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New York, Day 1, Part 2

Hello, Thursday, I’d like you to recall Tuesday. We’re going to add a few more pictures from Tuesday in this space today, and then some more, tomorrow, to round out Wednesday.

This idea didn’t make any more sense when I initially thought of it, either.

We are very high up on the Empire State Building, here:

We met an Auburn man there, too. We had four War Eagle Moments in Manhattan over the last two days, in fact. All four of those stories have been added to that photo blog.

It doesn’t look that high in the picture, but of course this was as high a place as you could stand in the man-made world. And, of course, that’s higher than you should ever hold your phone through the railing for a picture of a shadow.

I have taken this picture before, but the one below is better. I love this stuff:

Like this. That’s great faux-deco.

And the NBC microphone, at Rockefeller Center, took that picture five years ago, too.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from high atop Rockefeller Center:

We were able to walk behind the pulpit in St. Pat’s for the first time ever. They had a copy of Pieta there, and the others visiting revered it with a reverence that could only be considered reverence.

I have seen Pieta, at Rome. (The original was by Michelangelo, and it was the only piece he ever signed.) St. Pat’s Pieta is a fine sculpture, but on a scale of one-to-10 Pietas, this is four Pietas at best. According to Wikipedia, the authority of everything Michelangelo, the St. Pat’s version isn’t even an “authorized replica.” This version was built in 1906 by William Ordway Partridge, an American who studied in Florence, Rome and Paris (where he was born).

We learned about this building while on the Circle Line tour on Tuesday:

It was the first skyscraper on the island. Actually, our guide said, they originally called it a cloudscraper, all three stories of it, but they renamed it so people wouldn’t think poorly of the weather. Marketing has deep roots. Behind it, I believe, is the New York Bank Department.

OK, this one needs a bit of background. Our friend Kelly takes pictures of her feet to prove she’s been places. (Ask her why.) Every so often, then, we take pictures of places our feet have been. Here The Yankee shows Kelly the Statue of Liberty. I suppose my picture of her taking a picture is the “making of” photograph. Wendy also took a picture of The Yankee taking a picture of her foot. I took a picture of Wendy taking a picture, which means I also shot the “making of the documentary.”

This was all on the Staten Island Ferry, which we rode over from Manhattan and back for an extra, late evening view of the statue. We rode to Staten Island on the Molinari, who was a congressman and borough president. We rode back on the John F. Kennedy. We passed the S.I. Newhouse, which was named after the historic publisher. I worked for one of his companies for more than four years and walked past some of his offices in Times Square on Tuesday. No getting away from the man. He died in 1979, his son runs the family empire today, at the age of 83. He’s worth billions.

How quiet do you think it is out there?

More from our two days in New York tomorrow.

adventures / friends / iPhone / photo / site / video / Wednesday — 1 Comment
1
Jun 11

New York, Day 2, Part 1

Remember: we’re doing a two-day tour of Manhattan over the course of four days on the blog. The first part of Day One was yesterday, and is found in the previous post. This is, as the title indicates, the first part of Day Two. Day One’s finale is tomorrow, and we’ll wrap up Day Two on Friday. Clear?

Every time we’re in Manhattan we stop to visit St. Patrick’s. Beautiful church. I tried to do a pan-around photo with a free app I downloaded, but I’m still trying to figure it out. I thought I’d nailed it, when looking in the phone, but on the monitor it was full of flaws. So here you go. Also, search around and you’ll find plenty of other mentions of this beautiful church elsewhere on this site.

We also hit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we visited only briefly. Just about the time I found the sections I’d like to see it was time to go. Next time, perhaps. Meanwhile, men in armor:

We walked by here at lunch time. I didn’t have the heart to tell all these New Yorkers that chickens don’t really chirp all that much.

Yesterday we checked off an item from Wendy’s list, which was to get a hot dog from a street vendor. Our friend who is from Brooklyn, says street vendors are for tourists. We needed to go here:

And I love everything about the place. I had the depression special, two dogs and a drink for under five bucks. I had the papaya juice, because that’s the name of the place and also because we had a little communication mix up. I was looking for the condiments and he wanted a drink order. But, as a general rule, you can always order the thing similar to the name of a restaurant.

Get the onions on the hot dog. Definitely.

We visited St. Thomas in Manhattan for a service that marks the Eve of the Ascension. St. Thomas is beautiful. And — perhaps an audiophile can discuss this at length — I believe there is such a thing as a perfect acoustic. If St. Thomas doesn’t have it you’d be hard-pressed to find somewhere with a better sound. This is a clip of a small men’s choir singing Bach. There were maybe a dozen men, but they filled their sound filled the entire church.

The picture was taken with the iPhone, the audio was recorded on the sly with a free app called Recorder. This was the first time I’d ever been in a church wearing shorts.

The Yankee got in trouble, though. She got caught trying to record a little of the singing and a priest pointed at her. Very sternly.

The second part of Day One will be here tomorrow. The rest of Day Two, including another museum, a moment of drama and more.

adventures / friends / iPhone / memories / photo / site / Tuesday / video — 1 Comment
31
May 11

New York, Day 1, Part 1

So here’s the plan. We’re spending two days in New York City, so I’m breaking this up for the site. This post is about today, the first day. Tomorrow’s will, obviously, be about tomorrow.

While we’re spending Tuesday and Wednesday in New York City, I’m rationing out the rest of the pictures and details to get the site to the weekend. Everybody got that? Can someone explain it to me?

The sign at the train station. The Yankee’s dad dropped us off. We were running behind, but not so much as other people, apparently.

We made it into the city with no trouble. Got off at Grand Central, showed Wendy around the station, remember, she’s never been to New York. We walk outside and … these are the first four pictures I took of her and sent home to her mother. The top picture is the first thing she saw in Manhattan. Go figure.

If you’re curious, I created that little image with a handy little free app called Diptic. I enjoy it very much.

Anyway, one of the things Wendy had on her list was to see the Statue of Liberty, of course. So we hopped a bus and walked up to the Circle Line to take the tour.

This was my fourth trip in front of the statue, now, and each time I (still) have this little feeling of surprise at the thought of being there. There are a lot of places and things in the world that I admire from afar without having ever seriously considered the opportunity to see, but here’s one, and here we are.

The Yankee takes a picture. I bought those rings from Wendy’s father. Small world, gemologically speaking.

Some nice stranger took this picture for us. We gave them great shots in return. Do you ever wonder if those people wonder about you? How is that guy that took my photo just after the first of the year? But I digress.

From the East River, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in one picture. Also, a lot of other buildings thrown in for scale.

Still looks a little odd at the World Trade Center, but there’s a distinct change taking place here. The new construction is slated to be open in time for the 10th anniversary later this year — 10 years, difficult to believe. The first time I took the Circle Line (five years ago!) the guide spoke at great length, and with poignant eloquence, about September 11th and the loss and the first responders and about St. Peter’s, a local church with pews now scarred where those rescuers took breaks from their horrible task. Today the guide talks about what is coming to the site, and what has been gained in that part of the city and that was nice to hear.

She’s breaking the law.

And there was a lot more to the day. You’ll see more pictures of it on Thursday. (Tomorrow will be about tomorrow, naturally.) We caught one of the new trains out and headed back to Connecticut for the evening. The new trains are nice. They’ll feel out-dated before the end of the year, but still better than the brown on brown aesthetic of the old trains.

Here’s a brief interview I conducted with Wendy on the small town girl’s first day in the big city.

errands / Monday / Samford / site — Comments Off
2
May 11

Living right

Busy day as the semester begins to wrap itself up with a tidy bow.

Made the commute to campus to pop in and pick up a newspaper plate. We give one of these to the editor of the paper every year. It should have been in the office early last week, but the storms got in the way, as they passed over our printer’s facilities, ruining their town, killing the power and making travel impossible for a while.

So now comes the task of trying to get this thing prepared in a few minutes for its presentation tonight. I stopped by the Framin’ Shoppe where the nice lady that makes all of our beautiful projects said “You must be living right. How’s 3:30?”

And that was perfect. So I left for other errands, swinging by AAA for a currency exchange and then to the old homestead for a termite inspection. It passed. The guy that gave it the close examination may have been younger than me. (That is starting to happen more and more.) And he was the teach you how to build a watch type of fellow. I’d simply asked him about this new Sentricon product I’d heard about — figuring I might get his professional opinion since he wasn’t selling anything to me — and received an education and a demonstration.

We went to the back of his truck, the appearance of which he apologized for. Seems it wasn’t clean enough to be the backdrop of his demonstration. But he pressed on, pulling out bait traps and discussing the finer points of this evolving treatment system. Seems this particular company is going to be moving to this technique later in the year.

I like this company. They do it all the right way. They answer the phone by saying “How may I make your day better?” When they come visit you have to remind the technician what to check out. In one of those clerical errors that never gets resolved the out-building isn’t on his manifest, but he just accepts that the out-building is part of the job and he does what you ask of him. They show up on time. They don’t stick around longer than necessary and still manage to come off as very personable people.

One time a guy beat me home and he sat in the drive and waited for a few minutes, doing his paperwork. I pulled into the drive and then he cranked his truck and left. He somehow managed to miss me standing there. So I called the office and we all had a good laugh. Except for that guy. He was very concerned about the mix-up.

“Accidents happen, my friend. Make sure there are no bugs.”

So all is well there, and another errand off the list. Back to the framing place, where the newspaper plate was ready to go and I promised I’d brag on them. Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe.

And that got me back on campus in time for a meeting with next year’s staff of the Crimson. There are a lot of holdovers from this year’s staff. Some of the new faces have been in my classes. They’re all seem pretty sharp. And really didn’t want to hear me blather on today. There’s the picnic, finals for which to prepare and tonight’s intramural softball championship.

Priorities.

So we all made our way over to the picnic, which is indoors, because we often have rain about this time. The meal is catered by Johnny Ray’s, a local barbecue place that is apparently in some decline. The website is gone and, I was told tonight, most of the locations are closed, including the original store on Valley. Shame, too, because the food is good.

We gave out awards to journalism and mass communication majors at the picnic. I got to call out the names of several hardworking students.

And when it came time to present the now handsomely framed newspaper plate to this year’s editor-in-chief I mentioned the dedication to this task displayed by the printer in getting the thing here despite the storm and the huge save today. (Framin’ Shoppe!) I said the things I’d prepared — noting Jennifer’s can-do attitude, her always-present smile, how hard she and her team had worked this year and so on — I discovered … she had disappeared.

Can’t win ’em all.

So I thought up a new joke. When in doubt, laugh at yourself.

The picnic is great fun. The students and professors are a bit more at ease — there is nothing due in an evening to brag on the best students — and there is much laughter. This is the moment when the end of the spring semester becomes a reality, and you can allow yourself to think of the summer without it feeling like far off daydreaming.

This is the beginning of the final week of classes. Things are winding down as they ramp up to finals.

One update on the LOMO blog.

photo / Samford / site / Thursday — Comments Off
31
Mar 11

“The hedge fund you’re looking for isn’t here anymore”

The newest slender section of the site is going to look that that. I’m tinkering with the design now, so I thought I’d throw the picture up here. Of course I’ll tell you all about it when the page is ready to go.

Class today, reading today. Also, the sun came out. I’d have to check the meteorological records for three or four cities, but I believe this was the first time I’d seen that big ball of fusion in more than a week.

Those were the highlights of the day.

And I also re-discovered Golden Smog:

You know your supergroup is on an extended hiatus when the record label links to the official site which has been taken over by a hedge fund:

The (economic) crisis also demonstrated flaws in large financial firms. These start with the too-big-to-fail problem. Large banks cannot be allowed to go down; knowing that, their creditors lend without monitoring their risks; as a result, their risk-taking is undisciplined. At the same time, each trading desk within a large banking supermarket has strong reason to load up on risk. If its bets come good, huge bonuses will ensue. If they go bad, the losses will be spread across the whole institution.

[…]

The question for policy-makers is what kind of financial institution will absorb risk most efficiently—and do so without a backstop from taxpayers. The answer awaits discovery in the story of A.W. Jones and his descendants. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.

The page on starting a hedge fund redirects to a 404.

Whoops.