Skool Daze Archives
What’s with all the freakin’ birds?
After working for far too long on a huge (and well-written!) profile, I wander out into the rainy, pre-dawn city streets only to be greeted by an avian cacophony the likes of which I have never heard. Perhaps they were on hand to greet the Times delivery man — or the guy setting up the coffee cart.
Either way, shouldn’t they have been huddled under little bird umbrella somewhere? Or in bed?
Or maybe I’m just projecting …
I flinched again when I rounded the corner last night.
My Upper West Side apartment looks out over the Hudson River, from which, despite Spring’s promised coming, still blows a chill evening wind. Most of my walk home from Columbia keeps a few streets of buildings between me and the river — but each night, when I turn the corner on 122nd Street, I get slapped with a wind that I seem to have offended in some way. It wasn’t so bad last night, but was still cold enough to make me cringe a bit when it hit me in the face.
Part of my reaction was, no doubt, simply habit. In the dead of winter, the wind would lurk on the other side of the corner, pummeling me like it was a pugilistic bouncer who wanted to make sure I never came back to his club. The portion of 122nd is a steep uphill walk; at times I’d feel like a demented mime, as I walked across the wind, covering scant ground as the trampled snow conspired to have me slip back two steps for every three I took. I’ve never spent much time in Chicago, but I can’t believe the Windy City is any worse than a mid-Winter New York; in February, downtown wind speeds reached hurricane levels.
Spring, though, is finally and stealthy winding its way amongst the skyscrapers and brownstones.
Today is the type of day where, throughout elementary school, I’d lose my coat. The early morning chill was enough to require a jacket, but by now the fog is already burned off and the afternoon promises to be the type that lures me outside just to sit in the sun and hum along with the chirping birds.
When I was a kid, the birds were ignored when I gathered with friends after school for a cutthroat game of kickball, tossing my coat over the playground fence while we played. In the middle of the game — just when somebody was going to score a game-winning run — the bus would show up. Featuring an irascible driver who couldn’t stand waiting, the bus would just pause for a few minutes, so we’d abandon the game and run for our ride. I’d never realize my jacket was MIA ‘til I was almost home.
That, at least, shouldn’t happen now: There seems to be a dearth of interest in a J-school kickball league.
What’s your favorite childhood memory?
Happy Cthulhu week! Watch out for mad Arabs …
Q: How many Lovecraftian protagonists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Just one - but are you sure he should turn it on?
I’ve never smiled so much in my life.
The halls of the journalism school were filled Saturday with the happiest-looking group I’ve ever seen. Well, not the halls, exactly, but the rooms at either end. Columbia was holding its 2001 Job Opportunity Conference, and everybody in the two interviewing chambers was smiling like they actually had something to be glad about. The halls, now that I think about it, contained an absolutely miserable-looking batch of people.
Our facial expressions changed instantly, though, upon entering the interview rooms, as we all tried to project charm, intelligence and general good will: I’m a nice person! You like me! You want to hire me! Smile! Smile! Once off-stage, with the words “hiring freeze” ringing in our ears, our expressions turned somewhat glummer.
Any job interview invites the candidate to throw up a false front, but the conference, due to the way it was set up, raised that idea to a new level. Like one of those dating parlor things, where candidates get a few minutes to try to impress the other person before moving on to the next potential, the students bounced from interview to interview, hoping to convince each recruiter that their publication was the single place they’d always dreamed of working. And it went both way, of course: One recruiter had six people convinced that a job offer would be in the mail sometime this week. I’m not even sure if the guy was hiring.
What an odd ritual.
Anyway, it was fun to make contact with a range of media folk. And anybody from the fair who has stopped by my site (the URL’s on everything I hand out), thanks for coming. It couldn’t have been any easier for you to sit in a room all day, disappointing those you couldn’t hire while hoping to find that one perfect candidate. We appreciate your time and interest.
And if you stopped by the site ‘cause you want to hire me, I’m just an email away.
One of the unexpected delights of living in New York: the opportunity to have my hair cut by people who don’t speak my language.
I’m not exactly sure how I got into the habit. My first few haircuts in the city were done, even if they were foreigners, by people who spoke English. Soon, though, I began frequenting Spanish barbershops, an experience that always includes a certain amount of apprehension. Each time I go to the shop, we carry on this mime routine, in which the barber waves at my head and says something in Spanish, I wave back and say something in English, and then he does whatever the heck he wants. Two haircuts ago I walked out looking radically different than when I went in. Last time, I got my beard trimmed — and yes, I was a bit nervous when we finished the waving routine and he pulled out a straight razor. I thought for a moment I’d insulted his mother or something.
Of course, not being able to speak with my hair cutter does allow me to skip the part of the barbering experience I loathe the most: having to carry on a banal conversation when I just want shorter hair. I mean, it’s not like I have somebody who’s “my barber”; I’ve rarely see the same person twice in a row — which is good, because I’m certain all conversational possibilities have been exhausted once the first cutting is halfway completed. And not being able to communicate exactly what I’m looking for in a haircut hasn’t seemed to change the process at all. I’m still getting whatever the scissor guy was planning on doing.
The problem now is I’m beginning to pick up a little bit of Spanish. If the day comes when I understand what the barber’s asking when he waves at my head, I’m going to have to leave. I hear there’s a group of Russian barbers downtown …
My masters’ project is finished.
I haven’t slept for three days.
Goodnight.
It’s nice to know there’s a scientific reason I can’t walk to school without looking like drunk mime. I would try to time my commute based on this map, except I can’t understand it …
There’s something wrong — I think as I sit in my apartment this afternoon, filthy and frigid — with not having water in the building at the same time rain-soaked gales are sweeping the city streets. With all the water coming down out there, shouldn’t we be able to get some of it in here?
The city’s Department of Environmental something-or-other (I saw their truck from the window, but had neither the energy nor the inclination to dechipher the initials) shut off my building’s water at 8:30 this morning in order to work on the pipes for about eight hours. Sometime later in the morning, they had to leave to handle an emergency somewhere else, resulting in the water being shut down ‘til midnight! That means no shower, no clean dishes, no laundry — and, with the hot water radiators not functioning, no warmth.
Oh, well. You know, I live close enough to the Hudson … maybe I’ll start bathing there …
It would figure that I’m not in New York this week … the week I’d actually get to see my name in print since, oh, August.
On Sunday, Newsday published a piece I did in December on a lawyer in Jackson Heights, Queens, who is helping immigrants dealing with the same problems she had when she came to the country illegally three decades ago.
Even after years of newspaper work, there’s still a thrill that comes from seeing your own byline. Of course, I have to wait ‘til I get back to New York to do that … But seeing it online was cool, too.
What’d you think of the story?
In Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he relates the tale of a man convicted of regicide who is drawn, quarter, burned with hot coals and, generally, tortured to death. One of the most gruesome parts involves the quartering, in which horses drag the poor unfortunate in four directions in an attempt to pull him apart. Because the horses are inexperienced, it ends up being more painful than even the punishers had intended it to be.
I related all of that to say this: Whoever decided to show movies on long-distance bus rides should turned over to horses that are rank amateurs, who will clumsily and agonizingly tear the person limb from limb.
I took a Martz bus (Martz is a Pennsylvania-based Greyhound-knockoff) from the city to Pa. the other day, getting on the vehicle around nine in the evening. The last time I had such an unpleasant trip a boxcar was involved.
This time, I was forced to sit next to a hugely fat man who elbowed me evertime he moved and, once, knocked my glasses off. Combined with no sleep the night before, a driver who took his license test on bumper cars and the general unpleasantness always offered by bus travel, I hit high levels of irritation quite quickly. When the driver flipped on some movie about African basketball players (I kid you not) and native drum music began ringing down the aisles, I checked my bag to see if I brought a baseball bat. If I had, those TV sets would have been coming down.
It wasn’t even that bad of a movie, just absolutely out of place. Showing a film on a bus is like having the guy next to you on the subway eat fried chicken. There’s nothing wrong with it per se; it just doesn’t fit in the context. I mean, are there people who, around 10 p.m. (when the movie came on) didn’t want to either sleep or read, who really wanted to see just the beginning of a B movie before disembarking? If so, what’s wrong with those people?
I spent the three-hour trip passing in and out of consciousness, waking every time the music hit a high note, the man next to me hit me, or the driver hit a bump. It’s a miracle I didn’t hit anybody.
There’s nothing better, at 2:30 in the morning, than homemade chocolate cookies. You know, when the coffee’s beginning to really kick in, and you need something to take the edge off the caffeine so you can actually concentrate … Oreos are good, too, but they require too much work if you’re the type who feels a need to take each one apart before eating.
C really is for cookie — and that, indeed, is good enough for me.
What’s your favorite post-midnight snack?
Continuing the tiger theme:
I think I’ve written some good ledes in my time, but I’ve never been able to come up with the stark simplicity found here: “A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.”
Beautiful.
TAMPA — An unemployed wanderer was arrested at the Westshore Mall Feb. 3 after mall security told police the man tried to stab a guard with an umbrella.
Mall security officers began looking for Raymond Tylicki, 28, of Cleveland, Ohio, around 5:30 p.m., after employees at Burdines told them a “suspicious-looking man” had been in the store and “given himself a bath in one of their displays.”
Security guard Abel Rivas, 36, found Tylicki at a fountain in the center of the mall, where, the guard said, he was scooping out coins. When the guard approached Tylicki, police said, the man dropped the coins, cursed at the guard and ran for the exit. When Rivas cornered Tylicki near Saks Fifth Avenue, the guard told police, the suspect turned and attempted to stab him several times with a black umbrella.
Rivas and three other security guards restrained Tylicki and turned him over to the Tampa police.
Tylicki is being held in the Hillsborough County jail in lieu of $1,000 bail. He has been charged with aggravated assault.
Hey, I’m famous.
Well, not really. But it was interesting being on the other side of the notebook.
It’s also interesting to see all the attention Gore’s tenure at Columbia is getting — and how negative it is. It seems obvious to everyone now how massively the school is being played: Gore’s class being off the record, media being barred from the occasion, a general clamping down on information instead of the openness you’d expect from a journalism school.
On other news: I haven’t been posting much recently, but I have a good reason. My site is undergoing a massive overhaul. I’m totally redefining the interface and content; it should be relaunched on Samuel Pepys’ birthday (in honor, of course, of the diary section you’re now reading.)
Anyway, the redesign is taking up much of the time I have blocked off in my schedule for web stuff. I’ll still have sporadic postings between now and the relaunch — but if you wonder away because of the lack of new content, make sure you come back in a week or two to experience all the bells and whistles.
Well, I’m back.
One backpack. Two showers. Ten states. Eleven days. Two thousand miles.
I can now, with some justification, call myself a hobo.
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Starting out with the purpose of reporting and ending up having fun, I traveled across the country in a boxcar (well, and some grainers and gondolas), seeing beautiful scenery, camping under the stars, living on dry Ramen noodles and canned tuna fish and getting kicked out of convenience stores, restaurants, libraries and supermarkets.
Pictures, once I get them developed, and my journal, once I get it transcribed, will no doubt show up somewhere on the site.
The semester is over!
In case your wondering what I’ve been doing for the past five month, click here, where you can see the stories I’ve written for school. If you want to publish them somewhere, just let me know.
Anyway, happy Hanukkah (starting tonight — for seven days only!), merry Christmas and joyous Eid ul-Fitr.
See ya next millennium …
Having finished my 12-page, 3,700-word law exam Tuesday night, there was something at least slightly humorous about wandering into the school computer labs shortly before noon today and seeing rooms filled with people frantically – nay, feverishly! – pounding away on the keyboards before the noon deadline.
Well, I say “finished Tuesday night.” I was done with the writing, but had to come to the lab to actually print out the final copy.
Hence, my humor rapidly evaporated when, in quick succession, Word’s spell checker failed, my computer crashed and the printer ran out of toner. Quite vexing.
But I got it done. One more profile to go, and the first semester can officially be marked “conquered.”
Silver bells, silver bells. It’s Christmas time in the city.
The trees along College Walk sparkle, sending out the holiday vibe I usually only get from Christmas cards. Across campus, miles of twinkling white lights gleam, nudging me just a little closer to the holiday spirit. I’m not usually an earlier celebrater; maybe it’s because I typically do my Christmas shopping on the 24th, but for whatever reason, I tend to wait ‘til later in December to embrace the holiday mood.
The hustle and bustle going on aboutst (ain’t that a nice word?) the city, though, is making the mood come a little earlier this year. Last week, I watched a dozen or so workers set up the huge coniferous in Rockefeller Center — and as I walked away from the square, dodging the trumpeting angels, I started humming carols.
Ring-a-ling, hear them sing. Soon it will be Christmas day.
Call me provincial (You’re provincial! Sorry — too much time watching either Ben Stein or the Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Anyway, call me provincial, but after six weeks in New York, I’m still amazed at the things people sell on street corners. Not the watches and bootlegged CDs; I expected those. But while walking along one block — one block! — in Woodside Boulevard in Queens the other day, I saw:
* a man selling an exotic form of fruit salad, for which he was chopping up mangoes and papayas using a straight razor;
* a woman roasting ears corn over a small brazier;
* and a group selling pillows (two for $5 — which wasn’t cheap enough for the hagglers arguing with them.)
None of these are particularly unusual or startling, at least not as individual items. The blending together of such a diversity, though, creates a wonderfully unusual streetscape.
After receiving some questions about my last Ganesh posting, I should perhaps clarify the situation: I was, indeed, speaking metaphorically. However, since visiting a Hindu temple a few weeks ago, I actually have seen Ganesh quite a few times. The most recent was at a tattoo parlour, which I was visiting for a story.
While I’m there, one of the workers come in with a color copy of a Ganesh portrait, which she was preparing to tattoo on somebody. Ganesh is a quite popular figure, the artist said, although the tattooees are usually not Hindu.
For a big guy riding a mouse, he sure gets around a lot.
I love New York parks. I think my affection stems from the blend of green and gray, the mixture of rural and urban. Trees reach high into the air, almost blotting out nearby apartment buildings, while the screams and laughter of children playing is just enough to mask the ever-present noise of traffic.
I sat in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park yesterday and watched the entire world go by. It seemed like it might be one of the last nice afternoons of fall, and families were out in force to catch a little sunshine, complete with frisbees, footballs and those ubiquitous scooters.
The roads through the park were full — not clogged, just full — with skaters, joggers and more bike-riders than you could shake a stick at. (Not that I didn’t try; I just couldn’t shake a stick at all of them. That didn’t distract from the pure and gentle pleasure I had in shaking a stick at the ones I could.)
On the sidewalk, a father and son, both Orthodox Jews clad in black, stopped passersby to see if they were Jewish. If they were, the boy would respond by blowing the shofar — an instrument traditionally made from a ram’s horn — to mark the beginning of the new year. Like the mixture of gray buildings peeking over green trees, the contrast between the somberly dressed duo and the colorfully clad joggers who swirled around them was a mixture of differences that made the park seem even more alive.
Note to self: In the future, avoid stories that involve walking the streets of Queens and asking black people if they’re actually from Africa.
C is for cookie; that’s good enough for me. C is for cookie; that’s good enough for me. Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C.
Thanks, Melanie.
Ever wonder about the spiritual life of the people who live in Queens, the most diverse county in the country?
Yeah, well, I didn’t either. However, as part of my Reporting and Writing Class, which is covering Queens, I’ve undertaking an exhaustive, indepth look at the subject. If you ever plan on studying the Kabbalah or enrolling in an Islamic day school, here’s the place to go.
“Please do not touch the deity.” I grew up in church, covered religion for a while and have been been in a dizzying variety of churches, temples and mosques. However, the polite request to refrain from handling god that I encountered upon entering a Hindu temple today struck me as one of the odder things I’ve come across.
My Writing and Reporting class spent the day traveling through Queens (which we’ll be covering for the rest of the semester), getting to know the ethnic makeup of the area, eating Indian food and looking for story ideas. Our assignment: find a story today, report it tomorrow and turn it in by Tuesday. [I’m doing an article on alternative medicine … anybody know anything useful?]
Anyway, as part of the trip we stopped at a Hindu temple during the festival of Ganesh-Chaturthi, the elephant-headed god. Kinda odd looking, sure, but in the words of an Indian friend: “He’s a good guy.”
Root, root, rooting for the home team did absolutely no good whatsoever. In my first excursion to a New York City ballgame since moving here (perhaps the second such trip in my life, stirring up pleasant but dim memories of sitting in what was probably Yankee Stadium with my grandfather, a huge baseball fan, when I was but a wee tyke) the Mets got horribly, horribly spanked. It was an 11-1 game, with the Astros out-hitting, out-fielding and generally out-playing them. It was so bad even Braves fans felt sorry for them.
Oh, well: at least there was Cracker Jacks …
If this journalism thing doesn’t work out (and it darn well better), I think I’ll switch careers to be a street vendor. Not just any vendor, mind you; I have no interest in hawking knock-off watches or “real leather” belts. But there’s two salesmen on Broadway who catch my attention every time I walk by — the guy selling classic literature and the dude with carpet cleaner.
These two stands fascinate me for different reasons. The carpet cleaner stirs up childhood memories of strolling through the state fair, seeing row after row of badly dressed, over-aggressive, commission-driven hucksters selling everything from slice-‘em, dice-‘em, juice-‘em machines to early versions of dehydrating machines (Take that succulent piece of fruit that’s so tasty and juicy and make it a desiccated husk! That will make it taste even better!) to, indeed, carpet cleaners. But the guy on 112th and Broadway doesn’t have the fancy stand and microphone. It’s just him, a long, filthy rag of a carpet, a bottle of cleaner and a mop. Several days a week — including at least an hour today — he stands there scrubbing the carpet, convincing onlookers that they need Carpet Shine (tm). American capitalism at its best.
The bookseller is at the other end of the spectrum. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually try to sell anything: he just lounges around reading, letting people browse the amazing array of Shakespearean plays, Greek philosophy and political tomes he has crowded on a card table. They’re books people sell him or he picks up in actual used bookstores, he said the other day. He was cagey about releasing sales figures, but said he was doing OK (not paying rent on a storefront has to help). He just wants to help people read, he said.
So maybe that’s where I’ll end up in a few years. If I’m lucky, I’ll combine the two vendor motifs and end up selling really, really clean books.
Days like today are what higher education is made for. Sure, I had to spend my morning working on news stories — but I would have had to do that if I was still employed. But the afternoon — lazing about on the grass outside school, browsing through half-a-dozen newspapers, chatting with beautiful women … You know, it just might be worth $30,000.