I wouldn't have wasted my time on Trump, says Greta Thunberg

Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg said on Monday that talking to U.S. President Donald Trump at a United Nations summit on global warming would have been a waste of time since he would not have paid any attention.

Smart youngster. It is very encouraging to see a new generation of young activists. She is a prime example of why I think there is hope for this world of ours adults are doing so much to harm.

Fred P. Graham, Legal Affairs Reporter and Court TV Anchor, Dies at 88

I watched Fred Graham’s reports when watching CBS News was an ingrained ritual: I would not consider any other network as valid.

The son of a Tennessee preacher, Mr. Graham, a lawyer with a soft drawl, a habitual cheroot and the steady gaze of a Mississippi riverboat gambler, was a Yale, Vanderbilt and Oxford University scholar who went to Washington in 1963 as chief counsel to Senator Estes Kefauver’s subcommittee on constitutional amendments, then served two years as a special assistant to Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz.

After getting laid off by CBS in 1987, he wrote “Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman,” first published in 1990, on his two decades in broadcast journalism, in which he argued that network news programs had become “infotainment,” the equivalent of “a well-produced video version of a tabloid.” As Michael C. Janeway, then the dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, noted in a review for The Times Book Review, the title, “Happy Talk,” referred to “that mindless banter with which television anchors fill air time.”

It has only gotten worse. Anchors laugh and banter and comment, coo and smirk. News leads off with disasters or tragedies, aiming for ratings, and switches to actual news when there are no more plane crashes or murders left.

Arthur Singer Jr., Who Set the Stage for Public TV, Dies at 90

He played a key behind-the-scenes role in the Carnegie Commission report that led to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal funding.

Can one imagine the federal government funding public broadcasting today? Not me. Lindsay Graham, that paragon of mediocrity, wouldn’t allow it. Can one imagine there not being public broadcasting today? I shudder at the possibility.

His efforts came in the wake of a speech in 1961 by Newton N. Minow, the newly named Federal Communications Commission chairman, to a roomful of 2,000 television executives in Washington, in which he dismissed their product as a “vast wasteland.”

Big difference: today we pay for that drek.

In a typical day of broadcasting, Mr. Minow said, “You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”

How little has changed.

Factbox: Erdogan pushes 'crazy' Istanbul canal dream despite opposition

12/27/2019:

President Tayyip Erdogan has revived plans to dig a canal on the edge of Istanbul despite opposition from hundreds of petitioners and the city’s new mayor against the kind of mega project that has come to define Turkey’s economic boom and bust.

Erdogan is pursuing his dream of grandeur, enabled by the absence, nay, the withdrawal of US presence. That crazy man currently in 1600 Pennsylvania is doing great damage to the nation and our interests as he whips up hysteria among his base, in pursuit of his own dreams of grandeur.

An urban landscape

 

Early winter sunset.

Mirror images

 On the ride downstate, stopped in Drayton Grant Preserve; picture taken at 12.05pm:

Once back in Flushing, my car parked, took this picture at 3.07pm:

Subway buskers

Saw this duo on the subway platform at the 72nd Street station of the Q train, in Manhattan. They were great.

I told her I wish I were a record producer, I’d sign you to a contract. She said, so do we. I asked about her musical instrument: a bass banjo, their invention. They were great — of course I dropped a couple of bucks into their collection box. Moments like this are what make my city so great.

The past is still here

On the corner of 65th Street and First Avenue, in the borough of Manhattan

Two films

Hadn't seen School of Rock in years; held up pretty well. Batman Begins was fun.

The Best Obituary Ever, and the Wacky Funeral That Followed

Joe Heller always wanted to have the last laugh. So when he died at 82 on Sept. 8, his daughter Monique Heller sought to provide it by writing a paid obituary in the local paper describing her father’s inimitably irreverent and preposterous personality. Her humorous tribute was published — online and in print — last week in The Hartford Courant and immediately caught digital fire.

Mr. Heller  

The obituary listed achievements such as being a “consummate napper” and a regular browser of collectibles at the local dump. “There wasn’t a road, restaurant or friend’s house in Essex that he didn’t fall asleep on or in,” Ms. Heller wrote, adding that her father “left his family with a house full of crap, 300 pounds of birdseed and dead houseplants that they have no idea what to do with.”

When young men sought to pick his daughters up for a date, Mr. Heller would first run their license plates and check their vehicles for safety, including an inspection of how worn their tires were.

When suitors entered the home, he made sure to be cleaning one of his guns, and that his collection of shotguns and harpoons were clearly on display, Ms. Heller said.

On Friday morning, a Navy honor guard — long known as the Antique Veterans Organization because of its aging membership — delivered a rifle salute, played taps and performed a ceremonial flag-folding ceremony.

The honor guard’s commander, Joseph Barry, admitted that Mr. Heller would have “dropped a few F-bombs” in declaring the whole thing superfluous.

After the burial, Ms. Heller held the American flag presented in her father’s honor and said perhaps the obit had struck a chord with regular people.

“People like my dad are the backbone of this country,” she said, “and I think the world wants to hear their stories.’’

Spare us the theatrics

We could use a Speaker of his ilk.

Speaker Bercow, champion of Britain's parliament in clash with Johnson, bows out

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, champion of Britain’s parliament in its move to rein in Prime Minister Boris Johnson over Brexit, said on Monday he would stand down, issuing a warning to the government not to “degrade” parliament. 

TR lived here

30-year old pitcher made his MLB debut after 10 years in the minors and struck out his brother in his first game

http://www.businessinsider.com/video-brain-moran-strikes-out-brother-colin-moran-2019-9

Escape to America

The songwriter and singer gave hope to working-class boys in towns thousands of miles from New Jersey.

In the Britain of Thatcher and the fascist National Front, and again in the age of Boris and Bozo the Clown, Muslims are condemned for being different.

How Bruce Springsteen Unites the World

I should have felt despondent, but I didn’t care because I had a one-word escape plan: America. For the teenage me, America was not an actual place so much as it was an idea and ideal. I learned about America not through travel but from John Hughes and Martin Scorsese, from Studs Terkel and John Steinbeck and, most importantly, from Bruce Springsteen. 

The new Tadeusz Kościuszko Bridge

Happy Birthday, to me.

 Even Google remembered:

School's open

“Nothing like capitalism to ruin a perfectly nice summer vacation.”

College Point

Today was a beautiful Wednesday, and I decided to get lunch and go to MacNeil Park. Good decision, if I say so myself.

After picking up my online order, I drove over to College Point, parked by the park, and walked up to the promontory overlooking the Long Island Sound (or perhaps the East River). I ate my delicious red Thai curry, and washed it down with a bit of Pellegrino Limonata; gourmet dining al fresco.

Nearby there's a marker I remembered from years back:

US Coast Geodesic Survey, it reads. From that point I looked west:

Once I could see the Twin Towers from that vantage point, then they were missing; now a huge towers stands nearby.

LaGuardia Airport is right across Flushing Bay:

And on the water there are always craft; today I saw jet skis and boats of different sizes:

 Cops on the water, small boats on the water, and large boats, too.

And I had a visitor:

Poppenhusen

College Point is a weird neighborhood — not commenting on the denizens, but its geography. It is stuck way out there in a far northern corner of Queens
It is quite isolated, too, cut off from the rest of the borough's northeastern by I-678, the Whitestone Expressway, and served only by an unreliable bus line, the Q15, making cars essential. Its streets are uniformly very narrow, its houses small. It does have  MacNeil Park, a great greensward abutting the East River, according to one map, though I think of that water as Long Island Sound. From a promontory in the park there is a great view of Manhattan (great being relative; I remember the weekend of September 8-9, 2001, we went to the park and saw the Twin Towers, which were tragically missing the next time we went to MacNeil Park, soon after 9/11 —that has remained with me all these years).


Today I went to the Walgreen's in College Point to get a shingles shot. It is on the corner of 14th Avenue and College Point Boulevard; that is what I think of as the center of the neighborhood. I parked on 123rd Street, and went for my shot. The process was easy enough.

After, I went for a walk in the neighborhood. Today wasn't anywhere near the 90º plus temperatures of the last few days, though some humidity remained. I walked along College Point Boulevard, and soon came upon Poppenhusen Park.

To the right are a few benches, a rarity: public seating not in a park (alas, they abut College Point Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare). Inside the park stands a statue of College Point's benefactor.

Conrad Poppenhusen was a German immigrant who manufactured whale bone goods, before moving onto producing hard rubber goods (licensed by Charles Goodyear). As I recall, though I can not find that information. Poppenhusen made another fortune manufacturing hard rubber butons for Union soldiers during the Civil War.


College Point was named after  St. Paul's College, a seminary founded in 1835 by the Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg.The college closed around 1850. When Conrad Poppenhusen arrived in 1854 he was already a prosperous manufacturer in Brooklyn of hard rubber goods and expanded his operation to this small farming community. College Point became a factory town primarily for his workers, most of them also German immigrants, and the tycoon became a philanthropist, contributing to churches, libraries, and the Poppenhusen Institute, an educational beacon of College Point. Poppenhusen is responsible for the first free kindergarten in America. He connected College Point to Flushing by the Flushing and North Side Railroad, later called Whitestone Branch. A monument on College Point Boulevard, one of the main streets in College Point, stands testament to Poppenhusen. College Point became a center for breweries and day trip resorts, and in the 1920s shifted towards the manufacturing of airplane parts.

Despite its geographic isolation and poor transportation options, the neighborhood participates in the  current real estate boom. I walked past a small house by 5th Avenue and College Point Boulevard which is listed for $750,000. I was amazed to see that number/

Weird weather

After three days of 90º plus temperatures and high humidity, thundershowers arrived Sunday night, but in a very strange way. At 11.34 I took this picture of the weather app on my phone:

85º in Flushing, 82º in Cartagena -- and 73º in New York. 70s never reached Flushing.

Cher

Over the weekend I watched two old favorite films, both with Cher in the lead role. Moonstruck is vintage. Nicolas Cage in his first big role, before he got to be famous, overplays it a bit, but no one can outshine her.

Another great performance by Cher. Oh, and I love Sam Eliot and his moustache. Roger Ebert, of course, put it well:

Movies don't often grab us as quickly as "Mask" does. The story of Rocky and Rusty is absorbing from the very first, maybe because the movie doesn't waste a lot of time wringing its hands over Rocky's fate, "Mask" lands on its feet, running. The director, Peter Bogdanovich, moves directly to the center of Rocky's life - mother, his baseball cards, his cocky bravado, his growing awareness of girls. Bogdanovich handles "Mask" a lot differently than a made-for-TV movie would have, with TVs disease of the week approach. This isn't the story of a disease, but the story of some people.
And the most extraordinary person in the movie, surprisingly, is not Rocky, but his mother. 

Cher, on the other hand, makes Rusty Dennis into one of the most interesting movie characters in a long time. She is up front about her lifestyle, and when her son protests about her drinking and drugging, she tells him to butt out of her business. She rides with the motorcycle gang, but is growing unhappy with her promiscuity, and is relieved when the guy she really loves (Sam Elliott) comes back from a trip and moves in. She is also finally able to clean up her act, and stop drinking and using, after Rocky asks her to; she loves him that much.

The version I saw has a lot of Springsteen songs, not Bob Seeger songs, as the original theatrical release had. Can't ever go wrong with the Boss.

Breakfast

Sweet Sue's restaurant on Main Street in Phoenicia makes world-class pancakes. We've been going to Sue's for thirty years. The coffee remains great (strong, but far better than the other stuff baristas serve). We sat outside in the shade of a table umbrella and enjoyed a favorite breakfast: peach pancakes and huevos rancheros.

 The potatoes were nicely done, the refried beans perfectly spiced, the egg just right. I tried replicating the breakfast the next morning with the leftover pancake, but didn't come close to making it as good (but I still enjoyed it):

A handful of films and a musical disc for an extended stay in the Catskills:

First up, recordings of Oscar Pettiford in Denmark. Mr. Pettiford was a superb double bassist who also played the cello (I can't think of any other jazz musician who played the cello; Yo Yo Ma bows it, and Pettiford picked it). Years ago I found recordings of Bud Powell in Paris on YouTube, and one was of Pettiford's song Blues in the Closet, which quickly became a favorite. In this album Pettiford performed with Scandinavian musisicans, as well as with American tenor sax man Stan Getz.

I found an article, online of course, from the UK's Guardian reviewing the recording:

In the late 1950s, Copenhagen was second only to Paris as a European jazz hot spot, and American bassist Oscar Pettiford was its leading light. These 17 tracks reveal what a lively and diverse scene the mixture of US expats and Scandinavian musicians had created. Prominent among the latter was Swedish pianist Jan Johansson, whose sensitive blend of jazz and local folk music was decades ahead of today’s distinctive and widely accepted north European sounds. The most famous temporary expat was Stan Getz, who can be heard here on three numbers, recorded live, along with both Pettiford and Johansson. Listen out, too, for vibraphonist Louis Hjulmand and drummer Joe Harris. A fascinating selection from a brief but exciting time.

Films:
The man who knew Infinity is a wonderful character-driven drama which investigates mathematical genius and racial intolerance, make that racism. Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons are wonderful.

Frida I remember seeing years ago, and enjoying immensely. After watching half an hour I realized I was beginning to pick it apart too much, and running the danger of spoiling a great memory. I turned it off.

An officer and a gentleman is a little dated, but Gere and Winger and Gossett are magnificent (I took it because I wanted to see another Robert Loggia film; he's in this films for the first few minutes only).

Rent is always great.

If Beale Street could talk I am not so sure about; the acting was wonderful.

I am a liberal, and I love the USA.

In her 3 July 2019 NY Times column, The joys of raising first-generation Americans, Jessie Kanzer chooses to disparage liberals. I dislike that, and wrote a letter to the Times about it. I have a lot to say about such nonsense.

She subtitles her essay: I wonder whether my liberal neighbors know how fortunate we are. Well, my dear, this liberal does. I love this country; it gave my immigrant family the freedom to fail and to succeed. As it did your family. I am willing to bet your liberal neighbors love this country as much as you and I do.

Why do people, usually political conservatives, believe liberals hate America?

We liberals criticize people who want to shut the door behind them, refusing to give others the same chance at the American Dream their ancestors got. A hundred years ago it was the Irish, Germans, Italians, the Chinese who were criticized for being unworthy of becoming Americans. Half a century later it was Eastern European Jews. Now it’s poor Central Americans.

They’re criminals, some say. They’re lazy, they want to sponge off the system, they’re uncouth, low-class slobs who should go back to where they came from. It was said of the Irish — signs in store windows said no dogs or Irish allowed; political correctness (mostly) disallows that same hatred being expressed too openly. These days social media provides an outlet for spewing such rancor.

Well, my dear, they want to work. They don’t want a free ride. They’re escaping brutality at home, corrupt governments that sponge off US foreign aid, and lack of opportunity for themselves and a decent future for their children. Salvadorans and Peruvians, Mexicans and Hondurans, they are clamoring for freedom and opportunity. They are willing to do work no one else in our society will deign to do: they pluck chickens and pick tomatoes, harvest lettuce and fruit and milk cows, all for pay no one else will accept, low enough so a gallon of milk, a head of lettuce, a pint of strawberries and a chicken cost little. Just how do you think, my dear, that a head of lettuce costs but a buck?

I’m not sure they can understand what it’s like to live without freedom. They didn’t receive warnings from the KGB, the precursor to imprisonment, writes Ms. Kanzer of her liberal neighbors. Well, no, surely they didn’t, nor did her conservative neighbors. So why single out liberals?

Do you actually think your conservative neighbors were visited by the KGB? The FBI? Were their relatives sent to the gulag? Please.

4th of July, 2019

Ms. Jessie Kanzer makes good points in her column. Freedom to choose is wonderful, in effect a secular miracle.

I’m an immigrant, long a U.S. citizen. I’m a liberal, too, and proud to be both. I’m living the American dream because I’m secure and my children are good citizens who have chosen their careers because of their passions, not a government or political party directive.

Liberals despair seeing people who are fleeing their homelands to chase the American dream treated with cruelty and hatred. We want them to be safe, to have a chance to raise their children in secure freedom. We welcome their aspirations to become U.S. citizens, to work and to contribute to this great nation.

We despair seeing buffoons and haters disparage immigrants as criminals. We fear that inequality and intolerance are becoming acceptable values. We dread what is being done to our wonderful country in the name of fake patriotism.

Yet we are optimistic, because we are Americans. Liberals believe in the inherent goodness of people. We are tolerant. We love humanity. We love our country. We know how fortunate we are to live in this great nation. We believe in diversity, and we welcome immigrants to work with us to make the United States of America a yet greater nation.

And we love that Lady in New York harbor who has welcomed immigrants for a century and a half with the promise of freedom.

Salomon Weir

New York

We liberals love America. You, Ms. Kanzer, should understand that criticizing the government is an  inherent right guaranteed to Americans in our Constitution. Being critical of government policy isn’t expressing hatred of our nation, it is exercising the very freedom you say you value so much.

A taxidermist and a delicatessen

Traffic is the byword. In fact, it seems to be an area-wide affliction. Not one of the joys of living in New York, but a condition. Worse, depending on the time of day, or not as bad, if luck smiles on one.

Today I set out on an afternoon trip into central Queens. In fact, I went to Middle Village. I set out this hot afternoon, first, to my local QBPL branch, Mitchell Linden, to return a book and pick up three others; I also printed an article I look forward to reading again and again, In the Hudson Valley, a Drive Back in Time.

Ah, yes, the Hudson Valley and history. Suits me fine.

I avoided taking the Van Wyck Expressway, which my maps app showed in red: heavy traffic. But New York ain't easy; I took College Point Boulevard, and ran into traffic anyway.

Remember, that's Wyck as in like, not as in wick.

I know the ways and byways some, and with that app, I can weave and find a different way; not to avoid traffic, nor to outfox it, which are impossibilities, but to mitigate it. Not getting onto the highway, I took something called the Meadow Lake Road West — not that there's a street sign so identifying it, but the online map does — dodged that heavy traffic crawling on the Van Wyck, waited three traffic light changes, and turned right onto Jewel Avenue (well, 69th Road). Crossing Queens Boulevard, the street name changes to Yellowstone Boulevard, and the character of the architecture changes from houses to large apartment buildings, stacked one after another.

Before reaching Woodhaven Boulevard, I veered left onto Selfridge Street, and stopped at the Ian Maclennan Garden in Pebblestone Triangle (bounded by Selfridge, Manse Street and 68th Avenue), a pleasant oasis which afforded my a respite in a spot of shade.

Turning onto Metropolitan Avenue, I headed west, past Woodhaven Boulevard, with parts of St. John's Cemetery on each side (somewhere in there, John Gotti is buried, he who once was known as the Teflon Don). Turning onto 73rd Place, I hit the jackpot: a parking spot in the shade (my car thermometer read 90º and the sun was hot).

A local dance company.

Getting to be lunchtime, I looked for the local public library; I needed a water closet and to sit a few minutes and use the public wifi.

Where is it? To the left, an industrial building; straight ahead, a private building advising people there is no parking for the library. Yet, off to the side, there it is:

 That narrow entrance gives way to a deep, long library; its air conditioning was quite welcome.

Reflecting the neighborhood demographics, as libraries do, this little curio:

Mary Higgins Clark in German.

After lunch, I walked over to All Faiths Cemetery. It is not well maintained. I saw mausoleums dated 1903, and graves from earlier, as I have in other cemeteries, but this one was sadly neglected. Its interesting feature are its rolling hills.

On my walk back to my car, I caught sight of this store; I could not believe was seeing it:

Under its canopy, a still discernible sign reads Delicatessen. The possibilities made me shudder. It was quite a hot day. But I know I saw that.

Two QBPL branches, and a cemetery, of course

On a humid Friday I set out to find a book by Molly O'Neill, who, alas, died last Sunday. I saw her obit in the NY Times this morning.

Ms. O’Neill ushered in an era of food writing in the 1990s that was as much about journalism as deliciousness, built on the work of writers like M. F. K. Fisher, Richard Olney, Elizabeth David and Craig Claiborne, the former food editor of The New York Times. “I wanted to be all of them,” she wrote in 2003, “with a slice of Woodward and Bernstein on the side.”

I well remember her, and remember reading and enjoying her writing. Then time passed, and I lost track of her. She moved onto other endeavors, and I started watching food shows on television.

With American food writing today including many voices and cultures, it is easy to forget that Ms. O’Neill was doing so long before the globe-trotting Anthony Bourdain and the Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold were household names, at least in food-centric households. “This is exactly what Tony Bourdain was doing, and nobody gave her any credit for it,” said Ruth Reichl, the author and former Times restaurant critic.

I don't know how she was personally, if she had Bourdain's extroverted personality, or whether she appeared on the food scene early, and Gold and Bourdain reaped the glory of her pioneering work — or if her being a woman and those two and others being men had anything to do with things, but it does dangle there in the ether.

I went onto the QBPL website, and searched for her The New York Cookbook, but its three copies were (already) reserved. I found her One big table at a couple of QBPL branches, including Briarwood. There I decided to go.

Briarwood is a weird neighborhood; well, its location (though I suppose Briarwood residents mightn't think so). It's on the southern end of Main Street, which in downtown Flushing is a big, busy thoroughfare. It's right off Queens Boulevard, up the block from the County courthouse, with the Van Wyck Expressway right there (remember, that's Wyck as in like, not as in wick).

Spaghetti of highways; in the afternoon traffic abounds — if you were to look at traffic on a map of central Queens, there'd be a lot of red. I was in some of that, on the Van Wyck and on Union Turnpike on the way to the library. I've been in traffic other times: there is a perpetual construction project to widen the highways, which seems a losing proposition, though I do  see some progress (after fifteen years, and more).

I found a parking spot on Queens Boulevard, across the QB from the Library, and crossed that thoroughfare carefully (this is the same Queens Boulevard which further west has six lanes in each direction, and is considered one of the most dangerous streets in New York City (not just in the outer boroughs, but in all the boroughs).

85-12 Main St, Briarwood, NY 11435, constructed in 1957. I was there at 2.45 in the afternoon. Busy. Lots of people at the computers. I used my QBPL app to find the Dewey Decimal number of Molly's book (641.5097 O), took it from the shelf (carefully; it weighs in at 846 pages), and perused it for a while.

She was 66, my age. Twenty five years ago the comic George Burns used to joke most people my age are dead, a line which always got a laugh. Some times the laugh was wistful; it is more so now. 66 seems young. Too young, anyway.

After some time, and many vegetable recipes, I decided it was time for me to leave and get lunch. Ah, modern times: I searched Yelp, and found an entry for a food cart mere yards away from the library. I am a fan of street food, yet I wondered, for a long moment, if that would be my choice today. I decided that, yes, it would.

There it sat, beyond the entrance to the E and F trains of the IND line (do people still refer to IND and IRT? Yeah, I think so). I ordered a lamb gyro. I saw the man inside the cart grab a pita and toss it on the grill, heard him chopping at the grill, and smelled and saw the spicy meat I would get if I'd ordered a plate, but I stuck with my choice. Yes, salad, I said, please. Yes, sauce, and some spicy sauce, too, and a bit more. Five bucks, a bottle of water included.

I walked across Queens Boulevard (yes, carefully), and sat at a public space. There is a dearth of public seating, benches where one can sit down and have a snack or a quick meal, and linger for a while, and not just in New York. Why is that?

In this spot there were benches and what I suppose are metal sculptures, which are quite ugly, as well as litter: plastic bags with paper wrappers, an empty beer bottle, empty coffee cups filled with (I suppose) rainwater, all of which in part answer my above query: why aren't there public spaces where one can sit and linger? Because people are slobs, expect someone else to clean up their crap, and the city doesn't have the money to spend on public amenities. People are the same way on the road: they do not let another driver go first, rush to be ahead, cut in line, and behave piggishly.

Yet I enjoyed my food. The lamb was delicious, chunks of meat nicely cooked; the tomatoes were tasty, a deep red and juicy, and the sauces were an amalgam of goodness, just spicy enough plus a bit more. Thoughtfully, the man in the cart had given me a big handful of napkins, and I needed them. Pita is the perfect bread for this juicy goodness, too.

Queens at one of its best. Street food after a visit to the public library, outdoor seating, green all around me. Across Queens Boulevard, parkland, to my left, Maple Grove Cemetery. A sunny day, rain finally ended, getting warm, summer started.

I dropped Molly's tome in my car, and walked into Maple Grove. I saw two names I recognized when I scanned a QR code of one of its signs: Jimmy Rushing, the jazz singer, and John Sutphin, a Queens man after whom Sutphin Boulevard is named. I sat for a bit, and headed out. This little critter was enjoying the Queens afternoon's offerings:

Stopping at a supermarket at the corner of Main Street and Union Turnpike, I was in a different neighborhood then, away from Kew Gardens and Briarwood, into the fringes of Kew Gardens Hills. I think the name is a bit of an affectation, but I don't live there. Over the last twenty years the neighborhood has become heavily Orthodox Jewish, Modern Orthodox.

I parked and went into the QBPL branch. Approaching it, I was surprised:

When I was in Library School, in one class we were given an assignment to visit a local library (we define what local meant), and speak to a librarian about the library's issues. I chose the Kew Gardens Hills branch of QBPL because it was close to Queens College and I knew the neighborhood (as few classmates, if any, did). The branch was utterly different then, smaller, far more modest, perhaps dowdy. Today's library is quite different. I'll leave it at that for now. But it is worth considering, and investigating, why certain libraries are remodeled or replaced, while others aren't.

Laurelton QBPL

On a rainy day I headed to southeast Queens, had a delicious Jamaican lunch (jerk chicken, though with a sweet sauce; sweet was a surprise, and a bit much), then went to the Laurelton branch of the Queens Borough Public Library.

Built in 1953, it stands on a side street, just south of Merrick Boulevard. That was 66 years ago, a long time back. Surely the community could use a new library. WHy there isn't one is a question I can not answer.

Inside. it is bright, a large, open room with a couple of subdivisions. It seemed well used. A librarian and a clerk were talking to each other, and theirs were the loudest voices in the room.

I sat for a good half hour and leafed through a couple of print newspapers, rare as that is these digital days, while outside waves of rain fell. I could hear the rain hitting the windows. It was quite very pleasant to sit in the dry indoors and read.

Libraries remain oases.

Hair and beards

Three weeks ago I happened upon the movie Gettysburg, and decided to watch the first hour. Well, the movie is about three and a half hours long, and once I started watching it I wanted to finish it. I didn't that night, but I did get it from QBPL, and watched the last two hours.

Tom Berenger and Jeff Daniels were great. Martin Sheen had the thankless task of playing an idealized Robert Lee. All three of them, and many others, suffered from having to wear ridiculous hair on their heads and faces. I mean, my goodness, Hollywood can create alternate universes and impressive flying objects, blue beings and all sorts of superheroes with impressive skill sets and great costumes, but a decent beard? Apparently not.

The film is from 1993. The dialogue is from a plethora of books imagined to know what was said in 1863. It doesn't hold up very well. Of course it's my opinion; this is my blog. Lee is portrayed as some sort of spiritualist, and seems ridiculous. I do believe I read and/or heard every line of his dialogue in my years as a Civil War buff.

Robert E. Lee was a traitor to his country. So were Longstreet and Hill and Hood. At least Longstreet had the good sense to reform himself. Of course, that made him a traitor to the people who continued to believe in the purity of their cause: upholding slavery and feudalism under the guide of states rights.

We should move onto the XXIst century, all of us. Of course, some don't agree. They think Jefferson Davis was a patriot, some do. Factually, they're wrong. But one can take a horse to water ...

Spring cinema, and travel

A weekend's worth of library materials from the Phoenicia Lib:

Beginning to research our later autumn-early winter trip to Colombia: intended destinations are Cartagena and Barranquilla. We ain't Moon people, but information is important; that book gave me a lot of information.

The Old Man & the Gun wasn't worth making, and if anyone other then Robert Redford pitched that turkey I can't imagine that dud being made. I kept thinking and saying if this thing doesn't improve in ten more minutes, forget it. I turned it off after an hour, and rue the wasted time. I ain't getting any younger, and that film was a waste of my time.

The Man who never was I first watched several years ago, and enjoyed, or remembered so (perhaps I thought I remembered so). I found it indirectly, having read a novel by David Ignatius (a brilliant reporter and excellent writer); his epigram quoted, I believe, a phrase by (book was Body of Lies, which I found easily with a web search) Ewen Montagu. Soem memories are best left undisturbed.

Independence Day is from 1996, when women still wore big shoulder pads in their jackets. It's 2½ hours long, about an hour longer than it should've been. Its hokey dialogue would get a film student reprimanded by an instructor tired of hearing clichés and truisms. I finished it, and didn't rue it.

I didn't watch First Man; this is the second time I've taken it out of the library and not watched it. I think I detect a pattern.

East Elmhurst QBPL

Went looking for another Queens Library branch, and it was closed. At least I got lunch, and I found yet one more street named after a rather obscure Civil War general.

Tenochititlan is a little bodega on Astoria Boulevard; I'd seen its canopy some weeks ago, and made a point of going back to check it. I ordered a taco and a quesadilla. This is, for lack of a better term, real Mexican food, not Taco Bell. They might even have pressed the tortilla from masa right then. I was already hungry, and got a little impatient, but bided my time. That was a wise decision; it was food waiting for: the taco was pretty good, the quesadilla superb. Eight bucks for both.

 I parked on the north side of Astoria Boulevard, not far from the street named for General Andrew Atkinson (A.A.) Humphreys. Not a major figure, but remembered. Noted, anyway.

I went to the QBPL branch, even knowing it was closed (why remains a mystery)

I had wanted to visit the Trolley Car Triangle, but didn't: rush hour was creeping up, schools were about to let out, and I skipped it. I did get this picture (no, I wasn't driving; I had stopped for a red light).

Why this neighborhood is named East Elmhurst remains a mystery. I shall endeavor to solve that.

Woodside

The 7 train runs along and over Roosevelt Avenue in north-central Queens. Small shops line the street from Corona to Sunnyside (at which point the Avenue disappears, to reappear on the other side of Queens Boulevard as Greenpoint Avenue, bound for Brooklyn).

 At 53rd Street, where there is more light under the street as Roosevelt is wider than the elevated tracks (notice the sunshine on the sidewalk), there's a Peruvian-Mexican grocery.

Continuing east (I was riding the Q32 bus), there's Peking BBQ, a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant; next to it is Rico Pan, a bakery & cafeteria (probably Colombian), and (just visible) The beerkeeper

On east,not very clear because of the raindrops on the bus window, Tibet Kitchen (and Friends Corner Cafe).

I got off the bus at 82nd Street, bought a couple of empanadas and a bottle of cold water, and found a place to sit for a few minutes. Done, I walked up to the 82nd Street station, to catch a 7 train back to Flushing.

When I watch las noticias locales, I often see commercials for Ginarte (lawyers).

 And this is an urban scape, from the platform of the train station:

Back on Main Street I went to Xi'an Famous foods, got a couple of snacks (great food, from easter China; great value), and ambled back home. Poor GW, not even a plaque. Steinbeck has a plaque, Sherman a gilded statue and George Washington? zilch. Well, a bridge, yeah, but where he actually lived? Nuthin'