What's Nu?

This post is based on a mutual Googling experience my friend The Yant and I had last week.

Someone she knew (nu?) had an email with the domain extension .nu. This was new (nu?) to both of us.

"What the heck is .nu?" I mused, both of us laughing uncontrollably––in the middle of the day, on the telephone. "I've never heard of this." So both of us, she in New York and I in Greenville, begin the Google process.

I hit paydirt straightaway.

"Oh, look, it says it's some country called Nuie that has sold all these new (nu?) .nu (nu!) domains." So, nu? Oy!

Further investigation led us to several websites telling us about this new (nu?) country, around only since 1974 and seemingly a province of New Zealand.

It looks really beautiful. Their main export is coconut cream along with lime oil. The entire island closes down on Sunday because the natives are devout.

Then I read the meaning of the name. "Nuie means, 'Look! There's a coconut!'"

More uproarious laughter ensued.

We apologize to the residents of the tiny island of Nuie for our laughter at their expense. We hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive us.

I really must say I appreciate coconut cream and lime oil in all of its manifestations. And if I am ever in Nuie, and also The Yant will be there with me, we will probably be able to find lots of coconuts for you, if you just invoke the solemn word, "Nuie!" or its English equivalent, "Look! There's a coconut."

Well, you learn something new (nu?) everyday.

I Sing The Party Electric

The Christmas Holiday Party season has officially begun.

The earliest one is always a delightful affair. I have good friends that also attend and this time Bill came with me. We had some good nog with lots of Jack in it and some good discussion. I didn't partake of any food since I figured the eggnog made up for any caloric deficiencies.

Kind of a warm night, so after all the nog, figured I would go out on the back deck. The hostess' mom was out there, a very sweet woman whose (20' x 20') bedroom I fauxed about 6 years ago. She remembers me as "the girl who does..." and then there is a JAZZ HANDS! sweeping gesture. The technique I'd used involved large sheets of plastic placed atop freshly glazed wall parts, and through what is called "smooshing," random patterns are left. I had biceps the size of sides of beef after I'd finished that job. She still likes it, though.

To get to the hostess' mom, though, there was a bit of a blockade.

Is it that I am hyper-aware, or is it just that people are asleep or just pretending to be so?

I opened the door to the back porch. A tiny bit. About a foot and a half in front of me was this bobbed blonde woman. She was standing with a very tight little circular group. Someone in the group was relating a story. The door was open at her back and she just stood there and smiled at the person telling the story. I opened the door a bit more, still not touching her back.

She didn't budge.

A little more. On the edge of touching her back.

Nope.

"Excuse me?" I ventured.

Nothing.

I pushed the door just enough and spoke more loudly. "Excuse me!" and she finally turned around and gave me a look that would have wilted Patton.

"Sorry!" I said. All that time with the Canadians had taught me how to be very properly British. No effect on this woman, who hated me for interrupting her personal space. She merely moved enough to let my friend and I through, as if she too were a door, and swung immediately back into place.

Is it just me? Am I so wrong? or is it just that one cannot break the confines of a circle without some consequence?

A circle is strong. Wedding rings are round. The table at the Algonquin is round. At that moment I wished I were Dotty Parker, and if I were able to be endlessly (like a circle) quick and witty on my feet, I could have said, "Thank you dear, so glad you could accomodate my intrusion." But she would not have got it.

So it's the vicious circle, impenetrable, and what makes that spot so hallowed that you cannot even tear yourself away to recognize that there might be some other bit of life right outside it? Or has it been recognized, but then ignored, so that one's inclusion in the round might never be disturbed?

Either way, it's body language gone awry. Complete and utter lack of awareness, or just basic reactionary hostility? I'm cool where ever I am, and where ever I am is the coolest place in the world, or, this is my space, Bucko, get the hell out of it.

Once I was leaving, going 'round the other side of this circle toward the door, a high heel kicked me right in my knee. "OW!" I screamed. Some tartaned tart had whanged me during her demonstrative full body laughter. Not only did she not realize she kicked me, she didn't realized I'd been hurt when I screamed. Bill was out there by this time, asked what was wrong, told him, no one in this circle had any idea of anything outside their little world. "Ow," I repeated gamely, once the stinging really set in. Nope. Not going to get any sympathy from this group.

So I am voting for the unawareness factor. People asleep in their personal spaces, allowing no one to penetrate their circular slumber, and completely oblivious to the consequences of their dreamlike state.

Walt Whitman was all about a state of awareness and enjoyment of one's surroundings. If you can't sing the body electric, then I guess you're relegated to the party electric, harnessed by group dynamics and a false sense of aggrandisement. Personally, I would like to proceed through life with JAZZ HANDS! and inclusivity.

But that's just me.

Falling for Greenville

I couldn't let autumn slip by without documenting some of the incredibly gorgeous colours and blue skies we here in Greenville have been lucky to experience. Supposedly this is the best autumn in 20 years.

I took to the road (on my way to various and sundry places on Friday, such as Whole Foods and Easley), and, with my trusty camera, was involved in "drive by shootings." This meant I just pointed and clicked whilst driving; didn't even look out the viewer, just shot and hoped for the best. This resulted in some cockeyed images but I got the gist of the vibrance of our Appalachian foliage:


The foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where we are located, is ablaze yet the leaves are beginning to fly like snowflakes.

I am not feeling particularly prolific this evening but wanted to show some of the beauty of our area. So a picture speaks a thousand words.

Cuban Food

¡Buen Sabor!

Just felt the need to write about what we are having for dinner–-again. "Again" because this meal is a frequent eat here in our household.

Piccadillo, made with ground turkey to lighten it up; garlic, onions and peppers; cumin, oregano, cinnamon, a can of salt free tomatoes, all sauteed in olive oil and then raisins added and my son's portion plated. Then I add the chopped green olives for the rest of us.

Boniatillo, which is sweet potato pudding. First you have to infuse water with lemon and stick cinnamon (about 20 minutes at the simmer) and then make a syrup with some (a cup of) brown sugar (soft ball stage). Smush up two cans of sweet potatoes, drained, in a food processor. Add that to the sugar mixture. Add two egg yolks, tempered with the sweet potatoes, and some low fat milk (I know, with all that sugar and egg yolks...I had to health it up somehow).

This is my son's favourite meal. I like it too; it's got that sweet/salty thing (the olives pack the salty punch).

I gotta go and infuse some water now.

Nerdyrappinghood

Speaking with my sister this weekend, she mentioned at some point during our conversation that she liked Firefall. And that there was nothing wrong with that. I of course immediately concurred.

We are children of the '70s. Back then, growing up in Miami, there was an "elevator music" station called WLYF, Life-FM. My brother used the music from the station to create some of his incredibly silly and wonderful taped "commercials" about wheelchair races and "the Norland Senior High Art Show." WLYF was so sappy and so not even Mancini that it was truly only meant for parodies. I have learned that WLYF still exists, but has evolved to "adult contemporary," which means, in essence, they now play Firefall. And there is nothing wrong with that.

In all likelihood, they also play Ambrosia, and England Dan and John Ford Coley, and Player and Ace. Oh my. It's today's elevator music. I am now qualified and perhaps certified as a big nerdy over 40 child of the 70s.

Don't get me wrong. I am also the hip mother of an 11-year old and I know my Kanye West from my Ludacris (clean versions only, thank you very much). I still bop to a world beat and I still like my Sid Vicious with a sizzling side of Elvis Costello. I mourned the demise of CBGB the other day. I did my best "Wayne's World" imitation to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the car today.

But I am not ashamed to admit: I like Firefall. And all those other guys. Half of my iTunes library is testimony to that. Maybe that doesn't make me so hip. But it sure is comfortable and wonderful and will most certainly augment those future wheelchair races with aplomb.

Drivinghood: North and South

When I was living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and one of the incredibly insane owners of an automobile, I figured out that there was an unwritten, unspoken code shared by taxi drivers.

Taxi drivers own the streets of NYC. They know exactly how to navigate each pothole. They can tell Just how far any other vehicle is at anytime.

There are no lines on Madison Avenue (at least there weren't last time I drove in NYC). At least they are not painted lines. They are energetic lines.

Like meridians up and down the body (any fan of acupuncture knows what I am talking about), these lines keep everything in working order. And then there is the cooperation between each taxi driver, sharing this unwritten code, this brother- and sisterhood of maneuvering, watching out for one another. It is fast and furious but completely organized, and part of some zen-like flow that I am pleased to engage in. It's fun for me to figure out this code and ride the wave. And you become part of this Northern drivinghood yourself, with fraternite, egalite.

I am still trying to suss the code between pickup truck drivers here in the Deep South. There is one, that much I have figured out. Sometimes it involves ensuring that my little Honda does not get in front of them. There is nothing so grand as a Ram perched at the front of the lineup at a red light, especially one that has the satisfaction of having edged everyone else smaller than they out of the way.

This is different than the other lack of etiquette I experience from the SUV drivers. They like to bear down on us little vehicles, huge behemoths on my tail. But they also like to bear down on their own. No egalite, fraternite.

The trucks, they take care of each other. Just like the taxi drivers, they somehow work together so that they navigate traffic as a unit. Did I mention that there are sometimes as many pickup trucks on our roads as taxi drivers up Madison Avenue? Now just picture these trucks all travelling in symphony (Hmmmm. Trucks=symphony. This is a new one. Do we have something here?). They allow the other trucks to be part of their flow. They work in concert. (More musical references to trucks. I think I will get cussed out now.)

I have to figure out how to become part of that flow. How to cruise effortlessly through that little bottleneck on East North Street, the one right at Main Street, big red pickup on my right, big white pickup in front of me. Once I can determine the unspoken language of pickups, perhaps I can, in some small (read: Honda) way also become part of that great drivinghood of the South.

Romantic Notions of Autumn

Whilst growing up in Florida during some of my Wonder Bread years, I missed autumn something fierce. I also missed snow, but that is another story.

So I moved back to NY...I lived on my college campus amongst some of the most vivid colours in nature (Westchester) and then had the good fortune thereafter to work in Connecticut and drive up the Merritt Parkway to experience even more chroma and hue in its maximum glory. Oh, and yeah, and then back to NY and Westchester and curving around the Sprain Brook Parkway, all trees and rocks and orange-reds at 50mph...

I love fall. My body loves fall. Once the humidity drops away, once the air crisps, my humor rises and my energy begins to explode. My senses come alive. I have found that others agree. Fall may come a bit later here in South Carolina, but it is no less intense. Let it be said, though: I am no fan of Indian Summer...let's just get on with fall (and snow, let's have some snow...). I like the cool and the cold.

I think this weekend we will be going up to Flat Rock, NC to pick apples. North Carolina and its Blue Ridge Parkway boasts some of the most beautiful foliage in the country, I have found. And so close! Still a little early right now for fall colour, but I learned that the apples for pie-making are ready at this time so off we go.

Already, though, the Carolinas have a fully-red maple here, a brief flirt with orange at the top of another tree, and against the deep green, these little bits of colour pop.

Yep, fall loves me too. I am jonesing for more of it, missing the New England component of it, but real content in the glow of my romance with Carolina autumn.

BxM18, WTC, and 9/11

Five years later, I still have a tactile memory of a place I'd left eight years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall five years ago. It still hurts like hell to recall eight years ago, last I set eyes on my WTC, but five years ago still breaks my heart.

I used to work at Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, which was straight across the Hudson River, straight across from the majesty of the Twin Towers. Most of the time, I drove to work, an endless maze of little roads which took me the shortest route from across the GW and eventually into Jersey City. Other times, though, I let the Liberty Line do the driving for me, and took the BxM18.

The BxM18 (which stood for the Bronx-Manhattan 18 Bus) was the express bus that went between Riverdale and downtown Manhattan, cruising down Broadway for most of the trip, and leaving you off right at Vesey Street. I would walk up Vesey to Church, with the WTC right in front of me. I still don't know which one was WTC 1 or WTC 2. I just knew I would enter the front doors, look at the shoes in the window of the Nine West store, and go right down the stairs or escalator into the WTC concourse.

The concourse was that little diversion right before I made my way to the Path train. There was a coffee shop that prepared decadent chocolate mint coffees that I toted across the Hudson. If I spilled the coffee on that which I was wearing, I could always stop at the Gap store in the WTC and buy a new shirt. I remember buying certain articles of clothing in several stores in the concourse. The newstand (where I recognized the distinctive elderly gentleman who had previously worked at the newstand in the bottom of Rockefeller Plaza) was where I picked up a Daily News or Post once in awhile (snotty NYT reader that I am.;-)). The lunch treks my friend Michael and I used to take across the river just to get the chicken pita at Miami Subs on Liberty Street.

But it was the little diversion I had before even arriving at the WTC that I've remembered in these past few days leading up to today. It was the BxM18.

By the time the bus arrived at 261st and Riverdale, it had probably picked up passengers at two stops. I knew it originated at the Yonkers-Riverdale border, right in front of where the nuns used to play basketball. The folks who had been picked up first had determined their seats on the bus a long, long time ago. I was a relative newbie compared to these seasoned riders, who were older folks in their late 50s, 60s, maybe even early 70s. They had the gravelly voices and accents of southeastern New Yorkers, sounding like all my aunts and uncles from the Bronx and Westchester.

I would sit about two seats back from the driver, as an act of respect to the more established riders who wanted to sit in the middle of the bus. Eventually, I established my seat right there, two rows back. I would take out my NYT crossword to work on. Except that I didn't always work on it. Instead, I listened.

These veteran riders had been riding the same bus together since time immemoriam, it seemed. They all knew one another by name. They knew about one another's jobs, families, lives. Their comfortable patter, in those inimitable accents, was a soothing balm to me during the harried start-and-stop ride down the highway and city streets.

They talked about old times. One gentleman sang the old Robert Hall theme song. They dredged up other 50s and 60s pop culture examples, Maypo commercials, remember what used to be on Johnson Avenue!, what about Father so-and-so over at St. Ann's, my grandson had his bar mitzvah, and oh so many gems. I was rapt. My heart used to swell with affection for these individuals, some whose faces I would never see, only big winter coats and briefcases as they ambled down the narrow aisle of the bus at their stops.

I hadn't thought about these people in years until now. And now I think of the many faces I never saw, only the voices I heard that filled my mornings with a bit of history and times gone past. I wonder how many of these people actually worked in the Twin Towers. I wonder how many of those voices were silenced that day forever.

It was my WTC. But more than my WTC, it was theirs. Their morning journey was a rich part of some rich lives. I am grateful to have been privy to their lives, their stories. And my heart breaks a little more again today.

Yonkers 10705 Part I

Note: I've missed a few days of this repartee due to a really nasty stomach flu. Truly grotty.

So I'm in bed last night, tossing and turning. Thinking about that time in my life when I was living in Yonkers, NY. Not quite The City, but if you stood at a certain place on Riverdale Avenue, right near the Convent of Mt. Saint Vincent, where the NYC bus stopped, you could be both in The City and Westchester at the same time. I used to place my feet astraddle this imaginary line on the sidewalk, right in front of the cooler shade of the convent's stone fence.

I always felt I had this dual citizenship, this ability to span being a Yonkers girl and a New York City girl. Truth be told, lots of folks believe that Yonkers is really just another town in the borough system. So I guess I was always a city girl by default.

Besides these thoughts plus a massive craving for Carvel (across from the convent, and still there...and also indicating that perhaps my appetite was returning!), I took an astral walk down Riverdale Avenue. Of course, this was 1968. Everything's a bit different in 1968. Finely manicured apartment buildings, including the mysterious "co-op," which was an apartment neighbourhood which was supposed to be private and don't take the short cut through it or some guy in grey will come out and yell at you...The Associated grocery store, where they carried those tiny little green glass bottles of coke and the guys were named Murray, Meyer (the butcher) and some other guy with a grey buzzcut and Fassbinder glasses who manned the register. The only things we ever shopped for there were snacks, like cokes or ...mmmmm.... Wise Cheeze Waffies...or the occasional candy bar. Too expensive, my mom would say. My family did their shopping up on South Broadway or across the city line in Riverdale at the Daitch.

For the real sugar rush, though, there was nothing like Lane's Luncheonette. This place runs throught my blood memory like
nothing else. I could draw the place in finite detail...from its jaunty diagonal placement at the corner of Riverdale Avenue and Valentine Lane...to its sign above the door in black lettering on white...to the glass door that proclaimed "It's KOOL Inside!"...and when you entered: to the right, display racks of grown-up books and then lots more of Archie Comics and the forbidden "love" comics. Beyond that, there were wooden racks containing newspapers (Yonkers Herald Tribune, Daily News) and then magazines above that (Playboy right out there, all the way to the left so maybe you don't see it, but there). Toward the back were more wooden shelves holding toys and paper and just stuff, and then THE BELL SYSTEM phone booths. Wooden, private, with ights that went on when you closed the door to dial your mom and ask if you could buy the "love" comic because you were 8 now.

But to the left when you entered...ah, to the left...first, the candy, the candy. Hersheys and red hots and licorice, oh my! Sylvia, the register lady, always tried to pawn off pieces of Bazooka from a plastic box on the counter in lieu of change owed. There was a Murray there, and a Mary, and I can't remember the fourth guy who was part of this family but they were somehow all related.

And then there was the lunch counter. Malteds and milkshakes in the silver containers, poured into the hourglass-shaped glasses, with a paper straw and a pretzel rod from the glass container on the counter. And the tuna fish, the tuna fish sandwiches! What the hell was in the tuna fish that made it taste like pure heaven on a piece of triangular toast? My brother and I have been attempting to replicate this memory for a thousand years now. I haven't even eaten tuna in about 10 years because of suspected contaminants, but the memory of the tuna fish haunts me. Some delicate balance of tuna, mayo, celery and perhaps pickle relish, I don't know, whipped into this impossibly ethereal concoction, filling the white toast slices with some sort of mousse-like perfection. George, not related to the rest of the gang, was the cook and I wish we'd pumped him all those years ago so our moms could replicate our favourite sandwich...but then again, it never would have tasted as good at home at the kitchen table as it did on a lunch trip to Lane's.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Santa is cruising at an altitude of 25,000 feet with the likes of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. Oh, yeah, let's not forget Rudolph. Could've used him during the ice storm the other day. All should be in our neck of the woods around 1am.

I wish a Merry Christmas to all. And to all...a good night.

P.S. I am quite new at this blogging stuff so I do hope these posts become more engaging as I continue to write. cheers...

Pampered and Prodded To Within An Inch of My Life

One day this summer, when my mom was visiting me, she told me, in no uncertain terms, that we were going to get a manicure. One of those luxuries I'd always deemed unnecessary, I agreed but was decided that I would do the minimum. One colour, no French treatment, real low-maintenance was what I was solely interested in.

I can get pretty excited about NARS Orgasm blush, or Smashbox lipstick or even that gloss that Monica Lewinsky was wearing when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters...but manicures. Or massages, or anything I perceive as being too self-indulgent, where someone has to provide a service for me. All of that Judeo-Christian guilt comes into play.

After the manicure, though, I thought, hmm. My nails do look swell. But no, no, no, no...

Now a day before Christmas Eve, I have to fess up. I got the works. Within the past two days, I have had a warm stone massage, a French manicure (complete with an aromatherapy paraffin dip for my hands), and today got my hair highlighted in nice warm tones.

What the heck is wrong with me?

Nothing, I hear. I'm supposed to be on the upswing with taking days for me, treating me, being good to me. The massage and the manicure were purchased by gift certificate at the end of last year and I've found every excuse not to use it until now when it was to expire. The hair was just the icing on the Pannetone. Which is something I am craving but having honoured my body and soul in myriad ways, I think I'll be taking it easy on the other indulgences.

Maybe not. We are going to a Christmas Eve hors d'oeuvres-y thing and there might be some indulgences that will honour me, body and soul ("I'm all for you, body and soul."--Lady Day