Red-Tailed Hawks from Washington Square now in Tompkins Square

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I think it was about two years ago when I first saw a hawk in Manhattan. It was in Washington Square park, the one where I Am Legend was filmed. There are NYU buildings surrounding the park and two hawks had turned a window sill on one of those buildings into a nest. The NYU administration did a good thing by leaving the nest in place and then went one step further by sharing the hatching and growing-up process with the world via a web cam live feed.

Life is busy and I didn’t keep up with the hawks and I’d all but forgotten about them until last week. I was walking through Tompkins Square park, which is a few blocks away from Washington Square, when I saw a hawk land on a railing nearby. After a few minutes I realized there were two hawks in the park. They were hanging out together, generally. We watched one try to catch a squirrel, but the squirrel fought back and the hawk dropped him. I was amused to see the squirrel proudly stand on the end of a branch, as if he was daring the hawk to come back and try again.

It’s really neat to see wildlife in the city. Anything to get a little green in the middle of all this concrete. Hopefully the birds don’t start taking and eating rich people’s small dogs, though.

American Folk Art Museum

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Henry Darger. At Jenny Richee. 1950-1970.
Carl Klewicke. Quilt. 1907.
Henry Darger. The Story of the Vivian Girls.
Slaves, Morton Plantation, Kentucky. Whig Rose and Swag Border Quilt. c. 1850.
Jessie B. Telfair. Freedom Quilt. 1983.
Unknown, probably Baltimore, Maryland. Reiter Family Album Quilt. 1848-1850.
Paula Nadelstern, Bronx, New York. Kaleidoscopic XVI: More is More. 1996.
Marcus Charles Illions, Brooklyn, New York. Carousel Lion. 1910.

Some photos I took at the American Folk Art Museum by Lincoln Center last weekend. It’s a small place. It takes about 30 minutes to look at everything inside, but admission is free so it’s still worth the trip. There are donation boxes located near the entrance so we gave 5 bucks. I think the best items in the museum are the quilts. I was surprised. It wasn’t what I expected to be the most impressed by. The drawings of anime-style kids threw me off a bit too, since the large mural-style drawing was created between 1950-1970.

It’s Science!

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The Inorganic Carbon Cycle
The Inorganic Carbon Cycle

And I’m just not that into it. I was having a conversation with a friend recently and we agreed that humanities are better than science any day of the week. I realize the irony of conveying that message using a device and medium created by modern science, but I suppose I’ve always enjoyed studying ideas and social constructs more than things.

I’m studying climate change this summer in the last required “core” course for my BA. I had a few choices. I could have taken biology, chemistry or an earth science course on global warming and climate change. I wanted to take biology, but the course was too late at night. Chemistry I would have failed, I’m sure. I hated chemistry in high school. Something about memorizing the periodic table and atomic weights seemed completely pointless to me. When would one be doing science and not have a copy handy to use as a reference guide if needed, really?

Anyway, there are things about this class that I find interesting. First of all, I agree with the basic premise that global warming is a real and happening (not in the fashion sense) thing. The planet is getting warmer. It has done this in the past, but this time it’s different because we’re converting all of the carbon that used to be underground into carbon that’s in the atmosphere, which causes the planet to retain more heat. I have a hard time understanding how people can look at the multiple data sets available for temperature change, change in carbon in the atmosphere, and see the huge spike associated with increased human activity (burning fossil fuels, creating gases) and brush it off as a joke or hoax. When Miami is underwater, I wonder if people will still be claiming it’s a conspiracy?

Beyond that, it’s pretty cool to see how volcanoes and the El Nino weather pattern affects global temperatures. Or to examine the what-ifs of climate change. Famine, drought, flooding, shifting coastlines and floating cities. It might even be sort of cool, except for all of the people that would die along the way.

The actual mechanics and math of climate change is tedious. It is painful to sit down and look through long charts of numbers, plugging them into formulas and whatnot to get measurements of changes in temperatures.

Anyway, there are about two weeks left in this class. Then I’ll start getting myself together for Fall semester.

My “Terrorist in the Park” Look

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My wife and I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in Fort Tryon Park enjoying the sunshine, the fresh air and the energy of the people all around us. It was refreshing. Very refreshing. I can’t remember the last time I just went to a park to sit down and relax. Granted, I did do reading for the class I’m taking, but it was still a better experience than sitting in a stuffy library or at my desk at home.

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Anyway, when I was looking at these photos later, I realized that I really need to trim my beard. I look like a stereotypical TV terrorist with those dark sunglasses. I even have the Captain America red-white-and-blue shirt to prove how American I am, and how I’m just an average American. Nothing to see here!

Walking Down the Hudson River

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The city is so green and amazing now! I thought it was really interesting that there is a gardening club in Riverside Park. Lots of people were helping out. I wonder if something like that could ever take off in the Washington Heights section of the Hudson Greenway?

The Hudson River
A man selling balloons outside Riverbank State Park
Seen from Riverside Drive
An old bus that someone is living in.
The pedestrian path along Riverside Drive
Riverside Park gardens.
Riverside Park gardens.
Flowers in the Riverside Drive gardens.
Sail boat on the Hudson River
Riverside Park
Woman walking dogs in Riverside Park
Riverside Park
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial in Riverside Park

Riverbank State Park at Sunset

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Another spot I enjoy walking to and in is Riverbank State Park. The park is an elevated, artificial park that is built onto the side of Manhattan island. To get to it, you have to walk over one of two bridges, or by walking up a few flights of stairs from the Hudson River Greenway below.

Riverbank Park has a pool, a track, tennis courts, indoor basketball courts, a roller skating rink, a restaurant and I think a cultural center. Kind of hard to believe it’s all built on an artificial, elevated platform.

Walking down there is about 2.25 miles. It’s a great place to stop, use the bathroom, and take in the sights before turning around and heading back home. I don’t know that I’d want to have a picnic there, though there are certainly facilities for it. I think Fort Tryon Park is a much nicer place to go for that. But, it would be a great place to sit down and read a book for a while. The breeze there is nice, since it’s over the water.

Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters

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The ice cream truck. We each got a vanilla sugar cone. It was that kind of day.
A woman doing an oil painting of the scenery.
Jewish kids playing.
A view of the Hudson River.
The Cloisters.

My wife and I have been taking some time to go out for long walks while I’m not so swamped with classwork. Central Park is nice, but we live a lot closer to Fort Tryon Park, which is also an awesome place to visit. We can walk there from where we live and the park itself has some great views of the Hudson River and The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that houses a large part of the museum’s medieval collection.

We walked around there on a Saturday afternoon. Since it was a Saturday afternoon, the park was full of Jewish people relaxing for Shabbat. We saw families sitting on benches, walking together, taking in the view, and kids playing. There were groups of people on picnic blankets and some playing games.

My wife and I would like to go back and have a picnic. Maybe we can pull that off this weekend.

Architecture of Doom

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A few months ago, or maybe half a year ago now, I came across a Tumblr blog called “Architecture of Doom“. As it’s name suggests, the blog is home to images of terribly uninspiring and depressing architecture. The effect is elevated by the clean, minimalist white blog theme that seems almost cheery by comparison.

Every time I walk past this set of four buildings in Upper Manhattan, I think of that blog:

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These buildings literally straddle I-95.

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That’s a highway, running below them. Is it an odd feeling, I wonder, knowing that every day thousands of vehicles roll beneath your feet, under your apartment? What would happen if there were an earthquake? Though I suppose if there were an earthquake in New York City it wouldnt’ matter if there were a highway under most of these buildings or not. They would almost all collapse anyway.

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There’s something terribly depressing about this facade. It radiates poverty, depression, and despair. Whether that is true of the people that live there or not, I don’t know.

I walked past these buildings on Tuesday because I was going to the library on 179th Street. I discovered that there’s an app called Overdrive Media Console for iOS that makes checking out digital copies of the New York Public Library’s collection a snap. I hadn’t used my library card since I got it 3 years ago, so it had been canceled. Maybe they thought I was dead?