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Saturday, January 11, 2014

July 2013 in New York City - hot summer in the city!

CITI bikes introduced summer 2013 in NYC by outgoing Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Residents and tourists took to them immediately, even using them as places on which to park their stuff, like activist flags, a cup of coffee, etc. This is in the Garment District around Broadway and 36th. I was in the area often to go to the Community Acupuncture Center between 6yh and 7th Avenues.

The above is the narrow street running alongside Pace University's Manhattan campus building, taken during Left Forum 2013. To the right below was taken near a corner across from Union Square Park, possibly at 13th St.

The above is near Times Square.

Bloomberg also, over the course of his administrations, made many changes to street life in Manhattan, instituting the carving out of spaces on many city streets and intersections, for traffic calming and decrease and increase in outdoor seating, where you can just sit and watch/smell/hear the sights of the city and, often, buy food from various ethnic cuisines. And, especially since Occupy burst upon the scene, NYPD watches you constantly.
Smile, you're on camera!

And here's another nice carve out at Greeley Square Park.

And yet more, an older carve out. Testimony to the needed civilizing and calming effect of nature/Nature.

The Asian infusion pops up everywhere. Better learn some Cantonese or Mandarin or Korean as it's being spoken all around you!

This sumptuous beauty was in the West Village area in yet another triangle shaped park by a tiny old Church converted into a tiny turret-like library

with no public rest room !, so crossed legs were in order for a while until I happened upon a McDonald's two blocks away.

But I did find the Apothecary! Bigelow's Chemists where I got a tube of Arnica gel at a good price and likewise the homeopathic remedies I was seeking - Hekla Lava and Symphytum Officinale from very helpful staff there.
Yet again, I gave in to the siren call of the Union Square summer farmer's market. I dashed from stall to stall enthusiastically soaking up the vibrant life that I so miss while I exist in exile in drab upstate NY so pardon the lack of focus in some of the images.

I'm guessing the title of "Avocado" for the squash comes from the most likely Korean word for that Yellow globe sounding to the Korean speaking ear like the word "squash" .... or some such thing.

See...I told you, NYC folks of all ages REALLY love the Citi Bikes even if it is sponsored by a bankster corp.

and then if something undesirable happens, there's always help at hand.

This looks like it was a fender bender, near Grand Central Terminal, no Citi Bike involved.

Yet another traffic calming civilizing effort.

After a long day of hiking from block to block seeing/smelling/hearing new excitement around every corner- they're making a movie here in the park by NYU,

I return to where I started in the a.m., to the calm and serenity of the scenes by the Hunter's Point area of the East River, an impressive example of brownfield reclamation. In the space of about 10 years from its start with one lonely co-op apt. building (City Lights at Queens Landing), the area has exploded with a new State Park (Gantry State Park) about 15 other high rises (mostly rentals) on the river's edge,

low rises a bit further back from the river (mix of condos and rentals) where there's little or none of that wonderful Manhattan schist rock below, with new local restaurants, Italian, Thai, Latino, etc., dry cleaners, doggy day care, nail salons, supermarket, a very local flea and food market on the weekends,

a drug store, an elementary school on the ground floor of the first building, a spanking new middle school two block away (pics to come in another post) and a space ship like yet to be opened high school at the top of another new apartment building in front of a new city park right at the edge of the East River ferry stop for that point. In essence a whole community sprang up, keeping some old icons like the L.I.C. Bar.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Speaking of city chickens reminds me to post overdue photos of a trip to Toledo, OH in April of 2013 to speak at a conference which involved my first encounter with the breed of Silky chickens. Here is the master chicken, clearly of emperor status as he stomped around wide-legged like an over-bulked weight lifter. The boxes behind him contain bee hives.

This one behind the chicken wire may be a Silky hen or young Silky

since this one below clearly is a Silky hen brooding. The youth group responsible for this suburban garden with chickens on land beside and part of the church where the conference was held were hoping those eggs would hatch into baby Silkies

Here's a view of the large plot with garden boxes.

The youth group putting up a play set.

Also some kind of water collection and/or water purifying system

Inside the church meeting room, a caterer created a totally amazing carved fruit display, with a watermelon with solar panels on one side, windmills on another and a tree and stream on yet another! tomato rosettes and cantaloupe roses, etc.

As for the conference itself, the speakers covered almost every topic dealing with sustainable energy. Jill Stein was a keynoter.

Here's another speaker. I was pleased that they had diversity amongst the speakers as so often at events on sustainability there is none.

I spoke on conservation, efficiency and deep retrofit. After the conference, my hostess drove us back to her neat, cozy house to freshen up before proceeding on for a fund-raiser at a downtown meeting place for youth (so lovely that Toledo has such a thing!) for a young Green Party candidate for city council.

He gave a good speech at a well-organized event.

The next day my hostess took me to the Toledo Art Museum, which has an extensive glass art collection, along with a opportunity to try your hand at glass-blowing.

Upon leaving the museum we went on a driving tour of old Toledo to check out the many grand houses with large front porches. The next day we drove the hour or so to Ann Arbor, MI, which is so totally a college town that the campus is embedded into the city itself, no fences, no gates separating city from campus.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

ETM Solar of Endicott, NY, hosted a solar house tour starting at a house in Binghamton. On Oct. 5, 2013. Before I saw where the solar panels were, I honed in on the city chickens!

The home-owners also have a food garden, what looked to be bins to catch rainwater

and, of course, the solar panels, set to catch the sun's rays but also discreetly hidden from street view.

Inside the garage you can see an example of the array of boxes and dedicated meter for a solar panel installation.

I understand that NYSEG installs a digital meter since the powers that be require it. The house meter located on the exterior wall of the house itself also has to be digital. The second house I visited was in Vestal and is a ground mount. The homeowner explained that many things he had to do to prepare the site for the installation and why he chose to not put the panels on the roof of the garage. .

Both homeowners were very happy with their approximately two year old installation in terms of saving money on their electricity bills. Here's a home in Endicott with both electricity and hot water from solar on two different parts of the roofing.

Proof that you don't need a "perfect" location in order to go solar. Notice in the photo of the meter that even on a semi-cloudy day, the little arrow on the left points to the left at the time I took the photo, meaning metering is going backwards thus saving the homeowner some $$.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Talk on the Brain at Rockefeller Univ in NYC - March 14, 2013

Although Rockefeller University has an impressive campus on the edge of and blocking view of the river, with some solid old stone buildings and the glassy new one that held this talk, the speakers were disappointing. Hosted by SWINY (Science Writers in N.Y.), the speakers came across as cliquey with each other and most in the small audience, arrogant and, in the case of the woman on the far right, downright sniping. She revealed she takes a particular drug for depression but I felt it seemed like she was on speed. She was very, very critical and hostile to those who express concern about pharmaceuticals and Big Pharma so, of course, I wondered how much money she gets from them. Oh wait, must be not enough and she wants more, as she is a freelance science writer. The nicest person I met at this entire trek to hear this talk was the guard at the front gate.

Corporate Interference conference - Food, Fracking & Wireless - March 13-14, 2013, NYC

******* March 13-14, 2013, Scandinavian Center, NYC Why this site? Maybe the only auditorium in NYC that's free of wireless. http://www.corporateinterference.org/ We heard from David Carpenter, M.D. on the multiple corporate invasions into our lives to the detriment of our food and thus our health via at least the multiple means of GMOs, fracking and wireless. Teasing out the details were Dr. Ron Bishop from SUNY Oneonta who gave a crisp and specific presentation on the many existing abandoned oil and gas wells throughout the state, some of which the NYS DEC was in complete ignorance, Dr. Magda Havas on the many assaults to our health from wireless in its many forms (cellphonea, laptops, towers, etc.), including a set of photos of her own blood after she used a cellphone and after using a wireless laptop - the cells got stickier and more like ketchup. One legislator, Andrea Boland, spoke of her fight to get bills on the floor re protection against wireless. Dr. David Brown, who, with his staff, has been working with people in western PA harmed by the rapid and massive invasion of fracking, shared terrifying details of the types of harms to health and welfare. Dr. Krimsky presented an at times macabre history of the development of the concept of G.R.A.S. in our food. His was the clearest example of the egregious and pernicious influence of corporate influence over our food supply in one specific area, out of many. Our government agencies, due to orders or short staffing, have handed over control over what's in "food" to the purveyors of such. Never ever touch any processed "food," nothing in a box. A very good conference overall.