Do NOT Do the U

In Manhattan and Brooklyn, unwritten traffic rules dictate that you can make a U-turn pretty much any time you want -- unless you're driving a cab, in which case police will invariably give you a ticket. At least that's what the cab drivers will tell you. If you get into a taxi outside 35 W. 81st St (just down the street from where I grew up) and wanted to go across town, the driver could take you over to Columbus Ave, down to 77th St, back to Central Park West, and back up to 81st St (a half-mile trip) -- or he could just make an 'illegal' Yuwee, and you'd be headed to the East Side just a block later.

But only cabbies have to deal with the cops for U-turns in NYC. In Manhattan and Brooklyn, I used to do U-turns right in front of police cars, sometimes slowing them down as they lazily scanned the nabe for miscreants In New Paltz, things are a bit different.

A few days ago, I was on my way back from Starbucks when a squad car that had been parked nearby suddenly put on its lights behind me. I pulled out of the way, assuming that the officer wanted to get past me in order to respond to a call. Nope. He explained that he'd spotted me doing a U-turn before I'd parked across from the Starbucks. I told him that I was new to New Paltz and that I didn't know about that rule. He let me off with a warning. I guess that's another way that NP is different from NY.

Who Is the Most Interesting Bus Buddy?

I've now taken about 50 bus rides between New Paltz and New York. Most buses can seat up to 44 but only carry, say, 30, and some of those folks are traveling together. So, to my happy surprise, most of the time I've been able to sit alone.

On occasion I've struck up a convo with a person from the New Paltz area who has given me suggestions about cool places to visit or cool things to do, and it's always encouraging to chat with other commuters who tell me that they have taken the bus for years with no regrets. I've met a really nice tutor named Bill, and yesterday I had a great time talking with a guy who knew all the cool places to hike, but today I had my coolest bus buddy yet. His name is Francisco, and he's a professional wrestler.

I know that I would never have struck up a conversation with this guy had the bus not been 20 minutes late. I started by asking him about the delay, since he'd been on since at least Kingston, and before I knew it, we were comparing tattoos. Francisco's left hand sported an Ace bandage, and he explained that he'd hurt it in a bout several months back; part of his trip today was to see a physical therapist. Wait...his PT session today was for his shoulder, which was injured when his car smashed into a tree at 50 mph when the brakes gave out. Amazingly, his only injuries were two broken toes and a bruised shoulder even tho the car was totalled and the airbag didn't open till 90 seconds after the crash! The very picture of this poor guy sitting dazed in his crumpled second-hand Volvo when the airbag finallly went off; well, I was almost crying from laughing. He went on to say that he's got two suits pending against the garage: one for the air bags that didn't open in time, and the other on account of the mechanic who caused his brake pads to melt off as he sped down a twisting, rural two-laner, nearly plunging to his death off the side of the mountainous road. When he realized that his brakes were shot, he had the presence of mind to say a little prayer and aim for the tree rather than crash into a car ferrying a mom and her kids in the oposite direction. The punchline is that he's being sued by the owner of the tree. And maybe it was his tattoos, his accent, or his bling, but after he crawled to a cop who happened to be talking to a local, he almost got arrested. The officer put him in the back of the car and only hours later took him to his house, dropping him off there and telling his family that he might need medical attention.

I was starting to talk about my near-death occurrence involving my unicycle and a school bus and how it made me appreciate life when he mentioned that this car accident was only the 6th time he'd been touched by death. Some of the earlier brushes involved other people (he lost friends on 9/11), but he has awakened in a hospital bed at least two other times. The more recent one was fairly common and involved being a passenger in a car driven by reckless friends, but the other one was pretty wild: At ten, he'd been struck by an 18-wheeler while on vacation when the drunk truck driver hadn't seen him walking on the side of the road. The force of that impact sent him flying down the road, landing in an ugly heap with his nose near his ear and his arm broken in four places; he spent three years in a wheelchair and went thru the first of what proved to be a lot of physical therapy.

Back to wrestling, I mentioned that a good friend of mine works for Vince McMahon, founder of WWE (one of the wrestling federations). We chatted about wrestling, and I was particularly interested to hear about how some wrestlers cut their heads and faces before a bout so that they'll bleed a lot during the match.

Amidst this discussion, suddenly our coach driver hit the brakes to avoid a truck that had slowed down too fast. Some of our fellow riders screamed, reminding me that in all of my rides, no passenger has ever been carsick. To this, Francisco contributed a story from his upbringing in Brooklyn. He'd been on the school bus when one of the other 6th graders had crapped his pants. The driver had tried to put up with the stench for a long time but finally pulled over. He took the smelly boy, Bob, off the bus, went with him to a store nearby, and bought him some clean clothes with his own money. But the story had a bitter (or should it be 'pungent'?) ending; the boy was teased mercilessly till he graduated high school. Francisco still calls him Bob the Poop.

This reminded me of a similar story from my high school. There had been a nerdy boy who had fallen in love with a girl who was not part of the pretty-girl clique. The affair went noticed only on the fringes of our high school radar until a love letter turned up in which our hapless protagonist professed his love with the unusual statement, "I want to blowtorch your panties off." This comment haunted him till graduation, just like Bob the Poop's nickname, but Blowtorch had the last laugh when he inherited part of his dad's fortune, making him one of the richest people on the planet.

Francisco and I had more in common than wrestling, aching left hands, and moving from Brooklyn to the New Paltz region in search of a better life. It turns out that my companion also has a little girl, and her name also starts with M-A. In fact, Maya was born the exact same day as my little Maeve. Wow. And while I started a unicycle club, he's the founder of a wrestling group. I'm a lapsed Jew, he's a lapsed Catholic. Francisco is my part Italian, part Puerto Rican doppleganger. Who knew?

Best of all was how much Francisco sounded just like my favorite comedian ever. Mitch Hedberg apparently died nearly two years ago, but here he was talking to me about priests who child-molest children and airbags that pop open only after the driver is nealy dead. Francisco and Mitch have the same unusual rhythm and pregnant pauses to their speech and both lace their sentences with the occasional Anglo-Saxon term for fornication or feces.

Francisco said that he was expecting to travel back to Kingston at 7:30, and I was looking forward to chatting with him some more, but he didn't show. I look forward to seeing him next week.

Why the Bus Should Always Come Late

Since early September, I've commuted Monday thru Thursday to Manhattan and back. I always get to see the kids off to school, but some nights I get back so late that I don't have a chance to put them to bed. That happened the last two nights.

This morning, I didn't get out of bed till just minutes before Fiona's bus is due to arrive. Now, in her case there is a big difference between the set arrival time (8:20) and the actual time that the bus gets there. Her usual driver is notorious for always being about 17 minutes late (his record is 19). He's remarkably consistent. The problem is that on rare occasions, a substitute driver takes over his route for a day, and she's never more than a few minutes behind schedule.

Most parents hope for a punctual driver, but I'm always hoping the bus doesn't show till at least 8:35. That gives me 15 uninterrupted minutes with Fiona. Sometimes we work on self-defense moves or listen to our favorite Ben Folds Five songs, but most of the time we just chat. I was disappointed, then, to see her bus pull up at just 8:26 today. That substitute driver robbed me of ten precious minutes with my big girl.

The good news is that I'll be home in time for stories and tuck-in...that is, if this bus ever makes it out of the Lincoln Tunnel.

Morning Is Definitely Broken

Living in New Paltz puts me in a different mindset for sure. In New York City, I drive like an Israeli cabbie (and if you haven't been to Israel, I can only tell you that a cab ride there is more likely to put the fear of god into you than any visit to the Wailing Wall). In New Paltz, however, I'm a pussycat. I frequently have to check my rear view mirror to ensure that I'm not holding up a line of cars.

This relaxed mentality also shows up in my song choices. In Manhattan, I want to listen to hard-rocking The The or something noisy and boppy by Outkast. In New Paltz on the other hand, I'm all about James Taylor and Cat Stevens. In listening to one of my favorite songs, however, I came up against a problem that took me out of New Paltz and put me thru a weird ride on Web.

"Morning Has Broken" is a religious tune that sounds like a hymn with a catchy jingle, so it comes as little surprise that this is what it is. The song was written not by Mr. Stevens himself but rather by a well-known children's author of the early 20th century who was commissioned to write a few hymns. Cat rightly omitted the other three (clunkier) stanzas and repeated the first one, creating a folk hit, but what exactly was he singing?

Typing "morning has broken" and any other line of the song into a Google search brought up between up to 15,000 'hits.' I noticed, however, that some of the webpages had conflicting lyrics. Further investigation turned up several errors. Since most websites borrow (steal?) from each other, the errors showed up with varying frequency.

Here are the 'correct' lyrics, penned in 1931 and recorded by Cat Stevens several decades later:

Morning has broken, like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dew fall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning,
God's re-creation of the new day."

In errant version #1, the last two lines of the first verse are:

Praise for the springing
Fresh from the world.

This makes no sense; after all, what is a springing? But since Stevens didn't publish the lyrics in liner notes, people made guesses, and some of those folks had bad wiring in their accoustic (or neurological) equipment.

There are actually two subvariants here. Some webpages have "the springing fresh from the word," while other have "them springing fresh from the world."

Variant #2 is a substitution of "dew fall" with either "dewfall" or "dew-fall." Both of these show up in dictionaries, but neither is as the author wrote it. Oddly, of the nearly 1,000 hits examined more closely, 772 have "dewfall" as one word while fewer than 200 have it as two words.

The funniest error, variation #3, is the substitution seen in the line:

Born of the one light Eden saw play.

In 44 webpages (many of them connected to some singer named Nona) the line reads incorrectly (and quite bizarrely) as:

Born of the one light Eden so play.

Interestingly, in singing the song, Stevens made an error of his own. The lines are:

God's re-creation
Of that first day.

Stevens sings it not as "re-creation" but instead as if god is entertaining himself. Recreation is akin to hangin' out and havin' fun. Re-creation is a different matter entirely.

Here is a bad idea: Why not borrow the tune (which Stevens borrowed from a Gaelic song) and then write your own words celebrating, say, marriage? Click here to check out some really awful lyrics.

That linked page (above) also highlights a rare variation (#4), substituting "God's feet" for "his feet." This change went against the wishes of the hymn's author, who envisioned the blackbird as the garden walker (as opposed to God); that's why she didn't capitalize 'his' to "His." If you think about it, there is no biblical mention of God walking in the Garden of Eden, so the very idea of it is laughable at best and sacrilege at worst. This variation only appears 40 times, however, so not a whole lot to get worked up about.

For more information, check out this link to the Unitarian Universalist Association forum for a really interesting discussion about the origins of the lyrics and music of this song.

Where to Pick Apples

We visited Hurd's Family Farm, five miles south of New Paltz just down the road from the lower school building, Lenape, where our Fiona attends 5th grade. Friends were visitng from Brooklyn, and after showing off the house and then the town, we decided to show off the apple farm.

First on the agenda was the corn maze. Since Maeve was napping, Shirra stayed with her in the car (reversing our roles from when we went to a corn maze in Martha's Vineyard). I went with Emmett and our friends, whose son, Nick, is one of Emmett's best buddies. The two boys had a great time hampered tho they were by our frequent requests of them not to rush off, lest they get lost. Getting lost turns out not to have been much of an issue due to the frequent balding patches caused by the lateness of the season. The maze is usually green and lush, but by October, it's a bit brown and patchy. Still, the boys had a blast, and I think Fiona would have had fun had she not been apple picking with a friend off in Kingston.

After the maze, we headed for some apple picking of our own. Maeve had awakened, and she loved running about looking for trees that had not already been denuded of their fruit. I recommend gala and empire apples for eating, rome for baking.

Following the apples, we decided to head to the pumpkin patch. Maeve prefered to stay with me in the playground, which consisted mainly of a sandbox, a defunct tractor that kids could climb, and a series of tires from small to large that were half buried in the ground. Initially Maeve was quite tentative as she held my hand and traipsed from the small tires to the huge ones at the end. After about ten practice runs, however, our little two-and-a-half-year-old was able to run the course sans assistance despite her overly long hand-me-down dress.

The rest of our party returned eventually with a few pumpkins in hand. The three that Shirra had chosen weighed in at 40 lbs but cost only $20.

The whole afternoon (including the fruit we came home with) cost our family no more than $44.

Natural Marvels

We've seen some gorgeous sights up here during our first two months in New Paltz.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd seen a crane coasting across our local lake. It turns out that this majestic soarer was a blue-crested heron. We've also seen a woodchuck watching for predators while standing outside a store, beavers busying themselves as they ran along the road, frogs frolicking across puddles in our playground, and spiders the size of broaches in our basement. And that's just the animals! We've also seen our own trees submit to the shorter (and colder) days, dropping their red and golden coats on our still-green hills...and then there's the moon.

When I was 13 and a half, I bought myself a telescope with a large fraction of my Bar Mitzvah gelt. I stared at the Moon through those powerful lenses and marveled at the craters. What I didn't see is that if you look closely, you can actually see it rotate.

Shirra's folks gave Emmett a telescope for his sixth birthday, and we promptly put it to use in Martha's Vineyard, where we were during this celebration. But when we returned to Brooklyn, we packed it up right away, even before we knew we were moving, because there is too much light pollution in The City, even in our quiet old nabe. New Paltz is different. If we turn out the houselights, the night sky can be almost pitch, and the sky becomes alive with stars.

On a crisp night in mid-September, the moon was low and full, so I decided to take a closer look. To my astonishment, after my eyes adjusted to the intense light of the Moon, I was able to see it rotating slowly. I stared at it for a long time, and when I came in, my eyes needed some 20-30 minutes just to return to mornal. But it was certainly worth it for me to see that slow rotation a bit closer .

Do Not Keep on Truckin'

Earlier during this commute, a truck veered slightly into our lane. As we passed him, some of us noticed that the driver was reading a sheet of paper (directions, no doubt, on how not to drive safely). I leaned forward and whispered to the woman in the front passenger seat, "Not to put the fear of god in you, but that's why I don't sit in the very first row." She smiled but remained unfazed and seated. I suppose that means that the Prozac is working.

And woo hoo, this is my first blog posted from my phone (a web-ready Sidekick II).

One last observation: A gallon of gasoline is about 40¢ cheaper in New Jersey than in New York.

I Led the Pigeons

For complicated reasons having to do with McCarthy, the Knights of Columbus, various presidents, and some flag salesmen who wanted to drum up more business, kids in most public schools have been compelled to say (or at least hear) a daily Pledge of Allegiance since 1892. This rubs many of us parents the wrong way, tho apparently not the majority. One reason is obvious while another is so subtle that I feel like I'm the only one who has ever realized it. The third reason has to do with global competition.

Wrong-Way Rub #1
Primarily the Pledge offends me with its deific reference, reinforcing the idea that the sanctity, safety, and success of our country have something to do with a supernatural being. In fact the phrase 'under God' was added as a response to the godless commies of the McCarthy era and under pressure from the Knights of Columbus and other religious types. Without those two words, I'd have only two problems with the Pledge.

Wrong-Way Rub #2
What the hell does it mean? Ok, all of us adults can figure it out, but I remember having to recite it at camp three decades ago and wondering about many of the words. Pledge: Isn't that the stuff you polish wood with? Allegiance? Republic? Indi-something-or-other? What do those mean? And who the hell is Richard Stands?

Rub #3
It only takes 15 seconds to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But since it means nothing to the people reciting it, why not replace it with a quick run thru the 3s and 4s time-tables? For a country so obsessed with test scores, it seems odd to waste time on a daily basis; those meaningless polysyllables weigh in at 45 minutes a year and nearly five hours thruout elementary school. I'd much rather see that time spent memorizing Shakespeare sonnets or Romantic poems.

I dissected the Pledge for my kids, explaining it to them before offering up the version that I recited at camp. They jumped right onto that idea, and now each of them recites our homemade version everyday:

I led the pigeons
To the bag
Of the untidy states of Tomato-ah
And toothy republican Richard Stands,
One ancient wonder-cod,
Individual,
With flibberty and gibbets till Fall.

I'm not entirely sure how Tomato-ah happened, but the kids swear by it (literally). Shirra and I contributed some of the trickier bits like the ancient wonder-cod. The funny thing is that altho the kids mock the Pledge on a daily basis, they could be the only children in both lower-school buildings who know what it's supposed to mean.

One day, Emmett told us that he'd made a new friend; let's call him Richard Stands. He knew Richard was a cool kid when he told him his version of the poem and Richard admitted that his was also a non-Pledge family. A few days later, it fell to Emmett to lead the class in the Pledge. He explained that this involved standing up in front of the class while everyone recited. I asked him if he recited the real version (which he doesn't know), but he told us he'd merely said his usual tribute to the bagged pigeons. His mom and I were so proud! Our little iconoclast!

What is an Acre?

We have just under 8 acres in New Paltz, but what does that mean?

An acre was originally defined as the amount of land that a farmer could plow in a day with a yoke of oxen. Somehow that ended up being a square with sides equal to about 208 feet. And according to an Ozzie farmer I met, acres are measured on a plane. If your land is rolling hills, your 8 acres will truly play out more lile 9 or 10.

To get an idea of an acre, imagine a football field including the endzones (in other words, all the green stuff on the field). That's about two acres. Your typical baseball field? Just under two. In fact, if you can visualize the basepath and everyting inside of it, then a homerun trot encircles nearly a quarter of an acre. But just try to imagine a baseball player mustering a couple of oxen.

For those savvy of Sheep Meadow in Manhattan, that site comprises 17 acres, so cut that in half, give me the smaller piece, and that's about 8 acres. Plus we have a stream.

I've walked the woods surrounding our house, but I still haven't figured out our property lines exactly. I know that there are some Posted signs that mark one of our borders, and that helps, but the rest is a mystery. I do have a vague idea that our parcel somewhat resembles home plate.

What I do know is that when I look outside around the house, it feels like I am the king of all I survey, just like Yurtle the Turtle. Of course, he comes to an unhappy fate when the lowest turtle burps, so I try not to brag about my dominion too much.

How to Bury a Loved One

There comes a time when all hermit crabs must crawl down that long beach where the sun never sets. That day came too soon for Potato, Emmett's beloved new pet. Potato and two friends came to us from Sue's Zoo, a local shop where we also purchased Fiona's guinea pigs. We're not sure what happened to this young crab. He had sufficient water and food, his tank was clean, and he had adequate opportunity for exercise. But today, when Shirra went to check in on him, he was not moving. For those of you who know hermit crabs, this lack of movement may not seem unusual, but this little fella was unusually lacking in movement.

Considering their general, well, hermetic existence, I was surprised at Emmett's reaction to the death of Potato. He immediately burst into sobs and tears. He never cuddled with his crabs, and he rarely touched them, but clearly they have made an impression on him (and in him, once, when he tried to pick one of them up). And somehow this cute crab's shell seemed cutest of them all, its tan swirls vaguely reminiscent of latte or, in the uncaffeinated eyes of a seven-year-old, a potato. When his sobbing had subsided somewhat, Emmett acknowledged that he would indeed like to replace his lost crab as soon as possible, and he mentioned a crustacean that had tickled his fancy a few weeks ago in the shop. Potato is dead. Long live Tiger.

Emmett wanted to give Potato a proper internment, but digging in the shale around here is quite dicey, so even after a few minutes I'd only made a small dent in the dirt. With Potato resting comfortably on his bed of earth and grass, we buried the little critter about 6 inches deep. For a headstone, Emmett scratched Potato's name and the date onto a large piece of shale and placed it beside the grave.

I wish I could take back one moment from today. That's when I ordered a sidedish for my veggie burger. Eschewing the salad, I asked the waiter for a mashed potato. Emmett had to excuse himself from the table to cry in the bathroom, and I didn't even realize what I'd done till Shirra told me an hour later. There are few boys as sensitive as my little sweetheart.

Chainsaws, 101

Here are some considerations when contemplating the purchase of a chainsaw:

1. Do you need one? Sometimes an ax will do. I'm still not sure that I need a chainsaw, but I bought one anyway.
2. Electric or gas? Electric (almost?) universally require a cord, so you can't walk deep into the woods with an electric chainsaw. Electric chainsaws are ideal for people who want to do some cutting in their basement or who have all of the wood brought to their shed. If you want to tackle the woods IN the woods, you need a gas-powered chainsaw. Initially I bought an electric, but when I realized my mistake, I switched it for the gas-powered one that costs three times more. I also learned that you can't get a cord long enough to allow you to use the electric saw in the woods; it's a safety issue.
3. Are you adept enough to handle a gas-powered tool? I thought I was, but it was a bit daunting. The second-worst part is getting the gasoline into the machine. The third-worst part is turning it on. The fourth-worst part is keeping it on. (The very worst part would be chopping off a body part, but luckily that didn't happen).

You need ear plugs and goggles. I remembered both but left the plugs in my pocket and the goggles in the basement. You need gloves and steel-toed boots. Gloves came with the saw, but I didn't read about the boots until long after I'd finished chopping. I think I have a pair up in the closet. They're not the kind seen in the hands of the guys on ESPN's Outdoorsman contest; mine were made by Doc Marten, and they're blue. Won't I look dashing?

You need something to chop. I didn't really have any particular NEED to chop, driven mainly by something found on my Y chromosome, but I'd already spent 30 minutes trying to fill the saw with gasoline (not including the time spent washing the gasoline smell off my hands -- ketchup seemed to do the trick), so I was determined to get some chopping done. I went to the outskirts of our woods and found some fallen trees that were begging to be made into logs. We don't have a working fireplace yet, but I guess I could store the logs in our shed for when we do.