I have no idea where this is going to go today. In reality, it’s not like I ever do. I did two things today (well, there were more than two, but two main things): I went to church, and I went for a bike ride. A side note – I don’t like laptop keyboards. They are very uncomfortable, and I’m quite sure that it takes me twice as long to write this as it would with a good keyboard. Okay, problem solved, at least for tomorrow. Staples really does make it easy, gotta say. I actually almost solved the problem today, except the store closed 42 minutes ago. Tomorrow, on my way home, (“OK Google, at 5pm tomorrow remind me to pick up keyboard”) I will be picking up my Logitech K350 Curved Full-Size Wireless Keyboard, Black. My rational: (1) I’ll be writing for the next six weeks, (2) our keyboard at home is flaky, (3) I don’t have to carry it home on the train, because I just cleverly rented a vehicle large enough to carry Ellie to get home. Boom. Done.

Working out of town has its own set of obstacles. Some are obvious, like how do you get around? Bike and public transportation. Taxi and Uber as back ups. Where do you live? AirBnb. What do you eat? A mix of eating out and keeping some food on hand. Kitchen hours here are limited (6-8pm), and I often get home rather late – after 7, at which point I have other things I need to do before I sleep, like writing this blog. How do you entertain yourself? So far, not a problem. I haven’t even turned on the big screen TV in the room. No Netflix or Hulu either. I just don’t have time.

I have to say, when you are working out of town, Staples is great to have nearby. In my regular life, I go to to Staples once a month, maybe. I’ve already gone to my local Staples here in the Bronx several times, and they’ve always solved my problem. Printing (color or regular) is easy and you can do it without help (unless the copier incorrectly senses that it is out of paper). Walgreen’s has been handy too – I got some batteries at clearance prices and postage stamps. It helps that both of them are located between my main two train stops, and are only about a 10 minute walk away (see, I don’t even complain about the stairs anymore).

Another technical problem I had was getting WiFi access at all the sites I go to. Security is pretty tight at most of the places, and holy crow tight at the rest. I had hoped to use my phone as a hotspot, but for technical reasons, that doesn’t work well. On the other hand, I didn’t want to get locked into a two year contract for dedicated equipment that I only planned to use for two months. The solution was a prepaid hotspot. It expires in September, and I bought the equipment, so I can use it again next year. Boom. Done.

I’m not going to say much about the church I went to today. The congregation was small (about 10), likely because it is both summertime and the regular priest was away. Their hearts are in the right place. I can say that. Also, they are very friendly. I will likely go back. There aren’t enough churches close by to do a different one each week as I did last year, at least by walking. I may have throw transit into the mix. I hear there are some nice churches downtown.

One other thing about the church from today. The stations of the cross did not look original to the building, which, judging from historical Google satellite images looks like it was built around 1855. This is what happens when you go to move your laundry from the washer to the dryer mid-thought. The stations were, I think, on a plywood base, and had simple copper wire sculptures representing each station.

My bike ride was not notable, except for its length, about 13.5 miles, and the break I took about half way. I rode south today, along the Hudson River Greenway, which is the most heavily used bike path in the nation. I concur with that assessment. Along the way, at about 155th street, I passed a small food cart with what looked like fried chicken in a tray in the window. I continued south, but it wasn’t long before the siren call of that chicken pulled me back. I had to wait a long time to be waited on, though I was only third in line.

While I waited, some sort of melee broke out in the parking lot behind me. It seemed to have to do with two vehicles attempting to occupy the same space. One was a shiny black fancy Mercedes crossover, and the other was an older white cargo van. I don’t know if they actually hit each other. The whole thing was going on in very fast Spanish, but it was definitely a thing, because cell phones were out everywhere recording it. Eventually, three police cars slowly rolled up.

At last, it was my turn. Ordering was a bit confusing because there were no prices or menus – just four trays of meat (ham, chicken, pork chops and pork loin, all already cooked), a two basket fryer, some ladies out back chopping plantains and one lady inside with a giant cleaver she referred to as a machete. I ordered chicken with plantains. She took a leg quarter, hacked it to bits with the machete and threw it into the fry basket. The plantains went in the other basket. In a few minutes, I got an aluminum tin with fried plantains and refried chicken, half a lemon and half a lime. I plopped down on the grass nearby and had a delicious dinner.

As I ate, the situation in the parking lot sorted itself out. The black car left, and the cargo van pulled into a space. Before it was all over, though, a cheer went up for the police and their help.

Naturally, it didn’t go as planned. I had hoped to get to the Tucker Square Farmers Market last Saturday, but it didn’t work out. This week I had two reasons to get down there: one – the farmers market (OK, I looked up the apostrophe rule for farmers market, and it depends on who you follow; AP Style guide says no, but the Chicago Manual of Style says yes, so I’m covered either way. I’ll try not to mix styles on the same day), and two – I wanted to stop at a Verizon store to see if there was anything I could do about using my phone to get WiFi for my laptop.

It was a simple plan: the market was at the 66th Street stop on the 1 train, and Verizon was at the 72nd Street stop. Easy peasy – hop off at 72nd go to Verizon, then walk to the market which was less than half a mile away. I got off at 72nd, and looked up and down Broadway for the Verizon store, but didn’t see it, which was weird, because, you know, they are pretty obvious. So, back to Google – “verizon near me”. Results: “0.5 miles away”, near 79th Street, the next uptown stop. Hmmm… that seemed like an unusual mistake for me to make, especially since I was in this area and at this stop last week, so 72nd stuck in my head when I first saw that’s where I was headed. I took one last look around before I set off toward 79th, and then spotted it across the street behind me – a tiny store from with a Verizon logo on it – a Verizon reseller. Not what I needed. More confident that I actually needed to go back uptown, I set off on foot and arrived about ten minutes later. I looked in, and thought “That’s a lot of people.” I checked the time – 3:50. The market would be closing in about an hour, and since they’d been there all day, vendors would be packing up, having sold out or just trying to get a jump on reloading their trucks. No way was I going to make it if I stayed at Verizon. I checked Verizon’s hours – open until 8. New plan: go to the market first, then come back. I hopped back on the 1 train for two stops so I could get to the market as soon as possible.

It was a good choice – many stands were already packing up. First stop – Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse – as I told you I am stalking them. Here’s how that went. I walked up to the stand, and noted two separate cheese domes. One had several respectable looking cheeses – a couple of tall, whitish, cylindrical wheels and few more short, blocky remnants each with that white and pale tan dappled patina that says “real cheese”. Oh, baby. The other dome, had only two cheeses in it – clearly the feral cheeses; they don’t play well with others. The first I recognized immediately as about a half a wheel of Drumm, the cheese I had last week. It was sitting back behind the cutting board under the dome. It had probably been given a time out. The other was about a quarter pound of a darker, sinister looking cheese, all lumpy and irregular, with a brown grey coating. It was a thinner cheese than the others, with only the merest tranche of pale buttery yellow running through the center. The cheese quickly becomes a deeper, richer, more introspective, yellow as you near the rind. “I know Drumm, but what’s that other one?” “Oh, Baudolino. Would you like to sample them?” “Nope. I’ll just buy what you have left of it.”

Now, of course, for you my friends, I have researched Baudolino cheese. At first, I came up empty – no description on their site. I looked further – scanning down the page of search results. One immediately caught my eye: http://madamefromageblog.com/tag/baudolino/ I don’t usually put the links in plain text, but had to this time. Just look at that site name: “Madame Fromage”. I fell in love even before I felt the recoil of the mouse button under my finger. I knew instinctively that food porn lay under the guise of a blog, and I was not mistaken. From her description of Bobolink Dairy (She’s been there. I was invited out there today by the vendor. I’m going to have to find a whey. Ha ha ha. I crack myself up.): “whimsical gourmands who produce peasanty cheeses with dragon-ish rinds”. Here’s her description of Baudolino: “A Brie gone wild; it tastes like a washed-rind in drag.” I told you. Food porn. From her “About” page, I learned that she teaches writing and has a thing for cheese. There are some real weirdos out there, folks.

Then I saw this lonely looking little block of cheese in the “safe” cheese dome, so I got that, too: cave-ripened cheddar. The vendor asked if I needed some bread, and there was a quarter wood-fired Rustic Loaf, so I got that. They said next time I could try the medieval rye levain, so I got some of that, too – all for less than the price of an entree at moderately priced restaurant. I got some tart cherries, apples, and some cider at other booths. There were a couple of open tables in the midst of the market, so I and sat down with the sun whispering through the leaves, a gentle breeze keeping me company, broke out the bread, cider and cheese and made myself a mini-feast.

I should just stop here. Eventually, I made it back to Verizon, and got what I needed. I could write about that, but I have the memory of a fine meal in my mouth, so I’ll leave that other story untold.

I woke up this morning with what I thought was plenty of time to get ready for my day in Stamford, the location of my only classroom that is not in midtown – the remote outpost. I dogged my morning practices a bit, and before long, I looked up and it was almost 7.
Still plenty of time – I wanted to make it out there a little before 9, so I could catch the shuttle from the train station, and get there as the girls did. I arranged my Google maps input to get me there by 8:45, and presto, I discovered that I needed to be on a bus by 7:32 at the very latest, which gave me only a few minutes to get ready – no time for breakfast. Then, there was the weather – what is it about cloudy mornings and the imminent threat of rain that makes it so hard to get going? You had to know by now that I wasn’t about to let that question go unanswered.

Without bright morning sunlight to kickstart your body on overcast days you can feel lethargic, down and drowsy. Central Queensland University associate professor in chronobiology and sleep Naomi Rogers said that was because your body was not getting the necessary signals that indicated what time of the day it was to prepare you to be alert and active. (link)

I actually wanted to get an earlier start because, in addition to missing breakfast, I wasn’t sure about lunch – I didn’t know what the situation would be for lunch. It is a closed campus with a cafeteria where the girls eat, but no other food nearby. I thought I might be able to grab a sandwich somewhere along the way.

I hurried my butt up, and got out to the stop by about 7:17, knowing that buses were scheduled to stop at both 7:22 and 7:25. No bus came at 7:22, so I hopped back on Google (it tells you when the next bus is due to arrive at your stop; last year I only had a flip phone, but I could text a stop number to the CTA, and it would tell me the same information), and to my chagrin, discovered that the bus was delayed and due between 7:27 and 7:32. There went my hopes of acquiring breakfast and lunch on the way. I needed a new plan, and formulated one while I waited.

First, catch the next Bx1/Bx2 bus, take it to East Fordham Rd (18 minutes), walk a little less than a half mile to the train station (9 minutes), buy tickets for the train, which was due to leave the Fordham station at 7:59. If you do the math, you’ll see that that plan leaves little room for “adjustments”. At 7:27, a bus came up the hill and stopped at the light. I leaned out into the street to catch the route – “Out of Service”. Aggh. The light turned green, the bus lurched forward, and just as suddenly, the route sign changed to “Bx1 Mott Hill” and it pulled over to pick us up.

We got to East Fordham Road at 7:47. Mercifully, the crossing light was with me, and I was on my way. I made it to the station at 7:55, shaving a minute off Google’s walking time estimate. While Google’s time estimates are pretty good when I’m walking in most places, I find that, especially in midtown, I often can do substantially better. I attribute this to the algorithm I use to cross streets. First, Google’s general route is the simplest one: walk as far as you need to in one direction, then turn and walk as far as you need to in the next direction. That’ll get you anywhere you need to go on a grid with just two directions. On the other hand, if I am walking between two places that are relatively diagonal on the grid, I use the rule “always walk in the direction of the walk signal”. I walk straight if the walk signal is on in front of me, otherwise I turn. This means I’m just about always walking. If I used Google’s plan, I’d have to stop at some crosswalks to wait for the light. I’m a geek. I freely admit that.

Speaking of algorithms, and we were – I am, afterall here to help teach computer science, many of the elevators in the buildings I travel to are quite different from ones I’ve seen before. It’s disconcerting, actually. To use these elevators, instead of pushing an up or down button, you are presented with a computer touch screen that has floor numbers listed on it. You touch the button on the screen for your floor and the computer tells you which car to get on, like A5. You get in the car, and the doors close and take you to the floor you requested. There are no buttons accessible inside the car except for “open doors” and “close doors”. Sometimes people are going to two or more different floors – you just get out at your floor. I wondered aloud to some teaching staff if this might be more efficient than the old buttons in the car way. My thinking is that the computer running the elevators can group people going to the same floors because it has that information before the car gets to you. One of the TAs said her father works in a building with the new style, and said that while it was not much faster most of the time, it was a lot faster when the elevators were being heavily used (like at the beginning and end of the day and around lunch time). OK, whoa it’s way cooler than I thought. It’s called “destination dispatch” and has totally revolutionized elevator design. The same number of elevators at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, where this technology was pioneered, can carry 30 percent more traffic. This video does a nice job of explaining it, and how disconcerting it is.

I made the train, grabbed (and ate) breakfast at the Stamford Station, and walked out to the shuttle lot just exactly as the Synchrony financial shuttle pulled up. Perfect.

The rest of the day was delightful, if a bit long. This was the first time I got to interact with the students for any length of time, and it is so much fun. Lunch at the cafeteria was good and cheap – I was able to use a prepaid voucher from a student who was absent today. We played Pterodactyl which is fun. I’m looking forward to next week – four more new classes!

First a word from our sponsor. Ok, they are not really our sponsor, but still, it’s a good word: Sponsor’s word. Read it if there’s something in your life you are trying to get better at. And there is, isn’t there? If not, why not?

Truth be told, I had a little bit of a hard start this morning. I planned to go for a walk. My knee was kind of cranky, so I decided to avoid the steepest set of stairs, instead going through the courtyard, around the building (five buildings, really) and down the hill on the sidewalk. I don’t usually do that because it is about ten times further. I was only a little surprised to see two police officers standing vigil at the entrance to Building A, where the Bronx police officer who was killed Tuesday lived. As I passed by them, they each made eye contact and said “Hello”. What did take me by surprise was my reaction. I felt so very, very sad, as if someone I knew had passed. The feeling stuck with me my entire walk.

There are a couple of key events in the first weeks of the Girls Who Code Summer Program, and I had all three today, almost back to back to back. During the week before the girls start, there is an important Teacher/Partner Orientation meeting, where the teachers meet the contact people from the corporation for the first time, and we get all kinds of logistics worked out: seeing the teaching space, checking on laptops, discussing planned events for the summer, and the like. At the second meeting I check in on the teaching team, see what’s foremost in their minds and then I give some suggestions about things that worked well for us and the girls last year: thank you emails, a class cheer, cell phone policy – things to get into the habit of right from the get go.

Ideally, these meetings take place in that order, with a couple of days in between, but this is a short week, so that can’t happen. We had those meetings back to back at one site today. That’s going to be an interesting classroom, because it is a double class – 40 girls and 6 teaching staff all in the same space. One of the teachers is coming in with four years’ experience, most recently at an all boys high school. She is very thoughtful, planful, and can see where sticking points are likely to occur even before they do. All that, and she’s willing to ask questions: “What do we do when a student forgets the password for their laptop?” We all know it’s going to happen.

After that I headed over to another site about a mile away (I AM getting my steps in – 15,600 today) for a different kind of event. During Week 1, the first week the girls are there, there is an event called the Meet and Greet, where students’ families come in, see the classroom and meet the teachers and other people who help pull the program together for the summer. This is typically a real shindig – lots of really good food. Tonight’s event at BlackRock (OK, I wasn’t sure what they did either, until I found out that I was going to be working there, and looked it up. They provide services to help people and groups of people (like corporations, municipalities and endowments) manage their money (like retirement funds).

It was a really great event – Lisa Dallmer, who is BlackRock’s Chief Operating Officer for Global Operations & Technology, introduced BlackRock and why their partnership with Girls Who Code is so important. Like many corporations who partner with GWC, they are committed to closing the gender gap in technology and want to hire women to fill positions. They support the program, in part, to grow the hiring pool in future years. The teaching staff introduced themselves and presented some information about the mission of GWC and what to expect this summer. After the presentations, students and families mingled and met the girls’ mentors (another great part of the GWC program) and toured the classroom.

This, at last, is where I get to the point of this post. I want to give a big shout out to Kristen Rogers, who absolutely went over the top preparing the classroom for the girls. When I first saw the room, my inner classroom critic went, “Ugh.” The space has no windows, a large table (which can seat 23) filling most of the room and had a distinctly corporate feel. Great for meetings, less great as a classroom. In the last few days, however, Kristen has utterly transformed that room. I have not yet seen a classroom exuding so much energy. The girls are going to have a great time in there this summer. Here is some of what she did.

The overall theme is Wonder Woman (or Wonder Women, as it came out today – I like it!). There are themed decorations all over the room. Two walls are covered with blue and gold stars of many sizes.

Along one wall, they have placed specially designed posters of women leaders in technology, both historical and modern day. If I understand correctly, they will be updating those throughout the summer with posters of women in other types of leadership positions. Awesome idea!

On another wall and a half, there are hand painted portraits of the girls themselves (what a metaphor – their pictures are literally hanging with pictures of women leaders. Give me a moment here – I’m verklempt.) Kristen met an artist, Kahiem Archer, and had him paint each of the girls from the head shot they sent in for their security badges.

He also painted a larger piece, which is like a poster for the whole room.

Overall the effect is amazing. I really do get to work with the best people. 🙂

It was kind of a long day today, especially after a short night’s sleep. I was up late watching the fireworks. Everything last night went as planned – perhaps even better than planned because I accidently caught an express 4 train back. I’d tell you about the decision between walking the almost mile back from the station or taking the bus (the bus was the right choice, given the time and place), but there’s bigger story here, one I’m not sure made the news in other places.

I first heard about it on the radio at 1:30am: Police officer shot in attack in the Bronx. Then again at 3:30am: Police officer fatally shot in ambush in the Bronx. Then at 5:30: Police form slow motorcade to escort the body of a slain officer from the hospital to the city morgue. An on-the-scene reporter described the motorcade, motorcycles out front, lights flashing. You could hear the helicopter overhead. I could see that helicopter in the distance still hovering over the area when my train passed just before eight this morning.

The reporter mentioned the officer’s name in the report. Afterward, the anchor mentioned that they were given her name by someone, but it hadn’t officially been released yet. Then, moments later, it was released: Officer Miosotis Familia.

The area of the Bronx where this occurred is not far from here, only about two miles. If I walk around the reservoir, I am almost halfway there. Three of us living in this apartment had a brief discussion about it. The area is known for drugs and gang violence. Wanting to fill in some details, I searched on the internet for some updated stories. I first turned to this article in the NY Times, a trusted source in my mind. Then, because I was on the Google News page, I clicked on a Fox News story, to see how coverage varied. While both reports talked about the gang related violence in the area, (which is in fact, that is why Officer Familia was there in the first place – there has been a mobile police unit perpetually in the area for about three and a half months), only the Times article mentions the link to the shooter’s mental illness. In fact, the Times article goes into some depth about it, including some history and an interview with a relative of the shooter. Fox News, however, makes no mention of mental illness at all. I read all nine articles which contain the name Miosotis, including the one about the shooter, on their site. Make of that what you will. What narrative are they going for? This article, and this article, and this article, and this article, and this article, and this article (two thirds of the related stories published today) suggest one. If you don’t want to wade through all those links, this one sums it up.

One other connection – Officer Familia lived with her three daughters and her mother, who she was caring for, in Building A of my apartment complex.

I probably should start writing this now, because sure as heck I’m not going to want to write it after I go to see the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks and somehow make it back home. At least that’s the plan. And we already know how those go.

In my defense, I should note that it is possible that I conceive of a plan and carry it out and nothing goes wrong. To wit: I took myself to the Bronx Zoo (it is a delightful day here) by bus and back again, and it all went smoothly, despite some challenges.

This is the part of the show where I compare my relatively nascent knowledge of the MTA with the CTA and try to figure out my ETA without upsetting the people in my PTA who worry about their kid’s GPA.

On Chicago Transit Authority (“Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” – sorry, that was just mean) buses and trains, each upcoming stop is announced clearly and professionally by a recording, which I think is triggered by GPS location. Some of you may remember that it took me three weeks to figure out why the bus voice always said “Green” as it pulled out of the Halsted train station. This is really awesome, and I’m sure that a lot of money was put into it. Oh my gosh – this just in: you can actually hear recordings of what it was like before the prerecorded message days! There are some really dedicated people in this world.

Some of you may be wondering, “Just how does someone get a voiceover gig like that?” From the same source:

The voice in the announcements on the “L” is that of Lee Crooks, a professional voiceover artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Crooks was chosen from among a half-dozen potential voices, male and female and of a racial mix, CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney told the Chicago Tribune. An Americans with Disabilities Act advisory committee and CTA’s executive committee voted for the winner, which in this case was no contest. “The voice selected was the No. 1 with both groups because it was clear, easy to understand, friendly but also professional,” Gaffney said.

The Big Apple did not let this go without a response. Although the training has not completed yet, all drivers here are learning diction using the great Athenian orator Demosthenes’ pebbles in the mouth technique. [Naturally, there is some controversy surrounding whether this actually happened – in this 1967 response to a letter in the Lancet, (People! Do you see what lengths I go to to provide you with the facts?) Saul M. Bien (who really knows about The Pressure Gradient In The Periodontal Vasculature) postulates that actually Demosthenes was using a smooth flat pebble as an palatal obturator to compensate for his cleft palate. Makes sense to me.] Since they are only part way through the training process, some acumen must be exhibited on the part of the rider in interpreting which stop is coming up. For example, one has to discern that “eat hop and hop” means that the Bedford Park Boulevard stop is next. Further, until training is complete, you can expect the drivers to be somewhat shy about announcing stops, and may only announce every fourth or fifth one.

Another difference in the systems is that every CTA bus is equipped with a bike rack capable of holding two bikes – if it’s already full you are SOL (Sure Out of Luck), and have to wait for the next bus. The MTA has one-upped the CTA by not having any bike racks on buses. You can, however, bring your folding bike onto the bus. Ellie would like to mention, at this point, that she does not fold, and has never even been to a yoga class.

You may think I am disparaging the MTA. I am not. One of the ways that MTA buses are superior to CTA, is the routes themselves. Let us compare. In order for this to be a fair comparison, I chose the same route number from the two cities: 8, which is the bus I rode most often in Chicago.

You see, while the CTA drivers have to go only north-south or east-west, the Bronx driver have to be able to go all wackadoodle all over the place. They’ve got better things to do than learn diction – they have to figure out where to go next. That’s why I had to leave the word “legend” on the Bronx map – those drivers are legends! This also indicates the level of intellectual achievement which must be obtained by Bronx bus riders. Let’s say you want to go south. In Chicago, you simply stand on the west side of the road (sun in your eyes in the morning, sun at your back in the evening) hop on the next thing that says bus, and poof you are on your way. Things are different in the Bronx. If you want to go south, as I did yesterday, it does not suffice to stand on the west side of the road and catch a south facing bus. You could end up anywhere, including Riverdale or even Spuyten Duyvil. No. You have to keep your wits about you here. Your bus could be facing in any direction. Just get on, and when you get somewhere, pretend that that’s where you are meant to be.

 

Well, I’m going to see some fireworks. Although, who knows, I may up at the beach.

(Re: the title – see this)

As anyone who has read this blog for more than a day will know, my plans often don’t go as, ahem, planned. I suppose that goes back to an unwritten guideline that I follow whenever I can: Don’t turn around unless you really have to. By some definition of “really”. This guide is not so strong as a rule, and there are plenty of things that turn me around, but given the choice between backtracking or going a new way, I’ll choose the new way.

Case in point: this morning I went for a bike ride. The plan was to ride around in Van Cortlandt Park, which indeed, I did. Only, I spent way more time outside the park than I had anticipated, and had it not been for the aid of a local resident, I’d have spent considerably more.

I started my trip in the southwest corner of the park, since that is closest to where Ellie (my bike) is stored. I was riding around in the park sort of favoring left turns, since this should keep me on the outskirts of the park, moving in a clockwise direction. This worked pretty well, until I got to what turned out to be the end of Mosholu Avenue.

The word Mosholu is no stranger to anyone who has been in the Bronx. There are tons of things with that name: a library, a parkway, community center, day camp, and golf course, to name a few. I’ve driven on the Parkway many times on the way to the Bronx Zoo, and had always assumed it was named after some general or something. Nope. Mosholu is an Algonquin word meaning “smooth stones”, referring to the stones in a nearby creek. As I wrote this, I thought it odd that that be the case. My recollection of the indigenous Algonquin people is that they lived in Ontario, Canada. This is what happens when you grow up in Buffalo, NY, listen to too much Canadian (Happy 150th!) radio and have a brain like peanut butter that stuff sticks to. I my mind, New York City is too far out of range to have Algonquin words. However, apparently the Algonquin language was used from Virginia to the Rockies to Hudson Bay. So there you are. I’ve learned something. I feel better now.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Mosholu Avenue. It headed left; so far left that it took me right out of the park onto Broadway (I’ve run into Broadway so many times, I got to wondering if that road ever ends. It does, way up in Sleepy Hollow, where it turns into Albany Post Road.) The operative procedure when you are ejected out of your clockwise circumnavigation of a park is to continue on, making every right turn in an effort to get back into the park. Of course, turning around was also an option, but where’s the adventure in that?

So, I headed down Broadway. Not to complain or anything, but I really should say headed up Broadway, both because I was headed in the uptown direction, but also because I was going uphill. The Old Croton Aqueduct was indeed a monumental engineering feat (it carried water 41 miles to NYC by gravity alone – Jerome Park Reservoir, across the street from where I am living this summer, was part of some incarnation of the aqueduct), however the part of it that paralleled Broadway (about a quarter mile to the east) was the easy part, because it’s all downhill in that direction.

I found no entrances along the western side of the park, so I took a right onto Caryl Avenue, which runs along the northern side of the park. Almost immediately, a Yonkers police cruiser passed me – I made it out of NYC! By the way, did you know that the gentilic (apparently denonym is a better, more modern term for gentilic) for a resident of Yonkers is either Yonkersonian or Yonkersite?

I travelled long enough on that street (and several others, including one or two that dead-ended at the park fence) searching for a right turn and not finding one, that I began to ponder whether you could fence off a whole city (Yonkers) from the park. Basically, yes, you can, and they did. There weren’t even any gaps large enough (and poison ivy free enough) to get Ellie through. Deep in my heart, though, I knew that if I went all the way around, I’d be able to get back into the park somehow.

Serendipity saved me from that fate, however. I rode down yet another dead end (Tibbett Road. Tibbett is a corruption of Tibbet, who was one of the earliest settlers in the area. I’d not mention this, except for the fact that I think I accidently walked by the place his house originally was this afternoon. His name is on a lot of stuff around here, a creek and several streets, but it is surprisingly difficult (but not impossible) to find out stuff about him.) As I turned around at the end of the street, where the entrance to the park should’ve been, a woman came out of her house to walk her dog. She asked me if I was looking for the entrance to the park. Decision time: do I say “Yes”, and get a short cut (if there is one) or “No thanks” and continue around the park? I had been going for about an hour at this point, and Caryl Avenue was quite hilly. (Surprise, surprise. Also, that link is a view from Van Cortlandt Park Avenue, which suggests that my right turn plan would’ve worked at some point in history.) I said yes. She told me where the entrance was (it was as far north on Tibbetts as I had come south on the dead end, about a tenth of a mile). I thanked her and was on my way.

I found the entrance to the South County Trailway, which connects to a dirt path (kind of muddy in parts) through Van Cortlandt Park back near where I had started. I finished the ride back to where Ellie is living for the summer.

Here is a picture of Ellie in her new digs. She likes it there – it is climate controlled, and just big enough for her.

After a rest, I decided to head out to the Bronx Zoo, one of my favorite zoos anywhere. Earlier this year, I bought a one year membership so I could go whenever I want this summer. Naturally, things did not go as planned.

I saw that I could catch the bus just outside our apartment complex (saving me 108 stairs). I knew I needed to head south and east to get to the zoo, so I caught the bus heading south. I was somewhat surprised when the bus drive called “Last stop” about a block from my yoga studio, which is east of here. He asked where I was headed, and I told him what stop. He said that I could go across the street and catch the bus in the other direction – the right bus heads north as it passes my apartment, then loops around. So, I went over to the other bus stop to wait for his bus to come back around in a few minutes.

While I was waiting, I looked across the street at Ewen Park, and in particular, at the staircase which bifurcates the west facing edge of the park. I have walked past that staircase several times on the way to yoga and thought, “I have no reason to climb those stairs, so I’ll probably never know what’s up there.”

I know now. As I headed to the stairway, I passed over a granite plaque that proclaimed “CLX Stairs”. Now I’m no Latin scholar (though I know one), but I recognize 160 when I see it. So I counted. As I got to the top: 155, 156, 157, 158, done. Hmmm. I thought I miscounted, but nope. They made the plaques before they reconstructed the staircase in 1999 for $720,000. Two stairs were eliminated, but the plaques still stand.

So what’s up there? Well, for one thing, another staircase with 78 more stairs, but no fancy name. I propose “LXXVI Stairs”, in keeping with the spirit of things. I found a bunch of parks, Seton Park (named after Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, and the hospital bearing her name that stood on the site until 1955, though as far as I can tell, she was never there), the Spuyten Duyvil Playground (which is named after the devil and either spate, spite, or spout), the Riverdale Playground (which disappointed me, because there was an ice cream truck and I dearly wanted ice cream, but no one was in the truck), the Raoul Wallenberg Forest (OK, this guy is pretty cool – he saved about 100,000 Jews during World War II – many by making them appear to be Swedish citizens. The forest itself is a mess, overgrown with trails in disrepair) Henry Hudson Park (“Hudson’s last voyage was in 1611 when after discovering Hudson’s Bay and claiming it for England, his crew mutinied and cast him adrift.” I had forgotten about that. link), Phyllis Post Goodman Park (she was a teacher and community activist).

When I eventually (and to my surprise and delight) made it back to the top of the LXXVI Stairs, I made my way home. By another route, naturally.

So, I’ve been here before. I mean right here, in the Bronx, in this neighborhood.

During Christmas break my senior year in high school (1982), a couple of the Brothers and maybe a teacher at my high school, St Joe’s (which was founded by the Christian Brothers), took a few seniors on a sort of class trip to New York City. I remember that a maximum of ten seniors could go, and about six did. I went because it was an amazing deal. For about eighty dollars, we had transportation by school van and accommodations for a couple nights, which I think were dorm rooms at Manhattan College (also run by the CBs). I remember lying awake listening to sirens and people talking outside. This was long before the Disneyfication of the city – New York was still a place to be feared.

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue was described by The New York Times as “the ‘worst’ [block] in town”. In that decade, Times Square was depicted in Midnight Cowboy as gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime in the rest of the city. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. (Wikipedia)

It was a long drive to the city in those days, via NY Route 17 across the southern upstate New York. I got to talk to Brother Joe Radich (I may have the spelling of his last name incorrect) for a long time, and recall thinking that he was a cooler person in real life than when he was a teacher. I think I had him for typing. I still can’t type, even after being a computer programmer for thirty five years. (There were five typos in that sentence alone, three in this one.)

While we were here, we saw a play (I don’t remember the name, but I do remember it was weird – avant garde), a musical (Godspell) and the Rockettes’ Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Musical Hall. From that, I remember the Rockettes (I was a 17 year old at an all male school, after all), but I also remember the Wurlitzer Organ, and how the sound filled the hall.

A bit about that organ (Why? Because I just looked it up, that’s why.) As it turns out, it was built in the town next to my high school, and was the largest organ ever to leave the plant there. It has TWO consoles – each can run the whole thing – 4178 pipes. Wow.

I discovered my deja vu on my ill-fated mission to find church this morning. I set out with plenty of time for 8:30 am mass at Visitation Parish, which is only six tenths of a mile from here. I got to where I thought the church was, only no church. There was, however Manhattan College’s Leo Engineering Building (That is a quality link right there. Is there no limit to what I’ll do for you? Even more info about Leo Hall: it used to be a Fanny Farmer Candy Factory, and from 1964 to 1997 it had a critical nuclear reactor in it. Critical means it operates just below the level where them neutrons start getting frisky and all sorts of bad things can happen.) I thought (from estimating on Google Maps) that I was much farther away. I suddenly realized that it was the 1 train that we took into Manhattan every day on that trip.

So, how did I manage to get lost (in the sense of not ending up where I wanted to be
(my usual kind of being lost), and not in the sense of not knowing where I am or how to get back to where I knew I was (which seldom happens to me)? Looking back, that is just a really complicated sentence. I suggest meditating before you read it. Actually, I guess I just suggested meditating AFTER your read it. I’d better stop now.

Unfortunately, I did not start out this morning with a complete set of directions in my head. In my head, the directions were: go down the hill, cross the big road, walk one block, take a right and it is at the end of the block. This, as I see now, was perfectly accurate. However, it is insufficiently detailed in the description of “big road”. As I was walking, I interpreted “big road” as “Broadway” , which is indeed a big road – the biggest around – yellow on the map. What I neglected is that I cross over the Major Deegan Expressway (also yellow on the map) BEFORE I get to Broadway. I should’ve turned right after I crossed the MDE bridge. Anyone who has been in a long term relationship knows that these are the kinds of communication assumptions that cause fights. Fortunately, it was just me, so the fight didn’t last too long. (Although I did turn away from myself in bed later in the day when I took a nap, so I have a feeling it’s not quite over yet.)

When I realizzed my mistake, my phone dutifully (and non-condescendingly) told me which way to go, so I quickly headed in the right direction. I’d have been on time to church, except I was waylaid by a road closure due to overhead track work, the very trackwork that George was so excited about yesterday. I arrived three minutes late. That’s OK though, because I’m Catholic, and Catholics are always late. One small problem. The church is closed, permanently. Note, there is no indication of this on Visitation Parish’s (I realize now, defunct) website. There was a sign taped to the door indicating that there was a shuttle to the sister parish (St. John’s) that had left 33 minutes earlier.

The next mass at St. John’s was at 11am (or so I thought), so I shopped for some supplies I needed and headed back up the hill. At 10:35, I headed back down again. I got to St John’s at about 10:55, aaannnnndddd no one was going in, the opposite of which I take to be the usual harbinger of the beginning of a church service. Hmmm… The sign on the front of the building didn’t help much. Mass times were listed as 8: and 1XX3, where X represents a place where the letter fell off. Again, my phone to the rescue – 11:30. The good news was that there was a farmers’ market half a block away. Its first day, just opened. I got cherries, apples, and cilantro – and, I was on time to mass. A little early, even.

P.S. Click on the link for harbinger to hear a really excellent pronunciation of it.

I’ve only seen two cats so far, both of them last night as I walked around Jerome Park Reservoir. The first was a gray and white cat, round, blue tag on its collar, lying atop a retaining wall with its front paws folded back in, in the way members of the cat family, but few other animals do. Maybe goats. The other cat was a young, orange and white striped cat, slipping out curbside from under a parked car. Although it was only mere feet away, it took no note of me, and continued on its prowl. His eyes were reddish and swollen around the rims.

Dogs, on the other hand, have been a different story. There are all kinds of dogs here. Well, maybe not all kinds, but a lot of them. What kind of dog you see seems to depend on where you are in the city. We don’t even have to talk about midtown. No dogs there, except maybe hot dogs.

The first couple of days I was here, I was pretty much either in midtown or Kingsbridge, which is the neighborhood next to where I live, and is where most of the stores and restaurants around me are located. I spent a fair amount of time walking on Broadway there, and saw mainly one kind of dog: white pit bulls. (I know, I know, American Staffordshire Terriers. It’s too late at night to type all that.) I must’ve seen four of them, and not having seen any other dogs, this stuck in my mind. Since then, I’ve seen a number of other dogs around this area, but pit bulls are, by far, the most common. I’ve seen a lot more colors of them, too.

Today, I got myself into a different neighborhood: 96th street on the West Side. No pit bulls there. Most of the dogs there were what I’d call lap dogs – Lhasa apsos, terriers, and the like. I saw two people who stopped to talk to each other – the woman had two little white dogs, and the gentleman had four, which had neatly braided their leashes so that only about two feet at the end was untangled. I saw an ancient Yorkshire terrier – it didn’t need a leash because it was too old to move very fast or maybe even at all. There were also quite a large number of dachshunds in many colors and styles. All of this I saw in a short three block walk toward Central Park.

Apparently, Central Park is where the big dogs go. And it is where the big dogs go. See what I did there? It works better if you read it out loud in your brain and slightly change the emphasis of that last word. (And they say that Mandarin is hard to learn because it is a tonal language. Ha! Try English.) But seriously, there were more big dogs there than little, and more big dogs there than I’ve seen anywhere in the city. I saw one elderly woman with three elderly German Shepherds – one leash in each hand, and a belt around her waist for the third. The one breed of dog I haven’t seen at all, curiously, is Labrador Retrievers. I’ve seen a few Goldens, but no Labs.

I’m writing a short one tonight, because I got back late from my adventure (where adventure = get on the 1 train, get off at a random stop (I was originally planning to go way downtown, but hopped off 96th because, on my daily commute, a lot of people get on and off there simultaneously), mosey into the West Side Arts Coalition salon show (when you walk out the subway station door and the sign across the street says “Gallery Open”, you go in), meander down to Central Park, eat a hot dog (what is it with me and hot dogs these days?), traipse through the park down to 72nd, wander around 72nd and Broadway, find Levain Bakery (it was suggested to me as having the best cookies ever, but the line was too long for my purposes today – I’ll be back), get caught in a thunderstorm (I found a construction awning to hide under), ramble around in circles trying to find a place for dinner (I didn’t care what kind of food it was – I wanted to eat outside, or at least near a window, but all the outdoor seating was wet), ended up at what seemed to be a Chinese/Latin fusion restaurant (La Dinastia), discovered that they weren’t fused, but mostly just side by side, ate masitas de puerco fritas with fried sweet plantains (it’s Cuban – if you haven’t had Cuban food (for me it’s been since maybe 1999 – way too long), it is SO GOOD, and almost always comes with a fresh tomato and iceberg lettuce salad that, in this case, paired perfectly with the fried pork chunks – I can’t even describe how the masitas crunched on the outside and were so tender and flavorful inside – I wish I could, but no), and then made my way home. Somewhere in there, I took this picture. Which just goes to show you that NYC is an LGBTQ friendly city.