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!

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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.

First off, I have to start writing these things earlier in the evening. It is now 9:54. When I first sat down to write, it was 7:54. I really had nothing to write about. I thought about writing about my day, but nothing stood out: I got up, learned some programming stuff, headed downtown, ate a gyro, met one of my teaching teams and talked for 4 hours (we have to bond too, you know), went to the Union Square Farmers’ Market, and came home.

The highlight of the market was the stinky cheese I bought. I’m a big fan of the stinky, washed rind cheeses, which I first learned about at the Wadsworth Mansion Farmer’s Market, which is held in August each year. (YYYESSSSS!! I just checked, and I’ll be home in time for it! August 28th, this year.) Stinky cheeses are not for everyone, I must say. But, as a father and husband whose darling family eats all the regular cheese in the house, these are the way to go. They won’t touch them, so my stash is safe.

I’m talking washed rind cheese, a broad but distinctive category of gloriously stinky curd. The telltale signs include a moist or sticky exterior, some variety of reddish-orange rind, and profound aromas reminiscent of often-unmentionable things (sweaty feet and barnyard animals figure prominently). (link)

My first love is Drunken Hooligan from Cato Corner in Colchester, CT. However, I will buy stinky cheese wherever I can find it, because it is not typically sold in grocery stores. You don’t wrap this stuff in plastic. You can find cheeses like this sometimes at places like Whole Foods. I have yet to check Garden Gourmet Market, but must, since they have, by far, the largest selection of cheeses I’ve seen outside a cheese specialty store.

How I buy stinky cheese:

1. Locate a cheese vendor at a farmers’ market
2. Look for the tell tale signs of stinky cheese:
   1. Short lines (except Cato Corner – they always have a line for some reason)
   2. Clear plastic domes over the cheese
   3. No plastic wrap anywhere (waxed or foiled paper only). The cheeses need to breathe. They are alive for heaven’s sake.
   4. Cheese that looks dusty, discolored, weird, gross, and definitely not like something anyone would want to eat.
3. Ask which is the stinkiest cheese.
4. When they vendor offers a sample, I decline. I ALWAYS buy without tasting it. Jump in. Both feet. Full throttle.
5. Buy a quarter pound (usually $6-$8 worth; stinky cheeses are labor intensive to produce)
6. Eat about a third of it on the way home, especially if I have fruit or tomatoes. If there’s good bread, then it’s a sandwich. Holy cow. My mouth is watering right now.

Today I bought Drumm from Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse (this is so weird – Google just suggested that I replace “and” with “&” as I typed it in. Google: So useful. Big scary.) When I came home, I looked them up on the web, and I think I may start stalking them at Farmer’s Markets (Tomorrow they are at Tucker Square. Wait, what? No, no. I’m not stalking them. Really. Nothing to look at here. Move along. Move along.) I do love their philosophy, though.

We want to raise our children in a world where farming, and indeed all other human activity, is done thoughtfully and sustainably, with long-term well-being taking priority over immediate gain.

It’s enough to bring tears to my eyes. There’s more on their site, of course. Oh, and Drumm cheese?

One of our trademark cheeses, with a flavor that is complex and accessible. This Drumm is semi-soft, with a runny edge and a light texture. Excellent with fruits, pairs well with a variety of wines and ales … It is a medium sized wheel, and has a bit of soft-ripening going on around the edges, which gives it a slightly sunken-in look (and thus the name).

By saying “this Drumm”, they are telling us that the cheese comes out different every time. It depends on the season, the weather during that season, what the cows ate, how the cows are feeling. It’s a living thing – nature versus nurture. Different every time.

As I was saying, I had nothing to write about tonight, so I went for a walk around Jerome Park Reservoir. I got to wondering, is the Park named Jerome, or Jerome named Park? I know now, because I looked it up. However, that turned out to be its own rabbit hole, so I am going to save the story until I have a day where I hit writer’s block. I know it’ll happen, and it’s good to keep a couple of topics in reserve. If I write about it now, I’ll be up all night, and it’s already after 11. I will, however, mention some of the time sensitive things I noticed – things that won’t make sense if I save them until later.

First, mulberries. This is an underappreciated tree if there ever was one. Mulberries are delicious and in season right now. You can find mulberry trees by looking for the purple stains on the sidewalks underneath them, and in the daytime, the flocks of birds in them. Just listen. Didn’t I say that yesterday? Hmmm … maybe there’s a theme there. It’s part of a larger theme: if you are bored, you are not paying attention. There’s a ton of interesting stuff happening. Always. Sadly, most of the trees here are trimmed too high to eat the berries conveniently. I managed to get one anyway.

Second, fireflies. It took them a while to get their act together this year – almost two weeks late in Connecticut by my reckoning. There was a bunch of them in the fields around the reservoir tonight. “Hey baby, baby, baby!” That is what I imagine they are saying as they fly through the air, flashing away. (OK, DO NOT, research fireflies. A quote: “Target males are attracted to what appears to be a suitable mate, and are then eaten.” Only one species, but still.) I researched them to verify my recollection that female fireflies are flightless. I was close: this is true only for some species.

Third, fitness. The temperature was in the mid 80’s when I was walking around. A guy ran (I use that term loosely – it was a kind of fast shuffle) with his dog. They guy was wearing a heavy fleece sweater! Then I saw the next guy. Well, his silhouette really, it was getting dark, and he was back lit. He had a narrow waist and broad shoulders, and was running at a pretty good clip. And, it appeared as though he was wearing body armor. Not Under Armour, mind you, but body armor. As he got closer, it all made sense. No, no, it didn’t really. He was actually wearing a heavily weighted vest, with heavy objects in each of ten cylindrical pockets. I’m kind of glad he didn’t run into me. It would have been like getting hit by a Mack truck.

Fourth, I bought a hot dog from a food cart. They do place those in convenient locations, I must say. I had gotten a hankering for one about 5 minutes into my walk, but despaired because the neighborhood around here is pretty residential. However, there were some athletic fields on the other side of the reservoir and someone willing to sell me a hot dog. With everything? YES. Both feet. Full throttle. I don’t even know what was on it. It was dark. It tasted good, though.

There was more that happened, of course. There always is. But I must away ere break of day.

So, eventually, I made it home and ate my Drumm cheese paired with fresh Rainier cherries. Yum.

Vaguebooking: An [intentionally] vague Facebook status update that inevitably prompts friends to ask what’s going on. As in:

Mark is: “thinking that was a bad idea”

(An aside again: You really should click on that “Mark” link, especially if you have a friend named Mark.)

Yesterday, I vaguely alluded to the fact that I might have something unpleasant to deal with today.

…I think I might have a tricky day ahead of me tomorrow, based on an email I received moments ago.

I received an email indicating that there was some tension brewing in one of my teaching teams. It seemed both people had the best interests of the girls at heart, but different priorities. One emailed me and asked me to weigh in and define the roles of instructor and TA in a meeting we are having on Friday. Ugh. I became mildly nauseated – there’s a part of my mind that just wants everything to go smoothly so I don’t have to deal with this. But that’s not why GWC hired me. My feeling comes from a time when I didn’t have good tools for these types of situations. I think I’m getting better at it now.

First instinct, don’t deal with it by email – too fraught with the peril of misunderstanding. Still, I needed to respond.

First, thank you for reaching out so quickly. I know that’s not an easy thing to do.

Your instincts are right that this is very important to address sooner rather than later.

I also know that this is the kind of thing that might keep you up at night, so I wanted to respond right away. We need you well rested 🙂

We agreed to meet this morning for coffee. I’m thinking,“Good call, Ochterski – you just bought yourself some time.” I knew what I wanted to do, but on the way downtown this morning, I looked at some conflict resolution web sites just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

Before today, I had only met her once, in a meeting with the corporate host for her classroom. One of the things that struck me was when she asked the host, “Is there a place we can take the girls outside to unwind?” Ah! Someone who gets it and can see the needs the girls will have even before meeting them. Good teacher instincts. The force is strong in this one.

My basic plan for this morning was this: 1) ask a question, 2) listen 3) validate 4) then do it again 5) maybe, just maybe, offer a “what if”.

The first question (after “Hello”) is always “How are you feeling today (or right now)?” Yoga sutra 1.1: “Atha Yoga anushasanam”. My Sanskrit is a little rusty these days, and every site translates this a little differently (“Now, after having done prior preparation through life and other practices, the study and practice of yoga begins.” or “Then comes the right time to undertake the practice of yoga.“) A translation I’ve heard and particularly like is “Start where you are.” First, of course, you need to know where you are, hence this question. It is also a way of communicating “I know you are going through something, and it’s OK to talk about it”.

It opened the flood doors a little bit, and she started telling me a lot about what had been going on. We hadn’t actually gotten into the coffee shop yet. This was fortuitous, as was my poor choice of a coffee shop. Wait, what? It is so easy to find good coffee shops these days – “OK Google, coffee shop near 9th Avenue and 34th Street” Red Eye Coffee – 4.8 stars on Google, 4.5 on Yelp. Boom. Done. However, if you don’t actually READ about the place, you wouldn’t know that there is no seating there. I bought both drinks (If you feed them, they will follow you. Best advice ever.) The transaction in the shop interrupted our conversation long enough that I could back up a bit. After all, we hardly knew each other.

We walked toward the host site, which was about 15 minutes away, looking for a place to sit and talk. It was a pleasant, if breezy, morning, and we found a plaza with tables, chairs and shade after about a block and a half. Along the way, I tried to get to know her – Where are you living this summer? (She is from the West Coast and is still trying to understand New York weather), How did you you get involved in GWC? and so forth. I learned a lot about her teaching background, philosophy, and goals. Just listen – no need to make conversation here.

Over the next hour, we teased apart the situation. I did my best to listen, then repeat back what she had said, changing the words, but still capturing what she said. “Let me tell you how I understood what you said, and let me know if if I have it right, and correct me if I’m wrong.” When I did this, I tried to reframe what she said, to help look at it from another perspective. “A sense of superiority” (she didn’t want to use that word, but no other one came to mind) became “maybe their confidence in their technical skills makes them want their opinions to carry more weight”.

What I got was that there were two experts in the room – one in tech, one in teaching, and they probably had different ideas about how the class should look and feel and what should be taught. I said that it sounded like she was looking for a way to get both people what they want, and not have an antagonistic, win-lose situation around every disagreement. She agreed. As I said, the force is strong in this one. GWC knows what they are doing when they hire people. I try to remember this when I lose my confidence.

Fortunately, GWC gave us a tool which may have saved the day. They called it “the decision making framework”. It is new this year. It is a three point checklist for making decisions:

1. Advocate for all students
2. Make your thinking visible
3. Build more than code

That’s brilliant stuff right there, and the solution to the problem. It gives both people a common goal to work toward – something they both have to subordinate their opinions to. It gives them a way out, and a way to resolve conflicts – which idea is closer to the framework?

We also came up with some ideas about how to rebuild the teaching team after the difficult day yesterday – use the same tools we use with the girls. With them, we have them write a classroom contract, so what if they tested that activity plan by making a teaching team contract? With the girls, we practice affirmation bonding activities. State what strengths you see in the other person. OK, what if the teaching team practices that? Fortunately, the tech person is also a big proponent of bonding, so it should go OK.

All the teaching staff I talked to remember hearing about the decision making framework, and remember the first point, almost. Advocate for all (girls?students?people?). Almost no one can remember the rest. I’ve tried, and I have the gist of each, but I still get messed up on the specific wording. I have the same difficulty with lyrics in songs – it is one of the ways my brain has changed since I was younger – I get the gist better, but the specifics less so.

So, my plan is this: tomorrow morning, with the help of Staples ( which is 187 stairs and half a mile and from here (close to the 231st Street station), and has more stuff than my local Staples in CT), I am going to make a laminated card for each teaching team (I checked, they can print and laminate my document). That was easy.

Post script: I just received an answer to my check in email. Things went better today, but there is still some tension.

Everybody knows Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team formation, right? (Form, storm, norm, perform). Start where you are.

It was a quiet day here in Fort Independence. I didn’t have any face to face meetings, so I could work from home. I spent a lot of time getting things into my online calendar and contacts so I can reference them wherever I am. I could be at any one of seven sites any day, or even on a field trip, so creating ready access to all my information is a good use of time (I think – I’ve never done this before. Didn’t someone once say something about the best laid plans?)

I took a break this morning to run some errands and walked down to Broadway by a different, slightly longer, route than usual, one that ends up near the 231st Street train station (the 238th street staion is about 10 minutes closer). I grabbed some lunch at a local deli, musing about the fact that I have only eaten at restaurants or take out so far, and that this is not a sustainable practice. First, it’s rather expensive. Second, I have to climb down those stairs and back up again.

I am going to indulge myself with a bit more grousing about the stairs. I am getting better at them, first off. Secondly, I can hear my mom say “Oh, Joseph (only about three people in the world call me that: my mom, my wife, and my sister), get over it.” I need to inform my dear readers that, according to Shah, who lives on the first floor of my building and whom I met yesterday (I’m pretty sure I got that who/whom right), there are 108 steps from the bottom of the hill to the sidewalk landing of our apartment. I have since verified his findings. Fortunately for him, he lives on the first floor, and needs to climb only the additional 5 steps to the building door, and two more to his apartment door. I, on the other hand, live on the 4th floor, and have an additional 4*18 steps to climb to get here, for a grand total 187 steps. If we assume a standard 7 inch riser (Everyone knows that right? No? Then thanks, Dad!), a little quick math reveals that is about 109.083333333 feet. If you grant me the extra foot for the rise in the road between the staircases, that’s 11 stories. Each way.(Down is slightly more difficult for me.) See where I’m coming from? If you need a point of reference, the tallest building in Middletown, CT is River’s Edge II at 13 stories.

That being that, I decided to lay in some food for the hard times, like, you know, if the temperature goes above 80, or it rains, or something weird like that. I was faced with a choice: on the right, we have good old Stop and Shop #0503, on the left, we have a sketchy looking store with lots of fruit outside at ridiculously low prices (compared to CT). Here’s a street view:

(Editor’s note: this picture was taken January four years ago.)

How to tell a sketchy store:

1. The fruit is outside (who’s moving all that fruit around every day?)
2. There is a lot of fruit, at very low prices
3. It is hard to find the front door
4. You can’t see inside the store
5. The front door is very narrow
6. The exit door is not visible, but is not the same as the front door
7. The price signs are hand written and look like the’ve been around for a while
8. When you look into the front door, the aisles are very crowded with stuff
9. It looks like a bazaar

So, what to do? Obviously, grow up, go in the narrow door and look around. You can always leave without buying something. Truth be told, my real fear is a language barrier – it goes back to a travel incident right after college, maybe someday I’ll tell you about it, but it’s after 11pm now, and I think I might have a tricky day ahead of me tomorrow, based on an email I received moments ago. (That is foreshadowing of a story I may not be able to tell).

So, I went in. And I’m so glad I did! The place is called Garden Gourmet Market (OK, that could be a sketchy name). The aisles are kind of narrow, but there is a lot of stuff. This place makes Stop and Shop (and even the bougie Big Y in Northampton, Mass) look like off-brand gas station convenience stores. So much variety. It is like Whole Foods, but not as pretentious.

I bought a bag of lettuce, some cherries, salad dressing (Annie’s Sesame Ginger) and some chocolate bars (which are calling my name now, in spite of what happened before and I’ll tell you about later) and headed home, trying to see if I could spit cherry pits between the construction wall and the safety roof over head at our local massive, multiple, jackhammering, construction site. I can’t. I am pretty good (though not perfect) at avoiding the ricocheting pit, however. (An aside: magniloquent is a highfalutin word. It’s dark in there people. You never know what’s going to come out next. The inside of my brain is like a reality show with lots of unstable people (and maybe some unstable (and unstabled) animals) in it. )

OK, back to the story. I’ve been meaning to get to a yoga studio since I got here. I chose one (based mostly on proximity, but also on their website AND the fact that they provide mats, so I don’t have to buy (or lug – see W0D0) one. Also, they have many styles of yoga, which is my style of yoga.

It’s about a 20 minute walk away. Tonight they had Astanga yoga, which I hadn’t practiced in a while – maybe a year and a half. It is a strenuous type of practice, but I usually feel better afterwards. Usually. I gotta say, I enjoyed the class, but came out a bit sore – definitely feeling the hip openers. I don’t want to wake up in this body tomorrow, but I didn’t have room to bring my spare. Actually, the walk home helped equilibrate everything.

On the way, I stopped back into the Garden Gourmet. Hungry. See, you were wondering when I was going to get to the point. Here I am. I left with baked ziti with grilled chicken (very good – the grilled chicken tasted like it had been over fire), granola, milk, salad topper stuff, and this thing, which I was not sure what it was at the time, but seemed to have raspberries and the definite possibility of chocolate.

You see, I took a picture of it because I knew that Google Goggles would notice the bar code and send me a link to the right web page: https://webshop.ppkbjelovar.com/products/cokoladakakaokrem_namazi-205?Artikli_page=8

I’ll let you translate it out of Croatian. It is gone now. Plus some more.

You know the moral of the story.