Adelaide

1.

My friend Gary came over for a dinner that was supposed to include the planning of our long-awaited Prospect Park Autumn Olympics, but no one else could be coaxed into joining us, until the last minute, when Sean and his friend Mark showed up. I make a bunch of bruschetta, and we pack everything carefully into plastic bags and begin the precarious climb up the rickety rung ladder to my roof. The moon is bright, but not bright enough, and there is loud clattering as we (mostly I) collided with various rusted chairs, metal grates, pipes and old beer bottles. The neighbors have a roof deck and the roof deck has a table; we make our way over to it, and in the dark, more wine is poured and bruschetta is unpacked and placed on lids and plates and tupperware trays, until the whole table is covered with little glorified pieces of toast. John Cale is in the cd player. I put it in there as a favor to Gary, and he knows it. On some buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan, there are little houses built right onto the roof, mysterious little one room cottages with their own windows and roofs, perched high above the city, out of view unless you're right next to them. There is one down the block from my building, and we can see into it now, a woman in a blue shirt, laughing on the phone. Gary and I climb up to the overhang of the building, lying flat on our stomachs and leaning over the edge, our chins resting on the back of our hands. It's an excellent view of the sidewalk below, and a little scary. "Look," I tell Gary, pointing down, "it's way too hot to be dressed like that." Below, a man about our age but with a completely different life is sweating his way toward a cab in a three piece suit. We laugh. Neighbors are returning from the gym, and from movies, and evening walks with dogs. The skyline of Manhattan stretches across our view, and the Statue of Liberty glows faintly in the distance. From my roof, tonight, I can see more stars than I ever have before in New York. In two hours, it will be Gary's birthday.

2.

At the afterschool program on Mondays, I take the kindergartners and first graders outisde to play in the schoolyard. Today they invent a game called "turtle fish", in which pieces of chalk are dropped off a little stairwell onto the ground and collected by children waiting below. They rig up a complicated system of jump ropes tied to buckets for this purpose, and scamper around the steps with great purpose and concentration, whispering things about fish and turtles and boats as they work. A tiny girl, sliding around in too-big shoes passed down by an older sister grins up at me with a smile filled with more spaces than teeth. "Do you got a hamster?" she asks. The new hamster in my room has become legendary in a week. "Yes," I tell her. "Do you want to visit him sometime?" She does. What's your name, I ask her. Her mouth is covered with Oreo crumbs. Her name is Frances, and she likes the color pink and her birthday is April 16th. She sputters all this out in one breath. The playground is an enclosed courtyard, but a little sunlight filters down onto the chalk drawings that cover the ground. I sit down to tie an endless procession of little shoelaces. "I don't want you to fall," I tell them all cheerfully. They study me carefully. Their hair is damp from running so long, and their eyes are wide. They are not exactly sure who I am, and they're not pleased that I've interrupted their play with something as practical as shoelaces. Frances, who has been tossing a pen up in the air and catching it, sits down next to me and writes something on my forearm. I don't see it until later, when I'm at home, making an apple pie for Monday night football, with my sleeves rolled up. In perfect first grade block letters, it says FRANCES BOYLAN APRIL 16.

3.

We're at the park on Sunday afternoon, lying on a bamboo picnic mat. It's a section of Prospect Park I've been reading in for years, situated in a valley of sorts,with trees rising up around the edges. Ridiculously pretty. Exactly the sort of thing Frederick Olmstead was aiming for when he designed the park. Today, inexplicably, the area is full of giant dragonflies, hovering and careening around crazily. They are flying so close we can hear the clicks and hum of their wings. "Why are they all here?" my companion demands. I like bugs, but I don't know. It's too far along in the summer for them to be mating, and there's nothing here for dragonflies to eat; maybe, like me, they're just desparately loving the last days of summer, before it's too late.


*This update typed while watching Die Hard With a Vengeance and getting ready to leave for St. Marks.

The taste of summer

Previously posted to the March records list.

One of my favorite things about New York in the spring and summer is getting Mr. Softee ice cream. Mr. Softee ice cream trucks are the most common ice cream trucks in New York City, with a catchy, sweet summer song, and a smiling ice cream headed gentleman painted on the side. I'm one of the only grownups I know who will race out in the street when the trucks go by (alerted by the jingle) shouting, "SOFTEE! SOFTEEEEEEE!," with a desperation and love people my age feel very rarely for ice cream. I love watching the milkshake machine, and the noisy hum it makes, and the way a dipped cone gets visibly soft in the hot sun. I grew up in a place where there weren't any ice cream trucks, and I can't get enough. I am making up for lost time.

#1
Morningside Heights

A rumor was going around that the Mr. Softee on the corner sold drugs out of his truck. My friend Hillary decided to find out for sure. She asked the Softee, "do you have any drugs?" He said, "yeah. but not for you, pretty." Later that summer I saw a guy mysteriously hand the softee a "book". The softee handed him back a black "water bottle." They caught me watching them, and the softee winked at me and said to the other guy, "she's cool, man." I felt proud that I looked dubious enough to witness ice cream drug exchanges (previously in my neighborhood I had been called 'whitesey' and 'narc-o'). My cherry cone was free that day.

#2 Cumberland St., Brooklyn

My old roommate Marc and I used to keep stacks of quarters on the bookshelf by the front door, so that we could race outside as soon as the music sounded (this Softee didn't linger long on the block sometimes and had to be chased). I ordered more ice cream in the summer of 2001 than I ever have in my life, so i got to know this Mr. Softee pretty well. This exchange happened in August, 2001:

Mr. Softee: Hey, cherry cone (my nickname, due to my favorite order).
Me: Hey, Mr. Softee. One vanilla sandwich and one cherry dipped cone, please.
Mr. Softee: Hey, you want to go for a ride sometime?
me: IN THE TRUCK??!!! Oh my god! Yes!
mr. softee: (scornfully) No, I got a Toyota.
Me: Oh. But I want to ride in the TRUCK.
Mr. Softee: You can't ride in the truck. It's against the policy.
me: Not even just to make one milkshake?
Mr. Softee (getting a little upset): No.
me: Awww.
Mr. Softee: Forget it.

Sometimes on hot summer days as I'm trudging around the city, sweating, I wish Mr. Softee would give me another chance. That he'd come by in his toyota with air conditioning, and a chocolate sundae ready for me in the drink holder, and drive me where I need to go.

#3
5th ave. and 2nd street, Brooklyn

This is my current apartment. This Mr. Softee doesn't seem to be the best promoter of his own product. In one memorable encounter, he said, "these cones got a lot of calories in them, ya know". I gave him a kind of "thanks a lot" look and said, "luckily, my gym is right there on the corner of Union!" He said, "Phew, that's good, cause if I ate one of these cones, I would head RIGHT over to the gym." Out of some kind of misguided revenge, I said, "I'll ALSO have a great white bar (which is shaped like a shark)". His eyes got really wide but he didn't say anything. I ate both ice creams with giddy happiness, felt really, really horribly full, and went to The Gate to have a beer. Going to the gym didn't even cross my mind.

*This update typed while listening to Peanut Butter Wolf.

Something you don't see every Christmas

3 reasons to cry this weekend:

1. Chorizo the hamster had a rough Saturday night (see www.bearswillattack.com). He continued to frolick around the bathtub, seemingly oblvious to his missing ear, which made it all the harder to see it gone. I set my head down on the edge of the bathtub and wept. The next day, still fine, Chorizo received the very best in hamster guilt toys...a plastic ball to careen around in, a top notch salt lick, and not just the average little hamster box for sleeping, but a hamster duplex with a window, french doors and a blue roof. Tomorrow he goes to school to meet his third grade caretakers, who were thrlled out of their minds to hear that he was soon to arrive. Donovan the cat, the ear eater in question, is much loved despite the (very natural) act of eating a hamster ear and in fact, slept with his front paw on my cheek last night. His time in New York is coming to an end soon; he is waiting for the closing on his newly purchased apartment in DC. I asked friends what I should tell my class about the missing ear. One said, "tell them that if they screw around, the same thing will happen to them." Another said, "tell them that some animals look different, just like some people look different." The PC commentor was laughed at by the jerk commenter. Another friend said, "make him a little Mets hat and you won't even have to deal with it at all." We left it at that.

2. All of my pants, except the pants that I am wearing, were lost by the laundromat. I didn't actually cry, but I did bite a pencil anxiously a few times. My friend Gary kindly offered to give me his designer Swedish jeans, which don't fit him quite right. As we stood hip to hip, I noted that his legs are skinnier than mine. This is because he is a vegetarian, and I eat candy all the live long day. If you have pants you would like to give me, please contact hoipollloi@yahoo.com. If my pants were put in your laundry bag by mistake, please return them. If you have any candy in the shape of pants, I would like to try it.

3. Yesterday afternoon, I got out of the subway near Times Square and as walked up the stairs to 48th St., one of those Central or South American bands with the variety of panflutes and the ponchos suddenly launched into a loud song. I had to wait on this corner for a few minutes for a friend that was soon to arrive, and found myself getting teary eyed. Not for reasons you'd suspect, though. The real motivation was explained in this exchange between middle aged woman with a fish shaped purse and myself.

me: (lower lip trembling)
woman: excuse me, are you alright?
me: oh! (trying to laugh) Yeah. It's just this music.
woman: Does it...remind you of something, or--
me: No. I just really hate it.
woman: Ah...excuse me?
me: I just can't stand this kind of music.
woman: (not rude, but very disconcerted). OK. Well, take care.
me: Thanks.

The fact that a stranger in New York even noticed such a mild degree of unhappiness is incredible. I myself have passed sobbing people on the sidewalk and said nothing, then headed for home and a bottle of wine and the chance to feel bad about my unkindness in private. Talking with friends last night, I tried to trace the reasons that such music could bring tears of dislike to my eyes, and came up with this. When I lived in England, I spent many Saturdays walking around London. Once, I was supposed to meet my friend Daniel at a certain point in a very public square. I was running late. There were panflute musicians just like the one I saw the other day on at least two corners of the square (it seemed like there were 10 different ones). Because such bands always look quite the same, and sound definitely the same, I couldn't get my bearings and it got later and later. It was like an episode of the twilight zone, where everyone in the world becomes a Central American flute player. That, and the kind of nightmare where you need to get somewhere and simply can't. And furthermore, I don't like panflutes. At all.

But for every reason to be unhappy, there are millions of reasons to be happy in New York. Friends return from long trips to Scandinavia bearing gifts of the world's best lip balm, bocce is played, dinners are cooked for multitudes of people, bars are open late, new third graders arrive at school with shiny new shoes and giant adult teeth filling their smiles, Mr. Key is smiling on his usual bench, the sun filters down through trees in such a way that means fall is starting, and everywhere, there are good, good people.

*This update typed while listening to REM.

Message to the masses: Women of New York, please, give up your dumb sweater ponchos.

Holding hands on a dark street

Mr. Sit.

Mr. Sit is an elderly man who spends sunny days on a lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of his apartment. He has a shock of white hair that flips boyishly onto his forehead, and a smile that makes my heart feel like it's being squeezed. His voice is soft and wavering, like Mr. Key's, and you can tell by his accent that he's lived in Brooklyn a long time. His clothes are impeccable. Whenever I walk by with a man, any man, he says exactly the same thing: I say, "Hello!" He studies me for a moment and then says, "Helllllloooooo. Have a nice day!" Then, when I'm almost past him, he says, "you make a lovely couple". Except with Sean Howe; we make merely a handsome couple. I brought some friends to meet him this weekend. They knew about his lovely couple comments and wanted to earn one for themeselves. We greeted him, and as we passed him, it seemed that he wasn't going to say anything else. At the last moment, though, they got his best comment to date: "Hubba hubba!" Mostly, though, i see him when I'm walking alone. Sometimes he'll say, "You're on the way to Hollywood!". But usually, we just chat about the weather and shoes and stiff knees and the newspapers. I'm making him a linoleum print of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sergeant John.

We stumbled on Sergeant John's stoop sale on a Saturday of otherwise bland stoop sales, making his seem all the more extraordinary. When we walked up, he said, "It's September 11th, remember those who died, stop and shop, it's my birthday!" Scattered around the stoop and sidewalk is a huge assortment of junk and treasure and bric-a-brac. A rubber Nixon mask from the 70s has been placed over the end of the bannister. There are ladies' hats from the 50s, a velvet Elvis (which I bought), newspapers from six different decades, including Nixon's resignation headline, toys, silver candlesticks, cookie tins, and fixtures he tore out of old L trains that were being chopped up for scrap. Sergeant John has a special love for trains. He speaks with love about the old subways, gently touching the maps and metal signs and route destination signs, and shows us the toy trolleys. Picking up a paper trolley, he tries to demonstrate the electric attachment at the top, but it falls inside the trolley and he can't recover it. "I broke your trolley pole!," he exclaims. Then he picks up a metal Japanese trolley, and says, "The Japs made these in the 60s. Who else would make a toy trolley with rubber wheels? The Japs control the money of the world." Then, quickly, "but more power to 'em. They've had a hard time. Look what we did to them." Sergeant John flits from subject to subject, but not lightly. It's all very fast, and very random; the thoughts and words of a man who is bursting with the kind of life I haven't ever thought to ponder before today. "Look at this!" he barks. "I'm 64 years old today and look at this." He flexes his muscles, over and over, the biceps bulging when he squeezes his fists. "I got a full head of hair," he says, pulling off his Vietnam Vet hat. The grayish brown hair is thick and tussled. It's a source of obvious pride, but a source of fear as well. "Ronald Reagan had a full head of hair too. And the Alzheimers...I don't want to end up like that". He shakes his head and takes off his sunglasses, peering up at us. His eyes are shockingly blue, something we will mention later as we are eating sandwiches at a restaurant a few blocks away. Sergeant John fought in Vietnam, as a sniper. He clearly relished the job, as he describes it, even the time when he was expected by a Cambodian village leader to eat moneky brains right out of the skulls. "I was drunk on some local stuff they had, so I didn't even care. I just reached down and..." He makes big scooping gestures and loud eating sounds. What did monkey brains taste like? "Popcorn," John says. In Saigon, he bought a $500 bulletproof vest from a German who had been in the French Foreign Legion. The Sergeant relates the experience, giving the German a deep, gruff voice. "So, this German says to me, "Zee Vietnamese tried to keel me years ago. And now they will keel you. I says to him, 'Look, Krauthead, I have American money to spend.' And I pull it out. And suddenly, he loves me. 'Ooooh, show me zee money!' that krauthead says. We took that vest out and tacked it up to a tree. I shot it 20 times with an AK-47. Afterwards, there were 20 bullets on the ground and the vest was totally unmarked. 'I'll take it,' I said. That vest saved my life when my helicopter went down. I was the only one in my regiment who survived that crash." Sergeant John shows us shrapnel scars on his wrist. When he was wounded, though,he healed quickly, which he attributes to parsley. He eats a lot of parsley. "Parsley is full of your vitamins. It's good for, you know, anything. The Trojans ate it, and their wounds healed really damn fast." John also gives parsley the credit for his youthful vigor. He flexes his muscles some more.

There was a special woman in Sergeant John's life once. "She's up at St. Charles cemetery now," he says. "She smoked a pack a day." He pauses. "I got a lot of money. All I ever wanted was one thing. You know what that was? A woman who wanted me, for me. Not for my money" He taps his chest. His voice gets softer. "This woman, she could have cared less about my money. She didn't want to go out for a fancy dinner. All she wanted was this." He lifts his right arm. "To hold my arm when we walked. Everywhere we went, she held my arm."

Meeting someone like Sergeant John is a rare and sacred thing. It's the kind of encounter that leaves you shaken afterward, happy and sad alike, and all the mixed up ways people feel when they meet someone that makes the world a little brighter and more lovely for a few hours. As we eat lunch, Sean and I are almost completely quiet. I know he's feeling the same thing.

After lunch, I bring the birthday cake Sean and I bought for Sergeant John over to his house. I walk close to the hedges so he can't see me. A few buildings down, I stop on the sidewalk and crouch down to light the candles. Some neighbors and people walking on the sidewalk gather around me. "It's John's birthday today," I tell them. They walk along with me toward his stoop. The candles flicker wildly, threatening to go out. A few feet from where John is sitting, we start singing Happy Birthday, quietly first and then louder as we reach him. Sergeant John, Vietnam vet, self-professed rogue and professional bachelor, lover of junk and history and parsley, leans forward, grinning, to blow out the candles.

*This update typed while getting ready to watch the Packers game with friends.

The way you smile

The sun was shining, the liquor was bountiful. Teeth were sparse but happiness abounded. In this weekend's adventures...

Two parties.

Friday night. There was a party at Sarah Brennan and Adrian Tomine's apartment, to celebrate my friend Fred's 30th birthday. I made a big batch of vodka lemonade and then Sean and I drank almost the whole thing ourselves. It was about 100 degrees, so we crowded around the air conditioner, sitting on a desk with our feet swinging. Fred was glowing with birthday happiness. For his birthday, I gave him a copy of Colonel Sanders autobiography, _Life as I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin' Good_. Adrian read the first line of the book aloud to Fred: "Dadgummit!" There were funny little comics tacked up on a bulletin board. Rough draft Optic Nerve.

Saturday night. The lovely Troy and Katie celebrated their first wedding anniversary. I invented a ridiculously strong drink called the Headache, and Sean and my friend Jeff made me a drink which had no name but had a lot of cruddy pineapple vodka in it. The music was perfect, and there was dancing, except for Marc Balgavy, who doesn't like to dance very much but has a lovely beard. I went to O'Connors afterwards, but I don't really remember it. Sean and I ate slices from the newly redone pizza place next to Southpaw on the way home. This morning, The Headache proved true to its name.


One hour in the City Lights Diner.

The City Lights is on Atlantic Avenue and the corner of 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn. It's what I would call a typical Brooklyn diner: giant menu with colorful headings like "Very Delicious Sandwiches", waitresses that won't put up with any crap, plastic glasses that still smell a bit like dishwashing detergent, a clientele that looks tired but calm, coffee that's simple. I used to spend quite a bit of time here; my first year of teaching, I would take homework papers there at night to grade. This afternoon, churchgoers filled a few of the booths, talking and laughing. In their Sunday best, they looked out of place in a grimy diner, but they gave the City Lights a dignity that it deserves. The waitress has a head of wild, curly hair and a boisterous laugh. I order cinnamon toast, and then, before I can say it, she says, "chocolate egg cream?" Which is exactly what I was about to order. I don't remember her from my nights of chocolate egg creams in the second window booth, the same one I'm in now. "Do you remember me?" I ask her. "How did you know that was what I wanted?" She looks taken aback. "Goes good with toast" is all she says in response.

Two policemen come in. They are the Laurel and Hardy of cops; the tall, skinny one teases the fat one for putting a lot of sugar and milk in his coffee. The fat one laughs and shakes his head. How are things in Brooklyn this afternoon? "Quiet," they say. "Everybody's watchin' football," says Laurel. Hardy proclaims that he will kill the Jets himself if they have a bad season, and what the hell, he'll kill the Giants for the same reason. A woman and a little girl, about 7 or so, come in and share a grilled cheese deluxe. "How big is your heart?" the girl asks. "It fits right there," the woman says, tapping on the girl's chest. "It pumps your blood." But how did it get in there, the girl wants to know. We're born with it in there, the woman tells her between french fries. "But," the girl says, starting to get impatient, "How do we move?" "I don't know, baby," the woman says, laughing, "I just don't know."

Outside, the sun is glittering on the cars going by and the sidewalk is full of shadows. An elderly man and woman come in and order burgers. "Hello," I say. "Hello, my dear," says the woman.

Tomorrow: The stories of Sergeant John and Mr. Sit.

*This update typed while watching the end of _The Royal Tennenbaums_, and listening to Al Jolson.

Valentine

A peaceful Labor Day Weekend in Brooklyn.

1. The Barbecue

The Barbecue was in Prospect Park, held by my sweet friend Fred, who has a giant bushy beard and wears crazy ties. He is also king of the mini Weber, crouched down near the ground, gently turning ears of corn and closely watching burgers. We walked over together: Sean Howe, my friend Frank, four Swedes in a touring pop band, and me. Finding the bbq proved to be daunting. Fred and I called and texted each other more than 10 times, as we wandered around the lake, scanning the horizon and sidestepping swampy puddles. The Swedes' perfectly primped hair started to wilt in the heat. "Can you see an orange buoy out in the lake?" Fred asked. "Yeah," I tell him, "it's right across from us." But everything, from every angle, is right across from us. "The buoy, the fishing area and the barbecue are an equilateral triangle," Fred says with authority. I haven't thought about equilateral triangles for a long time. "Are you the apex?" I ask him, without really knowing what I mean. Fred doesn't know what I mean either. But eventually he guides us to the right spot, a pretty area by a little inlet of the lake that features a large moldering pile of mowed grass and lake gunk by the shore. It doesn't bother me. It's really lovely. Sean and I occupy ourselves by throwing some large sticks into the water by lifting them with our feet. Then, this:

Me: Want to play with the football?
Sean: No.
Me: Want to run around?
Sean: No.
Me: Want to make boats out of leaves and race them?
Sean: Not really.
Me: (pause)
Sean: (pause)
Me: I'm going to go steal that remote controlled truck (which is being raced around by some men near us and is making a really loud and grating whine)
Sean: Then you can throw it in the lake.
Me: No, I'm just going to take it and run away.

So I run off toward the truck, and my feet feel ridiculously light, as they did when I was a kid, sprinting around my house at night in the summer during a game of Ghost Around the Graveyard. The truck, it turns out, is fancy, and thus, it is fast. I try to edge up to it, but the impulse to grab it and flee is fading fast, and the truck is speeding up, racing around a makeshift obstacle course. And the men holding the remote control are eyeing me suspiciously. When I get back to the grill, the Swedes have thrown themselves down in the grass and stretched out like golden retrievers. They are still jet-lagged.

2. The New York Times

Frank is in charge of rushing the Swedes around (they are staying at Gary Olson's house, then that changes, they are staying with Jeff Baron). He stays with me and Brian, where there are fewer grape arbors and less coolness, and more cats. Frank and I lounge around the apartment, reading the Sunday paper. We get into a routine: Frank will say, "Oh my God!" when reading a story. Or he will say, "Wow." "Oh Man." Or "Jeez." Not looking up from what I'm reading, I say, "Hmm" in response to these exclamations, and Frank explains what interesting bit of information he has just come across. Frank is from Boston and says "awesome" a lot. Brian reads the paper with a deep intensity; he frowns as he studies The Week in Review. His cat sits on the arm of the chair while he reads, her eyes half-closed. I read the city section every Sunday with an overwhelming love for New York City: the interesting neighbors, the quirky situations, the stink, and the monuments to people long forgotten.

3. Mr. Key

Mr. Key, in his soft, gentle voice, agreed to have lunch or dinner with me. But now he is nowhere to be found. The weekend was sunny, and now it's rainy, and Mr. Key's bench has been empty the whole time. Mr. Key, where are you?

4. The phone call

In July, I called some random 718 numbers to get ideas for this blog. The first two hung up (one after saying, in the background, "God damn kids and their prank calls"). The third number, T. Ramirez and her friend K. (both aged 15) was more helpful. Wonderful, even. They told me to eat Puerto Rican food, and then kindly offered some ideas about how to cook rice and beans, and what brand to buy. With Tito Puente playing in the background, I make rice, beans, plantains and mango fritters. The Puerto Rican kids in my class two years ago (all 14 of them) were so proud of the food they ate. Most of them could cook, and they brought amazing platters of fried and spicy and sweet things to our winter party. "This is what Puerto Rican people eat for Christmas," one of them said. "We don't eat no fruitcake. We eat OUR food."

They would have been proud of me, those kids, even if my rice was a little burned on the bottom and my plantains were oversalted.

5. Fall

Suddenly, there are a few rusty colored leaves on the ground in Brooklyn, clogging the gutters in the rain and crunching underfoot on the sidewalk. The air is heavy with the scent of end of the summer flowers, the ones I'm allergic to. The summer has turned rotten. At home, the cats all stretch out on the rug together, as I pack and crate and seal up magazines and books and records. A handful of wet leaves I picked up are drying by the window. The house fills with the damp and sweet smell of autumn. I think: "The apples are almost ripe now." I think: "where are my sweaters?"

*This update typed while listening to Slowdive, and re-edited while planning which stoop sales to hit this morning with Sean.

The Greatest of Great Men

This is the North Korean Central News Agency press release in October, 1997 that prompted my favorite New York Times article ever:

Kim Jong Il, son of former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, was confirmed
as general secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea on October 8. Mysterious natural phenomena
are being witnessed in different parts of Korea as provincial party conferences adopt resolutions
recommending Kim Jong Il as general secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea.
White flowers came into bloom on a pear tree, attracting butterflies and bees at a factory in
Pyongyang on September 27. On their way to work, factory workers witnessed this phenomenon
and said nature welcomes the festive event. More than 100 blossoms opened on an apricot tree
near a film-processing plant in the city on that same day. Eighty-five blossoms were witnessed
on apricot trees at a stock farm in Sangwon County on September 25. About 400 blossoms came
into bloom on a twenty-year-old wild pear tree in a park in front of the Kaesong Municipal Party
Committee building in thesame period. On the morning of September 22, fishermen of the fishery
station in Rajin-Sonbong city caught a 10-centimeter magical white sea cucumber while fishing on
the waters off Chongjin. They said the rare white sea cucumber has come to hail the auspicious
event of electing Secretary Kim Jong Il as party general secretary. Seeing the mysterious natural
phenomena, Koreans say Secretary Kim Jong Il is indeed the greatest of great men produced by
heaven and that flowers come into bloom to mark the great event.

*This update typed while listening to and half-watching a horrible Lifetime movie.

The Size of Your Life

Ask someone what time it is in a British accent. Submitted by David Greenberger.

Me: 'ello, do you 'ave the time?
Guy at the deli: Um, yes. It's almost 1:30.
Me: Ta.

Ask someone what time it is in a southern accent. Submitted by David Greenberger.

Me: What tahm is it, please?
Lady at Associated Grocery Store: 1:45.
Me: Thahnk yoo, Ma'am. I just love these northern grocery stores y'all have.
Lady: (raises eyebrows but says nothing)

It's funny. Every time I try to say something in any accent, it almost always comes out sounding at least a little bit Russian. This is likely because my old roommate and I spoke to each other almost exclusively in Russian accents for about six months. It is, even now, unspoken as to why we did that, and why it lasted so long. He would come home from work every night and turn Russian and demand, "What you are making for deen-er?" and I would instantly turn Russian and reply with something like "Tonight I am making for us burgers" or "why you are never cooking for me instead?". Even now, if I try to imitate Trace, the bartender down the street, who's from Wales, or my Yemeni doctor, or a snooty French accent, someone invariably says, "you sound Russian."

Follow a squirrel around. Submitted by Chris.

I find a friendly squirrel on second street. He walks towards me on a metal gate until he's right in front of me. I can see his whiskers quivering. But when it becomes apparent that I don't have anything to feed him, he runs out onto the sidwalk. I follow him. He runs up a stoop. I wait. Someone's put a bunch of free stuff out on their stoop. I take a little wire basket, thinking, it will be perfect for the rulers in my classroom. Someone has dropped part of an ice cream cone on the ground and the ants are in heaven. The squirrel races up a tree trunk. I squint up at him for a while until it's too bright to look anymore and realize that there's a little girl standing next to me, looking at me looking up. "What?" she says, pointing up to the sky. "Just a squirrel," I say, smiling.

Get a malt. Submitted by Ivan. Aie nako!

I wander down to Louie G's for a strawberry malt. The afternoon light is different than it was a few weeks ago. Muted and paler. It's not very close yet, but fall is looming somewhere, and I can't wait. I'm daydreaming along, thinking that malts are one of the best inventions of all time, and wondering who left a bra next to the mailbox on the corner of Union Street, when I see Mr. Key up ahead, for the first time in days. He's sitting on his favorite benches, with his cane, outside the coffee shop. I walk up to him, and he turns to see what's caused the sudden shade. "Hello," I say. "Hello, he says. His voice is always quiet, and a bit melodical. I sit down next to him.

TO BE CONTINUED

*This update typed while listening to workmen hammering in the new restaurant downstairs (it's almost done!) and a Snow Patrol album.