Cat In The Hat
Hello World,
Well, I'm sure that nobody wants to hear about the local weather lately, which has not only been nothing to write home about, and I ought to know, but also manages to lack interest for strangers, by falling short of being indescribably bad. In fact, it would be very easy to describe, and you can try this at home as an experiment for yourself. First, sit in a dark room all morning. Then go into a lighter room, but sit in front of a fan blowing at high speed. Next, stand in the bathtub and throw a bucket of cold water over yourself, and then go back to sitting in front of the fan. Repeat. Congratulations! You've just replicated last week's regional weather, right in the comfort of your own home, and I'm sure that you didn't like it any better than we did. On the other hand, not complaining about the weather is more of our yard flowers, including our wonderfully fragrant phlox, giant allium, and even lily of the valley, all of which I expected to be later, but here they are already. We have two different kinds of pointy white flowers, star flowers and also Star of Bethlehem, and they're both open and a welcome sight. Everyone's azaleas are doing great and ours are no exception, while the wisteria is turning everything lavender, everywhere that it rambles. As Bill says, with everything busting out all over, who needs June?
Elsewhere on the home front, I apparently spoke too soon about the juvenile delinquent squirrels in our yard not digging up the flowers in my planters, because last week they did just that. I had to chase around after my impatiens and mini roses, which were all scattered about, then pick them up and dust them off, and replant them back in the containers, all the while hoping for better results the second time around. If only those pesky squirrels would dig up the poison ivy or dandelions, or God forbid, the darned garlic mustard, instead of things that I actually want, they would at least earn their keep around here instead of just being juvenile delinquents. Oh well, everyone knows that I always say this is how we know we haven't all died and gone to heaven, because things are not perfect. In an odd development, of the two mini roses that I got, one opened up as pale pink, which is consistent with how the buds looked, and the other one turned out to be purple, which is a color I certainly don't expect to find in roses. After being roughed up by the local wildlife, I don't know if they're going to survive at this point, but right now I have a pink and a purple in my garden. Meanwhile, the Knockout rose in the bucket seems to be doing very well, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I can camouflage the "rosebush graveyard" section of the garden with something decorative over the summer.
As if things weren't hectic enough at work, this week I decided to take off three days, so I hold out no hope for next week at all, and the following week is only four days, so it will probably take me the entire month of June to get caught back up to where I should have been. Two of those days off were for the 2008 Assembly for the Metro New York Synod, and there's nothing like being surrounded by 500 grouchy Lutherans to really make you question your sanity, such as it is. But the day before the Assembly started, I had a completely different adventure.
It all started innocently enough, as these things so often do, when I got this note from the daughter of a friend in Oregon, who had relocated east while taking graduate courses in New York City:
=========================
I am writing to invite you and Bill to watch me walk across a stage in a silly hat!
As a January 2008 graduate of NYU with my M.A., I am entitled to participate in NYU's May 2008 Commencement and graduation activities, to be held on the morning of Wednesday May 14. The Graduate School's Convocation is a mini-graduation at which each student's name and degree are announced.
=========================
Well, anyone who knows me can tell you that I couldn't pass up an invitation like that, so I told her that I would be there with bells on, and looking forward to it. So early Wednesday morning, I left my car at work and dashed down the block to the train station (somehow forgetting that the bridge on the way is under construction, so you have to run two blocks out of your way just to get there) and hoping to arrive in time to catch the 8:30 to Grand Central Terminal. Not so fast! Like many stations, there are four sets of tracks, including one each of a local and an express for both the northbound and southbound trains. So you can imagine our surprise when 8:30 rolled around and what arrived on the southbound local track, next to the platform, was instead, a northbound train letting people out, but not picking up passengers. We didn't mind that part, because the train was going in the wrong direction, but we all realized that there was no way our train could come, until this other train moved out of the way, and far enough past us to get switched off the local southbound tracks and clear the way for our train to use those same tracks. When that was finally accomplished and the southbound train pulled up to the platform at last, everyone piled into it since it was 10 minutes late, and found that it was already full and we had to stand all the way to the city. It also turned out to be not the 8:30 train anyway, but the 8:15, and they did announce that our real train, the 8:30, was right behind it and we should wait for that, since it was emptier, but most of us didn't want to take any more chances and just stayed where we were, standing up and grousing in the doorways. The good news, I suppose, was that the conductors didn't dare come around and take tickets under the circumstances, so a person could have gotten a ride for free, if they hadn't already bought their ticket.
The graduation ceremony was going to be at Lincoln Center, in Avery Fisher Hall, so my first order of business was to find the subway tunnel for the Shuttle and take that to Times Square, because apparently the 1 train is the only subway that goes to Lincoln Center. That actually worked pretty well, even with buying a $4 MetroCard from a ticket machine that didn't accept cash, only plastic, so I will have a $4 charge on my credit card, no thank you so very much not. Lately, when I've been in the city, I generally use the 4 - 5 - 6 trains to go downtown from Grand Central, and these trains have a handy feature with a recorded message that tells you what station you have arrived at, and what the next stop will be. Apparently this feature is peculiar to those trains, because it wasn't present on the uptown lines that I took, and it makes it a lot harder to know where you are, or how close you're getting to your destination. In fact, when the train arrived at 66th street, I couldn't see the name on the walls anywhere, and it was only lucky that they also print it on the support columns, so I knew to get off there. When you come up from the subway, you find Lincoln Center right there, but it takes up several blocks in each direction, so I printed myself a map from their web site, to help me find where I was going. My job was to reconnoiter with another young lady who had the tickets to be admitted, and she had suggested, for the sake of convenience, that she and I and another young fellow should meet at the world-famous Revson fountain in the heart of Lincoln Center. This splendid architectural element has been celebrated in movies and TV, as well as photographs in every type of media, and tour guides of every description. If you ever watched "The Producers" on television, you saw Gene Wilder's character splashing in the fountain, which even 40 years ago, was already a world-famous landmark. Obviously, this would be an ideal place for three people to meet, not only being so iconic that anyone could find it, but also handily located right in front of Avery Fisher Hall. What could be better! [Please take a moment to insert your own punchline here, as I'm sure anyone could see the storm clouds brewing on the horizon of this scenario.]
One month previously, on April 16 2008, the Revson fountain was dismantled and removed, and the courtyard walled off with construction fencing, while the plaza was being completely renovated, and I don't mind saying, no thank you so very much not. It was certainly an unwelcome sight to me when I arrived at the plaza, when what to my wondering eyes did not appear was the world-famous fountain, and I also didn't see the two people I was supposed to meet there, even if the fountain had been there, which it decidedly wasn't. The area outside of the construction fencing was full of graduating students milling about in their caps and gowns, plus their proud and doting families, but no one on the lookout for me with my ticket to get inside. As it was starting to get late, I had no choice but to call the graduate herself, who I figured was probably pretty busy at the time, and I left a message that I was outside but couldn't find her friend who had the tickets. At that point, I was about to leave her the cell phone number to call me back at, except that I was carrying the Nextel phone they gave us at work, which we use for the two-way radio feature and not the cell phone, and as a result, I have no idea what the phone number is. So there I was, standing outside the construction fence at Lincoln Center where the fountain was supposed to be, in front of Avery Fisher Hall, where I couldn't get in without a ticket, and I'm pressing every button on the Nextel that I can think of, in the hopes that there is some place that it will tell me what the phone number is. Luckily at that moment, the phone rang, and it turned out to be the young lady with the tickets, so I told her where I was, and she said she would hurry right over. I should have noticed sooner that there was another person hanging out right near me, and it turned out to be the young fellow who was also waiting for a ticket, but I didn't know him and he didn't know me, so we had probably passed each other numerous times while looking for this errant ticket person, without realizing that we were two sides of the same triangle, so to speak.
The graduation ceremony itself was interesting and entertaining, and we had excellent seats in the lower tier of boxes along the wall. The speeches were short and relevant, and although there were a lot of them, never boring. There was a lovely brass ensemble that played at different times during the program, as well as a soprano, and you can believe me when I tell you that there is a reason why Avery Fisher Hall is renowned for its acoustics. It's true that with over 500 Masters and Ph.D. students, all being announced individually and walking across the stage in silly hats, it did take a very long time and soon became monotonous. But I'm sure after all their hard work (and their parents' expense) we would have to agree they each deserved their moment in the spotlight, so we shouldn't begrudge them that. Some of us might have felt that they saved the best for last, after the final diploma was handed out and we were dismissed, we were treated to the rousing sounds of the NYU pipe and drum corps, as welcome as they were surprising. They were turned out in the traditional kilts and tams, plus knee socks and sporrans, but with the pipers carrying uncharacteristic purple bagpipes, which I can't say is an innovation that much improves the instrument.
From there, we took the subway across town and had lunch in an Irish pub called The Blarney Stone, which may have had something to do with bagpipe music in our heads, but more likely because I vetoed the original suggestion of Cosi's, which is a chain that features odd food and bizarre decor, and I had already found out that one time there was too many for me. We found it tasty and inexpensive, although the first part may have just been because it was almost 3:00 and we were about ready to die of starvation. After reviving our flagging spirits with food, we walked over to First Avenue and signed up for the tour at the United Nations. I had never been there, even as a school field trip in my youth, so I found it really interesting and different. Our tour guide was a woman from Zimbabwe, who spoke excellent English, but they also offer tours in other languages, such as French and Chinese for foreign tourists. We had a chance to sit in the Security Council room, the General Assembly room, and some other meeting rooms, and we saw many exhibits, about subjects like weapons and colonization, plus some wonderfully elaborate gifts from foreign governments. Our guide was a wealth of information, and they even let you take pictures in there, where I would expect them to be a lot more jittery about cameras or recording devices. The tour wraps up in the gift shop downstairs, and here it seems they have jewelry, gifts and handicrafts from each of the 192 countries that belong to the United Nations, and you could just spend all day there looking at everything, each item more beautiful or unusual than the next. Having said that, however, I have to admit that it fails the first test of a gift shop for me, as it had neither salt and pepper shakers, nor souvenir spoons, which is a condition that rarely befalls me in my travels. I ended up buying a souvenir key chain for myself, and a guide book to New York City written in Russian for Bill, and considered the day a huge success, and it goes without saying, I have the pictures to prove it.
By then it was late, so we hurried back to Grand Central and went our separate ways, with me running to catch the 6:00 train home, and lucky to just make it in time. But I got a seat and the train left on time, and arrived without incident, so it was already an improvement over the morning trip. Of course, you still have to walk the two blocks out of your way around the bridge construction just to get back to the hospital parking lot, and by then, making end-runs around construction projects was getting to be old news for me and I was sick and tired of it. In fact, it reminded me of a book I read recently, where the main character said that an unfriendly woman he met looked at him like a hammer looks at a nail, and that's about how I was feeling. It was a fun day, but a long one, full of lots of activity and tramping around, and I was glad to get home and relax after all that. Frankly, I think that visiting 192 countries in one day is enough for anybody, and that's without all the silly hats.
Well, I'm sure that nobody wants to hear about the local weather lately, which has not only been nothing to write home about, and I ought to know, but also manages to lack interest for strangers, by falling short of being indescribably bad. In fact, it would be very easy to describe, and you can try this at home as an experiment for yourself. First, sit in a dark room all morning. Then go into a lighter room, but sit in front of a fan blowing at high speed. Next, stand in the bathtub and throw a bucket of cold water over yourself, and then go back to sitting in front of the fan. Repeat. Congratulations! You've just replicated last week's regional weather, right in the comfort of your own home, and I'm sure that you didn't like it any better than we did. On the other hand, not complaining about the weather is more of our yard flowers, including our wonderfully fragrant phlox, giant allium, and even lily of the valley, all of which I expected to be later, but here they are already. We have two different kinds of pointy white flowers, star flowers and also Star of Bethlehem, and they're both open and a welcome sight. Everyone's azaleas are doing great and ours are no exception, while the wisteria is turning everything lavender, everywhere that it rambles. As Bill says, with everything busting out all over, who needs June?
Elsewhere on the home front, I apparently spoke too soon about the juvenile delinquent squirrels in our yard not digging up the flowers in my planters, because last week they did just that. I had to chase around after my impatiens and mini roses, which were all scattered about, then pick them up and dust them off, and replant them back in the containers, all the while hoping for better results the second time around. If only those pesky squirrels would dig up the poison ivy or dandelions, or God forbid, the darned garlic mustard, instead of things that I actually want, they would at least earn their keep around here instead of just being juvenile delinquents. Oh well, everyone knows that I always say this is how we know we haven't all died and gone to heaven, because things are not perfect. In an odd development, of the two mini roses that I got, one opened up as pale pink, which is consistent with how the buds looked, and the other one turned out to be purple, which is a color I certainly don't expect to find in roses. After being roughed up by the local wildlife, I don't know if they're going to survive at this point, but right now I have a pink and a purple in my garden. Meanwhile, the Knockout rose in the bucket seems to be doing very well, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I can camouflage the "rosebush graveyard" section of the garden with something decorative over the summer.
As if things weren't hectic enough at work, this week I decided to take off three days, so I hold out no hope for next week at all, and the following week is only four days, so it will probably take me the entire month of June to get caught back up to where I should have been. Two of those days off were for the 2008 Assembly for the Metro New York Synod, and there's nothing like being surrounded by 500 grouchy Lutherans to really make you question your sanity, such as it is. But the day before the Assembly started, I had a completely different adventure.
It all started innocently enough, as these things so often do, when I got this note from the daughter of a friend in Oregon, who had relocated east while taking graduate courses in New York City:
=========================
I am writing to invite you and Bill to watch me walk across a stage in a silly hat!
As a January 2008 graduate of NYU with my M.A., I am entitled to participate in NYU's May 2008 Commencement and graduation activities, to be held on the morning of Wednesday May 14. The Graduate School's Convocation is a mini-graduation at which each student's name and degree are announced.
=========================
Well, anyone who knows me can tell you that I couldn't pass up an invitation like that, so I told her that I would be there with bells on, and looking forward to it. So early Wednesday morning, I left my car at work and dashed down the block to the train station (somehow forgetting that the bridge on the way is under construction, so you have to run two blocks out of your way just to get there) and hoping to arrive in time to catch the 8:30 to Grand Central Terminal. Not so fast! Like many stations, there are four sets of tracks, including one each of a local and an express for both the northbound and southbound trains. So you can imagine our surprise when 8:30 rolled around and what arrived on the southbound local track, next to the platform, was instead, a northbound train letting people out, but not picking up passengers. We didn't mind that part, because the train was going in the wrong direction, but we all realized that there was no way our train could come, until this other train moved out of the way, and far enough past us to get switched off the local southbound tracks and clear the way for our train to use those same tracks. When that was finally accomplished and the southbound train pulled up to the platform at last, everyone piled into it since it was 10 minutes late, and found that it was already full and we had to stand all the way to the city. It also turned out to be not the 8:30 train anyway, but the 8:15, and they did announce that our real train, the 8:30, was right behind it and we should wait for that, since it was emptier, but most of us didn't want to take any more chances and just stayed where we were, standing up and grousing in the doorways. The good news, I suppose, was that the conductors didn't dare come around and take tickets under the circumstances, so a person could have gotten a ride for free, if they hadn't already bought their ticket.
The graduation ceremony was going to be at Lincoln Center, in Avery Fisher Hall, so my first order of business was to find the subway tunnel for the Shuttle and take that to Times Square, because apparently the 1 train is the only subway that goes to Lincoln Center. That actually worked pretty well, even with buying a $4 MetroCard from a ticket machine that didn't accept cash, only plastic, so I will have a $4 charge on my credit card, no thank you so very much not. Lately, when I've been in the city, I generally use the 4 - 5 - 6 trains to go downtown from Grand Central, and these trains have a handy feature with a recorded message that tells you what station you have arrived at, and what the next stop will be. Apparently this feature is peculiar to those trains, because it wasn't present on the uptown lines that I took, and it makes it a lot harder to know where you are, or how close you're getting to your destination. In fact, when the train arrived at 66th street, I couldn't see the name on the walls anywhere, and it was only lucky that they also print it on the support columns, so I knew to get off there. When you come up from the subway, you find Lincoln Center right there, but it takes up several blocks in each direction, so I printed myself a map from their web site, to help me find where I was going. My job was to reconnoiter with another young lady who had the tickets to be admitted, and she had suggested, for the sake of convenience, that she and I and another young fellow should meet at the world-famous Revson fountain in the heart of Lincoln Center. This splendid architectural element has been celebrated in movies and TV, as well as photographs in every type of media, and tour guides of every description. If you ever watched "The Producers" on television, you saw Gene Wilder's character splashing in the fountain, which even 40 years ago, was already a world-famous landmark. Obviously, this would be an ideal place for three people to meet, not only being so iconic that anyone could find it, but also handily located right in front of Avery Fisher Hall. What could be better! [Please take a moment to insert your own punchline here, as I'm sure anyone could see the storm clouds brewing on the horizon of this scenario.]
One month previously, on April 16 2008, the Revson fountain was dismantled and removed, and the courtyard walled off with construction fencing, while the plaza was being completely renovated, and I don't mind saying, no thank you so very much not. It was certainly an unwelcome sight to me when I arrived at the plaza, when what to my wondering eyes did not appear was the world-famous fountain, and I also didn't see the two people I was supposed to meet there, even if the fountain had been there, which it decidedly wasn't. The area outside of the construction fencing was full of graduating students milling about in their caps and gowns, plus their proud and doting families, but no one on the lookout for me with my ticket to get inside. As it was starting to get late, I had no choice but to call the graduate herself, who I figured was probably pretty busy at the time, and I left a message that I was outside but couldn't find her friend who had the tickets. At that point, I was about to leave her the cell phone number to call me back at, except that I was carrying the Nextel phone they gave us at work, which we use for the two-way radio feature and not the cell phone, and as a result, I have no idea what the phone number is. So there I was, standing outside the construction fence at Lincoln Center where the fountain was supposed to be, in front of Avery Fisher Hall, where I couldn't get in without a ticket, and I'm pressing every button on the Nextel that I can think of, in the hopes that there is some place that it will tell me what the phone number is. Luckily at that moment, the phone rang, and it turned out to be the young lady with the tickets, so I told her where I was, and she said she would hurry right over. I should have noticed sooner that there was another person hanging out right near me, and it turned out to be the young fellow who was also waiting for a ticket, but I didn't know him and he didn't know me, so we had probably passed each other numerous times while looking for this errant ticket person, without realizing that we were two sides of the same triangle, so to speak.
The graduation ceremony itself was interesting and entertaining, and we had excellent seats in the lower tier of boxes along the wall. The speeches were short and relevant, and although there were a lot of them, never boring. There was a lovely brass ensemble that played at different times during the program, as well as a soprano, and you can believe me when I tell you that there is a reason why Avery Fisher Hall is renowned for its acoustics. It's true that with over 500 Masters and Ph.D. students, all being announced individually and walking across the stage in silly hats, it did take a very long time and soon became monotonous. But I'm sure after all their hard work (and their parents' expense) we would have to agree they each deserved their moment in the spotlight, so we shouldn't begrudge them that. Some of us might have felt that they saved the best for last, after the final diploma was handed out and we were dismissed, we were treated to the rousing sounds of the NYU pipe and drum corps, as welcome as they were surprising. They were turned out in the traditional kilts and tams, plus knee socks and sporrans, but with the pipers carrying uncharacteristic purple bagpipes, which I can't say is an innovation that much improves the instrument.
From there, we took the subway across town and had lunch in an Irish pub called The Blarney Stone, which may have had something to do with bagpipe music in our heads, but more likely because I vetoed the original suggestion of Cosi's, which is a chain that features odd food and bizarre decor, and I had already found out that one time there was too many for me. We found it tasty and inexpensive, although the first part may have just been because it was almost 3:00 and we were about ready to die of starvation. After reviving our flagging spirits with food, we walked over to First Avenue and signed up for the tour at the United Nations. I had never been there, even as a school field trip in my youth, so I found it really interesting and different. Our tour guide was a woman from Zimbabwe, who spoke excellent English, but they also offer tours in other languages, such as French and Chinese for foreign tourists. We had a chance to sit in the Security Council room, the General Assembly room, and some other meeting rooms, and we saw many exhibits, about subjects like weapons and colonization, plus some wonderfully elaborate gifts from foreign governments. Our guide was a wealth of information, and they even let you take pictures in there, where I would expect them to be a lot more jittery about cameras or recording devices. The tour wraps up in the gift shop downstairs, and here it seems they have jewelry, gifts and handicrafts from each of the 192 countries that belong to the United Nations, and you could just spend all day there looking at everything, each item more beautiful or unusual than the next. Having said that, however, I have to admit that it fails the first test of a gift shop for me, as it had neither salt and pepper shakers, nor souvenir spoons, which is a condition that rarely befalls me in my travels. I ended up buying a souvenir key chain for myself, and a guide book to New York City written in Russian for Bill, and considered the day a huge success, and it goes without saying, I have the pictures to prove it.
By then it was late, so we hurried back to Grand Central and went our separate ways, with me running to catch the 6:00 train home, and lucky to just make it in time. But I got a seat and the train left on time, and arrived without incident, so it was already an improvement over the morning trip. Of course, you still have to walk the two blocks out of your way around the bridge construction just to get back to the hospital parking lot, and by then, making end-runs around construction projects was getting to be old news for me and I was sick and tired of it. In fact, it reminded me of a book I read recently, where the main character said that an unfriendly woman he met looked at him like a hammer looks at a nail, and that's about how I was feeling. It was a fun day, but a long one, full of lots of activity and tramping around, and I was glad to get home and relax after all that. Frankly, I think that visiting 192 countries in one day is enough for anybody, and that's without all the silly hats.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 2:24 PM
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