For some reason unknown to me — as the reasons for most things are — yesterday morning’s walk to the basketball gym was rife with discarded items that practically wrote their own captions. Here are mine; you’re welcome to send yours.
Honey… About the dog…
Whee! First-class flatbed from now on!
It should’ve set off warning bells when he insisted on hanging that stupid self-portrait in the living room.
Take this messenger job and shove it!
Do you think he’ll get it if I leave TWO behind?
Despite the 17 degree temps when we left in the morning, I went out to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Reserve with the intrepid Keith Michael in search of Snowy Owls, which Keith had seen out there last week. And look!
According to another birder we met out there, this one is a juvenile — you can tell because it’s not pure white. She — I don’t know how he knew, but he kept calling it “she” — was just snoozing on the marsh. The above photo’s a zoom-in; she was a dot from where we were and we wouldn’t have seen her except the guy had a massive camera on a tripod pointed right at her.
She’s the first Snowy Owl I’ve seen (yay!) and following the Urban Birder’s Owl Protocol, which I only learned about yesterday, I’m not supposed to say exactly where she was so she doesn’t get overwhelmed by gawkers while she’s trying to sleep, owls being nocturnal creatures and birders mostly diurnal ones. But she was at Jamaica Bay, so you intrepid birders, dress in your five thermal layers and get on out there!
One day to go in the year. One degree F, with windchill, at the river this morning. One dogwalker. One jogger. One bag lady, though she was bundled in three coats. One other person, like me, just walking. One seagull overhead.
Never have I seen my neighborhood so empty. The weather (it snowed yesterday), a lot of people taking this week off, and the fact that it’s Sunday, have combined for the winter quiet of an actual village, not the usual bustle of Greenwich Village. You could park a Mack truck on my block, even if you aren’t good at parking Mack trucks.
In this kind of sunny quiet I can feel hope for the future riding on the wind. So, despite all the disappointments of the past year, I send you all good wishes for 2018. Be kind, be productive, and #Resist!
…of two or three thousands miles may experience, at the moment of departure, a variety of emotions. He may feel excited, sentimental, anxious, carefree, heroic, roistering, picaresque, introspective, or practically anything else: but above all he must and will feel a fool.”
— Peter Fleming
She will, too. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you’ll recognize the quote. I use it whenever I take a big trip because it’s always accurate. I’m leaving in half an hour for the airport to go to Budapest and points east, circling back around to end in Prague. The cat, plants, and apartment have a great sitter; all my work is done; even the weather’s beautiful. And what a fool I feel!
But I’m going to the land of my people — not quite, we’re from Ukraine, but on this trip I’ll spend a lot of time walking the streets walked for centuries, until WWII, by Ashkenazi Jews, who are my extended people — and I’m going with some of my favorite traveling buddies, the gang I’ve been to western China and to Mongolia with. I expect once I really get there the whole fool/jitters/travel anxiety thing will melt away, and the trip will be great. Right now, I just want to stay home in my comfort zone, but that’s why you travel, isn’t it? When the comfort zone gets to comfortable, then you gotta go.
Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone. Or, if you insist on getting into trouble, try to enjoy it.
I leave you, and NYC, with a river photo. The next river I sit beside, if all goes well, will be the Danube.
Haven’t done one of these in awhile, but NYC, my home place, just keeps coming. A few recent wonderfulnesses:
In Queens, right outside the gates to a large cemetery, stand two commercial enterprises. One, unsurprisingly, sells gravestones. The other sells construction supplies: hard hats, safety cones, warning flags. This strikes me as an excellent choice of location on the part of the construction business. The subliminal message is so clear as to hardly be subliminal: If you don’t buy OUR products, you might have to buy THEIR products.
Also in Queens, a psychic has a storefront office next to the We Buy Gold store. This is for your convenience, in case the psychic gives you bad news?
And, finally: the guy in the shoe repair/keymaking shop on 44th St. has a plastic jug into which runs a flexible piece of hose containing the overflow from his air conditioning unit. I’m thinking, how courteous, to keep people’s shoes dry, preventing what would otherwise be a small but steady stream on the sidewalk. That may have been the original impulse; but I was there when he opened the shop yesterday morning. He took the hose out of the jug, crossed the sidewalk, and carefully watered the street tree in front of his shop.
I love New York.
Flatbush, Brooklyn, yesterday. No, I have no idea.
Windy, heavy snow and sleet when I was out this morning, but blizzard? Nah. Still, almost no one down by the river but me. One other photographer, two joggers, and one dogwalker: the big tattooed guy with the four little dachsunds. This is their foot/paw prints in the snow.
And this is the dogwalker with the dogs and the jogger. These are all 8:00 a.m. photos, by the way.
Water taxi dock.
Pier 46 pilaster.
Blue light with snow hat.
Curving pathway.
Cold in the apartment.
Warm in the just-out-of-the-dryer laundry basket.
Early this winter one of my neighbors hung a whole bunch of fake cardinals in a front-yard tree. Yesterday it snowed, and I actually burst out laughing on the street this morning.
For your gift-buying pleasure, including, of course, gifts for yourself. They’re not quite all here (kind of like me) — Accordions to come, give me a few days. But
and
And please note: Proceeds this year go to Planned Parenthood. So, buy away!
