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.