cell phone photos of NYC

in order from last taken to first taken while here

drooping > sagging:

hard to see, but this is a fire hydrant busted and flooding the street:

I think this is inordinately funny:

"It's the B to the R the O the O-K, L-Y-N that's the place where I stay" NOT:

We could see this lady's butt:

someone not afraid of heights wrote that:

the Brooklyn Bridge, as cool as everyone said it would be, I think:

so many plastic bottles:

Hi, Cassie:

This photo doesn't do justice to the hecticity of this sitchiation:

a WTC memorial in Greenwich Village:

I'm crazy about the font used for the 168th STREET sign

Coming off the Jersey Turnpike onto the Washington Bridge. I was SO EXCITED.

Now, when you say "nasty," what exactly do you mean?

Looking for a place to stay. Not this place I guess? (Even though we were parked in front of it, and I was using the wireless from their office to check them out online.)

run-ons

He felt that he had fallen on the soft and thick cushion while his body, light
and weightless, had been run through by a sweet feeling of beatitude and
fatigue and was losing consciousness of its own material structure, that heavy,
earthy substance that defined it, placing it in an unmistakable spot on the
zoological scale and bearing a whole sum of systems, geometrically defined organs
that lifted him up on the arbitrary hierarchy of rational animals. His
eyelids, docile now, fell over his corneas the same natural way with which his
arms and legs mingled in a gathering of members that were slowly losing their
independence, as if the whole organism had turned into one, single, large, total
organism, and he --the man-- had abandoned his mortal roots so as to penetrate
other, deeper and firmer, roots: the eternal roots of an integral and definitive
dream. Outside, from the other side of the world, he could hear the
cricket's song growing weaker until it disappeared from his senses, which had
turned inward, submerging him in a new and uncomplicated notion of time and
space, erasing the presence of that material world, physical and painful, full of
insects and acrid smells of violets and formaldehyde.

Three sentences from "The Other Side of Death" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the stories in a collection of his that I'm currently reading. These kinds of sentences are common in Marquez's work, and I generally really like anything he's written. But they're so long, WTF. It takes me awhile to sink down into (and I really think that's the best way of phrasing what needs to happen for me to understand his work) his writing. It's just so different from how I use language myself, slow-moving maybe. Any one who knows me well knows that I generally do things as quickly as I can. Sometimes when I'm just washing dishes or getting dressed I get out of breath from moving too fast. (Also, I'm out of shape, apparently.)

I can't articulate exactly why, but this need to adjust my language-intaking-process reminds me of this project that I just did this summer. I'll be thinking some more about this.

"It works like a web."

At a meeting yesterday for the local version of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, I got to listen in on the teen members' planning of a social event for members of the GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances) from various high schools in East Central Illinois (and those students from schools without GSAs who would be in GSA if they could).

When it came to advertisement, one of the teachers there wanted to know, if the plan was to blanket the coffee shops and other teen hangouts in Champaign-Urbana with flyers, how would they get the word to students who aren't in our area?

One of the teens from a Champaign high school explained, "Oh, we'll use Facebook. It kinda works as a web. So if I invite one person from Paxton, they'll invite others..."

Kids these days, huh? I'm crazy about moments like that when I get to see a kid explain to an adult, especially if the "adult" is me. I also think that the tone, pace and words that the explainer uses are sometimes funny. The talk slows down and becomes sort of gentle as the explainer thinks of "old" things to use for comparison: "Well, there are these things called blogs, y'see, and they're like journals, only on the World Wide Web for all to see!"

Wikipedia update

The last time I used Wikipedia (to look up an unrelated subject) I had a message waiting for me regarding my recent alteration of the Mother McAuley page. "Unconstructive" seems a little harsh. Also, I don't even think it's a real word.

!

I just finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me which I'd heard a lot about in the last few years. I was surprised to see that it was actually published thirteen years ago.

I learned that the first Thanksgiving was actually in 1863; Lincoln proclaimed the third Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving because they were in the middle of the Civil War, and he sensed that the Union could use an upswell in patriotism. Just the kind of thing that an origin story celebration could do.

Huh.

I learned other stuff, too.

"Hey guy, nice pajamas."

"They're O.R. scubs."

"O.R. they?"

tired trope, nasty clothes