what you see

maura @ 10:28 pm

Now that things are (somewhat) slower I’m trying to get back to some old, good habits, things I’d stopped doing when I was too busy or too tired. So I walked to work both yesterday and today. Today I even walked the old, preferable way, which is much more scenic and much less vehicle exhaust-y but takes between 5-10 more minutes. Which is nothing, really — barely a drop in the time bucket, practically zip in the great scheme of things. And something I should totally be doing for mental health, etc.

What I’ve missed in the past couple of months is new street/public art, which is everywhere! Photos of the stuff closest to work coming soon, but also there’s a great installation on a building on the scenic way to work. I didn’t stop to take pictures today, and anyway tonight I found much better photos than I could probably take. E.g.:

Really a cool project, and I haven’t even had a chance to walk around the entire building yet. I actually kind of adore that part of Brooklyn, that intersection of Livingston and Hoyt. True that it’s grungy and dirty and rundown and sad, plus the horrible commercial crowdedness of the Fulton St. Mall (where–UGH–xmas carols are currently being played so loud you can hear them 2 blocks away!). But there are amazing and beautiful historic buildings, and a Mexican grocery with 50 cent bags of chips for after summer-camp snacks, and lots of people people people coming and going and just trying to make it work.

Here’s an article about the artist, who sounds like a cool guy.

Image credit: sabeth718

that point me to another day

maura @ 10:19 pm

What is it about getting out of the city that always leaves me so conflicted when I return? Gus was out of school all last week so we headed north for a few days for our annual grandparents-n-snow pilgrimage. All of the usual “s” activities were accounted for: sledding, snowshoeing, skating, and skiing. Gus, Jonathan, and my brother built an epic snowfort, too, about 5 feet wide by 15 long with three rooms and walls (w/crenellations) over 5 feet tall and fierce icicles all around the door to ward off marauders. The whole trip was lovely.

So now I’m thinking about the country again, nature + woods + mountains (and the silo house). It’s not that I want to leave the city. Why does nature always have to = no diversity + tons of driving? Especially the driving — on this trip we realized that Connecticut is the Staten Island of New England, because there is always traffic somewhere no matter what day or time you’re on the road.

Also, I really miss the snow. You’d think after our unusually snowy January I’d be okay with what’s obviously winter ending (at the botanic gardens today I noticed that the bluebells are starting to poke through). But the skis in my closet make me greedy for more. Maybe we just need to be in a more northern city.

What I really want is a War Drobe so I can move from city to nature easily without all that pesky driving. And a rainbow unicorn.

a very blustery day

maura @ 9:32 pm

So, there was a tornado in Brooklyn yesterday! Yeah, I know the weather service is saying they’re not sure what to call it yet, but it sure seemed like a tornado to me. It’s funny: I lived in Missouri for 2 yrs as a kid and have spent lots of time visiting my in-laws in the great Midwest, but it’s here in the big city that I first encounter a tornado.

The whole thing was really weird — as Jonathan said at dinner, the weather forecast for the day didn’t seem that awful, just a 20% or so chance of rain in the evening. I was chatting with a coworker and ended up leaving work later than I planned, and as I walked from the library to the subway it was just starting to drizzle. But the air was really unsettled and the clouds were speeding by and the lightning was just weird, so you could tell it wasn’t a typical storm.

The train was really slow so I was probably down in the subway for 20 minutes or so. When I got to my stop and walked up to the first level above the platform, there was a huge tree branch near the turnstiles. Which was unexpected! Then I got upstairs to the sidewalk and saw the first of the big downed trees on my walk home (that’s the photo on the left above). There were three big trees down on the three-block walk to our street, though strangely none of the small trees on our block were damaged at all. The buildings around us are all fine but there’s been lots of roof + window damage elsewhere in Brooklyn and Queens.

(The Times has a cool map today of the downed trees that traces the storm’s path. Go GIS!)

We’re fine, as is everyone we know. Our car is fine, too, which makes me a little sad. You see that last photo up there, on the right? See the little bit of red car across the street from the car that has a tree on it? The red one is ours, and I wish it was the other one. I’ve been trying to make us get rid of the car for about 3 yrs now. But my enthusiasm is not shared, and it’s a lot of work to get it together and actually sell it. So we are still car owners.

But we have friends whose car got totalled a bunch of years ago, I forget how, I think they were in an accident but thankfully no one was hurt. And afterward they decided not to get a new car. Which got me thinking what a great thing it would be if something like that happened to our car. Accident, disaster, whatever — as long as no one gets hurt and nothing else gets broken. It just seems so much easier than having to make the effort to sell the damn thing.

So hello tornado in Brooklyn. If you were going to take down all of our beautiful trees, the least you could have done is dropped one of them on our car. The owner of that car across the street is so lucky, sheesh.

updates, in list form

maura @ 5:32 pm

1. We did manage to make it to the BBG today. What’s more fun than traipsing through the botanic gardens with a sullen, complaining 8 yr old? Same plus nearly every other resident of our fine city. I have rarely seen the gardens so crowded on a non-event day. We actually had to cut the trip short because the crowds were getting to all of us.

2. Here’s the flower report:
Magnolias: mostly finished
Tulips: full bloom
Grape hyacinths: full bloom, like a bluish-purple carpet
Lilacs: mostly not open, but a few bushes have started, eep!
Cherries: a mixed bag, some trees are full on, and some just have buds. Seems like the trees with whitish blossoms open earliest:

It’s like a crazy nature fast forward over there, even the azalea bushes have a couple of blossoms opening. Looks like Gus will have to endure a few more awful weekends of floral viewing. We’ll be consulting the cherry blossom status map to plan our viewing strategy.

3. We did have ice cream bars, phew. And as you can see, even the non-treat time wasn’t all bad:

Nothing like a muddy stream to really cheer a kid up after being dragged to see boring old flowers with his boring old parents.

4. Have you seen my to-do list? It’s gone missing, which has completely thrown me for a loop because I need to update it for this week and I usually start with the old list when I’m making a new one. I’ve got a couple of piles of work- and research-related stuff on my desk and shelves, and it’s not in any of them. I *just* had it yesterday, and I can’t for the life of me imagine what’s happened to it.

Maybe the cats stole it. I’ve been talking trash about shaving them lately because with the warm weather they are shedding like mad. This could be their devilish revenge: wig out the control freak by stealing her list! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

untogether

maura @ 9:41 pm

I didn’t ride my scooter to work all last week, because the week before I took a spill. I know, I know, why didn’t I tell you, internets? Well, I was (understandably, I think) embarrassed: as I keep saying, the only thing dorkier than an old lady in an orange helmet riding a kick scooter is the same eating it on the broken pavement near the Atlantic Center. Duh. It wasn’t the end of the world — a couple of small scrapes and a bruised shoulder and a chunk out of one hand, and thankfully the worst of it is on my left side (I’m right handed).

With my (minor) injuries I’ve been walking to work the past week or so. It’s funny how sloooooow it seems to me now when I walk to work. It only takes 40-ish minutes, but it’s easily twice the time it takes me to scoot. (Though I’m pretty sure that walking is better exercise, even with the uphill scoot home.) I do listen to podcasts or music during the walk, which I can’t do when I scoot, but it still seems long and a little boring.

Until I get to the art, that is. Then things get more interesting. You may have seen this story in the Times last week about the rise of pop-up art galleries in vacant storefronts around the city. I know it’s not a good thing to have vacant storefronts, but I have to admit that I vastly prefer the art.

I actually walk by two of the galleries mentioned in the Times piece. The first is a long stretch of storefronts with a ton of space, and lots of interesting sculpture and paintings inside. Right next door is an Applebee’s* which just increases the artistic tension, as far as I’m concerned. The Kenny Scharf mural (photo in the Times) is there, and a weird industrial chunky sculpture that’s all wood and oil drums and pipes and water. There’s also the melting waffle from the plaza near my work! I was so glad to see it — it disappeared from the plaza a few weeks ago and I’ve missed it.

* I’ll never get used to this Applebee’s being there. It’s so incongruous.

The second set of gallery spaces is smaller but also pretty cool. There are a couple of pieces with an anti-consumerist bent, which I totally groove on. It’s also nice that the old store signs were left above each storefront; the 1 Hr Photo, Check Cashing and Taco Rico signs really add to the effect. One of my favorite pieces has a table with two chairs and a huge jello mold on it. It’s the spiritual sibling of the enormous melting waffle. Go weird big food art, go!

everything looks beautiful on video

maura @ 9:43 pm

It’s been a crazy kid week in the mauraweb! household. Gus learned to make farting noises in his armpit (thank you, private school day camp!), and has of course been showcasing this newfound talent at every opportunity. Tonight I had to act like a parent and bust out with “no farting noises at the dinner table!” On the other hand, he’s really quite good, so I can’t help but feel a *little* proud.

He also got a haircut yesterday for the first time since last September. In our crunchy, progressive-school corner of Brooklyn it’s pretty common for boys to have long hair. But on our recent trip through a non-NYC airport the security guard used a female pronoun while referring to Gus not once but *three* times (though it didn’t seem to faze him). And it’s gotten increasingly difficult to comb, esp. since we’ve entered the shower-every-day camp phase of the summer.

I really liked his long skater kid hair so initially I was sad, but when I got home from work last night I was relieved to discover that the cut turned out really well. It always surprises me how much older he looks with shorter hair. I tried to take a picture, but he was all moving and weird faces and everything.

We accidentally let him stay up too late tonight and he started to get a little rammy in the shower. Suddenly he was rapping: “yo yo yo, my name is Joe, I like to wear my pants down low.” It sounded like something he didn’t make up on his own, so I googled it and looks like it’s a YouTube meme. For kids. Very odd. I couldn’t find the exact words though (the videos I watched all had the same beginning but different ends to the rhyme, e.g. “I stubbed my toe on a cheerio”). So maybe he did make up that part.

here’s your future: it’s gonna rain

maura @ 9:39 pm

I’ve been mentally blogging all day in discrete paragraphs rather than sustained narrative, so I’m going to kick it list-style here tonight:

1. After multiple recommendations I finally got my hands on some Thermals records. And they are awesome! Good for listening to while cleaning the stacks of papers off your desk, arranging the fall workshop schedule, and doing the dishes. Since it has rained here for a million billion jillion days straight, the line that’s the title of this post seems particularly apt.

2. Seriously, it has rained for a million billion jillion days straight. I mean, I used to dig in Ireland, I know from rain. I finally bought some big tall boots, but this is still getting pretty old. No rain today but the forecast for the weekend looks ominous, bah.

3. Last week we went to the curriculum share at Gus’s school to see all the fantastic work they’ve done all year. I am completely in awe of his teacher: she took those 27 kids on a ton of field trips all over the city (they studied a lot of architecture this year), including walks over the Brooklyn, Manhattan AND Williamsburg bridges (not all in the same day). Among the work Gus showed us was a book he made entitled “All Kinds of Awesome Poems By Gus.” Which makes me giggle every time I think of it.

4. I finally cleared a whole bunch of random old photos off my phone recently. Here are two:

This is from a crazy place with tons of inflatable stuff to climb on called Bounce U that we went to with friends earlier this year. Gus had a blast, predictably.

There’s a fun public art project all along a street near my work for which lots of people knitted cozies for the parking meters! It’s amazing, very Doctor Seussian. I took this photo right after the cozies were installed — they look much more droopy now that they’ve been rained on for a month. You can get a better look in the nice Flickr photostream and there’s also more info in the Times.

that’s when their eyes got big

maura @ 5:28 pm

You may remember that time last year when I saw a manhole cover with the word TELEPORT on it. (Or maybe you didn’t, which is why I linked back to it just there.) And then I couldn’t find it later.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I found it again, except that I’m not exactly sure that this is the same one I saw before. I could swear that I saw the other one a few blocks away, but I haven’t walked that way to work in a while.

It’s funny, it never even occurred to me that this could be Art, but Jonathan suggested it might be so the last time I passed it I looked verrrrry closely. And it looks as solid and authentic as any other manhole cover. Plus, it’s right near a big old Verizon building and there are other manhole covers in the vicinity that feature the same hexagonal patterns (though they all read BELL TEL or have a bell on them).

That’s the boring explanation for its existence, though. I’d prefer it if you could really teleport. And, as Jonathan pointed out, there are little rocketships in between the hexagons. Interesting…

distant voices from deep space

maura @ 10:45 pm

Way back in April I was inspired to take the camera and document my walk to work one day. I downloaded the photos and there they’ve sat, in a folder named blag, on my desktop, for weeks now.

Until today! The day when you too can enjoy My Walk To Work in all it’s late April glory.

This is the block around the corner from ours, a particularly pretty one. Lots of lovely planting going on here — I always enjoy a good clawfoot bathtub planter.

A coffee shop on my walk has this cool bench. Never had their coffee though — I’m always too hyped up from J’s coffee (and walking too fast to stop at this early point).

This is one of two somewhat crazy clothing + other stuff stores I walk by. I’ve never been in though — maybe I am too afraid that I will buy something.

The Williamsburg Bank Building is the tallest building in Brooklyn. Of course they are turning it into condos (note scaffolding). The red and greenish building on the right is just one example of the hideousness wrought by the developer who wants to build a huge stadium in this part of Brooklyn. Bah.

I’ve never understood why there’s a cow in front of the hardware store. But it is a well-maintained cow, and the kids do like it.

Did you lose your glasses? I hope not, because these are in bad shape.

I am perfectly happy living in an apartment. But if I ever do live in a house, I would like it to be purple! After walking by it somewhat unintentionally, I actually changed my route because seeing this house every morning makes me happy.

Gus’s old preschool was across the street from this bar, which prompted many a joke amongst the parents, esp. during the always-excruciating “phase-in.” Note the “for sale” sign. Sigh.

I walk by lots of beautiful examples of urban gardens. I like this one for the pansies, which look so perky and happy, and the variety, which is quite eye-catching.

I also walk by lots of bikes. I’ve been having serious bike lust lately. This old school yellow number’s pretty rad. (More on bikes another day.)

How many new buildings can you count? The correct answer is 3 (4 if you count the one just to the left that didn’t fit in the frame). There’s a lot of construction these days in northern Brooklyn. Because, did you hear? There’s a terrible shortage of million-dollar 2 BR condos! TERRIBLE! Wherever will those people wanting to pay $1m for an apartment GO?! Quick, throw up more condos, before they all move to the suburbs!!!

</snark>

This is a sculpture in the plaza I walk through when I’m almost at work. Even though I’ve been at my job for almost 3 mos, I still wonder “where’s that dog’s owner?” at least once a week.

Another view of the plaza, while the cherry trees were in bloom. Public art is cool. The mostly blue + green mostly metal + stained glass sculpture on the left has an old-fashioned subway station feel to it. On the right is part of an installation of small plastic water bottles filled with red liquid hung in the trees, which look like alien fruits or eggs or something.

I like walking through this plaza — it’s right at the end of the walk and it’s nice to see trees, grass and art before starting the workday.

Work! The library’s in a funky building that was built in the 80s to connect 3 other buildings. Sometimes the floors don’t meet up (e.g. the library building has no 3rd floor) which is surprising! I’m lucky to have a window — the green dot approximates my location.

…and, I don’t know quite how to end this post. Except to say that it’s Friday night, and even though I can’t quite manage the popfest this weekend, I still probably shouldn’t be thinking about work. Bye!

so so so busy

maura @ 1:36 pm

but jonathan sent me this link and it just cries out to be posted: this is the blog of the main buyer at the coop. get yer fresh coop news here, including such tasty tidbits as why you can’t get grade b maple syrup in ny state anymore (how will anyone ever do the master cleanser fast???).

in all seriousness, we in this household are mightily pissed off about the maple syrup thing. luckily we’re visiting my dad in vermont very soon, mostly likely with an empty suitcase in tow.