New York Public Library, Nov 2012 - 01
Image by Ed Yourdon
A view of the main entrance to the New York Public Library. Lots of tourists and visitors, lots of people posing or taking photos of one another...
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When you've lived someplace for a long, long time, it's embarrassing to admit that you've never (or almost never) visited one of your city's iconic landmarks or tourist spots that everyone else seems to know intimately. For me, one such place has been the New York Public Library"
… and after an unplanned visit this afternoon, I'm delighted that I'll be able to cross it off my "embarrassing admissions" list.
Goodness knows I've walked past the imposing 2-block-long front facade of the library often enough (though I have to admit that I had no idea that it occupies the site of the old Croton Reservoir, a 4-acre man-made lake surrounded by massive 50-foot high, 25-foot-wide granite walls, whose 20 million gallons of water supplied New York City residents for most of the 19th century). And as my long-suffering Flickr fans know, I've been to the park behind the library (Bryant Park, if you didn't know) numerous times over the past 40 years, with oodles of photos to document my visits. But as for visiting the inside of the New York Public Library … hmmm … I think I might have wandered inside sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s to see if they had a copy of one of the early books I had written. But I'm not even sure about that … and after that, I know I haven't been inside to see the stacks of books, the card catalogs, the ornate paintings, and all of the other details.
Not until today … when I found myself in midtown Manhattan after another of my periodic visits to the dentist. My first instinct was to photograph Bryant Park again, but I was unpleasantly surprised to see that a skating rink and several artsy-craftsy shopping stalls had been installed. Feh. My second instinct was to walk up to Grand Central Station, and see if I could get some better photos with a flash attached to my camera … except that I had forgotten to put the flash into my backpack. Bah. Humbug.
So … I thought perhaps I might find some interesting photo-opportunities at the front of the library, rather than the park behind the library; indeed, it seems there are always tourists posing in front of the library entrance, and various studious, colorful, or oddly-dressed people reading intensely, or sipping a cup of coffee, while they sit on the broad expanse of steps. Now that I was looking at it a little more closely, I had to chuckle at the contrast between "old money" and "new money": the library was opened in 1911 as a result of the contributions of rich, powerful tycoons and robber barons of the late 19th century -- people like John Jacob Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Tilden, etc. -- but its main building was recently renovated and refurbished with a massive contribution by one of today's Wall Street tycoons, Stephen Schwarzman; indeed, it is now known as the "Schwarzman Building."
After I had photographed everything that looked interesting on the outside, I got the urge to go inside … after all, it had been more than 40 years since I last viewed the interior of the building. I'm sure the contrasts were far less visible then; what you'll see now is a mix of the old (massive columns, Greek statues, long corridors with marble walls and 20-foot ceilings, enormous reading rooms with mahogany walls and old-fashioned lamps) and the new (laptops, desktop computers, iPads, Kindles, microfiche readers, and various blinking and flashing gadgets). But one thing has not changed: it's still as silent as a tomb; nobody talks above a whisper, and everyone seems to respect the signs that urgently demand visitors to turn off their damn cellphones. Even the familiar startup "bong" of the Apple and Windows computers seemed muffled and muted.
Initially, I was puzzled by the presence of so many laptop computers: if you had a laptop, why would you bother coming to a public library to read stuff? And then I remembered: it wasn't so long ago that the only "public" place where you could access the Internet was the local public library. There were no wifi hotspots in places like Starbucks (indeed, there was once a time when Starbucks didn't exist! egad!); you couldn't get Internet access bundled in with your cable TV subscription (once upon a time, we didn't even have cable TV! Gadzooks!); and lots of people couldn't afford the monthly cost of a dial-up modem connection to services like AOL or CompuServe. Lots of people didn't even have a laptop or desktop PC … so they shlepped down to their public library and waited patiently until one of the old, heavily-used PC's became available. Or, if they were trying to track down an old newspaper article -- in those ancient days before newspapers put all of their archives online -- they would trudge down to the library to read things on the big microfiche readers.
And that reminded me why I haven't been in a public library for such a long time: I'm lucky enough to have my own "personal" access to all of the things that used to be available only from a library. If I spent a lot of time looking at ancient manuscripts, or old historical documents, it might be a different story; but the books that I've been reading for the past 10-20 years are available in electronic editions (Kindle, iPad, etc.), or available (free) on the Internet, or available in discounted form from Amazon … or, in the worst case, available in old-fashioned "paper" form in the Barnes & Noble bookstore down the street.
There was another historical aspect of the library that I found amusing: the card catalog. It's still there, and the cards are still individually typed, with cryptic information about the publication details and current location of the associated book. It reminded me of the vintage-2008 book by David Weinberger (which I ordered from Amazon) called Everything Is Miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder", which discussed the original genius, and the current irrelevance, of the Dewey Decimal System -- which neatly categorized all books by a single subject in a hierarchical fashion, but which did not contemplate the notion that a book might fall into several categories, at least one of which might simply be "miscellaneous."
The hordes of people in the library were interesting in and of themselves. Lots of minorities, lots of old people. Lots of tourists, most of whom were busily photographing one another on the steps leading up to the entrance. Lots of people bundled up in heavy coats and strange hats, despite the warm temperature inside the building. One guy playing Solitaire/Klondike on his laptop. Another guy sitting in front of a chessboard and neatly-arranged pieces, which he had apparently brought into the building on his own. And aside from the people, there were lots of roped-off corridors, mysterious unmarked (and locked) doors, and long stairways leading up and down to different levels.
There are many more details about the library that I won't attempt to tell you; if you're interested in the history of the library, or its relatively unique public-private status, or the various services it provides -- many of which are quite valuable even in today's Internet Age -- then check out the Wikipedia page"
or visit the library's website at www. nypl.org".
The New Business Card
Image by Christine ™
I've blogged at bigpinkcookie.com (and its predecessor blahblahblog.com ) for 9 years - but I never have had fancy business cards for the site. I will now!
Technically the left is the back and the right is the front. I had to include the red wall photo icon of myself after reading about me in the Brand Camp Blog.
I also ordered pins to pass out with the cookie too.
I'm totally smitten by these - what do you think?
Pelmeni: “pelemeni” to us expats, far from the family tree
Image by Rosa Say
Set story:
As we awake on this first day of the New Year, there is a great big pot in the refrigerator waiting to be transferred back to the stove. For your tummy it promises simple hamburger dumplings in a hamhock broth. For your heart it holds tradition, memory, family, heritage, and love.
After years of remembering and missing it with each New Year’s Day, I finally made my own first pot of Grandma Protacio’s pelemeni in 2007, thanks to nagging my mom about finding the recipe. Becca had done an internet search and found a recipe for me a coupla years ago (and we learned we had never spelled it right), but I’d never made it then: It sounded way different (ours was always eaten as a soup). Plus I knew mom had the “real deal” stored away somewhere, and I chose instead to trust in the day she’d surely find it.
This year Zach was home to help me (his hands are in these photos) and entertain me... it became an all of New Year’s Eve production, with flour everywhere when we were done with the dumpling making.
Not going to tell you it’s absolutely delicious, for truthfully it needs a lot of shoyu as you see in this last photo (that part is definitely not Russian). But taste is not the point. It’s tradition, and the only one I remember as the quarter-blooded Russian I am.
2011: What I Heard
Image by erin m
Of the many, many things about my life that have changed in the last 12 months (hi there, New York; two new tattoos? Sure!), there is one small, simple change that has had the most profound effect on me.
It's the difference between telling someone "I shoot concerts" and telling them "I used to shoot concerts." I used to do a lot of things in my life--I used to play the flute, I used to date guys I shouldn't, I used to have long hair, I used to collect Star Wars trading cards. But when I stopped doing all those things, it was because I grew out of them, or they just weren't something I felt was especially important anymore. But concerts? Live music? A year ago, you'd have had to pry my camera out of my cold, dead hands, the finger still twitching reflexively on the shutter, to get me to willingly stop taking photos of musicians on stage. Or, as it turns out, you just have to offer me a job in another city with a night schedule that makes going to concerts a virtually impossible luxury.
So this year, I'm celebrating the shows I saw, because somehow through it all I managed to see and shoot some incredible musicians this year. I did it because it’s important to me, and I did it because apparently I get twitchy if I don’t. I made the time to do it, sacrificing sleep, vacation time and sobriety, because standing around in a room full of 500 sweaty people watching a group of even sweatier people singing their hearts out is something I just really like to do.
5: Dismemberment Plan, 9:30 Club, January
For about 4 days last January, the D in D.C. stood for Dismemberment. We ALL went to the one of the shows, and The City felt like it was on a unified mission, and that mission was to have a fucking party. I went to the Sunday night show at 9:30 and stood on the balcony, surrounded by people I knew. I’ve often described this night to people as the reason I finally decided to move to New York, because as I stood up there gripping the rail, it felt like I knew everyone there. I loved that place because of that, and I needed to move because of that. Here’s a clip of the Ice of Boston at the end of one of those shows. One. Big. Fucking. Party.
4: Weakerthans, Bowery Ballroom, December
The Weakerthans dedicated each of their four nights at the Bowery to one of their main albums; I took the two in the middle as vacation days from work and lived a sleep-coffee-bowery-sleep-repeat schedule for two days. After months of no shows at all, these two nights made me feel normal again. Here’s a version of “Reconstruction Site,” the title track for Night No. 2. And here’s John K Sampson all by his lonesome, being quirky and Canadian and waxing slightly-less-than-poetic-but-no-less adorable about Occupy Wall Street before launching into “One Great City.”
3: Avett Brothers, DAR Constitution Hall, February
I wrote this show up for We Love DC, and also got to shoot it for them, and everything Deep and Meaningful (and Long and Rambly) that I have to say about the Brothers Avett you can find there. With the benefit of 10 more months’ reflection, I’ll just add: The Avetts sing in “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” that you should “decide what to be and go be it.” If that night at D-Plan was one of the reasons I moved to New York this year, that Avetts line was one of the things that got me thinking about it in the first place. Here’s a slightly cruddy version of that song from that night (included mostly so you can see Joe Kwon ROCKING the hell out of that cello).And here’s “I and Love And You” from the night, because it’s simply beautiful.
2: Middle Brother/Dawes/Deer Tick, 9:30 Club, March
This was my very last night as a DC resident. I got to spend it shooting Dawes. Without the usual first-three-only limitations--I had the ENTIRE show, right up at the stage, no rail. I wrote it up for We Love DC, and I’m done using words to try to convince every single person I know to listen to Dawes and Middle Brother (and Deer Tick now, too, because this year’s album sold me on them), because they’ve heard it all before. This was probably the single greatest concert experience I had in Washington, DC. It probably would have been the greatest show I saw this year, but for …
1: The National, Beacon Hall, December
Yeah, that’s right. I’m putting The National ahead of MIDDLE BROTHER. ME. I’m doing that. That’s how good this show was. This is the exact moment I was fully committed to the decision that this show--their first of six in a row at the Beacon--is the best I’ve ever seen. I was pretty much already there thanks to this one, though. And this one. I’d always liked the National somewhat passively, and I lucked into a photo pass because I have amazing friends who have amazing sisters, so going into the night I was just jazzed to SHOOT again. Glad to know the rules, glad to do something I’m good at, glad to try my hand at something I’d been getting rusty at. And them BAM, out of nowhere (well, actually, straight out of Bryan Devendorf’s drumkit), a band I’d always kinda sorta liked on studio albums became the band that put on the greatest live show I’ve ever seen.
Today is Dec. 29. You know what I’m doing tomorrow, on the second to last night of the year? Going to a concert.
card
Image by tamaki
Happy New Year! to all my Flickr's friends :)
I made this cards as new year card.
If you want, I'll send this card.
Please give me your address.
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2007
2006
2005
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added writing on Jan 9, 2008.
Thank you many request.
Today, I sent card for you who gave me the address.
Please wait :)
thank you!
...and now I have to finish this present.
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