city mouse

Overheard!

None of these are as poetic as my favorite overheard comment from some months back. But humor me anyway; I’m still regaining my strength after several days down South.

Overheard in Greenville, SC, Bob Jones University art gallery* edition:

Geeky Religious Dad, to wife in floor-length denim skirt and two gawky homeschoolish teen boys, backing away from a portrait of a fierce looking Virgin Mother holding a chubby little Christ child while crushing the head of a serpent underfoot: “I like this painting. But I do not like that it shows Mary’s bare foot. No [shaking head gravely], I do not like that at all.”

Overheard in New York, predictable edition:

Blonde walking up Lexington Avenue with a big SCOOP bag slung over her shoulder, on cell phone: “No, I’m on my way to get my eyebrows done. But if you want to meet me at 80th and Madison I can give you a quick peck.”

Overheard in an office, stolen from my dear friend O- edition:

Slackjawed yokel co-worker, commenting on handbag: “huh-huh ... Prada ... the devil wears Prada. Is that from that movie? Did you get that because of that movie?”

*Yes, it is with some regret that I confess to giving this unfortunate institution money in order to look at their impressive collection of religious art from the 14th-19th centuries. Actually, my mom did. And actually, we only visited so that Mr. Management and my Russophile mother could see the vast collection of Russian icons housed there; they are, unfortunately, in storage for the next two years. Anyway, they have lots of other stuff, including two paintings that actually feature God Himself. It’s true, he really is an old white guy with a beard!

But the best part – aside from Easily Offended Religious Dad – was when my mom attempted to guilt-trip the Bob Jones gift shop lady who broke the news about the missing icons by telling her that we had traveled “all the way from New York City just to see them.”

I tell you, my mother's guilting technique is unstoppable! I’ll bet that cashier is still smarting from it. The poor thing may never know that we were actually in Greenville to visit my family anyway ...

Library of the day

Friends and countrymice, I come to you with glad library tidings from the far side of the continent. The new(ish) central branch of the Seattle Public Library has an army of librarians standing by to answer your nagging reference questions, 24/7. Free music downloads for lucky library card-holders. A fearless, outspoken union that passed a resolution calling for President Bush’s impeachment. And – deep breath – its own café, complete with scrumptious-or-at-least-drinkable Seattle coffee you can carry around the library with you.

Then there's the building itself, which is a beaut. It’s probably fortunate that I don’t live there any more since I’d inevitably become obsessed to the point of distraction with taking photos that capture all the neat-o light and lines. Here are some modest attempts.

Fancy book-sorting system that runs along the ceiling on the main floor

Sunshine on a cloudy day

Neon escalators!

A vertiginous view looking down from the 10th floor

Some outdoor perspective (library on right, lumpy public art in foreground)

Of course, there’s spectacular architecture, and then there’s user-friendly design ... Though the architecture critic types have showered the building with praise, I direct you to the amazingly creative Ruby Crowned Kinglette, who has created a lovely tote bag to express her feelings on the matter – really, take a look! Says she:

architecture for architecture's sake is a failure when it is a public building, built with public funds.  i am not a big fan of that in the private sector; in the public realm it is just bad design.  i have read too many accounts of what a success this building is, how it has put seattle on the map architecturally, how the building itself is a destination, how utterly brilliant mr. koolhaas is.  but, i can not believe anyone who thinks it's so great has actually used the building for it's intended purpose.  it frustrates me every time i use the place. it frustrates me every time i am there and groups touring the building talk about how spectacular it is.  it really frustrated me the day there was a fire alarm while i was doing research on the 9th floor. the entire building emptied via the fire escape that emptied out into the middle of the building that we then had to walk through to get outside????? really? isn't that counter intuitive? shouldn't people exiting a burning building NOT have to walk through that building once they get to the main floor??? - ok, it wasn't burning that day, but still....

For more on libraries and their intended uses, I direct you to some missives from actual (angry!) librarians posted by Maud last week ...

Samuel Johnson Is Impressed

I am pleased to report that I actually learned something today, before 8 a.m., even. Humbly, I had to acknowledge that the word "bunghole" is not a dirty word at all, at least not originally, but in fact refers to something to do with a cask of ale.

How I passed three decades thinking otherwise frightens me a little. (The word "bung," according to Dictionary.com, derives from Middle English bunge, from Middle Dutch bonge, from Late Latin puncta, hole, from Latin, feminine past participle of pungere, to prick. Which still sounds a little dirty to me, sorry.) During our morning repartee, my erudite, sophisticated boyfriend and I got on the subject of kegs (don't ask). He made one of his trademark sophisticated, erudite jokes, somehow involving the use of the term "bunghole," and I chided him for being crass. "I beg your pardon," he said, "'bunghole' is a perfectly respectable word!" He went on to remind me that just last night we heard my quite respectable literary heroine Lydia Davis utter that very word at a reading in a stuffy room in a building on NYU's Washington Mews.

The word appears in a story from her Samuel Johnson Is Indignant collection -- I believe the story is "Special Chair," but don't hold me to that -- in which the narrator describes being appointed the caretaker of a friend's big, heavy chair which is somehow crafted out of an ale or wine cask. "What must you have been thinking when you heard Lydia Davis use the word 'bunghole' in that story?" my learned boyfriend asked.

Come to think of it, I said, it had struck me as somewhat out of character for her at the time, but everything else about that reading was sort of odd, so I wrote it off. It was odd, for example, to go to a free reading we saw advertised in Time Out and be greeted with a full spread of chafing dishes featuring a series of hot hors d'oeuvres, our choice of white or red wine, beer, chilled water and sodas. It also was odd to sit in a distinguished room lined with the classic works of Irish literature, in a building apparently devoted to all things Irish, waiting for an event we were pretty sure was supposed to feature a writer not particularly known for her Irishness, surrounded by people who all appeared to be more grad studenty than the types one typically sees at these types of readings in NYC, with notebooks and pens on their laps. And it was odd to wait a half hour past the starting time of the reading, squirming in our seats, wondering (as more and more grad students filed in, purposefully clutching not only their notebooks but passing around what appeared to be syllabuses of some sort, and worksheets) if we were in the right place. It all was cleared up eventually, but we had an entertaining time speculating about what kind of awful lecture or exam we may have mistakenly stumbled into, and how we would excuse ourselves from the packed room once we were discovered to be interlopers.

Lydia herself wasn't odd, of course, or maybe a little but only in her own delightful way. She's done with the translating for now and her next collection is out next spring; it seems that it will feature a lot of her shorter (as in sentence or two) pieces. Then again, she may just not enjoy reading longer ones; she seemed a bit apologetic each time she looked up after reading anything longer than a page. But I think once one has been deemed a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France, one no longer needs to apologize for anything, ever.

I'm thinking of getting a bike

When considering a move to New York, I had to carefully weigh my temperament -- nervous, claustrophobic, prone to anxiety attacks -- against the very real possibility I'd be stuck riding in a rickety old metal canister underground squashed against strangers for miles each day to work. Then I remembered that I hate freeway driving more than just about anything else (even yoga), so I got over it, and for the most part I've actually grown to enjoy the subway, even my sardine-can commutes most days.

They've been doing "track work" lately on the line I ride regularly, though, and the trip has grown ever more tedious. For the past two mornings in a row, my commute to work has been interrupted by the frantic cries of a conductor over the train's loudspeaker: "Police! Police! Transit police, come immediately to the downtown train! Police!" Yesterday, it was more than a little disconcerting to note that this announcement echoed for nearly five minutes through a platform at Grand Central Station on the late side of rush hour before help apparently arrived or the conductor panicked and fled or died or something (I switched to the express before I could find out).

This morning I made it all the way down to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall before the excitement kicked in -- this time, in addition to the distress cry, we got some more information: "There is a crime in progress. Police! Police! Report immediately to the conductor's car in the front of the train. There IS a CRIME in PROGRESS!" For the next 10 minutes, doors opening and closing at random, we commuters sighed, craned our necks, and grumbled to each other a bit, but curiously (or not), none of us actually stepped out of the air-conditioned car to see what was happening or attempt to save ourselves from this ongoing crime wave. Since it was nice out, I finally decided to continue the rest of my commute on foot.

I guess my temperament has become more placid over the past few years of subway-riding -- it didn't even occur to me until later to wonder what exactly happened in that poor conductor's car.

Sorta related: Even "7 On Your Side"'s Tappy Phillips can't get justice from the MTA!

(Cute bike-riding mice snagged from this Finnish fairy tale site.)

Entschuldigung!

For someone who bills herself as a writer, I'm a dismal failure when it comes to observing and recording entertaining scenes on the street. I don't even own a Moleskine. And I feel inadequate about the fact that I rarely overhear anything on the bustling streets of New York that's entertaining enough to pass along. There's actually a whole Web site (though a bit meanspirited and unverifiable), devoted to the topic of overheard New York conversation, featuring acres of fresh posts daily. Who are these lucky tipsters who pick up these polished, urbane gems? Assuming they're true, that is.

I do overhear things, they're just sort of pointless. Yet they wedge their way into my head, and I sometimes find myself repeating them, compulsively and silently (or so at least I hope) for a block or two after the person has passed. Like this bit from a woman talking on her cell phone in the east 70s last week:

"She's a friend of Opal's
who works with Opal's mother
on Sundays
when Opal doesn't work ..."

It has a certain poetry to it, no? It lodged itself in my mind, the sound of the words taking precedence over their actual meaning, so that it wasn't until much later that I wondered: Her name is Opal? She works six days a week? With her mother? Poor dear.

As anyone who's had to spend time shopping or watching TV with me knows, I get phrases, songs, jingles and theme songs stuck in my head at an alarming rate, and am doomed to go around warbling them aloud like an autistic child for longer than is healthy for me or my poor companions. So I was excited to learn about this new language-learning program that seems tailormade for a person with my condtion: Earworms (site not Firefox-friendly, alas).

The idea behind this software is that you can pick up chunks of language -- handy traveling phrases and such, divorced from the grammatical rules and rote memorization associated with language acquisition -- if they're paired with a catchy soundtrack and repeated, until you find yourself internalizing them without realizing it. They offer lessons in major western European languages, with Japanese and Arabic to come. I decided to give it a try with the German demo, a language that has eluded me despite my best efforts.*

A sexily-voiced British pair, male and female, intones the phrases soothingly, first the English ("Ex-CUSE me"), then the language ("Ent-SHUL-di-goong"), over a gently pulsing, vaguely porno soundtrack. It repeats, adding new phrases along the way, as the music does its thing. The result is an odd cross between a European art film and that Electric Company segment where the male and female lips each utter half of a word and then articulate the whole word in tandem: "Pu-" ... "-sh" ... "Puuush." (And what a relief to learn from Maud that I wasn't alone in finding this weirdly sensual as a child! Maud, I owe you several therapy co-pays.)

The Earworm approach is sort of ingenious. For me, I think it might be more effective over, say, a bad Journey tune or the theme song to Antiques Roadshow, but I guess they haven't got the music rights.

Anyway, I do give the Earworms site credit for getting the phrase ent-SHUL-di-goong lodged into my consciousness. Too bad it's currently competing with this awful yet visciously catchy Slade song (you have been warned!), the unfortunate result of a tipsy conversation at a Greenpoint bar this weekend that, while very entertaining, is unlikely to make its way onto any clever Web site.

*Fun fact from Wikipedia: the term Earworm itself is derived from the German Ohrwurm. Insert obvious leave-it-to-the-Germans-to ... joke here. I think I prefer the alternate, "melodymania."

Smile, baby

According to this article, Manhattanites who can afford to be choosy now choose non-doorman buildings. In addition to confirming (as if this was needed) the Times' fixation on Manhattanites who can afford to be choosy, the article reminded me of my brief stint in a doorman building on the Upper-Upper-West Side.

This was my first residence in the city, coming up to test the job market as a nervous country mouse. I took the sublet, sight unseen, off of Craigslist, from an arty woman who was to be out of the country for three months. Through a series of pleasant long-distance e-mail exchanges and phone chats, we declared our mutual trust for one another and I met her briefly in her immaculate, intimidatingly white apartment, hours before she was to take off for Europe.

Though I'd been assured of the legality of the sublet, upon our meeting I was told that I was now an " old friend" of hers, mainly there to "water the plants." This story was necessary, she explained, to make sure the doormen didn't rat her out -- "try not to chit-chat with them; they can be rather nosy," she advised, as she instructed me on the finer points of exactly how to arrange the pile of white eyelet-lace pillows on the bed each morning, and on exactly what chair, and in what manner, the couch pillows should be stacked in the event I had an overnight guest.

Between all that and the plant instructions and the lecture on the intricate workings of the leaves in her folding antique table and the linen-laundering advice and the complicated arrangement by which her "real" friend would be coming by to pick up my rent check and take a look at things every so often and her rules about when to raise and lower the airshaft window depending on what time of day the Chinese restaurant downstairs started frying garlic, I sort of forgot the doorman admonition.

The only doormen on a sad stretch of upper Amsterdam that faced a housing project, the poor guys could be forgiven, I thought, for being a little chatty. Besides, I was unemployed, locally friendless, and in heartbreaking negotiations over the impending implosion of a relationship down south. In my phone calls back home to Countrymouseville, I'd amuse friends with my stories of the doormen and their names, which all ended in a variation of "-ie" -- Reggie, Johnny, Danny, Tony. They ribbed me good-naturedly about my boyfriend, who I was hopelessly trying to convince to join me in the city. Despite my carefully worded friend-watering-plants tale, they caught on right away to my illegal sublet status. But it was all very nice, until it wasn't.

I can't say when the shift took place -- probably in just a few weeks, after the glamour of Having a Doorman wore off -- but their good-natured teasing gradually seemed to carry a hint of malice, and the constant questions about the long-distance boyfriend turned into a challenge about his very existence. By the time I'd talked the soon-to-be-ex into coming up to visit, I may have cared more about showing him off to Reggie and the gang than actually selling him on the prospect of life in the big city. The politics of when to say good night, when to accept help with packages, whom to complain to about mice, when to lie low (when the landlord came around), and when to stop and furnish a report on my progress in the big city -- it all became too much. It was with relief that I finally hauled my last suitcase out of there for another living arrangement.

When I came back to the building a month later to pick up my deposit check from the fastidious arty woman, the doormen barely acknowledged me. It occurred to me only much later that I was probably supposed to give them some sort of tip for their services. I feel a stab of guilt about that whenever I pass a doorman.

Which, as it happens, is quite often in my current neighborhood. Yesterday, I admired a fuchsia azalea heralding spring in a planter outside a residential high-rise. The color reminded me of a bush we'd had outside my last country mouse house down south, and I felt a little wistful. As I passed by, I heard a doorman call after me, "Hey, it wouldn't hurt to smile!" A half a block later, I did -- not because he told me to, but because I was so damn happy to be going home to my own non-doormanned apartment.

Again with the libraries!

Grab your library tote bags -- we're just weeks away from the grand debut of the refurbished Morgan Library, on East 36th. After a three-year, $100+million renovation and expansion, the Morgan is set to re-open to the public April 29. Architecture folk are abuzz about Renzo Piano's additions to the original 1906 McKim, Mead & White structure, profiled glowingly in the Times this week.

Those robber barons didn't skimp on the collecting. Among the Morgan's literary highlights are "a number of exceptional documents handwritten or signed by influential figures in Western culture, including Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, Napoléon, Sir Isaac Newton, and Voltaire," along with the only surviving manuscript of Paradise Lost, transcribed and corrected under Milton's direction, Charles Dickens's manuscript of A Christmas Carol, the journals of Henry David Thoreau, plus manuscripts and letters galore from the likes of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and John Steinbeck.

The Morgan boasts tons of visual art, too, including nearly 10,000 drawings from the 14th through 20th centuries -- da Vinci to Durer, Blake to Burne-Jones. Last year, the Morgan acquired the manuscript and illustrations for de Brunhoff's Histoire de Babar le petit elephant, including "the earliest plan for the Babar book (9 1/2 x 6 in.) with forty-four pages of pencil and watercolor sketches and the original text."

Online information on the Morgan's opening is skimpy, but according to last week's New Yorker, the "Masterworks From the Morgan" exhibit will showcase a Gutenberg Bible and Mary Shelley's annotated copy of "Frankenstein," among other treasures. In November, the Morgan announced that a week of festivities were planned for its opening, including appearances by Seamus Heaney, Edward Albee, and Pete Hamill. Stay tuned ...

To occupy your time while you wait, you might want to browse through the library's online gift shop -- this Bayeux Tapestry necktie would be just the thing to wear to the opening, no?

Thanks and a free library card to Maud for bringing up the topic of non-NYPL libraries none of us could recall the name of (she covered the collection earlier here) ... if anyone knows of any others in the area worth a visit, drop me a comment, please.

An intimate exchange

Say you're in a public restroom at a place known for such amenities -- for our purposes, let's say Starbucks, perhaps a high-traffic one on a high-traffic street like, say, 14th Street. And after making your way through a long Sunday line of men, you enter the bathroom, plug your nose, flip the toilet seat back down with the very edge of your boot toe, turn to assume position, and see that there is no toilet paper, nor paper product of any kind, to be found in the room.

Fortunately, you have reached an age where you walk around prepared for such occasions, with a little pocket pack of Duane Reade tissues in your bag, (shoved amongst an array of sticky cough drops, lipstick ends, linty band-aids, last year's ATM receipts, and other assorted necessities). So you do your best, and then begin thinking of the poor girl waiting in line behind you. She seems young, probably not yet of the age at which one thinks to carry tissues in her purse (or sleeve). Do you doom this poor innocent to a TP-less visit following yours? Or, when exiting the facility and handing the door off to her, do you discreetly, maternally, offer her a tissue from your Duane Reade pack?

Yesterday, I did the latter. And paid for it by being made fun of by my male companion, waiting outside the door for me. "It just seems like a rather intimate exchange, for two people who don't know each other," he commented. He didn't seem convinced by my argument that it seemed the right thing to do, nor the one about how it's a "girl thing." Don't most girls carry tissues? he asked.

The discussion continued all the way to Union Square until I finally hit upon an argument that resonated with him: "Well, if I hadn't offered," I said, "she would've thought I'd come unprepared and just dripped dry in there -- or worse! She would've thought I was a disgusting person." Ever keenly attuned to people's perceptions of one another, my companion finally conceded my point.

Every Day is Like Sunday

I liked these pictures from Greenpoint. That little bit of pole graffitti is funny because it's true! Or not. Actually, Greenpoint isn't so easy to define. I love it not only because my favorite person lives there, but because it pulls off the "third World Shit 'hole" [sic] vibe right alongside this great, baroque Old World thing, right alongside this hipster/stroller invasion thing, the whole package flavored by an absolute indifference to what outsiders may think. (And battling a corporate indifference to environmental cleanup, too, but that's another post). Also, kielbasy!

You either like the industrial-desolate beauty thing, or not, I guess. There's a picturesque area right at the northernmost tip, where Franklin Street ends, and a panoramic view of grey Manhattan arises, between stacks of giant container boxes, trucks, and sundry industrial detritus. I took these on a drizzly Sunday a few weekends ago. (They should get bigger if you click on them).

a  great building at the end  of Franklin -- those lovely, vulnerable glass bricks obviously make great target practice for someone ...

such a nice ampersand ...

is this the northernmost playground in Brooklyn? My Brooklyn geography is lacking.

anyway, if those swings faced the other direction, they'd enjoy this view:

I know, it's very "Photo 101," as K likes to observe when I attempt to get all arty with the Olympus. But I am fascinated by Box Street, near my new favorite cafe, which takes its name from this and the adjacent street.

 

A Moment of Silence ...

...please, for that rarest of events: They (whoever "They" are) have taken something great, and made it even greater. New Yorkers, do you know how rarely this occurs in your city? On planet Earth, for that matter? I mean, amenities. The resplendent, already award-winning Bryant Park Bathrooms, to be precise, remodeled to the tune of $200,000. Per the NYT:

"Look, it's a just a restroom," said Daniel A. Biederman, executive director of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation.

But as the grandest of the park system's 600 bathrooms, "it is an inspiration for us," Mr. Benepe said. Its renovation was completed not by his department, but rather by the nonprofit restoration corporation that operates the park for the city. "It sets the gold standard for park comfort stations."

The Baths of Caracalla it is not, but the new interior has grand 10-foot coffered ceilings, mosaic tiles, a crown molding of painted wood, illumination from brushed stainless-steel wall sconces, indirect cove lighting, a wainscoting of mosaic vines and flowers, mirrors framed in cherry wood and, yes, sinks and a baby-changing table capped with Bianco Verde marble from India.

Your baby's tender hindquarters deserve nothing but the finest Italian marble.

(on a sort of unrelated note, I can't read the word "wainscoting" without recalling my time spent as a literary editor in Countrymouseville, where once I had the privilege of reading a short-fiction submission that used the phrase "Wayne's coating" to describe an interior. Beautiful.