Margaret Mendel's Blog

2011-12-27T12:18:00.000-05:00

This is a photograph of the delicious Christmas flan we had on Christmas Eve. And then, oh yeah, fresh strawberries!!!

Christmas in New York City

2011-12-23T14:33:00.001-05:00

I took a walk the other evening to check out the Holiday lights in Manhattan. What surprised me was the limited decorations. Except for the areas where there is always some kind of visual holiday delight the rest of the city was quite unadorned. It was less than a week away from Christmas and most of the store windows were sorrowfully clad in some semblance of the holiday or at best a winter theme. This photo made me begin to look more closely at how the city has nearly hidden decorations.

At dusk when the mob outside of Macy's is a crush of bodies walking around the building on 34th St. and 6th Ave. there were some things to see, but I preferred looking up to get a full view of the city and her jewels!!!

There was a giant lone star hanging suspended over one of the major city streets.

But for me the most interesting view was not just the tree at Rockefeller Center, because even though the tree this year was as huge as ever, when I took a long look, the tree was dwarfed by the building behind it.

BALLOONS AND WHALES

2011-11-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

I was in Time Square the other day and happened upon a balloon promotion for “Imagine, There's No Hunger" an organization established by Yoko Ono aimed at fighting world hunger. It was one of those beautiful bright and brisk New York City autumn days. But for me a shadow was cast across those hundreds of milky white balloons just before they were released enabling them to float up into the sky.I'm not a naysayer nor do I like to rain on anyone's parade, though since I learned that these latex bubbles frequently cause the death of whales and dolphins, I can no longer help but object to these kinds of balloon promotions.

It’s not just children’s party balloons that cause harm to sea life, weather balloons released into the atmosphere also are a part of the problem. The life of a helium balloon is predictable. As the balloon rises, the helium expands and the balloon eventually bursts into many small pieces or the balloon deflates as the helium escapes. Regardless of the demise of the balloon the particles always float back to Earth frequently falling into the oceans.

According to Save The Whales, “Balloons are ingested by whales, dolphins, turtles, seals, fish and water-fowl, which innocently believe they are food such as jellyfish or squid. Recently a young whale was stranded on a New Jersey beach. A balloon lodged in its stomach prevented the passage of food. Other examples are on record of sea life starving to death after swallowing balloons that was mistaken for food.Gerald Eddlemon, an ecologist who works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, suggests that the plastic used in the production of meteorological and astronomical observation balloons be replaced with materials that break down in salt water – or at least remove the chemicals that prevent the balloons from degrading.

There are alternatives to balloon promotions; plant flowers or trees, have children make kites and fly them, launch balloons indoors. Or if you must have a large demonstration using balloons, when handing out balloons also give everyone a sewing needle and break the balloons all at the same time, and then clean up the mess and dispose of the discarded latex in a proper manner. And for a business trying to get the attention of passersby, use colorful windsocks, they have great eye appeal and are reusable. It’s hard to ignore the problem once you realize the potential damage that a helium balloon can cause. Tell your friends to dispose of balloons properly and never let balloons loose into the atmosphere. Because balloons can travel quite long distances, even when a balloon is released miles from water it could quite likely end up in the ocean.

2011-11-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

It was just a couple of days before Halloween and the snow began to fall from the sky in huge sloppy flakes. No one really thought it would last very long, but as it turned out the snow kept coming down all day. There was only a couple of inches accumulation and it was certainly pretty to watch. 2 million people lost their electricity and I understand that there are still areas in Conn. as of today Nov. 2, that are still sitting in the dark. But from what I've heard NYC was up and running in no time. In fact, the next day the sun was out and in most areas of the city there was almost no snow visible and only the streets remained wet as though it had simply been a heavy rain the day before. This is a photo of a section of Vancortlandt Park that first day.

A WALK IN VANCORTLANDT PARK

2011-07-02T05:36:00.001-05:00

I took a walk in Vancortlandt Park the other day. What glorious light and the view was spectacular from the observation bridge on the small pond!!!

A LITTLE TO THE LEFT

2011-04-06T13:08:00.002-05:00

Spring is on it's way!!!

2011-04-05T11:13:00.004-05:00

I took a brisk walk in Vancortlandt Park yesterday and the signs of spring are there.

THE GREENING OF THE UNITED STATES POST OFFICE

2011-04-02T17:37:00.004-05:00

Read my latest article in the Kings River Life Magazine about how the US Post Office is going green: http://kingsriverlife.com/04/02/us-postal-service/

TIMES SQUARE ART (A TEMPORARY INSTALLATION)

2011-03-26T07:19:00.013-05:00

Sheep were grazing along Broadway the other day. Well, they were only paper sheep but they were certainly a sight to see!! Brilliant white sheep standing around in the spring sunshine. The installation comprised of 24 paper sheep and spans 36 feet and is 12 feet wide. All of the sheep are hand-made by artist Kyu Seok Oh in a labor-intense process involving natural and traditional materials.

When I got a closer look they did appear to be a bit confused what with all the traffic and people milling about.

Here is a portrait of one of the sheep in the flock.

And there was more to see across the street from the sheep. Artist's work had been installed there, too. For several days in March, Broadway at Times Square, besides being one of the busiest streets in the world, was also a gallery. A sign posted near the art work explained: "Times Square Arts, the Public Art Program of Times Square Alliance, is pleased to present for Armory Arts Week sculpures by four artists currently on view at the Armory show."

This is "Mouse" by Tom Otterness.

This fantastic sculpture titled "Star Fountain (Blue)" was made by Niki De Saint Phalle.

This is a long view from on high of some of the sculptures on Broadway.

ORCHIDS

2011-03-18T08:48:00.010-05:00

The other day I went to the New York Botanical Garden's Orchid Show. What a beautiful display of fantastic flowers. I didn't write down the names of the individual orchids but they certainly brought to mind images.

This scene reminded me of three sisters and one of the sisters is a real show off.

What a lovely combination of green and purple.

These orchids reminded me of fluttering butterflies.

I call this grouping of flowers The Choir.

This stem of orchids is my Oriental Beauties because it was located in a bamboo grove.

These are my Speckled Twins.

GUINNESS

2011-03-16T08:09:00.004-05:00

Read the full article that I've written about Guinness in Kings River Life Magazine.

http://kingsriverlife.com/03/16/guiness-recipes/

GARLIC

2011-03-14T09:16:00.004-05:00

ALLIUM BLOOMS

GARLIC is part of the Allium Family. Check out my garlic article in the Kings River Life Magazine:

http://kingsriverlife.com/03/12/cooking-with-garlic/

THE NEW YORK CITY RALLY TO SUPPORT WISCONSIN UNIONS AND TEACHERS

2011-03-02T16:24:00.030-05:00

So far my blog posts have not taken any political direction. I have political views, though, as of yet, I have not expressed them on the internet. But last weekend I went to a rally that I would like to tell you about. It was in support of the unions and teachers in Madison, Wisconsin who are faced with the possibility of losing the right to collective bargaining.

There have been quite a few rallies throughout the country in support of the Wisconsin working families and the New York City rally last weekend had a pretty good turn out. More than 10,000 people showed up. It was an orderly group with deep convictions and strong voices with some folks showing support for the Wisconsin issue by wearing the traditional 'cheese head' hats.

The rally was situated just outside of City Hall and on the edge of the Financial District. The demonstrators were herded onto a three-block long sidewalk space outside of City Hall Park. Metal barricades were placed on the outer edge of the sidewalk to keep the crowd from stepping out onto the street and into oncoming traffic.

I decided not to stay in the rally proper and wiggled my way out from the crowd to roam the outskirts of the gathering to take photographs and get a longer view of what was going on.

I met a one legged man handing out fliers. He was a jolly guy and said that there were a lot of people at the rally from the organization, MoveOn. There was a contingency from the New York Gray Panthers. Representatives from local unions stood in the crowd proudly displaying union patches on their jackets and waving placards. Nurses and teachers called attention to themselves with their signs.

As late comers arrived the rally spilled out into the City Hall Park. So, I headed into the park to see what was going on in there and found that people had more room to move about and they were just as eager to display their signs, make a statement and chant along with everyone else.

There were many photographers out that day documenting the rally. TV news cameras from the local and national stations were everywhere interviewing the attendees.

One father brought his twin sons to the rally. He had made them each a sign to carry that said, WALKER WORKS FOR KOCH. Charles G. and David H. Koch, two extremely conservative brothers who strongly support the end of union bargaining rights, were the largest contributors to Governor Walker's campaign for Wisconsin governorship. When I first spotted the twins they were chasing each other in a quiet section of the park. I asked the father's permission to photograph his sons and I watched the boys tirelessly run from one section of the park to another waving their posters and laughing. By the end of the rally one of the boys had calmed down and stood quietly by his father's side.

It was a lovely, warm, bright sunny day with hardly a breeze. I could have almost forgotten about the bitter cold and the tons of snow that we'd had in New York only a few weeks earlier. If one believed in that kind of thing, the pleasant weather would seem a good omen for a positive outcome for this rally. But we are in tricky times and the working families in Madison, Wisconsin are not alone in their fight. Under the pretext of balancing the state budget the fundamental right for collective bargaining is threatened to be taken away from workers in Wisconsin, while at the same time corporations are being handed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts and benefits. Budget deficits are problems that many states are facing, not just Wisconsin. In New York and New Jersey, as well as elsewhere, there is the real threat of letting go of thousands of teachers in order to balance the states budgets. I don't get it. Why should the people who make the least pay the most?

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A LIFETIME MAKES

2011-02-22T13:15:00.012-05:00

I know that life is made of individual seconds that add up to a lifetime. But every once and a while I turn around and discover that the years have passed far too quickly. Occupied with the day-to-day ‘stuff’ like cooking meals, shopping, the bothersome task of paying bills, filling the gas tank in the car, life seems to be made up of large blank spots of trivialities.

The other day while my husband and I were out with our grandson, Devon, not doing anything too important, just having a good time going in and out of stores and stopping for a slice of pizza. He’s a fun, playful kid who loves sports. We’d just had a big snowball fight and we stepped into a shoe store to warm up.

We headed to the kid's department not looking for anything in particular. Devon found a pair of baby booties and he put them on the floor next to his foot. “Look, grandma, see how big my foot is,” he said.

I looked down and we both had a good laugh. There was six years of growth now in his shoes and that bootie looked like it would have fit him a lifetime ago. No more diapers, no bottles; he’s now in the first grade and under supervision he crosses the street without holding anyone’s hand.

How did that happen?

This is a photograph of my son and daughter when they were little. They are now so terribly far from baby booties that I scarcely remember those days when I balanced one of them on my left hip while keeping my right hand free to do household chores.

I look down again at Devon’s foot next to that baby bootie and vowed to savor every second. I did not want to let these days go by aimlessly unremembered

We left the store and hurried along the icy, wintry street heading for the car. Grandpa climbed in behind the steering wheel. He turned the key in the ignition. “Oops, we’re nearly empty,” he said. “I’ll get gas before we drop Devon off.”

I looked over my shoulder at our grandson sitting in the back seat. He had taken a matchbox car from his coat pocket and was pushing the toy across his knee. “I need gas, too, Grandpa,” Devon said.

I closed my eyes and let the moment imprint itself on my mind. How long would this memory be? Two seconds. Perhaps it will only last three, maybe four seconds. I sighed, and then savored again Devon’s little boy voice, “I need gas, too, Grandpa.”

THE FIGHTER

2011-02-21T14:35:00.003-05:00

Several years ago I was at Brooklyn College and photographed these boxing gloves in a glass case in the library. This Library contains one of the largest boxing archives in the world. I thought it would go well with the review that I just wrote about the movie THE FIGHTER. The article is now appearing online in the Kings River Life Magazine. You can read the review here: kingsriverlife.com/02/20/countdown-to-the-oscars-movie-re...

THE ALCHEMY OF PIE DOUGH

2011-02-12T13:59:00.006-05:00

I just had an article, "The Alchemy of Pie Dough" published in Kings River Life. Check it out here: http://kingsriverlife.com/02/12/pie-dough/

RESPIT FROM THE SNOW AND COLD, BUT WHEN!!!

2011-02-11T20:38:00.023-05:00

This year the winter has been rough with snow and ice still piled high along the roadways like small mountains, and just try to find a park bench to sit on. The alternate side of the street parking regulations has been reinstated so that the standing snow and ice can be scrapped away to allow for more cars to park. And though thankfully the sun was out today, the air is still quite chilly and nothing is melting very fast.

So, I decided to head over to the New York Botanical Garden and to hang out for a while at the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. What a great decision that turned out to be. The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant blue and though it was still very cold outside once I walked into the conservatory the air felt so warm I could have believed that I'd arrived in the Bahamas. There were no ocean breezes, no sound of waves slapping against a sandy beach, but it was warm, humid and because it was an early Friday afternoon, I nearly had the place to myself.

There were not a lot of flowers in bloom but there were some tropical beauties on display. What a wonderfully welcomed sight they were with the bright reds, subtle pastel shades of orchids and a few exotic, waxy flowers that dangled over the pathway in the rainforest section.

In another month the Botanical Garden will have its annual Orchid show. I'm really looking forward to that and I know then that Spring is really nearly here. I have already marked it in my calendar.

There's still a lot of snow on some streets, especially in those areas that get very little sunlight and as I park my car on a side street in Brooklyn to pick something up at the drugstore, I can't help but take a photograph of one of the classic dirty snow piles that still dot our NYC streets.

TIME TO DECK THE KITCHEN CABINETS WITH PHOTOS

2011-02-07T13:53:00.005-05:00

The kitchen has been newly painted. We took down everything from the clock to a junky old wine glass cabinet. But since we live in a coop apartment we really do not have permission to redo the entire room. So we cleaned it up and I decided to frame and hang some photographs. This is a selection that I decided to use on cabinet doors in the area way above my reach.

A WALK IN VANCORTLANDT PARK

2011-02-06T13:51:00.005-05:00

All the bad weather that had been forecasted for yesterday tuned out to be just a dreary, drizzly overcast day!! And this morning the sun came out with a brilliant glare making all the ice now sitting atop the piles of snow glisten and shimmer.

I had to take a walk around Vancortlandt Park today. The light was just too lovely to pass up. The trees are certainly dormant and vacant of any leaves making it possible to see the apartment buildings that stand along the edge of the parklands.

There were a few joggers and one hearty soul wearing ice gripping cleats on his hiking boots and he looked as though he'd been doing a lot of serious walk through the park. But other than those few folks I pretty much had the place to myself. I took one of my favorite jaunts off the main path and was greeted by a fluttering of brilliant red wings. Cardinals were all over the place, sitting in the sun, perched on tree limbs, flitting from one branch to another and then they all flew a way. It was really a lovely thing to see, that bright red color contrasted against the winter dormant trees.

TABLE FOR TWO WITH A SNOW VIEW

2011-02-04T17:53:00.008-05:00

In a small park on the upper westside of Manhattan at West 66th Street, between Broadway and Columbus, there are tables and chairs set outside all year long, summer through winter. There are usually a few lunch wagons in the area, but mostly folks get food at one of the local delis and then come to sit in the park and watch people pass by or chat with a friend. In the summer it is hard to grab a table and chair or even a lone chair. But as you can see in the winter it is certainly a different story. I was in this area a couple days ago and there were a few people bundled up drinking coffee and nibbling on sandwiches chatting away with friends. Today though the wind was blowing, the temperature was freezing and even the pigeons were no where to be found and you had your pick of best tables in the place.

WINTER IS SLOWING DOWN FOR A DAY OR TWO

2011-02-04T09:43:00.002-05:00

This is what our courtyard looked like several days ago. Pretty isn't it!!! The weather seems to have taken a break from all this wintry stuff, though I understand that another storm is predicted to hit us again tomorrow. But for now we deal with ice, slush and freezing temperatures.

THE BIG WINTER STORM

2011-02-02T12:46:00.006-05:00

This is a close up view of a rose hip encrusted in ice.

Ice is everywhere today and though it's starting to thaw and the ice is melting from the limb of the trees, the ice cycles falling from the roofs and fire escapes, it is still a nasty mess out there.

Luckily the storm didn't turn out to be as bad a predicted, any way for us here in the New York City area.

I wonder what the rest of the winter is going to look like.

WHY DON'T YOU COME IN OUT OF THE COLD

2011-02-01T09:27:00.003-05:00

On my way into Manhattan yesterday I had to take a shot of this billboard stretched out across the new location for the 5th Ave and 47th Street Guess store. The snow looks small but don't let that fool you. New York city and the surrounding area is loaded with the white stuff. The only thing in Manhattan is that the street cleaners really got ride of a lot of the piles of snow, carted them away so that getting around in the busiest sections was easier for the pedestrians.

MELTING SNOWMAN IN A SOUP BOWL

2011-01-31T08:57:00.003-05:00

My grandson made a snowman and we brought it home and put it on the kitchen cupboard.

RED

2011-01-30T08:38:00.004-05:00

It's no secret that New York and the surrounding area has had its share of snow this winter. And as the saying goes, "if you are given lemons make lemonade" so when you get bunches and bunches of snow---go snowboarding!! But always wear a helmet!!

WINTRY FENCE

2011-01-26T17:03:00.004-05:00

Well, there is no doubting that this is winter!! The snow has had its way with us this year and it looks like we will be in the grips of a winter wonderland for at least the next three days. I have to admit it is beautiful!! But there is freezing temperatures and ice and snow everywhere. Now the weathermen are making a comparison with the east coast and Alaska. Guess what?? We are colder here in New York than most places in the northern tundra!! Go figure!!

A PIECE OF CRUSTY FRENCH BREAD

2011-01-26T14:04:00.003-05:00

Ah, a piece of fresh crusty French bread would really go awfully nice about now.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

2010-12-20T16:20:00.006-05:00

It’s mid December and I’m contemplating taking a walk. The weather, as I look out my dining room window, appears to be quite warm. The sun is shining brightly but I know it’s a trick of nature trying to make me believe that the temperature outside is pleasant. It’s really cold out there, very cold. And even though the snowfall from earlier in the week has melted, everyone knows that it’s not a day to dally outside wearing anything less than a heavy winter coat. Another reason why I know it’s cold outside is because we’re a week away from Christmas

I like to walk in Van Cortlandt Park no matter the time of year. I was there the other day, just before the snowstorm. A few trees along the edge of the lake were still decked out in fall foliage. But it’s only a matter of time before those trees too will be as stark and lifeless looking as the other timber in the area.

No matter how cold the weather gets, until the lake freezes over, you can always see someone fishing. There are at least five locations where I’ve seen fishermen cast lines out into the murky, algae laden water. One well used fishing hole is on an old train trestle that crosses over a narrow strip of the lake. On my last visit to the park I saw an old-timer wrapped in woolen coat. He sat on an up-turned plastic bucket, his pole dangling over the lake, a red and white bobber sitting on top of the water several yards from the shore. The lazy flowing lake certainly could not have taken the bobber much farther from where the old man had cast it out into the water. A gentle breeze jostled the bobber from side to side, the reflection of the foliage along the lake was distorted by the rippling water. Hundreds of wild geese on the other side of the lake squabbled and honked while the old man sat patiently watching his bobber.

A scraggly, leafless tree sitting on a rocky ledge of the lake’s bank caught my eye. The poor thing, even this early in the cold season had an exhausted dead-of-winter look as it leaned precariously over the water with branches stretching out beseechingly as if the tree was trying to catch its balance. It looked as though the slightest breeze would cause the tree to topple over into the lake. And in its spindly outstretched branches nearly a dozen red and white bobbers, along with yards and yards of fishing line, had become entangle. The bobbers swayed and jiggled in the gentle breeze. I slipped my point and shoot camera from a coat pocket and took a photo of the scene as the old man reeled in his fishing line. His red bobber slowly approached the shore and then with a quick snap of the wrist the old man flung his line back out into the water again, just missing the outstretched branches of the weary looking tree. Plop, the bobber hit the water. Several ducks floating nearby looked expectantly at the bobber, thinking that something good had been tossed in the water for them to nibble on. I watched the fisherman and wondered how many of the entangled bobbers in the tree belonged to this old guy.

“Looks like a Christmas tree,” I said.

“Ho, ho, ho,” the old man replied and then smiling broadly he turned away and began to fiddle with his fishing pole.

I continued walking up the trail. Squirrels scampered up the trees, mouths stuffed with debris, dry leaves and twigs, building material for their winter accommodations. They know that it’s just a matter of time before the real cold weather sets in. A speckled hawk flew overhead, circling, searching. The incessant honking of the migrating Canadian geese was everywhere as they took off in flight heading for their winter quarters. I made my usual rounds, visiting the area where a pair of swans hangout, dipping their heads under the murky water eating the vegetation until their necks are so green their necks resemble vines attached to their soft white bodies.

Heading back home I once again walk across the train trestle. The old fisherman, still sitting on his upturned bucket munched on a handful of potato chips. A few ducks glided close to the fisherman’s bobber and he tossed a few chips in their direction. The birds scrambled closer to shore and gobbled up the tidbits. It didn’t look as though the old man had tangled any more bobbers in the ragged tree. The wind had picked up. A bank of leaves were caught in a wind-devil and traveled across my path. The old man flipped up his collar and seemed to hunker down closer to the ground as he once again reels in his fishing line.

“Well, have a nice Holiday,” I said.

“The same to you,” he responded and flicked his bobber back out into the water.

THE CANAL DISTRICT IN PARIS

2010-07-07T16:11:00.040-05:00

It was a brilliant sunny day when we decided to tour the Canal District of Paris. Parts of the waterway -- built between 1806 and 1825 to link the Seine with the 108km-long (sorry I don't know how many miles that would be) Canal d l'Ourcq- are higher than the surrounding land.
We took the subway and when we got off the train this is the graffiti that greeted us. We headed for the park that runs along the edge of the canal.

This statue sits at the entrance to the Canal Park.

This was our first view of the canal.

The canal gates closing on us and our journey begins.

There are old swing brides and half-moon footbridges and the lovely dappled shading of horse-chestnut trees everywhere. It makes for a perfect area for a romantic stroll or a leasurely bike ride.

There is graffiti, too, but somewhat sophisticated.

There are lovely tree lined walkways along the canal.

People sit along the edge of the canal in the early Paris summer.

The cafes along the Canal are a perfect place for a glass of wine and catch a bit of the cool breeze coming off the water.

Homeless people live along the canal and though we did not see too many other incidences of homelessness it was really quite evident at the entrances of the tunnels along the canal.

At one point in our journey the keepers of the canal had trouble opening one of the locks. We could see a large sections of something rising and falling in the water. I thought it might be a body but it turned out to be a drifting sleeping bag that got caught in the gears. It was pulled free and we were on our way again.

The half-moon footbridges are a great place to stand and watch the barges pass by.

This is a view of what it looked like as we entered the first tunnel.

There are air vents deep inside the long tunnel. The Saint Martin section of the canal tunnel travels directly under the Palace de la Bastille.

The Saint Martin tunnel is pretty long and is eerily-lit.

We saw this sign "Canal Saint-Martin Port De Plaisance" as we sailed out of the canal area.

Once we were out of the Canal District we traveled along the Seine River and this is a view of the Notre Dame from the river.

Notre Dame is on the largest of two islands located in the middle of the Seine. Here is a shot of people lounging on the tip of Ile Saint Louis, the smallest of the two islands.

This is a view of the shore line as we passed the Louvre.

This was the end of the Canal District and Seine River tour.

RHODIA, PARIS AND ME

2010-06-11T07:16:00.017-05:00

Packing for a vacation is always a hassle. Though I follow the rule, pack only half of whatever it is that I want to take. That’s worked for me over the years when it comes to my clothes, but reading material and something to write on has always presented me with a problem. That is until this year when I brought along with me to Paris a pocket sized Rhodia notebook instead of my standard sized Rhodia.

This handy little notebook fit perfectly in the back pocket of my jeans, in my jacket pocket and it even snuggled in comfortably next to a tube of lipstick in a small evening handbag I took with me when we went out for my birthday dinner at a very fancy restaurant.

I never know when I might want to jot down a story line, make note of a special sighting, or record something like a name, a food, a place or even an e-mail address.

I like to travel light: a camera, a notebook and a bit of money in my pocket.

Our first morning in Paris we sat in an outdoor café drinking coffee with hot milk; still groggy from our flight and fearful that I’d forget this wonderful moment, I took out the Rhodia, jotted down a few observations and took a photo of the moment.

This little notebook accompanied me on outings to many French eateries. The most noteworthy was an excursion into the depth of flavors of a Mouse au Chocolat that we ordered in a restaurant on the outskirts of what is said to be the largest flea market in the world. I was copying from the restaurant’s chalkboard menu what we had eaten for lunch and the waitress came up behind me and asked, really quite assertively, “Why are you copying our menu?” I was startled by her comment and she made me feel as though I might be doing something illegal, and I responded, “I want to remember.” She gave me a funny look and walked away.

My Rhodia and I traveled across many of the bridges that crisscross the Seine River.

Then there is the story of Djello, a fantastic husky that we encountered while strolling near a lake one cloudy afternoon on the outskirts of Paris. I could not resist taking a photo of this dog with its magnificent blue eyes. I told Mitzi, the dog’s owner, that I’d e-mail her a copy of the photo and I whipped out my Rhodia and copied down the name of the dog and the owners e-mail address. There was no fumbling for a scrap of paper; the notebook was very accessible and with a pen that I had clipped to the front cover it was all very easily recorded.

My Rhodia and I have looked up at the Eiffel Tower and marveled at how powerful this structure looked against the blue sky.

But I think that the most exciting moment for me and my Rhodia notebook came when we discovered that while on a tour of the Canal District in Paris we steamed right past the Exacota and Clairefontaine warehouse, the exporters of the Rhodia notebooks to the USA. I had no idea where this company was located in Paris and when I saw the familiar logo printed across the building I quickly whipped out my notebook and took a couple of photographs. That was a very cool experience and totally unexpected.

Even though the trip to Paris is over, the enjoyment is not finished yet, as I untangle my photographs and the notes that I have made in my Rhodia. There are no chocolate or coffee stains on the cover of this notebook, nor is there an greasy smears of the delicious French butter, there are, never the less, tons of memories jotted down on those Rhodia notebook pages.

WHEN DOVES CRY

2010-06-09T07:19:00.017-05:00

There is a significant time difference between Paris and New York. So, for the first couple of days there was some confusion with going to sleep and waking up. Then, the sleeping straightened out and the mornings and evenings fell into a normal pattern.

Though each morning we were awakened at dawn by the strangest howling. The light in the bedroom, dusky and dream-like made the noise seem all the more strange. The morning would go silent again, I'd fall back to sleep only to be awakened a shot time later by another plaintive calling out. This went on every day, each morning, a strange howling coming from somewhere in the interior courtyard of the apartment complex where we were staying.

We tried to reason out what could be making this eerie sound. Neither my husband nor I had ever heard anything like it before and though we did not think it was anything threatening, we were certainly curious. Then one day I looked down into the courtyard and saw a mourning dove slowly, gracefully walking across the patio garden path. The delicate, soft grey bird then flew to the other side of the building, its wings making a familiar high pitched swishing sound. But then when the bird landed under the eaves of the windowsill and called out to its mate on the other side of the courtyard, the soft cooing of this gentle little thing was caught in the curved structure of the window and its song echoed up to our window sounding more like a wolf howling than a bird call. Then I watched as the pair took flight and disappeared on the other side of the roof tops.

We had several days left of our visit in Paris and each morning we were serenaded by the plaintive dove's cry. Then one night I remembered a 1984 Prince song, "When Doves Cry". I could only remember that it was a tragic love song. I associate doves with love and Paris is known as a city for lovers, though these mourning doves made me realize that where there's love there's bound to be heartbreak. And we did see what appeared to be lover's tragedies while traveling through the streets and gardens of Paris. In one department store I saw a young girl weeping and weeping, and an older woman trying desperately to console the crying girl. They made a quick purchase and hurried out into the street, the girl still crying so hard that tears were streaming down her face. We saw another women walking briskly through a beautiful garden, hurrying passed lovers nuzzling each other on park benches, her yes red from crying and she brushed so close to us that we could hear the sobs choking in her throat.

Here are the lyrics from:

WHEN DOVES CRY

Dig if you will the picture
Of you and I engaged in a kiss
The sweat of your body covers me
Can you my darling
Can you picture this?

Dream if you can a courtyard
An ocean of violets in bloom
Animals strike curious poses
They feel the heat
The heat between me and you

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that's so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father too bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry

Touch if you will my stomach
Feel how it trembles inside
You've got the butterflies all tied up
Don't make me chase you
Even doves have pride

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father too bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that's so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father too bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
She's never satisfied
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like

When doves cry

LOOKING UP

2010-06-07T07:55:00.014-05:00

Walking the streets of Paris is a dream-like experience. Most of the buildings are old, old, old but very well maintained. Some of the churches date back to the 1200's so for an American this puts an entirely different spin on the concept of historical landmark. There are crazy crooked dog-leg shaped streets with deep shadows that have an air of mystery and intrigue. And though the streets and the facades of the buildings are so delightful, for me it was when I looked up at the roof tops that I found another level of interest.

Some buildings stretch out in simple elegance.

Apartment dwellers everywhere in the world bedeck their balconies with greenery and Paris is no exception.

This is a photograph of a group of apartments that over look the Notre Dame, the Seine and the Left Bank

When you walk passed the outside of the Lovre look up and you might see the statue of a naked Napoleon III astride a muscular steed looking down at you.

And when the Paris sky is dotted with small white clouds and the blue of the atmosphere is at its most brilliant, that's when the rooftops are breathtaking.

The configuration of chimneys sometimes look like crowns adorning the roof tops.

LA MADELEINE

2010-06-01T14:05:00.016-05:00

Today was a vacation from the vacation. We’ve been walking our legs off for ten days now checking out everything that was on our list of things to see and do. We woke up this morning to a heavy cloud cover and the promise of rain. The French Open has been interrupted many times with the rain and so have us tourists been hobbled by periodic cloudbursts. But we do march on.

But after a long and luxurious morning of coffee and bread, butter and jam we set out once again to explore the streets. We went to La Madeleine Square. There is a church in the square dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and the square is located at the junction of the boulevards with an artery from place de la Concorde. The history of this building if a bit too complex to go into here, but the structure was initially started by St-Louis-des-Invalides in 1764 but through many political and complicated times the structure was not consecrated until 1842.

The back of the Church shows how austere the structure appears with its strong lines of columns.

The stair at the front entrance is lined with hundreds of flower boxes.

The interior is exquisite and powerful.

All along the outside of the building there are larger than life size statues of saints. Here is St. Cabrial. All of these statues are very dirty and the entire place looks as though it is in the process of getting a cleaning with scaffolding around the entire building.

A real find. A toilet underground in the La Madeleine area. There are two female attendants waiting to hand you a towel after you have washed your hand. The walls are rich wood paneling with a stained glass window on each door of the stalls.

This is the entrance for the ladies!!

And for the gentlemen there is a Urinoir. Just follow the arrow.

From the steps of La Madeleine you get a full view of rue Royale, the obelisk at the heart of the place de Concord and beyond that you can see to the Palaise-Bourbon and the Invalids dome.

MARCHE AUX PUCES DE ST-OUEN

2010-05-29T11:45:00.011-05:00

Today we went to a flea market that boast it is the biggest flea market in the world. It has 2500 stalls broken up into 10 different street areas each with it's own speciality. Thousands of people come here every weekend to shop, browse, and socialize. The day started out grey and slightly breezy but by the time we left the market, we'd walked through the market during a rains storm and the wind was blowing through the stalls making the afternoon quite chilly. But we, along with throngs of other shoppers endured the weather seeking treasures. Though this market had plenty of new clothing, not just antiques. The following is a small collection of my photo expedition through the market.

There are not only street vendors but a multilevel addition that seems to go on forever with antiques of every kind imaginable.

Inside the maze of vendors you can find quiet little alleyways that dead end at lovely little shops.

I'll bet you could get a good deal on some well used copper pots!! Probably only used for about 20 years in some famous restaurants.

Need new chairs?? They got plenty at this market!!

For those who are seeking the unusual in transportation, and certainly something that I'll bet your neighbor does not have, let me suggest a bent cane bicycle.

It wouldn't be a flea market without lions and motor cycles all in the same room!!

And my favorite was the merry-go-round animals for sale and the child's rocking horse.

MONTMARTRE

2010-05-28T03:09:00.013-05:00

It was a miserably rainy day but we headed out into the city anyway. Soon the rain stopped and then as we began our climb to the Basilique Du Sacre-Coeur the rain came pouring out of the sky. Luckily there were a lot of cafes where we could sit under cover, have a coffee and watch the people scurrying about under their umbrellas.

We sat undercover in an area where many artists were selling their paintings and they were certainly not happy about the downpour either.

The rain, for a short while, turned into a drizzle, a troubadour came by and for a few coins he entertained us for a while.

After we'd had a cup of espresso the rain started to come down again, this time it came down in buckets, and we decided to have lunch and a dish of ice cream while we waited for the weather to turn a bit milder.

At one point the rain simply remained a dreary drizzle and we paid our bill and headed up the hill to the basilique du Sacre-Coeur.

It is really a lovely place but no photos are allowed inside. On a clear day the view is extraordinary but even on a dreary day the view is pretty spectacular, too.

And here is a view of tourists viewing the view.

This is a view of the bacilique looking back up the hill. There is a charming merry-go-round at the bottom of the hill and on this very dark and rainy day the colored lights and the music added a great deal of warmth and friendliness to the scene.

LOUVRE

2010-05-27T04:20:00.007-05:00

We had rain and the sky for most of the day was dark and threatening. There was quite a bit of wind so we ate in a cafe rather than sitting outside where we could watch people passing by. Then we decided rain or shine we'd get onto a subway and head out to the Louvre. But when we stepped outside of the subway we saw the cafe that we sat in 10 years ago on our first visit to Paris and we just had to have a look. The inside hadn't changed much with a dark moody lighting and the scruffy unpolished wooden floors. But the best part of the place is that the back room, known as the library room, is still there and the walls are filled with book in every speakable language on this earth and are there for the patron's use. What fun.

After a cup of coffee (I had mine poured over a glass of vanilla Ice cream) we walked across the street to the Louvre. By then the sun was streaming through the parting clouds and it was just too beautiful to go indoors no matter what would be waiting for us within those magnaficant walls.

A musician played classical music inside one of the alcoves and he make the place feel even more magical than it already was.

2010-05-26T03:26:00.004-05:00

I don't have much time to blog this morning. But I thought I'd do just a little writing this morning before we leave for one of the museums. The days are long in Paris. This photos is of a street scene taken at 9:00 PM. You can see that there are deep shadows and that the sun is still shining. Another thing about time here is that while it is 4:30 AM for you in NY, as I write this it is already 10:30 AM here in Paris.

I'm not sure what this other photo is about though I certainly thought it was a curious way to express a warning. It was attached to a door in a changing room area of a small clothing store.

A LEASURELY WALKING DAY IN PARIS

2010-05-24T18:44:00.008-05:00

It’s interesting to be in a city and have no real commitments, no work, with family and friends thousands of miles away. Today we picked a location and simply walked. We are big people watchers and in Paris there is always something to see. I suppose this blog will end up being a patchwork of our travels. But then that’s what traveling really is all about, taking in as much as you can and then sewing the pieces together making a quilt from all the fabrics that you encounter.

We didn’t see the “lucky day scam,” today. There were no rows of street venders at the tourist’s sites selling trinkets the way you frequently see in NY. There seem to be few panhandlers in Paris, too, though I’ve seen several women sitting on the street begging for money. I saw one young woman sitting all hunched over, scarf wrapped sadly about her head and when she thought no one was looking she quickly dab on a bit of lipstick, shoved the tube into her shirt and then presented a really quite sad face.

We are always drawn to water so it would only seem natural for us to walk toward the Seine. It runs all the way through Paris and even though there are tons of tour boats the water continues to have a majesty and seems to be kept pretty clean. Though we did see a soccer ball stranded in the middle of the river. The tour boats frequently resemble barges hauling people and because they are so crowded they make me feel a bit uneasy thinking about clambering onto one of those things. I worrying about what a great splash we'd all make if the thing sprung a leak or ran into another barge carrying a full contingency of tourists.

You cannot beat strolling along the water at sunset.

I ask you how do you top a beautiful day like this one?? And my answer is, you have French ice cream and a glass of wine. And if the waitress brings you a small dish of olives, have a nibble and add it to the texture of your day.

YOUR LUCKY DAY SCAM

2010-05-24T05:47:00.002-05:00

We got a bit of money changed at the airport, the rate wasn't that good so we got only enough exchanged to pay for the bus to get us into the middle of Paris and another bit of money for some food.

After getting off the bus and exchanging more money we stood on the street trying to decide which of the directions we had been given would most likely be the right way to go and that was when we had the most curious encounter.

A man, who appeared to be walking passed us, stopped, stooped down and picked something up off of the sidewalk. He handed it to Steve and said, “Sir, you dropped this.” It was a gold wedding band.

Steve looked at the ring and said, “It’s not mine. You found it, you keep it.”

“Oh, no, I cannot keep the ring, I am a Muslim. You must keep the ring. It is your lucky day. Look, sir, it is 18 carrots. You are very lucky.”

Steve tried to give the ring back, but the man insisted that the ring was really ours to keep. The man bowed politely and then hurried off to the street corner. It wasn’t but a few seconds later that he came back and said, “Could you give me some money?"

We were groggy from our travel, the lack of sleep and our bellies were beginning to grumble from hunger, but we were not that out of it and realized at that point that we were being scammed. Steve said, “No, take the ring back.”

The man was very insistent. He wanted money and not the ring. Then the man turned to me. With his nose nearly touching mine he said, “Madam, give me money for food.”

“Take the ring back,” Steve said and then reached into his pocket. The man waited to be handed some money. But Steve put the ring in the fellow’s outstretched hand and we hurried away up the street. The man followed us for about a half block and then gave up and walked away.

In the last two days we have seen this scam being played out on other street corners. Once a man tried to hand us a ring from the sidewalk and another time we saw a man try to entice a woman carrying many shopping bag into a game of “Madam, this is your lucky day”. She looked at him with hardly any notice, and we just kept walking. The man shrugged his shoulders, turned and headed off toward a more crowded street most likely looking for an other pigeon to pluck.

2010-05-24T03:34:00.009-05:00

THE FARMERS ON THE CHAPMPS-ELYSEE

Our first day in Paris we took a walk to the Champs-Elysee and happened onto one of the biggest expositions I have ever attended. There was lots of activity with tucks and vegetables and stands being set up everywhere. We couldn’t read the displays nor could anyone explain to us what it was that was going on.

The next day we were headed for the Seine, taking a street that we were now familiar with and we saw throngs of people milling about. So, we went to see what the fuss was about.

Well, we met head on the 2 million people who had come to a farmer’s exposition. The entire Champs-Elysee had been closed to traffic and the crowd was so thick there was no way that we could have gotten any where but to be grabbed up in a current of moving people and taken down stream with them. Instead, we stepped back and simply watched.

There were people in booths giving away free trees for people to plant. There were t-shirts for sale, and lots of demonstrations and tons of displays of vegetables.

One lady wore a skirt made from decorative cheese boxes.

We came back at sunset and the crowd had thinned out a bit, but there were still lots of people hanging around eating cheese and drinking wine and beer from the venders. There was a little bit of music from an ump-ump-ump tuba band, but not much more than that in the way of enetertainment.

FIRST FULL DAY IN PARIS

2010-05-23T09:03:00.002-05:00

The first full day in Paris, with a beautiful blue sky and a bright sun that paints deep shadows along the building facades; it’s early for Parisians on this Saturday morning, nothing is open and we are starving. So we stroll along the narrow streets just taking in the sites and soon we come to the Champs-Elysees where masses of people are meandering, shopping and seeming to have nowhere in particular to go. We turn off onto a quieter street and head for the Seine eventually figuring we’d get to the Eiffel Tower. And there like an apparition we see on both sides of the street cafes open with more than enough room for the two of us to have what for us by now would be our lunch.

A LONE MUTE SWAN

2010-04-06T10:04:00.032-05:00

Van Cortlandt Park is an amazing 1,146 acres that stretches out across the northern edge of the Bronx. I head for this area every chance I get. Sometimes I walk along one of the trails or I sit on a bench at the lakeside and watch the ducks and geese glide across the water’s surface.

Every year the birds in the area produce a burst of clutches and it’s always a delight to see fuzzy ducklings and perky baby mallards trailing behind their parents. I’ve also become accustomed to seeing a pair of Mute Swans joining this waterfowl grouping. The swans do their bit for the area, too, and every summer I've seen a family of swans traveling across the lake and marshland.

But this winter though the area was filled with more geese than I could possibly ever count, there was only one Mute Swan. I went back to the park several times this winter, and each time I saw only one swan.

It’s spring now and on my last trip to the park I saw Willows, the first trees to begin the bold greening this early in the season and I saw several Skunk Cabbage plants stretching out of the mud and unfurling their large juicy leaves reaching up into the bright warm sunshine. Tidy mallard pairs moved in unison across the lake. And still, I saw only one swan.

According to the magazine “Wildlife Conservation” Mute Swans ‘have a triangular naked black area in front of the eyes and a black knob above the deep orange bill. The fleshy knob is more prominent on the males’. So, looking at the photo that I took of this bird, I believe that the lone swan is a male.

The sad thing about this is that a pair of these regal birds has been nesting in Van Cortlandt Park since 1983 producing a clutch of at least three cygnets each year. I doubt very much if it has been the same two swans all these years that has been populating the parklands, but the last mating pair may have been distant relatives of the original pair. Science, through modern genetic techniques, is discovering that ‘divorces’ are somewhat common among swans, particularly after a nesting failure, however, these birds tend to be monogamous.

I don’t know what happened to the other swan, whether it was a divorce or a death that parted this couple, but it will be interesting to see what happens next and if the park rangers will introduce another swan? As I watched this lone swan glide across the lake there was great dignity in his pose and I see no sign of regret or sadness and I cannot help but wonder if those are feelings only we humans experience. The Mute Swan still up-ends himself the way he has always done to get at the tubers, stems and other aquatic and submerged plants. He still sits in the middle of the marshland grooming himself in the warm spring sunshine. It is I who will miss seeing the Mute Swan family. I will miss the cygnets and watching the protective parents and I wish that I had taken a photograph of one of the swan families several years ago when I had a chance.

I wonder if this Mute Swan is lonely and then I remember that a very sad an lonely woman once told me she had survived a personal tragedy because the days just kept coming, one after the other, no matter what happened.

2009-12-16T11:35:00.002-05:00

I wrote this following piece five years ago. I tried to get it published in a quilt magazine, but it was rejected. I never posted it on my blog, who knows why. Well, here it is years later. Devon is now in school and is quite a special person to us. Enjoy the holidays with friends and family.

This would be my first Christmas as a grandmother and I’d decided to make a small soccer ball for Devon, my grandson. The ball looked simple enough to copy -- alternating black and white hexagons sewn together as for a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt, but three dimensional. I’ve made my share of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks, so I figured that I’d get this little project done in an afternoon.

I had a small soccer ball Christmas tree ornament and decided to use it as a model. I dug into my fabric stash, pulled some black and white yardage from the bottom of the pile, and made a hexagon template. I cut out the pieces and was off and running. Well, sort of.

Using the Y seam method I began to piece the ball together. I first attached six white hexagons to the six sides of a black hexagon. This first row went together quite nicely. The next row had alternating black and white sections. I seamed them together without much difficulty, as well. However, when I’d attached this row together I knew that something was not right. My ball was as flat as a doily. What had I done wrong?

I am not a math person. I thought I had counted six sides on the white section of the ball but perhaps I had made a mistake. I studied the model again. Looking more closely and counting the sides on the black sections of the soccer ball, I realized that I had indeed counted wrong. The soccer ball wasn’t made up of hexagons, but instead had been made of pentagons – five sided pieces. Back to the drawing board I went and after much fiddling I had a template with five angles that were all the same.
I went back to the cutting board where I sliced up a new stack of five sided black and white pieces and began to sew them together. By the time I got to the third row, I realized that I had again done something very wrong. My soccer ball looked like a black-and-white chicken beak. This was not going well. What had looked to be simple enough at the beginning was turning into a quite complex task.

But I was on a mission and I decided that this soccer ball would not get the best of me. The ornament I was using as a model dangled from the lamp on my sewing table. I counted once again the sides of the black section. Five. Then I counted the sides of the white section of the ball. Six. I counted again. Five black. Six white. How could that be?

Back to the drawing board I went once again, this time measuring more carefully. Like I said, I am really not a math person and it took me many tracings of the ornament, fitting together various sizes of paper pieces and only after I’d created a small mountain of discarded malformed paper soccer balls did I finally figured out how to make a five sided template that would work with the six sided template. I still don’t understand what I did, but three days later when I cut out the fabric pieces and seamed them together, I had a soccer ball. I swiftly stuffed the round cloth structure with leftover quilt batting, hand stitched the opening closed, and in the end had a ball as brilliant as any you’d see in a store.

On Christmas morning I handed my son-in-law, Desmond the gift to open for the baby. He squeezed the package, gave me a quick smile and said, “A ball?”

“Ah, but what kind?” I replied.

He proceeded to remove the wrapping. “A soccer ball,” he said gleefully and began to toss the ball up in the air. And after he’d thrown the ball back and forth across the room with my husband a couple of times, he squeezed the ball and commented, “Good action, Grandma.”

Not knowing anything about the game of soccer, I took that as a compliment, but before I could respond Desmond gently bounced the cloth ball off his infant son’s head. Devon continued to contentedly suck on his bottle and kick his little feet oblivious to his first encounter with a soccer ball. “We’re going to have fun with this,” Desmond said.

The project had taken me longer than an afternoon to make, but the lessons I learned were fascinating and as fulfilling as if I’d made a king-sized bed quilt. Maybe next Christmas I’ll make a football. Maybe I’d better get started on that now.

2009-11-25T09:59:00.005-05:00

A HAUNTING

Most people think of houses when they think of something haunted. They think of dark creaky old wooden stairways, or closed, locked rooms that groan and whisper in desolate homes overgrown with weeds and twisted vines. These are the places people usually think of when they talk about a haunted house. I used to think that too, but not any more.

I live in an apartment building and I know my apartment is haunted. A shiver can still run down my spine when I remember the first time I realized this.

Our building, constructed in 1926 is a sturdy four-story walk up. From our dining room windows we look out onto a charming courtyard with trees that were planted when the structure was first built. Today the trees nearly reach the top of the roof, the branches spreading out like a canopy, and the roots stretching far beneath the foundation of the apartment house, or so we imagine. When our windows are open in the warm weather we can hear the leaves rustle and chatter in the gentle breezes. No mater what the season, birds and squirrels can be seen moving about in the trees. Who would suspect in this tranquil setting there would be something haunting us?

I believe the haunting comes from the cement, the plaster, the wood, and the paint, and from within the pores of the very brick that makes this building stand so tall; the haunting comes from the blood and the bones of the building itself.

There is a pattern to the haunting. Everything is quiet for a while. The weeks go along, the months, and there is a rhythmic hum in our ordinary lives. Then it happens. Light bulbs begin to burn out all at the same time; faucets begin to leak, appliances break down, and the milk sours quickly in the refrigerator. That’s how I know the haunting has come. That’s when I see something -- a momentary blankness, an emptiness in the air, and I think I see a shadowy image flit down the hallway like quickly moving smoke. But, then, when I look, whatever I’ve see is gone. All that remains is a lingering, disquieting smell. A smell that sits on the back of my tongue, an odor that I smell as I exhale. And I taste in the air the molding, dusty leaves rotting under the trees. I sense eyes, too, eyes that seem to look out from behind the layers of paint on the walls, following me, silently waiting, watching.

At night when everyone has gone to bed I sometimes hear footsteps coming down the hallway. The footsteps approach the door to my bedroom, then stop. Just as suddenly it’s gone and I know now that it retreats back into the walls. I used to excuse this sound as the wood expanding and contracting. But it’s footsteps, one after the other, deliberate, purposeful steps, walking down the hallway.

Other people have thought they’ve see something, or heard something in their apartments, too. They discount any strange sound or movements as being caused by their neighbors on the other side of the walls. I, too, was skeptical once of the existence of the thing that haunts, but something happened, and I no longer deny what I see or hear.

One day after my son left home and moved into an apartment of his own, I was moving furniture, turning his newly empty bedroom into a study for myself. I had taken my son’s bed apart, then moved his comic book collection and schoolbooks into the closet. I took his rock music posters down from the wall and put up my own choice of art, a plaster head of Nefertiti and a large photo of Billy Holiday. I was hard at work when all of a sudden I thought I saw something, a movement, perhaps a dust fairy floating past my vision. At first I ignored whatever it was, and told myself that nothing was there. However, the image persisted at the corner of my eye. Something stood in the doorway of my son’s room. Overpowered by curiosity I slowly turned. And there in the doorway stood the strangest little fellow.

“Where the heck did you come from,” I murmured. Then I closed my eyes. I could not believe what I saw. When I looked again, he was still there. I waited for him to say something or to move. He did neither. He simply stood silently watching me. I looked away again, wondering was he only a piece of lint on my eyeball. I looked back. He was still standing in the doorway.

This thing, this strange little man stood no taller than a yardstick. His dark eyes, deeply set under bushy brows, glistened like candle flames. His face and hands were the texture and color of tree bark and he wore garments of coarse fabric. Gnarled misshapen toes poked out from under the ragged edges of his pants legs. Thick, dark, bristly globs of hair stuck out all about his head and his knobby hands hung at his side.

I remember thinking, “So, this is what you look like. I knew you’d show up some day.” And I wondered if he had been living in my son’s messy room all these years.

As we stood watching each other I felt as if we had spoken before, or maybe we had touched each other somewhere, in the walls, in the clothes closet, under the trees. After a moment I realized that all those night of worry and hearing something coming down the hallway, coming toward me, scaring me, were not so frightening after all. Then as unexpectedly as this strange little man had appeared he was gone again, like a fading echo.

An icy chill crept down my back while I waited for him to return. The skin on my hands was sweaty when I locked my fingers together seeking my own comfort. I sat in a chair by the window and watched the doorway for what seemed hours, but he never came back.

I don’t know what it was that happened that day, but I do know that something definitely stood in that doorway looking at me. Some days I’ve wondered if it had been a dream. I really did see something that day, though, and I’ve asked myself many times, if this little guy was a part of the building or was he a part of me. I don’t know which.

I do believe there is something magical about the building I live in. I think I hear it breathing on some days. I feel it contracting and expanding as I imagine the structure trying to heal itself, make itself whole again when it learns of the pain and sadness in the lives of the people who live inside the rooms. I like to think that the laughter of children playing, rains down on the courtyard and comforts the tired old building as the giggles are sucked into the cracks of the brick and mortar walls. And this strange little being, this thing that moves through wood and plaster, a soul with eyes that flickered and lapped at me, has anyone else seen him?

I know that the light bulbs will continue to burn out all at the same time and that there will be other strange situations that no one will be able to explain. And I also know that every once in a while this little fellow will flit down the hallway making another vaporous appearance to a purpose I cannot understand.
THE END

Wat Rong Khun A Contemporary Temple in Thailand

2009-02-07T20:20:00.007-05:00

In 1997 Chlermachai Kositpipat a renowned Thai Buddhist artist set out to build a temple in his hometown as an offering to the Lord Buddha, thereby creating an “art for the land” for his nation, religion and monarch. The first building that has been constructed to date is the consecrated assembly hall, the Lord Buddha residence, and is a striking ornate white structure. The building is surrounded by motifs that represent the various stages of reaching enlightenment. There are larger than life demons wielding swords and fangs rising out of the earth depicting the trials and sacrifices that are encountered in the process of reincarnation.

There are plans to construct another nine buildings with each structure containing a moral lesson. Chlermachai Kositpipat estimates that at the rate that the construction has been going that it will take another 60 to 70 years to complete his project. He has prepared for this long haul by establishing two of what he calls batches of disciples, younger people who will carry on after he is dead. One batch of disciples is 28 years old and the other batch is 20 years old.

Everything on the outside of the building is constructed in white stucco and decorated with white class all which represents the wisdom and purity of the Buddha. However, on the inside of the building the walls are painted in vibrant colors, a stark contrast to the outside façade.

There is a reflection pond that contains only white fish and several fountains that periodically spray up into the air like a giant geyser.

The meditating Buddha is depicted on the outside of the building sitting within the lotus flower. In many of the stories of Buddha meditating he is surrounded by animals, the earth, and the spirit world all of which make sure that no harm cames to him.

The evils of smoking and drinking alcoholic beverage is clearly convayed in stucco statues that have been painted red signaling that the followers of Buddhism take heed.

Before climbing the steps to get into the Buddha residence everyone must pass a sculpture of hands reaching up out of the earth. There is a huge skull with gaping mouth and one hand is holding an alms bowl. Most of the hands are in various stages of decay and morbidity, all reaching out in a fantastically pleading manner. I believe that this aspect of the structure represents the impurities of the mind, suffering and most probably was Hell.

THE SERIOUS BUSINESS OF SLEDDING

2009-01-20T10:23:00.002-05:00

We had a bit of snow the other day and boy was it fun!!! Soft and flaky, not so good for making snowballs but boy was it slick!!! This is the fun part of the winter and the cold weather.

CABBAGES AND CONDOMS

2009-01-13T16:32:00.009-05:00

We took a curious side trip in Thailand to a place called Cabbages and Condoms. It’s a restaurant and resort created to provide financial support for the PDA (Population and Community Development Association). PDA is Thailand’s foremost non-governmental charitable organization that was founded in 1974 by Mechai Viravaidya, the former Thai Minister of Health and one of Thailand’s leading philanthropists.

PDA provides education about birth control, environmental conservation, rural development and AIDS awareness. The aim of the group is to make condoms as common –and as accepted—as cabbages. In Thailand cabbages are a staple part of the diet, they are grown in all the villages, they are everywhere and everyone uses them. PDA proposes that if condoms could be as common and used as often, then some of the population and health problems facing Thailand could be overcome.

In publicizing PDA and its efforts to educate the population of Thailand, Viravaidya has passed condoms out to international bankers and CEOs at major conferences and has paid farmers to paint ads and public service announcements for condoms on the sides of their water buffalo.

Though I did not have a meal at one of the Cabbages and Condoms eateries I heard that they offer really quite good food and that in their décor they also continue to promote the health and safety aspects of condom use in a fun and amusing manner. There are several Cabbages and Condom restaurants throughout Thailand. One of the restaurants boasts of having the world’s largest collection of national brand condoms and they are displayed around the walls. Instead of serving after dinner mints, there are bowls of condoms located at the exits.

When we arrived at one of the restaurant it was closed but we visited the gift shop and gathered up a few interesting shirts with the Cabbages and Condoms logo and a few other items that were made by the local villagers. Everyone took photographs of the manniquins dress only in colorful condoms and then we had a very good cup of coffee and bought some cookies made by a local baker. And I have to tell you that the clerk in the gift shop did not offer condoms to our bus load of tourists.

DAMNOEN SADUAK FLAOTING MARKET IN THAILAND

2009-01-10T09:02:00.007-05:00

A little more than an hour drive outside of Bangkok is the Damnoen Sauak Floating Market. Basically it’s a shopping mall on water. Though slightly reminiscent of Venice with its many canals, with the abundance of brightly colored and exotic produce it would be hard to confuse this Thailand market place with that of the Venetian waterways.

We arrived at the market on a sunny morning with the light reflecting brilliantly from the water. A walkway shrouded in deep shadows ran parallel to the water where throngs of people milled about shopping and tasting the food. There are two sections to this market. One section caters to the tourist with lots of stuff to buy. On the other side of a bridge marks the beginning of where the locals do much of their own purchasing though much of how they shop is through barter.

A butcher, with a full set of carving knives and much fresh meat floated about the canals selling sometimes snippets of meat but frequently he whack off a large chunk of meat and hand it off to a vendor who would cook it right there on the small boat. Women would float by with large cauldrons of bubbling hot cooking oil frying up a piece of meat that had just been handed to her by the butcher.

Fruits and vegetables of every kind imaginable were loaded onto the boats and the merchants maneuvering up and down the canals would conduct business as though this waterway were any normal street in the big city.

Tourism certainly contributes a great deal to the crowds in this market place though the local farmers do a great deal negotiating and purchasing as well. The large bags and bins of dried fish and spices that I saw were not intended for tourists but were for the local trade.

EATING AT THE STREET MARKETS IN THAILAND

2009-01-08T07:25:00.012-05:00

The food venders in Thailand are merchants, business people who bring their products to market sometimes in carts and sometimes in baskets attached to shoulder poles. The venders sit on street corners, and I don’t know if they have a regular location in a market place but I often saw them move when the foot traffic started to thin out. The venders who carry their foodstuff in baskets also bring along little stools or they sit on their haunches for hours.

You can purchase fresh fruit or you can have a fruit juice prepared while you wait. Oranges are a popular item and the venders can be seen squeezing the fruit making glass after glass of the bright orange drink.

Noodles are big seller in the street food scene. They can be served with meat or without, a spice sauce added or left plain.

Though I didn’t get a shot of the soups, they were a popular item. In Thailand they don’t use the plastic containers that we use here in the States for our fast food, but instead the soup is ladled into a plastic bag and a rubber band is wound tightly around the opening. The bags are bulbous, filled half way with soup and half air and when the soup is carried down the street it reminded me of someone carrying a bag of tropical fish home from the pet store. In fact, much of the street food was served in plastic bags; noodles, rice and saucy meat dishes were all treated the same. There were some Styrofoam containers, but I mostly saw the plastic bags used for the take-away food.

Much of the cooking is done on the spot. In one market we saw a young woman working with a green glutinous dough. She dipped one hand into a large bowl of the pastel colored batter and smeared a perfect circle onto a griddle. Her other hand worked a spatula lifting and turning the thin pancakes and then removing them to cool on a tray. Another woman took the pancakes and ran them through a machine that cut them into thin noodles.

We tasted roasted worms one day. Now this was something that I’d never thought I’d do, but the time was right and I took a couple crunchy fellows and popped them into my mouth. Surprisingly they were quite tasty, with an initial buttery flavor. The longer I chewed though the more bland they became and the crunch turned to a dry texture that felt like I had a bit of fish scales in my mouth. But they sell these culinary delights by the pound in the food stores and in the street markets.

The most interesting and tasty food for me was the sticky rice cooked in bamboo. Unfortunately I did not get a good photograph of this operation but I got my share of the food. Glutinous rice is soaked in water overnight and then drained. Coconut milk then replaces the water that was removed. Some variation to this dish is the addition of mung beans but most of the time the rice and coconut milk is sufficient.

Bamboo poles are cut and the thick sides are skived so that only a thin layer of the wood remains. The rice is then stuffed into the bamboo and roasted over hot coals for at least three hours, turning frequently to keep from scorching the rice. When eating the rice the top of the bamboo pole is scored to allow for the wood to be easily peeled. The bamboo adds great flavor to the rice and keeps the food at a nice temperature throughout the day. The bamboo serves as a container as well as a lunch basket for farmers when they work the rice fields or tend to their buffalo herds.

I doubt that I’ll ever be so ambition and make this sticky rice in bamboo, but it is certainly up there on my list of culinary delights.

CHRISTMAS IN THE HONG KONG AIRPORT AND IN THAILAND

2009-01-05T08:00:00.009-05:00

This year we spent Christmas and the New Year in Thailand. It’s a long flight from New York to the Orient. We were in the air 14 hours before we caught our first connecting flight in Hong Kong, not to mention the time we spent waiting on the tarmac at the JFK airport. But things went quite smoothly and we were in the air in no time. There’s not much to see up there in the wild blue yonder though at one point I got a great shot of the landscape of China before we reached Bangkok. The view from up there looked mysterious and magical. I wanted to believe that what I saw was fog spreading out over the mountain range. Knowing what I do about the air quality of that country I suspected though that what looked so dreamy and artistic might have quite likely been pollution.

We had no idea how or even if we’d experience any kind of Christmas while we were away. I had not left any Holiday decorations back in our apartment. No need to, and I didn’t think that I’d miss any of the hoopla that we usually dealt with during this time of the year. So, when we got off the airplane in Hong Kong where we were to change planes and head for Bangkok I was quite surprised to hear American Christmas carols coming over the loud speaker as we walked through the airport looking for the gate to our connecting flight.

And then we saw it, a huge floor to ceiling golden Christmas tree. It didn’t sparkle with glitter nor did it have twinkling colored lights. This immense symbol of the Christian Holiday looked as though it had been made of gold though we all knew that it had been spray-painted. The closer we got to the tree the more curious the decorations seemed to be. The tree had been constructed of very large cutout leaves and wire sculptures that I thought looked like bedpans and I grabbed a quick shot as we hurried off to find our departure gate.

When we arrived in Bangkok we were greeted by more Christmas decorations in the hotel lobby. A huge gingerbread construction stood in the foyer complete with confection that replicated dripping snow with many Santa Clauses positioned around the house in both white and dark chocolate. The humidity even in the air-conditioned lobby played havoc with the frosting and like real snow sliding from the roof of a heated house, the frosting kept breaking off the eaves of the cookie roof and had to be replaced every so many days by one of the bakers from the kitchen.

What really impressed me was the number of beautiful poinsettias that were everywhere. I thought they were native to the topics and while talking with one of the staff in the hotel I learned that they were new to this country and that they called the plants Christmas Flowers. The red blossoms certainly dressed the streets and lobbies with great dignity though I was disappointed to hear that they did not grow in the wild tropical forests.

On Christmas Eve we attended an outdoor Holiday buffet with all the American trimmings: turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and then there was fried rice, bean curd wrapped in cabbage, Phad Thai Sai Khai, banana and glutinous rice steamed in banana leaves and countless other exotic goodies. Overseeing this affair was a huge snowman sculpted in ice. He stood in front of the appetizer section, tropical flowers scattered about its base, a silk scarf tied around his neck, a classic top hat and the beam of a spotlight to show him off. The poor fellow got smaller and smaller as the night went on. Droplets of water ran from his hat and down the cheeks of his jolly round face. We all knew that it was only a matter of time before he’d be nothing more than a puddle of water on the slate floor.

Christmas decorations were often simple and done in very good taste. The Christmas tree in the lobby of our hotel in Phuket, an island off the main land of Thailand, was a small structure adorned with local seashells, though for me it was dwarfed visually by a lovely tropical floral arrangement.

When we traveled through the cities in Thailand we did not see many signs of the Christmas holiday. There were no houses decked out in colored lights or prancing rain deer standing on the rooftops, but when we returned to our hotels we were always met by the constant playing of Christmas carols. If I closed my eyes and listened to the music at the breakfast buffet, in the elevator, or sitting in the lobby there was no mistaking the time of the year. Probably the most jarring experience with this Christmas music came one morning during breakfast when I heard an old song from my childhood, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause” sung by Patsy Cline. I had to chuckle because that morning we were heading off to see the reclining Buddha and thinking about mommy smooching with this bearded old symbol of a Western holiday just didn’t fit my image of what I thought I’d experience during this Holiday season while traveling in the Orient.

FISH KICKER WON THE OCTOBER STORY OF THE MONTH

2008-12-01T10:18:00.005-05:00

Many thanks to all of the loyal readers "Fish Kicker" won the story of the month in the on-line publication, www.bartlebysnopes.com. The Story of the Month is a monthly contest voted on by the readers of Bartleby Snopes. Near the end of each month, voting begins and lasts for about two weeks. All current stories are eligible. The winner of the Story of the Month earns an automatic spot in the semiannual magazine.

If you haven't read the story here's the link: www.bartlebysnopes.com/fishkicker.htm

I will be catching up with some very old business and getting it into the blog. Most of my time has been spent in revision of "Pushing Water" which has now been completed and is in the process of being sent out to agents!!!

Barack Obama on view in Times Square the day before the Presidential Election

2008-11-04T14:16:00.001-05:00

DUNBAR HOLLOW CEMETEY

2008-10-30T23:11:00.002-05:00

It’s just at the south end of Dunbar Hollow Road, that’s where the Dunbars are buried. Not all of them mind you. There are some who because of dastardly deeds were banned from the cemetery. It’s a sad but true story of greed.

As the tale is told, Reuben Dunbar was afraid that his uncles’ two surviving sons would inherit property that he thought should go to him. Reuben was nearly twenty-one years old, newly married and he and his wife were expecting their first child. Reuben must have fretted terribly about the situation for one night when he’d been left in charge of his nephews, Stephen age 7 and David age 9, he took the boys into the woods and murdered them.

Reuben Dunbar was tried and found guilty. He was sentenced to death, and was hanged on the 31st of January 1851 for the murder of his nephews. The young boys were reportedly buried in the Dunbar Hollow Cemetery but no one knows for sure where Reuben was laid to rest, if indeed he ever found peace.

The cemetery is really quite ragged now with tombstones dislodged by trees, and the ravage of time has taken its toll. The carvings of names, birth dates and death dates are hardly legible on many of the marble headstones, worn away by rain and snow. There is a very old metal fence that supposedly encircles the graves, but tombstones are strewn about the area both inside and outside of the fence, and it’s really quite difficult to tell where the graves actually were. And it is such a strange sensation to walk in that area, the earth is so soft and thick with a dense groundcover you hardly know whose bones you might be treading on.

Look what I found in my Martini!!!

2008-10-29T09:44:00.003-05:00

A Halloween Hologram. Just the other day there was a ghost of the summer baseball season still living in my martini!!!

BOY STANDS ON HEAD WHILE TWO SKELETON PILLOWS WHISPER SECRETS

2008-10-27T08:01:00.002-05:00

Ah, the tricking and treating season is drawing near and there is no end to the fun that everyone is having this year. Devon will be 4 years old in a week and his energy and joy of life just never quits.

The revision of the novel is going well, slow some days, but I'm still moving forward.

TIME OUT FOR ME TO MONKEY AROUND

2008-10-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

It was a cold and blustery day in New York, the promise of many more wintery days to come. But these furry fellows were quite warm and comfortable in their special tropical jungle exhibition building. And they were very interested in a couple of kids who were entertaining us all with their redition of what a monkey sounds like.

FISH KICKER

2008-10-21T00:51:00.002-05:00

I have a short story, "Fish Kicker" published this month in an online journal.

Go to www.bartlebysnopes.com and click onto 'current stories'. My story is the third one down on this list.

And please, if you have the time, vote for your favorite story. The story with the most votes will be featured as the next Story of the Month, and it will also earn a spot in the first edition of the semi-annual magazine (due in January).

Please only vote once. Email is used only for verification purposes.

Voting will last until November 1st and the results will be announced on November 2nd.

FLORAL FLIRTATION

2008-09-06T19:26:00.002-05:00

An article I read in the Smithsonian Magazine stated that: "Flowers sway in the breeze to beckon pollinators, a study from Wales' Aberystwyth Univeristy suggests. Sea campion plants with slim stems flutter the most and attracted the most insects. (Flowers with average stens set the most seeds though, apparently because pollinators visited more stable flowers longer.) The study is the first evidence that "waviness," like color and scent, influences a flower's attractiveness.

The One Pillar Pagoda In Hanoi

2008-08-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

The One Pillar Pagoda was built by Emperor Ly Thai Tong, who ruled from 1028 to 1054. According to the court records, Ly Thai Tong was childless and dreamt that he met the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who handed him a baby son while seated on a lotus flower. Ly Thai Tong then married a peasant girl that he had met and she bore him a son. The emperor constructed the temple in gratitude for this in 1049, having been told by a monk named Thiền Tuệ to build the temple, by erecting a pillar in the middle of a lotus pond, similar to the one he saw in the dream.

The Pagoda was located in what was then the Tây Cấm Garden in Thạch Bảo, Vĩnh Thuận district in the capital Thăng Long (now known as Hanoi). Before the pagoda was opened, prayers were held for the longevity of the monarc.

The temple was renovated in 1105 by Emperor Lý Nhân Tông and a bell was cast and an installation was attempted in 1109. However, the bell, which was regarded as one of the four major capital works of Vietnam at the time, was much too large and heavy, and could not be installed. Since it could not be tolled while left on the ground, it was moved into the countryside and deposited in farmland adjacent to Nhất Trụ Temple. This land was widely inhabited by turtles, so the bell came to be known as Quy Điền chung, which means Bell of the Turtle Farmland.

At the start of the 15th century, Vietnam was invaded and occupied by the Ming Dynasty. In 1426, the future Emperor Le Loi attacked and dispersed the Chinese forces, and while the Ming were in retreat and low on weapons, their commanding general ordered that the bell be smelted, so that the copper could be used for manufacturing weaponry.

The temple was initially built of wood on a single stone pillar 1.25 m in diameter, and it was designed to resemble a lotus blossom, the Buddhist symbol of purity. In 1954, the French Colonial forces burned the pagoda before withdrawing from Vietnam after the First Indochina War and the pagoda was then rebuilt in 1955.

Smoke

2008-08-05T08:09:00.003-05:00

Last night we went to Smoke, a Jazz Dinner club. Great New York summer night, clear, cool with a slight breeze and it just felt great to be alive. The music was really fabulous and I think next time we'll order less fancy food. Some places do better with simple dishes and I think Smoke is probably that kind of place.

Today is a serious writing day. I do believe that the end of the novel is within my grasp and I'm serious about getting this thing to a first draft. Right now I have written about 360 pages and though I have a little over a year in the story yet to tell, I believe that I can do it in about another 100 pages.

Wild, Wild Horses Couldn't Keep Me Away

2008-08-04T12:08:00.003-05:00

A little something remembered from the Stones.

Well, I've just checked in with my blog and realized that I haven't published anything since last February. Now that's not a good thing for a writer, to leave the pages blank for all that time. So, there will be more frequent posts.

I guess I should tell you that I've been writing heartily on the novel and that I would love to have it finished by the middle to end of this month. It is going quite smoothly as of late and the end is now in sight!!!

I've had some good fun so far this spring and summer and the photo of these horses come from a trip with grandchild, daughter and husband to Coney Island. Very nice day and off season a perfect place to stroll and not have to stand in line for anything. The acquarium is also a real special place, too.

See, now I tell myself this wasn't so hard to do. Writing in the blog should be fun for all, like Coney Island!!!

A Kaliedoscope Of An Old Oak Tree

2008-02-27T13:14:00.006-05:00

I've been away for a while, but not far from either my photography or my writing. The novel is coming along and though I no longer make predictions, it would certainly be nice to have this thing ready for editing by the end of spring.

The Holidays are, oh, so over!!!

2008-01-20T08:27:00.000-05:00

Well, the Holidays are over and there are no longer any excuses for me not to write. So, forgive my absense from posting more on this blog. I'm involed in a long battle now with plot and scenes for PUSHING WATER and I've found a renewed energy for the novel. At this point I have written 223 pages and have a good three hours to write until I have to quite and get ready for comapny. This evening is an important Giant football game and Liza, Dez and Devon will be coming by for dinner and to watch the game with us. Life goes on and so will the blogging!!!

MARKET PLACE IN VIETNAM

2007-12-26T15:47:00.001-05:00

This is a shot of an indoor market in Vietnam. There is no shelving in this place and the food products are stacked on top of each other or on cartons and are piled sometimes way above the normal reach. Vendors stand on little stools to get to the packages that are on the very top of the stacks. The lighting was very poor in this market but I opted not to use flash so that I could get as candid a shot as possible. Anything could have been purchased in this market. You could buy a conical hat, dried fish and fish sauce, raw meat, rolls of plastic sheets, lemon grass or if you wanted you could buy prepared food to take home or eat while you walked between the stalls. I only saw women vendors in this market, a rambling shopping mall of sorts that took up several city blocks. And when there were no customers to haggle with, the women played cards while they sat on their stools or on the boxes of their produce. I saw some vendors giving each other manicures while they waited for someone to show interest in the merchandise stacked up in their stalls. These ladies were pretty aggressive sales people, too, and once you showed even the slightest bit of interest in what they were selling, they worked very hard to sell you something.

I want to share with you a recipe that I prepare quite often. It is called Hue Chicken Salad, or in Vietnamese it is referred to as ‘ga bop’. I found the recipe in “Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table” by Mai Pham.

The interesting aspect of this salad is the initial treatment of the chicken. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I do.

HUE CHICKEN SALAD

Sea salt
1/2 whole chicken, thigh and leg scored for faster cooking
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 small yellow onion, sliced paper-thin and rinsed (about 1/2 cup)
2 Thai bird chilies or 1 serrano chili, chopped (optional or to taste)
1 cup loosely packed mint leaves
1/2 Tablespoon vegetable oil
4 butter lettuce leaves, preferably inner leaves

1. Fill a large pot with 2 quarts water, add 1-teaspoon sea salt and bring to a vigorous boil. Add the chicken and bring the water back to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, cover the pot and let the chicken sit in the covered pot for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool.

2. Remove and discard the skin and bones from the chicken. Hand-shred the meat into1/4-inch-thick strips and place in a bowl.

3. Add the black pepper, 1-teaspoon salt and sugar and gently massage into the chicken. Add the lime juice, sliced onion, chilies, mint leaves and oil and then toss together.

4. To serve line a serving plate with the lettuce leaves and place the chicken salad on top of the leaves.

MURDER NEW YORK STYLE

2007-11-07T11:58:00.000-05:00

I just got a short story published in a mystery anthology, "Murder New York Style". I'd share with you at least the first page of my story, but there are strict publication rules that forbid replication of any of the stories in the anthology. However I can give you an idea what the book contains. At least I can copy that information and not get into any publication snafu. And I can tell you that my story is based in the Bronx.

The blurb on the back of the book state the following:
EXPLORE MANHATTAN, THE BRONX, BROOKLYN, QUEENS, STATEN ISLAND, WESTCHESTER, AND OTHER OUTER REACHES

The twenty-one stories in this anthology are classic New York. Imagine bargain stopping in Chinatown, working in the Metropolitian Museum of art, belly dancing in a Turkish nightclub, or teaching a course at a diverse New York College. These are some of the circumstances and locations that find murder and mayhem around every corner in "Murder New York Style".

You can find this book at Amazon.com. Let me know what you think.

WATER PUPPETS

2007-10-11T12:37:00.000-05:00

We bought this fellow in a market place in Hanoi. He is a water puppet and he is called Happy Man.

Water Puppets or Mua Roi Nuoc is a unique art form that began in the Red River Delta region of Northern Vietnam in the tenth century. Farmers devised a form of entertainment using the natural material that they found in their environment. In ancient times, the ponds and the rice paddies after a harvest were the stage for these impromptu shows.

This art form has only found its way to the world stage in recent years as a result of the normalized relations with the West. Today the Than Long Puppet Troupe is the most well know in Ha Noi.

Modern, water puppetry is performed in a pool with water as the stage. The puppeteers stand behind a screen and control the puppets using long bamboo rods and string mechanism hidden beneath the water surface.

The puppets are carved out of wood and often weigh up to 15 kg. A traditional Vietnamese orchestra provides background music accompaniment. Singers of Cheo (a form of opera) also with its origins in North Vietnam perform songs while the puppets act out the story.

The themes of most stories are usually based in a rural setting and have a strong reference to Vietnamese folklore. The tales are about day-to-day life and folk tales that grandparents tell to their grandchildren. The puppets act out stories of the harvest, of fishing and of the festivals. Legends and national history are also told through these short skits. Many of the skits especially those involving the tales of daily life, often have a humorous twist in the end.

TRAFFIC IN VIETNAM

2007-09-27T19:04:00.001-05:00

Vietnam has no traffic lights, no stop signs and no traffic cops. As you can see from this photo taken last year in Hanoi at night the traffic is snaking along the streets without the aid of any signals. At intersections and cross roads there is an understanding that everyone will get to where they are going, and the term we heard used many times was that the driver will ‘ease into traffic’. In this country if you persist in moving forward you will get into the stream of motor scooters. There are cars on the streets, but very few and many of them are taxis. In a country with 54 ethnic groups, a population of 82.8 million there are over 4 million motor scooters.

And I want to tell you, crossing the street on foot in Vietnam is not for the weak of heart. You must, as we were told, dance with the traffic. Step off the curb and move forward watching at all times from which direction a scooter will be coming. Let one or two scooters pass, step forward. Always keep moving, never stop and never, never turn around and run back to the curb. Most scooters will not slow down for you, but they will beep-beep you, not in annoyance, but to let you know that they are there. We always made it across the street and we never saw anyone hit while maneuvering from one side of the street to the other.

IT'S APPLE PICKING TIME IN NEW YORK

2007-09-27T18:52:00.000-05:00

Apples, native to Europe and West Asia, were introduced to North America in the 17th Century. There are approximately 7000 varieties of apples in the world today but only 100 are grown commercially, with an estimated one billion pounds of apples produced yearly.

You ever wonder why an apple floats? It’s because apples are 25% air. There are tinny air pockets surrounding the cellular makeup of the apple and that is why an apple floats. It is also these air pockets in the apple that makes a wonderful crunching sound when you first bit into a fresh picked apple. That crunch is actually the air pockets between the cells bursting as your teeth bite into the apple.

There are quite a few stories where the apple takes center stage, and it seems to have all begun with Adam and Eve. Greek mythology used the apple to represent deceit and treachery. Then there was Snow White, William Tell, and lets not forget Sir Isaac Newton and his bright ideas about gravity when he was hit in the head by an apple that fell from a tree.

APPLE CHUTNEY

3 pounds apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 pounds onions finely chopped
2 cups seedless raisins
2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 cups vinegar
1 tablespoon mustard seed, crushed
2 ounces fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon crushed coriander seeds
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (this is optional and depends on personal preferences how much or how little you use, but the pepper flakes will give the chutney a kick)

Combine all the ingredients and simmer over low heat. The chutney improves if it is cooked over very slow heat for a longer period of time. If you have the time, this recipe should simmer very gently on the back of the stove all day. Otherwise, 3 hours should do it. Stir the mixture frequently as it begins to thicken. This will happen towards the end of the cooking time. Cool and either put the chutney in to sterilized jars and seal or put in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. The chutney will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.

GRANDMA FAUST'S APPLESAUCE NUT CRUMB CAKE

1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
Butter the bottom of a 9 inch square pan. Sprinkle the bottom of the buttered pan with the chopped nuts. Blend together the flour, sugar and butter and put this mixture over the chopped nuts. Set aside and prepare the cake.
Cake -
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins that have been dusted with a teaspoon of flour
1 cup warm apple sauce
Cream the butter and sugar. Blend beaten eggs into the butter mixture and cream until light. Sift together flour, cinnamon, cloves, baking powder, soda and salt. Add dry ingredients 1/3 at a time to creamed mixture, alternating with the apple sauce. Fold in raisins. Pour batter over nut, butter sugar mixture already in the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately one hour.

COAL WAITING TO BE SHIPPED ALONG THE YANGTZE RIVER

2007-09-25T17:59:00.000-05:00

I read a story in the news some weeks ago about two brothers in China who had survived a coalmine disaster. They had been buried for nearly six days and dug their way out using a pick and their hands. Rescuers had called off efforts to save the brothers after more than a day, and grieving family members burned ceremonial “ghost money” for the men’s souls to use in the afterlife. They left food offerings of steamed buns, cakes and canned goods at the mine entrance. Yet the brothers managed to work their way to the surface and survived by eating coal and drinking their own urine.

While we traveled along the Yangtze River in China this last June we saw many places where huge piles of coal had been brought out from the mines and stored along the shore waiting to be carried away on barges.

What I’ve learned since returning back to the USA is that there are state-owned mines and illegal mines. The brothers said that they had worked for state-owned mines in the past but turned to the illegal mine because they got paid about every two weeks, as opposed to once a month. Still, they said they made only about $265 a month for working 12 hours a day.

LOTUS FOOT

2007-08-23T12:51:00.000-05:00

I didn’t know what to expect when it came to shoes in China. The black cloth Mary Jane shoes were the first footwear that came to mind when I thought of this country. But there’s so much to see when touring China that I hardly knew where to look first. And it wasn’t until I had returned home that I realized that I’d only seen one pair of ‘lotus shoes’. Those are the shoes worn by the girls and women who had their feet bound.

We had gone to at least one cultural museum in every city that we visited. In some cities we visited two and maybe three museums and still in all those cultural exhibitions I had only come across one pair of little shoes for those tortured feet. And that pair had been in the museum at the Ming dynasty tombs. But these little shoes looked so new that I’m sure they had been replicas specifically made for the museum.

I was not looking for the bizarre or grotesque. But the outside world had by now heard so much about foot binding that I was certain I’d run into quite a few representations of that aspect of the culture. After all the practice had gone on for hundreds of years and had only been banned in 1911.

I wondered how this strange tradition had begun in the first place. So, I did a little research and found that there were quite a few legends related to the origins of foot binding. The most common legend comes from the Sung dynasty (AD 960-1280). Prince LI Yu’s concubine, Yao Nian was said to walk with such small feet and so gracefully it appeared as if she was “skimming over the top of golden lilies”. From that point on, the ‘lily footed’ woman is said to have become a model for China. There are many variations of another legend regarding an early version of ballet also called toe dancing for the royal court. One particular story is of a dancer who performed on a platform shaped like a lotus blossom. And then there is the legend about the last Empress of the Shang dynasty. This Empress had a clubbed foot and did not want to be known as having this condition. She demanded her husband make binding feet mandatory for all girls. By doing so, her deformed foot could now be considered beautiful. The truth is we may never know the definitive origin of foot binding however the powerful effects of this practice are apparent.

What we do know is that foot binding began in the north and then spread to other parts of China. Eventually all the ladies in the various courts throughout the country adopted this custom that had initially only been practiced by court dancers. Wealthier middle and lower class women followed suite and began to bind their daughters feet, too and ultimately all classes of women participated in this practice. In 1273 the Sung dynasty was taken over by the Mongols and this began the Yuan dynasty. The Mongols supported foot binding for all women because it made the women less likely to be able to succeed. In the 1300’s the Ming dynasty took the place of the Yuan Dynasty and foot binding continued to spread.

The process of foot binding is a torturous experience and began for young girls between the ages of four to six. It was done early in her life so that the arch did not have an opportunity to develop. The mother or sometimes the grandmother started the process in last month of fall or the beginning of winter, so that the foot would be numb from the cold and the pain would not be as severe. The girl’s foot was first soaked in warm water or animal blood and herbs. She would have her toenails cut as short as possible. Her foot was massaged and then the four smallest toes on her foot were broken. A ten foot long silk or cotton bandage that had been soaked in the same liquid in which her feet had been washed was wrapped around her smallest toes and then pulled tightly to the heel. This process was repeated every two days for the next couple of years. At the end of the two years the little girl's foot would probably only measure three to four inches long. To make sure that the foot stayed small the process of tightly binding the foot continued for at least another 10 years.

Binding women’s feet became an important aspect of the Chinese culture and became much more than just a fashion statement; it crippled women. Foot binding kept women weak, out of power and dominated by her husband. And the process took place so early in a girl’s life that she had no choice but to follow her parent’s wishes. Consequently she’d remain uneducated and would always be seen as an object to men, and the process that had begun as a statement of beauty had in the end defined a society. For hundreds of years bound feet had been a status symbol and the only way for a woman to marry into money. Mothers would demand that a matchmaker find their son a wife with tiny feet. If the mother of a prospective bridegroom lifted the skirt of his intended and found that the woman had ‘clown feet,’ she would not allow her son to marry that woman.

There is a misconception that men found the deformed foot, in the flesh, erotic. Actually men never saw a woman’s bound foot because they were always contained in a ‘lotus shoe’. Some scholars have claimed that the erotic effect was a function of the tiny steps and swaying walk of a woman whose feet had been bound. The very fact that the bound foot was concealed from men’s eyes was, in of itself, sexually suggestive.

In the mid-1600’s the Manchus took over the Yuan dynasty to create the Qing Empire and this new government system strongly opposed foot binding and attempted to prohibit the custom. But by then the practice had become so much a part of the Chinese culture and family traditions, that the government could do little to stop it and the custom continued to thrive even thought it was now considered illegal.

At the onset of the nationalist revolution in 1911, foot binding though not completely disband, was officially made illegal and still a small group of women living in the southern part of China continued the custom.

When the communist came into power in 1949, they issued a ban on foot binding. Much of antiquity was destroyed during those years of revolution. Educators, landlords, businessmen and scholars were forced to work on the land and in the factories. During this time everyone was a common-man. And the women who had bound their feet were seen as the epitome of all that the old ways represented. Any woman who still had her feet bound was forced to remove the bindings and to do hard physical labor alongside her comrades. This work was difficult enough for the ordinary woman, but for the women with the tiny and misshapen feet, it proved to be agonizingly painful.

From what our tour guides told us, China is now trying to change how their country is viewed by the world. There were no apologies for the Mao zealots during the revolution but now the stance seemed to be of one that claims there was an over reaction to bring about change. Our tour of the Ming Tombs where we saw tin boxes that now replaced the actual unearthed coffins that had been destroyed by the youthful fervor of the revolution was a lasting example for me of how much was probably destroyed during that time. Now I understand why so many of those little lotus shoes were nowhere to be seen.

Some scholars estimate that 40 to 50 percent of Chinese women had bound feet in the 19th century. Though for the upper classes, the figure was probably closer to 100 percent. And some estimates say that as many as 2 billion Chinese women broke and bound her feet to attain what was viewed as the ideal of physical perfection.

Now in the era of the one child family though the male child is still the most desired offspring, women are most assuredly making their mark in China. Women are doctors, lawyers, judges and some are even reaching into the political arena. But most assuredly there is no longer foot binding. And though I saw only that one representation of a lotus shoe, I saw women who walked freely on the streets wearing high heels, sandals, slippers, and sneakers. They were wearing shoes of every kind imaginable.

STEAM PIPE BURST YESTERDAY ON LEXINGTON AND 42nd ST.

2007-07-19T15:23:00.000-05:00

It was all over the news, "burst steam pipe, rush hour on 42nd Street and Lexington Ave." A terrible thing to happen, the worst hour of the day and one of the busiest sections of the city. This morning I decided to jump on the express bus and see how close I could get to where the incident occured.

Well, I didn't get very close at all. As you might expect the area had been blocked off and there was no way that I could even get a glimps of what it looked like. Actually the pictures in the newspaper were pretty detailed and really quite awful. I wasn't looking for that kind of thing. I just wanted to get a closer look, see for myself the melted street and the trucks fallen into the huge crater that the steam pipe had produced.

I walked quite a few blocks trying to see just how much of an area had been blocked off. New York City has been very hot and muggy the last couple of weeks and today was a typical NY summer day. So, I did not have the energy to travel the entire peramiter of the roped off area. But the areas that I did cover gave me the impression that the contained area probably was at least 3 to 5 blocks in all directions from where the incident occured. I say 3 to 5 because some of these blocks are longer than others.

But traffic on Madison Ave. and on a few other streets were a mess and going cross town in some areas was impossible and absolutely not allowed in the area that had been blocked off.

There were female cops guarding the street outside of Grand Central Station, leaning on the metal street dividers answering questions and giving directions to confused and disgruntaled communters. No one lost their tempers, but I heard one of the officers say several times to various travelers, "Well, no, you cannot go any farther on 42nd St."

What struck me as interesting was that though almost all of the police officers wore face masks, the average person walking the street going to work or meeting a friend for lunch crossed over from one side of the street to the next street as though nothing had happened. And no one but the police and one or two pedestrians wore face masks.

The average person who needed to be in this area had been inconvenienced because they had to take a different street than they usually did, but people were talking on their cell phones, delivering flowers, catching some sunshine on their lunch hours. Strange as it seemed except for the roped off area nothing apeared altered.

The New Yorker is really quite resiliant. And this roped off area could have just as well have been the beginning of a little street carnival because nothing looked out of the ordinary. No panic. No hysterics. And a few people, like myself, could now stand in the middle of what would have been on a normal day one of the busiest streets in the world, and we took pictures. One person even stopped and would not cross in front of my poised camera fearful of messing up my shot.

I could see that there was a bit of confusion and some of the weary summer travelers pulling large wheeled suitcases had to walk a few more blocks than they had thought they would, but even they seemed to take this situation in stride.

CI QI KOU, AN OLD STREET IN CONGQING, CHINA

2007-07-18T09:39:00.001-05:00

One of our stops in China was in Chongqing, a city with a population of 6 million people. The city was spread out and we drove for miles in the city proper and everywhere we went there was either a road being built, an huge apartment or office building, or a major highway with megalithic like overpasses.

And then we were taken to an area of the city called the old street, Ci Qi Kou. This was how the old China must have looked years ago before the modern structures were built. The doors on all these old buildings were made of deep aged wood and the streets were all brick with major dips and gullies. It was a hilly part of Chongqing and from several locations we could look out onto the new section of the city, shrouded in an afternoon mist.

We walked along the streets that twisted and turned sometimes intersecting at right angles and other times a walkway would slip into the main drag, an alley with clothing hanging from power lines or discarded cardboard piled in a corner waiting for the garbage collectors to come along and clean the street.

On one of these streets I came upon an old woman sitting infront of her house making soft sole shoes. She had a few items for sale scattered in front of her, items she had undoubtedly made herself. I bought a couple scains of bright red thread and one of her needles. But all along I had in mind that what I really wanted was to take a picture of this woman. I lifted my camer and she looked uncomfortable. So, I lowered the camera. But with the help of some young people who had been watching my transactions with the old lady I was told that what she wanted was money in exchange for her picture. I asked, "How much?" And they told me that she wanted twice what I'd paid for the thread, which really only amounted to a little over a dollar. I agreed and she then put her sewing down, sat up straight and posed for me. She is one of my most prized shots of that day.

Ci Qi Kou was like nothing that I'd ever seen before. We passed a barber shop that also doubled as an ice cream store and variety store. The entire front was open to the public and we saw a man getting his hair cut while two women who might have been manacurists pulled down their masks and smiled and called to us as we walked by.

We saw a kitchen set up outside on the street and a few tables neatly arranged inside a darken room. All the stores and eateries had one wall open to the street. There were no light bulbs only natural lighting. Though we were only there during the day I can only imagine that there must be electricity in the area because there were rather rustic electric cables strung across the streets and into the house.

Vendors walked the street with the classic poles balanced on either end with baskets containing fruit, vegetables and other items. We kept coming across a lemon vendor and she jokingly tried to sell us her lemons. But what would we have done with them? She smiled pleasantly and went on about her business.

There were also vendors who had huge containers that appeared to be variety stores. Toys, candy, socks, and things that I had no idea what they were all packaged and neatly layed out for all to see. One vendor seemed to have been taking a break form the hustling of his busy day as he sat on a curb reading the local newspaper.

This little area of this huge and still growing city is like a museum with the Chinese culture and the old way of life on display. The items that are sold by the vendors, though modern and really quite western in nature, nevertheless, have become part of the replication of days gone by. The brick, the wood, the tile work possibly may be even older than the places where we boast about in the USA that 'Washington slept here'. The interesting thing about this jaunt into Ci Qi Kou Street is that people still really live here. They may be scraping together a living, but this is their home and I wonder after looking at all the construction that is going on, not just in Chongqing, but in all of China, just how much longer this really special place will exist.

This is a test.

2007-07-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

I want to see if I can have writing between the pictures. So far I have not been able to figure out how to do this. Be patient with me. I'll get this thing working for me soon. But you have to realize that most of my time now is spent on the novel. I have set the end of this summer to have the first draft completed. So that means very little fooling around with other stuff, like this blog.

It does look like I've learned a simple task of copy and drag. Could it be that simple? I'll push publish post and see what happened.

These are pictures of summer. Don't you love these kinds of shot!!! So now that I've learned some new skills, my blog with the photos will hopefully make more sense.

SHENNONG STREAM

2007-07-06T13:12:00.001-05:00

One of the side trips we took while traveling along the Yangtze River was to a place called Shennong Stream. No one on the tour really had any idea what to expect when we got there. A sampan ride through a minor gorge was all that we had been told.

So, after breakfast we disembarked from our cruise ship, clambered onto a ferry and headed down a rather large stream at the mouth of the Wu Gorge and away from the Yangtze River. Though the water voyage so far had been quiet and peaceful we now entered another level of silence. The limestone cliffs shot up higher and hugged the shore more closely than they had until this time. What had along the larger river been soft, almost furry hills filled with indigenous trees and underbrush, now we were surrounded by craggy mountains, large fields of bamboo and deep thick brush that looked sharp and unfriendly.

We traveled in the ferry for almost an hour with our guide indicating various points of interest. On one shore the water stood so still and clear that the rugged outcrop of rocks on the shoreline and the reflection in the river made a perfectly delightful Rorschach image.

The guide talked about seeing monkeys sometimes or other wild animals like goats, and sheep, but we only saw a few birds. Then in the middle of what appeared to be nowhere, we came to a shack moored on a riverbank. We glided up to the place and we stepped out onto the rickety dock. We were herded through the main building that turned out to be a tourist attraction gift shop and then out through the back door where 20 or 30 sampans sat waiting for us to climb on board.

We had arrived in a place called Dadong and the men waiting in the sampans were farmers who had been displaced by the rising water of the Three Gorges Dam. They are now called ‘boat trackers’ and take tourists on rides up the Shennong Stream. They are thin small men with very strong back and leg muscles.

Once everyone had settled into a sampan and life jackets were securely fastened, we set off up stream. The water was quieter now. Even quieter than when we’d been on the ferry. We were sitting much closer to the water now, too, and those of us in the outside seats could dangle our hands in the water, a very refreshing experience on such a hot and steamy day.

The banks of this river has been inhabited since at least the Han Dynasty and the primary ethnic group of this river valley has been the Thuja people. Since the beginning of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the water level has risen approximately 155 meters at the mouth of the Shennong Stream. Much of the previously scenic vertical gorge is now evidently submerged. By the completion of the dam construction in 2009, a further 20 meters of the gorge will be under water.

The boat trackers guided us up the stream using very simple boat riggings and poles. The water sounded and felt like real water, gurgling, splashing and at times was so clear that I could count the pebbles passing under the sampan. And then we arrived at a small rapid. All the boat trackers at that point jumped into the water, except for the man in charge of the rudder. Each man threw a harness like contraption over his shoulder and they began to pull the sampan through the quickly moving water. It was all a bit thrilling but not dangerous.

They pulled us along through the water until it was clear that the water was too shallow for a boat to go any further. At that point we were told it was time to eat our lunches and though we were told that we could not get out of the boats we were treated to gifts of pebbles that the men gathered from the water. Most of us shared our lunches with the boat trackers and we sat in the middle of this strange stream, this very ancient place in China eating boiled eggs and fresh fruit.

I couldn’t help but notice the shoes that the boat trackers wore. The simple woven bottoms of the soles with a simple jute cord wrapped around one side and then tied was all that they seemed to need to walk in the water and over the river rocks and large boulders. They were smart looking sandals that any shoe designer of today would love to have invented.

Then when the time was up the boatmen grabbed up their harnesses again and pulled us back into the deeper water where we were treated to a boat race back to the home base. This ride is now an industry on the Shennong Stream. The farmers displaced from their land have moved into another line of work and as we headed back to our tour boat on the ferry we saw many more boat trackers leaving the stream, the days work finished, the life vests piled in the middle of the sampan.

The excursions up the Shennong Stream have brought other employment opportunities to this community. There are boats at every turn on the stream with men and sometimes women gathering up the debris that floats along the river. Twigs and garbage floats along the shoreline and seems to be quickly scooped up by these keepers of the water. It is easy to see how high the water has sometimes risen from the plastic bags and cloth that hang high in the trees like flapping Tibetan prayer flags.

Half way back to the tour boat our guide pointed out a location along the river where high up in the cliffs we could see ‘hanging coffins’. These coffins that are stowed in caves and crevices on the high vertical limestone cliffs are evidence of the early history of settlements in the Shennong Gorge. It’s still not known how these heavy coffins were actually secured on such steep, and inaccessible places. The coffins were typically carved from a single section of a tree trunk, with some coffins measuring approximately 90 centimeters in diameter. The coffins are typically 30 to 150 meters from the top of the bluff and 25 to 70 meters above the river surface. Most commonly a coffin rests on two sturdy hewn poles that have been wedged within the limestone cleft or cave to form a level platform for the coffin to rest.

The Three Gorges Dam construction has destroyed many of these coffins, though some are being retrieved for cultural presentation and archeological study. One such coffin has been preserved and now sits on display at the White Emperor’s Palace, within an historical Daoist Temple situated high above the inundated level along the Yangtze River.

I have gathered some of the technical information about this area from the inter net, but I was there, watching, smelling, touching and experiencing everything that I could. I hope that these pictures give you an idea of what it was like to travel on the Shennong Stream.

LADIES ROOMS IN THE FAR EAST

2007-06-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

Not mentioned very often (or ever) in articles about the Far East are the toilets in the ladies rooms in Japan, Vietman, Cambodia and in China. What you often find in the hand washing areas are either quite common sinks and paper towel dispensers or extraordinarily beautiful areas to clean your hands and adjust make-up. Marble is frequently used to build the counters and as you can see in the photo above this facility has a lovely sink and beautiful vase. Very nice, indeed.

While most of the toilts were clean enough, a few were unpleasant and only used by either the most needy or the heartiest of traveler. And there is a definite difference between the facilities used in the USA and those of the Far East because most ladies rooms that we encountered while in the Far East had what they called 'squat toilets'. And to use them, ah, the name tells it all. There were a few 'western style' facilities and they were quite welcomed when we came across one of those.

Learning how other people of the world manage daily life issues if part of the fun of traveling, but when I found a little comfort from home it made me realize just how much I take for granted.

BREAKDANCING IN THE PARK

2007-06-20T16:34:00.000-05:00

Devon showing us his breakdance moves. Not bad for a 2 and almost 3/4 year old kid.

VISITING THE PANDAS

2007-06-20T05:48:00.000-05:00

Well, I can't say that seeing the Panda Bears was a fun experience. That day Beijing was as hot and muggy as any summer day in NYC. And it didn't see like the Pandas were happy with the weather either. They were lazy looking and seemed to only want to sit in the shade and eat bamboo.

The play ground set up for them to romp and tumble remained empty and though a few people on our tour got a couple great shots of one Panda as it lumbered by headed for the newly scattered pile of bamboo, I however was not in a good postion and only managed a few febble photos.

The first day we returned home from China I read in the newspaper that "The first skull of the earliest known ancestor of the giant panda was discovered in China. Discovery of the skull was estimated to be at least 2 million years old."

Ah, well, but I got a great shot of a little girl dressed in pink and she had a ticket in her hands to see the Pandas, too. I hope she had better luck than I did.

AH, BACK TO NORMAL. WELL, SORT OF.

2007-06-19T13:52:00.000-05:00

Well, we're back and our first full day we decided to pick up Devon from his school. We headed for the park and let him run around in the sprinklers. What a great thing to see, kids running and screaming, spashing and kicking water at each other. And then there is that great invention, the water baloon fight.

Steve played tag for a while with Devon and one of the other kids in the park and then the little guys went off to spash each other.

We're back in the good old USA again and somehow things haven't changed at all. The little guy has grown some, but he's just as adorable as he's always been.

Summer is here and the temperature is about the same as it was in Beijing and Lasa, so there were no major differences there. But, now instead of eating out every day, I'll have to get back into the swing of things again and take out my pots and pans and do the cooking for myself. And I have to get back into writing, something that I really have not done while we were away. I tried, but there was just too much going on to concentrate on the novel.

WE HAD ONE MORE ADVENTURE AS WE LEFT OUR SHANGHAI HOTEL FOR THE AIR PORT

2007-06-17T20:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a story is best told from the end and then moving back in time before pulling the tale around so that it makes a full circle. Does that makes sence? Well to be more clear we're home. But before we left China, not 5 minutes from our hotel we were stuck on the back right passenger side of the car by a quicly moving white van. Our driver ran through a stop sign and the van had no choice but to hit us. Luckily he was not going at a real fast speed or this would have been another kind of story. No one was hurt and there were 2 to 4 taxis standing around almost instantantiously ready to grab us up and whisk us off to the airport.

We were well taken care of at the airport and our 15 hour flght, including the 1 1/2 hour lay over Beijing, went smoothly.

I'm in a strange time experience right now and though I'm tired, I cannot sleep.

Also I have found out that one of the memory sticks for the digital camera does not work. I had used this memory stick from the middle of the visit to Lasa until the end our the Yangtz river trip and now I have nothing to show for that part of our jouney. This digital thing is all still so very new to me and maybe I'll be able to find someone to help me figure this thing out. The other memory sticks work fine. I don't want to even think about the possibility of not being able to recover those pictures.

But, we're home and now I have to get back on track with the writing. There is much to do and plenty of time to do it in. So, I must get at it.

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG IN CHINA

2007-06-11T05:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I cannot get into my blog and when I had one of the women who works in this internet/business room in our hotel she translated for me what I had not been able to understand for at least four days. I cannot access my blog sight here in China and I can no longer download photos, either. I don't know if you can get my blog in the states, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see what I find out when we get home.

Presently we are in Tibet. We've been here for three days and leave tomorrow morning. At that point we will start a river journey and see the huge dam that is being constructed. I have taken over a 1,000 photos at this point and will most likely take at least another 500 or 600 pictures before this trip is over.

The one thing that struck both Steve and I as soon as we got off the airplane was the air. Neither one of us had been in very high altitude before and did not know what to expect. Well, let me tell you we got out of breath walking just several steps. I developed a serious head ache and nose bleed. I was not alone in my suffering, there were at least half of the people on the tour who were just as uncomfortable. Steve was headachy for one day and then he adjusted. The guide took us to a local herbalist store and got us some medicine. And it did the trick, though it still does not take much to make me feel out of breath. I recover quickly and keep up with the rest of the group.

I don't know when I will next add something to this blog. But if you are able to get my blog and you have the time send me an e-mail. We get yahoo like a dream.

I'M HAVING A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE WITH THIS BLOGGING THING

2007-06-08T08:17:00.000-05:00

AS IT TURNS OUT MY BLOGGING DAYS ARE PROBABLY OVER UNTIL I CAN GET SOME ASSISTANCE. ALL OOF THE BLOGGING INSTRUCTIONS ARE IN CHINESE AND THOUGH I'VE BEEN ABLE TO GET SOME STUFF DONE, FOR THE MOST PART THIS HAS BEEEN A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE. AND TONIGHT I REALLY FOUND IT TERRIBLY FRUSTRATING NOT KNOWING WHAT IT IS THAT I HAVE TO CLICK IN ORDDER TO GET TO THEE RIGHT LOCATION. I THINK THAT I DELETED SOME OF THE LAST BLOG BUT I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO TO GET IT BACK AGAIN.

WE ARE IN XI'AN AND HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THREE DAYS. TOMORROW WE LEAVE FOR LAHSA TOMORROW AND I AM WAY BEHIND IN KEEPING UP WITH WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING. I GUESS WE'RE JUST HAVING TOO MUCH FUN, WHICH IS HOW IS SHOULD BE.

I'VE POSTED A COUPLE OF PHOTOS OF WOMEN WITH UMBRELLAS. THESE WERE SHOT IN BEIJING. THE BRIGHT SUNLIGHT REALLY IS HOT AND BLARING. I'VE BEGUN TO COLLECT THESE UMBRELLA SHOTS AND WILL POST THEM FROM TIME TO TIME.

I'LL BLOG WHEN I CAN.

HOUTONG

2007-06-08T07:52:00.002-05:00

On our first day here before the tour started we walked around an old district of BeiJing. I'm now sure what the area was called but it was near the Antique Market.The houses were very assembled in something akin to blocks with eack section containing a courtyard that all the homes shared. These are the types of houses and communities that have been

HOUTONG

2007-06-08T07:52:00.001-05:00

THE FORBIDDEN CITY

2007-06-05T17:13:00.000-05:00

The entrance to The Frbidden City is just acorss the large roadway that surrowds Tian'anmen Square. Chairman Mao's portrait sits atop the enormous gate to this huge place. The interesting thing about this site is how immense it is. I don't know if any of my photos will express just how huge this place is. And the courtyards that we stepped into, accept for the main one, all looked the same. The buildings were all the same and though there were a few walls decorated with tile work, most of the structures were painted red, representing royalty and the tiles atop the buildings were gold, a representation of the heavesn.

The Emporer lived here with his concubines, servents. The grounds were sacred and no one else was allowed into the city and there were only certain locations where the concubines were allowed to visit within the city.

This place was so huge and confussing with each courtyard that we stepped into looking just like the one that we had left. When I looked into the rooms I saw that there were many luxurious gold and red pieces of furnature and the details of a royal life were definitely evident, but the structures themselves were not visually stimulating, at least not for me. I got the biggness and the flavor of what this place had been about, but I walked around and looked at the courtyards thinking how everything looked the same.

The hot sun reflected back off the brick walkways making the day feel even hotter than it actually was. And that's another thing, nothing grows in the courtyards. When the Emperor had the Forbidden City built he ordered that the courtyards contain a floor that was 50 bricks deep. He wanted to make sure that no one would be able to tunnel into the city.

At another time I'll blog a few of the photos that I took from the doorways looking into some of the buildings. As of this morning I am way behind on what we have seen so far, and by how things seem to be going, I will probably jump over a few things and move right into what we are doing in the 'now' and then catch these other things up once we get back to NY.

Today we see the Pandas, have lunch, visit the Summer Palace and then in the afternoon fly off to Xi'an where the Terracotta Warriors and Horses are located.

CHERRY VENDERS

2007-06-05T09:16:00.000-05:00

I cannot keep up with all the things that we are doing. So, I'll be giving a view of what we are seeing and doing as I have time. The potograph above is a common sight this time of the year. Cherries are sold all over this city, piled on top of fold out tables near bus stops, and sometimes on cloth mats streched out on the walkways in clear view of the passersby. Or like the vender in this picture he has piled a large mound of cherries onto a small truck bed attacked to his bike. He's chosen to sell his goods at a busy intersection under an overpass. We drove into the country today and on one roadway we must have seen twenty or thirty venders scattered along the way and they were all selling cherries.

TIAN'ANMEN SQUARE

2007-06-04T17:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had gotten our first view of Tian’anmen Square from a taxi window as we drove passed. There were thousands of people crowding together. It was late in the afternoon and the sky was threatening rain. So when our bus unloaded us at the entrance first thing Monday I had a good idea what to expect. Though we arrived early in the morning the sun had already begun to beat down on us.

All I can really say about this Square is that it is huge. The people were still filing in and you could see that though this place could hold thousands and thousands, this place was far bigger than I could have ever imagined.

People from all over China, not just the world, come to visit here and you can see the different ethnic groups milling about, actually seeming to be just as amazed as I was at the tremendous size of this open space.

There’s not really much to see in the Square, but I think that it’s the ‘being there’ that makes this a special place. Our guide did not have answers for us when we asked about the confrontation between the students and the military. She said that even though she is from Beijing she was not there at the time and she could not believe that the soldiers in her country would open fire on any of its own citizens. “The government has promised to tell the real story to the people in the near future,” she said.

SINGING MOUNTAIN

2007-06-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

Probably the most difficult for me to explain is our next stop at the Singing Mountain Park that overlooks the Forbidden City. As we stepped through the entrance we immediately heard a large group of people singing. Their voices rising and falling and seeming to call out in unison and I was immediately reminded of movies that I’d seen of peasants singing while they worked in the fields. Some women danced and another woman moved gracefully in time as she swirled a huge ribbon on the end of a stick.

We walked a little farther up a steep embankment and heard another group of people singing. We stopped to watch and listen. Blake looked at the sheet music that one of the singers held and said that this song was about living in a strong country where your father was the mountains and your mother the rivers.

Most of the singers appeared to be in their late 50’s and older. There were no young people in these singing groups. There were many younger people in the park but they walked, holding hands, taking pictures of the trees and flowers, and of each other, but they were not singing.

We walked farther up the hill and the voices from the different singing groups rang out beautifully in this green tumble of trees and grassy fields. Each group sang a different song, some had more female voices while others had a deeper tone and sounded more male. There must have been 20 or 30 different groups singing and they were all clearly songs of enjoyment and everyone sang with great vibrato.

Many of the pictures that I took did not really turn out that clearly. The day was hazy and dark and overcast. Blake said that the air quality had been very bad lately, but you know I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and it looked like a sky heavy with rain to me. Well, sure enough, late that afternoon the sky opened up and poured down a heavy blanket of rain. We hailed a taxi and headed for the hotel our heads buzzing with everything that we’d seen and heard.

OLD DISTRICT IN BEIJING

2007-06-03T17:15:00.000-05:00

From the mosque we took a taxi to another part of the city, a very old quarter that will most likely be torn down in the next couple of years to make way for large and ugly apartment buildings. We saw many remnants of the communist ideals painted on the walls. Slogans regarding friendship, solidarity and respect for community life were in plane sight and in some cases newly refreshed. (Blake is fluent in the Chinese language and was able to read thee signs to us.)The streets were narrow, twisting and snaking through this district making it a difficult place for the unfamiliar to negotiate.

We ate lunch in a typical outdoor place and sitting at the table we were certainly an oddity for the community to see. At one point a Chinese man walking passed us took our picture.

OUR FIRST TOUR OF BEIJING

2007-06-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

On our first full day here met up with Blake, our daughter and son-in-law’s friend living in Beijing. He had agreed to take us around the city for the day.

Our first stop was a mosque. Very old and in need of some repair the buildings were spare except for the ceilings and roof tops which were elaborately adorned and painted in bright elaborate designs. The eye was forced to look up and I thought this was more of a representation of heaven.

I saw a little boy in the garden wearing a scull cap, a gentle child who played with the blades of grass along one of the walkways. He strummed the grass with his hands as though he were listening to a melody.

WE ARE HERE IN BEIJING

2007-06-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

So we got here, the first leg of our 15 day China tour. I wanted to upload more photos but it seems that from this part of the world only one photo is allowed per blog session. And that's not all, I am having to do all this blogging with the instructions for the blog in Chinese. That means I have to remember where the directions were located for the edit, delete and so forth. Hey, this is not a problem, when in China, need I say more!!!

And the time here is exactly 12 hours ahead of NY. Midnight here is the 12 noon lunch hour back home of the day before.

We had a 3 hour delay, standing on the tarmac waiting for other planes to come and then go. A storm somewhere in the USA had set this in motion and we just had to deal with it.

The air is New York summer like but a bit more sticky. we have a haze in the air, but we're not sure if it's summer haze or smog.

I'll figure out this blog thing eventually.

We're headed for China this afternoon

2007-06-01T05:12:00.000-05:00

We've been awake since way before 5:00 this morning just tooo excited to sleep any more. The flight is 4:30ish this afternoon and almost everything is packed. We saw our grandson last night and our daughter and son-in-law. Pizza and beer for dinner. No cooking on the night before a big flight. That's to keep the sink from piling up with dishes, but still there were plates and cups cluttering the kitchen this morning. Ah, domesticity. Well, that's the last I want to see of that kind of thing for the next two weeks. It's eating out, eating the unusual, eating on the run and never having to look at a messy kitchen that I feel that I have to clean.

The last couple of days have been filled with excitement. I found out yesterday that the anthology of New York mystery stories where I'd had a story accepted has found a publisher and at the last minute I had to sign a contract and send a photo and bio. I'm not complaining, but it did ratchet up the excitement.

We're ready for anything. Let the adventure begin.

DADDY'S GIRL and A STREET MUSCIAN

2007-05-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Traveling on the subway you never know what you'll see or experience. The one thing that you can be sure of is that you'll find plenty to see. I've begun to take my camera with me wherever I go. And I'm learning how to take candid shots of what I see. I have found that I'm getting pretty good at it. too.

The woman in the above picture presented me with a problem, a moral problem. The size of her tatoo and her emence weight made me feel as though I were intruding into something that was non of my business. And as one of my companions on that day said, "Looks like there was abuse in this woman's life." I had to decide quickly weather or not to take this shot. And I decided to take the chance and deal with the consequences later. It was originally taken in color but I thought that it might be more dramtic in black and white, though this shot didn't need more drama.

The other photograph is of a very contented muscian playing and singing while people milled about waiting for their trains. We gave him some money and I asked if he would mind if I took his picture. He gave me the high sign and preformed a bit more dramatically while I clicked my little digital camera.

Each day I'm getting more brave with my camera. I may have issues rattling around in my head about whether I should take a shot or leave an incident alone, but more times that not I'm opting to snapping the shutter and there has not been a time when I was sorry that I'd done so. I do however have to be careful if I think that someone is going to object and give me some trouble.

Zebra crossing at Macy's on 34th St. and Harold Square seen from the Empire State Building in Manhattan

2007-05-15T11:33:00.001-05:00

Zebra crossing at Macy's on 34th St. and Harold Square seen from the Empire State Building in Manhattan
Originally uploaded by margaret mendel.

This is a test posting. I'm learning how to upload and send photos from the Flickr.com to my blog. This is a shot I took while on top of the Empire State Building. What a beautiful day this was.

SCOTLAND YARD

2007-05-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

(These photographs were taken from the internet.)
The following is a reprint of an article I wrote for the Noose, the newsletter for Mystery Writers of America.

INSIDE SCOTLAND YARD
Securing order, preventing crime and the detection and punishment of offenders, if a crime is committed, is the primary objective of any police force. Jeremy Taylor, the MWA guest for our November meeting, talked about his involved in this endeavor for 30 years with the Metropolitan Police of London, first working as an uniformed officer with a Westminster beat, then as a detective for 27 years on the International scene.

The British police system has roots that date back to the first Saxons. Initially the community was divided into groups of ten, called “tythings”, with one tything-man appointed as a representative of each group. The community was then divided into larger groups of ten tythings, and these were placed under the jurisdiction of a “hundred-man” who was then responsible to the shire-reeve, or Sheriff, of the country.

This system of policing would become modified during the feudalism period. The tything-man became the parish constable and the Shire-reeve the Justice of the Peace, to whom the parish constable was responsible. This became the main system of overseeing the populace during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and was generally made up of an unarmed able-bodied citizen in each parish called a parish constable. The constable, appointed or elected, served unpaid for a year and worked cooperatively with the Justices in securing observance of laws and maintaining order. Later, a group of paid citizens, known as “The Watch” would be established to guard the gates and patrol the streets at night. During the eighteenth century the tremendous increase in population in the towns, brought with it immense social and economic change and the old system of policing failed to meet the needs of the changing times which led to the formation of the “New Police.” In 1839 the first Metropolitan Police act was passed and the Metropolitan Police force was established.

The job of organizing and designing the “New Police” was placed in the hand of Colonel Charles Roman and Richard Mayne. These two Commissioners occupied a private house at 4, Whitehall Place, the back of which opened on to a courtyard. The back premises of 4, Whitehall Place were used as a police station, and it was this address that led to the headquarters of Metropolitan Police to become known as Scotland Yard.

There are two stories about how Scotland Yard got its name. One versions is that this location had once been the site of a residence owned by the Kings of Scotland, and another version is that 4, Whitehall Place backed onto a court called Great Scotland Yard, property said to be owned by a man called Scott during the Middle Ages.

In 1890 the headquarters were moved to premises on the Victoria Embankment and became know as “New Scotland Yard” and then in 1967 a more modern headquarters was build at Broadway, S.W. 1 which is also know at “New Scotland Yard.”
When Jeremy Taylor joined the Metropolitan Police as an uniformed officer in 1961 his primary objective was to deal with incorrigible rogues and vagabonds and the prevention of crime. Police officers in the Met are not issued guns or hand cuffs, but are given clubs called truncheons. However, the officers are not allowed to use their truncheons and the clubs must keep concealed at all times. Whistles are a basic part of the equipment issued to an officer, but are to be used only in an emergency. If an officer were to find himself in trouble he is expected to blow the whistle loudly three times. Or, if it is night and he is using his torch he is to flash the light off and on three times in the direction of another officer. The use of radios, according to what Taylor said, is thought to lessen the senses and is therefore discouraged.

After Taylor and other new recruits were shown their first dead body, he and the other officers in the room were all then given a stiff whisky in various glasses. Once they had finished the drinks they were told that what these glasses had in common was that they were the glasses of suicides.

In 1974 Taylor was sent to work in Greece, Cypress and Turkey where he dealt with spy cases. His first involvement with a bomb came in 1978, which was before the days of forensic science, and the only assistance in dealing with such situations had been X Rays. So Taylor, his fellow officers and the head of his division, on that first day when confronted with this potentially dangerous item, looked into the wooden box with the assistance of the X Ray machine, and, indeed saw wires, batteries and a detonator. They had a bomb on their hands all right, and, as he put it, they all had a cup of tea before deciding how to go about dismantling this explosive device.

Times have changed a great deal since those early days when Taylor first worked in the International arena dealing with the monitoring of spying. He said that most of his old department now focuses on International Terrorism. Taylor retired ten years ago and divides his time between working on a board that oversees a retirement home in the country and enjoying opera.

The New Scotland Yard can be contacted in writing at: New Scotland Yard, Broadway, London, SWIH OBG. The phone number for New Scotland Yard is 020-7230 1212. But in an emergency when in London always dial 999. E-mail inquiries can be sent to new.scotland.yard@met.police.uk and they aim to respond within ten days.

JUST THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE TO SEE WHAT I SAW ON A WALK IN NEW YORK CITY LAST SATURDAY

2007-05-09T07:45:00.000-05:00

Our visitor from California is still here and we're seeing the sights of New York like we were tourists, too. But that's a good thing and I've included a few picture from the stroll we took on the Westside and Village on Saturday. We had perfect weather that day and even today, Wednesday, the temperature is a guest book request. The special thing about being in NY even if you are not a tourist, you never know what you will see.

SHOPPING NEAR MIDNIGHT

2007-05-05T20:46:00.000-05:00

A friend, Alan Holland, has come for a 9 day stay. He's from California. He got in last last night and we decided to pick up a few groceries at Fairway. He's a real camera buff and so we both took our cameras into the store with us. His camera is a snazzy job with a big lens while mine is a small hand held darling. Well the security guards saw his camera and told him that he could not take any pictures of the displays of vegetables or fruit. I had gone off by then in another direction and because my camera is so small no one saw me taking shots of the produce. He only had time to get a picture of a stack of mushrooms, a lovely photo, too. I on the other hand got some leeks and a big pile of lemons. We had a great laugh afterwords, but we still cannot figure out why the security guards in this food store was so uptight about taking these photos.

A TRIP TO SING SING AND THEY GAVE ME A MUG

2007-05-02T01:59:00.000-05:00

(This was written several years ago after a Mystery Writers of America fieldtrip to Sing Sing.)
Sing Sing is the only prison bisected by railroad tracks, and a few minutes before our Metro North Train pulled into the Ossening station, we got our first view of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, with thick rolls of razor wire stretched across the top of the immense granite walls. Then a two minute taxi ride, a short walk through the parking lot and we stood at the entrance to one of the most notorious prison in the USA.

After a thorough security check and Superintendent Fisher had given us an introduction with a brief history of the prison, we were taken on a two and one half hour tour of the facility.

In 1825 the Legislature appropriated funds to purchase 130 acres, thirty-three miles North of New York City. This property offered a rich quarry, which would provide materials for building the new prison, as well as, for long-term productive prison labor. The prisoners lived in tents back then while building their own jail, stone by stone, chopping out the granite rock from the surrounding area. The prison when completed would measure 476 feet long and would stand four tiers high. Each cell was to be 7’ deep, 3’3” wide and 6’7” high. In the winter of 1826, 60 cells of the proposed 800 cells were completed, and by 1828 the construction of Sing Sing was finished.

Until the turn of the century, prison labor continued to be used to cut stone from the property and to provide blacksmith work to fulfill contracts made on the outside by the commissioners.

The Sing Sing Correctional Facility is much larger today and now houses 1,800 inmates, with approximately 900 employees who oversee the operation. Though Sing Sing is a prison which services the entire State, 77% of the inmates are from New York City.

In 1989 Sing Sing became accredited by the American Correctional Association (ACA), which holds the prison responsible for 437 standards. These standards cover every aspect of the facility, from health care, security and safety, to business office and housekeeping, and addresses inmate programming and custody issues. These standards also mandate that the staff be well trained. ACA returns every three years to insure that these standards have been maintained.

The Sing Sing Correctional Facility contains two major cell blocks, A and B. Cell block A is as large as two football fields placed end to end and houses 800 men in three tiers. Cell block B is not as wide as Cell Block A, and stands four tiers high.
These two cell blocks feed into a hub, a huge kitchen, where two separate dinning halls fan out at opposite ends of the food preparation area. The men eat all of their meals in the dinning room in ten minutes shifts, and the ten minutes sifts promptly begins once the first man in the group sits down. We were allowed to walk through one of these dining halls during a lunch session and saw the prisoners eating hot dogs, squeezing mustard from little plastic envelopes, and at first glance, it looked no different than any other large dining hall. There was a difference though. A correction officer stands at the entrance to the area and hands a spoon to each inmate as he walks through the doorway. Extra guards are posted throughout the hall, and we were told that if there was to be trouble it would be during a meal time. And each prisoner, as he enters the eating area, must pass through a metal detector.

Men who have earned special privileges by their good behavior are housed in a separate section of the facility. These men have unlocked cell doors during the day and are allowed to move about freely within this restricted area. There is a two year waiting list to get into this wing of the prison. If someone gets into trouble while waiting their turn, they are removed from the list, and must begin all over again to work their way back into the good graces of the prison authorities. This wing is for men who have earned the right to be there, and it is not a privilege that is taken lightly. This is also the location where a James Cagney movie was filmed.

There have been 614 electrocutions of men and women in Sing Sing. The last execution was in 1963. The old death chamber is dismantled now, and the area is used as a machine shop. The electric chair has been preserved and will be on display in a Sing Sing museum that is being planned for the future. Superintendent Fisher told us that the walk from the death row cell used to be called the Waltz. He said that when Julius Rosenberg was asked what he wanted as a last request, he said, “I want to dance with my wife.” When he was asked what kind of music he wanted, he responded, “A waltz.” Fisher said that he did not think that this really happened, but the walk was still called the Waltz.

We were taken into long corroders with rectangular windows constructed too far off the floor to look out from. Then we made a turn and found ourselves in a long walkway lit only by candescent bulbs covered in wire cages, with walls that looked so thick it felt as if we’d gone deep into an underground tunnel. Some passageways we were taken through went on for blocks and blocks, twisting and turning, with stairways that went up, then down, as we followed our guild through a maze of locked gates with guards everywhere.

Returning back to our meeting room at the end of our tour, we passed an outdoor area enclosed by a heavy gage wire fence and covered by a tarpaulin, where prisoners graduating from a GED program were preparing for a celebration.

After we ate a very tasty lunch prepared by prisoners learning culinary skills, we met with two prisoners, active in a Youth Assistant Program. This program is designed to help put kids on the right track, with an aim to teach them that in order to make the proper decision one must understand the consequences of ones acts. “We tell the kids,” one of the presenters said, “Don’t listen to the guy on the street who tells you when he goes to jail he’s got it on lock, meaning he’s doing easy time. There is no easy time in prison. Prison is a sea of pain.”

The prison system has changed greatly since the 1971 Attica riots. Now there are policies, procedures and programs in place to insure there is fairness for all inmates. Superintendent Fisher told us that the days of closed prisons are over. Now prisons are linked closely with the outside world. Training for employees is now an intense eight weeks program which covers areas such as communication skills and law. The main focus of the training is to teach employees to rule by leadership, not by intimidation, and to be firm, fare and consistent.

The South bound Metro Train heading back to NYC does not pass through Sing Sing, but the tracks make an abrupt turn and runs closer to the Hudson River. Boats used to bring inmates up this river to the big house, but not any more, the dock was closed years ago. The original outside walls of Sing Sing still stand though, a site now preserved as a historical monument. We saw those vacated old granite walls, ruins now and a home for feral cats and twisted brambles. Oh, if those walls could talk, what stories they would tell.

ABOUT THE PREVIOUS POST

2007-04-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

The sign with Edgar A. Poe's signature is on the fence outside of Poe Park located on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The house is called the Poe Cottage and is where he lived for a short while with his wife, Virginia. He wrote many of his poems there. Virginia, pictured below, died at the untimely age of 24 years old. Poe was heart sick at her passing.

THE FATHER OF THE MYSTERY STORY

2007-04-25T16:39:00.001-05:00

A TRIBUTE TO POE (This article I wrote for the Bronx Times on October 21, 1999 and it also appeared in The Noose, the newsletter for Mystery Writers in America.)

In 1841 Poe published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” introducing the eccentric amateur detective, Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, and evermore opened the door to new possibilities for the story teller.

Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an association of mystery writers, founded in 1945, chose Edgar Allan Poe as their Patron Saint. Each year, in May, MWA selects the best novel, short story, first novel, non fiction book, young adult and children’s books, theater and television productions in mystery and suspense and present each with an Edgar Award. This award is both an honor to the writer and a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, the master of mystery and suspense. Over the years many esteemed mystery writers, such as Dashill Hammett, Graham Greene, Alfred Hitchcock, to name only a few, have received an Edgar. Over the past 53 years since the awards inception, hundreds of American writers, who thrill and excite the reader, have received this honor.

Edgar Allan Poe’s writing has had a profound affect on more than just the American writer. In 1846 The Black Cat was translated into French and created for Boudolair limitless possibilities to create his new work. Japanese writers have been inspired by Poe’s ability to depict the terror of the soul and, in using what they call the twice told tale, retell folk lore with a Poe twist. For writers like Kafka, Poe envisioned the state of the world as they saw it and helped to create for them a new consciousness. Poe became a major literary presence for Latin American writers honing their skills around the turn of the Century. Carlos Fuentes attributes to Poe his need to write in a way that allows the reader to perceive the world in unaccustomed ways and to discover hidden possibilities. In some countries the Raven became a metaphor for the murky life of Social oppression, while for writers in other countries Poe demonstrated a way to examine evil and how to put visionary experience into language.

But on October 7, 1999 when Brian Dennehy stood on the porch of the Poe Cottage and read The Tell-Tale Heart I understood for the first time the power Poe could weave into a story. As Mr. Dennehy’s voice skillfully maneuvered through this tale of a dreadful deed, it was absolutely clear to me why we never tire of Poe’s stories. It was because his stories never fail to pull you up close to their breast as they breath their foul stench into your face, no matter how many times you hear them.

Keeping to a schedual

2007-04-19T11:06:00.000-05:00

I've been working very hard on PUSHING WATER and I'm now at a place in the novel writing where I must make some serious decissions about where to take the plot next. For me this is the most difficult part of the writing process, plot line. Though this is indeed one of the most important aspects of keeping the reader turning the pages. So, today I must get at it and deal with this next stage of the writing.

I have down loaded is a photo of my work station. The vintage travel poster of China looms over my computer screen and I have a display of my photographs contrained in my hard drive, and this is my diversion for the moment. I will only blog for a few more moments and then I must deal with the real task at hand, the plot.

I have given myself until the end of May to complete the rough draft of this novel because June 1 we will be heading off to China for a couple weeks. I so want to have this thing finished by then. But I cannot do it if I allow myself too many diversions. I make a plan, set it in motion and then see how it turns out in the end.