Answer in New York: to Rent
Check out this fascinating article, sent to me by a friend:
Is It Better to Buy or Rent? (You'll need a New York Times membership to read this, but it's worth it.)
Long story short: it depends on where you are. Another conventional piece of conventional wisdom goes down the drain.
Blustery Day
The wind is raging outside, and the sky is grey. This is how God intended weather to be.
Of course, most of the people on the streets are cursing and struggling to keep their umbrellas from turning inside out (even though it's hardly drizzling), and vendors are fighting tarps in order to cover their wares before the seemingly inevitable rains come. Nobody is happy.
To me, though, this weather is the best. Would that I could take the afternoon off to stand in Central Park.
The Home Team
I've never lived in a city that
liked the Yankees before. For (reasonably good) reasons of money and long-term dominance, they're universally hated (even if Boston does deserve nearly as much lambasting for the same reason). Do I think there should be NFL-style profit-sharing in the Major Leagues? Yes, absolutely. Do I wish these things were more of a contest, with fewer home runs, less power-hitting, fewer steroids, and a lot more smart play, self-sacrifice, and strategy? Absolutely. Am I a Yankees fan? You bet. And for a long time, I've been a Yankees fan in a land of Anybody-But-The-Yankees fans.
Imagine my consternation, then, when, standing outside a bar peering in so that I can see the scores (Cleveland lost - Boston is losing - Yankees are winning - what more could I ask?), I met a couple who were
doing the same thing. And, more than that,
they were equally pleased to see the various scores. What? Yankees fans? Amazing. We got into a conversation about the fact that the Yankees have closers but no middle order in the bullpen this season. We agonized about the previous game, a shameful 17-9 loss to Baltimore that went through
eight Yankees pitchers who could do nothing but give up runs. We talked about bats vs. hurlers, and wondered about what size field would be best for a team like today's Yankees. It was
great.
So that's what it's like to love the home team, eh?
(For the record, I like the Jacksonville Suns, and I spent my college career loving the Binghamton Mets. And, frankly, I even like minor league ball better than the MLB. But finding Yankees-
lovers is something that will stay with me for a long, long time.)
Academies of Scale
Yesterday evening marked my first venture into a New York City public school. Let me tell you, it was a harrowing experience. I would never,
never,
never want my child to attend such an institution.
This is not to say that the school itself was a bad one (and I refrain from giving its name for that purpose); I have absolutely no sense of the quality of the teachers, for example. It was, however,
at least nine stories high, with
escalators, and the "essays" being displayed in front of an AP English classroom were all under a page long. This is not promising.
It's not the academics that caused my visceral reaction to the place, though. It was the space. The school was like a jail: there were no windows, there was no outdoor space, and it was enormous. Escalators seem to be the perfect place to taunt or fight others far from the eyes of any administrators. The place was impersonal. Students were expected always to be predictably in the place listed by their class schedule, because there were too many to keep track of otherwise.
I think back to my own (very good, public) high school, and I realize that much of the most valuable time I spent there was before classes started, in Mrs. Hall's room playing Scrabble or arguing about Shakespeare, and during my lunch period listening to Mr. Warren lecture to one philosophy class or another. I was close to teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, even the principal. Was I unique in this way? Sure, but only because of the degree of my familiarity with them. Others--from the worst performers to the best, the most troublesome students to the most well-behaved--knew
somebody well. Teachers got to know their students. School was a
community.
That just wouldn't have been possible in the school I visited. Nobody was allowed into the building before school started, except those with a specific destination (cafeteria, remedial reading classroom, etc.). After a class with a teacher, it is distinctly possible you'd never see them again--and unlikely that they'd keep up with you as a result. No wonder this particular school has a dropout rate of about 30%. And that, according to the
New York City Department of Education, is really quite a
good rate.
It is hard for me to imagine that a school of that size and impersonality is safe. But such problems can be fixed: more cops, more teachers in the hallways, stiffer penalties for student fighting, expulsion for more serious offenses. Far worse is my sense that such a school could not be a true learning environment. The reason that
Stanton was great was because it was a place where
everybody was invested in your doing well. Everybody expected you to learn. All the students took hard classes, and, unsurprisingly, nearly all did well--because that's what people were pushing you to do and helping you to do. That's what a school
should be; it shouldn't be
hard to learn at school. But this monstrosity that is the New York Public School:
I wouldn't have gone every day, I'd bet. There's no way I could make my kid do so.
NYU and the Cloister
I had my first class at
NYU yesterday evening. It was fun. The Washington Square Park area is quite cool, full of students, street-side book vendors, hole-in-the-wall eateries, and streets with actual names instead of mere numbers. NYU itself is nice, too. But being in the city, with all the opportunities it affords, cannot, I think, make up for the experience of
going off to college. A college town, or even just a self-contained campus, is a different thing altogether. It is a university community that is spatial and physical as much as theoretical--and that, I think, matters. Everybody at Cornell was a Cornellian, was studying and learning (or at least attending classes and hoping to get by without studying). NYU's great diversity and strength derives, at least in part, from the fact that you can't avoid interacting with a million people who
aren't students or academics. But isn't that what you go to college to do...?
I believe in the Cloister of education. And then I believe in getting out.
On Curation
I went to the Metropolitan Museum yesterday, where I spent most of my time in their current exhibit on Bohemian art. I most enjoyed the bit where they presented several illuminated Jewish works alongside a series of similarly illuminated Christian Bibles. The curatorial notes explained that, in the 13th and most of the 14th centuries, the Jews and Christians of Prague were engaged in deep intellectual and religious exchange. This was reflected in their artwork and their manuscripts, among other things. The notes closed by inviting the viewer to compare the styles of the different illuminations, noting their varying artistic interpretations of the same events, as well as their numerous similarities.
This was an invitation that I accepted wholeheartedly, and the comparison was one that I very much enjoyed. The exercise got me to thinking, too: is this not curation at its best?
Too often, curators take the easy way out. Art is grouped by date and place of origin, and nothing more. A Van Gogh? Put it in the room with all the other Van Goghs. A Rodin? Put it in the European Sculpture garden. A red-figure urn? Put it with all the other old Greek stuff. And put the painting by Jan van Eyck in with all the other Dutch portraiture; group all the mummies together in that other room; we'll put 18th century Spanish art here; let's send all the tapestries out to the Cloisters. And, wham-bam-boom, the museum is arranged.
What the modest little exhibit on illumination asked me to do, however, was compare along different lines. Objects were grouped together not solely because they were from the same time and place, but because they were stylistically and subjectively reminiscent of each other. Look at how the artists played with each other's work, the arrangement insisted. Look at how these different folks treated their very similar subject matter. This was an active and thoughtful curation.
If I were a curator, here is what I'd do. I'd put a tormented German crucifixion scene--a Grunewald in the National Gallery in Washington, DC, with a gruesome Christ and a dark and angry sky--next to a Floretine painting of the same subject, with a bright blue sky and a pacific, uncontorted Christ gazing down calmly at the mourners below. I'd toss in Dali's floating Cruxifiction for good measure, and a golden crucifix for liturgical use in a Parisian cathedral. I'd put a Coptic version of the same scene, embroidered onto religious vestements, on a nearly wall. If I could get it, I'd also include a print done in Reubens's workshop, currently housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; it features a pained Christ hanging heavily on the cross in what must have been his moment of doubt, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?. It is a horrific and striking scene that I drew over and over again when I was in high school.
Then I'd ask the viewers to think about these several pieces, all inspired by the same story, all depicting the same characters perhaps, yet so very different. I'd try to point out possible influences on each of the artists, and the way the works interact; the Dali is as much a comment on earlier crucifixion scenes as it is a comment on the crucifixion itself, for example. I'd ask the viewers to truly compare the pieces, to look closely at the art, to notice the differences that make each scene unique. That, I think, would be a truly provocative exhibit.
All of this is not to say that I have anything against the tried-and-true method of grouping by time and place, but it is to suggest that this is only one way to organize a museum or gallery--and to lament that it seems to be very nearly the only way that art museums are organized anymore. The Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the British National Gallery, our American National Gallery, the Met, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Philadelphia Museum--they're all organized after exactly the same fashion, and we grow up learning to group art in one very common way. But why? You could put 8 different representations of the Pieta side-by-side; you could put 13 still lifes (lives?) of tables with fruit on them next to each other--just imagine a direct comparison of Cezanne with Picasso, for example!--; you could put Greek urns next to Egyptian organ-jars next to Medieval Arab vases next to modern vases made by Chihuly; you could put Cleopatra's needle next to the Arc de Triomphe (theoretically, at least) and talk about architectural tributes to military victories. Heck, for that matter, you could place Jewish and Christian manuscripts side-by-side, some in Hebrew, some in Latin, and one in Czech(?), and you could ask museum-goers to compare them.
(Click the image for a larger version.)
On Bars
In Ithaca, there's a bar on Stewart Avenue called the
Chapter House. If there isn't a band playing, you can go in, get a drink, and head for the back room, where you're sure to get a seat to yourself from which to sip your beer and watch the baseball game.
In Washington, DC, it's harder to find seating at
The Brickskeller. Once, I even sat at a Pac-Man table, my beer in the way of anyone who might actually have wanted to play the game. Once seated, however, it's easy to unfold a newspaper or to pull out a pen and to start working. People are polite--friendly even--but they understand that you have come to the bar to do whatever it is that you want to do, and they let you do it.
New York is not like this.
Yesterday night, I went to
Brady's, a cozy and comfortably un-chic establishment a block from my apartment. My main reasons for going to Brady's were to 1) have a drink in a reasonably nice space and in a way that could not be mistaken for Drinking Alone in My Apartment; and 2) watching some baseball on TV. (I should explain here that I neither own a TV nor care to own one. I do, however, have a desire to watch Yankees games, especially since the team is duking it out with Boston over the division championship just now.) Annoyingly, however, I was propositioned by
four men in a
two-hour period at this bar. I went home with business cards (a bizarre New York phenomenon), phone numbers, and several offers of free drinks (all of which I had declined).
Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against meeting new people who live near me. Indeed, I enjoyed myself immensely while talking with Nick and James, two guys who seemed to understand the concept of "Sorry, I'm just here to watch the game," and I really do hope to see them again sometime. What I am averse to is the seemingly-ubiquitous idea that a single girl at a bar
must be there to find a guy, and not even remotely for any other reason--even if she says explicitly that she is there to watch baseball. Wouldn't it make sense to believe the girl? I mean, either she's telling the truth or she's rejecting you, and neither makes it seem like she really wants you to take her to dinner next week (and yes, I was asked,
after saying I was uninterested).
As I said, I'd like to meet up with Nick and James again sometime. I predict that it'll be a while before I seem them, though. I won't be back at Brady's in a long while.
Street Fairs
I love this city! Today, I awoke to find a fair on my beloved 84th Street. People were selling everything from books and latkes (I bought some of both) to pillows and jewelry (which I did not buy). The local Lutheran Church was giving away free cookies. Children were gasping at the
real! live! ducks! (This, incidentally, amazed me. I grew up staunchly in suburbia--no farm-kid background for me--but it had never occurred to me that a six-year-old may never have seen a
duck before.) Everybody was wandering the streets, chattering away in German and English and French and Spanish and Chinese, having a great time.
I like the institution of the street fair. I suppose everybody's got 'em: Neptune Beach had similar fairs four or five times a year out by the beach, and Ithaca populated the Commons with fairs a few times a year. But the honest-to-goodness, walking-only, closed-to-traffic, everybody-on-the-front-stoop
street fair is a thing that I think can only exist in a city.
The first urban street fair I ever attended was the Haight-Ashberry fair in San Francisco. I went with my Uncle Charles, and was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the thing. Here in New York, the experience is similar (if rather more sober and less hippie). What's amazing, though, is that it remains at once a densely-populated and fiercely
local event. It seems like
everybody at the 84th-street fair, for example, lives within a block of 84th street. We're all neighbors, all several thousand of us. One stall even features T-shirts sporting the logo "10028"--our zip code. It would be bizarre to find a SoHo-dweller at our fair.
In Neptune Beach, the fairs serve the populations of "the beaches," as well as Jacksonville, Mayport, and maybe even Ponte Vedra. In Ithaca, similar festivals are geared to the whole city. But here in New York, anybody from the West Side just isn't local.
On Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
I read Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men. I've never before been able to get through anything by Steinbeck, but that trend has been emphatically ended by this book. It is simply exceptional.
I have trouble defining that exceptionality, however. Three factors come to mind, but they can hardly account for the force of this book. I'm going to list them anyway.
First, I was drawn into an emotional attachment to several of the story's characters. As a result, I was deeply invested in, and greatly moved by, the horrifying (but necessary?) end of the tale. Knowing what
had to happen at the story's end, and feeling heavily the tragedy of that situation, I even went so far as to shed a tear or two.
Second, the story is incredibly well-crafted. It is tight: one killing echoes--and is perhaps necessitated by the logic of--another; accidental victims grow in size and complexity from mouse to puppy to woman, and the trend is obvious and terrible; the entire book is put together in order to make the last few scenes predictable--and therein lies their power, because you know they have to happen and the anticipation aches.
The third exceptional feature of Steinbeck's story is the complex relationship it has to Burns's "To A Mouse," which I went back and read for the first time in years after reading Steinbeck's story.
Of Mice and Men is something of a variation on a theme set by Burns, and it is highly successful as such. Like the poem, it illustrates for us that "the best-laid plans of mice and men / gang aft a-gley." But Steinbeck does more than that: he trumps Burns when it comes to showing that dreadful human condition by which we cannot help think about what has happened, and what will happen in the future. To be sure, Burns stresses the same point; he finds a mouse more "blest" than he himself is, because the mouse lives in the present while he is left to "guess and fear" what is to come. But
Of Mice and Men realizes the idea that Burns merely states: Steinbeck's characters live for their future hopes, and when George kills Lennie, it is all the worse because it is a premeditated, well-considered act which he hates--but which he knows he must (and will) do. More than that, though, Steinbeck drew
me into this illustration:
I knew what was going to happen at the end of the story, yet I dreaded finding the place in the book where it actually did happen. I was awaiting Lennie's death (and the death of Curley's wife, for that matter) with a kind of dread, and a kind of hope that somehow the story would be just as good with a different ending.
(It wouldn't have been, of course.)
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, An lea'e us nought but grief an' pain For promised joy. Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! The present only toucheth thee: But, och! I backward cast my ee On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!
News Wars!
New York is not a one-paper town.
Almost everywhere else in America is. Everywhere else, Knight Ridder, the Tribune Co., and Gannett corner the market: they leave one another to their respective turfs, and conglomerate with or buy out or make bankrupt all their small-scale competitors. Local papers are gobbled up by the One that has been blessed by big-paper backing.
New York is not like that.
Here, newspapers
compete. Sure, there's the
New York Times. It's the best paper around, and we all know it. But who has time to read the
Times? The
Post is more accessible, with its bad puns for headlines and tabloid-style layout. Lots of people read the
Post. But the
Daily News has a loyal following, too, as does the
Sun. And what about the
New York Observer?
And the
Wall Street Journal (which has the same problem as the
Times, except that it fits into even more of a niche market)? And, lest we forget, there are always the free papers.
This morning, today's new breed of paperboys stood outside my Lexington Ave subway station hawking their wares. "
Metro! Metro Metro Metro!" one yelled, thrusting the paper at wary travelers. (I took one--
Metro has reasonably good reporting, reliably touches the most important news of the day, and has a sudoku and a crossword, which are great selling points.) Another man yelled "Model on the front cover!
amNew York! Model gets busted! Model on the cover!" He, too, was handing his papers out like a madman. (I didn't take one--
amNew York has vapid reporting, and devotes two whole pages to "articles" about things you should buy (a squishy chair! new lipstick! these shoes!) .) Today, for the first time, a third, quieter girl had joined the fray. "Hurricane Rita?" she asked tentatively. "Would you like a free
Sun?" She was not as successful as the two more experienced boys. (I took a
Sun anyway--I'd never read it before, and unlike
Metro and
amNew York, the
Sun is a broadsheet, which suggested good things about the depth of its articles.) And get this: desperate for market-share in a wide-open market, all three were
free (though, to be fair, the
Sun usually costs 25 cents).
I can't say that any of them are objectively good papers (though any can give you the major headlines, and
Metro might even put them on the front page). But that isn't really the point. Here in New York, newspapers duke it out. They
fight for their ability to bring us the news we want. They sit next to one another at subway stations, and yell for you to take them. They thrust themselves into your face. And you know what? Everybody reads the paper on the subway in the morning. They might be reading
amNew York or the
New York Post gossip section, but they're reading. Public transportation and the newspaper wars make this a city of readers. They also make this a city of great political awareness: everybody knows that Fernando Ferrer won the Democratic primary last week, that Anthony Weiner conceded the race, and that fourth-grade test scores went up on Mayor Bloomberg's watch--because everybody read these things in their morning paper.
New York underground
Yesterday, going home from work, I found myself watching a fantastically good breakdancing team in the Grand Central subway station. Other days, the same terminal features an excellent violin-and-banjo duo calling themselves "Ebony Bluegrass" and playing at the platform to the S train. Both of these groups are hot stuff: they are skillful, hip, and catchy. What are they doing performing for change underground?
It made me wonder, then, about just how lucrative such a day could be. I presume that performing for change in the sunless bowels of New York is not a particularly good way to make a living. But surely these folks--the musicians, at least--could get a gig
somewhere? I mean, there are plenty of far worse acts that I've seen on stage in New York City already.
Moreover, the MTA seems to somehow sponsor or legitimate many subway acts. Both the breakdancers and the bluegrass boys posted high-quality, stylized signs with an "under New York" bannerline and their names printed underneath. Numerous groups have these banners. What do they signify? How do you get one? I don't know--but it does make them seem like something more than beggars or street performers. This, the banners seem to say, is a
gig.
One other interesting sidenote: breakdancing is perhaps the first truly colorblind activity I've seen in this city (though that probably reflects the fact that I live on the upper east side, which is perniciously monochromatic). The breakdancing troupe was anything and everything: black, white, Latino, Indian, East Asian--and this from only 7 boys. But that, if rare, is also not too unremarkable--friendships and associations by interest often cross these barriers fairly easily. What was intriguing, and, frankly, really nice and comfortable, was the fact that the
audience was so very diverse. We were young and old and in-between, as polychromatic as you can get, dressed in business suits and baseball caps and t-shirts and jewelry and baggy pants. And we were all having a good time, mesmerized by the guys dancing in front of us. Maybe the subways are the great melting pot that the USA is not, and that New York itself only vaguely approximates.
Ray Craib, The English Patient, maps, Herodotus, & history
At the moment I'm reading a paper-in-progress by
Ray Craib, a friend and professor of mine at Cornell. The paper is about nature, space, and national identity in Mexico. Ray has a particular knack for the geographical, having introduced me to, among other things, Thongchai Winichakul's excellent
Siam Mapped, historical exercises in the mapping of Connecticut (if memory serves), and some of the numerous possibilities of spatial representation and the historical significance of landscape.
Ray's paper makes me think about traversed paths and the problems of rediscovery. As Ray rightly points out, Cortes doesn't seem to have noticed the Mexican landscape much (at least, not if his journals are anything to go by). But later travelers evoking Cortes--like Calderon de la Barca--are hyperaware of their surroundings, and the fact that these are
the surroundings through which the "first" discoverer passed. Perhaps they know they are in the presence of greatness--whether that be a reference to Cortes (a dubious reference, I admit, but here we are concerned with the perceptions of the travelers themselves), or to their awesome destination. The journey is not about discovery of a new thing, which could be anywhere, but of an established greatness, which is along
this path. And so the journey becomes not just a means of finding a thing--Mexico City, Borobodur, the Notre Dame,
anything--but is itself a thing to be noticed and appreciated.
I am reminded of
The English Patient (the book--I've not yet seen the movie), in which Herodotus figures prominently. Ondaatje's book is very much about space and place: the English patient knows the Middle Eastern desert intimately, and is constantly evoking a hill here, an oasis there, or an ill-omened cave in his ravings. He does not get lost in this place that looks the same in every direction. He knows the space, and its variations, and he marks it. He comes to view the landscape itself as a natural unit, too, and says that it can't be properly divided between nations which exist outside of it. For the English patient, the space is significant; indeed, the desert may be the one thing that holds importance for him.
But
The English Patient is not merely about space. Among other things, it is also a book about words, about story and history. The patient brings with him Herodotus, always; but it is an amended Herodotus, a corrected text. The patient writes over its words and pastes in new ones. The English patient
knows Herodotus, and likely learned the desert first through Herodotus's eyes--but he sees it differently now, and he amends the story. Having read Herodotus, he can hardly have experienced the desert
like Herodotus did.
Perhaps this is the same idea. Following the footsteps of Cortes, or even going on a
Da Vinci Code tour of Europe (people are so weird), gives significance to places we may never have noticed before. Their representation--on maps, in books, in art--tells us what to expect, and makes them weighty in their own right. I'd argue that this makes our everyday experiences richer, and that it invests them with greater meaning, greater significance--but I don't want to be dependent upon Herodotus to show me that a place is awe-inspiring. The man believed in giant gold-digging ants, for goodness's sake.
