Sunday - the 31st of May already

It's been too long now, fully two and a half months, since I began self isolating. It feels like a lifetime and it's becoming weirdly routine, which I am not happy about. Yesterday I spent nearly four hours in the car driving back and forth to Ridgewood in Queens to pick up my kid so we could spend a half day together. It was worth it even if it was more driving than I felt like doing. 

I grant that places that usually have terrible traffic were easy to drive through. The only delays was getting past two accidents on the Long Island Expressway in almost exactly the same spot, just before the exit for the Grand Central Parkway and the Van Wyck Expressway. Odd that both should've been there.

It's been announced that NYC will enter phase one reopening a week from tomorrow. I'm not sure how that will affect me, but I hope that by the end of June I'm able to start commuting again. I miss it. I know I've said it before, but the feeling is with me all the time.

Today I hung around the house. I finally put the screens in the storm doors. It hasn't been urgent. We've only had two warm days all month. But June is here and with June we usually get plenty of hot days and warm nights. Spring has gone by without much thought. 

I'm saddened by what's going on around the country right now. The anger that has boiled out after the deaths of innocent Black men makes sense, especially when the supposed leader of this country does nothing but look for others to blame. But it is sad that other innocent people, shopkeepers especially, are being hurt by this. I don't have any idea how long it will go on, but it won't last as long as the problem of racism in the USA will last.

Anyway, a few photos. Tonight I selected some random midtown street scenes. The people are real, the locations authentic, and the photos candid.

Is it any surprise that in all but one, the central person is using their phone? 

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Saturday - a lovely day if only we weren't still waiting to fully reopen

It's the last Saturday of May, and a lovely day it was. I have a friend who many years ago said of a day very similar to this that it was as if there was no weather. It was fair, there was just enough of a breeze to keep it comfortable if you were active, but not so much as to make it feel too cool to just sit in the shade and relax. The sky was an unpolluted blue, crystalline, it almost made your eyes tear up to look at it. I could take a few of these and never complain.

I drove down to Queens and picked up my youngest - Hudson's the only one in the NYC area now - and brought them back for an afteroon hang out and bbq. We had multiple discussions about doing this the past couple of weeks but with everyone healthy now, and enough weeks of social distancing and Westchester beginning to reopen and NYC a week away - we decided it was safe. We all had a great time. Enough said.

It was leg of lamb day. I grilled a marinated leg of lamb - not a huge piece of meat but a small one, just enough for three people. Mary made her famous rosemary and olive oil potatoes and we topped it with a garden salad, all of which came out of her garden. It all couldn't have been better. We had a bottle of a Boundary Breaks dry riesling with appetizers and finished an already open bottle of Damiani Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 - a reserve and now that it's gone, it's probably irreplaceable. 

It was so perfect it was absurd.

The photos were taken last September. Driving down to pick up Hudson in Queens and coming on these today made it sort of fated that I would post them.

I was walking around Ridgewood, Queens with my Hudson. We'd just come from cleaning out stuff from a house my sister-in-law and I were selling and figured it was too nice a day to not walk around. Looking at the pictures today, the song "Walking in Memphis" came to mind. Walking in Ridgewood with my kid was as interesting as Marc Cohen's Memphis, minus the ghosts, the catfish and the gospel. 

We started in a cafe and finished in a Polish restaurant. You got a prayer in Ridgewood.

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Friday - the end of May, early summer in Chappaqua

When I write these posts, sometimes I write as if I'm in Manhattan, not 30 miles north of midtown. It's a mental state, and no doubt I am usually in a NY state of mind. 

But I live in the woods, as I've shown, and the good thing is that it's nice to sleep where it's quiet at night, and great to be able to be where there's action when I want to. Except right now there's no action, while NYC recovers from the epidemic, and Westchester slowly reopens.

Tomorrow, I'll go to the Farmers' Market. I don't know what I'll get but whatever it is, it will be something different from what I'd buy at the supermarket.

These photos are very NYC to me, in that they catch people in moments of total isolation while still surrounded by the masses. There is definitely a place for repose in the heart of the city.

You might notice that in three of them, the self-isolating individuals are deeply engrossed in an object in their hand and it isn't a book.

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Thursday - yes, today's Thursday even if yesterday I thought it was Thursday

It is too, too easy to lose track of the day of the week when every day you are in the same place, doing many of the same things. The routine takes over and it's really only the weather that seems to change from day to day.

I look at the newspaper, I listen to the radio, I spend some time searching the internet for things I'm interested in, but I'm still here, still confined to Westchester, to the Chappaqua area, still locked down even if now one of the locks has been opened and some people are starting back to work.

My work is in the city, and I miss it, the city, the office, the commute, walking around, checking which food trucks are out, deciding what to get for lunch, going out after work, meeting up with friends, what have you. 

But dawn has peeked over the horizon, it's pink fingers tickling the tops of the trees. Soon the sun will be up and we will start back.

One thing I've had more time to notice: the Liar-in-Chief is most frustrated when called out, his lies thrown back in his face. We can hope that there will be a sunset for this soon.

Tonight I post a short series of a man who is proud to sell me a knish on the street. There is a certain coy pleasure in how he handles the tongs, plays with the camera, and wraps up the afternoon snack. 

This pair is from the Magdy's Cheesesteak cart. It's great seeing one of the men who make the food enjoying his own when he steps out to take a break.  And after him, one of the proprietor preparing my sandwich.

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Wednesday - It's summer. The trees are all leafed out, the azaleas are in bloom

I should take a picture of the white azalea bush in my back yard. At night, it's so bright it makes it hard to sleep. It is a beautiful thing to see and at this time of year, with so many flowers blooming, the lawn a lush and bright late-spring green, and the trees shading the yard from the hot afternoon sun, it's a delight.

I got out on the old Malaguti scooter for a short ride into town. I needed to take a walk and I didn't feel like going to Kensico Dam Plaza. I wanted a change of scenery. Downtown Chappaqua isn't really big enough for a long walk, but I parked behind the stores on South Greeley, walked to the post office and back, then looped around the middle school ballfields and up past the Episcopal church. It was something different from the plaza, and in the warm afternoon, I did work up a sweat and even ran into a friend. 

Westchester has begun to reopen. Curbside retail pick-up is beginning, the Chappaqua Library is offering that service for its material if you use the reservation system. The number of new cases of the virus are down to levels at or below when the shut-down started, deaths are down, hospitalizations are down, and people are beginning to talk about going back to work.

We have to be careful, though. New York City, Westchester and Long Island were hit hard, really slammed by the virus and even if things are improving, we can't act as if nothing happened or we might be in for it again.

Meanwhile, a question for those who've drank Donald's kool-aid: how many of his lies will you believe before you begin to see the truth?

And speaking of truth, tonight I am posting photos of things I saw. These might seem random, but they are not quite that. Things get thrown away that should've been kept, or are tossed to the ground when they should've been put somewhere else. At least one mystified me because of how it sat so lonesome and forlorn, and I couldn't imagine how it got left behind. Some of them are part of the ongoing "Minor Crimes Against Humanity" series. You decide which.

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Tuesday - It finally feels like summer!

The weather got warm enough to go around in shorts and a tee shirt. I had to adjust the push lawn mower we use - my property is on steep hill with terraces and dragging a heavy power mower for the amount of lawn I've got is more work than using an efficient reel mower. Ours wasn't cutting right but it was easy enough to diagnose: the blades weren't making enough contact with the base. A quarter turn of the adjustment screws and everything was fine again.

Westchester County and the other counties of the Mid Hudson Region are beginning to reopen tomorrow! This is big news. It's phase one, but you have to start somewhere. I am itching for an opportunity to go back into the city, for a chance to enjoy a meal in a diner or restaurant with my wife and friends, and browse inside a bookstore. It's going to happen soon, even as we adjust to the new normal.

I am very disappointed in the Trump's administration's wishy washy, seesawing way of dealing with this crisis. It is said leadership comes from the top, and the top here was too busy rationalizing, justifying and blaming others for decisions he made. Sad.

Photos today were taken last year in the late spring and early summer of the people working in a couple of the food trucks that make lunch in Manhattan interesting, plus one of an excited customer.

The first batch was taken at a "traditional" Chinese truck, Fa Fu, the second group at a truck serving quick French food, Paris on Wheels.

Whether you like the food or not, that's a matter of taste. I like the people who take care of us hungry New Yorkers, and I hope all of them are well.

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Monday - Memorial Day - we're still here

Here, in Westchester, it's been a quiet Memorial Day, and one to either forget or remember depending on how you are reacting to current events.

I'm sad for our country that the Divider in Chief is either unable or unwilling or both to grapple with the gravity of our current situation. But that's not why I'm posting.

I read something in an article about a journalist who's threatened by the community he lives in for reporting on it truthfully. He was quoting the Soviet Refusnik who became an Israeli politician, Natan Sharansky, "Can someone within that society walk into the town square and say what they want without fear of being punished for his or her views? If so, then that society is a free society. If not, it is a fear society."

Has the USA become a "fear society?"

Any, today is Memorial Day. Last year on this weekend I paid a visit to the grave of Babe Ruth and his wife. I've always found it interesting how people bring their own personal baseball memorabilia to the monument.

Here's two photos.

Several years ago, I was in the passenger seat of a car driving through Waterloo, NY. This village, located on US 20/NY 5 about half way between Seneca Falls and Geneva, NY, claims to be the site of the first, official, community-wide commemoration of those who died in the Civil War. I took these pictures through the windshield. It was a wintery morning in upstate NY.

I'm not particularly proud of these photos, they are somewhat washed out and not as sharp as I'd like, but that's what happens when shooting through a car window while traveling at 30mph. 

They could be worse. What is worse is that I've posted a couple of these before, around the time they were taken. So it goes.

Waterloo, NY isn't a major place, but it has the charm of a late 19th century upstate village.

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Sunday - the last one of May and a lovely day indeed.

I didn't do much today. I was hoping to drive down to Queens to pick up my youngest and bring them up to the hose for a Memorial Day BBQ but since my Covid-19 antibody test came back negative, my child was reluctant. Next week, instead, I hope.

But dinner was nonetheless a delight. I broiled to perfection a marinated leg of lamb, covered with sesame, garlic and rosemary. Mary made one of her signature dishes, potatoes broiled with rosemary, garlic and olive oil but instead of the usual red baby potatoes she used fingerlings I bought at the farmers' market. Alongside that was fresh asparagus, tender and delectable. Wow!

We drank a bottle of Hermann J. Wiemer's 2009 Blanc de Blanc, a special sparkling wine that was aged over its lees for nearly a decade, disgorged only this past January. I wonder how this wine will taste in 5-10 years. This year it's delicious with its citrusy notes, it's yeasty toothiness, and palate clearing acidity. Delightful, indeed.

I haven't given any thought to what photos to post. I should have taken a picture of the asparagus, the potatoes and the lamb before it was carved, but I didn't, so you will just have to imagine them.

Instead, I'll contrast the meals' delights with a quartet of photos taken in the underworld that is Grand Central Terminal.

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