My New Bike
Category: New York Story
The Sweetest Corner in the City
Downcast
Light at the End of the Tunnel
For Japan
So sad — the devastation today after the huge earthquake and tsunami. And so I offer just a little glimpse of hope.
I took these photos with my phone in April 2010 in and around Central Park.
I know the people of Japan love cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms remind us of how fleeting life and beauty are.
These pictures are my prayers and thoughts for the people of Japan.
Beauty and spring will soon come. For you. For me. For Japan.
Cherry blossoms are inevitable. So is hope in the face of destruction. 
Trash and Snow Removal
One of the inspiring things about the peaceful demonstrations in Egypt and now, Wisconsin, is that the organizers arranged clean-up crews. (How come I can’t do that in my own house?) When zillions of people gather, it’s important to clean up after yourselves.
This morning I woke to ANOTHER dumping of snow on My Beautiful New York. I wondered, Who is going to clean this mess? The New York City Sanitation Department. They must be really tired of looking at snow. The snow blankets
the garbage. The kids thought a pile of snow outside of our apartment building was garbage. When the snow melted last Friday, we discovered the pile was a motorcycle.
Clean up is not sexy, but it is an essential part of the process. You have to clean up before you can start anew. In Egypt, after 18 days, when the people decamped from Tehrir Square, I noticed in the photos that the people doing most of the cleaning were women. They swept the square. Maybe as democracy sweeps through the world like a winter storm, one democratizing outcome could be the the equal sharing of chores between the sexes.
Whether it’s New York City with another dumping of snow, a people’s movement in Wisconsin, or a democracy movement in Egypt, let’s not forget to clean up. And let’s not make only the women do it. Let’s be like the Sanitation Workers, equal opportunity cleaner uppers.
Retreat
This is where I am right now. I am on a retreat. Retreat means surrender. And I surrender.
New York City’s winter requires an antidote. How about a warm nurturing room on the third floor of a mansion? Forty-five minutes from the city, the retreat center at Stony Point, New York is totally worth it.
The air smells fresh. The snow is still white. The food is good. I am here for 24 hours.
I am in a house full of women. Some are a part of a Loving Hands knitting and crocheting group. And I am part of a group of nine women from Rutgers Church. In the afternoon, we sat in a circle in the meditation room. In the evening, we sat in front of the fire and laughed.
I love to retreat. I would like to surrender every week. Or every month. Or at least every season. I see the need to get away as restorative and necessary, especially for working mothers. The cost for 3 meals and a single room in the mansion is $115, but the result is sanity. It is not too high a price to pay.
http://www.stonypointcenter.org/
I find I can can thrive on the island of Manhattan so long as every once in a while I can go to Stony Point or Westport, New York or to Manchester, Vermont. Getting away makes going home manageable.
Dirty Drifts
The city snow will disappear this week and I’d like to say a fond farewell.
You hung on too long, my friend, you and your sooty piles, heaped next to the trash.
New York City is beautiful in the Spring and in the Fall. It is beautiful in the Winter right after the snow falls. There are sparkles in the moonlight then. But now, there are cigarette butts and doggy doo. And it’s really time for the snow to go.
I was in Vermont last week. There, the snow stays white.
I don’t want to move to Vermont. Yet I found comfort and beauty in snow that stayed pristine. There was something relaxing about being in a place that is not polluted. (I love that Vermont is just a few hours from NYC.)
I took this picture when cross country skiing at the Lincoln Family Home at Hildene, a grand home, (built on the backs of our immigrant ancestors), by Robert Todd Lincoln, who was president of Pullman Company. Most recently owned by an eccentric descendant of the great president, Ms. Beckwith, it is now a lovely cross country skiing destination with 416 of
Lincoln’s 500 acres still intact. Really lovely. http://www.hildene.org/
With every good bye I bid to one season, I have to remember a hello will follow. The daffodils will be the first, their little green sprouts, emerging. And the buds on trees, tightly wound, will emerge. The seasons are a miracle. Just as you can no longer live with one, the next comes waltzing (or skiing) in.
The Mayor’s Meeting Clock
I am a fan of productivity. Mayor Bloomberg is too. He’s installed big clocks in his open-air office at City Hall. The digital clock starts when the meeting begins. Like a cabby’s meter, the Mayor’s clock is running. It’s called a count-up (not count-down) clock. Time is money.
I am a fan of brevity and short meetings. I am the one in every meeting who will volunteer to pass out the papers. I can’t sit still for longer than an hour. (This week I was in a 4-hour meeting!)
Maybe we should consider the Mayor’s time clock. It’s worked so well for him that he’s installing them in a bunch of conference rooms in City Hall.
The Mayor too is a fan of the stand up meeting. So am I! Not only do I like chatting with my colleagues while leaning on their door frames, I like meeting coworkers in the elevator while traveling to the first floor — exceedingly productive! I LOVE the walking-down-the-hallway-together meeting.
When I am in a walk and talk meeting, I feel like I have an exciting career or am in a TV show, like ER or West Wing. I think good ideas come while you’re walking together — Not so much while you’re sitting across the table from someone.
Lately at lengthy meetings people bring their laptops and you can’t tell if they’re playing Solitaire, IM’ing their friend across the table, or actually taking notes. And what about the people who phone in to meetings? I always wonder What are they doing? Is it possible they’re still in their pajamas? (Damn those lucky telecommuters!)
I learned about the Mayor’s meeting timer from my friend who sent me the link via Facebook. (But, no, I was not checking FB during the 4-hour meeting!) Here was the article:
Bowling in Brooklyn
I ordered a beer. It came in a plastic cup from a bartender wearing a cumberbun. The Melody Lanes bowling alley is a place that time forgot.
See, the girls, a couple of their friends and I had gone out to Brooklyn by the Number Two train tonite. We met E. and W. at the Barnes and Noble on Court Street. E. drove through the Shlushpocalypse of Brooklyn to the bowling alley. In the car, we talked about kids’ ingratitude, unwritten books, blogs, plans to travel to France.
Right in front of Melody Lanes, there was a parking spot just waiting for us, as if we were rock stars. It looked crowded but we were at the front of the lane in no time. The woman behind the counter assigned us Lane 12. She reminded me of a beloved hall monitor from high school. Tough, but tender underneath. Brooklyn all the way.
We keyed our names into the electronic bowling screen. I chose my usual name Gorgeous. We girls enthusiastically cheered for one another if we ever managed to get a couple of pins down (and I’m talking the bumpers were up).
We ordered fries and nachos and burgers. Then I hit on the beer idea.
The bar was the highlight. Because the bartender, Pete, was schmoozing with someone. Just as I approached that irritation point, wondering, Is he ignoring me? There Pete was. Like he had ESP or something. It turns out Pete is very famous because there are 7 tips about Pete on Foursquare — the man is known for his cumberbun, his drink special and for being that “hilarious, eccentric, cursing bartender.”
The other highlight was on our way out, seeing a bunch of people dressed up like characters from The Big Lebowski, a movie I have never seen. But it looked good based on what the characters were wearing, especially the pregnant woman in the nude-colored body suit with the vines around her. She was Eve.
So that’s Saturday night in Brooklyn. None of us broke 100 (and again, we had bumpers!). I wish I had taken pictures to show you, but just imagine a 1950s bowling alley and then you’ve got the picture. http://www.notfortourists.com/LD.aspx/New-York/Nightlife/Melody-Lanes
100 Days of Poems and Pics 