Archive for February, 2008
Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
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The view looking out my window this morning when I woke up. The view inside my window all day. These are refugees from the EFMS science lab that rode home with me on the subway in an insulated picnic bag.
You can bet that there will be more of these shelves in the future…and better organized too. Note that there are both desert and sub-tropical plants. Every city home with windows could have at least one of these display shelves. They’re like an aquarium for plants and probably a lot easier to maintain. Using modern methods there’s nothing to it and they’re good for the soul.
Incidentally, If you remember the lyrics to this song, you’re older than I thought you were.
7 comments February 22, 2008
My Part Time Job
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This is the neighborhood of my part time job as a treeage triage technician. We had a little problem with the Inside Plants Science Lab a while ago. A major number of the plants dehydrated and defoliated. The science lab became an ICU. It’s a long story and I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say there are a lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda’s involved. Since I am not certified by the board of education for access during the school day, I care for the plants from 3 to 5 pm and some Saturdays. I’m now the only one that touches them.
Revival of these plants will be a testimony to the modern sub-irrigation methods used. It has also taken every bit of knowledge I have from over 30 years of experience with sub-tropical plants. Some of the plants are already compost but there are now signs of new growth on most of the desktop Ficus trees. I’m grateful that they didn’t all die. It looked rather grim for a while. Ten years of work almost went down the drain.
When the weather is warmer (probably April), I’m going to rent yet another U-Haul truck, hire Sambou and Jesse and move the plants to my apartment. The racks and fluorescent lights are already here. I will then have a demonstration location for prospective donation recipients. I’ve learned much from this experience and my mistakes.
The photo above shows the Ebbets Field Middle School across the street from the rather ugly apartment complex that replaced the demolished Ebbets Field. In the foreground, we have the well-known fast food emporium for the school kids. How convenient. I guess it’s better than a liquor store, but not by much.
Imagine a vegetable garden here – This area is on school property between the MacDonald’s and the school. Wouldn’t it be neat if there was a vegetable garden here during the spring and summer? No, there’s no need for access to the earth. Have a look at this sub-irrigated container garden at McGill University in Montreal. The 73 slides are truly inspiring. It was a cooperative effort between McGill students and the Rooftop Garden Project. There is absolutely no reason why this concept couldn’t be used in this play area. There is also no reason why this couldn’t be done all over the city. The only obstacle is lack of knowledge. We met the enemy and its name is ignorance.
Tornado ally – I’ve been walking by this row of apartments on my walk to and from the subway not realizing that the repair work going on is a result of the unusual tornado that ripped through Bay Ridge on August 8, 2007. This is just a few blocks from my apartment. I had no idea that a tornado could touch down in this part of the country.
Cobweb vines – Brooklyn Botanic Garden is one of the venerable botanic gardens of the world. Unfortunately, they have not kept up with the modern age. BBG publishes many books, not one of them covers the subject of sub-irrigated container plants for food production or decoration. There isn’t one class that teaches anything about the subject. I audited a class about houseplant care a couple of weeks ago. The information was as current as the Middle Ages and poorly presented. It was flat earth stuff.
The garden is stuck in a prior century. It’s painful when I walk by here so close to the Ebbets Field Middle School to know that the garden administration completely ignored my attempts to reach them about the plant science lab donation. I got a turned back and a deaf ear. The disaster that occurred might have been avoided had they a sensitive ear to a legitimate plea for help.
I was standing on a corner near the school and was startled to see this big sightseeing bus. I grabbed the camera from my coat pocket and shot. One click and this is what I got. It’s one of my favorite street shots. I like the juxtaposition of the tourists, the rockettes and the woman walking by oblivious to what’s going on. She’s got her music and her Nathan’s drink. What more does she need? And what are all those people shooting up there? Have a look at the original size photo.
After standing on my aching knees for a couple of hours doing triage on the plants, there’s the long ride home on the subway. Hey, it’s better than being stuck in car traffic. Besides, I get to do one of my favorite things in New York and that’s people watching.
1 comment February 17, 2008
Kung Hei Fat Choy!
I have no memory of the last time being in the marvelous mecca of entertainment known as Radio City Music Hall. It may be fifty or more years ago.
In any case, it was a lot of fun last week celebrating the Lunar New Year with a large group of Chinese Americans. The show was an extravaganza but anticlimactic. I had already had my big thrill for the day just getting inside the theater. I felt like I was in a cathedral. It was awesome.
I have faded memories of luxurious facilities in the theater. They were brought back to life when I walked down to the rest room. Note the unexpected scale figure who walked into the picture. The men’s lounge was the men’s smoking lounge back in 1932 when it opened just a year before my birth. Of course, smoking by glamorous actors was a part of mainstream life in the golden age of movies. I too started smoking at a very early age. Oh my have times changed.
I clicked my little point and shoot camera many times inside the theater but none of the photos could do justice to what I saw. Oh for an SLR and tripod. The seats were unfilled because I was very early, I took the picture from my seat which was not far from the stage.
The show was spectacular but perhaps more evocative of The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins than a Lunar New Year celebration. I must admit dozing several times. Perhaps you can get an idea from this promotional video including the rather trite viewer raves. The show had no content like anything I remember from running all those Firecracker 10K runs in Los Angeles Chinatown. For sure, I wasn’t expecting to be propagandized at this show. The video too is high quality propaganda.
I found this review on the web. The writer expressed my thoughts far better than I could. He read my mind.
By bmesc on 1/16/2008
Make no mistake: This is a fulan gong show and it is not subtle. 50% of the pieces are directly referencing fulan gong and its teachings. The MCs say “fulan gong,” the song lyrics directly reference fulan gong, dance pieces glorify fulan gong teachings and the scene depicting police (with a big red communist symbol on their backs) killing a fulan gong follower is too graphic for children. If the title of the show was, correctly, a Fulan Gong New Year Spectacular, would you go? They marketed this show in a misleading way. I know a bit about Chinese culture, being married to a Chinese born wife. To be fair, she thought half the show was good, and the scenery is spectacular, but she, as I, could not believe how overtly they preached their beliefs. The sad thing is, if you do not know much about Chinese tradition, this show does not really represent it. They seem say that China of long ago, when religious beliefs were prevalent is how it should be. My wife and I thought we’d see a big production of the types of shows you can see during various San Diego Chinese New Years’ events, but there are no traditional songs in this show and they use traditional Chinese dance to tell their own stories glorifying what fulan gong teaches. This is not a Chinese New Year celebration per se. The most well known aspect, the dragon dance, is absent. If you did not know this was the year of the rat, you would not know it after the show, either. They didn’t mention it. I had no opinion of fulan gong before I went to this show, and I’m not for or against fulan gong or the Chinese government, but after seeing this show, it is hard not to believe the fulan gong is a politically motivated religious group. (To be clear, my rating is 1-Star but my preview incorrectly indicated 5)
Earlier in the day, I became an official “New York Senior Citizen” when I applied for and got my senior discount MetroCard. With it, I can now ride the subways and buses all day and all night for only $38 a month. What a deal! The experience was very much like getting a passport by the way.
The MetroCard center happened to be just around the corner from my old IBM office at 2 Broadway. I well remember those long (2 hr each way) trips to and from East Windsor, N.J. via the Penn Central at Princeton Junction. I particularly remember the walk through the grounds of Trinity Church. I have little or no memory of the mural so prominent at the entrance to 2 Broadway. It’s a hint as to where my mind was in those days. Note the Starbucks next door. I sat there for a while and watched the passing parade of people on the street outside. People watching in New York is so much fun.
This is a sample nearby at the well known bull sculpture.
I thought seriously about going to the Giant’s ticker tape parade the day before but decided not to when I got up and saw the weather. You can see some of the paper debris on a building across from 2 Broadway. I certainly have earned a lifetime membership in the Giant’s fan club from those days long ago rooting for the likes of Charlie Connerly, Y.A. Tittle, Fran Tarkington, Frank Gifford, Kyle Rote and Frank Summerall. This is a team however for younger fans and I was just a bystander to this miraculous victory.
This fun day ended with an interesting vignette. I walked a couple of blocks to the R train entrance, went down a flight of stairs to find that I was on the uptown side. As I was standing there scanning the signs, I heard a woman’s voice (with a slight Spanish accent) ask which direction I was going. When I answered Brooklyn, she said I was on the wrong side of the street and then gave me detailed directions. With that she asked if I’d like an elevator back up to the street level then proceeded to walk over and press the button for an elevator. She obviously noticed me staring at the signs and quickly sized up the situation. You’ve heard New Yorkers are always in a hurry with no time for courtesy? Fuggedaboutit! I’ve been shown more courtesy and respect as a senior on the subway and streets of New York these past months than all the years driving around Southern California in my little “glass bubble”, even with the top down.
2 comments February 12, 2008
