Service with a Smile

Taken with my BlackBerry camera - sorry about the poor quality

I could say a lot of things about this fruit stand I saw last night on the Upper East Side, but I think I will let it speak for itself.

Demo Lesson

Yesterday I took the 2 train farther north than I've ever ridden it to teach a demo lesson at a charter school called Democracy Prep. The hiring process for Democracy Prep is, so far as I can tell, similar to that of other charter schools, meaning that there are a lot of hoops to jump through. After filing out an online application, which involved typing in my work history and answers to essay questions, and uploading my resume and cover letter, I got an email telling me that I'd passed the first screening step. I set up a phone interview via email, chatted for about 20 minutes with a representative from the school, then got another email inviting me to teach a demo lesson to a seventh grade English class.

I was not looking forward to the demo lesson, predicting that it would go badly, as I'm juggling a fair amount of unpleasantness at the moment and so didn't start planning it until the last minute. Also, having done a lot of reading about charter schools, I knew that they often had very rigid teaching procedures that the kids are accustomed to. I, of course, wasn't going to be bringing that to the table. Also, I didn't know the kids' names, nor anything about their reading levels or what they'd studied in the past and could be expected to know already. Plus, I was given only 30 (30!!) minutes to address the following aim: 

Scholars will be able to distinguish between facts and opinions within a text and determine whether they are being effectively used to support the main idea or argument or to relay and then disprove an alternate idea or argument.

This was a huge challenge because I had to come up with a text on my own for students about whom I knew nothing. I emailed the teacher. She wasn't sure which "cohort of scholars" I'd be teaching because they rotate a lot, so she didn't know whether I'd have the higher reading group (on grade level) or the lower reading group (way below grade level). She did, however, tell me that they'd already covered fact vs. opinion. Whew. At least I didn't have to start from the very beginning. I decided to find passages about books they'd read so we'd be on familiar ground, and she told me they'd read, among other things, The Outsiders and Nightjohn. Ok, bingo. I ended up going onto Amazon and augmenting book reviews submitted by readers; they always contain both facts and opinions that, depending on the quality of the writer, support their rating of the book in question.

Founder Seth Andrew

There are four or five different DP campuses in the city, and next year there will be six. The one I visited is not the one where I will teach if hired - they're considering me for the position of a high school writing teacher - so while I got a feel for the system in general, I didn't spend a lot of time deciding whether I could see myself at this particular school. DP has one wing of one floor of a building that contains several schools. Other hallways were raucous, but DP was orderly. I walked into a classroom full of uniformed students, all black with the exception of one Latina girl, to catch the last five minutes of a motivational/disciplinary speech by the founder of DP himself, a guy in his 30's wearing a suit and a yellow DP baseball cap over longish hair. He was cheerfully commending one student for having a "perfect day" after some previous rough spots, but he'd come down ferociously on anyone who whispered to a neighbor or was caught staring into space. The students would all flash thumbs-up signs at him whenever he asked a question they agreed with ("And that's what we want to see, right?") and to honor the student being praised, they extended their arms toward him and wiggled their fingers. I'd read about this sign language in charters before, but it was fascinating to watch it in action. It reminded me of watching a dog handler with a well-trained canine: the dog's eyes never leave the handler, and it immediately complies with a series of mysterious hand gestures, no matter how slight. The teacher, who was observing, corrected student behavior a few times during the speech with hand signals, and chairs were instantly pulled in and posture hastily corrected without a single word being exchanged. Interesting.

When it was my turn to teach, the classroom was generally quiet and the student's attentive. Over half were eager to volunteer answers, which is a far cry from my experience at Heritage, also a Harlem school, where the students couldn't have been less interested in what was going on. They were reasonably articulate and poised, and I'm sure I would have been more impressed if I'd seen them during an earlier period rather than the tail end of the very long school day. I learned quickly that a raised hand with crossed fingers does not mean that the student wants to answer or ask a question but that s/he wants to go to the bathroom - kind of cool system, really, because the teacher can either nod or shake his or her head and get on with the lesson without having to stop, listen to the request, then grant or deny permission.

I thought the lesson went ok, and during the debriefing session afterward I got much more positive feedback than constructive feedback, which was nice. One of the 3 (3!!) adults observing me said that it was obvious that I had great rapport with the kids right off the bat, which I was happy to hear because that's the kind of thing you can't fake. The two suggestions for improvement I received were aspects of teaching style that are really easy to fix, and even if I don't get the DP job, I can use them to improve my next demo lesson at another school. Now I just have to wait for their decision and, possibly, instructions about the next hoop to jump through.

I'm not sure that I'm head over heels in love with DP just yet, nor with any of the charters in the city. The school days tend to go from 7:15 until 5:00, and then there's after-school tutoring which is also run by teachers. It's a long, draining day, but since they target students who are behind, it's necessary to bring them up to speed. I think the teachers get a fair amount of time during the day to plan and grade (one school told me teachers instruct during only four of eight periods) so they don't have to do so much at home, but it's still a lot of hours. On the other hand, the pay is better, and both teachers and students are held to very high standards, which I like. Some charters, despite their lofty mission statements, end up flopping, although DP is one of the 20% that can demonstrate hugely positive results. The staff wants to be there, and they all have the students' best interest in mind or they wouldn't put up with the demands of the school. It would be nice not to feel that I was in the minority because I'm willing to work hard for the kids' benefit. There is a lot of professional development and support from mentor teachers, curriculum specialists, etc. And the families are grateful to be lucky enough to have gotten their kids into these schools (it's a lottery system and has nothing to do with student aptitude) so they tend to be very supportive and involved. Check out this video if you're interested in the DP system. (It's ridiculously motivational).

It'll be interesting to see what happens, and I'll certainly post updates as they come.

National Marathon

 Well I did it. Marathon #1 was mostly successful, and although I am still hobbling around three days after the fact, I definitely plan to do another one.

Despite being billed as one of the official race hotels, the Marriott I checked into in Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon was a dismaying four miles away from the starting line. This made a bit more sense when I actually went to the starting line to pick up my number, t-shirt, and other assorted goodies. I saw that there really aren't any hotels near the armory/stadium where the race was going to begin. While it would have been convenient if I'd been closer to the course, the hotel, which was near DuPont Circle, turned out to be great for meet-ups with friends, so it wasn't all bad.

The expo where I picked up my number was pretty typical: vendors selling running-related items at allegedly marked down prices, free samples of yogurt and energy bars, and information about different races. They're always fun to walk through. I entered a drawing to win a trip to Africa to run a marathon around Mt. Kilimanjaro, which I don't think I won, as well as a drawing for a free entry into a long-distance relay race, which I hope I didn't win because I don't know eleven other people who like running enough to be on my team.

Dinner was supposed to be a carb-heavy plate of pasta, but, amazingly, this seemed to be a rarity in D.C. After several false tries in restaurants whose menus were devoid of carbohydrates, it was getting so late that I ended up with a plate of gnocchi instead - tasty, but probably not the best option. C'est la vie. As is my wont the night before a race, I slept badly and had marathon-related nightmares.

Despite my poor night's sleep, when my alarm went off at 5:00 the next morning, I was up and dressed in no time. I called the front desk to request a cab, and the guy told me to come down when I was ready. After swallowing some Advil for my knee, the last of my Powerade, and a packet of HammerGel, I headed down to the lobby with a packed bag to find chaos. The phone was ringing off the hook and no employees were in sight. The lobby was full of people, many in running gear, who looked bleary-eyed and disgruntled. I asked the lady next to me if she was waiting for a cab, and she said grouchily that she was waiting for the valet to bring her car up. Three people in her vicinity nodded, arms crossed. There were cabs going by outside, I discovered, but I ended up riding with a guy named Aaron whose girlfriend was running and had gone on ahead. I joined two other women, also strangers to both Aaron and to me, in the backseat, and Aaron kindly ferried us as close to the armory as he could get before traffic backed up so much that we decided to get out and walk. It was absolutely freezing - 27 degrees was the predicted morning temperature, and it sure felt like it - but luckily the bag check was indoors. I ended up with lots of time to spare, so I checked my bag, stretched, and got increasingly nervous. I'm used to pre-race jitters, but it's usually excitement; this time I was truly worried my knee wouldn't allow me to finish the race. At last, at 6:45 the final call to the starting line blared over the loudspeakers, so I joined the throng flowing out towards the corrals.

When the gun went off, my corral didn't even move. We finally crossed the starting line about nine minutes after the front-runners had gone, and by then I was more than happy to be moving because of the cold. My knee was sore, but within a mile or two I knew that it was going to allow me to finish, and my anxiety and bad mood dissipated accordingly. In fact, I felt great. My two-week, post-fall training hiatus had left my legs totally fresh and ready to go. I was wearing a cheap hoodie from Old Navy over my running clothes and a pair of huge cotton gloves that had come in my goody bag, and a few miles in I'd warmed up enough to ditch them both on the side of the road. (They were in good company; the Salvation Army must have made a killing from the castoffs that day.)

I kept looking at my watch and noting that I was going WAY too fast. I was pretty consistently doing 8:00 to 8:30 miles when I should have been staying between 9:00 and 9:10. But I felt great and decided to just go with it. I figured that if I got tired near the end, I'd have enough of a head start to make up for it and would still be able to break my goal of 4 hours. There were pacers in yellow t-shirts with red flags bearing times on them - the idea being that if you ran along with them you'd finish when they did and be able to make your goal time that way - and I caught up to the 4-hour guy around mile 8. (He'd started before I had.) I blew by him and kept going.

Just before mile 13, the half-marathoners, who had started at the same time we had, veered off to the right towards the finish line. (See the course map here.) About 2/3 of the bouncing crowd of runners disappeared, as did the cheering spectators, who were far more interested in watching the finishers. We marathoners continued on in grim silence. I'd been running for roughly an hour and 52 minutes, still well on track to come in before the four-hour mark. I decided it was time to break out the mix of songs I'd loaded onto my Shuffle for some extra motivation, so I dug it out of my pocket. Good thing too, because around mile 15 I began to realize how tired I was. I'd swallowed a packet of HammerGel at mile 8, and I finished the second one somewhere around mile 17. I hadn't stopped for water yet, but I stopped three times between mile 16 and the end.

Curiously, the knee I'd been worried about hardly hurt. My right knee, however, which had been twinging a bit here and there, was slowly becoming incredibly painful. Every quarter mile or so I'd get a sharp stab of pain, sometimes fleeting and sometimes continuous. By mile 18 it ached consistently.

It's funny how quickly one can forget how much something hurts. I remember that I was miserable for about the last 8 miles, and that I was really, really miserable between miles 21 and 24, but looking back it somehow doesn't seem so bad. I made the conscious decision to start crying twice, but quickly abandoned the idea when I realized that the lump in my throat made it hard to breathe. My muscles were tired, obviously, but my knee was the biggest problem. I kept thinking that my 24-miler hadn't been nearly this bad, but then I remembered that I'd done the whole training run at an easy pace, whereas I'd stupidly started out this morning's run like a bat out of hell. At mile 20, when the songs on my playlist seemed to drag on for ten minutes each, I pulled out my headphones and stowed the Shuffle back in my pocket. The 4-hour pacer came upon me at mile 22, and a mile later I abandoned the idea of breaking 4 hours and watched him pull away from me and slowly disappear.

Mile 23 was the worst. And then, very suddenly, there was just a mile to go and that fact buoyed me enough that I felt some of the pressure had been taken off my knee. I finished at 4:05:38, disappointed, but relieved that I didn't have to run anymore. The pain in my knee increased tenfold as soon as I let myself really feel it, and it was a while before I was able to muster the mental energy required to collect my bag and head for the Metro station. Thank goodness they all have escalators.

Post race, looking happier than I felt.

I was almost too tired to shower, but I knew I should eat something and so I dragged myself through the process of getting cleaned up and dressed. I couldn't bend my right knee at all if I was standing on it, and so I limped around DC until Sunday, then limped onto the bus and back into New York. Now, on Tuesday, my limp is almost gone, although my knee is still a bit sore. My muscles, while still a bit sore, feel surprisingly ok.

I'm already looking forward to my next one, although I've yet to determine which one that will be. Wherever and whenever it is, you can bet I'll be pacing myself a lot better.

A Reading by Jumpha and Jonathan

I always seem to find out about readings by authors I like too late. In New York they are always going on at various bookstores, but I always read about them in a back issue of New York Magazine a week after they've happened. Manu, however, is more on the ball, and a whole week in advance he invited me to a joint reading by Jumpha Lahiri and Jonathan Franzen. Lahiri is perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection _The Interpreter of Maladies_ which I finished at 2:00 A.M. on an air mattress in Anthony and Jane's living room floor about a year and a half ago. Franzen wrote _The Corrections_, which won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. (I don't remember where I was when I finished it several years ago, but I find myself thinking about it a lot, which is the mark of any good piece of writing as far as I'm concerned.) I learned at the reading that he's also a prolific author of non-fiction, journalistic-type pieces.

The reading was a fundraiser for Lahiri's kids' school, the Waldorf School, in Brooklyn, a very new-age-y kind of place for wealthy families that has an unconventional instructional approach and organic everything. Apparently she's really involved in construction of a new library there. It took place in the auditorium of The New School, which I'd never visited before. After a late start, a very nervous moderator, apparently also and author and parent at the school, introduced the authors and babbled for a while about how much time they'd all put into discussing and planning the event. Based on his struggles to lead discussion later, it didn't really show.

Lahiri read first, two sections of a new novel she's working on. She didn't tell us the name, probably because it most likely doesn't have one yet. For a change, it's about an Indian kid in the Northeast... Of course it was beautifully written in a very elegant, understated way. Actually, that phrase describes Lahiri herself quite well. She has a soft voice and a shy, serious demeanor. Next, Franzen boisterously read a non-fiction piece called "Emptying the Skies" about illegal songbird hunting around the Mediterranean, which appeared in The New Yorker in July of 2010. It was funny and exciting and fascinating all at once. Lahiri is, very obviously, a splendidly accomplished writer, but Franzen can make your jaw drop. I'm often nervous about whether authors I meet will live up to my expectations; I want them to be delightful people, when often the antisocial, too-introspective, socially awkward types are the ones who have the inclination toward literature. Franzen was exactly the way I wanted him to be: sharp, witty, insightful. I'd like to have a martini with him.


After the reading, the moderator inexpertly led a discussion, which started off with a series of statements that kept dead-ending when he realized that they weren't going to lead to questions. Franzen pointed out that both he and Jumpha were more than capable of interacting with the audience if they'd only be provided with something to answer. The audience had passed in a fair number of index cards with questions on them, but the moderator largely ignored them. When he was finally able to stagger out a rather uninteresting question about geography, both authors jumped on it and discussed it at length - anything to prevent the mic from being passed back to the moderator, it seemed. Lahiri spoke about the way that, for her, people define a place more than the place itself does. The daughter of immigrants, Lahiri's cohort served as a more significant atlas than the geographical location. She also talked about setting a story in an Italian village she'd never visited, based entirely on a tourism video she got her hands on. Years later, she found herself visiting the village and taking copious notes, even though the story was already published.

Franzen spoke about the role of research. Surprisingly, he feels facts are confining for a writer of fiction, and he'd much rather write things they way they seem like they should be. (One of the protagonists in _The Corrections_ has Parkinson's, so I was surprised to hear that Franzen eschews research, since he must have had to do a lot of it to follow Alfred through his deterioration.) On other hand, he said one has to pick facts that speak loudly when one is writing non-fiction, since the piece is essentially a series of facts cobbled together. I'd always heard that authors love research, but I guess I tend to read about research only after I finish a work of historical fiction, and obviously authors drawn to that genre are going to have a propensity for it.

Now that my copy is signed, I refuse to read it. I just checked one out from the library.

After the reading, we stood in a long line to get books autographed, then went to a hip restaurant not too far away for a decadent dinner with Manu's glamorous cousin and her entourage, which included her assistant, her co-jewelry designer, and a married Brazilian singer-songwriter-musician couple. Our final stop of the night was a Southern diner-cum-hip-hop lounge with retro album covers all over the walls and tables shaped like records. I can't say it really fit with the theme of the evening, but it was certainly a nice way to cap things off.

The Bigger They Are, the Harder They Fall

My assailant

If this is true, I'm colossal. Two Sundays ago, I was 3 miles into a very pleasant 12-mile run with Manu when, for reasons still unclear to me, I went flying, Superman-style, and landed on a metal subway grate. Although my  shoulder, hip, hands, and elbow took a beating, my left knee was the first to make impact and therefore got the worst of the fall. By the time I had hobbled over to some nearby steps and worked up the guts to roll back the my tights to actually look at it, it was already puffing up, and the parts that weren't bloody were taking on a striking shade of indigo.

After I got my breath back, I was annoyed, and insisted that I could probably keep going. "Oh yeah?" asked Manu, who was doing a masterful job of keeping a straight face as sympathy and amusement battled behind his calm exterior. "Run to that wall." Huffily, I stood up and took off running. This lasted for exactly two steps, when, to the enjoyment of a nearby group of tourists, I set my left foot down and nearly fell again.

I insisted that Manu go on without me - no point in ruining the run for both of us - so he escorted me to street in a manner that put me in mind of a retirement home nurse. He flagged down a cab for me, threw me a twenty-dollar bill, and continued on his way. (Had I been alone, I'd have been in quite a pickle, as I never carry cash or even a Metro card with me when I run.) I limped from the cab to his nearby apartment, where his roommate's brother, a 4th-year medical student bound for the ER, very professionally wrapped a few ice packs in paper towels and applied them to my various injuries, all the while not breathing a word about what a klutz I was. Manu's roommate kindly asked me if I needed one more ice pack for my bruised ego.

Kneecaps #1 and #2

While the incident was, obviously, annoying, particularly when you consider that there are four flights of stairs between my apartment and the rest of the city, I mostly found it amusing. It's slightly less so now, with four days between me and the National Marathon and what looks like a second knee cap stubbornly refusing to go disappear. My dad told me in an over-the-phone diagnosis that there really wasn't much I could do but wait for it to go away. (Bad.) However, he also said that, from my description, there wasn't really much I could do to cause further serious damage to it either. (Good. Sort of). I ran three tentative miles on it yesterday, and while it was achy throughout and is, perhaps, marginally more sore today than it was yesterday, it was definitely tolerable. So I plan to line up in the corral for the National Marathon on Saturday and see what happens. Donations of pre-race morphine will be accepted with gratitude.

Bluegrass in the Big City

Have I mentioned that I have absurdly interesting, talented friends? On Wednesday, I met up with Chris, and old college buddy, who as moved to New York to record and play bluegrass music. (Huh?) Ok, so he's had to pick up a few temp and tutoring jobs here and there to make ends meet, as well as pick up a third roommate, but he's loving his time here, and has introduced me to some great music venues. First it was Irish music on Sundays, and on Wednesday we went to the Grisly Pear near Washington Square for some fantastic bluegrass.

I discovered bluegrass sometime during college, and have been an on-and-off fan ever since. I'd only ever seen a few live performances, though, and this is one genre that shines brightest when great musicians get together to jam. This is exactly what happens at the Grisly Pear. We arrived early and got spots at a centrally located booth, and after about a beer and a half the musicians started to arrive, various cases in hand. They were mostly guitar players, but initially there were mandolins (how I love the mandolin!), a banjo, a harmonica, a bass, and a dobro (I'd always thought it was called a steel guitar, but Chris kept using this term for it), and more musicians showed up throughout the night.

The musicians stood in a circle around a few tables that had been pushed together to hold their various beverages. They played pretty consistently for several hours, and were still going strong when I left. Sometimes one or another of them would drift away to chat with someone or have a smoke outside, and the gap in the circle would close until he reappeared again. They went around the circle, taking turns doing lead vocals or instrumental solos, with everyone else joining in with effortless harmonies from time to time.

A picture that I wish I'd taken from The New York Times. Uncle Sheriff Bob is near the middle, wearing his straw hat.

The best character, by far, was Uncle Sheriff Bob, a man in his 70's who showed up in a battered straw cowboy hat and a leather vest that had a sheriff's star pinned to the front and "Sheriff of Good Times" embroidered on the back. He came and chatted with Chris for a while, then proudly pulled out a battered article (read it here) about the group's jam sessions that had appeared in The New York Times a few weeks before. We congratulated him. Chris joined in for a few songs while I was there, and as soon as I left I'm sure he was back up again. The talent in the room was staggering, and the atmosphere, with the dim lighting and acoustic music wending its way through the appreciative audience, was at once electrifying and soothing. I felt as though I'd been transported out of New York.

Job Search (and Search and Search and Search)

Dear Fate,

I thought I played this right. I went to grad school right when the market was at its worst and jobs were supposed to be scarcest, particularly for government jobs because of tightening state budgets. I wasn't looking for a job during the worst of the recession; I used that time to get another credential and therefore improve my chances of being hired to teach...somewhere. Now the economy is picking up (according the most recent issue of The Economist, anyway), and I've graduated from a top-notch school. So how come you seem to be conspiring against me?

Let's start with the hiring freeze. Seriously? The New York public school district supposedly isn't hiring anyone (although I hear they're making occasional exceptions for special ed. and ELL teachers), and on top of that, I hear that they plan to lay off 6,000 teachers this spring. SIX THOUSAND. The upshot is that competition for charter schools and independent schools is brutal. Everyone wants to teach in NYC, and everyone wants to teach English. Yeah, yeah, I've got the reading specialist degree to give me an edge, but at this point I'm not sure it's enough.

I've attended two recruitment fairs in the last few days, both through Columbia. One was specifically for charter schools and one was a more general K-12 fair with charters, independent schools, and out-of-city/state districts. They were essentially huge rooms filled with tables manned by representatives from different schools snagging passers-by with varying levels of enthusiasm. Most of them had stacks of glossy brochures that must have cost a fortune to print, and some of them even had personalized tote bags, water bottles, mints, pens, and mini bottles of hand sanitizer to give out alongside the standard bowls of candy. (Most people, myself included, seemed too intimidated to stock up on all the free loot, though.) They were happy to answer questions and would take resumes, but the litany was the same virtually everywhere that I stopped: Fill out our online application. My biggest accomplishment was collecting a giant stack of brochures for anywhere and everywhere I thought might possibly lead to a job for the fall. Next step: carpet bomb New York with my resume and hope for the best.

You haven't been entirely cruel, Fate (or maybe you're just toying with me). I have two phone interviews scheduled, one this week and one next week. Friends have told me that most schools ask you to come in and teach a demo lesson to a room full of kids you've never seen before if the interview goes well. I hate being observed, and I hate the idea of trying to teach a lesson on a random topic to kids who were studying something different yesterday and really don't owe me a thing. But that's the way it goes, and it's a bit depressing that the chance to teach one of these lessons is my immediate goal since it will lead to employment.

Look, Fate, I know you've been kind to me in the past. My first teaching job fell into my lap, since I student taught at McGavock before they hired me, and I knew I had the job in the bag as soon as the principal proposed it to me. (Boy was that the best interview ever!) And let's not even talk about how great St. Paul's was. I have an OK gig going with the whole tutoring thing, but I'd love to get some more experience to build up my resume, to say nothing about making enough money to keep living in New York. I'm trying here. I really am. I spend about three hours a day filling out mind-numbing online applications. So how about smiling on me again? Please?

Sincerely yours,
Unlucky and Underemployed on the Upper West Side

Cooganized and Wet on a Sunday

(How's that for cryptic?)

The New York Road Runners, the organization through which I did all my half-marathons, puts on lots of races throughout the year, one of them being the New York marathon. I am dying to do the marathon. Alas, so is half the running world, meaning that if I enter the lottery it's extremely unlikely I'll be chosen and get to run it. Luckily, NYRR has this great deal called 9+1 that guarantees one entry in the marathon. If you register for 9 of their races and volunteer at 1 during the course of the year you get automatic entry into the marathon the following year. I've registered for two races in April so far, and on Sunday I volunteered at a race in Washington Heights called Coogan's Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5K. I have no idea where the salsa or blues come in, but one of the sponsors of the race owns a restaurant called Coogan's, in past years there was a live band (it rained this year, so perhaps that's why we didn't get to see one) which may account for the Blues, and St. Patrick's Day is sort of soon... Happily, my volunteer duties didn't involve explaining the title to anyone.

Volunteers. I'm 3rd from the left  - Sorry for the wet lens!

I worked coat check on Saturday night and didn't get to sleep until about 4:30 A.M., so you can imagine that when my alarm went off at 6:00 I wasn't too chipper. Brushing my teeth and getting dressed woke me up, though, and by the time a very grumpy Manu joined me on the uptown subway, I was wide awake and looking forward to the race. I'd signed up for the post-race hydration and nutrition station. Decked out in stylish neon orange mesh vests with reflectors, a group of about six of us headed off to fill hundreds paper cups halfway with water. I chatted with a middle-aged man who said he'd been volunteering with NYRR for years. He lives in Brooklyn and had cheerfully risen at 4:00 that morning to make it to the race on time. He knew everyone who walked by, it seemed, and said that Fred Lebow himself had persuaded him to get into running years before, although he preferred shorter races and had never done a half- or full marathon. (See below for information about the legendary Fred Lebow.)

Buff starters

We were soon pulled away from the water tables for guard duty at the starting corrals to ensure that people lined up according to the numbers on their bibs. I immediately volunteered to monitor the competitive runners' section, meaning that I wasn't supposed to let anyone past whose number was higher than 100. I was excited to check out all of the fleetest of the fleet, but first I had 25 minutes to wait. Twenty-five drizzly, chilly minutes, as it had started to rain right about the time I left the water tables. A miserable 15 minutes followed during which I lost touch with my toes one by one. An emcee made announcements no one really seemed to hear and kept asking the drifting crowds if they were ready to "get Cooganized." I watched the runners jealously as they jogged up and down, half to prepare for the race and half to stay warm. At last, the runners began to assemble in the corrals, and I discovered that the pre-race excitement I always feel before the gun isn't limited to the runners alone. I skipped to the side of the course seconds before the start, and watched the elite few in the front explode across the starting line.

As soon as most of the 7,000+ runners were on their way, a short-ish man in a hat with an accent shooed us to the center of the course, where we were supposed to ensure that outgoing runners stayed to our right and incoming runners headed back toward the finish line stayed to our left. It was pretty exciting watching the first two finishers blowing towards the end, neck and neck. No one broke the record that day, but the first-place finisher still wound up with a time somewhere around 14 minutes. I always enjoy watching races. It was interesting to see the differences between the stride lengths, energy levels, and body types of these runners from the people I see in half- and full marathons. They take huge steps, have much stronger finishing kicks, and tend to be bulkier and more muscular than the long distance runners.

I was originally supposed to have manned the fruit and bagel tables after the race was over - really, whose carbohydrate stores are so depleted after running three miles that they are in immediate need of a bagel? - but Hat-and-Accent Guy chased several of us across the finish line where we were supposed to keep people moving towards the water tables. Next, we broke down the metal barriers that had held the onlookers in place, emptied leftover water bins, and folded tables. It continued to rain on and off, but now that I was moving again it wasn't so bad. Finally, the kids' races started, and we got to watch tiny competitors zig-zagging their way along a short course until they reached the finish line, where a cadre of police were handing out huge medals. One little girl was leading her heat pretty handily until she crashed headlong into a traffic cone taller than she was and went sprawling. Whoops. The whole scene was hilarious. Shortly thereafter we handed in our vests and trudged back to the subway, which transported me to a hot shower and one of the most satisfying naps I can remember taking.

Competitors from last years kids' race, who look both adorable and very dry.

I always noticed that there were a lot of volunteers at NYRR events and enjoyed munching the post-race apples, but I never really appreciated how much work goes into coordinating these races. We put in a solid 4 hours, and that's not taking into account the work that went into ordering food and paper cups, arranging for t-shirts and medals, setting up and hauling away portable toilets and metal fencing, supervising the baggage drops, stopping traffic... The race entry fees I used to gripe about suddenly seem like a bargain.

Fred Lebow

Lebow, an immigrant to New York from Romania, was an avid runner and founder of the New York marathon. The first one had only 55 competitors and took place in 1970. While checking my facts just now, I was surprised to learn that he finished the first marathon in well over four hours; I guess I'd always assumed he was a bit more competitive than that. (Of course, the poor guy was almost 40 then, and that was in the days before Hammer Gel packets.) There's a statue of him monitoring his watch on the east side of the park which I run by nearly every time I go out. The statue is moved every year to the finish line of the marathon, however, so he can be present as the runners come across.

Facing East at the Tagore Gallery

On Friday night, Manu and I went to the opening of a new exhibit at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Chelsea. According to the webpage, the gallery is "devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures.... [and] focused on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that engage in spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues." All of the artists who had work on display had "deep roots in Asian culture," with the exception of one American guy who spent a lot of time living somewhere in Asia and studying Balinese music. There were going to be paintings, sculptures, photographs, and I wasn't sure what else, but I was excited about attending my first gallery opening.

This wasn't the set-up at the gallery, but it gives you an idea.

The first thing I noticed, before I even walked inside, were the gongs. There were three of them mounted above the entrance, and they seemed to be connected to some sort of mechanism that caused little padded mallets to whack them at intervals. It was a bit cacophonous, so I was relieved to get through the door, where I assumed I'd find a hushed, spacious series of rooms filled with people murmuring to each other occasionally as they gazed at paintings on walls. To my dismay, there were gongs everywhere, and they made such a racket that the mass of people packed into the small space were having to yell to make themselves heard. The din died down, however, as the intensity of the gongs waned; they seemed to be programmed to reach a crescendo occasionally, but in between the mallets didn't seem to bang as hard or as often, and the noise was actually quite pleasant when it was in the background instead of being center stage. I saw a guy in his late 20's wearing eyeliner and a maroon blazer with a swatch of kimono fabric sewn onto the back panel fiddling with the monitor that controlled the gongs. (This was Taylor Kuffner, the Balinese music protegee, apparently.)  

I liked some of the pieces on display. There were some tapestries that I wasn't wild about, and some interesting squares involving fading colors, which impressed both Manu and me until we decided that the artist had used an airbrush and were instantly disenchanted. On one wall, painted white, there were hundreds of white pieces of paper cut into identical wispy feather shapes and affixed directly onto the surface with straight pins to form a wavy sort of pattern. I didn't love it until someone walked by it and the feathers all rippled rather fetchingly. Manu particularly liked a series of photographs of bodies with cool designs superimposed over them. I liked a huge abstract waterfall done in black and white on two panels that occupied a back wall from floor to ceiling.


We were very literally cornered by Nhat Tran, an appropriately eccentric artist-type, when we wandered into a hallway with no outlet where one of her pieces hung. She asked us if we'd like to know more about it, and of course we said yes. We got a crash course in Urushi, a Japanese lacquer technique that she learned through a fellowship she won to study art in Japan. Apparently Urushi artists use sap from a particular tree that grows only in a certain part of Japan and can be collected only during the tree's 8th year of life - 7 is obviously too young, and 9 far too old. The sap must be mixed with pigments, and although it is very thick, it must be applied thinly. As it oxidizes (or something) the colors transform. She told us it took her about a year to produce the piece on the wall in front of us, a profusion of colored splotches covering a piece of wood about a foot high and three feet long. Goodness. Amusingly, after growing up in Vietnam and studying in Tokyo, she's set up a studio in Indianapolis, although she has not yet attended the Indy 500. She was tall for a Vietnamese woman, although I suspect she had some help from her heels, and had very long, elaborately curled hair and a slinky black cocktail dress with a Japanese-esque chrysanthemum pattern embroidered on it. She was quite exuberant, and after about five minutes of talking about her artistic training and commiserating with me about how small Tokyo apartments are, she began to gush about how beautiful I was and how handsome Manu was and insisted on taking a picture of the two of us posed in front of her piece (called, appropriately, "A Puzzling Statement"). Puzzled, we consented, posed, and said our farewells.

"A Puzzling Statement"

The artists and their work were obviously pretty fascinating to see, but my favorite part of the experience by far was the people-watching. I had dithered while dressing earlier that evening, not sure what one should wear to this sort of thing, but I saw as soon as I entered that my indecision was completely unnecessary. I could have closed my eyes, grabbed a hanger out of my closet at random and donned whatever was on it and I would have fit in perfectly. About half the people there wore jeans and sweaters or blazers and looked pretty average. The other were scattered somewhere along a scale between artsy and wacky. A woman in her 40's had thin colored feathers draped between locks of her hair but was otherwise normally dressed. A younger woman looked like blend between a salsa dancer and a mourner, her elaborate ruffles and layers all somber black. Feathers turned out to be not that unique an idea, because another woman turned up in a sequined tank top with a cardigan that reminded me powerfully of a butterfly net and a fountain of black and white feathers shooting upwards out of her hair and cascading down either side. My favorite patron, however, was a man in his 60's with a long-ish gray goatee and wild, mad-professor hair. His glasses had yellow tinted lenses and thick black rims, and his loose trousers were a faded brick red. He had on a white shirt, open at the collar, and set off by a brightly colored floral ascot tied jauntily around his neck, and he held an unlit, much-chewed cigar between the fingers of the hand that wasn't holding a glass of the free white wine available at the bar. (Did I mention there was free white wine? There was.)

Airbrushed?

Manu's dad had charged him with paying his respects to the man himself, Mr. Tagore, who owned the gallery. He is a short Indian man with salt-and-pepper hair and a luxuriant, jet black unibrow. We had to wait in a sort of informal line to get to him, and he and Manu chatted for about 90 seconds before he politely thanked us for coming, handed Manu his business card, and wandered off to mingle with some of the other patrons.

Although I was distracted from the art, which I'd thought was the whole point of the opening, I had a great time. Or maybe the art wasn't the point at all. Maybe it's about seeing and being seen, networking with other artsy types, and getting new ideas about fashionable uses for feathers. That and free wine.

Z!nk

Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. But when Manu got an invitation to go to the March cover release party for Z!nk magazine, I agreed to be his plus one without hesitation. I'd never been to a magazine cover release party, and I figured it would be worth seeing.

I was absolutely right. The party started at 10:00 on a Tuesday and ended at midnight. We arrived at the club (called 1OAK, for 1 Of A Kind...) half an hour late. There was a line to get in and we had to give our names, which were checked against the guest list before a security guard unhooked a red velvet rope to let us in. It was loud, dim, and absolutely packed inside. After checking our coats and bags for $4 an item (!) we squeezed up to the bar. Ally, Manu's friend, ordered a club soda and I ordered a vodka soda. The bartender yelled that my drink was free and that Ally's was $6, then added, in case we were wondering, that beer was $10 and all other drinks were $25. Ally realized that tap water was what she really wanted, and Manu decided that what I was drinking looked pretty good after all.

We ran into Lisa, Manu's friend who was responsible for the party, a few minutes later. She was able to demystify the drink prices - "We only gave them vodka," she explained - but Manu said she seemed stressed out and so we wandered away after paying her our compliments.

I was perfectly happy to just stare at the other party-goers, which was a good thing because conversation was nearly impossible over the music. Our companions were an interesting mixture of hipsters, fashionistas, run-of-the-mill night-clubbers, and people who looked like they'd just come from a costume party. A guy in a black fishnet shirt snuggled with a girl wearing a colorful turban in a booth. A blonde guy with a glittery star painted around his left eye posed for a picture with a girl in knee-high boots and a short faux-fur coat. We counted at least two pairs of sunglasses, a truly noble ode to fashion since it was so dim I could hardly see even without shades. Plaid hunting jackets and horn-rimmed glasses mingled comfortably with miniskirts and sequins. A true equal-opportunity party.

This is what 1OAK must have looked like before the party started.

We yelled back and forth for a bit, refreshed our drinks, and watched the colorful tights, open shirts, fedoras, and impossible platform heels surge around us. At one point a huge guy in a suit who looked like he worked security for Al Capone squeezed behind me on his way somewhere, putting his hands around my waist so that I thought for a minute he was going to lift me out of the way. "'Scuse me, baby," he said. I excused him.

The crowd started to thin just before midnight. I thought it was because the party was ending, but a visit to the bar revealed the real reason: the gratis vodka from the magazine had run out and the bar's normal drink prices were in effect. Time to leave. We collected our coats and collected cool canvas gift bags on the way out, which contained ridiculous plastic sunglasses, a fun bracelet, some pamphlets and coupons, and the March issue of the magazine. I can't say that I love Z!nk's style - it's a bit adventurous for me - but they throw one hell of a party.