One day in the life: Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan

Being retired means not being in a hurry, to go anywhere, to get any place. Or so the theory goes. Today I headed to Brooklyn to get a reduced-fare Metrocard and to activate my Brooklyn Public Library card. As an experienced subway rider, and with the help of online tools such as the MTA website's maps, I knew that I could get to Brooklyn without going through Manhattan (a rarity; I do believe every single subway line, save one, traverses it): take the G train.

Setting out around midday, I headed down to the Flushing Main Street station, a walk I have taken thousands of times (when working in Manhattan, I preferred to walk to the subway, rather than wait for a crowded bus, in both directions, unless it was raining or freezing cold). Riding an escalator deep underground, I swiped my Metrocard and got on a local (at that time of day, only locals run; express trains run during morning and evening rush hours).

In a few minutes the train doors closed, announcements were made, and the train moved out of the station. Just outside the tunnel, it stopped. I thought nothing much of it; trains do that all the time. Soon it moved, reached Willets Point-Mets, then lurched toward 111th Street, then 103rd, and then Junction Boulevard. I know those names by heart. I concentrated on reading my book, A time of gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor (914.0455 F), a wonderful travelogue.

Crawling out of Junction, the train stopped. The stop became a delay. That made me look up and around, just as the conductor announced we were being delayed because of construction ahead. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder. Then the train moved, and reached the next station. That sequence was repeated, and as the train crawled out of 82nd Street station I considered the possibility of getting off at the next station, 74th Street, walking down to catch the E train, and taking that line to the G train.

It was then I realized I was annoyed with the delay. I'm not supposed to get annoyed about such trivialities any longer, now that I'm retired. But I'm a New Yorker, I rode the subway for decades, and grumbling is ingrained in my system.

Bah, I wouldn't switch; the time it took me to walk down to the E might be equal to the extra time it would take the 7 train to reach Court Square station, and I might have to stand on the E; I was already comfortably ensconced in a seat on the 7. The train left 74th Street in good order, and resumed its normal speed. My calculation had worked in my favor. Score one for the intrepid traveler.

The connection between the 7 and the G is one I had never taken before. One, I got off at that station (which used to be called Courthouse Square; its diminutive is perhaps meant to connote modernity) not more than a handful of times in my life. Two, I have ridden on the G train as few times. It was fun to take it, and pleasing: the New York City subway system is largely in bad shape, dirty, inconvenient and a pain in the ass. To see progress is heartwarming.

I got on a G train which might have been waiting for me; it wasn't, but it was crowded and left soon thereafter. I was about to sit down and heard a woman chattering on her cellphone; I found another seat several yards away (and when I sat down there I still could hear her voice). One other stop in Queens, and then it ducked under Newtown Creek and hurtled toward Greenpoint Avenue. Nassau, Lorimer, Metropolitan (the same avenue as in Queens); eventually it reached my destination, the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station (ceremonially opened by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia on April 9, 1936; it doesn't look that good any more).

With the aid of the maps app on my iPhone, I found my way to Livingston Street, and knew to turn left; without such an aid and my sense of direction surely I would've turned right. (Starting at Schermerhorn, I had turned right on Bond Street, where I should've turned left.) Going along Livingston, I saw a combination of old and new buildings. Sidewalks were crowded, traffic steady. Not quite cacophonous, the afternoon was noisy. I might say urban buzz, but it was louder.

The address of this building is 422 Fulton; I was seeing its back. It is a 12 story masonry special condominium constructed in 1920. It houses Macy's, among other tenants (it's the old A&S, a department store I remember, which is long gone, swallowed up by, as I recall, the parent company of Macy's. A&S stood for Abraham and Straus; Isidor Straus and his wife Ida went down with the Titanic, and a mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery memorializes them).

Other old buildings abound; interspersed among them, new ones are sprouting. Construction seems to be everywhere; it is difficult to believe the industry isn't booming. In contrast, I remember seeing a small handful of cranes when we were in Cuba in April of 2017. I daresay there were more cranes working in a half-dozen block area in Brooklyn this day (same can be said for Flushing, Queens) than I saw in Havana.

New building don't use brick, and have very little style. Minimalism is fine, but much modern architecture is simply ugly.

Reaching 110 Livingston, after crossing Boerum Place, I saw it was a condominium building, and not my destination. Checking my paperwork, I realized I wanted 130, not 110, so I went back outside, crossed Boerum again, and went inside 130 Livingston.

Turns out that is not where I was supposed to go for the Metrocard. 130 Livingston is the mailing address for such transactions. The working office is at 3 Stone Street in Manhattan.

Say again?

Yes, Manhattan. The security guard at 130 Livingston was very nice and very helpful. Just one stop on the 4 or 5 train, he said. And he gave me a map.
 

Easy. Take a train one stop — downtown Brooklyn is directly underneath lower Manhattan —and cross Broadway, turn right, and left on Stone, and there it is.

Stone Street is one block long, running between Broadway and Broad Street (can a street one block long run?).

Question is, of course, why does 130 Livingston have maps of where one should go for the Metrocard? Because, the obvious answer is, many people go to 130 Livingston instead of 3 Stone.

Another question: why aren't people directed to 3 Stone in the first place? Ah, the secrets of life can not be simply revealed to everyone.

It was fairly easy to get my business completed, and didn't take very long. I was given a number, waited for some few minutes, was called up to a counter (the NYCT workers sat behind very thick glass, perhaps bulletproof, a symptom of our society's vagaries), managed to hear the woman behind the glass talk to me over the loud conversation the customer next to me was having with someone over the phone (not a cellphone, but a landline a woman behind the thick glass had given her), had my picture taken, sat again and was called up to a different window to be given my temporary reduced-fare card by a very nice gentleman who waited for a loud conversation next to us to quiet down so he could speak in a civilized tone (I did like him). I thanked him, thanked the woman who had first helped me, went outside, back to Broadway, couldn't get into the bathroom in the nearby Starbucks, went into the Bowling Green station, loaded twenty bucks into my new Metrocard and used it to get back into the IRT station, catching a number 5 train back to Brooklyn's Borough Hall station.

Again using my maps app, I found the nearest Brooklyn Public Library, which happens to be the Brooklyn Heights branch. As I walked along Remsen Street (a street but five blocks long) I noticed a sudden change in the noise level and character of the neighborhood; I had clearly entered a completely different place: no clamoring traffic, no loud pedestrians, parents walking with young children, brownstones and not tall buildings. Brooklyn Heights announced itself.

 From across the street I could not make out the legend on those plaques on either side of the front door so I walked over, and read Brooklyn Ear Association. Nice — wait a minute; ear? No, not ear, but bar, Bar Association.

Why would there be an ear association? What do I know? I was in Brooklyn, and I'm a Queens boy. Even in my home borough there are some unusual places and institutions. New York City is huge and never ceases to amaze me. So, sure an ear association could exist. It did seem weird, though.

On I went, to the library. I found it in a brownstone the next block over. I walked in — and it was tiny. Ain't Brooklyn Heights supposed to be posh? For a long moment I felt nonplussed (love that word). Then I realized the library was crowded, and loud.

Over the last several years that I worked as a public librarian, my library became increasingly loud. Back in 2005, when I went to library school, to get my Master's degree in Library Science (oh, indeed, librarians have an advanced degree, a fact which surprises more people than it should), one of the bywords was there is no shushing in libraries. We were adapting to a changing society, a good thing. Yet the change in acceptable behavior has been significant: cellphones and coffee cups became de rigueur, loud conversation an assumed right, eating equally so. What I saw, increasingly as time passed, was that people at the library defined their own standards; if they considered it appropriate, it became acceptable, even in the eyes of those whom, given external evidence, one might assume adhered to stringent standards.

I didn't always like the new normal, but I adapted. I never wanted the library to be a monastery, yet matters seemed to be swinging to the opposite extreme. I remember once, when I was in Library School at Queens College (an excellent example of public education), I went to study in its library. Out of the several floors of the building, two were designated quiet floors; the others weren't so designated but they were noisy floors. I went to a quiet floor. It wasn't. All around me students were having conversations, some in exuberant tones: read loud. I put up with it for a bit, then got fed up and asked a young man to lower his volume. He didn't appreciate the suggestion. But another youngster took great exception to my request, challenged me, inched to closer to me, and dropped his backpack in a challenging manner. I could not believe it: I was being challenged to a duel for asking someone to be quiet in a quiet floor, and the challenger wasn't even the one I asked. Go figure.

Yes, Brooklyn Heights. Turns out, I learned from doing a bit of research, the building I visited isn't the real home of this BPL branch, but temporary quarters. A complex set of factors enter into that equation, including politics and finances: mix people and money, toss in a dollop of status and drop in a helping of ambition, and it gets to be rather a mess. Anyway, I'm a visitor from Queens.

Small space, many people, loud conversations. Reminded me of the subway, so I felt at home. I went up to the desk, patiently waiting for my turn — and a preteen cut in front of me. Hey, I'm retired; I'm in no hurry; I let it go. A nice librarian asked if he could help me; I told him I wanted to activate my BPL card, but I had waited longer than the 30 days specified in the letter I'd received three months earlier, when I applied for the card. He took me over to a computer, and showed me a form to fill out and where to press send when I completed the form. I did so, went back to the desk — and the same preteen cut in front of me again. I well know when one is twelve the subject at hand seems the most important matter in the world (I'm quite a few years older than 12, yet I sometimes have that very same feeling), so I waited. Another man at the desk helped me, and within a few minutes I was a spanking-new, proud holder of a Brooklyn Public Library card, with all the rights and responsibilities thereby included.

I headed on. By now it was four in the afternoon. A light rain had begun to fall. Traffic had thickened in the streets and on the sidewalks. Rush hour had begun. Getting a seat on the train home was now questionable. Yet I was in Brooklyn, surrounded by grand buildings. And what was the hurry? If I had to stand on the train, so what? Well, I wasn't happy about the prospect, but, hey, I had to make time for a couple of pictures.

Brooklyn Borough Hall was completed in 1848, and was city hall when Brooklyn was a city. The land on which it sits was donated by the Remsen and Pierrepont families. Remsen I had just been on; Pierrepont is also nearby. It is on Joralemon Street.

I bought myself an empanada in a food stand; I was hungry, and I had to eat something in Brooklyn, and not a slice of pizza or a hot dog. That little thing cost me four bucks! Actually $3.99, but the youngster didn't bother giving me the penny. A penny here, a penny there, soon all those pennies add up to a whole buck. Anyway, tiny as it was, and not hot, it still broke my hunger (and it was a shiitake curry one).

I caught the G train, sat all the way to Court Square in Queens, walked upstairs, and took a 7 express; that second train was jam-packed, and I stood all the way to Junction Boulevard, where I sat the last few minutes of the ride.

When I got home I was exhausted.

Francis Lewis

Northernmost eastern Queens is a section called Whitestone. The Throgs Neck and Bronx-Whitestone bridges connect it and southeast  Bronx. Francis Lewis, a member of the Committee of Sixty, delegate to the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, lived in the area. A boulevard and a high school in Queens are named after him, which seems small regard for such an important patriot. Francis Lewis Boulevard stretches the length of the borough, running north-south its entire length, surely one of the few streets, if not the only one, to do so. A few people refer to the street and the school as Frannie Lew, yet it all seems insufficient praise, though he is hardly the only one of the Founding Brothers generation to be so lightly regarded. Who was Rufus King? Cadwallader Colden?

Looking at a map of the north shore of Long Island, where Queens and Nassau Counties meet, three necks jut out into Long Island Sound; these were part of the Gold Coast which F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of in his classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. Whitestone is one of these necks.

North shore of LI map

Arthur Hammerstein, lesser known second son of Oscar I and brother of  the quite famous Oscar II, built a house in Whitestone in 1924 (according to an NYT article from 1988), which he named after a successful Broadway musical his brother wrote and he produced, Wildflower. He did not own it for long; in 1930 (as the Great Depression deepened) he sold it. Over the years it was hostage to vagaries of New York real estate and other social trends.

I recall going there in the mid-1970s when I was attending Queensborough Community College (as it was called then), for some sort of student government shindig (I date myself with that word, if with nothing else). I clearly remember ordering a tequila sunrise, quite a popular drink in those days, and I distinctly remember the barkeep bemoaning how none of us ordered a real drink, until someone ordered a scotch and soda (surely a faculty member, or a member of that generation), which brought a resounding snort of approval from him.

These days Wildflower is a gated community (ach, another pet peeve of mine, that term, right up there with experience). There is a fence and a gate which keep riffraff and other undesirables outside its confines. Yesterday I got as close as one can without violating such strictures, and with my handy, if failing, iPhone 6 plus, took a couple of photos of the house.

Tudor in style and a rare type in New York, the Times article said the mansion mixes stucco and half-timber work in the gables with patterned brick designs in the rest of the facade, which I agree with entirely. Not it, but the rest of the area's newfangled edifices stick out as sore thumbs. But these are the sentiments of a curmudgeon, I readily admit.

Alas, the area utterly lacks anyplace to eat. So I went home for a late lunch. How I wished I could have found a taco, or a nice hot bowl of pho.

A bit afield upstate New York

Kingston was New York State's first capital, back in 1777. It was also burned by the British after the Battle of Saratoga, back when those blokes did not considered us their cousins. Actually, it goes further back in history, to 1614, when the Dutch set up a factorij (trading post) at Ponckhockie in what would become Kingston. Across the years it has persisted, and today it is a vibrant little city. It is also the seat of Ulster County. Accordingly, there are governmental functions therein, and, as is wont to happen, there are quite a few lawyers, as well. Too, there are numerous retail stores, and, of course, various eating establishments.

I have gone to Le Canard Enchaine for many years. It is a traditional French restaurant, not fusion, but nouvelle cuisine; inside it is traditional, bad French music (there must be another kind, no?), posters of things French and of men and women in poses which one has to doubt would pass muster with people who might not very likely go inside, but might well be aghast if they did; there are also books, lots of dark wood, actual tablecloths with white paper on top, real silverware; it is an anachronism in a good sense of the term.

I fondly recall more than once having a prix fixe menu in summertime, including an exquisite cauliflower soup unlike any other I have ever had.

An aside here: I like vegetables, tomatoes (though they are actually fruits), avocado, string beans and peas, broccoli and carrots, chard, kale, the whole bunch (except for turnip and brussels sprouts), but I have never gotten cauliflower: its white color is unique, its shape unusual, and its overall look simply weird, in a good sense of the term, but it has no flavor.

Yet the cauliflower soup at the Chained Duck, as I affectionately call it, was sublime. Not quite a madeleine, but the recollection of having it lingers in my memory. I remember going there alone, and with my wife, too, and recall we both adored that cauliflower soup. I imagine butter has something to do with matters here.

eight petit slices of crusty bread

Today I ordered the plat du jour, chicken paillarde with lemon, garlic and herbs, and a glass of Cabernet (I do not, as a rule, drink wine with lunch, but rules are made to be broken, now and then, and so I did). My waiter, that is, mon serveur, poured me a tall glass of water and served me a bread basket with a two pats of butter in a small plate — alas, beurre froid, cold butter, one of my pet peeves (high up on the scale, quite close to the term experience). Yet it was quite a generous bread serving, indeed.

I had a couple, and, Mon Dieu, the bread was warm enough to melt the butter. And it was French bread as one expects; the French know how to do bread, even in Kingston, New York. Yum. Still, as is the wont of French restaurants, especially with one waiter on the shift, even for a small crowd (though slow should most definitely be a French word, all the more when it comes to dining, even in early afternoon), I was left to my own devices for an extended period. So, I ate more bread, which, étonnamment (surprisingly), there seemed to be an endless supply thereof; by now the beurre froid had become beurre chaud. Close thereto.

And my plat du jour was served. Two chicken cutlets, thin and charred, sat on a bed of mashed potatoes, surrounded by a tangy, spicy and sweet something, the way things are done in modern cuisine, sort of an apricot essence with a definite yet not overwhelming spice. The chicken was charred, as if cooked on a barbecue grill; it was delicious. The potatoes were rather good, too. The green herbs I ignored, but for the rosemary: I adore rosemary, and had a taste of it: just magnificent. I lingered over my meal, for I was in no hurry, and to linger over a meal is indeed a great pleasure.

Then it came to be time to go, to pay for my meal and move onto my next errands. Oh mon Dieu. The plat du jour cost $16.95, as advertised; the glass of Cabernet cost $12 — twelve bucks. It was good wine, mais oui, by for that price perhaps Mademoiselle Edith Piaf would replace that awful music, and Monsieur Macron might sit with me and discuss geopolitics, a topic of great current interest to us both. I paid, left a nice tip, and went on my way.

I went to Kingston to buy a battery charger for my car. I had absentmindedly drained its battery on Friday evening, gotten a battery jump from a friend and neighbor, but had neglected to let it run the requisite time to be fully recharged, so when I went to start my car on Sunday it would not start.

A foot of snow fell upstate, beginning with light flakes after four on Saturday afternoon, developing into a steady snowfall by midnight; when I awoke Sunday morning there was a lot of snow on the ground (and elsewhere, in fact).

At midnight, a few inches of snow on our picnic table.













Quite a bit more at 11.30 on Sunday morning.









That's a foot of snow, mate. It weren't easy to get to the table to measure, but I had bird feeders to fill.




I had much snow to clear before I could go anywhere.




















I haven't seen piles of snow this high in ages; it is a bittersweet sight to see one: nice, but it is a lot of snow.

After lunch I walked back to my car. The Chained Duck is on Fair Street; further up the street, on the corner with Main Street, stands The Old Dutch Church, which dates back to 1660 (it was a part of the Dutch Colonial village of Wiltwyck which was a trading outpost in the colony of New Netherland). For the US, that's pretty old. On a side of the main entrance I found this plaque (and I wiped away some snow probably put there by a snow blower; after all, we'd just gotten a foot of snow).



The plaque reads that George Washington himself visited the church on the 16th of November 1782 (when there still was not a nation called the United States, not formally). The tablet was sponsored by the people of Kingston on the 16th of November 1932, 150 years after GW visited, when the governor of the State of New York was one Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Pretty neat.

I did some more shopping after, and went home happy.

English language

Just what are our English cousins squabbling about? Contrary to the normalcy to which we are accustomed (everything the English say sounds better than most anything an American can say, certainly when it comes to politicians), Britain is lurching in a quagmire called Brexit.

One Prime Minister gambled he could quiet the grumblings about Europe, and lost: a section of the British public voted to leave the European Union, and he, David Cameron, resigned, giving another politician in his party the dubious duty of carrying on with that questionable policy; she, Theresa May, has been trying to push an elephant through the eye of a needle.

British politicians have simpler, and more apt, names than we Yanks do. There is no Newt in Parliament (again, our English cousins are lucky). Tony Blair, whatever one thinks of him (and there is much passion surrounding that topic), that's a nice simple name. They have a Margaret, we have a Nancy. We had Franklin, they had Winston. They had John Major; mediocre politician, great name. What can we offer to counter Theresa May? Nothing. Theresa is such a name, not at all common; but May? Can't top that.

Our governmental system (leaving aside contemporary politics, for now) is derived from the British: we also have two houses of Congress, though we do not have Lords (no matter what some wealthy wish, thank goodness), but do have a Senate; our Founders made three branches of government, rather than two, and I have yet to hear about anyone qualified to criticize those wise men; we also have a Speaker of the House, but the British equivalent has a different role.

The British speaker, unlike his American counterpart, is required to drop his party affiliation and remain neutral on matters of policy, tells a New York Times article.

The current Speaker, John Bercow, is a former Conservative Party right-winger (grandson of Jack Bercowitch, a Jewish Romanian immigrant, he actually supported "assisted repatriation" of immigrants) who drifted to the other end of the political spectrum. He became the scourge of Parliament Tories, including the hapless David Cameron, who took to making fun of Bercow's height (5'6½") by calling him a dwarf (proving the Brits don't have it completely over us Yanks; US politicians do not make fun of the opposition's anatomy, generally).

Mister Bercow is quite a good speaker (pun intended) of the English language. According to people who knew him as a small lad, he has always been so. In rejoinder to Cameron's insults, Bercow sneered that “Eton, hunting, shooting and lunch at White’s,” an exclusive St. James’s gentleman’s club, did not qualify him to lead.

Which brings me to the current Brexit imbroglio. After the British public — or a section thereof, those who bothered to vote — opted to leave the European Union, Cameron resigned and left the business to May. It has been a bloody mess, the whole lot of it.

Hard exit, soft exit, no exit, do it over; the British don't quite know what they want, or enough of them don't agree on any one course of action. Labor opposes whatever the Tories propose; the Tories can not agree, as a party, on one course of action: some Tories want to depose May and become leader of the party and the nation (such as Boris Johnson, himself a thoroughly British chap who, of all things, was born in the United States, and is thus an American citizen; he was named after a Russian chap his parents knew in Mexico), others want something or other.

A big mess. Theresa May negotiated a pact with the EU, which very few Brits liked; when she submitted it to Parliament for its approval, it was defeated in a rout. Labor then called for a vote of no-confidence in Prime Minister May, but that was defeated. And there it stood last week, when Speaker Bercow stepped in.

With less than 10 weeks left before the country is set to leave the bloc, he has broken precedent by wresting some control over the Brexit decision-making from Prime Minister Theresa May, allowing Parliament to act to stop the country from leaving without a deal, according to the Times article.

Breaking precedent is a big deal, of course; precedent is an important tenet in a system of laws. However, following precedent can become a hindrance. As Speaker Brecow is quoted in the article, “I understand the importance of precedent, but precedent does not completely bind, for one very simple reason,” he said. “If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change. Things do change.”

Predictably, that has pleased some and enraged others. Guessing whom is easy. For example, here is video of a Tory who does not, it well appears, like Speaker Bercow.

Speaker Bercow's language and logic are most impressive, to me. But others surely would disagree with such a conclusion. PM May's team on Friday threatened Mr. Bercow with the most supercilious of punishments: blocking his entry to the House of Lords — an honor bestowed on every speaker for more than 200 years.

Others are still seething over his decision not to wear the traditional speaker’s regalia, including wig and knee-breeches, which he said created “a barrier between Parliament and the public.” 



The son of a cab driver from North London, Mr. Bercow propelled himself through the Oxbridge-educated upper reaches of British society by sheer determination and is viewed, variously, as a sharp-elbowed bully and a champion of the rights of Parliament.CreditAndy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock 

For a Yank, that's quite formal, but that's how the British are.

For those interested in long parliamentary debates, this very long video is catnip. One interesting detail is the dress of these parliamenterians: suits, yes, but not stripped ties, and no lapel flag pins.

And as to the use of the English language, I close with this paragraph from the Times article:

In the wretched purgatory that was Westminster last week, there was precisely one person who seemed to be having fun. From the silk-canopied speaker’s chair of the House of Commons, John Bercow looked out over Britain’s squabbling Parliament and brayed, “Order! Order!” in that undrownoutable voice, something like an air-raid siren with postnasal drip. He doled out his pompous, antiquarian insults, cheerfully rebuking one member for “chuntering from a sedentary position ineloquently and for no obvious purpose.” The outside world rarely takes much notice of the speaker of the House of Commons, a nonpartisan and typically low-profile figure who presides over parliamentary debates. But Britain’s last-minute paralysis over exiting the European Union, or Brexit, has made Mr. Bercow into a kind of celebrity. [emphasis added]

 Hear, here!

Looking for Leon Bismarck Beiderbecke

In search of Bix, a jazz pioneer.

He lived his last chapter in apartment 1G, 43-30 46th Street, in Sunnyside, in the borough of Queens, New York City.

Before going to 46th Street, I stopped by the Sunnyside branch of the Queens Public Library. Having worked as a public librarian for twelve years, and having been married to a librarian for many more years, libraries have a special place in my heart. Some years ago Laura and I went to San Francisco for a family wedding, with plans to stay in Sonoma for a few days after. As is wont to happen, in the last-minute rush to get to LaGuardia Airport for our flight out, we forgot our travel books. Problem? No; we went to the San Francisco Public Library. As libraries go, and we have visited numerous over the years, the main branch of SFPL is a gem. Back then it was cleverly arranged: Dewey categories in different floors. We found travel books, looked at a couple, and took notes we used when we got to the Sonoma Valley (more our style than the fancier, more expensive Napa). A few days later we traveled up to Seattle for a few days, and — of course —visited the Seattle Public Library

Oases in urban — and rural — landscapes, libraries have been changing greatly over the last few decades, yet retain immutable traits: ebooks and Internet computers have displaced (many) printed books and card catalogs, and libraries now offer free wifi; too, they are (mostly) quiet resting places that have bathrooms and places to sit and take a load off for a bit.

Outside, it is an attractive building; it stands on the corner of 43rd Street and Greenpoint Avenue (yes, it is a straight arrow to the Greenpoint in Brooklyn, but that's another story for another future day).

Inside, it was actually roomier than I had first thought; and quite familiar: an information desk and a reference desk, sitting nooks, a Children's Room, and a YA space. I was impressed.

After visiting the library, I went searching for Bix; then I went for lunch.

Not far from 46th Street I found Adda, a restaurant I had seen reviewed in the NY Times back on 20 November 2018. Now, I am not enamored of culinary trends (I do not think of smoke as food, and like meals which actually sate my hunger, no matter how pretty, thank you very much; and I have had it with star chefs and eloquent reviewers intent on displaying their wide-ranging vocabularies and  far-reaching experience — I vote for experience to be sent to linguistic Elba, may it never escape), but I do love good food, and I was hungry.

I crossed from the south to the north side of Queens Boulevard, and back again, seeking the little sun I could find; it was a cold day. Ethnicities abounded, of course: this is Queens, the most diverse place on the planet, where Turks, Filipinos, Colombians, Chinese, Japanese and Indians walk and work cheek by jowl and everyone is in search of lunch.

Adda pleased me. I ordered a vegetable samosa and finally settled on the Mumbai lamb curry my waiter assured me would tickle my palate; not very spicy, he assured me, and he was sort of right, in that it wasn't that spicy, but it was more than a tickle. The basmati rice I was served was aromatic and delicious, and a nice-sized serving.

The only detail I didn't like was the  musical cacophony; something I can only describe as Indian hip hop was playing very loud. I could hardly hear myself think, as the saying has it, and could not comprehend why a man across the narrow aisle between tables from me sat, a finger in one ear, a cellphone to the other; why not just go outside and talk? I could not fathom what the person on the other side of that conversation was hearing.

Otherwise, I was quite happy. I shall have to go back to Adda some day.

Urban adventures

Having decided to retire from work, I considered what I would do with my time. I have never forgotten a cautionary tale once told me by a man I met in an unemployment office after becoming a statistic in a corporate downsizing: he told me of his own retirement, how he took it easy after decades of getting up early to go to work and putting in long hours; one day he found himself sitting in his pajamas at the kitchen table having coffee at noon —no, he said, this is not what I'm going to do in retirement, and went out and found a part-time job in a State Unemployment Office giving advice and help as best he could.

I knew I would not just sit around and read the newspaper once I retired, though I did look forward to a leisurely daily pace. Gone would be some of those quotidian annoyances I had long wished I could excise, such as driving home late at night after working until 9 and not finding a parking spot within blocks of home, or driving in thick traffic on Friday evenings. Worse had disappeared from my life when I stopped working in Manhattan and commuting by train: thick crowds filled with inconsiderate louts; overcrowded trains crawling along the tracks, stopping in between stations, or being taken out of service; people reeking of tobacco or weed or perfume; manspreading. Commuting life had improved greatly when I began driving to work and listening to music of my choice via routes I devised to reduce thick traffic and boring drives. But I was still working.

I have turned an age, and reached a stage in life, when I can start a new chapter. In Spanish it is called la tercera edad, the third age, which I think is an apt description. I needed a plan. I didn't have to think about it much before realizing there were things I wanted to do. I knew of places I wanted to visit, food I wanted to try, rides I wanted to take. I would now have the time to do so, and thus a plan emerged: I would go, visit, and eat as I wanted to, and my initial focus would be my hometown, New York City.

From Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington (isbn: 978-1-59420-266-7; Dewey; 973.4 — though some libraries put it in a separate Biography section), I learned that GW's first Executive Mansion was at 3 Cherry Street (in Manhattan, one of, as my Queens, five boroughs of the City of New York). That became one of the destinations of my future travels, or, as I came to think of them, urban explorations.

Before actually retiring, I began my adventures. I decided to walk or take public transportation, buses and trains, as much as possible, and drive as little; if need be, I would drive to a place, but then explore it on foot.

One November day I went shopping for groceries and sundries in my favorite retailers in College Point; after, I parked a few blocks away, and set out on foot. I know this area fairly well, or so I thought, having driven through it dozens, many dozens, if not hundreds, of times. Yet I forgot to remember that driving through a neighborhood is not a good way to get to really know it. I knew the street names and numbers, but there is more to a neighborhood, as I quickly found out.

As I walked I ruminated on the name College Point; that's a whole other story, as the saying has it. What I do know is that it is geographically isolated from the rest of this part of Queens, cut off by the Whitestone Expressway, and served very poorly by New York City Transit bus service. It is quite a fascinating neighborhood of exceedingly narrow streets with a good dollop of history thrown in: Conrad Poppenhusen, the benefactor of College Point itself, who founded the first free kindergarten in the United States, made quite a fortune, if memory serves me, producing buttons for Union troops during the United States Civil War (also known as the War of Rebellion by some, itself a topic with much surrounding passion even a century and a half after its conclusion).

At any rate, leaving the Civil War aside, for now, as I walked along 14th Avenue I thought of how true it is that, as in my neighborhood of East Flushing, too, here, houses were being knocked down and replaced by what I call, without any affection whatsoever, MacMansions (why? they are produced with the imagination and artistry of fast food, namely, none). I saw them, here and there and there, too. It happens in the streets near my home with sickening frequency: an old gem with a side yard is demolished, replaced by a monstrosity built of ostentatious lack of imagination, with no yard at all, and, if so, with what becomes a series of parking spaces. It is an abhorrent social trend.

Then, quite suddenly, I happened upon a house I had never seen before. Of course, knowing 14th Avenue as I did, or thought I did, I had driven by it many dozens of times. But I had never seen it before. There it stood in its glory.

House on 14th Avenue in College Point, Queens, dates from 1915

This beauty was constructed in 1915, a century before I happened upon it. When I learned that (later, at home, using a very useful website), I was astounded. No, not every house is recently built; I would see that more and more as I walked other neighborhoods, took notes of other houses, then researched them. There are many houses I have seen which were constructed in the 1920s, 1950s, 1960s; even many which look modern, or recently built, often turn out to be 70 years old houses which have been refurbished. It has been a fascinating process, and a learning — dare I say it? If I do will the goddesses smite me? yes, I shall say it —a learning experience.

Yet this house is unique. I have not seen anything quite like it.

Ellington and Strayhorn, and Paname

10 December 2018

The Duke Ellington Society (TDES), which I joined more than 20 years ago, has an annual holiday concert of Ellington and Strayhorn music. It is music with great depth and sublime beauty which I deeply enjoy.

Ellington began writing and performing his music in the 1920s, influenced, among many,  by Willie "The Lion" Smith and Jellyroll Morton, and Fats Waller; in time, Duke developed his own style, his own voice, and he expressed it best through his orchestra. There is wonderful Ellington music from the 1920s (Creole Love Call and Black and Tan Fantasy, both largely composed by his trumpeter Bubber Miley) and 1930s (Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, In a Sentimental Mood, and Solitude), all of which remained part of the repertoire for decades.

Yet in 1939, Billy Strayhorn,  a young man from Pittsburgh, played a song he had composed for Duke which changed the trajectory of Ellington, of the Orchestra, of Strayhorn himself, and of American music: Take the A train.

There are many stories, some apocryphal, some doubtlessly true, about the two men. The proof, for me, is in the music. Ellington composed hundreds of songs, Strayhorn many dozens, perhaps hundreds. Some aficionados debate whether Strayhorn could have been a great success without Ellington; some argue Duke was made better by Strays. What is true is that for the 28 years they collaborated the music they produced is in the pantheon of the Great American Songbook. As much as I adore George Gershwin's music, I consider Duke Ellington the greatest American composer (for, alas, Gershwin died very young, and thus produced far less than did Duke).

TDES meets in Saint Peter's Church, which stands at the corner of 54th Street and Lexington Avenue, in the borough of Manhattan. Looming over it is the Citicorp Building. The two structures have a woven history; both are also New York City landmarks. Saint Peter's has a tradition of ministering to jazz musicians, and of hosting TDES. Over the years I have seen numerous concerts and memorial services there, and the most memorable took place in the sanctuary. The immensity of the space and the acoustics are, dare I, not a Lutheran and an agnostic, say it? — divine (there, I said it).

For 2018, the TDES holiday party featured a quintet plus a singer: David Durrah, piano; Harold Robinson, alto saxophone; Waldron Ricks, trumpet; Larry Roland, bass; John Yaya Brown, drums; and Susan Giles, vocals. To begin the concert, Mister Durrah played Daydream with nothing less than an angelic touch, setting the tone for a wonderful evening of music. Mister Roland's bass playing was masterful. And Ms. Giles sang a handful of songs with exquisite timing and a beautiful voice. Her rendition of Chelsea Bridge, a song some consider one of the ten best jazz pieces ever written (myself included), was just superb.

 Inside St. Peter's, affectionately known as the Jazz Church, in its sanctuary, a picture of La Morena, the Virgin of Guadalupe.


Before the concert , Laura and I had dinner at Paname, a darling French bistro on 2nd Avenue. We had 5.30 reservations (concert started at 7.30). Needless to say, the restaurant wasn't at all crowded, though by 6 quite a few tables were taken. Our waitress was very nice, friendly (if inexplicably a bit shy). After letting us sit for a bit, she brought over complimentary servings of mushroom mousse, which were delicious. Of course, a colorful swirl accompanied the mousse; this one was quite attractive and tasty, too.

We ordered a bottle of Malbec, and with a basket of warm baguette we were served soft (but of course) butter. We both had the prix fixe menu. I ordered escargot de bourbogne in baby potatoes: delicious, but you had better like garlic! Laura order the crab cakes with remoulade. We were then given complimentary lemon sorbet as a palette cleanser. As an entree I ordered the pork scallopini, a twist on a classic dish, served with a thick gravy; Laura ordered the cod a la nicoise tomato fondant. For dessert I ordered flourless chocolate cake and Laura ordered the Crème brûlée. everything was delicious, perfectly cooked, nicely presented. Service was outstanding and unobtrusive. I have come to prefer bistros of this sort over 'hot spots' featuring the star-chef-inspired cuisine which so often disappoints but never fails to be expensive. Paname is a New York gem.