CNN.com has posted the following map showing where Americans have gotten obese since 1985:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/obesity.map/
New York, I am very disappointed in you: You are about to become a red state. Try to do better. As for 1985, keep up the good work.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
She doesn’t even know what spoon is . . .
. . . although she has seen me use them to transfer her food from its can to her dish--which is an obtuse way of ambling toward my point, namely that last night I was finally back in my apartment in The Bronx, and so was Jenny, my cat. My weekend was exhausting, beginning on Friday after work, when I carried a couple of sacks of books back up to The Bronx, and continued with ten more trips on Saturday and Sunday. (Strategy: Take items such as chairs and bookshelves on the subway very early in the morning.)
On Sunday afternoon I fetched Jenny from my generous friend and took her home--and I still had a few more trips to make. By 1 a.m. I crawled, muscles aching, into bed, losing consciousness almost before my head hit my pillow. When I happened to wake up in the dark sometime later, Jenny was fast asleep against my leg. She woke up and nuzzled her face against my shoulder, saying “massage my neck” and “I’m glad to see you” and “scratch under my chin.” She reclined near me, and as I fell asleep she tapped me on my cheek, saying “pet me more.” So I did. And when dawn woke me up, Jenny was sleeping nestled against my arm. Two months was a long time for us to be apart, with only a few moments in my hectic stupid schedule when I could visit her.
On Sunday afternoon I fetched Jenny from my generous friend and took her home--and I still had a few more trips to make. By 1 a.m. I crawled, muscles aching, into bed, losing consciousness almost before my head hit my pillow. When I happened to wake up in the dark sometime later, Jenny was fast asleep against my leg. She woke up and nuzzled her face against my shoulder, saying “massage my neck” and “I’m glad to see you” and “scratch under my chin.” She reclined near me, and as I fell asleep she tapped me on my cheek, saying “pet me more.” So I did. And when dawn woke me up, Jenny was sleeping nestled against my arm. Two months was a long time for us to be apart, with only a few moments in my hectic stupid schedule when I could visit her.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
On!
My apartment renovation is done and I will soon be leaving my sublet in the Greenwood section of Brooklyn, or, as I like to call it on days like this, the Standing Water section of Brooklyn. The rain was falling so hard as I walked to work getting soaked from the thighs down to my socks that my downsloping street was nothing more than a fast-running creek.
This half-Hispanic, half-Polish neighborhood lies on the western edge of the Greenwood cemetery, which means we have a lot more funeral homes, florist shops, and memorial stores than most neighborhoods. I have taken the M train on purpose: Even now when it trundles into my station it surprises me that it still exists in the way that it’s surprising when one finds a shop that still blocks men’s hats or sells moustache wax.
Certain memories of this neighborhood will stay with me: As I walked along 7th Avenue on a sunny day a couple of weeks ago, where it runs along the edge of the cemetery, I wondered about the graves on the grassy hillside--there are geotechnical considerations. And soon I saw and answer: There was a group of four graves with their headstones leaning in different precarious directions and the casket-sized rectangles of grass before them swooped into the slope. They may have stood that way for years or looked like they were. Most likely they are slowly moving--even as you read this. The coffins below gave way and the earth above sagged into the empty space, the grass growing in the sun not at all disturbed.
Another memory: As I was walking by the Jurek Park Slope Funeral Home, on 4th Avenue, on a pleasant summer evening I could not take my eyes off a silver-and-black Cadillac hearse. It wasn’t of a style I recognized, but I guessed it was from the 1970s. My attention was riveted to the back window and its lace curtains, whose edges ludicrously and elegantly came together to leave a post-card-sized opening for anyone who would care to look through the glass. It was then that an attractive blonde woman wearing a short black skirt and black high heels and a rather stylish jacket came out of the funeral home, got into the hearse, and drove away. Life imitates cable television.
The Guerros Taqueria seems to have gone out of business, and I will miss them. Their tacos were delicious and they had about twelve kinds, ranging from al pastor to oreja.
I will not miss the mosquitoes. Probably one of the reasons why sublet was so cheap is that it does not have niceties such as screened windows. So, I have been spraying my entire body with Off! each night before I go to sleep. And for a couple of weeks the itching of fresh mosquito bites would wake me up at 4 a.m.--like clockwork. I finally read the Proustian paragraph in 3 point type on the back of the Off! bottle, with its explanations of how to apply the stuff to children, how to keep chiggers out of the cuffs of your pants, and other information I can’t use, and then I saw it: Off! only lasts for 2 hours. That’s probably on a hiker, for a sleeper in the Standing Water section of Brooklyn, it lasts till 4 a.m.--and man are those lady mosquitoes hungry by then. I am probably now nourishing the grandchildren of the long-dead mosquitoes who were eating me alive when I moved in.
Six or seven years ago, when West Nile virus was a new concern, trucks with nozzles emitting a fine mist of insecticide rolled through the streets of New York. Now there is nothing to be done--or is there? I would just like to add that I am very pro bat and pro dragon fly. Spraying a whole city with poison never held much appeal for me. I wish there was some way to release New York-native species of dragonflies instead. Or erect bat houses.
This half-Hispanic, half-Polish neighborhood lies on the western edge of the Greenwood cemetery, which means we have a lot more funeral homes, florist shops, and memorial stores than most neighborhoods. I have taken the M train on purpose: Even now when it trundles into my station it surprises me that it still exists in the way that it’s surprising when one finds a shop that still blocks men’s hats or sells moustache wax.
Certain memories of this neighborhood will stay with me: As I walked along 7th Avenue on a sunny day a couple of weeks ago, where it runs along the edge of the cemetery, I wondered about the graves on the grassy hillside--there are geotechnical considerations. And soon I saw and answer: There was a group of four graves with their headstones leaning in different precarious directions and the casket-sized rectangles of grass before them swooped into the slope. They may have stood that way for years or looked like they were. Most likely they are slowly moving--even as you read this. The coffins below gave way and the earth above sagged into the empty space, the grass growing in the sun not at all disturbed.
Another memory: As I was walking by the Jurek Park Slope Funeral Home, on 4th Avenue, on a pleasant summer evening I could not take my eyes off a silver-and-black Cadillac hearse. It wasn’t of a style I recognized, but I guessed it was from the 1970s. My attention was riveted to the back window and its lace curtains, whose edges ludicrously and elegantly came together to leave a post-card-sized opening for anyone who would care to look through the glass. It was then that an attractive blonde woman wearing a short black skirt and black high heels and a rather stylish jacket came out of the funeral home, got into the hearse, and drove away. Life imitates cable television.
The Guerros Taqueria seems to have gone out of business, and I will miss them. Their tacos were delicious and they had about twelve kinds, ranging from al pastor to oreja.
I will not miss the mosquitoes. Probably one of the reasons why sublet was so cheap is that it does not have niceties such as screened windows. So, I have been spraying my entire body with Off! each night before I go to sleep. And for a couple of weeks the itching of fresh mosquito bites would wake me up at 4 a.m.--like clockwork. I finally read the Proustian paragraph in 3 point type on the back of the Off! bottle, with its explanations of how to apply the stuff to children, how to keep chiggers out of the cuffs of your pants, and other information I can’t use, and then I saw it: Off! only lasts for 2 hours. That’s probably on a hiker, for a sleeper in the Standing Water section of Brooklyn, it lasts till 4 a.m.--and man are those lady mosquitoes hungry by then. I am probably now nourishing the grandchildren of the long-dead mosquitoes who were eating me alive when I moved in.
Six or seven years ago, when West Nile virus was a new concern, trucks with nozzles emitting a fine mist of insecticide rolled through the streets of New York. Now there is nothing to be done--or is there? I would just like to add that I am very pro bat and pro dragon fly. Spraying a whole city with poison never held much appeal for me. I wish there was some way to release New York-native species of dragonflies instead. Or erect bat houses.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Brooklyn stigmata
Here's something I've never done before: I got a mosquito bite in the center of the sole of each of my feet. At first, because they itched, I thought it might be athlete's foot--which I had never had before. But, no, they were mosquito bites. And I can't believe those were easy places to pierce and suck blood from. I know there are easier places because plenty of other mosquitoes found them. I looked like a teenager in the morning--I mean the pimples, not the perpetually haggard look I have developed over the years. Oh, I suppose I should mention that my cheap Brooklyn sublet does not have screens on the windows and it has been really hot lately.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Do what I do
O.K., I haven't blogged for a while; however, in my defense I'd like to say that this is due to a complete lack of trying. Here is today's installment of what I have come to call Do what I do. (But don't follow my example about not blogging--if you have a blog, you should post stuff.)
An editor I know whose surname begins with the letter S once gave me a piece of advice that I have found to be both simple and brilliant, and that is this: When confronted with a long alphabetized list that you might have to search through all of--but might stop searching through at any point if you find what you're looking for--don't start at the letter A. Start with whatever letter your surname starts with.* For example, I start my searches at the letter P.
I was reminded of this today when I began to comb through a list of 77 potential technical reviewers for two books I have just finished editing. One book is about generally accepted accounting principles for governmental accounting and the other analyzes the standards for generally accepted auditing principals.**
An editor I know whose surname begins with the letter S once gave me a piece of advice that I have found to be both simple and brilliant, and that is this: When confronted with a long alphabetized list that you might have to search through all of--but might stop searching through at any point if you find what you're looking for--don't start at the letter A. Start with whatever letter your surname starts with.* For example, I start my searches at the letter P.
I was reminded of this today when I began to comb through a list of 77 potential technical reviewers for two books I have just finished editing. One book is about generally accepted accounting principles for governmental accounting and the other analyzes the standards for generally accepted auditing principals.**
*People whose surnames start with A can ignore this rule--it really only applies to the rest of us.***
**I realize this information simply horrid--although it happens to be perfectly true. And for both of those characteristics I apologize.
***Surely, however, we can all enjoy the kitten scene pictured above, which I found on a blog that is put together by bloggers more prolific than me.
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