Postcards from Bergen Street

Postcard from Baltimore

2010-02-27T05:52:00.000-08:00

I've been here since Tuesday working at the Craft Council's Baltimore Show. Pretty exhausting, but also fun and inspiring because of all the beautiful handmade work. I'm running all the demonstrations and the artists have been lovely. There was a point yesterday when I thought, am I really getting paid to sit here and watch this guy throw pots?!

I'm blogging about the show for American Craft - check it out!

This isn't much of a Postcard from Baltimore really. Although I've been here since Tuesday, sadly I've seen hardly any of the city. I could be in Dallas or LA or the middle of Iowa and pretty much have the same experience of shuttling back and forth from my hotel to the Convention Center. I'm sad to have missed seeing the Walters Museum and MICA, and I haven't eaten even ONE bowl of chowder! Ah, next time...

Can't wait to get home so I can pop up to New Paltz even just for a night to recharge my batteries.

Snow Day!

2010-02-15T06:52:00.001-08:00

We got a major snowstorm last week - not quite a blizzard, but a foot of the most perfectly crunchy, packable snow you could ever wish for. Winnie and I met Catherine at the park for a break in the middle of our "work from home" snow days. It was still snowing pretty hard at this point, big wet flakes that completely soaked you. But there were people EVERYWHERE at the park! Making snowmen, having snowball fights, careening down hills on makeshift sleds - it was amazing. Here are some pictures:

Me and Winnie the snow bunny, who went into Crazy Dog mode as soon as we got to the park - rolling around on her back in the snow banks and tearing back and forth between me and Catherine.

Catherine the amazing cross-training athlete skied to the park!

Snowmen galore!

Controlled chaos on the sledding hill.

Givin' Some Thanks

2009-11-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

I am in the midst of some Thanksgiving FEVER. I have never experienced this before. I think it's the combination of Patrick coming home for 5 days and gearing up to host a big motley group of friends tomorrow for the Best Potluck Ever that has caused my excitement to reach fever pitch. Seriously, if there were Thanksgiving songs I would be singing them right now. I found myself humming "Chim-chimney, chim-chimney, chim-chim charoo..." while I was cleaning earlier for lack of something more appropriate to the season.

I got off work at 2:00 today, which was a wonderful thing and a bad thing at the same time. Now I've had all afternoon to kill around the house anticipating Patrick's homecoming, full of this weird, nervous, perky holiday energy. I took a nap from 3:30 to 5:00 (does anyone else nap purely to kill time?) and woke up to complete darkness, which is just weird. Winnie is beside herself thinking that I must have forgotten about her dinner - when I come home early from work it totally throws off the little clock that her whole world turns on. Which is kind of sad. I'm remembering what this sweet little old lady said to me once on the street, when I had tied Winnie up outside of the sushi place to get my take-out and then came back to find the happiest dog on earth, gleefully sweeping the sidewalk with her brushy tail. She said, "Just look how happy you made her. You're her BEST FRIEND." Awww....

So here's what's on the menu for that New York orphans Best Potluck Ever Thanksgiving feast:

Jenny & Patrick, fearlessly hosting a dinner party for 13 in their barely a one bedroom apartment, will be making roasted sweet potatoes with caramelized onions, rosemary, and parmesan cheese, and two authentic Southern style pecan pies.

Heidi & Jeremy, even more fearless, are tackling the turkey, gravy, and veggie stuffing, and then TRANSPORTING them all here. Heidi ordered this great turkey from her CSA that, we have been assured, lived a full and free life in upstate New York.

Nissa & Justin, bakers extraordinaire (well, Nissa at least, I don't know if Justin can claim that?), are bringing pumpkin roulade with ginger cream topping, pumpkin pie, and cheddar dill cornbread.

The lovely and beguiling Nina is bringing purple potatoes (what does that mean??), greens, and cranberry sauce.

Parrish, an Old Fashioned kind of guy, is bringing the cocktail fixin's.

Jen, Patrick's awesome new professor at New Paltz, is bringing a cheese, bread, and apple appetizer plate.

Ray, a friend of Nissa's who I haven't met, is bringing butternut squash soup and mashed garlic potatoes. I think we're going to be fast friends.

Hannah, another mystery friend of Nissa's, is bringing salad. Which we will desperately need to temper all of those starches and sweets.

Matty, also a friend of Nissa's, is bringing "appetizers - veggie and whatnot." I like him already for using the word "whatnot."

And Heidi's brother Michael will round out the crew - he's coming late but bringing wine.

I'll be sure to take some pictures and post soon.... I'm dying here, how can I wait for all this??

A Weekend of Good Sports

2009-11-01T17:08:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not talking about the World Series (sorry, Dad). I'm talking about masquerades and marathons in New York City.

I realized this weekend that Halloween is a completely different experience in New York than in most other American cities - not so much because the people here are more crazy and creative with their costumes, but because of the sheer practical imposition of the mass transit system. I didn't dress up this year and felt like a decidedly bad sport when I saw all the brave souls in costume on the subway Friday night. Of course there were some groups of masquerading revelers but mostly I noticed people who had obviously gotten dressed at home and then ended up riding the subway by themselves in all their costumed glory, completely disconnected from the context of whatever party they were headed to or from, and looking more than a little bit vulnerable. I wish I had pictures of some of the Halloween subway highlights from this weekend but these mental images will have to suffice:

A gangster dressed to the nines with fedora and penciled in moustache obviously trying to play it cool and blend in with the working stiffs in suits.

A sexy nurse who self-consciously tugged at the hem of her "uniform" as if rethinking the sluttishness of her ensemble in the garish subway lighting.

A guy dressed as Slash from Guns N Roses (I think), in acid washed jeans and an afro that must have been at least two feet in diameter and pressed up against the roof of the train like Marge's hair sometimes does on The Simpsons.

Heidi reported that she saw a girl in full Marie Antoinette Rococo regalia struggling to navigate the turnstile at the 7th Avenue station. That's just such a great metaphor for the way that glamour and fantasy can smack right up against harsh reality in this city. I love it.

Continuing the theme of good sports, Winnie and I walked Patrick to the subway this morning to catch the bus back up to New Paltz and remembered that it's marathon day! The NYC Marathon was slated to come through 4th Avenue in Park Slope starting around 10am. We were there around 9, so we watched the volunteers setting up elaborate house-of-card constructions of water cups that would shortly litter the street several inches deep, then I walked Winnie back home for a bit.

I came back down around 10 to meet Heidi and her mom Rita who was in town for the weekend visiting from California. We were there at the perfect time to watch the top runners come through like a pack of two-legged hybrid man-horses. They were seriously like MACHINES! So beautiful to watch, so intense.

I was remembering back to last year when Patrick and I experienced the marathon for the first time. We were staying in Park Slope for the weekend with Heidi and walked down to meet our friends Amy and Brian who wanted to see one of Amy's co-workers running. It didn't really occur to me until we got down to 4th Avenue what a scene it would be - what a spectator sport the marathon really is. Sure, there are some people like our friends who were primarily there to support someone they knew in the race, but most people just come out to celebrate the will power and stamina of the nearly 35,000 people each year who can chalk it up among their accomplishments that they ran in the New York City Marathon.

This year, the spectacle of Halloween ran right into marathon day, with tons of runners and spectators alike in costume. I was so swept up in all the great energy and humanity of the whole experience. We clapped and wooed for random people who looked like they needed the encouragement and shouted the names runners had written on their jerseys. One lady near us in the crowd had brought several boxes of Kleenex and held out tissues for the runners that came by. How thoughtful is that?

Thank you, Heidi and Rita, for the pictures and for all the great company today!

Creating a New Craft Culture

2009-11-01T16:05:00.000-08:00

I hate that it's been so long since I've posted anything - my only excuse being that work was going full-tilt all last month as the Creating a New Craft Culture conference (my main project since May) approached. I flew up to Minneapolis for 5 days of craft mania in mid October. Although it was exhausting, the experience as a whole was completely amazing. I met so many wonderful people, reconnected with old friends and colleagues, and generally felt incredibly proud to be a part of what really felt like one for the books. One attendee actually sent my boss Monica and me singing telegrams from India to thank us for all of our hard work in putting together such a positive and insightful conference! The song went like this:

Thank you for being you
Thank you for all you do
You turn the sky to blue
Thank you for being you!

Seriously. How hilarious is that?!

Last week at work, I started tackling the project of transforming our conference website to showcase overviews of each talk, photos, and audio podcasts. Four pages are live already - check them out!

I'm still digesting all of the intense dialogue from that week and trying to decipher the musings I scrawled in my Moleskine notebook in the cab on the way back from the airport. But once I have a bit more time to mull it over, I'll write about the conference and post it here.

Bergen Street apartment

2009-10-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 17

2009-09-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

I took this picture on my way to the subway this morning. I've been really fascinated lately by couples that kind of look like twins. These guys were amazingly matchy matchy - and even perfectly in step!

Not much to report here after an extremely busy work week. (To see what's been keeping me so busy, check out the Creating a New Craft Culture conference!) It's been pretty much a standard routine kind of week. Wake up, feed and walk the dog, feed and dress myself, oh and have I mentioned the kitties? They are decidedly playing second fiddle to Winnie these days, poor guys, but I usually remember to feed them. Head to work - typically a 20 minute commute including walking time, just enough time to read a quick chapter on the train. Work all day, eat at my desk (I don't know why I really never take a proper lunch break), head home an hour after I intended to, feed and walk a desperate Winnie dog, make or pick up dinner, try to read or watch a movie but end up working on side projects. Fall asleep. Not so thrilling!

I do have some good lunch highlights from this week - delicious panini from Ceci Cela Patisserie on Tuesday, banh mi sandwich today, delicious Mediterranean-style lentil soup leftovers in between. And I just made a lovely salad nicoise for dinner which featured farmer's market vegetables and green beans from Jeremy's garden.

What else? I mixed glazes in the studio on Tuesday night then met Heidi and Catherine for drinks after at Cherry Tree on 4th Avenue. We had our first drink in the backyard in what looked like an old kiln or pizza oven outfitted with cushions and a table. It was fun at first then started weirding us out. We were joined later by Jeremy then moved on to Zuzu Ramen so he could get a late dinner. Please join me for a moment of silence in appreciation of the Zuzu Ramen pork buns. Oh man are they good.

I've met lots of good dogs and two new shop kitties on my walks with Winnie. I wish that she was the kind of dog that got more satisfaction out of socializing with other animals - she really couldn't care less. Lately, since I've been so busy, Winnie seems increasingly morose. There's lots of sighing going on around the house. However, she has no idea that she has a weekend in the country in store for her! We're heading up to New Paltz tomorrow so hopefully she can fill up on green grass and squirrel chasing enough to sustain her through at least the next few weeks of being a city dog!

Monday, September 14

2009-09-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

I have to take a moment to express my love and appreciation for the ladies of Lan's Lucky Laundry on 4th Avenue, who have made my life so much easier by offering quick and affordable laundry services that keep me from having to do my least favorite thing in the world - waste any part of my weekend at the laundrymat. Today I dropped a huge cumbersome bag of laundry off there at 9am and picked it up on my way home from work at 6:30. I never understand how they do it, but in that time our laundry was transformed from a bulky oversized bundle about to burst out of the laundry bag into a neat compact little brick of clean clothes. And that only set me back $9, for two weeks worth of laundry. I love it. I also love that they let me bring Winnie in to pick up and drop off and they always pet her and say "She looks like an old lady!" I've also seen the ladies walking home at the end of the day a few times when I've been out running or walking and they always stop to say hi and pet Winnie. Now that feels like a neighborhood.

A man who stopped on the street tonight to pet Winnie made a completely incomprehensible comment that is going to ping around in my brain until it gives me an aneurysm. I'm trying to remember it verbatim: "You know, I really just don't like the young people these days, with the attitude and everybody's obsessed with their image, but when you get rid of all that, animals are just so sweet. I really love them." Umm.... Maybe he was drunk. Or crazy. He was wearing sweatpants and didn't look like he was just coming from the gym so that should have been a warning sign.

Other highlights from our evening walk included not one but TWO basset hounds, an encounter with the Haifa Deli cat on Flatbush (who was defiantly curled up in an eggie in the middle of the sidewalk), and Winnie catching the scent of a squirrel and somehow working her entire front torso in between the bars in front of someone's brownstone trying to get it. She's obsessed.

I'm looking forward to a quiet night at home with a big salad (including AMAZING grape tomatoes from the farmer's market - I don't know how much longer they will have them but I'm trying to eat enough of them so that I won't miss them when they go out of season) and leftovers from the cheapest and most delicious Polish meal ever last night. Bring on the goulash!

Sunday, September 13

2009-09-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

This will be an end of the week and weekend wrap-up post. I'm realizing one of the flaws of writing these little daily reports to Patrick is that all of the fun things we do together on the weekend gets left out!

Some highlights from the last few days:

The Greenwich House Pottery Centennial celebration and opening of the Ayumi Horie and Andy Brayman installation Who Lives in Greenwich Village?

Low-key Friday night dinner at Fish n Sip cafe on our block and starting the first season of Mad Men which is already winning me over.

Saturday morning walk to the farmer's market where I procured grape tomatoes, peaches, a cantaloupe, red bell peppers, and 4 little loafs of bread - all for about $12. I could have saved a few bucks on the bread by bartering Winnie the Bread Hound (she walked under the counter and the bread guy said "Yes, we do accept dogs as a form of currency!") but I figured I should hold out til the winter so I could keep fattening her up and fetch a better price. She does have a lot of meat on her bones.

Another Saturday highlight was dessert with Heidi at The Chocolate Room, which is a very dangerous place to live two blocks from. I had the scoop, nibs, and port combo which was a scoop of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with niblets of cocoa beans covered in semi-sweet chocolate, paired with a rich chocolate port. Heidi had the blackbottom cake which I think had something to do with butterscotch that gets burnt on the bottom a bit - amazing. Patrick got a root beer float - gotta love him.

Today was a Ladies Day of Leisure with Heidi, Catherine (for part of the day), and Nina (my newest friend and girl crush). We started with the Yinka Shonibare show at the Brooklyn Museum, which knocked my socks off, followed by prix-fixe brunch and mimosas on the patio at Cheryl's. Seriously none of our food could have been any better, including my Eggs Benedict over Salmon Hash (!). Brunch was followed perhaps a bit too hastily by ice cream at Blue Marble which is unfortunately (fortunately) only a block away from Cheryl's. We went and walked Winnie en masse and browsed a few of the boutiques on 5th avenue, then took the subway up to Long Island City for the opening at Socrates Sculpture Park of the '09 Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition. Patrick's old co-worker Wyatt was one of the artists and Nina's friend Mads was also in the show. What a BEAUTIFUL day to be out at the sculpture park - it was well documented with lots of self-portraits on Heidi's iPhone.

The last stop of the evening was Greenpoint where we stopped in to pay our respects to Heidi's godcat Moku at her brother Michael's apartment and then headed out to eat Polish food. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the restaurant where Michael took us (long L word) but he's lived in Greenpoint for years and obviously figured out the sweet spot because this place was amazing. It was decorated like a Polish grandmother's den from the 70s. There was an abundance of comically fake flowers including a choice garland crowning (engulfing, really) a taxidermy deer on the wall. Each table had it's own little reading lamp. The menu featured all the typical Polish fare, none of which - not even the entrees - topped out over $7. We ordered big bowls of mushroom barley soup and hot borscht for $2.75 each. It kind of made me feel giggly like we were getting away with something. Everything - from the kielbasa to the perogies to the goulash - was delicious. I (obviously) love my neighborhood but I'm also envious of those existing ethnic enclaves like Greenpoint, Jackson Heights, even Sunset Park, where you can still get meals like this - neighborhood food at neighborhood prices.

Wednesday, September 9

2009-09-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

I went for a run this afternoon down 6th Avenue to 12th street and back, then picked up Winnie and went back out for a cool-down run to Fort Greene Park. Winnie ran like a champ the whole way there, then we sat in the grass and watched people play tennis for awhile. In the 5 seconds when I wasn't really paying attention to what she was doing, Winnie found a dead bird.

On the walk home from the park, I stopped to check out some books on a stoop on S. Portland street and picked up these four:
Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Deepak Chopra, Life After Death (succinctly described in the first quote on the back as "A must read for everyone who will die.")
Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!
I can't wait to read these books! I spent the rest of the walk home marveling at what a fantastic book collection those people must have if these are the rejects!

The other day on a break at work I picked up a vacuum sealed pack of 6 frozen croissants from Ceci Cela patisserie on Spring Street (which were amazingly cheap - I think they were $5). It wasn't until I got them home that I realized that they came with absolutely no instructions on how to turn these unasumming lumps of frozen dough into the crisp golden wonders that I saw in their display case. I googled "croissant bake frozen" and low and behold, one of the first hits that came up was on a website that sells the Ceci Cela frozen croissants (which are apparently world-famous - who knew?) and has an elaborate photo essay from the pastry chef Laurent Dupal detailing what to do with them once you got them home.

I am almost done with the first phase of letting them rise on the counter for 6-8 hours. There are two whole sections of the tutorial devoted to properly covering and then uncovering the rising croissants with plastic wrap. Once I've successfully crossed this hurtle, I will brush egg yolk onto the tops of the croissants (not too much - as Dupal advises, "There is no need to paint every nook and cranny. Work fast and do not overdo it."). The egg yolk will give them their "beautiful and appetizing shiny golden color." I cannot WAIT!

Tuesday, September 8

2009-09-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Street sounds that I love hearing in our apartment:

1. The metal gates being raised and lowered by each of the businesses on the street. I've never lived on a mostly commercial street before and there's a great rhythm to the comings and goings of the people who work on this street, versus the people who live here.
2. The "gu-gu-gu-guh" sound the bus makes when it's shifting gears.
3. The whistle of the man who comes to feed the cats across the street everyday at 7pm. I'm a bit obsessed with those kitties.
4. The shake of dogs' collars outside and Winnie's attempts to communicate with these dogs without actually barking (which she knows she's not supposed to do). She ends up opting for low grunts and a grumbling Scooby Doo-esque "haru... haroo".
5. Laughter and salsa music in one of the backyards next door that we can see from our kitchen windows. These people seem to have a dinner party nearly every night with great music, great smelling food, and what I imagine, judging by their laughs and taste in music, to be a sophisticated yet fun-loving group of friends.

And two sounds that I hate to hear:
1. Honking, especially on weekend mornings
2. Rap (and the now ubiquitous Michael Jackson) blaring from cars that seem to be waiting on the stoplight FOR EVER. I think there's a special clause in Murphy's Law that dictates that the louder and more obnoxious the music coming out of a car, the longer that car will end up being stuck in front of your house waiting on a stoplight.

Monday, September 7

2009-09-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

To get started with my blogging, here are a few things that stuck with me from the long Labor Day weekend:

I took my dog, a book, and a blanket to Prospect Park Friday afternoon. It was what can only be described as a honey of a day - clear and warm, but not hot. Gorgeous. At the park, Winnie the dog attracted the attention of an adorable 15-month-old boy named Joe, who was at the age where he looked completely square, he was so well padded for his many falls. Joe and his mom Bonnie joined us on our blanket to brush Winnie, play with the leash and chat for a while. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to hang out with this perfect stranger and her kid for an hour or so. After living in small towns and rural areas for most of my life, I just love the fact that in Brooklyn I so often casually cross paths with people who I could easily see myself being friends with. I grew up feeling like kindred spirits were few and far between - and I still believe that true life-long friends are - but there's something so comforting about having chance encounters like this with perfectly nice, interesting people who I may never see again. It makes me feel like I've barely scratched the surface of all the great people there are to know here. They're a dime a dozen! And that's a great thing!

While the adorable blond-haired Joe played with Winnie's leash on the blanket, what looked like an older couple walked by. The man (who must have been in his 70s) stopped and said, "You'll never believe it, but my daughter used to have hair exactly that color." And then the woman said, "And look at it now, almost all gray!" They were father and daughter, walking in the park together on a Friday afternoon. I loved that moment, the fact that such a quick conversational exchange could carry the weight of generations, of time steamrolling on as it always does.

After Joe's interactions with Winnie devolved into him persistently rapping her on the head with her brush (she's so patient), Bonnie packed him up and headed home. Winnie (much relieved) and I hung out on the blanket and I read for a bit but kept getting distracted by what sounded like opera playing in the distance. Sitting up to investigate, I noticed a group of elderly men and women on benches on the other side of the sidewalk that snakes it's way through the Long Meadow. They probably live at the home on Prospect Park West where you can always see residents who have been brought out to get fresh air and sunshine. One of the men on the bench was singing to the rest of the group in a beautiful, sure tenor voice, his hands gesturing along with the lilting melody the way a conductor's might. He was singing as if it were the most natural thing in the world, merely a pastime, but nonetheless drawing a small crowd. When Winnie and I packed up to go home, we stopped and listened for a bit then headed on our way.

The streets are unbelievably quiet right now because of the holiday weekend. There's something really nice about that - when you're out on the street, there's an unmistakable calm, and when you're inside, the hush makes it feel like a snow day or something. I walked Winnie up Flatbush Avenue Sunday morning and I swear there could have been tumbleweeds.

This afternoon on the subway, a mom and her four kids (probably age 10-18) were bickering good-naturedly back and forth about who had eaten all of the cereal in the house. The two youngest ones finally fessed up to having taken out the Apple Jacks together. Their banter was straight out of a sitcom, but much funnier and more sincere.

I was reading on the couch this evening and heard a kitty meowing outside so I got up to check it out. There is a small colony of friendly but feral cats that live in an empty construction storage lot across from our building on the front side. As I got to the window, I saw two women in front of the fence with cat carriers. It looked like they were trying to take the cats away and I felt like shouting out the window that they couldn't take those kitties, because one of my favorite little routines of the neighborhood is hearing a man who comes to feed them whistle for the cats around 7pm every day. He has this great distinctive "Wee who hee who" whistle. The cats come running to him (and I go running to the window) and he feeds them and loves all over them. So my initial thought was, "Somebody has to stop them! How sad would the whistling man be if he came to feed them and the kitties never came?!" But then I realized that the girls were actually releasing two of the junkyard kitties from carriers back under the fence. I guess they took them to the vet or got them fixed! Whew, what a relief (ironically in a way, since they are strays!). But I just feel really happy that they are taken care of by people in the neighborhood.

Postcards from Bergen Street

2009-09-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to live locally. "Local" and "sustainable" must be the most overused buzzwords in today's ongoing debate over finding a more ethical, meaningful way of life. Local especially has crossed over into gastronomical nomenclature, spawning the term "locavore" and numerous books on how best to reduce the amount of gasoline needed to grease each of our respective food chains. I've been thumbing through one of them, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which chronicles her family's one year quest to grow or purchase from people they know everything that they will eat for an entire year (yes, including winter). Kingsolver's sense of wonderment at the process of growing one's own food is contagious. I found myself marveling at the fact that you can put SEEDS that cost next to nothing into the ground and a few months later harvest FOOD that you would then EAT without having bought it at the grocery store! What could be more magical? What was considered one of the most natural and banal things in the world to most people of my grandparent's generation now seems like alchemy.

I would love to grow my own food. I would love to participate more in my own "gastroeconomy" (as Kingsolver and her husband Steven Hopp call it). BUT (big but here) I live in New York City, in a third floor apartment in Brooklyn. This is not the time or place for me to try to stage my own personal gastroeconomic coup-d'etat. And that fact has led me to think more creatively about what it means to live locally in one of the biggest cities in the world. I think "local" is about a lot more than food. It's about being a part of the community where you live. It's about the fabric and texture of this city of a thousand tiny neighborhoods that feel more like small towns to me than most of the dots on the map in Middle America that I've visited of late. "Sustainable" is about a lot more than green design and environmentally friendly cleaning products. It's about sustaining your neighborhood through your patronage of local small businesses. And it's also about loving the place where you live, being sustained by it in an intangible way. A friend who moved to Rome on a whim - knowing virtually no one there - once told me that, even though it was hard to live an ocean away from her family and most of her friends, and to learn a new language, and that she worried about being deported for her long-expired tourist visa, there was nothing like the fact that everyday she woke up with a feeling of excitement, like, "This is where I LIVE. I LOVE this city."

I feel like that at least twice every day, when I walk my dog through our beautiful, vibrant neighborhood in Brooklyn and invariably see something amazing or touching or bizarre. And after work when my subway car comes up for air and crosses the Manhattan bridge, if it's sunny outside I can see the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Governor's Island, and all of lower Manhattan laid out in front of me in a sea of sparkling light. It really is the most magical thing on earth and it just makes me smile and sigh to myself, "This is the city where I live." So as seductive as the "back to the land" ideal of Kingsolver and other writers' interpretation of living locally might be, I think I'll figure out a way to do that here. Because I LOVE this city.

This feeling has been heightened lately because I'm relying more on the city for comfort and support than I ever have before. My husband Patrick just started graduate school at SUNY New Paltz, 90 miles north of Manhattan in the Hudson Valley, so for the next two years he will only be home every other weekend. As I adjust to him being absent during the week, I'm aware of just how much more precious the little interactions and vignettes of our neighborhood and my daily routine become. I want to record them as a journal of what's going on in our neighborhood so that Patrick doesn't miss out on all the little things.

So in the spirit of sustaining my own locality and being sustained by it, I've decided to start a digest of remarkable things that I witnessed, overheard, ate, or otherwise encountered in my neighborhood and the other bits of the city that I spend time in. Maybe these observations will seem entirely unremarkable to other people, but they make up the fabric of my experience here, give me a sense of place, and make me happy on a daily basis. So let me tell you about my day...