Observing the Observer

I started volunteering at my local library about a month ago. I go there once a week and do assorted things in the archives department. Since I've never worked in a library before, it gives me a nice opportunity to get a bit of exposure to all sorts of different things. In addition, the people are nice, the "work" is fun, and it's a 3-minute walk from my house. Win win win situation.

Add one more win to the pile. Today I scanned through microfilm of newspapers from 1905 to look for obituaries and death notices. The department is trying to put together a database on this sort of thing for genealogists, local historians, etc. The trick here is that in 1905, back before computers did the dirty work of newspaper layout, the good people of the Hudson Observer had to figure out how to configure their paper by hand. It wasn't an easy job apparently, and there was always extra white space left at the end of the process. Solution: scatter the obituaries in the white spaces! Yes boys, it's disorganized and amateur looking, but it's also midnight.

103 years later I sat poring over each page, looking for the needles in the haystack. As a result, I skimmed most of the contents of the paper. They're fascinating, funny, revealing, etc. A few examples below:

File this under "reasons I'm glad to be living in the 21st century". Modern dental methods, eh? Pulling out all your teeth? Yikes.


This "Crank" article was on a page full of advertisements for the upcoming "marvelous hot air balloon festival" that was to be "a delight for all". What really got me though, is the subheading and its description of the hot air balloon as a "huge gas inflated silk bag." Silk bag! I love that. Maybe that's just me.


Wait... is the opening line a direct quote? Not something made up by a reporter who longed to live a life of drama and romance? Really? "I - I can't go on." I don't know... I'm having a hard time believing that someone from Jersey City actually said that. It seems like something someone would say in an Errol Flynn movie. There's a life and tenderness here though, that makes me wish I could have met these people. "The teachers dab their eyes suspiciously"... very sweet.


This little article falls under the "Women Talk About" section. Apparently women used to talk about useless knicknacks and attractive trifles.

Who wants to move to London?

Um, we do.

Has your boss ever come into you office on a Friday afternoon and asked this question? Oliver's did. Dangit all.

He came home that night and we let ourselves briefly indulge in fantasies of European living, fun accents and temperate climate. Not to mention adventure. The "somewhere else" that has always held us both in thrall.

We can't go, of course. I'm almost 1/3 of the way finished with school, and I'd like to see it through to 3/3. Oliver likes his co-workers and likes his current setup. We just moved here too; it feels like we moved here 10 minutes ago. There's no way we're going to just pick up and leave. Besides, we don't want to leave. We want to stay here for a number of years. Maybe get involved somehow, put down some root-ish things.

Still, the fantasy was a good one. After three solid days chained to my books and laptop (with no end in sight, I'd like to add), a walk along the Thames would be perfect.

Losing Focus / Refocusing

My first semester back in school is starting to come to a head, and I've got a weird pattern going on. When I'm not studying, I'm full of guilt over the fact that I'm not studying. This guilt keeps me from doing things like reading for fun, going to the movies, going for bike rides, cooking (don't do these things! You don't have time! You should be working on your term project!), but it's not powerful enough to keep me from mindlessly surfing the internet, watching episodes of the Daily Show online, and staring into space blankly for long periods of time.

Enough!

Today was different.

We went to Brooklyn to go check out the Gilbert and George exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Brooklyn has a great art museum, complete with The Dinner Party! For those of you who aren't big feminist art fans, The Dinner Party is probably the most well-known work of the movement. It's not a painting either; it's an enormous table set for 39 great women from across history. When I was in college and learning about this stuff the Dinner Party didn't have a permanent home, so no one could go see it. Imagine my surprise then, when I stumbled across it today. I dragged Oliver around the table, filling him in on Margaret Sanger, Georgia O'Keefe, and the value of textile art. Toward the end of our little tour, he looked at me seriously.


O: "These plates. The paintings on them. Do they all look like...?"

A: "You just noticed that?"

O: "So it was on purpose?"

A: snickers

I haven't been to an art museum for quite awhile, and it gave me a nice little charge. There's something about looking at things that are bursting with meaning! life! intensity! questions! that makes the little details of a given day seem more colorful, more important. We walked through Prospect Park and saw a tree that was completely barren but for one brach that was full of bright yellow leaves. We passed two guys on the sidewalk who were shadow boxing each other. An elderly couple sat on a bench and peeled a granny smith apple with a paring knife, letting the skins fall into a clear plastic bag. A guy in our subway car sat holding a full-sized surfboard.

Beats staring blankly into space. Oh wait...

Rock it, my fellow Americans!

I got up early today and voted (picture above: me at my polling place this morning - to show the grandkids someday). Woo hoo! Election day! I've been looking forward to this day for a long time, and the voting experience has left me feeling great. Oliver even came with me, and even though he couldn't vote (convicted felons never can), he still got to be a part of the experience.

There was so much energy in the air! People came out of the booths and slapped each other on the shoulders. There were a lot of smiles, giddy jokes, reports of lines down the block over in New York City. The security guard near the door kept saying she'd never seen lines like this before, and she was all smiles. What a feeling! To be part of something together, to know that the entire world is watching what we do today. I don't often get the chance to feel like I'm part of a community. I do today.

Woo hoo!

Ten Random Things

1. All the apartments in our building got new windows this weekend. The windows look great, but the construction left a thin layer of dust/street grit everywhere. Ick.

2. While on the train back from New Brunswick last week, I overheard a girl in her early 20s talking to her grandmother on the phone. Every once in awhile the girl would break/slip into this hard core Caribbean accent. The rest of the time she sounded just like me.

3. My high school reunion was a week ago and I didn't go. Am I part of what's wrong with the world today? You know, the whole disintigrating community thing? Or are the organizers of the reunion to blame, for holding a reunion not during Thanksgiving or Christmas?

4. I've been thinking about "my Matisse" lately - it's Matisse's Still Life With Sleeping Woman, 1940. It was my favorite painting at the National Gallery of Art, and I used to pop into the museum once in awhile just to take a look at it (free museums of DC, I miss you so). One of the days just before I moved, I went to the museum and sat in front of the painting for a good half hour. Good times.


5. I'm becoming a little obsessed with the election. Any magazine, newspaper or blog that comes my way gets quickly scanned for election-related articles. Said articles then devoured.

6. Oliver made chili twice in the last three weeks. The most recent batch was a triple - it's enormous. Why did I pass this recipe along to him? It's the same recipe we used to eat when I was a kid, and we'd have it constantly during the winter. (It froze well and reheated quickly, so my mom wouldn't have to slave in the kitchen on a hectic Wednesday night.) I always hated it. I hate all chili, actually. It's just not my thing. He made dinner though, and I'm grateful. He also eats whatever I make, whether he likes it or not. Still, does it have to be chili? Whine whine whine.

7. Did you know that an adult bedbug can survive without food for a year? Crazy.

8. When I was in college I had serious fantasies of becoming a hobo. Just drift. See.

9. I love squash and beets, but can never seem to cook either properly. Why cruel fate, why? The squash is always so nasty and stringy, and the beets are rock hard.

10. If I could travel anywhere in the world right now it would be: the Balkans.

A Nerd and Her Historic Homes...

... Never kept long apart. We spent a beautiful, crisp Sunday at Hyde Park, FDR's home. He was born there (literally, up on the second floor), he spent his childhood there, and he did quite a bit of "presidenting" from there during the Second World War. I'd heard about this place shortly before we moved to the area, and it appealed to the part of me that misses the Civil War battlefields and random historical spots of the greater DC area. (F. Scott Fitzgerald's Grave, anyone? Gettysburg? The Confederate White House?)

I've always been a little fascinated by FDR, and I loved ambling though the house, museum and presidential library. I saw his oval office desk; his bedroom, complete with strangely flamboyant Asian-style robe; and the cape he wore in those pictures you always see of him sitting between Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta conference. I was equally fascinated by the land. Quiet, tree filled, expansive but not ostentatious - no sculpture gardens or gilded fountains - I could picture him pulling up in his Ford Phaeton on a cold fall night, shaking off the stress of his Washington life and slipping into the house.

Library entrance. The lower level showcased his car, complete with a button that, when pushed, produced a lit cigarette. Niiiiice.

Oliver among the changing colors.

I think the sculptor made Eleanor look a bit like a muppet. For shame.

A view from the porch to the backyard


Looking out onto the Hudson River Valley

A Weekend and a Night

We had a wonderful weekend with our guests; showed them some places, learned about some new places ourselves. The more time I spend in the city, the more certain I grow that I know nothing about it. Gotta love that.

Saturday night saw us in our first New York nightlife hotspot. Shocking, no? A library school student and a guy who writes computer programs for fun hadn't hit up the clubs yet? Unbelievable, I know. There we were though, sipping our $15 martinis and looking sooo underdressed in our jeans and sneakers. It was one of those bars you'd expect to see in a Sex and the City knockoff, with clusters of 20 and 30-somethings strutting from door to bar to table. The women were impossibly (and fakely, no doubt) blonde and their dresses looked gorgeous and expensive. A swivel of my head took me from table to table in the dining area, where plates of food were picked at and glasses of wine sipped. A suave-looking dj mixed music in his little elevated booth.

At one point, some time after we had arrived, it struck me how fragile the whole scene seemed. How much money does it cost to keep a nightlife wardrobe up to date? How often do these people eat $40 dishes with $100 of drinks washing it all down? Are they all making salaries that can sustain this sort of life? Maybe, maybe not. And what happens if they lose those salaries? Could this have been my own glimpse into the Roaring '20s? A lifestyle that can't last? A regular Saturday night?