If I Lived on this street....

.... I would have to smile every time I looked up at the building with these wonderful creatures:

But would I notice them every day? How many times have I walked by these and not noticed them? Do they tell me the true character of the building? Do they reveal or mask the likely lives of those that live in the building or those who pass by each day?

A few weeks ago I had a car service pick me up at the airport. It was the same service I use frequently. Yet, had I never used them before, my impression would have been that they weren't very good. The driver was late. He went to the wrong terminal. He complained. He drove without his seatbelt, the alarm buzzing seeming only to irritate me. It was the dirtiest limo I have ever been in. I told him to take the Queensboro to Westside Highway to Canal and the Holland Tunnel. He insisted he take the BQE to the Midtown Tunnel, across Midtown to the Lincoln. I rolled my eyes as we merged onto the BQE and I spied the worse mid-morning traffic jam I'd ever seen in New York.

But, he did know to get off the expressway and take city streets to get me to my destination on time. I saw a part of Queens I probably never would have been in. "What a different city than Manhattan" I thought. Later, after I arrived at my meeting (on time!) I marveled at his bizarre brilliance in taking a most unlikely route: through several sidestreets in Queens to 59th Street Bridge (for all of you readers over 45 who remember the tune....hum a few bars of the Simon & Garfunkle song and feel groovy), north a few blocks, then east to FDR, past drab Lower East side buildings and past the skyscrapers in the Financial District, south to the very end of Lower Manhattan, through funky Tribeca, and then north on West Side Highway.....to Canal and the Holland. The quickest LAG to NJ trip I've ever made! Sometimes the quickest route is not a straight line between two points.

So what do apartment-building statues that look like the offspring of gargoyles on the Gothic-styled cathedral around the corner, an old song from the 60's, and a dirty car/effective driver have to do with anything other than they all made me smile in a small way on the same day? And what does this have to do with books? (Yes, books... this is a quasi-book blog so this lazy blogger should talk about them sometime!) Well, they all seemed to fit with the book I was reading the same week -- Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

One gives nothing away to say that Invisible Cities is about Marco Polo explaining cities he has visited to Kubla Kahn. And one doesn't divulge a plot spoiler by saying that all of the cities described are the same place. Kubla Kahn knows Marco's deceit, and he plays along with the game, even describing his own cities, pointing out the obvious features that Marco has overlooked. It doesn't even matter that the city is Venice -- Venice, Italy, or Venice, California, or Venice, Florida, or some Venice that only exists in your mind. Or that it is in the 11th century, or the 16th, or some century yet to come.

The chapter titles bemuse and bewilder: "Cities and Memory", "Cities and Desire", "Cities and Signs". "Thin Cities". "Trading Cities". "Cities and Names". "Cities and Eyes". "Cities and the Dead". "Cities and the Sky". "Hidden cities". "Continuous cities" . . . . All describe a city that once existed, or never existed, or exists now and will exist in the future.

I can't tell you any more about the book without it sounding like a dry compendium of cities and their social ills. I can only tell you that it is a truthful description of a place that is familiar and people you know even if you've never met them. I can only tell you that it should bring a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. It might make you think that you'll pay closer attention to your city the next time you take a walk, or drive, or hurry somewhere. It might make you look for the city that was and the city that is and the city that might be, if only on maps in your imagination.

Of Islands and Oranges

My job took me to this island, the island of the City Like No Other, many times over the last 6 months:

As much as I love New York, I was more than ready to spend some time on a different type of island:

When I logged into Blogger this morning, I was surprised to realize just how long it had been since I posted to this blog. I composed dozens of vignettes this summer, mentally thought of writing about different scenes, sights, sounds and smells in NYC, but few have made it to paper and none have been posted here. Perhaps they will be posted in the future.

For now, I'm enjoying my time at the beach, listening to the surf pound, the birds squawk, and the occasional squeal with delight as the waves break around a child's ankles; feeling the warmth of the sun absorbed by the sand as I walk at the shoreline, watching the coral and pink skies at sunset, eating fresh seafood, drinking fresh squeezed orange juice, and -- what else? -- reading!

On impulse the other day, I picked up a copy of John McPhee's Oranges. How many books can you think of that are categorized as both 'Food' and 'Literature', as this one is?

Oranges is a thoroughly delightful work of non-fiction that seemingly describes all there is to know about the luscious orange (at least at the time it was published in 1967): where they came from and how the introduction around the globe of this succulent, sweet fruit has followed the courses of history; how oranges have inspired poetry and wars and been used as religious symbols in art and influenced architecture (think orangeries); how they have have been coveted as objects of beauty; how crop failures due to insects and freezing weather have wrecked havoc on the economy of towns; how the engineering inventions to make concentrated orange juice almost destroyed the market for the fresh fruit, and how an adequate mechanical means for harvesting had yet to be invented. After finishing the book this afternoon, I read a bit on the web on oranges. Consumption of oranges has decreased in the last few years. The acreage of orange groves has decreased since McPhee wrote his book 40 years ago although the number of trees and yields per acre have increased. Brazil -- the originating place of the navel orange -- is now the leader in orange exports, exporting almost twice as many as the US. But, apparently, oranges are still hand-picked in the field, a difficult task described by McPhee when he profiled the 'Orange Men' of the Florida groves.

One curiosity spawned by this book is the origin of the word orange. McPhee writes about the origin of the English word, evolving from the Sanskrit, then likely, after many linguistic transformations, being confused with the Provencal place name for the town that eventually became known as 'Orange'. In many parts of the world, there are two words for oranges, differentiating between sour oranges (like the blood oranges of Seville that are so delicious in marmalade) and sweet oranges. Sweet oranges in many languages are known as "portugals" because they were developed in that country. But -- and this is my curiosity -- what about the derivations of the word for the color orange? The fruit can be a range of colors. The word orange to represent the color wasn't used until the mid-1500's. In Thailand, oranges are as green as limes. Yet, the Thai word sohm is used for both the fruit and the color.

Did Western Europeans have a word for the color orange before oranges were brought to Spain by the Arabs in the 12th century? Or did they need to invent a word for the color of the fruit that grew in the luxurious gardens of the Alhambra? Apricot, bittersweet, coral, peach, red-yellow, salmon, tangerine, titian are all listed as synonyms for the color orange. Three of them, interestingly, are names for other types of fruit. In some languages (e.g., Dutch, German, Russian) the word for orange has a similar origin to the word for apple, as oranges were once called 'Chinese apples' by the Romans. As different as apples and oranges: whether fruit or hue, they are very different things on my mental map.

I started to read McPhee's In Suspect Terrain about 15 or 20 years ago. I never finished the book, although sometimes, when I travel through northern Indiana and southern Michigan, I think about the theoretical existence of undiscovered deposits of diamond pipes under the Great Lakes that I learned about from McPhee's book. After reading Oranges I think that I will read other books by McPhee. Looking to read "Literary" nonfiction? McPhee would be a good choice.

Blue

The last thing I remembered before spinning to a stop was observing that the passenger side airbag was, surprisingly, blue. Blue enough to catch my eye as the other airbag exploded in grey-white powder and smacked me in the face. Light blue, like the clear sky that day.

Days later, when I saw the car, my shock at the crumpled metal was subdued by my amazement that the air bag, now deflated and hanging from the dash like an abandoned grocery bag caught on a tree branch, was, indeed, blue. Barely discernible as color, except in contrast to the white. Barely blue in contrast to my bluish-purple broken foot, only faintly colored in contrast to the reddish-brown burn marks across my neck and chest, it laid there, disabled, no longer serviceable, having done its job to protect the absent passenger. The driver's side airbag -- the one that kept me from skewering myself on the steering wheel or flying through the windshield -- was white, with a slight pinkish tint.

This past week marked the first time in over 4 months that I've driven regularly. It is also the week that I began to wear regular (although somewhat unfashionable) shoes. No cast, no walking boot-brace, no cane: freedom, of a kind.

Already I've noticed the looks I get from strangers are different when they observe my new, awkward gait. A cast or brace is temporary and elicits slight smiles of sympathy or an occasionally "What happened?". Passing someone else in a heavy ortho-boot (almost always the right foot, I noted), gets a nod of commiseration. But limping, moving slowly up a flight of stairs, stepping awkwardly from curb to street, receives puzzled looks of curiosity. No commiseration, no sympathy, no breaks; at best, there is a curious recognition of one's otherness; at worst, rejection for not meeting the normal standard.

It will be interesting in the next several weeks until I am walking in a manner not discernibly different, to continue to observe reactions of strangers I pass in my daily activities. One thing for sure, when I go back to NYC in a few days, I don't expect anyone to give up their seat for me on a rush hour train.

genus Helianthus

There is just something about sunflowers that makes me want to smile.



Even when they've been pushed to the side of the table, to make room for the clutter of yesterday's hurried life: books, laptop, Rx bottles, the unread newspaper, work papers, bills....



...they sing 'Oh! Happy Day!', with a green stalk choir joining in harmony. The improbable petals, looking like wildly uncombed hair, lean and sway in all directions, inattentive to being out of scale with most of the world.

Can you imagine the reaction of pioneers crossing the Plains, encountering fields of these tall plants waving at them, their color-defining yellow petals outshining even the bright daylight of the Kansas sun? The flower may not have been unknown to them as it was cultivated in Europe beginning in the 1500s, but how could they not have smiled at the fields filled with these absurd-looking plants? They're mathmatically beautiful too with the florets arranged in successive spirals, the count, not surprisingly, Fibonacci numbers.

Maybe they aren't so absurdist. Still, they just make me smile. That my husband bought them on a whim for me yesterday at the market makes me smile too.

Interview by Emily

Emily of Telecommuter Talk recently participated in the Interview Meme. I agreed to play along by answering 5 really great questions Emily asked me. The following are my responses. Emily, as usual, made me think.

If you'd like to be interviewed, follow the rules at the end of this post. My answers were lengthy, but that isn't a requirement!

1. You love the Hudson River. What's one word you would use to describe it, and why?

One word? Are you kidding? I think you knew I couldn't describe it in only one word! There are so many to choose from: tidal, shimmering, blue, brown, green, deep, historic, ghostly, cold, barrier, brackish, welcoming, boundary, lively, life-giving, polluted, treacherous, mesmerizing, changing, timeless. How could there be only one word to describe something so varied?

To elaborate on any of these would require a separate post, but here is one of many reasons I'd use "historical": Alexander Hamilton rowed across the Hudson to Weehawken, NJ for his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Burr hid out on an island off the coast of Georgia, but was never indicted and finished his term as Vice President; Hamilton rowed back across the mighty Hudson to New York City, knowing that he would die. (Who could blame him for not wanting to die in Weehawken?)

I am enchanted by all rivers, and would probably use any or all of the above to describe just about any river. Standing on the bank of a river, I feel that I am apart from it, yet a part of it; on the bank, and floating with the current down stream. There is a quality about rivers that stands apart from the dimension of time. A river can be serene, but water is powerful. The Hudson can look like a perfect backdrop for sailboats on a clear summer day, but can turn into a frenetic monster when a winter storm kicks up.

Tidal rivers intrigue me even more than other rivers; the ebb and flow of a river emphasizes both its changeability and its predictability. I love watching the tide go out, seeing the currents eddy and swirl as the river is pulled out to the sea. If I lived at the shore, I think I'd be the kind of person who kept obsessive notes about the tide, and would often wander to the banks to see what had been strewn on the shore. But, as much as the low tide uncovers items lost to the water and reveals continual changes to the shoreline, high tide brings a reassurance that the river will always come back to reclaim and deposit more. With the Hudson, it is easy to overlook this, human achievement in glass and concrete in New York so dominating the view. But the river knows. Take a closer look next time you drive along West Side Highway, or across the George Washington Bridge, are at Chelsea Piers, or at any spot along either side of the Hudson: man can harness the river, but we can't completely own it.

My work for the last several months has brought me to an office overlooking the Hudson. It is always a tempting distraction to look out the window at the skyline of the greatest city in the world. Last week I stayed in Jersey City and had the pleasure of discovering that one can sit along the river in the evening, looking East, and watch the sun set as it reflects off the buildings of lower Manhattan onto the Hudson. Absolutely beautiful! Emily, that's my one word. Except it's two.

Here is a link to my favorite poem about a river. It is also a poem about love. What Any Lover Learns, by Archibald MacLeish

2. You have quite a few blogs to which you contribute. What's your favorite thing about blogging?

Well, obviously, anyone who blogs for reasons other than monetary ones (I don't know anyone who really makes money blogging, although I suppose some do) blogs because it is an enjoyable pastime. Unlike diary-keeping or journaling, activities that blogging is often compared with, blogging, as I see it, should be about communicating -- exchanging -- ideas. A journal is private; while I might be pensive and introspective when I blog, what I write is intended to be public, to be read by others.

I like the feedback (write more comments, please!). I like sharing ideas with others and reading what they think as well. I sometimes wish that I was able to respond more immediately to what my favorite bloggers write so that it can be more of a conversation -- but then I'd never get much work completed, books read, or blog posts written!

Blogging has provided me with an outlet for writing. Some people criticize blogs for being slipshod, for containing grammatical errors, for being too self-absorbed, for not being well-thought or well-written. The blogs I like to read are not like that; they are written by intelligent, thought-provoking writers who care about what they write. Sure, the style is informal, but that doesn't make it an example of poor writing. I think that my writing --not just on my blog -- has improved since I started blogging. The practice of writing frequently for an audience, even a small one, is a worthwhile endeavor.

3. What's your favorite thing about supervising people in the workplace, and what's your least favorite thing?

What a question to respond to after a difficult week! I always wish that I could be the type of manager who is very nurturing and mentoring, but I don't think that I've developed those skills enough yet. What has been a challenge to me and will help me to be a better mentor in the long run is to remind myself that those who I manage have motivations that often have little to do with me, my goals or the goals of the organization. Realizing this helps to understand that they aren't intentionally or maliciously trying to be contrary to the stated goals, but usually are acting because of something intrinsic to their nature. For example, someone who spends too much time socializing isn't necessarily a "slacker" because she doesn't want to do her job, but is trying to fulfill a personal need for interaction with other adults. Recognizing that can help deal with the situation in an effective, professional manner.

My least favorite thing about managing people is having to deal with negative personnel issues: employees who don't get along with coworkers, those who would rather gossip or point fingers at others than accept responsibility, etc. If these issues become paramount and affect work and it forces me to put an "action plan" in place, I hate it. Too often, those plans don't result in changed behavior but rather a change in personnel. I've had to fire people in the past -- both because of performance issues as well as layoffs that had nothing to do with the quality of the individual's work. It is a horrible thing to do. After the first time I had to fire someone, I went home and spent most of the next day sitting in my garden drinking whiskey and crying.

I have worked both as a functional/department manager as well as a project manager where I didn't have personnel responsibilities for those on the project. Although not without its drawbacks, the project management role is my preference because of the angst that surrounds so many personnel issues. In such a role, one can be a leader and a mentor, but you don't have to confront someone who is spending too much time chatting on the phone with their love interest, or listen to lame excuses when they are concerned about admitting they're absent because of a sick child and have used all of their allotted sick time, or acting in a passive-aggressive style because they think they should have been promoted to your job. If it interferes with the project, you can bring it to the attention of their boss; if it doesn't interfere, you can ignore it.

4. When you were fifteen years old, what did you think you wanted to be when you "grew up?"

A journalist. Or a nurse. Or an architect. I've had many different careers in my life, but never one of these.

I would have made a better doctor than nurse (see comment about not being nurturing in #3 above). Nursing seemed like a safe and acceptable position when I was 15. By the time I got to college, I knew that I had options to pursue non-traditional careers and was not limited only to "appropriate" careers for women like teaching or nursing.

I am interested in the aesthetics of architecture, but, while not innumerate, I never had the mathematical skills for dealing with the technical aspects of the profession; nor do I have the necessary artistic skills. I still marvel at those who design buildings that are both functional and objects of beauty.

I write, so I came closer to "journalist" than anything else. But, I abandoned J-school after 3 semesters. I didn't like the quick paced deadlines or the reporting of just the facts. And, I find journalism today to be far more shrill and biased than I naively thought it was when I started college 30 years ago. What passes for news today, whether it be opinionated political reporting, celebrity gossip, or corporate shilling, would bore me if I had to surround myself with it on a daily basis. I prefer writing when I can think through the facts and derive some meaning from them. And I want to pour over every word to be sure it is just right -- something that deadline driven journalism would not have allowed me to do. I should have known during my first journalism class that this was not the right field for me. We had to write a news article about a recent stabbing in the city. While I did do the assignment, I also jotted down a damn good poem inspired by the event (A friend read that poem and thought it so creepy, he dubbed me "Edgar Cammie Poe".) I no longer have the poem, but it was great. But it wasn't journalism!

5. (This is the question I think I'm going to give everyone, given I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife): if you could travel in time, where and when would you go?

This is a tough question for me. I have traveled extensively and have often visited places that I have read about in fiction. Yet, I've never understood why people want to go to a place specifically because they read about it in a novel -- no matter how much locale plays a part in the work, it doesn't really exist in that manner except in the book. I wonder how someone could not be disappointed when visiting a place that differs so much from an author's interpretation of the place. 221B is a fictional place in a very real London, but the portrayal of that city was a creation based on Conan Doyle's perception and imagination.

But, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't time travel if I could. I would want to see various historical events as they played out: to witness Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address; to hear Mozart playing one of his symphonies for the first time; to discuss the Suffragette Movement with Susan B Anthony; to see a protest led by Gandhi; to have sat in a beer garden listening to the debate when people first heard about Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg; to talk about books and politics and ideas with Thomas Jefferson; to be in Paris to paint with Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt in the 1870's and 50 years later, to have been able to party and philosophize and write with Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. The list is endless. I think I would always want to travel, choosing a different place and time at every chance I had.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

If I had read what you had read

Julie at Bookworm posted this interesting question recently:

Imagine meeting someone who has read the exact same books you have. No more, no less. What would that be like?

The responses on her blog ranged from "how boring" to "fascinating". My opinion falls closer to the "fascinating" end of the continuum. First, I would find it curious if someone had the same reading history as me. I'm not sure which would be more intriguing: to find out why they had read the same things, to discover whether they had read them at similar times during his/her life, or to persist in determining if such a bizarre coincidence were in fact true.

Certainly, having degrees in English means that there is a certain population that is likely to have read the same texts as me. As a former high school English teacher, there is a larger population -- both teachers and students -- that would have similar reading lists. I could list other groups with whom I would have some reading commonality: the members of two different book groups; bloggers who have recommended books to me and whose recommendations have led me to books I might not have otherwise considered; friends who have given me books; colleagues who share similar professional interests; contemporaries who read the same popular books at various points in my life -- every girl in 5th grade read the Little House books, in 7th grade it was Flowers in the Attic, in high school it was Centennial, college Atlas Shrugged, The World According to Garp and The Thorn Birds, an eclectic list that only shares the common denominator of popularity at certain points in time.

But, just as likely, there are books that others may have read that I haven't ever considered reading, or that I read at different times. Watership Down, for instance, was extremely popular when I was in Jr. High. I didn't read it until I was in my late 20's, as part of an assigned reading for an Adolescent Literature course. Cognitively, there would have been differences between my reading the book at 13 and reading it at 27, but, more importantly, as my reading of the book was for a purpose other than just enjoyment, I would have approached the text differently. I may be one of the few readers of mass market books on the planet who has not read The DaVinci Code. For good or bad, that book has insinuated itself into popular culture and I could no longer have an uninfluenced reading of that book. My reading of it would be influenced by what comments I've heard or read about it (ranging from a co-worker recommending it, to a family member describing it as "a good airport read when it's the only thing in English available", to an acquaintance stating that I had taken a political stance by not reading it), by the media hype surrounding the book and the subsequent movie, by the plagiarism trial, and various parodies of the book that I've seen. Without that, though, my experiences still would have influenced my reading of the book. Putting critical evaluation of the book's merit aside and looking at the book only as a story read for entertainment, and assuming that I had never heard of the book, reading it the first week it was published, I still would have been influenced by my prior knowledge of church history and theology; my Catholic childhood, and my exposure to Renaissance art.

If I were at a cocktail party and met someone who read exactly the same texts as me while an undergrad, would our reactions to the book be the same? Our perspectives would be influenced by the philosophy of the schools attended and individual teachers, and methods of criticism. Our interests in the texts and the time period in which they were written would be different as well. Someone interested in dramaturgy would read Shakespeare's plays differently than someone who approached them with an interest chiefly in Elizabethan language. Someone who loved teaching Freshman English might not understand why I found discussing the same short stories incredibly boring, and might not understand my frustration that only a few Seniors I taught ever wanted to understand Emerson. Someone who read Aristotle, or Moliere, or Camus at age 20 in the late 70's (like me) would have brought an entirely different perspective to a work than someone who read the same works at age 20 today.

Would it be fascinating to meet someone who had read the exact same books as I had? Of course. But our experiences could never be the same, as we would bring different backgrounds to that eclectic list. The fascination would rest mainly with how different our experiences with those books would be.