Kumquats

I was psyched when I went to my local grocery store last week and found kumquats for sale. Kumquats are not a common feature in produce departments -- the only other place I’ve ever found them in New York City is Chinatown. I never expected them in my local Gristede’s.

These kumquats weren’t the freshest I’d ever seen, but they looked more or less OK, so I bought them. Having polished them off over the course of a few days, I went back last night for another pint. The typically gruff cashier looked quizzically at them as she rang me up. She said she’d never had one, and seemed dubious when I told her the whole fruit is eaten -- everything but the seeds. The woman behind me in line volunteered that her grandmother used to eat them, but she personally didn’t like them.

They’re definitely an acquired taste. I remember eating a kumquat when I was a kid and thinking it was the most disgusting thing ever. They’re a sweet and sour, citrusy burst of flavor -- kind of like pulpy orange zest with a sweet kick. (My mom says they’re better bird food than people food.)


What’s especially funny about these kumquats is they’re grown in Dade City, Fla., which is about 20 miles from where I grew up. It’s pretty weird to be in New York and eating this little fruit that came from the soil of good old Pasco County. But apparently Dade City has become known as the Kumquat Capital of the World -- the town even has a Kumquat Festival, which I’m sure arrived after my own departure, as I never heard about it as a kid.

My mom’s next door neighbor has a kumquat tree, and when I’m home for Christmas I often dip into her yard for a handful of kumquats. (With permission, of course!) They’re terrific right off the tree -- and a lot cheaper than $3.99 a pint at Gristede’s!

(Photos: Reflections from the colored glass of the Westin hotel on the facade of the old New York Times building, W. 43rd Street)

Thurber-esque

Someone drew this nicotine-addicted rabbit, who looks suspiciously like an editor, on the whiteboard in a conference room at work. Doesn’t it look like a James Thurber cartoon? (But he’s long dead, so we can’t credit him.)

The whiteboards are supposed to be cleaned every Friday, but that rabbit has been there for weeks. I think the cleaning crew is just being lazy, but I'm glad they’ve left him alone. I’ve even taking to maintaining him personally. Every once in a while someone writes notes or a comment on the board around the rabbit, and after a while I go in and erase them, leaving him in skeptical silence once again.

Snow

When I wrote yesterday's post I hadn't yet been outside, so I didn't realize how much snow we got during the night. (I never know what the weather is doing until it happens -- I seldom bother with weather reports.) When I stepped outside to go to work, I was shocked to see so much accumulation.




You'd never know it was March! I guess this is what they mean by "in like a lion."

(Photos, from top: E. 30th Street; the back yard of my building; garbage from the high-rise next door; bicycles on Third Avenue)

Back to Winter

Well, yesterday turned into another action-packed day.

I zipped over to New Jersey in the morning to help my friend David assemble a new desk he got at Ikea. It was an adventure, with a million little screws and anchors of all different sizes, but fortunately the directions were very clear (and entirely pictorial) and we figured it out in a couple of hours. No drawers, thank God.

Then I went straight across Manhattan and out to Brooklyn to meet up with my friend Kate, who wanted to do some walking. We wandered through Williamsburg and Greenpoint -- an entirely different direction from where Katherine and I walked Saturday. We found some neat street art while walking along the East River, and though we were only out for an hour or two, I was chilled to the bone by the time we got to her apartment. The weather was changing, turning blustery and gray.

Kate, her partner Moom and I had dinner, and Katherine (from Saturday) joined us later. Greenpoint is a very Polish neighborhood, so we’d planned to have a Polish feast with mushroom and cheese pierogis and different Polish beers. At the last minute we had a menu change, though, and went with gnocchi and Polish beer. If I were a chef I’d call it “Italian-Polish fusion cuisine” -- and Moom, who did most of the cooking, is Vietnamese-American, so there was a bit of that sensibility thrown in as well. (Coconut ice cream for dessert, for example.)

While we ate it began to snow, and by the time I walked to the bus stop the streets and cars all had a light dusting. A few days ago it was warm and bright enough to seem like spring, but for the time being at least, we’re back to winter.

(Photo: E. 29th St., last night)

On the Hoof in Brooklyn

I went walking yesterday with my friend Katherine through Brooklyn, looking for interesting graffiti to photograph. It was a marathon! We started in Williamsburg, which always has tons of street art, and then headed east along the edge of Bushwick and down into Bedford-Stuyvesant, and back around into Clinton Hill and Fort Greene. It took us about five hours to make that loop.

These neighborhoods are all very distinct, and they have their own distinct street art. Williamsburg and Bushwick tend to attract artsy young people, so they have a lot more paste-ups, stencils, stickers and such. Bedford-Stuyvesant, on the other hand, has more old-school graffiti than anything else. So I got a good range of pics.

Katherine took the photo above in the outer part of Williamsburg. That speck on the left is me, and I’m 6’2, so you can see how big Norm’s wall-sized roller piece is!

All of these neighborhoods felt very safe, but I guess we looked out of place in Bed-Stuy, because we actually got stopped by the cops. About four of them pulled up in a van and asked us what we were taking pictures of and where we were from. I didn’t respond at all -- I was furious actually, thinking, “None of your business!” But Katherine’s cooler head prevailed and she said just enough that they seemed satisfied and drove on. (Law enforcement generally frowns on graffiti photography, because they believe notoriety encourages the writers, but there’s nothing illegal about it and we were on a public sidewalk.)

In between all the walking, we stopped at Rocco’s pizza in Bed-Stuy for a slice (chicken and broccoli!), and had coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. All in all, a great day!

(Photo: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Feb. 2009)

No rules, just right

So in restarting this blog, I realize right off the bat that I have to lay some ground rules. Or, at least, one ground rule. And here it is: There are no ground rules.

In its earlier incarnation I posted to this blog virtually every day -- weekdays, weekends, always in the mornings. I followed a pattern, posting one short entry and one or two photos each day. Those were my rules, at least in my own brain.

I liked that consistency, but part of what grew tiring was the sense of obligation -- a feeling that I had to be here every day and fit my format.

So I’m pledging herewith to lighten up, for cripe’s sake, and just post when I have something to say. It may very well wind up being every day, and in the morning. Maybe even twice a day. Or once a week. But at least perhaps I won’t feel quite so much like I have to post, and more like I want to.

Let’s see where that takes us, shall we?

(Photo: Front entrance of the historic Vander Ende-Onderdonk house, Ridgewood, Queens, February 2009)

Back again, apparently

Well, I just couldn't stay away. Rejoice or mourn, as you wish!

Three months ago, I really intended to end this blog. In fact, I eventually deleted the whole thing and packed it away on my hard drive in an .xml file, archived for my eyes only. On the "Internets," it was no more. "Shadows & Light" was a dead link.

But recently, a couple of things made me think maybe this wasn't the best idea.

First, I missed the wisdom and camaraderie of my blogging pals. I tried to keep up with their blogs, but it's just not the same when all the communication travels one way. You lose that collegial bond.

Second, I undoubtedly missed having an outlet to record and reflect on the stuff going on in my life. I have had a crazy couple of months! The newspaper industry is imploding, making my career look like it could go slip-sliding away at any moment. At the same time, I took a terrific two-week trip to India and also had a good long stay in Florida for the holidays. Ups, downs, the minutiae of daily existence, and nowhere to tell my tales.

Third, I had a very compelling exchange with a blogger pal of mine about the wisdom of deleting a blog. I argued that in my case I felt I'd outgrown my blog, that it didn't really reflect my life, blah blah blah. My friend said quite wisely that NO blog could completely reflect its writer's life, but blogs are still valuable chronicles of what rises to the surface. "The things we humans create gain meaning and context through time and distance," he said. "We often can't judge them ourselves, or immediately ... and that goes for something even as seemingly innocuous or silly as a blog."

I got to thinking about all the work I'd put into it, and all the people who said they enjoyed it.

Fortunately, Blogger offers a handy tool called "Import," with which you can upload your archived .xml file and, basically, recreate a deleted blog. So here I am, realizing that I'm the "blogger who cried wolf" and I've probably alienated all my readers. All I can say is, let's start fresh! More about that later...

(Photo: A discarded bouquet on the sidewalk in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India, January 2009)