Nota Bene
I just wrote about the subway in the last post, and wanted to say another related thing:
At our stop there is now a hand-painted sign which says
NORTH
BOUNDPLATFORM
CLOSED
The unusual choice of spacing reminded me of a day last when I was driving on the FDR on my way to Connecticut and was in some really slow-moving traffic. I had a lot of time to switch radio stations, to look at the water, and to read some LED signs with updates that had been placed on the highway. For the most part, these signs had truisms like, “Traffic Slow.” But one of them said something like
NB: FDR TRAFFIC SLOW DUE TO WORK ON EXIT 7
Wow. I was under the impression that the trend in signage — especially traffic signage — was to dumb things down. Witness the red and green flashing people at intersection these day, rather than signs with text saying Walk, or, Don’t Walk.
But not only had they chosen a somewhat obscure Latin and or Italian phrase, “Nota bene,” they had abbreviated it as NB, and just assumed that we’d know what they meant. Such confidence in their readership! As a person who loves language, it gave me a real charge. Hurrah!
Only on the return trip, when I saw a sign that said SB: FDR, etc. etc., and wracked my brains for a moment regarding the hidden meaning of the Latin abbreviation SB, did I understand that they meant Southbound.
They shouldn’t have such confidence in their readership, after all.
Steel Toe!
not pretty! but will be prettier?
For work, I read a lot of material designed to keep struggling readers glued to the page. Just ask me if you have any questions about unusual parasitic worms, or some of the more lurid bits of history. Due to a book I read recently, the title of which is “Stalin,” etched in blood across the cover, I’m well poised to share some fun facts about Stalin’s Five Year Plan.
It was designed to bring the Soviet Union forward industrially, an ambitious goal. To Stalin’s great pride, he got the country where he’d intended to in only four years. Of course, Stalin liked to brag about how it was completed ahead of schedule. What he neglected to talk about was the abjectly horrible cost of trying to subjugate his own people: famine, for millions.
While in England, I saw a few signs announcing that civic projects had been completed ahead of schedule. Because I’d just learned about the 5 Year Plan, it worried me slightly, and I wondered if there is an evil plot afoot to keep the workers down, which I doubt, or if it’s a marketing ploy, which is more likely. The third option is that English people are just less reliant on deadline pressure to get stuff done, which would be really interesting, culturally.
And then I came home to Brooklyn, and noted with astonishment that a civic project in my own neighborhood has also been completed ahead of schedule.
The subway station a block and a half from our apartment has been under construction for quite a while. The station house is one of the most moth-eaten and otherwise compromised I have ever seen, and ideally it would be torn down and forgotten immediately. However, we as a collective community are very proud of it because it was the first subway station ever, or something. It is also superlative in the number of pigeons trying to ruin it, though I’ve never seen a rat there, so I should stop complaining.
While this is underway, we’ve been able to catch trains at the Manhattan-bound platform, but the Coney Island bound one was jackhammered into thin air, so there has been nowhere to stand, and trains just whizzed by. To get where you’re going, you can walk ten minutes to another station, or you can take a train in the wrong direction for a minute and then turn around.
We expected things to be like this for several more years.
However, while we were on vacation, they finished the southbound platform. And unless I have misunderstood something, it was finished ahead of schedule. A miracle! And now, they’ve taken the northbound platform out of service so they can chop that one up and pour a new one. As a result I could not catch the Manhattan bound train today. In general, I look forward to taking a little walk to a different station, but this specific morning I was coldy and jetlagged and it was pouring, so I decided to try out the new Southbound platform. It would take me even further into Brooklyn, and then I could switch over.
Milling around the outside of the station in the rain were the smoky and gruff MTA crew who are responsible for getting this all done. In honor of the weather, they’d donned matching bright yellow rubberized poncho-and-pants* sets. A subset of the construction workers had been deployed to deflect confused and sopping riders to the only part of the subway that now works, which is a part that didn’t even exist two weeks ago.
In England, we took many walks. The least pleasant and yet probably the most memorable was a trudge around the perimeter of a very large turnip field, ringed with mud, after a large rainstorm. We never found what we sought, which was the public footpath that would lead to a church approximately as old as our subway station house. As brown squooshy water filled my socks that morning, the fact that my new walking shoes are urban rather than rural became evident.
I was wearing these walking shoes again this morning when I realized that to enter the new station, I’d have to breach either leap over or swim through an urban lake at an intersection which had nowhere to drain. I was coming to terms with the fact that there was no way I could avoid getting wet and was pondering which would be the better foot to drench when I realized that one of the yellow poncho people was desperately trying to get my attention.
“Steel toe!,” He yelled, and pointed at his foot. “They’ve got steel toes!”
I looked at him. Was he bragging?
“Just step on my steel toe!” he commanded. He plished a big boot down into the water, and I finally understood. I grabbed his hand and stepped on his toe without crushing it and he helped me across.
Whoever said that the US isn’t civilized has not been to the Avenue H BMT station on a rainy September morning.
They should have MTA workers flanking turnip fields on organic farms in England as part of their stimulus.
* DO NOT say pants in England; it means undies.
Thanks to H.L.I.T. on flickr for use of the photo, released under Creative Commons 2.0.
Much Like Rabbits
We are staying in the rolling Yorkshire countryside at a beautiful and spellbinding manor owned and inhabited by my 33rd cousin in law.
The estate has been in the same family since it was built in 1597 on 2000 acres of hills sueded with green and studded with sheep.
How we met this guy and got invited to stay with him is nothing short of a brilliant coup orchestrated by my father in law. It makes a fascinating and delightful experience in class study and family study and character-driven history and inheritance law and everything else.
I have far more to say about it, but am blogging from my phone, so here’s just a smidgen.
On arrival, after meeting the manor residents in the great hall and seeing the conservatory, which has grapes growing high in the arches of a room composed entirely of glass, I set off to look for a bathroom. The rest of the party went outside to look at the grounds around the house, which include two mazes, a fountain, and several statues.
The bathroom, I’d realize later, could be viewed as the house in microcosm. The toilet with wooden seat and wooden tank, is certainly worthy of admiration, and it may work as well as a sixteenth century toilet could be expected to. Still, there could be improvements. The door to the room won’t even think about properly closing due to that wing of the house settling. “These tiles may be from the Holy Roman empire,” I thougnt, looking at the blue crumble on the walls. And the wall-to-wall carpeting seemed to be from the ’80s. Nineteen, that is.
But then, as punishment for my uninvited scrutiny on the loo, I lost my way and could not find my family when I was done. Though the house has 80 rooms, they are spread over 4 floors, only two of which are entirely functional for the purposes of a guest. Many in the lowest floor or the top floor are things like “relics from the Boer War stored in plastic tubs” rooms, or “the broken china room,” where piles of shards await attention.
About eighteen rooms on the second floor are bedrooms. To keep face, I really only need to keep track of the bedroom where Matthew and Henry and I stay, as well as the rooms we regularly visited on the ground floor.
Still, “We’re convening in the Tandoori room for champagne in 15 minutes,” someone will say, referring to a room that has been restored to gilt and red furnishings with green and gold velvet wallpaper. (The joke is that it looks like an Indian restaurant.)
And I never seem to find the Tandoori room on the first try, or the library with its secret passages hidden behind replicas of 16th century volumes, indistinguishable at first glance from the real ones, or the dining room with its heavy silver and enormous mahogany table.
But on the first day, no one could even expect me to know my way around, and I was led into the Red Room for a proper English tea.
The Red Room is adjacent to and yet distinct from the Tandoori room in every way. Name aside, it is rose colored, not red. It has umpteen low chairs covered in a faded thick weave linen printed with flowers and birds. It is further characterized by a fleet of china parrots and unspeakably heavy tapestry drapes so old that they are simply disintegrating.
In the Red Room, we ate squares of some spicy moist cake, plus dense chocolate brownies prepared by the chef, and of course, we drank tea.
The children we’d brought set to work on the destruction of a set of delicate French nesting tables from the year 17whatever and, acting wholly in character, my child poured tea down my leg in a mad clamor for more bites of cake.
Just as I was perfecting the facial mask of a guest faking not having a tea-sodden leg, our host asked whether I write. At least, that’s what I thought he said, though he has one of those proper lockjaw accents, so it was hard to be sure.
“I do write,” I shouted as politely as possible towards the functional ear.
“Well then, you might enjoy the hunt we are having on the grounds on the weekend.”
Oh. Do I ride. I was finding that I need frequent clarification in our communications. So does he, owing to the fact that he is 86, and his hearing is typical of someone in the ninth decade of life. And then, there is the question of the language we share, but can still stumble upon.
He explained that they will be having a practice hunt here on Saturday, pack of hounds and all.
Just as they no longer keep 12 live in servants around anymore, they no longer own a pack of 30 hounds for hunting. Rather, they have a “subscription pack.” The wealthy in Yorkshire band together and share them.
The real hunting, which is very traditional and for which everyone wears red and which is actually illegal, doesn’t start til October. The Saturday event is mostly to exercise the dogs and horses and prime the onlookers for the season.
My host informed me that they don’t hunt foxes here but rather, hares, distinguished from rabbits by the fact that they weigh about twenty pounds.
Me: How are they prepared?
Lord of the Manor: They’re not. They live in the wild and they have simply no idea what’s coming for them.
Me: No, the rabbits, when they’re dead. How are they prepared to be eaten?
Lord of the Manor: They’re not rabbits. They’re hares. Much bigger. There’s quite a difference.
Me: I see. So how are the hares prepared?
Lord of the Manor: Much like rabbits.
I’ve Died and Gone to England
I haven’t been posting because I’m busy, you see. In the morning I have to eat these eggs, perhaps the best I’ve ever tasted, which have a large quantity of cream and chives folded in. I cut the richness with some roasted tomatoes and mushrooms cooked in butter as well as English sausages with bacon. Alongside of it all is special kind of toast that has been crisped in butter. In case you are trying to replicate my breakfast at home, this special toast has no crust. Your coffee should be in a French press, with true cream.
Lunch is a few hours later and a formal affair with wine, and coffee afterwards in some very tiny very pink cups. Then we have tea, then drinks, then a cold supper laid out for us by the staff, then a homemade dessert or more likely two homemade desserts, then coffee, then a smidgen of Bailey’s.
In case you are concerned that English fare is lacking, the chef trained in Asia and therefore, all of the peas are minted and the rice salads have cardamom and basically, every damn thing is perfect, like the duck with Chinese beans and chutney, and I cannot help myself from helping myself. In between these set meals, we walk around the considerable grounds with a sleek and perfect black lab, on the green green grass, and admire the sheeps and cows and hares.
I just wanted to let you know that I’m busy for a bit, but that you really, really shouldn’t be worried about me.
Fresh Tomato Sauce
Aside from my child, I don’t grow anything.
I’m not reveling in the bounty of my garden, nor am I snipping herbs from my windowsill. Later, maybe.
We do have a farmer’s market in the neighborhood but somehow, this summer has blown past with me only managing to show up there a few times. But over the weekend, my friend Theresa the pasta lover wrote, and told me about a sauce she’s been making from overripe tomatoes that sell for $1 a pound at her local market, so I made it a destination.
This is one of those instances where I wish I were more of a photographer, because one of the tomatoes was just a revelatory sight. Gloriously fat and orange, it was starting to split the seams. When diced, it resembled a bowl of glistening jewels. I mixed it with some marinated mozzarella that was not at all worthy, and it was still phenomenal.
The next day I approached the pile of red ones I’d bought. One would go for Henry’s dinner, and for that, I chopped it, and put seeds and all into a bit of butter and oil warming on the stove. A tiny bit of salt, and it was the perfect sauce for ravioli in about 4 minutes.
It was so good that I felt reluctant to try something different with the other tomatoes, but I followed Theresa’s instructions to cook garlic in oil, melt in some anchovies, and add the chopped tomatoes.
I used 2 smashed cloves, 3 anchovy filets, and 4 tomatoes, juice and seeds and all. I stirred in a bit of chili, butter, and salt. Serve over spaghetti, and sigh at the brilliant simplicity.
Church Avenue Chomp 