Saturday reflections

That sky made a perfect backdrop for these reflections on Broadway.

I took my class on a field trip to the New York Historical Society today, and after eight straight rainy Saturdays, it was sunny and unseasonably warm today and we were able to have our lunch pizza in Central Park.

It was a lovely day, and I have been in my pajamas since approximately thirty seconds after I got home.

Urban poetry

I am better, but still struggling to catch up on all the daily chores that got put on hold while I was out of action. So I haven't posted much.

Here are two pictures from earlier this month, of Gansevoort Peninsula. It's the latest of the old piers on the Hudson to be repurposed for recreation, but instead of a park, they built a beach. You can't swim, but there's sand, and rocks for the river water to lap against with appropriately beachy sounds.

It's a little surreal, which I think these photos capture. Especially because although it was unseasonably warm the day I was there, it was still October!

Orthopedic update

I know my ribs are slowly healing because now when I attempt to get out of bed in the morning I whimper instead of yelp.

But it's no coincidence that my favorite earworm of the past week and a half is this song.

Astronomy Tuesday

This spooky image is much closer to home than the ones I usually post, but not something I've ever seen before.

Red sprite lightning occurs in the upper atmosphere at a range of 50 to 90 km, far higher than the storm clouds that create the more garden variety lightning that accompanies thunderstorms. Sprites aren't actually lightning at all, but a kind of atmospheric plasma.

This image, from France, was captured as a single frame from a video. In the next frame, the sprites had already disappeared.

Image Credit and Copyright: Nicolas Escurat

Saturday reflections

Rows of converging reflections in Midtown Manhattan.

I managed to teach today despite my banged-up rib cage, but I have been basically horizontal ever since I got home, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is allegedly MyCn 18, the Engraved Hourglass Planetary Nebula, but I'm not completely convinced that it isn't a practical joke or something generated by AI. The giant blue eye in the middle of the image is—unnerving, to put it mildly. But if I were going to invent a nebula, I wouldn't use both pink and orange.

Image Credit and Copyright: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Processing and Copyright: Harshwardhan Pathak

Sunday bird blogging

A catbird in 6BC, a garden on Sixth Street in the East Village.

Saturday reflections

More reflections on 34th Street. 

I had a really good class today, enjoying being back in person after last week's Zoom teaching, and I stopped to pick up a few groceries on the way home. Then I managed not only to trip and fall when I stepped off the curb, but to bang into a flexible post marking off the bike lane on my way down and slam it to the ground with my chest. 

No serious damage done, fortunately, but I am sore. Everywhere. Also, although actual New Yorkers are nothing like their scary reputation for indifference and cold-heartedness, by the time the eighth or ninth person had joined the crowd around me and asked if I was all right, I would have preferred a lot less attention.

I was very grateful for their many helping hands when I was trying to get my ass up off the asphalt though.

Urban poetry

A church in the East Village that is obviously still awaiting renovation. But I love that sky.

Blast from the past

This is a three-bedroom condo in San Francisco that recently sold for $1.2 million dollars. I like the way it's designed and I used to know the neighborhood very well because I lived there for most of my childhood.

In that very same flat. That is now a million-dollar condo.

This is a picture of me doing homework in what was then the kitchen and is now the living room; the window behind me is the same window in the corner in the modern photo.

Obviously old buildings get renovated, especially if they're in a city like San Francisco where the real estate is even more insanely valued than Manhattan. But that's not what made these new pictures such a gut punch for me. Although this flat was always kind of a dump, by the time we moved out it would have been a compliment to call it a slum. It's been the setting for a hundred nightmares that would make Stephen King wake up screaming, and now it looks so—nice.

I shouldn't be shocked that it's been renovated; I've undergone a few renovations myself since the years when that was my home. But I wouldn't spend a night there for $1.2 million dollars.

Bonus reflections

A detail from the previous image, like a small abstract art piece.