part because of climate change brought about by our own ordinary daily lives. Tick tick tick.

Inexplicable

2007-01-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

Shamu is back.

Last June, the New York Times published an article in their weekly Modern Love column: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriageby Amy Sutherland, who had recently written a book about exotic animal training.

Within a few hours, it was at the top of their "most emailed" list. Modern Love columns frequently make brief appearances on the list -- this week's I Fell For a Man Who Wore an Electronic Ankle Bracelet isn't there yet, but it may be before the day is out -- but fall off after a day or two, replaced by Baby-Boomer health news and righteous editorials decrying the latest Bush Administration outrage.

Not so with Shamu. It remained number one on the list for nearly the entire summer, inspiring countless blog postings, and at least one radio program devoted to its idea.

Which is this: that husbands can be trained out of bad behaviors, and into good ones, by applying the principles used by exotic animal trainers. Your husband doing the dishes, a seal jumping through a hoop -- same thing.

Most of the conversations I had about the article dismissed the idea entirely, and for good reason. Contemporary marriages are supposed to be built on communication and respect. Those things might be undermined if one of you suddenly becomes the star in a SeaWorld show. Have we made no progress at all, or are we stuck in the '50s?

One of Sutherland's approaches is "least reinforcing syndrome," which is essentially not having a reaction when an animal (or a person) does something you don't like; ignore it and it will go away. Which might be okay if your husband is in a different room from you when he's ranting about his lost keys, but across the dinner table, can you imagine? A blank stare when he says something that annoys you? This is the basis of a good marriage?

Shamu has reappeared at the top of the most-emailed list six months after it was first published; I'm not sure why. Maybe the author has written something else that links to it. But I don't think people are sending it to their friends for the inanity factor alone. Aren't we all trying, all the time, everyday, to figure out how relationships work? That's all life is, in the end. Can I make you understand what I want, will understanding what I want make you act in the the way I want you to, and if not, can we at least agree on what we don't agree on and where do we go from here?

But that kind of rational discourse is the ideal. In reality, when you live with someone, they never wash the dishes the way you want them to, or, if you don't care about dishes, it's the pile of mail on the desk, or letting the cat jump on the kitchen table, or staying up too late, or getting up too early, or why don't you just do everything the way I do it because I love you but my way is right and yours is wrong.

Anything that purports to have a solution to these everyday annoyances -- and friends who have been married for as many as ten years say they never go away -- is worth reading, right? But secretly, I think there are more people who think there's something to the animal-training approach to marital harmony, as risible as it is, than are comfortable admitting it. Which says... something.

No-fly zone?

2007-01-11T10:44:00.000-05:00

Now that we've had two sub-freezing days in a row, I've been thinking about how nice it would be to take a vacation somewhere warm. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Macy's has changed their windows from Christmas to bikinis overnight.

But to get anywhere warm, I'd have to fly. I'm not a big flier. Last year, I took one plane trip, to Denver to see my college roommate. The year before, I went to Puerto Rico in February. The year before that was London. In the years before that, I flew frequently for work as well as vacation, to Africa, to L.A., to Pittsburgh. That last was most definitely for work, though I'm sure Pittsburgh has charms that were hidden from me.

Last summer, the Bishop of London called air travel sinful and urged people not to fly for any other than emergency reasons. A recent estimate by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Manchester estimated that 7% of Britain's pollution is caused by airplane emissions (in the United States, it's closer to 10%), which may not seem that high, but there's evidence that high-altitude emissions affect climate change differently from those made on the ground, and forecasts for air travel in Europe are that it will increase substantially in the next 20 years.

How do you define an emergency? Attending your mother's funeral? Checking into the Mayo Clinic for heart surgery? Lying on the beach in the Caribbean for a week to reduce your stress to the point where you won't kill your boss? I'm fortunate that I don't have to travel for work anymore -- it's exhausting and disorienting after a while -- but if any one of the people in my company who do suddenly announced they weren't going to fly anymore, his job would be in immediate jeopardy.

I want to go back to Africa. I haven't been to Italy since I was in college and every time I watch A Room with a View or The Godfather, I have to restrain myself from booking a flight immediately. I've long wanted to visit New Orleans, and it seems like right now would be the ideal time: they need the tourist income, and after a few more bad hurricane seasons, it might be impossible to visit ever again.

I can buy carbon offsets to ease my conscience a bit, but how directly they mitigate the climate effects of flying is debatable. I imagine my finances won't allow for more than one far-flung trip a year in any event. I'm not ready to give up flying altogether. But I do think it's worth thinking about and maybe taking a closer look at the Amtrak routes.

Piecing it together

2007-01-08T10:41:00.000-05:00

I first smelled the burning rubber -- or maybe it was spilt gasoline -- on the 2 train between 42nd and 34th Streets. The entire block of 34th Street from Eighth to Ninth Avenues was evacuated as I walked past on the way to my office on Tenth; people were too calm for it to be anything life threatening, but the smell persisted. A co-worker's F train was diverted to the A line. My 10am appointment was flustered because his building on 32nd and Broadway was full of firefighters and the rubber/gasoline smell. A woman fainted and was carried out on a stretcher.

OK, what's going on?

How you know it's January

2007-01-06T16:54:00.000-05:00

This was the scene just an hour ago in Central Park. Notice all the bare legs? The temperature got up to 74 degrees today. This is the first week of January, people.

Fortunately, there aren't any leaves on the trees, otherwise I'd have had to keep reminding myself I didn't move to Los Angeles or fall asleep until May.

Things move really fast

2007-01-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

Until recently, there was a supermarket on this corner, 100th and Columbus. Recently meaning, oh, a few weeks ago. It wasn't a supermarket I shopped at; none of the stores that were part of this now-demolished complex were. But probably the people who live in the Frederick Douglas housing project catty-corner to it, and the people who live in the Mitchell-Lama building next to it, did. Its place will be taken, no doubt, by yet another high-rise condominium, which, really, do we need this?

Apparently we do, because the church around the corner from me whose charming bells I hear every half hour sold its own retail complex -- which included a rug store and a tae kwan do studio, neither of which I'll miss -- for the same purpose. They're still demolishing it.

I wonder how long it will take the church to sell this vacant lot? Are there really going to be enough people to buy all these condos? I don't want them -- the people -- in my neighborhood. I don't want them waiting with me on the subway platform, shoving me out of the way in the tiny produce section at Gourmet Garage, making my Chinese food delivery 15, instead of 10, minutes away, because they're ordering from the same restaurant.

I realize progress is still defined by growth, and if Mayor Bloomberg's prediction that our city will be bigger by 1 million people by 2030, those people are going to have to live somewhere. I hope they open another Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood by then.

New Year's Resolutions

2007-01-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

I love making New Year's Resolutions. Mine are usually of the go-to-yoga-find-volunteer-work-remember-people's-birthday variety, and I have the usual sort of success with them, which is to say: moderate at best.

But I do think spending a little time taking stock of our lives, and at least thinking about making changes, even if those changes never make it past the planning phase, is a worthwhile exercise. How else would we know what to feel vaguely guilty about when we're sitting on the couch watching Veronica Mars instead of doing something productive and world changing?

Last year, my resolution, such as it was, was to stop being ambivalent about everything. I needed to commit to my job or leave it; seriously pursue a long-term relationship or stop bitching about not having one; finish the book I started writing three (now four) years ago, or give it up; move to Brooklyn if I wanted a bedroom or stay in Manhattan with a Murphy Bed.

My success rate has been 50% -- I've got Manhattan and the man, but am still torturing myself about the job and the book.

Since I've still got those two to gnaw on, I decided that this year I would make only one new resolution, and that one is: to stop using exclamation points in email to relative strangers (thanks for your help!), just because I want to make sure they know I'm being nice, not sarcastic (thanks for your help, bitch).

Why this one? It encompasses so many others. I know my thanks are genuine. I should have enough confidence in my powers of communication to know that they are being conveyed without resorting to punctuational theatrics. I don't believe in using exclamation points, except in an emergency, so why should I compromise my belief system, on the off chance that another person might feel bad? I should be who I am, and not worry so much about the impression I'm creating. As it happens, it's a false impression, or at least, I would like to think it's a false impression. I do not want to be seen as a glibly enthusiastic person, and an exclamation point at the end of an email is one step away from a inspirational quotation in your sig file, and only slightly better than a smiley.

OK, so it's a little dorky and over-precise. But unlike finishing the book, or figuring out what to do about my job, this is a resolution I think I can keep.

Resolutions considered that didn't make the cut, but that I might give a thought to trying now and then:

1. Tidy desk before leaving the office at night;
2. Drink office coffee rather than buy cup at the downstairs deli;
3. Walk to work 2-3 times/week;
4. Replace all household cleaners and cosmetics with organic versions of same;
5. Pitch article to Seventeen or similar on real careers high school girls should be thinking about
6. Do only one thing at a time, well, especially at work, even if it means getting less done;
7. Watch Netflix dvds within a day or two of their arrival; and of course,
8. Go to yoga;
9. Find volunteer work; and
10. Remember people's birthdays.

Black Tuesday

2007-01-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

The BBC World Service reported this morning on "Black Tuesday," and since the BBC broadcasts from London, they weren't referring to October 29, 1929, but rather the first day back to work after the long holiday, i.e., today. Most people in England had nearly two solid weeks off, and coming back to their day-to-day lives after the expenses, physical, emotional and financial, of Christmas and New Year's, is, according to the BBC, in a word: depressing.

Well, duh.

Apparently today is a bumper day for divorce lawyers, credit counselors and car mechanics in England. I only had a few days off, but looking back over the last few weeks, all I can see is a blur of parties, booze and fancy chocolates. And my family. I somewhat managed to stick to my budget for presents, so the January credit card bill won't be a surprise, but there's no way I'm getting on the scale.

More Fun with Numbers and Google

2006-12-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

Every year, it takes me by surprise: tourists come to Manhattan over the Christmas break. They come all year 'round, of course -- a record 44 million of them in 2006 -- but I never expect them now. Sure, we are experiencing our second unusually mild winter in a row (it's partly to do with strong El Nino cycle, according to my friend Clive, and not entirely unrelated to global warming), making both a visit to the climate-controlled Rockefeller Center skating rink and a saunter through Central Park possible and comfortable. But isn't it nicer to be home, playing video games and eating cookies and staying in your pajamas until noon? That's what I'd be doing if I had the week off.

What really gets me is how early the tourists hit the streets. On my walk to work this morning, before 9am, I had to dart around several packs of them, as they meandered four abreast on the sidewalk, and stopped at the corner as the Don't Walk light began to flash. Don't they know the flashing only means Start Walking Faster? I was on 35th Street, thinking that staying off 34th, with its Empire State Building and Macy's and Penn Station, would mean an uninterrupted walk. Silly me.

Can we just go back to that 44 million number for a minute? That's approximately the population of South Africa. The entire state of California could have visited us, and they could have brought along the state of Virginia. Every American with osteoporosis could have come. Every American without health insurance. Every victim of identity theft. Every woman at risk of thyroid deficiency due to rocket fuel pollution.

Oh, I do amuse myself.

Buy now, save (the earth) later

2006-12-19T09:11:00.000-05:00

After two long days of shopping this weekend, I am just about finished buying Christmas presents. The same thing happens every year: I tell myself that this year things will be simpler, then I see one more thing that would be just perfect to go along with the other perfect gifts I've already bought, and simple goes right out the window.

My cube-mate and I have been talking lately about the new environmentalism, the one that implies -- if not explicitly comes right out and says -- you can consume your way to a greener future.

Buy bamboo cutting boards instead of plastic ones. Solar-powered backpacks, to keep all your electronic gadgets running. Organic cotton t-shirts, fair-trade coffee, organic and fair-trade iPod cozies. What happened to the reduce part of reduce, reuse, recycle?

I suppose if you're going to buy stuff at all, you might as well buy some of these things. I bought my sister-in-law not one, but two bamboo cutting boards, in fact. Other people are buying them, too. The most crowded store I was in this weekend wasn't Bloomingdales or The Apple Store, but Cog & Pearl, a Park Slope boutique that sells artisan jewelry, housewares and clothing, much of it made from recycled materials. There were so many people that I stayed only long enough to note, not for the first time, that scarfs made from old cashmere sweaters are not only very nice, but very expensive, and I should really make something out of the pile of out-of-fashion sweaters I will never wear again.

Now there's an idea... guess what you're all getting for Christmas next year. How's that for simple?

Famous people come to see me

2006-12-14T10:16:00.000-05:00

At my choir concert last night, these two comic actors were in the audience. At intermission, I watched
Bob Balaban buy a drink from the Snapple machine. It was the kind of thrill only a very big fan of Christopher Guest movies can appreciate. It turns out he's the father of one of my fellow altos.

Why was Steven Wright there? Who knows. Maybe he really likes the rarely performed Mozart Vesperae solennes de Dominica.

Quick, let me get a pen

2006-12-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

It constantly amazes me what people will talk about on their cell phones, in the middle of the street.

This morning, walking west on 35th Street, I was in front of a man ordering breakfast to be delivered to his office -- "and put bacon on that; and a Red Bull" -- and just as he was about to hang up, he remembered, "oh, I wanted to put that on my credit card," and proceeded to read out its numbers and expiration date. And not in what one might consider an appropriate voice for such a transaction, if there were such a thing.

When he'd finished, he admonished the person taking his order to "scratch that out as soon as it goes through," so no one could steal his credit card number. No one except me, that is.

My Lovely Hometown

2006-12-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve never been in love with New York. I grew up here, I’ve lived all but a few years of my life here. There’s a lot about it I like, more than a few things I couldn’t live without. Like my family or my best friend, I love it and take it for granted, but that feeling that so many transplanted New Yorkers describe, especially from their early days here, the constant discovery and excitement -- downtown on Saturday night! bagels and the Times on Sunday morning! browsing at the Strand!– they’re what you do here, but do you have to get so gushy about it?

I used to feel that way when I lived in London, where even the grimiest Tube stop seemed romantic and old world-y, and running up to the top of a double decker bus was thrill every day. I thought maybe it was feeling I could only have for somewhere I hadn’t known forever.

Lately, though, I’ve had a surprising, Woody-Allen-movie-(in-his-prime) feeling about New York. The last leaves clinging to the trees in Central Park, a steam pipe venting on Lexington Avenue (is that a sight you’d see anywhere but New York? Of course not; other cities have utilities infrastructures that have been updated in the last 120 years), the Maya Lin clock in Penn Station – are these not beautiful? How could I not love this place?

Given my present mushy state of mind, it was a little disconcerting, then, to see not one, not two, but three people spit in front of me on the subway platform this morning, in less than five minutes. Them, I’m not so much in love with.

What Seven Pounds of Root Vegetables Looks Like

2006-11-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

I went a little overboard at the greenmarket today. Sister-in-law #1 always makes the pies for Thanksgiving, apple and pumpkin. Sister-in-law #2 hasn't been in the family long enough to claim something as her own, but last year she brought string beans, so that's what she's bringing this. Desserts and green things being out, because God forbid we put ourselves in a position to make a direct comparison between my cooking and theirs, I am bringing roasted root vegetables. Considering that there are only going to be seven adults at dinner tomorrow, at least two of whom will take no-thank-you portions at best, I probably should have restrained myself. But they're so pretty.

For the record, those are: purple turnips, yellow and red carrots, sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, rutabaga, garlic, red onion, parsnip, celeriac and shallots.

Monday, off to a roaring start

2006-11-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

If I'm not entirely awake and coordinated before I've had a cup of coffee in the morning, is it any wonder that I dropped a cup of it on the deli floor this morning? Not just dropped; exploded. Amazingly, none of it splashed on my coat, or on the woman in front of my on line. No, it's no wonder; the wonder is that it doesn't happen more often.

That time of year, again

2006-11-17T10:16:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, a box of handmade chocolates arrived at the office, a holiday gift from a would-be employee. Last night, I spent a few minutes in Talbots (I need new socks; you would figure Talbots, while not a place the under-50 should normally shop, would be good for these, but in the end, I didn't feel like paying $9/pair), and there was Christmas music playing. The Rockefeller Center tree has been delivered and this morning, on my way through Penn Station, I heard the clanging of a Salvation Army bell. There are 37 days until Christmas, which I think is too many for there to be gold-and-red garland strung in the Long Island Rail Road waiting area already.

I love the holidays. Thanksgiving is next week, and I am looking forward to cooking, eating, and hanging out with my entire family. I am not a Black Friday crack-of-dawn shopper, though, and have always wished that the Christmas season could hold off until at least December 1st. In fact, what I would really like is for the music and the parties and the shiny clothing on mannequins in store windows not to start until, say, December 12th. Then we can all rush around like crazy people to get our shopping done and cards written, which, let's face it, we're going to end up doing anyway, and when the 24th arrives, it will still be a little exciting, and not the exhausted end of a race.

I've always thought it was sad, and not a little weird, to see trees put out on the curb, bits of silver still clinging to the branches, two days after Christmas. In my family, we'd never put up the tree until Christmas Eve, and it stayed up until Epiphany, or as we called it as children, Little Christmas, on January 6th. We'd get one last, small present -- a book, usually -- before the tree came down, and in some ways, it was better than Christmas itself, for being extra.

Of course, it's hard not to think of the traditions of your childhood as being the right ones, and everything else is just wrong, and furthermore bad, but I do think we should try having the holiday season coincide with the actual holidays, and not be one long consumerist frenzy from the weeks before Halloween through the January sales. Chanukah doesn't begin until December 15th this year; this could be the time to try it.

64 dollars

2006-11-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

There was an unusual – unprecedented, in my experience, though the use of the word unprecedented makes the incident sound more portentous than I mean it to – occurrence on Amtrak train 155 Saturday morning. While still boarding at Penn Station (I was headed down to DC), a middle-aged woman with red hair came on and tearfully asked for help, something terrible had happened to her, she needed $64 to get to her family.

You need to show a ticket to get down to the Amtrak tracks – how did she get there? Maybe because she was white, or because she was crying and seemed legitimately desperate, people gave her money – much more than she would have gotten with the same plea on the subway. No one would ask for $64 on the subway. Maybe that was it; the amount, being large, seemed plausible. By the time she got to my row – the eighth in – she had $8. I gave her another two. If she managed to elude the train conductors for another few cars, she might have gotten the whole 64. But then, five minutes later she was back, saying she needed $27 more, and had no other way of getting it, so please if anyone could, etc. It was true that she was unlikely to be able to get on another Amtrak train, and she could spend a whole day on the subway without begging that amount.

I heard her get another $5 before she was out of earshot. I don't know why I didn't give her any more. I had more to spare. I wonder if she got it; I wonder if she's home by now.

I Only Look at Pretty People

2006-11-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

When I got on the overcrowded M16 this morning, a woman in the seat closest to the door was loudly complaining that “only ugly people bother her.”

“Isn’t that funny,” she asked, “pretty people never bother me. Only ugly people.” It took me a few seconds to figure out that she wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, but the bus at large.

“Starting with the bus driver. He’s the first ugly person who bothered me today. I wonder how many I’ll get today. I’ll start a list. I bet I get 20.”

The woman next to her stood up, preparing to get off.

“When are you going to Spain,” she asked. She either knew the woman or had made the mistake of engaging her earlier in the trip. It’s hard not to engage the crazy.

“What, you’re trying to get rid of me?”

“Not at all. It just seems like you need a vacation.”

“Two weeks. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to be around pretty people again. New York has gotten so ugly. Have you noticed that? Everyone is ugly.”

Fortunately at this point, I was able to move back in the bus, so there was no risk of my looking directly at her. I sensed that would bother her, and I would end up on her list of ugly people. She herself was, by the way, reasonably attractive.

I could still hear her chattering away about ugly and pretty people, but I was far enough away to tune her out, until, a few blocks on, there was an eruption. She must have picked on someone other than the driver, because the whole front of the bus yelled at her at once. A woman standing next to me took her on.

“Shut up about ugly people. People are not ugly based on what they look like. They’re ugly on the inside, and you’re ugly. You are the ugliest person on this bus.” She went on like this for a few paragraphs, comparing the woman to her son, to her 1-year-old niece, without explanation; the pretty woman’s taunts escalated.

“How old are you? I’m 37, you see how good I look. You look like you’re 51,” which prompted the woman next to me to respond, “Your Mama, your Mama, your Mama, your Mama, your Mama should never have given birth to you. Look at me in my face and call me ugly. You can’t do it.”

“I only look at pretty people.”

Et cet.

The pretty woman got off the bus at Macy’s; passengers cheered.

Dreaming on Amsterdam Ave.

2006-11-09T09:49:00.000-05:00

It's freakishly warm today in New York: 58 degrees before 10am. Perfect for walking, and I managed to get on the road early enough to walk a mile and a half of the way to work, stopping at Levain for a whole-wheat-raisin-walnut roll for good measure. Such a nice way to begin a Thursday.

While waiting to cross 96th Street at Amsterdam, I was still close enough to sleep to feel like I was dreaming all the cars whooshing by and that stepping several feet off the curb wasn’t going to result in my being hit. This is not a new thought, but it’s a persistent one these days: why is a vehicle that takes up at least 25 times the space I do, a vehicle carrying only one person to boot, given so much room? Still dreaming, at the corner of 96th & Amsterdam, I squinted down the avenue and almost saw the cars replaced by bicycles. And wider walkways. Maybe a light railway down the center, whisking people quickly to work.*

This morning on WNYC, Brian Lehrer interviewed the third Senate candidate in Virginia, Gail “for Rail” Parker, who ran on the Independent Green ticket. Despite being a former Air Force officer and businesswoman, which you’d think would appeal to a fairly conservative electorate, Parker won only 26,000 votes. Those are votes that might well have gone to Webb or Allen, had Parker dropped out of the race, as she hinted she might do last week, if one of the candidates would endorse her plan for a light-rail system for Northern Virginia. If Webb had, it might not have taken 36 hours for Allen to concede.

But neither the Republican nor the Democrat were interested. It could well be that Gail for Rail is a loon, and her endorsement was seen as a liability. She certainly hasn’t mastered the balance between staying on message and letting your interviewer get a word in edgewise, if the Brian Lehrer appearance was representative of her style. But the idea that Northern Virginia, which sends thousands of workers into Washington DC every day, on crowded and crumbling highways, and too few Metro trains, doesn’t need a true transportation solution, one that would incidentally improve the local air quality and serve as an example for how other suburban areas around the country could “reduce their dependence on foreign oil” (in quotes because it’s the phrase everyone with microphone and political aspirations is saying these days), it’s puzzling why one of candidates didn’t pick it up to get her off the ballot.

*I love to drive, by the way. I don’t own a car, but before I moved back to New York I did, and I loved it. They just don’t make sense in Manhattan.

The pic comes from Vision42, a group who envisions light rail taking over the length of 42nd Street. Please please please Mayor Bloomberg.

Win Friends, Influence People

2006-11-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

I have got to stop getting into conversations (or confrontations, depending on your view of what decibel level constitutes an appropriate indoor voice) at lunchtime about anything remotely touching any of the following: free market capitalism, trans-fats, the energy crisis, guns, cigarettes, the price of a six pack in Manhattan vs. New Jersey... you get the idea. Occasionally I'll say something that is new to someone and I'll feel like speaking up was worth the accompanying rise in my blood pressure, but in general, people know what they think, or at least think they know what they think, about everything already.

I know we are all individuals, and our viewpoints are not merely formed by where we grew up, but I seem to get the loudest when talking to my Southern co-workers, followed closely by the Westerners. The Midwesterners rarely say anything unless it's well considered and for that I love them. And the Northeasterners, well, they are my people.

After lunch, I emptied my mailbox for the first time in two weeks, and in it was a flyer advertising this workshop: How to Communicate with Tact and Professionalism. It promises, among other things, to teach its attendees how to "win arguments without losing friends" and "stop entering into arguments that go nowhere." Sign me up.

No. I do not. Need. A bag.

2006-10-24T09:31:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't had my coffee yet when I'm paying for my cup of the stuff at the deli in the morning. I may be cranky. But I am there every morning, with my 75 cents, you'd think someone would recognize me by now. But every morning it's the same thing. If I put my cup down on the counter to get out my money, I risk its being snatched up and put into a bag. And then I have to say, fast enough to be acted on, and therefore too sharply, "I don't need a bag, thanks." I love starting my day feeling like a bitch.

I also don't need the three napkins that are then invariably plonked on top of the cup, but at the instant they're placed there they soak up the tiny bit of coffee seeping out of the top, and removing them would only result in their being immediately thrown away.

Who needs a bag for a cup of coffee? Napkins?

Yes, I realize the solution to these wasteful practices is to not buy the deli cup in the first place, but rather to drink from the communal office pot. What do you want from me? I haven't had my coffee yet.

Ick

2006-10-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

As I listened to several NPR reports about sectarian violence (the polite term for civil war these days) and the number of overnight deaths in Iraq while in the shower this morning -- there must have been three reports, and it wasn't a long shower; we're in pledge week, even -- I wondered what I would tell my hypothetical children about why I didn't do anything to oppose the war. Sure, I went to a few marches, and called my congressional representatives a few times. I voted against George Bush as often as I could. But that's it, and I tell myself it's because there's nothing else I can do. Nothing feels meaningful or significant. The March on Washington ploy has been overplayed in the years since the Vietnam War, and all the officials go out of town for the weekends they're held anyway. We all know our president doesn't read the newspaper, but even if he did see a picture of two million people protesting on The Mall, he seems impervious to public pressure.

But it occurred to me that my complacency might have a least a little something to do with my feeling that our waging war in the Middle East is inevitable, and becoming ever more so, if we want to keep the oil flowing in our direction. It's not a one-to-one relationship, war for oil. But our friends in Saudi Arabia may be coming to the end of their reign, and we need a foothold in the region. We need to contain Iran, to prevent it from exerting stronger leadership, and considering that their country is sitting on top of some of the world's last best oil, who can blame the Iranians if they do want a nuclear weapon?

I was talking with co-workers at lunch the other day about the peak oil issue -- I didn't even bring it up, I swear -- and while the 20-year-old intern from Virginia declared that we've still got ANWR to exploit, and as long as he could fill up his pick-up for $2.19/gallon, we're fine, other people had slightly more nuanced opinions. Some ideas for improving alternative energy technologies were thrown around (I work in an engineering firm, after all). But the feeling of the room was summed up by the man who thought that we'd be the last ones affected by oil shortages because we'd go to war to secure whatever we could. And while no one of us would vote for such a thing, if we could vote for it (except maybe the intern), I can't help but feeling that there's a small, shameful part of us that's relieved that the decision has been taken out of our hands.

I need to get back in the shower now.

Stunt Love

2006-10-16T10:51:00.000-04:00

I visited the StuntFamily in Philly this weekend. It's impossible for one example to sum up the entirety of why I love these people, but on the bookshelves next to my bed, between The Coming of the French Revolution and Nietzsche's The Will to Power, was A Bear Called Paddington, and that sequence goes a long way towards explaining it.

Fun with trees and math

2006-10-10T16:33:00.000-04:00

If you've bought a plane ticket recently, you're probably familiar with the concept of carbon credits or offsets. How many miles is your flight? 3000? OK, purchase 5 credits, which will in turn fund the planting of 10 trees. Voila: your trip is now "carbon neutral".

Carbon offsets are not just for air travellers. By using a carbon footprint calculator, you can learn how many trees you'd need to plant to offset your personal greenhouse gas contribution, then pay to have them planted. I did it immediately after seeing An Inconvenient Truth this spring, and felt good about it.

But not that good. While that film's producers praised themselves for running a carbon-neutral shoot, I couldn't help but think it is just not possible that the five trees I have planted in Mississippi have a half a fig's impact on the exhaust coming out of my car in New York.

The UK's Guardian newspaper did some digging, and while they didn't answer my main question -- the Mississippi/New York one -- it turns out I was right. It's a controversial business, and not surprisingly, hardcore environmentalists would rather people not salve their consciences with a few clicks of the mouse, but work towards true carbon reduction. It's the old reduce-reuse-recycle conundrum. Yes, recycling is great and we should all do it, but it's the reducing that's going to make a real difference.

Still, check out a carbon calculator. It's educational and, uh, fun. And plant the trees. Who doesn't like trees?

Just checking

2006-10-10T11:43:00.000-04:00

This morning, a father walks his four-year-old son to school on Amsterdam Avenue.

Boy: Dad, we hate the Yankees, right?

Father: Yes we do.

And thus begins a lifetime of disappointment for the poor tyke; Yankees-haters are either Mets or Red Sox fans.

This is helping us how?

2006-10-04T12:56:00.000-04:00

Most New Yorkers commute to work using mass transit. There's a great benefit available to mass transit users called Transitchek -- it allows you to purchase up to $105 in transportation each month, pre-tax. The $76 monthly MetroCard I buy costs the equivalent of something like $50, post-tax. Commuters save a little money, the city keeps a few cars off the streets, companies save a bit on their payroll taxes -- it's a great deal all around.

Except when the program is expanded to include, and here I quote from the literature one of my colleagues sent me, in a bid to get my company to offer this new benefit, “qualified parking, that is, parking provided to an employee on or near the business premises of the employer or on or near a location from which the employee commutes to work by transportation for which a transit pass is used, in a commuter highway vehicle, or by car pool."

Which is to say, you can now drive your car into the city, park it in a lot near your office, and pay for it using up to $200 pre-tax dollars a month. You can also pay for "park and ride" facilities at commuter train and bus stations, which presumably encourages people not to drive their cars into the city, but the colleague who is agitating for this told me that if we offer this benefit, he will buy a car and start commuting that way. I'm hoping there's a more gracious way of saying no to him than are you out of your fucking mind?

How high can we go?

2006-09-27T09:44:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports today that the city, having finally given up on its idea of building a stadium on top of the Westside Yards, has reached an agreement with the MTA to rezone the railyard between 30th and 33rd Streets on 11th Avenue for residential development. And by residential development, they mean luxury highrises.

Never mind that such development will obliterate my office's view of the river. I'm as selfish as the next person, and would prefer not to work next to a building site for the next five years, breathing in the dust kicked up by the backhoes and the additional exhaust from the traffic that will be idle longer than ever.

But come on, is no one in charge of city planning? What text book are they reading that encourages blocking visual and physical access to the river? What real estate forecasts are they consulting that tell them anything other than that there is a glut of upscale condominiums in Manhattan as there is?

And, of course, at the same time that they add to environmental and economic pressures on the city -- all these new buildings are going to be plugging into the same fragile electric grid that the rest of us are barely tethered to, for one; at least some of their residents will want to send their children to our already overcrowded schools, for another -- building more highrises blows yet another opportunity for New York to show some leadership on urban development (the World Trade Center site being the other recent egregious one).

Small buildings, parks, local businesses that offer more than the bland sophistication of another Banana Republic store: these are the things that encourage us to know and care about the people we live with, and don't contribute any more to climate change and energy pressures. Incidentally, they also create the kind of city many of us want to live in.

What's going on

2006-09-26T07:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't been here that much lately. Something has happened to me in the last few months; my life is changing rapidly, though from the outside, it probably doesn't look that much different.

Where to start. You know about global warming, right? It's taken a few years, but the facts have finally started to sink in. But as scary as global warming is, it still feels abstract, hurricane Katrina notwithstanding. There are two other trends that make this a particularly strange time to be alive.

First: Do you know about peak oil? Peak oil is shorthand for the idea that at some point, we will have pumped half the amount of oil that exists out of the ground. Then there will be a ever-decreasing amount of it. And while the first half of the oil supply was relatively easy to get at and out -- in early days of oil production, it took only 1 barrel of oil to get 100 out; now that ratio is closer to 1 to 3 in U.S. production and 1 to 10 in Saudi Arabia -- the rest won't be so easy. It won't be of as high quality, either. There are geologists and economists who believe we may have passed global peak oil a year or two ago; if that's the case, it will become clear in another year or two. You can read much more about peak oil here, and here, and here.

Everything about our lives in the West runs on oil and products derived from oil. Gasoline is only the most obvious. Our food travels thousands of miles in trucks and on planes. Much of our clothing and other consumer products comes on ships from China. Every plastic fork, water bottle, crayon and rubber tire you use is made from oil. Our economy depends on all those things continuing to work as they do now, and more. There’s a reason our world runs on oil; it’s a great energy source, and there is no miracle alternative out there that can come close to replacing it.

When these simple facts finally sunk in, sometime in late July, I got anxious, depressed, obsessed. I'm no longer those first two things, but obsessed, yeah, you betcha. And while on many days I have the overwhelming sense that there's nothing I can do about what's to come, because I'm not going to buy land in upstate New York and learn 19th-century survival skills (not yet, anyway), and my individual efforts to conserve energy, buy local food, and cutback on unnecessary purchases is so much spitting into the wind, there are other days when I feel: yes, we still have time; I can be a part of the movement to turn this around.

Because here's the thing: no one knows when this is going to happen, and what it’s going to look like. Some people are planning for an energy and economic crash in the next few years and are organizing their finances and learning permaculture accordingly. Others think it will be more like 30 years, in which case we may still have time to invest in alternative energy sources. But even the most optimistic oil company executives, who, after all, owe their survival to the stuff, concede that the oil will be completely gone in 150 years. They are full of shit, but even if they weren't, should we continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere until the gulf stream shuts down? Should we extract every bit of coal out of the earth until every child has asthma and we're all swimming in acid rain? It's possible that my great-grandchild will be alive in 150 years; it's close enough that I should feel responsible.

What's the third thing making this so worrisome? Population. 6.5 billion of us live here. 1.3 billion of us have an economy growing at the rate of 8% a year (that would be China). We only want the best for the rest of the world, or so we would say if someone asked us directly whether we'd prefer African countries remain in abject poverty or develop modern economies. But as countries get richer, they use more energy. Look at the United States. We are 4% of the world's population and use 25% of the oil. And yet, world population continues to climb, and I have a sick feeling that our world leaders are secretly hoping for an avian flu epidemic.

Now that I've dumped this all on you, what do I plan to do about it? I'm still working on that part. There are cities (Portland and San Francisco are two of them) who have passed peak oil resolutions in their city councils. The next step is to enact "energy descent" legislation that force cities to cutback their fossil fuel consumption in a wholesale way. There are people working on a plan for NYC. It will be an uphill battle to convince our political leaders and neighbors that such a thing is necessary and possible, but it's one I will join. Finally, my operations and PR experience starts to feel like it might have an important real-world application.

It's not enough, but it's a start, and it's something I can actually do. And while some of the people who I'm meeting who have similar concerns are of the conspiracy theorist crank variety, most aren't. I'm enjoying finding a new community; one that is finding a mission.

And so, while I am still going to be writing about walking, and NYC, and walking in NYC, there are going to be a lot more posts about my obsession. I know a lot. I've been following some of these issues for years, and have been fully immersed in them lately. But being well informed is not the same thing as knowing what to do. There are plenty of sites where you can get news and information about these issues, and I’d encourage you to check them out. What I'd like this blog to be is part personal observation and critique of that information and part group project in figuring out how we get from where we are now to where we'd like to be.

I hope you'll stick with me.

Two times, two times

2006-09-14T14:44:00.000-04:00

Back in the 80s, Seventeen Magazine ran a regular feature about the trials and tribulations of being a teen, written by a fictional girl named Sylvia Smith-Smith. The joke, of course, was that her parents were both named Smith, and had avant gardedly hyphenated their family name. It was funny only because hyphenating was just starting to come into the mainstream; people wondered what would happen when one hyphenate married another? Would their children have four last names?

I haven't heard of anyone with that particular problem -- though I haven't picked up a Seventeen in a while; maybe they have a new character named Sally Smith-Smith-Jones-Smith by now -- but in today's New York Times, in an article about the first immigrant to set foot on Ellis Island, was this:

It’s a classic go-West-young-woman tale riddled with tragedy,” said Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, a professional genealogist. “If only it were true.”

...

Mrs. Smolenyak Smolenyak (a genealogist’s dream: she’s a Smolenyak married to a previously unrelated Smolenyak) became interested in Annie Moore four years ago while researching a documentary film on immigration. Pursuing the paper trail, she found that the Annie who died instantly when struck by a streetcar near Fort Worth in 1923 was not an immigrant at all but was apparently born in Illinois. Moreover, she traced that Moore family to Texas as early as 1880.

Five years on

2006-09-11T10:51:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to do anything special for the 9/11 anniversary -- except go to a lecture on alternative energy this evening, though that's only tangentially related -- but I ended up taking the day off work at the last minute. This was the first year that 9/11 fell on a weekday that I worked in an office. I didn't want to be with co-workers who mostly weren't living in the city five years ago.

Watching the reading of the names of the WTC victims, I cried every time someone stumbled over the name of their loved one -- this year's readers were all "spouses, partners and significant others", in Mayor Bloomberg's words; I like the inclusiveness: there were more than a few gay couples represented.

I knew three people killed that day, none of them close friends. I heard two of their names read, one of which was accompanied by a picture. Fred Rimmele -- the reader mispronounced his name, something that happened over and over; I hope their families weren't hurt by it -- a college classmate of mine, was pictured in his doctor's white coat and stethescope. He was by all accounts, a good doctor, a kind and decent man. I remember him only as one of those disciplined fit people who got up at 5 a.m. to row crew in the frigid waters of the Connecticut River.

The other was Marnie Pont, who turned out to have been Marnie Pont O'Connell. I didn't know she was married. Why would I? She was two years behind me in elementary school; our older brothers were friends. I remember them having what would these days be called a play date at our house one time and making each crack up over the "sometimes you feel like a nut" tv ad for Almond Joy. About Marnie I mostly remember that when the 5th and 6th grade girls of P.S. 41 had a night of sex ed in the school auditorium, her name was murmured authoritatively among the sophisticated 6th graders as an "early developer".

I can no longer remember the name of the third person I knew who died, a former co-worker who had started his job in the WTC only the week before. I thought I remembered his name was Terrence Smith, but that name isn't in the list of the dead. He had been a professional basketball player in Europe. He was married and had two children. He worked in the IT department at CitySearch and was always friendly.

These are the things you remember about people you don't know well. A general outline that could describe anyone and little hints about who they might have been, what worlds they left behind.

Big Oil Find?

2006-09-06T12:08:00.000-04:00

Three oil companies announced today that they had discovered an oil reserve in the "ultra-deep water" in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the most significant oil find in the United States in 20 years. It will take another year to prove that these 3 to 15 billion barrels can be usefully brought up, and at least 5 before they would start hitting the market.

3 to 15 billion barrels. Does that sound like a lot? The United States currently uses more than 7 billion barrels of oil a year. So, no, it's not very much at all, but the share prices of the companies -- Chevron, Devon Energy and Statoil ASA -- all rose on the news.

Two more years of U.S.-controlled oil is not a bad thing, but this is the kind of news that allows people to kid themselves that peak oil isn't a major concern. We'll keep finding new fields, see?

Ever present

2006-08-15T15:04:00.000-04:00

This plaque was on the forest trail at Wave Hill. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I like it.

Fountain

2006-08-15T12:10:00.000-04:00

This lovely little installation is on view at Wave Hill right now. Whenever I see a solar panel used like this, though, I can't help but wish it were powering something useful. Not that art for art's sake isn't valuable. It's just that my thoughts these days always go immediately to "what can we take off the grid?" and "silicon doesn't grow on trees, you know."

What can I say? I'm obsessed.

Wave Hill

2006-08-13T16:26:00.000-04:00

It had been a while since I took a proper long walk, and since Sunday's weather could not have been more perfect, I decided to get myself up to the Bronx to visit Wave Hill. After emerging from the 1 train at the end of the line -- 242nd Street and Broadway, the southwestern corner of Van Cortlandt Park -- I took a left turn on 246th Street, figuring that somehow, though it wasn't clear from the map I consulted how this would happen since the Henry Hudson Parkway was between me and it, I'd be able to get all the way west to Wave Hill.

The Bronx is incredibly hilly. I seemed to have walked up a 45 degree angle the entire length of 246th Street, which winds its way through the private neighborhood of Fieldston. If you want to know where the mythical upscale areas of the Bronx are, here is one. Enormous, but graceful houses on well-tended lawns. There's nothing ostentatious about it, but it's clear this is a very wealthy place. Oddly, I only saw one family, exiting from a minivan; otherwise, no one seemed to be home. I'm not sure what it means that it's a "private" neighborhood -- are these not city streets? I think it means that the private security guards who patrol in unmarked cars could make things uncomfortable if they didn't like the look of you.

Between the hills and the dead ends, it took a while to wend my way to Wave Hill, but it was worth it. Wave Hill is one of the city's hidden jewels. Formerly the summer estate of a succession of prominent families (Teddy Roosevelt spent time there, as did Mark Twain), it's now a series of gardens and greenhouses on gently rolling ground that overlooks the Hudson River.

There's a small woodsy area, and the two manor houses now contain art galleries and educational programs. Most of the other visitors seemed to be regulars, sitting under trees on the wooden chairs scattered on the lawn, reading the Sunday paper.

Where's Waldo?

2006-08-13T16:25:00.000-04:00

A clue as to where I walked today...

Lieberman vs. Lamont

2006-08-08T09:42:00.000-04:00

They're voting today in Connecticut in the Democratic primary. Joe Lieberman, coming to the end of his third Senate term, is being challenged by businessman Ned Lamont, who opposes Lieberman's support of the war in Iraq.

Much has been made of the role that liberal blogs have played in building up the Lamont candidacy -- or rather, in tearing down of Lieberman's -- and what it means for the future of the Democratic party. Will the blogosphere succeed in defeating long-term Democratic politicians in the primaries at the expense of their party winning in the general election in the fall?

I've always been one of those wishy-washy Democrats, who are intellectually and emotionally liberal, but pragmatic when it comes to strategy and voting. Pragmatic, in the last decade or so, has meant supporting candidates who are indistinguishable half the time from Republicans, and how well has that served us?

If I were in Connecticut, I'd be voting for Lamont, mostly on the war issue, even though the loss of Lieberman in the Senate will mean losing his seniority on several committees, which is the aspect of being a Senator most directly beneficial to his constituents (think: pork, or as they more genteely call it, earmarks).

But I'd also be voting against Lieberman, whose cynicism in the 2000 election was breathtaking -- remember that he stood for reelection to his Senate seat at the same time that he was on the ballot to be Al Gore's Vice President -- and whose self-righteous pomposity is as infuriating as it is inappropriate. We didn't need to hear his sermon from the Senate floor about the sins of Bill Clinton. We didn't need to be lectured about the moral imperative of the government to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case.

And if Lamont wins today, but loses in November? Sadly, with the George Bush still in the White House, I'm not sure it matters what the rest of the government is doing.

How much is enough?

2006-08-06T14:54:00.000-04:00

We had a heat wave in New York this week. Temperatures were in the 90s every day; with the humidity, it felt like it was in the 100s. The air did not move; it settled down on top of us, making it hard to breathe.

Mayor Bloomberg implored everyone to reduce their use of electricity, lest we overload the grid and cause a blackout. In 2003 we had one that affected the entire city for three days. With the rest of the country suffering in the same way last week, it was not unlikely that we'd lose power.

Most of us didn't, though, thanks to some conservation, and luck. Apparently businesses responded fairly well to the Mayor's pleas. My office building turned up the air conditioning a few degrees and turned off non-essential lights. The Empire State and Chrysler Buildings were not lit up as they usually are. Retail shops still blasted their a/c high enough to be felt on the street, but enough other people pitched in to make it work.

Who didn't respond at all heroically, though, was the general population. Electric usage went up after 6pm, when people got home and cranked up their a/c.

On the one hand, who can blame them? It was miserable. Just the walk from the subway took a couple of hours to recover from.

However, I couldn't help but think: this is it, folks. Do you think it's going to get, on the whole, cooler in the years to come? Do you think we're modernizing our electric plants fast enough to keep up with increased demand? Do you think coal and oil will last forever, and even if they do, that it's a good thing to be pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?

We should be conserving every day, not just when there's an emergency. The problem is, no one is asking us to; no one is telling us to.

God on the Upper West Side

2006-08-06T13:20:00.000-04:00

When I lived in the 70s, the proselytizers I ran into were mostly Jews for Jesus around the Christian holidays, and Lubavitchers in Mitzvah tanks around the Jewish ones. It made a sort of sense. There are a lot of secular Jews in that neighborhood; both sides probably thought a few were ready to be turned in their direction.

In the 90s, there are a lot of orthodox Jews, so neither of these groups probably think it's worth working here. What we do have are Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. The former are invariably middle-aged black women who speak Spanish. The latter, pairs of young white men in suits.

As I came out of the bagel store on Broadway this morning, there were two Mormons, bibles in hand, waiting on the sidewalk. I wasn't trying or not trying to avoid them, but as I passed, one said to the other, "nah," and I assumed they had decided not to pick on me.

Maybe they were just deciding not to go into the bagel store for a coffee, though, because they followed me across the street, to Starbucks. As we crossed, a man stopped at the light said to them, not meanly, "God is dead."

Outgoing atheists are another thing we have in my neighborhood, apparently.