Mati

I was lucky to have Mati, a friend from Israel, come through New York for something with the IDF recently. Obviously it was a lot of fun to see him, but another perk of having any friend visit is that I have an excuse to blow off work (yay!), spend money on things I normally wouldn't (yay!!) and see the city.

Highlights of his visit:

-seeing "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway – incredible

-being Mati's partner during his first-ever game of beer pong

-feeling worldly at a bar, hanging out with Mati (Argentinian/Israeli), Dave (Australian), and a guy named Rory (British) as well as two other Americans

-a brief visit to the Met where Mati explained, at length, some of the physical principles that make a gun work as we toured the Weapons and Armor exhibit

-eating at restaurants at least twice a day

-trying to explain Christian philosophy during a visit to St. John's Cathedral in a way that doesn't sound totally wacky. I've tried this on several other occasions with similar rates of failure

Life has rapidly returned to normal now that he is gone. I'm back to endless reading, eating cold cereal, and much more solitude. Now that I've figure out how to inflate the air mattress, I'm excited for another guest. Come visit!

Way beyond hunting and gathering

The kitchen right down the hall from my room has yet to be fixed, although I used the stove to stir fry some vegetables the other day, despite the sign warning me not to use it. Shhh, don't tell. (Turns out the air conditioning vent's malfunction doesn't actually affect the operation of the stove. Hypothesis: correct.) Walking those twenty feet down the hall can be a real drag though, and sometimes involves putting on shoes, pants, or even both, so I do as much as I can in my room.

This is my kitchen (use your imagination). I was pleasantly surprised upon moving in to see that the fridge was fairly large – for a dorm – and has a really good sized freezer. The microwave's "popcorn" setting is just about perfect. In the cabinet above, my cooking utensils (pretty much plates and silverware) are just high enough that I have to drag a chair over to get at them without knocking anything over.

Anthony was good enough to pick up a great electric kettle for me with which I support my tea habit. It's also nice for making the freeze-dried miso soup I found in Chinatown a few weeks ago. My other hardware consists of a great crock pot which I have discovered actually works for grains like rice, quinoa, and couscous.* It's not perfect, and things are more prone to get mushy than if they were prepared on a burner, but I've discovered that liberal fluffing with a fork about 15 minutes before I want to actually start eating does wonders. Also useful: the crock pot takes a long time to heat things up initially, but if I use near-boiling water from the kettle I can speed things along considerably. I made the couscous in less than half an hour, and brown rice took about an hour and a half last week.

*Couscous is actually closer to pasta than anything else. It's definitely not a grain.

Farmers' Market

Every Thursday and Sunday, a handful of local farmers and others involved in food production set up shop along Broadway, a few blocks away from my building. It's not very crowded in this picture because I was there insanely early on a Sunday, but by midmorning it's packed.

There are the usual fruits and vegetables for sale (although some of them are pretty gourmet; I've never even heard of some of these varieties of apples and peppers) but there's also an organic turkey farm, a cheese maker, a baker, some ladies who make jam, and a guy who sells all kinds of lavender products. Today I bought three different varieties of apples - my intention was to compare them, but I've already forgotten what they're all called - and some pears.

Coincidences

About a year ago, I was wasting time on Facebook, going through a friend's pictures. Mario and I went to high school together, and although I'm not positive, I think he's originally from Chicago. I learned that he was now living in San Francisco, and I was flipping through his photographs randomly when I came across one that made me stop in my tracks and rub my eyes (they way people always say they do, but you assume it's just an expression). Mario and my friend Xuan were standing together in the same room!

Lest this news shocks you slightly less than it did me, allow me to elaborate: Xuan and I went to college together. In Nashville, TN. Mario is from Chicago and went to college in California. I couldn't figure out the connection, so I emailed Mario and discovered that he and Xuan were actually ROOMMATES who found each other through a Craigslist posting. Totally weird, and I spent the next few days shaking my head and reflecting on how, while many people touch our lives, they're out there touching other people's lives at the same time, and how many connections we all have.

This is not news to Kevin Bacon.

Here in New York a few weeks ago, I went to a birthday party for a friend named Frank. Frank is from New York originally, and he and I met in Tokyo where we both taught English. I was pleased to share a city with him for a second time; he is, as they say, "good people". One of his friends, Josh, started talking to me, and the topic of teaching came up, as it always seems to when I'm involved in a conversation for more than 90 seconds. I mentioned teaching in Tennessee, and when Josh asked what city, he seemed mildly surprised to hear I'd lived in Nashville. "I went to Vanderbilt," he explained. "So did I," I countered. We graduated a year apart, which is not all that weird, but we were both members of the same outdoors club. We never met because I joined a semester after he graduated, giving us an huge group of mutual friends. We name-dropped happily for the rest of the night, and this again lead me to several days of head shaking and reflection.

Then of course, there was the Doug encounter, which I'm sure you read about as you avidly devoured my entry about the Boston trip.

But today, I've got one that possibly tops both of those. I just finished reading _A Long Way Gone_, a great memoir by a former boy solider in Sierra Leone by Ishmael Beah.

It's one of those books that hits you pretty hard, as you might imagine, and so to give myself time to mull it all over once I'd read the last page of the actual novel itself, I found myself skimming over the Acknowledgements page. My skimming ceased when my eyes hit the name Rose Lichter-Marck. When I was about ten, I went to a summer camp in northern California with a girl named Rosie Lichter-Marck. We weren't necessarily inseparable - in fact, I'm not sure if we even really liked each other much - but I'd always remembered her name because, well, how do you forget a name like that? Back to trusty Facebook, where I found her (not surprisingly, I got only one result in my search) and wrote her a message to inquire whether this was really her. So that's Coincidence #1.

Enter Coincidence #2: Rose is part of the Columbia network. For those of you who are not Facebook aficionados: I can only look at detailed information for people who are listed as friends or who are in the same network I am. Rose was not listed as my friend, as I'd not really thought about her existence for nearly two decades. She was however, I was astonished to discover, in the Columbia network. Seconds later, I was skimming through her profile, only to find that she is a first year grad. student here (!) and she worked for the publishing company that released _A Long Way Gone_ for two years, during the time that Beah would have been in contact with them (!!)

With each occurrence like this, I think to myself that this is it, nothing else will surprise me. I can only conclude that, like in numerous other instances, I'm wrong, and that I'll be blown away by something even more coincidental next week. And maybe I really AM connected to the whole human race.

Little Italy gets hot.

Mati, a friend from Israel, came to spend a few days in NYC as part of a program run by the Friends of the IDF. He had some free time last night and we went to Little Italy for dinner so he could see all the San Gennaro fanfare.

By around 9:30 were nearly at the bottom of a bottle of Cabernet, so when this character came slithering up the street escorted by a buxom (albeit unattractive) blonde, I thought I must not be seeing clearly:

But my suspicions were confirmed when the waiter gasped and Mati just about toppled out of his chair. "Was that really Ron Jeremy?" the waiter asked, looking both mildly impressed and mildly disgusted. Mati pawed frantically at him for a pen and the guy's notepad, then raced off down the street in hot pursuit, knocking over a fire extinguisher on the way. He caught the legendary icon at the corner, and came back a few minutes later, looking rather flushed, clutching a piece of paper that read "To Mati, Ron Jeremy" in a messy scrawl. Penmanship is not old Ron's strong suit, but in his line of work, I don't think it even matters that he's literate.

The conversation, as reported by Mati: "Excuse me, sir, I'm a big fan of your work. Would you sign an autograph for me?"

Now for the record, I have never seen Ron in action, so to speak (yeah, yeah, scoff all you want), but two girls in my practicum today confirmed that it's not weird to recognize him, so I feel a bit better about it. Mati has no such qualms. If he had flown back home immediately after dinner, I think he'd call his trip to New York a success. I'm left less delighted, wondering how on earth I'm going to top this when he gets back from FIDF functions and we head out sightseeing.

And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, or, The Feast of San Gennaro

San Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples, and his effigy (Catholics, is that what you call it?) is kept in the Church of the Most Sacred Blood in Little Italy in lower Manhattan.

His official feast day isn't until next week, but it's celebrated for 12 days in the biggest outdoor festival in the country. It kicked off with a cannoli-eating contest on Friday, which, alas, I missed, but I did get to attend Saturday's parade, which went down Mulberry Street in Little Italy and lasted about ten minutes.

On normal days, there are charming Italian restaurateurs who call remark on how "bella" you happen to be and use that as an argument for why you should eat in their restaurant. During the Feast, which apparently will attract over a million people as it runs its course, they were in their heyday. (I got a slice of pizza to go, which seemed to disappoint many of them.) There were also stands selling Italian sausages, pizza, cookies, torrone, and cannoli everywhere, and of course lots of Italian-themed souvenirs.

I wandered into a store that sold kitchenware as the proprietress was helping another customer. "'Ey! Uncle Eddie! (That guy's Uncle Eddie.) This lady wants to sell 'er house! She needs a Saint Joseph!" Then, in an almost conspiratorial tone to the woman, "Now whatcha wanna do is bury 'im upside down, got that?" Catholics.

Also noteworthy was one of the many donation boxes set into the wall of the church. Other donations could go to poor children or foreign missionaries, but at this box your funds purportedly get shipped all the way to the souls in Purgatory, because apparently that's a) possible, and b) going to help them out down there. I wonder if they use USD in limbo. Perhaps there's a money-changer there.

What's cool about that part of New York is that a lot of the ethnic parts of town are squashed together. By crossing one street, I went from Little Italy to Chinatown where I purchased some things from an Asian food market that I learned to love in Japan and picked up some really cheap produce as well. I'm told that if I kept going in the right direction I would have come to Japantown as well. Three continents in two days! Can't beat the New York subway.

So, despite the weather, a good day, although there is definitely such a thing as too many cannolis.

Local flavor

Spotted today while running through Central Park: an enormous, cranky-looking raccoon waddling at a full clip across the road. Thrillingly, this was my first glimpse of New York wildlife (if you don't count the flattened pigeon I saw on the corner of Broadway and 121^st or the clientele at Dave's bar).

School. Daze.

My earliest class begins at 3:00 P.M., but, alas, because of the Fellowship work I'll be doing during normal school hours and the practicum I'll have to squeeze in somewhere, the visions of lazy mornings that danced in my head a few weeks ago are fading fast. Here's a look at my class schedule and a bit about my courses:

*MONDAY

Don't know much about this one yet, as we didn't meet yesterday for Labor Day. It's called Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, which means, well, I imagine just what it sounds like.

*TUESDAY

To earn my MA as a Reading Specialist, I have to complete three practica*, and this course (Practicum I: Literary Assessment and Intervention) is a preparation for the first one. Interestingly, I'll be slogging through the practicum and the class simultaneously; this isn't the ideal way to do it pedagogically, but it means I can complete the program in less time and is therefore ideal financially. I hope I'm a fast learner… Lots of reading in this class, assigned by a very nice professor who is herself a graduate of TC's reading specialist program. In a few weeks, I'll be assigned a "client," a local kid with reading problems, and attempt to fix him or her using all the strategies I've managed to absorb at TC thus far. Both of us will need luck. The clinic is actually located on the TC campus, which is quite convenient. Clients pay according to a sliding scale, some shelling out as little as $25 a semester for our services. As you can imagine, the waiting list to get a kid into the program is pretty long. There's a big need for that sort of thing around here.

*THURSDAY

My first class Thursday is taught by my beloved advisor, Dr. Masullo. It's called Theory and Technique of Reading Assessment and Intervention. Based on the syllabus, I'm going to learn here exactly the things I came to TC to demystify. Again, lots of reading required – seems to be a pattern. Like my practicum prep. class on Tuesdays, I get the feeling this will be a lot of symptom -> explanation -> solution. Perfect. I was excited to discover that we'll dedicate a fair amount of time on writing skills as well.

Next, I head off to a class called Cognitive Neuroscience and Education. Our professor does research at Columbia medical school; currently he's working on communication methods for nonverbal autistic children. It's the first time this class has been offered at TC, and interest, particularly among doctoral candidates, is quite high. It's a nice change to have some men in the room – all my other classes are all female. This one promises to be a challenge, although I find the subject pretty interesting, so I hope I'll be able to rise to it. Dr. Hoyte said on the first day that it wasn't going to be any more technical than could be helped and that the emphasis would be instead on the processes within the brain, but that didn't prevent the article I've been struggle with today consisting almost solely of sentences that look like this:

"There is a perceptual component in the sense that sensory events occurring within the neglected hemispace have a diminished impact on awareness, especially when competing sensory events occur in the contralateral hemispace."

After the first two or three pages, it got more interesting and very slightly more accessible, so I'm feeling a bit less panicky than when I first picked it up. The other articles I read for Thursday's class were much less focused on specific brain structures and therefore less likely to drive me to drink, suicide, or possibly one followed by the other. Whew.

*I've seen the plural of practicum written "practicums" and "practica". (Microsoft Word, in its infinite competency, has flagged both variations with a red squiggly line.) I prefer the latter, because, as Anthony pointed out, "'Practicums' sounds dumb."

Labor Day weekend in Boston

HIGHLIGHTS

Friday afternoon - Courtney met me in Harvard Square. We hadn't seen each other since my post-Japan road trip in November of 2007, and therefore we talked for about ten hours straight (changing location from time to time).

Saturday morning - We visited the Mapparium in the Christian Science Center. Globarium would sound no less goofy but would be much more accurate, as it's a three-story high stained glass globe reflecting the political boundaries of the world in the 1930's; Africa is markedly different, everything else looks more or less the same. The shape and material made for interesting acoustic effects, which we alternately enjoyed (when we were standing on opposite ends of the bridge whispering to each other) and were annoyed by (when people during the presentation talked to each other in whispers made deafening). We resisted the Christian Scientist indoctrination, and left unscathed to meet up with Mike, a friend from Vanderbilt.

Saturday night - As members of an otherwise all-lesbian birthday party, we learned a thing or two about putting away vast quantities of alcohol, rugby, and love triangles.

Sunday afternoon - Jenny, a friend from NYLF two summers ago, is working on a Masters in public health at Harvard. Courtney and I met her for lunch and got to hear all about her improbable love interest, a Sri Lankan New Zealander she met in Geneva. After lunch, we headed over to the Arboretum to sit with Mike and a few of his friends on a blanket with bread and cheese, a chess board, a hookah, and Miles Davis. It was a beautiful afternoon, and we enjoyed exploring (although, disappointingly, the bonsai collection was locked for the evening by the time we got there).

Sunday night - In my friend Christian's apartment, I enjoyed the most improbably coincidence I've ever experienced. I met Christian while we were both working in Japan. His friend Doug, a guy he met in undergrad at BU, came over and when the conversation strayed to names and I told him my last name, he leapt out of his seat with an outburst of profanities. My brother works at a company with two employees. Improbably, Doug is the second employee. After Doug contained himself (which took some time), we all went out to meet up with Anthony and Jane for drinks.

Monday morning - Despite his obvious pain and suffering from the previous night's indulgences, Anthony joined Jane in giving me a tour of their posh neighborhood. We walked through the Public Gardens and had a tasty, somewhat eventful lunch. I learned about Anthony's deep affection for the duckling statues.

Monday night - I met up with Dave and Eddie, a New York native and good friend from Japan, at a restaurant in Korea Town for dinner. Having just gotten off the bus, I was still hauling my suitcase around, but I figure it's good exercise. It's good to be back in my room and settled, although in eight hours I'll be starting a four-hour orientation for my fellowship.

This street, the last cobblestone road in Beacon Hill, is the most frequently photographed street in the world, or in the US, or something. I had to jump on the bandwagon.

Local flavor

Spotted this afternoon while I was jogging: A gaunt man in his late 20's/early 30's, longish scraggly brown hair, tortured goatee, horn rimmed glasses, Greek fisherman's hat, flannel shirt, skinny jeans, enormous headphones, sitting on a park bench gnawing on the end of a superbly malodorous cigar about the diameter of a Tabasco bottle, watching a DVD on his laptop. I guess I'm not hip enough to get it.