Blog Toy: How Much Cussing on Hyphoid Logic?

Alerted by Respectful Insolence, I was curious to try out this little blog toy that tells you how many "dirty words" are to be found at a given website. On the average, about 9% of the pages on a site contain swear words. Here at Hyphoid Logic, though, I aim for a greater level of honesty:

179% more "cussing" than the average website and a college reading level? Well damn!

It's not that I set out to use offensive language, of course, but there are some instances in which I find that only the most visceral language will do. When describing something deeply offensive, I feel it's appropriate to use words that others might find offensive but that I find cathartic and, most importantly, accurate. Bullshit is bullshit, for instance. Sometimes, "nonsense" and even my favorite word for such things, "codswallop," simply don't rise to the task of conveying my feelings about something truly noxious.

Language can be a funny thing. Where I grew up and learned to speak — Brooklyn — anybody who became flustered at the liberal application of words like "bullshit" or the intermittent dropping of "f-bombs" would have been viewed as rather snotty and fey, and probably putting on airs. I try not to do that here because hey, this is my own little echo-chamber, after all. In my Grand Unifying Blogosophy, a blog is a thing that should offer an honest extension of the workings of one's mind. However much research I do and however much I learn and however many American subcultures I may move through in the course of my life, the inmost core of my being will always be tied to the streets of Coney Island.

You got a problem widdat?

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Birthday Weekend in New York

I'm back from a wonderful weekend in New York City courtesy of LL. This birthday turned out to be perhaps the best ever, though I've had enough of them now that it's beginning to get hard to remember them all. Still, returning to the city of my birth and places I (mis)spent my youth for the first time in so long was the best anyone could ask for. I made it a point not to spend any time online, so those who left comments will understand the delay in getting them posted and regular readers will forgive the lack of updates since Friday. This one entry will make up for all of that, though.

I'll break it all down by day for ease of writing, because there's a lot to cover.

Friday, Feb. 29
We arrived at our hotel, the Diplomat Motor Inn in Rockville Centre, at about 1:30 PM. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, we headed straight back out the door and drove to All American Burger in Massapequa. Back in my days as a teenage burnout on Long Island, I spent a lot of inebriated hours hanging out in the parking lot of this place scarfing down ridiculous numbers of their so-bad-they're-amazing hamburgers. My poison-of-choice was the double-double, which is what a double cheeseburger is called by the locals, contrary to the menu on the website. LL and I each got one and they were exactly as I remembered. LL was somewhat less than impressed, and I guess it's an acquired taste. Imagine an oversized White Castle burger and you've got the idea. For me, anyhow, this was an absolutely necessary bit of nostalgia. For LL, it was an experience akin to a root canal, I think.

When we were done eating, we headed to the neighborhood in which I lived. First, we headed over to the high school from which I graduated. It hasn't changed much, at least not from the outside. The kids still look the same, right down to a sprinkling of those who seem reluctant to let go of the heavy metal look I remember from the 80's. Yes, the big hair is still there. We next cruised past my parents' house which is now covered by bright yellow aluminum siding and entirely devoid of trees. A large silver SUV was parked in the driveway; I've no idea who lives there now. Our last stop in Massapequa was Pine Street Park, where I was once knocked unconscious with a beer bottle to the back of my head by a well-meaning friend who was trying to help me meet a girl we who was hanging out with us in the park that night. The knocking-out part worked fine, but I never did get a date with her. Ah, memories and the blank bits between them.

We took a drive around town past the former homes of people I used to know and then were done with Massapequa. On the way out of town, we stopped off at the Sunrise Mall (now Westfield Sunrise) to pick up a few things we needed, including a new hat for me. The mall no longer contains a movie theater, though there is a full-sized Wal-Mart there. Wal-Mart is everywhere.

A side trip to Amityville was necessary, too, so that LL could say she's seen the house upon which The Amityville Horror is based. People still live there (without any voices telling them to get out, I might add), and they've had a lot of trouble with trespassers taking photos of the place in the past, so I didn't do it myself. We just drove by. The address of the house has been changed and the distinctive Dutch windows removed to help discourage tourists such as myself, but being a local I still know which house it is. No, I'm not going to tell.

A little more driving around ensued and then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. LL tried to find someplace using her laptop, but we discovered that our room didn't have a wireless connection. The only rooms that have wireless at the Diplomat, it turns out, are those right next to the lobby, so management offered us a deluxe room with a jacuzzi and we decided to take it. It was right above the lobby and came with a complimentary bottle of Sambuca di Amore and two shotglasses. How could we say no? We were completely exhausted by this point, so we decided to have dinner at the TGI Friday next to the hotel. I had a large and potent scotch and soda while we waited for our table. Needless to say I was ready for bed by the time we'd finished, and that was it for Friday night.

Saturday, March 1
We set out early for Brooklyn. The plan was to take the Long Island Railroad from Baldwin to Jamaica, then change to the subway and get to Flatbush and DeKalb for breakfast at Junior's. That didn't work; someone had either jumped or been pushed in front of a train at Jamaica. Either way, the train we needed wasn't going to be running for hours to come. We turned around and got the car and drove to Junior's instead. It was 11:30 by the time we got there, having been lucky enough to not only survive driving on the Belt Parkway but to find a parking spot right within a few yards of the door as well. If you've ever tried to find a parking spot near Junior's on a Saturday morning, you know how close to miraculous this was.

The last time I had breakfast at Junior's, I was with my long-deceased grandfather. I haven't been back since he died, but I still remember the place vividly. It was a tradition; whenever I was at my grandparents' place on a Saturday, we had breakfast a Junior's. It hasn't changed a bit, even though the place caught fire in 1991. I ordered Scotch kippers with eggs and onions and LL had corned beef hash with poached eggs. Someone told me a couple of years ago that breakfast no longer came with an assortment of mini-danishes and rolls. They were wrong; that still happens. I bit into a Junior's prune danish for the first time in a generation and it was every bit as good as I remembered it. That taste brought back so many memories of my grandfather that it was all I could do not to start crying right there in the middle of a busy restaurant. Who would have thought that a prune danish could do that? It did, though. All of breakfast was that good and that memory-laden. Junior's was also the last place, and still the only place, I'd ever had kippers.

I needed to pick up some mints after breakfast; few things make for horrible breath moreso than kippers and onions. I crossed the street to one of those literal hole-in-the-wall newsstands that dot New York while LL picked out souvenirs (I got a Junior's t-shirt and a sweatshirt, too!) It brings up a point; everyone knows the myth that New Yorkers aren't friendly, but it isn't true. I wound up in a conversation with the guy in line in front of me and then in a second one with the leathery-looking Korean woman who runs the stand. See, it isn't New Yorkers who aren't friendly... it's the people who commute into the city from Nassau County. It was true back when I lived in Brooklyn and then in Nassau County and it's still true now; New Yorkers have a tendency to be outgoing. They live with crowds and often in close quarters. Folks from Long Island bedroom communities, on the other hand, never have to develop the interpersonal skill set that makes life in the Big City not only possible but enjoyable. That's a generalization, of course, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

After Junior's, we drove out to Coney Island. This was one of the two big stops for me on this trip. I hadn't set foot in Coney Island for many years and I was dying to see the place again. They say that Coney Islanders get sand in their shoes and never get it out again, and that's true. Sooner or later, we all have to go back there and see what's become of the place. The Boardwalk (and let's face it, folks, there's only one true Boardwalk and lots of imitators) is our Mecca to which we must make a reverential pilgrimage at least once in our lives should we ever leave it. More than a few of us go through some life-changing experience on the Boardwalk. We might have our first funnel cake our ride our first roller coaster or even lose our virginity there (ahem), but there's always something that anchors us to that place, and so we're like spawning salmon that swim upstream to get back to the place of our birth.

Of course, when we get there we have to complain at least a little bit about how it's changed and how much it's decayed since we last saw it and why hasn't anyone fixed the place and saved our favorite landmark of youth. For me, that mostly came as the result of a trip to the "Original" Nathan's. Those quote marks are intentional, because the hot dogs served at the site where the real Nathan's once stood are now the same ones you can buy at any supermarket or food court. They're cooked in the same way they're cooked anywhere else; gone is the open grill where they once singed perfectly over fire. That grill is where the cash registers are lined up now. I got a hot dog there and you know what? It sucked. I could barely digest the thing and was sick that night because of it. There's not much point to going back there again for me, aside from maybe taking a picture of the outside of the place. It's just a fast food chain store now, no better than a McDonald's. Sad to say, Nathan's finally betrayed Coney Island.

Still, the Boardwalk itself was much as I remembered it, though Astroland has now closed down and is never to reopen. Soon, it will vanish and a casino will rise in its place. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I wish that Coney Island could be what it used to be — amusement park, beach, low-brow grunge, burlesque shows, the Coney Island that started out sometime early last century and was still clinging to life when my parents lived there, and which was still at least on life support when I grew up there. On the other hand, maybe a casino is just a natural evolution. There's no way a Coney Island amusement park could ever hope to compete with a Six Flags, and would that be any better, anyhow? Who knows; maybe a casino can revitalize whatever else is left on the Boardwalk. As it stands right now, we could only find one gift shop there — and it didn't even have postcards.

Because it's still winter, everything was closed. It was still amazing to be back, though, and I took lots of photos:

1-3: Shots along the boardwalk showing LL and I and the parachute jump. I could see the jump from my bedroom window when I was a kid in Coney; it's in much better shape now than it was back then. The parachute jump is to Coney Island, and maybe to New York, what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

4-6: Some close-up shots of the parachute jump. The last one is taken from the base of the jump toward Astroland and the Wonder Wheel.

7-9: The Wonder Wheel itself; shot #9 is in the same park as the Wonder Wheel, Deno's Wonder Wheel Park (warning: the web page is kind of a pain in the neck). I don't know if it's going to stay open when the new casino comes in or not.

10-12: A shot from the Boardwalk toward the "Original" Nathan's, the Cyclone from the New York Aquarium parking lot, and another Boardwalk shot.

13-15: Three shots of the ruins of the old public bath. I think. I'm actually not sure what this old building is. It's a beautiful bit of decay there on the Boardwalk, though, and if anyone can tell me what it used to be with certainty I'd appreciate the info.

16-18: Two shots of a very friendly walrus and a not-so-friendly electric eel at the New York Aquarium. The aquarium is almost certainly the most successful thing still standing on the Boardwalk. I used to go there a lot as a kid; I think that electric eel might be the same one I remember from when I was about 10.

There are a few more Coney Island pictures in this album if you still haven't had enough.

After our visit to the Boardwalk, I took a shot at seeing the house I lived in as a kid in Seagate, just a bit more than a mile from the Boardwalk. Back when I lived there, the "gate" consisted of a security guard in a sort of toll booth. Now it's a major piece of wrought iron with razor wire at the top and high fences going all the way around the community. There was no way even to walk in, let alone drive, so I didn't get to see the old house. Considering what an armed compound the place looks like now, I probably never will, as much as I'd like to.

After a day in Brooklyn, we headed back to Long Island and got a bit of rest back at the hotel. We ventured out again for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Valley Stream called Seeda. I was in the mood for Thai and there aren't too many Thai places in Nassau, which is probably good for Seeda. The food was adequate and the service was bad — slow, curt and inattentive. The place was crowded and noisy and even though it was small, getting the attention of the wait staff was nearly impossible. I wouldn't bother with it again. Seeda bills itself as the best Thai food on Long Island, but I have a hunch that's as meaningful a title as being the smartest person at a Bush family reunion.

Sunday, March 2
At 9:25 AM, the precise time at which I turned 42, I was standing on a platform at Penn Station and waiting for the uptown A train to take LL and I to the American Museum of Natural History. The Museum is a pivotal place in my life; it's probably the single entity most responsible for getting me interested in science, particularly in biology. I wonder how many kids it has had that effect upon over the years. I couldn't wait to get back there again after all these years.

We met up with my sister and her family there; my niece even made me a birthday card on purple construction paper:

In case you find that writing hard to read, it says:

Moo Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo
Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo!

I mean, you'd think a 15 year old could do better than that. Then again, she's only 4 now, and in fouryearoldese I'm pretty sure that means "Happy birthday." Either that or she thought the whole thing was a bunch of bullshit. Could be either one...

We didn't get to spend much time with my sister's family, though. My niece got overtired and overstimulated and completely crashed, so they had to take her to one of the quiet parts of the museum while LL and I forged on. The displays have changed a lot since I was a kid and the whole place has largely been modernized, but it's still that same old wonderfully dusty old museum I'll always love. We stuck mainly to the biology-oriented sections, but we'll do more of the anthropology-related parts next time we go which, now that we're within easy travel distance, certainly won't take another twenty years.

Again, there are lots of photos in this album. Here are some highlights. Readers can figure out for themselves what's being shown here or ask. It's pretty self-explanatory, really.

We spent the whole glorious day in the museum, almost from opening until closing. After that, we bid our goodbyes to my sister and family and headed back out to Long Island for dinner at the Nautilus Cafe in Freeport.

The Nautilus was terrific. The food was just excellent; we started with raw oysters on the half shell and Asian calamari. The latter was perfect; spicy and sweet and enough to make me want to dive face-first onto the plate which, come to think of it, I practically did. We both got seafood combination plates with lobster tails, scallops and shrimp stuffed with crab meat for an entrée and split an order of asparagus hollandaise for a side. For dessert, I had key lime dream and LL had an almond "cake" which, as far as I could tell, contained nothing like flour and was pure, sweet amaretto with almond frosting and several other almond-flavored things. The service was flawless and friendly. The wine list wasn't bad, either. I had a couple of glasses of Italian Pinot Grigio with dinner and LL had a tawny port with dessert. Everything was solid from start to finish, and Nautilus Café turned out to be the perfect place for my birthday dinner. I really couldn't have asked for more.

We lingered there until about 10:00, then headed back to the hotel to collapse into a very, very deep sleep.

Monday, March 3
Breakfast at Bagel Cafe III at the corner of Atlantic and Ocean in Freeport was OK; they have real bagels there. We didn't want to get caught in rush hour traffic, so we passed a couple of hours at Three Streams Preserve (officially, it's called the Massapequa Preserve, but nobody called it that when I lived in the area). There's not much to say about the place, really. It has always been a popular place for teenagers to drink beer and do other things of which their parents do not approve, so parts of it are littered with old beer cans and bottles and other places are in good shape. I know I did my share of partying in the place when I was a disaffected 16 year old, and the tradition continues.

We got on the road at about 10:30 AM and took our time getting back, so we didn't get home until about 3:30 PM, when we discovered that our cable and internet services had been accidentally disconnected when our upstairs neighbor moved out while we were away. It took until this afternoon to get that fixed, and now here I am writing the longest single blog update I will probably ever write.

Our most excellent weekend has ended now. LL is fighting a cold she probably contracted while riding the subway and my fingers are falling off. Tomorrow, it's back to the grind.

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Going to New York

In celebration of my birthday, which falls on Sunday, LL and I are taking off tomorrow morning to spend a few days in New York City. It will be the first time I've returned to the city in which I was born in quite a number of years.

Some specific plans are still up in the air, but I know many of the places I'm going. I'll be spending my birthday proper at the American Museum of Natural History with my sister and her family. One day will take us to Coney Island, the neighborhood in which I grew up. I'm planning on walking the Boardwalk for the first time in well over two decades and grabbing a hotdog at Nathan's. I'd also like to see what's left of the house in which I grew up; I still remember the address. We'll also be making at least one trip to Junior's, and very likely two (one for breakfast and one for cheesecake). I would like to work in a trip to Katz Deli, too, and maybe take LL for a walk down 18th Avenue in Brooklyn; I'm sure my Lebanese partner will feel right at home in the Hasidic neighborhood, but where else would we get good potatonik, I ask you?

In an ideal world, we'd be able to see a midnight Rocky Horror in Greenwich Village, but the theater at which it used to play is no longer playing it; I understand it's now the property of the Discovery Channel. LL has never experienced a live Rocky Horror, and I know she'd appreciate it. That's another thing I haven't done in years that I'd like to do at least one more time, come to think of it. Still, it must be playing somewhere... maybe on Long Island? We're going to stay out on Lawn Guyland to save a bit of money on the hotel but still have ready access to mass transit, plus there are a couple of stops I'd like to make out there as well.

Thinking about all this is making it very hard to concentrate on anything "important" today. The worst part is that I still have to teach lab starting at 6:00 this evening! How am I going to maintain any kind of focus for three hours when me brain has already gone to NYC?

Meh. I probably won't. I can't wait to get on the road!

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A Bad Day for Making Plans

My efforts to meet local people just aren't panning out tonight. First there was the canceled Greater Worcester Humanists meeting. Now I've just found out that the meeting of frequent Pharyngulite sci-bloggers is going to take place on Friday night.

I leave for New York on Friday morning. I won't be able to make that get-together, either.

I'm no less excited about the trip I am taking, but I'm simultaneously bummed about the one I won't be taking. It's times like these I wish I could be in two places at once.

I think it's about time to give up on today.

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Javona Peters Case: Nathaniel Abraham May Need a New Attorney

There's a battle shaping up in New York over the decision to remove the feeding tube from a 16 year old girl in a persistent vegetative state. It's right up David Gibbs' ally, which could mean that Gibbs will wind up taking a lot of time away from Creationist client Nathaniel Abraham's lawsuit against Woods Hole. If Abraham were smart, he'd be looking for alternative representation right now because Gibbs is almost certainly going to inject himself into the situation. If he were smart, that is.

Kin battle over daughter's life support

Sixteen-year-old Javona Peters sat up in bed at Montefiore Medical Center the morning of Oct. 17, smiling and chatting, ready for her operation...

A few hours later, Javona was without most of her brain function - forever blind, deaf, unable to move, talk, think or eat on her own.

Her heart still beats and she can breathe with assistance, but she is in a persistent vegetative state, much like Terri Schiavo or, a generation ago, Karen Ann Quinlan.

And now - like them - she is the subject of an impending court battle, one that will pit father against mother over whether to let their daughter die...

[Note: Javona's father has recently had a change of heart in his objection to removing his daughter from life support.]

It was supposed to be a routine, 90-minute procedure called a ventriculostomy. The surgeon would bore a hole in the brain to drain cerebral fluid into a cavity. This would alleviate the potentially destructive pressure of what's commonly known as water on the brain...

Then the parents learned from hospital personnel that Javona had stopped breathing during the operation.

"Her brain wasn't getting any oxygen. They said it was 'anoxia' and that destroyed her brain," Javona's mother said.

Javona's parents, who are estranged and never married, cannot agree on whether to remove the tube. Both consented to the operation; neither signed a do-not-resuscitate order.

Javona's mother wants her off life support: "I lost my only daughter, she was my life and now she's gone and I want her to go in peace..."

The matter is in Bronx Supreme Court, with Joseph's petition to be named her daughter's guardian. If granted, Joseph would have the power to ask for a judicial order to end her daughter's life support. A hearing on the case, which involves a planned medical malpractice suit, is set for Jan. 7.

"If the father chooses to fight it and the hospital refuses to honor the mother's wishes, it could become a case like Terri Schiavo's," Korek said...

Javona Peters' surgeon, Dr. James Goodrich, declined to comment. He is director of pediatric neurosurgery at Montefiore and a leader of the team that in 2003 performed a daring series of lifesaving surgeries on Carl and Clarence Aguirre, Filipino twins born joined at the head...

Joseph, who raised Javona from birth, said Javona was born prematurely. When she was 3 months old, Goodrich, then at Jacobi Medical Center, placed a shunt, or tube, in her brain to drain excess fluids, Joseph said...

Joseph, who has a detailed handwritten diary of what occurred, said Goodrich told her the relevant anesthestic agents used were vecuronium and pancuronium. Both are potent muscle relaxants, often used in concert. Pancuronium causes full muscle paralysis and is used in lethal injections in executions, according to medical dictionaries.

"I asked, if she wasn't getting enough oxygen, why didn't anyone notice with all those people and machines in the operating room," Joseph said.

Three weeks after the operation, Joseph said, Goodrich told her he thought Javona had had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia.

"He was very upset from the beginning," Joseph said...

Javona's mother is furious. "I am shocked, I am angry, I am hurt and I am devastated," she said.

Right off the bat, I wish Javona Peters' family well and can only hope that if there was the least bit of negligence on the part of those involve with this surgery that they are held fully accountable. I can't imagine what Peters' family is going through right now and I hope that neither I nor anyone else ever have to find out what it's like to have to make a terrible decision like this. Ms. Peters has every right to file a malpractice suit in this situation and have the events leading up to this sorry state of affairs investigated exhaustively. At the same time, I hope that the medical personnel in this were as responsible as their positions demand and that this was, indeed, an unfortunate accident. For that matter, I wish that Javona Peters would leap up from her bed in full health. That, unfortunately, is very unlikely to happen.

At this point, as noted above, Peters' father is even coming to realize that his daughter's condition is unlikely to change for the better:

The father, Leonard Peters, was initially against the idea, but has said he is "85% changed my mind now, but I don't know the legality." He said that if nothing works for Javona he does not see the point now.

— Source

The question here is whether David Gibbs will be able to resist the temptation to take a public stand on this, or even file some kind of motion (sorry, I'm not up on my legalese) to get himself involved as if he were representing Javona Peters directly. Will he call Congress into session at midnight as he did in the Terri Schiavo case and attempt to contravene Peters parents in his effort to bring the laws of man into line with what he imagines as the Laws of God? This is, after all, exactly the sort of case upon which Gibbs has established his fame in religious circles. I just can't see him passing up another "opportunity" like this one. Anybody care to wager how long it will be before we hear his name in connection with this case?

If there's anything that's more of a hot button issue for folks like Gibbs than evolutionary biology, it's the "right to life." Gibbs' co-believers can always advocate for the possibility of a divine intervention (miracle) and contend that prayer can cure anything... even irreversible coma.

Nathaniel Abraham had better start looking for a new attorney. The Peters case goes before the Bronx Supreme Court on January 7. That's not a lot of time.

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Slavemasters Convicted: Sabhnanis Face Up to 40 Years

Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, the wealthy couple who kept two Indonesian immigrant women as slaves and subjected them to some of the most vile abuses imaginable (see this entry from November 6), have been convicted on all counts. They now face 40 years in prison. That seems like a mild sentence in consideration of their crimes, but hopefully they'll have to serve all of it and rot as they deserve to.

US 'slavery' couple found guilty

...Indian-born Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, could face up to 40 years in prison.

They were found guilty on 12 charges, which included involuntary servitude, harbouring aliens and forced labour.

The couple's lawyer said he would appeal against the verdict...

The women said they had been beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, made to take freezing showers and climb stairs repeatedly.

One said she had been forced to eat several hot chillies and then her own vomit.

"Apparently, the jury was taken by the histrionics (of the Indonesian women)," defence lawyer Jeffrey Hoffmann told AP.

Lawyers for the accused had argued that the housekeepers practiced witchcraft and may have abused themselves...

The women, identified as Nona and Samirah, arrived in the US legally in 2002 but had their passports confiscated by the Sabhnanis, officials said...

By the way, I suppose that there are occasions in which you just might be able to tell a book by its cover. That mug you see on the right is Varsha Sabhnani. Look at it for a moment; is there the slightest hint of kindness present in that bony visage? To me, she looks like a character from a story written to dissuade children from speak to strangers. One might suspect that she has a gingerbread house containing a large, bubbling black kettle full of greasy kiddie-bones in her real estate portfolio.

This is one case where it's rather tempting to conclude that they eyes are indeed the windows to the soul.

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As Much as I Like Fungi, a $1000 Bagel is a Bit Much

I think it would be hard to find someone more enthused about fungi than I am, and I'm an avid consumer as well as a student of this kingdom. I eat wild mushrooms every chance I get... but even I have my limits! For example, I absolutely refuse to pay $20 per pound for oyster mushrooms from the supermarket. That's simply never going to happen.

Even less likely to happen is my forking over $1000 for a bagel spread with truffle-infused cream cheese (and decorated with edible gold leaf):

It's schmearly $1G for this bagel with fungus on top

...Tujague, the executive chef at the Westin Hotel, has concocted a $1,000 bagel topping: Alba white truffle cream cheese.

The truffle - essentially a mushroom-related fungus that grows underground (go figure) - is in season and costs $4,000 a pound...

Production of the white truffle, prized for its delicate aroma, is limited to the Alba region of Italy...

And to make the point that this is one decadent schmear, he topped off his creation with edible gold leaves...

Heck, I can get myself a perfectly good bagel, pick a few wild fungi and have myself a rip-snortin' fine breakfast without feeling like I'm missing out on anything. Does anybody need to eat gold leaf? It's not like you can digest the stuff. It goes in one end and comes out the other completely unchanged.

Anybody willing to spend $1000 on a bagel needs to seriously stop and think for a moment about better things they could do with that money, like maybe shoving it up their nose and running naked down the street shouting, "Hey! Look at me! I have $1000 stuffed up my nose!"

Well, maybe that's equally stupid. But $1000 could theoretically pay for things that somebody else really needs, and if you're willing to spend it on a bagel, whether truffles and gold leaf are involved or not, you should be willing to spend it on something from which you derive only slightly less direct personal benefit. That much money could buy a lot of dental work for poor people needing root canals. Alternatively, you could pass it along to some impoverished mycology grad student to help defray the cost of some much-needed custom-made primers with which to clone a few fungal genes. Just a thought.

Who knows... maybe our hypothetical (ahem) graduate researcher could figure out a way to make Alba truffles grow just anywhere. Then you could pay $2.50 for your bagels like everybody else does.

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Goodbye to a Grande Dame

I don't imagine that most people who didn't grow up in New York City would know who Brooke Astor was, but to New Yawkuhs and ex-New Yawkuhs alike, hers is a name we saw everywhere in the city. There are few whose lives she didn't touch some way, and with good reason. Astor lived to be 105, which in itself would be an accomplishment.

Of course, that's not why some kid from Brooklyn would have known the name Astor. The Astors are a family that helped to make New York, and few Astors did as much for the intellectual and cultural institutions of one of the world's most intellectually and culturally significant towns. Brooke Astor got a lot out of New York, to be sure, but she also spent her long, long life putting a lot back into it. She gave more millions than any of us will ever see to the New York Public Library, the Botanical Gardens, the Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Modern Art. If all those things make you think "cold and impersonal marble halls" for some reason, consider that she also gave her support to various programs that helped train disadvantaged youth for employment and that provided them with money for higher education in the forms of grants and scholarships. She put cash into developing affordable housing back when New York was floundering through some of its worst economic hardships and Jerry Ford told us to "drop dead."

This is a lady (and I mean that in terms of her class as much as anything) who touched a whole lot of lives, including my own.

Astor isn't being buried in New York City, and it doesn't matter. She imbued the city with her spirit. She'll be interred, instead, in Irvington, a town that overlooks the Hudson which, as did Astor herself, spends its existence flowing through the city. The epitaph on her tombstone will read, "I had a wonderful life."

She sure did, and she made a lot of other lives a little more wonderful in the bargain, too, which is about as much as any of us can hope for. She deserved to live to 105, and she deserves thanks from people like me who never met her but who benefit from all that New York has to offer and so all that she had to offer New York.

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Say It Ain't So! Astroland to Close? Las Vegas-Style Casinos in Coney Island?

I spent the early part of my life in a unique part of Brooklyn — Coney Island. When I was a kid, I could look out of my bedroom window and see the old parachute jump not far in the distance. I made many a trip on foot to the Boardwalk, to Nathan's, and, in the summers, to Astroland. In the late 70's/early 80's, Coney Island was gritty and decrepit and maybe a little bit dangerous, and it's where all of my earliest memories reside. I am, admittedly, quite nostalgic about the place — so much so that I'm hoping to make the trek back there in the near future and show LL where I grew up now that I'm back in the northeast. But will there still be anything there by the time we can afford the trip?

I've just read that Astroland is closing down and many of the old buildings are being demolished. It's all been bought up by a big developer, you see, and it appears that all that grand and grungy, cheap and cheezy fun is going to make way for high rise apartments with high rise rents and a multimillion dollar Vegas-style casino. The developer is the same one that, years ago, got their hands on Times Square and turned it into a family attraction, complete with multiple Starbuck's and the world's largest Toys-R-Us.

Thankfully, the Parachute Jump, the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel are national historic landmarks and almost certainly won't vanish; the developer will have to build around them, I suppose. Perhaps they can incorporate one or more of the attractions right into their casino eventually. Nonetheless, the character of Coney Island is going to change dramatically, and even the developer says so.

Economically, I'm sure it'll be a boon for Coney Island. Most of the people who live there won't be the ones moving into the new luxury digs; they'll attract bigger wallets from Manhattan, no doubt. Yeah, there's going to be lots more money floating around Coney in the years to come. It'll be polished and shiny and who knows, maybe there will be a nice Prada outlet and $5.00 lattés galore.

All of which ain't Coney Island. It's a lot of other places... and Coney Island isn't supposed to be a lot of other places. For as long as I can remember, there never was anyplace else quite like it. I know, I know... that's progress. Nothing lasts forever. I guess Nathan's will always be there, though the soul of the Boardwalk is really just a cog in a soulless corporate machine now. Shatzkin's Knishes are long gone. Most likely, all the little sideshows will evaporate soon, too, as rents climb through the roof. In a couple of generations, nobody will remember all that stuff; it's not famous in the way that the original amusement parks from Coney's heyday are famous. Give it twenty years and everybody will associate the place with the new, shiny, decidedly pricey Coney Island™, and I'll be some doddering old fart with my insistences of what the place was really like.

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Preparations

Today, my last outstanding invoice from eBay sales will be paid. In total, I've raised about $4K from sales of my book collection. I only wound up selling about a quarter of it; eBay is just too time-consuming. I may sell more of it once we get to Worcester, though. I do have some motivation for doing that until my stipend starts; the temp agencies I signed up with got me all of 3.5 days of work which paid all of $250. There just isn't much of that kind of work here, I suppose. I may still apply at a couple of them once we get settled in our new place, though.

We had one couple take a look at our bedroom set. Not the brightest folks; the woman's response was that it "looked much smaller in the pictures." Huh? So another person is coming to look tonight. She's just moved here and has no furniture yet, so it's a good prospect. Aside from a few book cases and a couple of computer desks, which will go on Craig's List in the next couple of days, everything is taken care of. We've even got some help loading the truck, which we'll be picking up a week from Saturday. I'm taking the car in for its tune-up tomorrow, and once I get it back I'll get the tired and brakes done, too. If all goes well, we'll be hitting the road early in the morning a week from Sunday.

Tonight, I'm going to my last UFS meeting at Aladdin's. It will probably be my last time there. That place will be one of the things I'll miss about Tallahassee. It's been a default hangout and second home for LL and I since it used to be Sheesha Nights. There's apparently a good-sized Lebanese community where we're going, though, so we'll likely be able to find a new place somewhat like it to call our own.

We've still got a good deal of packing to do, but since today is LL's last day at work we should have plenty of time to finish.

Hard to believe that our five years in Florida is almost over. I'm looking forward to colorful autumns and cold winters again. I don't think I've ever fully acclimated to the weather here, and I know I can live without the swarms of mosquitoes. Nonetheless, I'm going to miss the biodiversity here. The only solution, i suppose, is to work hard, find grant money, and get myself back to Trinidad!

I'm already having wonderful fantasies about taking LL for breakfast (and cheesecake!) at Junior's (the original one in Flatbush). I have great memories of the baskets of mini-danishes that come with breakfast there, in the same way that good restaurants give you a basket of bread with dinner. I haven't been back there in nearly 20 years now — since 1989 or 1990, I think. Aside from everything right in Boston, having relatively easy access to NYC is a big plus. LL and I have never been to the American Museum of Natural History together. You know, I can still remember the smell of the fossil exhibits like it was just yesterday. That museum literally reeks of history.

And I wonder... where in Greenwich Village does Rocky Horror play at midnight these days? I hear that the Waverly is long gone, but I can't imagine that there isn't a showing there somewhere!

Nine days left here in North Florida. Yes, the whole moving thing is stressful... but it will soon be behind us, and I think things are going to get better for us than they've been while we've lived here. Tallahassee is an alright town for what it offers, but it's a bit isolating. There aren't any big cultural centers near here. I think I'm at a point in life where I'm ready to trade some nature in for some culture for a few years... when I'm not helping out with research. It's all very exciting. LL and I really are counting the days. Could you tell?

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