Done

It's over.  School is out.  My commute is finished.

Crab Legs

6:50 am, I'm walking down the sidewalk on 108th Street toward my car.  Beside a man and his three sons, all under 4 years old, are discussing garbage on the street.

"What's that?" one of his sons asks.

"Crab legs.  Someone must have had crab legs for dinner."

"What's that?"

"Divinus profundo frofui profusum"


"What's that?"

"The divine pouring fourth from the sea."


The father continued:  A crab swims in the ocean, a fisherman catches it, he brings it to shore, a fishmonger buys it and sells it, a chef cooks it, and man eats it -- and discards it.  And that's the cycle of life."

The boys were clearly perplexed.  I was amused.

And continued toward my car, past the dog poop, the candy wrappers, the garbage spilling from torn bags, and brown beer bottles still standing on a stoop.

Brain Lapse II

I lose my job and lose the ability to remember things.

The day I lost my job, I lost my glasses.  

A few days later, I forget to take my purse with me into the market -- and have to leave my collected items in the basket while I go out for my purse.

I leave the charger for my computer at our house in CT, not once, but twice.  The first time I drive up (120 miles round-trip) after my teaching is over for the day and get back in time for a faculty meeting.  The second time, I lug my computer down by subway to my daughter's office on 42nd Street, and she recharges it for me -- and then I'm very careful about using my computer for the rest of the week.

And last weekend I left my gradebook and folders of student papers up at the house, and had to leave home before 5 a.m. (was up at 4:30) to drive 90 miles up to our house in CT, retrieve the student papers and my gradebook, and drive 60 miles more to get to school by 7:45 -- but because of traffic coming down 684, I arrive just before 8.

Brain Lapse

Tuesday morning, the day after Memorial Day, I woke at 4:22 (somehow, that seems to be when I am waking on school mornings), got out of bed finally at 5:30, and was on my way by 6:15, thinking I'll get to school early and start grading papers.  I have at least a hundred papers to grade.

I opened the sunroof on the Volvo to let in the early morning smells:  pine, grass, foggy mist.  Every thing had a sheen of gray-green as I shot up the Sawmill River Parkway.  I was absorbed in the news of the Turkish ship commandeered by Israeli soldiers, the deaths of civilians, the videos made that showed both sides in the right.  I did not like that Israel had used live ammunition.  I did not like that a non-violent protester had sunk a knife into an Israeli soldier.  I did not like that Gazans are not getting in enough to live well.  I did not like rockets sent from Gaza into Israel.

And before I knew it, the road looked somewhat unfamiliar.  I looked for a sign -- and I was about to breeze past Katonah.  Katonah?  Exit 42?  That meant I'd driven 9 miles past my exit.  And not just past my exit, but past the exit for Mt. Kisco that followed my exit at Roaring Brook.  And another Mt. Kisco exit.  And the exit at Bedford Hills.  How did that happen?  Where was I?

I got off the parkway onto unfamiliar roads, and wended my way to Route 117 which wound its way past shopping malls and through Mt. Kisco's downtown to Chappaqua -- getting me to school about 20 minutes later than I had hoped to arrive.

I wondered -- was it that the news usually came on when I was about 10 miles south of exit 33 -- meaning that I still had 10 miles to go before my exit?  Was my mind just not on where I was and I was lost in the news and in my dreamy early morning thoughts, in particular -- how I dreaded going to work these days since I'd been "let go"?  My psychiatrist would have voted for the later -- saying there are no accidents.  Our brains do what they do because that is what we will -- consciously or not.

911

Driving down the Hudson River Parkway about 4 pm, I spot 3 boys in their school uniforms:  white shirts and dark slacks, hugging the cement berm at the side of the highway as cars whiz by at 50, 60 miles per hour.  There is no shoulder or extra lane.  I called 911.  Well, first I called 411, then realized my mistake and dialed 911.  A woman immediately answered.  Asked were the boys.  What direction was I traveling in.  Near what exit.  I told her I was nearing exit 14-15 near the George Washington Bridge, so they must be by exit 16 or 17.  She said a police car would be on its way.  I thanked her.

I do remember the day when you could call a business and get a voice, when you could say what you wanted and be done.  Now, it's so surprising to find a voice at the end of the line, to not have to push dozens of buttons to work your way through a menu before an "agent" finally answers.  I like 911.  I like that someone is there and that someone helps you right away.

No More Commute

I lost my job today.  The principal called me into his office to tell me that he was recommending Alex (not her name) for the position.  She is young.  She is beautiful.  I told the principal I had to go, that it was too painful to sit there.  I didn't want him to see me cry.

The drive home was a blur of green draping over the highway and billowing up on the surrounding hills.  I turned off the radio.  For once, I couldn't listen to the voices of npr or the music of wqrs.  I needed to hear the wind rushing through my windows on this 32 mile drive from my school in Chappaqua to my home in Manhattan.

Like the Eiffel Tower

In the morning, if my car is on 109th Street, I turn right on Broadway and drive north to 125th, where the subway comes up from the ground because there's an earthquake fault line that runs below Manhattan.  The elevated tracks remind me of the Eiffel Tower's massive steel lace.  Cars wait to turn left, past the BP station where Sikhs fill your car with gas, to a right on 12th Avenue past the Fairway and Dinosaur Barbeque, a left on 133rd Street past the Hudson River Cafe, and another right onto the Henry Hudson Parkway which travels along side the Hudson River, past the George Washington Bridge, across the Harlem River to Riverdale, up to the Sawmill River Parkway which begins in Yonkers.

Reader's Digest Flowers

7:10 a.m.:  Turning right from the Sawmill River Parkway onto Roaring Brook Road, I'm waiting in a line of traffic until the train passes through the intersection and the guard gates rise again.  I catch a glimpse of the orangey-red stripe of the red-wing blackbird in the green leafery of a tree.  I turn off NPR and an annoying report on Goldman Sachs and open my windows, hoping to hear the birds.  Indeed, there's the trill of ss ss ssss -- ss ss ssssss lingering, hanging in the air of morning just after a heavy rain.

Up ahead, Reader's Digest is abloom -- the front lawn bursting with yellow daffodils; fruit trees dabbed in pink and white.

4:13 p.m.:  Coming home down Roaring Brook Road, past Reader's Digest, making a left to cross the railroad tracks and make another left onto the Sawmill.  The red crossing lights started flashing and the gate blocking access to the railroad tracks came down -- on the roof of an SUV -- where it stayed.  I wondered why the driver didn't back up.  The driver behind the SUV backed up, as if to make room.  The train was coming.  It was clear that the train's width would, were it to sweep down the track, swipe off the grill of the SUV.  Instead, the train slowed to a stop.  The conductor signaled to the SUV to cross the tracks.  It did.  And then, at a few miles per hour, the train slowly passed by.  Then the gates rose again, and we were on our way.

To Citi Field for a Met Game

And from David, on his commute to Citi Field for a Met game:

I recently went to a corporate charity day to see the Mets at Citi Field.  I took the Number 7 train, the most convenient transportation from my office on an overcast day with a threat of drizzle.

 As the local rumbled from station to station, we emerged from the tunnel into bright sunlight.  I was enjoying the ride and looking forward to watching the ball game when cell phones appeared from everywhere.  Within two short stops, I was trapped in an international phone booth surrounded with oppressively loud conversations in Spanish, Russian, Chinese and a bit of Brooklynese.

I thought of a dozen ways to silence these obtrusive conversations but none without getting into an altercation, so I resigned myself to suffer through the rest of the trip.  Good fortune smiled upon the car as at the next stop the doors opened and a four-piece Mariacchi band appeared—replete with two big guitars, a large bass and an accordian.  They immediately broke into a great version of La Bamba much to the chagrin of the cell-phone conversationalists.  All calls quickly ended before the next stop, but  as soon as the band exited, re-dials were hit.

Lady luck smiled on us that day, as at the very next stop, an elderly woman entered and began playing a horrible version of La Cucaracha on an ocarina.  Cell phone conversations abruptly ended again and the rest of the ride was peacefully quite.  Some days, even bad music on a subway is a blessing.   

Sawmill Closes, Trees Bloom

Left early today to get to school early to finish putting in my grades for the 3rd quarter.  The time I should have gained was lost due to a vehicle fire on the Sawmill.  The parkway was closed at exit 27; we were routed onto the local roads in Thornwood where we wended our way along Route 117, through Pleasantville, left on Route 120 to Chappaqua. 

It's spring.  The broken trees, many of them splintered through their hulking trunks, lay with their skirts on the ground bursting with greenery.  All along the hills, tufts of green dress bare winter skeletons of trees -- or "sculpture without their leaves" as Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast. 

Coming down Broadway the meridian is abloom making small parks between lanes of traffic rushing north and south.  Suddenly, it's pleasant in the middle of Broadway to sit in the sun on a park bench, pastel tulips opening, pink trees flowering.

Yesterday we (my dog and I) walked across the park to the Central Park Conservancy at Fifth Avenue and 105th (about a 20 minute walk.)  There it was an olafactory feast.  The crab apple trees which line two parallel paths, were abloom with their pinky white flowers that smell like nothing else.  The lilac trees were in bloom.  The wisteria.  I go there to breathe in the smells. 

There was a crab apple tree in our back yard in Birmingham, Michigan that bloomed every year on my daughter's birthday, the smell so sweet you could cry.  There is a picture of Sari when she was 5 standing by the crab apple tree holding a branch of the tree.  She is wearing a blue dress that she loved and refused to let me pass down to her younger sister, so I framed that dress with the picture mounted on the dress (something I'd seen on the walls at the Museum of Modern Art).  So when I pass a crab apple tree in bloom, I always reach for a branch and bring it to my nose to sniff the smell of my daughter's youth.

Wisteria bloomed in purple bunches like grapes on an arbor along the side of my grandmother's garage on 7 Mile Road in Detroit.  Cars would stop and people would ask if they could photograph the side of her garage in full bloom.  I need to smell the wisteria, its sour-sweet scent -- and I am again with my grandmother at the side of her house, the cars whizzing by, warm lace cookies waiting inside.

Spontaneous Haiku

(written while teaching haikus to 9th and 10th graders):

March's cold winter rains
filling streets with black puddles:
a mirror of the sky.

Falling Trees

Six People Killed in Storm from Falling Trees

http://www.greenburghny.com/Cit-e-Access/news/archnews.cfm?NID=2354&TID=10&jump2=0

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/03/15/2010-03-15_untitled__2vics15m.html

Fallen Trees on the Sawmill

The Sawmill River Parkway is littered with fallen trees.

Too many to count.  Hundreds fallen into the road or beside the road.  Some lay uprooted, their tangle of roots exposed.  Some lay chopped into two, three foot diameter logs.  Others lay in a tangle of branches, like strands of unwashed, unkempt hair.  Others like brooms, their webs of extended branches reaching out.

And those white birches that didn't snap remain bowed, bent into an unnatural arch, like a ballerina taking a bow.  They remind me of Robert Frost's poem, Birches:

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.


Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
            

And a week after the storm, water overflowed from tributaries reaches the road just north of Thornwood.

Daylight Savings Time

Last week my commute was in daylight.  This week, my commute will be in the dark.  The effects of Daylight Savings Time on early commuters.  Now, people crossing streets in dark coats in mid-block are hard to see.  Last week buildings on the Jersey side of the Hudson were bathed in orange light.  This week they are dark shadows. 

Daylight savings time did not cause the closures on the Sawmill River Parkway.  The weekend storm did.  Roads were flooded and blocked.  Traffic was rerouted to 9A in Hastings where we drove along side cemetaries and warehouses, the narrow river's waters spreading from highway to roadway.  Once back on the Sawmill, mud and silt from the overflowing waters crept onto the asphalt.  There were fallen limbs and piled scraps of evergreens along the road's shoulder.  We were re-routed again at the Taconic, taking that north to route 117 which winds through Pleasantville and up into Chappaqua. 

What is normally a 40 minute commute turned into an 80 minute commute.

Storm Damage

Now I know why the Sawmill River Parkway is called "the Sawmill."  Trees snapped under the weight of the snow during the last storm, and along the sides of the road lie broken branches, sawed trunks.  Perhaps the Sawmill River was indeed where sawed and fallen trees were floated to a Sawmill.  Otherwise, one must assume the passage forms a wind tunnel, funneling high velocity winds that knock over and split trees along the way.   Some split half way looked like ducks squawking with gaping mouths of freshly exposed wood.

Stopping for Gas

I hate stopping for gas.  I hate cutting my speed, taking an extra five minutes to get whereever I 'm going, pull into a station, stop the car in front of a pump, find the un-lock switch for the little door to the gas tank, swipe my credit card, stretch the hose, insert the nozzle, and depress the metalic trigger that releases gas into the car.  (I do like the smell of gas, but I know I shouldn't breathe the fumes.)  I hate waiting for the tank to fill.  Now that gas is around $3 a gallon, more numbers have to swirl around, and around before the pump snaps off.  And I really hate when a stupid video ad plays and I watch it.

With the Prius, we don't have to stop as often.  We can go almost 500 miles on about 10 gallons.  (In the winter, the tank shrinks, so we've been told, and the car goes about 350 miles on 7 or 8 gallons.)   But with the dependable Volvo, we travel  about 350 miles on 16 gallons.  With a 70 mile drive each day, that's five round trips.  Plus, the Volvo has over 125,000 miles on it, and we want to preserve the car, so it's the one usually left at the train station.

Tonight, leaving an in-service just after 7 pm, almost 13 hours since I'd left this morning, I knew I'd need to stop for gas, and I didn't want to.  I was hungry.  But if I drove the 35 miles to the city and back up, I'd probably run out of gas.  Should I stop along the way?  Should I wait to get into the city and fill up in Harlem on 125th Street?  Or should I wait until morning?  I stopped in Thornwood -- about 8 miles south of Chappaqua.   The Volvo took over 13 gallons and I paid more than $40.

A Haagan Das ice cream freezer rimmed in waffles of gold stood outside the station's convenience store.  Dinner.  Yes.  A chocolate covered ice cream bar to nibble as I drive away.

A Berm of Ice and Snow

So last night I tried to get into my car and it was surrounded by a berm of ice and snow and dirt hardened like cement.  Plows had pushed a wall of frozen snow flush against the car.  Neither front door had enough could open.  I had to climb over the icy embankment and crawl in through the back door (that only opened about a foot).  The Volvo started right away, and true to its Swedish roots, pulled out over chunks of gritty snow and into the street.

Up the street in the pale light of 6:30 am, was a car barricaded by the remains of melted and refrozen snow.  To free his car (alternate side parking rules were again in effect) a white bearded man chipped his shovel into what looked like a cement block, the kind used to protect buildings from terrorists or divide highway lanes during construction.

Subway Posting

Sign on the attendant's booth at the #1 train 23rd St. Subway stop.

Back to the Street--and Snow

We moved the car from the garage on Saturday. Charges for not having to dig out our car:  $30.  Plus $9.99 for the shovel we picked up at Duane Reade.  Not bad. Next, the challenge of finding a parking place we didn't have to shovel much to get into.  We found one on our street on the Tuesday/Friday side.  A little digging, and I could back my car into the snowbound space, angled out -- for a quick escape at 6:20 on Monday.  Only, luck would have it that school was canceled again today -- due to storm damage (which is bad luck for those who lost electricity or had tree limbs fall on their homes).  And because the car was in a Tues/Fri spot, I didn't have to worry about moving it this morning.

Snow Day!!!

Snow Day!!!  And yes, parking in the garage was the right decision.

Cars were covered by at least a foot of snow, and according to Jorge, found on Riverside Drive shoveling out his car for his reverse commute to Yonkers, he'd been digging out his car for at least 45 minutes.

On the way to Riverside Park to walk our schnoodle, we passed a buried Prius.  

And a neighbor walking her dog, 

and an M-5 bus making its way up Riverside Drive.

The park was glorious!

.

To Park on the Street or Not to Park on the Street

To park on the street or not to park on the street.  Generally, we park on the street.  It's not too hard to find a parking place on our street in front of one of the schools where parking is permitted from 4 pm until 7 am.  Usually I'm delighted when it snows because we can leave our cars parked for days (not in front of the school) when alternate side parking restrictions are lifted.  Then I take care to park on Riverside Drive -- where I'm sure I'm not in a school spot and sure I won't have to move my car before 7 am.

Today school was dismissed early because of snow.  Our last three 80 minute classes were cut to 45 and we all went home at 11:30 am.  Woo Hoo!!!  I traded the Prius (not good on ice or in snow) for the Volvo parked in the middle school lot across from the train station.  The wiper blade became detached because of all the snow and I had to stop before getting on the parkway to clean the front window and re-attach the side-swiping blade.  One one car accident on the Saw Mill -- a huge SUV spun around down a hill off the side of the road.  The snow was heavy and wet;  The road slushy and slippery.

I had to decide whether to leave the car on Riverside Drive where it was sure to get covered by a foot of snow and get plowed in by another three feet when the plows went through or put it in a garage down the street for $15 a night.  In the end, it was a no brainer.  I didn't want to be shoveling out heavy, wet, icy snow two or three days from now.  What a relief to pull into a garage.  What a luxury!  And on my way home there was a neighbor shoveling out her car, moving shovelful after shovelful of white weight from street to sidewalk.

My only concern was that we wouldn't have a snow day tomorrow -- that I'd have to call the garage at 6 am to have them pull my car out.  The call came at almost 10 pm.  A snow day tomorrow!!!!  And outside our window, Broadway is white.  And the cars parked on 109th are covered in white and blocked up to the top of their hubcaps with a berm of white pushed there by city plows.  And we're still expecting another 6-12 inches tonight.

Check out the story in the New York Times.

A Dog Story

This is not quite a commuting story, more of a dog walking story.  In Riverside Park I met Annie and her fluffy beigeish dog, Picca.  We walked from the park where Picca had been sitting for a very long time gazing at a tree, hoping for a squirrel sighting, to Lenscrafters at 107th and Broadway.  Just as Annie and I were saying good-bye, a man in a leather jacket turned to ask if that was Annie's dollar bill on the sidewalk.  She said no, and asked me.  I said no.  Then she asked another woman walking down the street if it were her dollar.  She checked her zippered silver clutch and said no.  Suddenly, there was a second dollar bill.  And a five.  "Dollars from Heaven" does not have the same mellifluous sound as "Pennies from Heaven," none-the-less, that is exactly what three green wing-like bills landing on the sidewalk appeared to be.  The man again suggested the money must belong to one of us.  And so we picked up the bills, handed the five to the woman with the silver clutch and divided the two singles between us.

Snowy Road, Icy Road

It was a HORRIBLE drive to school today -- it started snowing as I left Manhattan -- thinking this is a Monet painting -- gorgeous muted blues looking across the Hudson to NJ -- Then it snowed harder and harder until when I got up here there were HUGE quarter sized flakes -- still beautiful, floating down.

The roads up here have at least an inch of snow and the streets are ice. There were at least 7-8 accidents along the Sawmill -- cars spun around, literally upended onto their sides, awful, awful. Icy roads -- and during the climb up the hill past Readers' Digest to school, I thought my car would slide backwards; my wheels were spinning -- so I pulled as far to the right as I could into snow so I'd get some traction. Student cars tailgaiting so I put on my flashers.

Then, coming around the corner of our lot toward where I park, my car wouldn't stop on the downward slope, my automatic brakes pulsing, and not knowing whether to pump the brakes or not (I did) and I thinking my car will fly off the hill into the ravine where the train passes (not that I thought my car would get down that far) -- but I thought, My god, I'll flip, I'll crash into a tree. Then my brakes grabbed, I made the turn -- and thought, well, if I can't stop, maybe the rusty gard rail will stop me and maybe it won't. Whew. I'm here. But it wasn't easy. An hour to arrive (rather than the normal 40-45 minutes) -- which wasn't too bad.

Nesting Mice and Rats

Today I took my Volvo in for an oil change. The car is usually parked in the middle school lot across the street from the train station. The oil change technician called me over to the open hood. "Look," he said. On top of the engine block was what looked like pillow stuffing or thick ribbons of insulation. There were scattered acorn halves, holes gnawed through the caps. A hole had been gnawed in the insulation under the hood. "Mice," the attendant suggested, and he swept up the heaping nest in his gloved hand. Field mice living in the athletic fields around the parking lot, he suggested, climbed into the car for warmth.

Last week, our other car, a Prius, went into the Toyota dealership for its regular oil change. The technician called to say there would be an additional $300 charge to clean up the mess left by rats -- including chicken bones, excrement, and whatever else rats hoard. "Do you park by a dump?" the attendant wanted to know. No. Just on the street off Broadway on the Upper West Side. (This had not ever happened when we parked on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side.)

Rain and Rerouting

Rain came down (?) horizontally today -- 40 mile an hour winds made teeming rain look like snow. The train between North White Plains was not running because a tree fell over the tracks. A tree had fallen by Chappaqua's Community Education building on Roaring Brook Road, causing the building to close because of fallen electric lines. I checked traffic.com several times before leaving the school, and each time I checked, was routed a different way, zigzagging all over Westchester County, the Bronx, and Manhattan. The ride home --with the sun trying to come out -- was like running maze: getting off the Saw Mill (because traffic was stopped for either a fallen tree or a flood), shooting over on 117 to the Taconic, getting back on the Saw Mill and squeezing into a single lane at McLean Blvd in Yonkers and again under a Riverdale bridge because of brown flood waters spreading across the parkway.

Hailing the M-60

I had heard you could hail a bus after 10 pm and before 6 am.

This morning, in the dark at 5:30, I ducked under the lowered security grate into Absolute Bagels on Broadway at 108 to pick up three dozen hot bagels for my classes. Coming out at 5:35, the M60 came barreling up Broadway. I stepped between two parked cars and stuck out my hand -- two blocks in either direction from the official bus stops at 106th and 110th.

It stopped!

I boarded, swiping my card for the $2.25 ride to the Harlem-125th Street train station. Delighted, I asked the driver "Until what time would the bus stop mid block?" He said for 20 more minutes. You can indeed hail a big MTA bus as if it were a cab. And the bagels kept my feet all the way to the train station.