Walking again!

So remember that time I went to cast my early vote in a wheelchair? Amazing to think that was just 2 weeks ago, especially with all the breath-holding this week - it's felt like a month! Also, if you missed it on Facebook, you may not remember this as somehow it didn't make it into the blog here, I skipped straight from the medical update to that lovely Halloween sail. 

So anyways - I had intended to join in the early voting we have here in NYC, but I had of course had absolutely no clue that I was going to be so dreadfully shaky on my pins after 2 weeks in the hospital when the time rolled around! It wasn't that I couldn't walk at all but at this point, one week after my release, I'm seriously not sure I could've made it once around my own block, let alone to Brooklyn College, my early polling location, about 3/4 of a mile away. Also really didn't want to be on public transportation yet, so I asked some friends in the neighborhood if they could help. My friend Gail came through immediately and also had the very good idea of the wheelchair; she has some friends whose daughther has a small theater company and Gail was able to borrow an old but fully functional wheelchair from the prop deck - that worked out so well. 

That was the 26th of October. My new chemo was starting on the 27th, and I didn't know how that was going to go, hence my hurry to vote before that. As it happened, the new chemo is going fine and I'm very happy to report that today I actually walked a mile and a half! Still very slowly, but I went up to the Little Free Library up near Courtelyou Road, a few blocks to the north, to drop off some books I was done with, and then I just wandered about enjoying the weather (amazing, 72 degrees when I went out in the afternoon) and the foliage, which is getting lovely. Here are a few samples, click any photo for a slideshow view.  

 

Pride People

So, jeeze, the second half of June was crammed with so many kinds of awesome I've had a terrible case of blogger's block just trying to figure out where to start. It's all a little overwhelming. It started off with an ACA Instructor Development Workshop with three great days of dusting off skills, while camping out at nearby Floyd Bennett Field. Then there was a fantastic family gathering in Michigan to celebrate 110 years of marriage (one 50th and one 60th anniversary). Then to finish things off I joined Scholastic colleagues on Sunday to march in my first NYC Pride. It was World Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Scholastic employees have marched together just as friends in past Pride Parades, but this year the company made it official.

Sebago had a rescue class going on up at the lake on the same day. I would've enjoyed that, and rescues are one of the things I slacked off on practicing after my mastectomy & reconstruction, and my rustiness on some of the more advanced rescues - Hand of God in particular - was noticeable at the IDW, so the class would've been a good follow-up. Because of that, I didn't quite make my decision the minute I saw the announcement - but after thinking things through I decided on going to the march, but I was leaning towards marching from the start and it didn't take too much thinking to decide.

I might talk more about my reasons for going in another post, but for tonight, I thought I would at least kick of my July blogging by sharing some photos from the march. I got there a good bit early to have some time to wander, it was a picture-taking paradise and as I meandered my way slowly up to the staging area, the question that kept running through my head was "How is it that I've never even come to see this before?" Click here to visit the album I put together. Enjoy!  

Current Subway Reading - Yes She Can

I've totally fallen down on that project I had where I was going to share my monthly reading (I stalled out at mid-March, as I recall) but oh my, I have GOT put in a plug for my current subway reading, Yes She Can: 10 Stories of Hope Change from Young Female Staffers of the Obama White House. I am absolutely loving this book.

It's actually kind of heartbreaking reading it and thinking about how hard these young women worked and how much hope they had for what they were bringing to the country and the world, only to have the current administration come dundering in and set straight to work tearing it all down. But it's also such a grand reminder that these young women - and so many other young women and men with similar visions - are still out there, were just starting their careers in the Obama era, and hopefully have long and powerful futures ahead of them to keep working towards what's right. There's a book tour going on right now - unfortunately for me the book came out in March and they started in NYC, but for any friends in these areas who might be interested, they're on the road through June, with several Georgia events, followed by events in Massachusetts, Denver, and Virginia.

SoHo Scene

Amen to that, Mr. Taco. <3 span="">

No time for tacos tonight, but I'll be back sometime when I'm not rushing in the rain.

Robert Moses Repercussions

So this is a little outside of the usual blog topic here on Frogma, but a Gothamist article caught my eye today. I've mentioned Robert Moses a couple of times in recent posts as Sebago had a really wonderful day in March where we visited Dead Horse Bay, where you can so easily imagine the sadness of all of the people he displaced as you inspect the belonging of theirs that were buried at the badly-capped landfill at Barren Island and are now strewn across the beach there. And then I also have a set of photos to share from a hike at a spot where you're reminded that he also did some very good things for the city.

But the repercussions of his clearances turn out to carry on to this very day. I never knew.

Just fascinating.

I have really got to get my hands on a copy of The Power Broker.  

Idaho concerns clarified

So I Vaguebooked (vagueblogged?) in my February reading post about being upset by some legislation proposed by a relative who's recently joined the Idaho legislature. I'm working on some month-end close stuff so otherwise probably wouldn't be posting tonight, but I thought I would put up a quick clarification for anyone who wondered what I was going on about.

Click here to read the thing itself, straight from the source. Don't miss the FAQ's, they're charming...apparently they aren't quite ready to put women under house arrest to stop them from getting an abortion in another state (how nice for those with the means to do so, right?) but they can't quite bring themselves to say straight out that no, it's not going to affect birth control - "likely not" is the best they can do.
The good news is that it seems it's not getting considered this year. Just found that out tonight, and I'm quite pleased. They do say they'll give it another shot next year, fingers crossed that it gets the same treatment. 

BTW At least one of these legislators is not a Trump guy, either, I can't speak for Rep. Scott but my relative is smart enough to have figured out Trump for the con that he is pretty quickly. One lesson I am seeing in this is that for all Trump's emboldened the alt-right, him going away wouldn't stop things, in some ways maybe he's just a symptom. I knew that, this just drives it home. Have to keep marching!

Note slightly later: Well, this is disturbing. One of the FAQ's on Rep. Scott's site is: "Is the goal of the AHRA to punish and imprison women for abortions?" And the answer begins: "Not at all." But here's Cousin John addressing his Kootenai County Republican friends. Listen to what he has to say. 

Note the next day - this was my response to a FB friend wondering how we got here (she'd just shared a interview in which the Florida House Speaker referred to pregnant women as "host bodies" 5 times) - I'm just both startled and sad to find myself saying this: "It's nuts. I've been thinking about how I was raised and the high-quality science-based sex education I got (at an Episcopalian school no less!) and the easy access I had to health care and (when the time came that I chose to become sexually active) birth control and how all of that worked together to let me live life as I chose. And I'm a bit of an odd bird in that I never wanted marriage or kids, so that choice has been SO important. Now my head is just spinning with the idea that -- well, was I raised in the golden age of women's rights?" 

I see what's going on now and I am SO grateful that I was given such freedom. 

Election Night at Slainte

I was tired from getting up early to go vote before work, but I figured that if I went home I was likely to just end up turning on the computer and getting obsessive over election results. Going to Slainte to play some tunes with friends and perhaps indulge in a refreshing adult beverage or two seemed like a better way to while away the evening.

It wasn't entirely an escape, Slainte isn't specifically a sports bar but they do have big TV's that are usually tuned to various games up on the wall, and last night election results were really the only game around (ok, there was hockey for a minute but pretty soon that want back to results), so I ended up kind of obsessing anyways, but obsessing in good company, while playing some tunes and drinking Dark 'n Stormies, was waaaay better than obsessing at home by myself. Can't think of a much nicer way to spend the evening.

I need to get a new camera battery, the old one's not holding a charge well and runs down especially fast during video recording, but here's a minute of last night's music.

In the end, I was pretty happy with the results -- yes, I was disappointed about some of the races, but personally, the main thing I wanted out of this election was to see some brakes put on this runaway train of an administration, and I think we got that. Not quite a blue tsunami but enough of a wave to count - and the diversity is splendid, I love seeing winners that actually look like the world I live in!

Election Day

Changes coming to Governors Island? Weigh in by October 9th if you're interested!

City of Water Day a few years back.

Just a quick post tonight to share some stuff a paddling friend from way back has been sharing on the NYC Kayaker Facebook group. Unfortunately I have to preface it with an "Uff da!", to borrow a most useful exclamation of dismay from friends of Norwegian descent - it turns out there was one public meeting to review the scoping document, that was a week and a half ago, and the NYC Gov website announcement is VERY vague about submitting comments, just says "Written comments on the Draft Scope of Work may be submitted to the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination until 5:00 P.M. Tuesday, October 9, 2018." There is a contact page, I've sent a message asking if that's an acceptable place to submit a comment. Will update if I hear anything. Worth a try and there's also a mailing address there for snail mail submissions.

Click here for a NY Times article about some possibilities

update slightly later - OK, maybe I can relax a little bit, the Times article does refer to September's meeting as being the first of several. 

I'm not the biggest Gov's I user, but I have been there for one Figment art festival, one Porch Stomp folk music day, I think 2 Halawai Hawaiian potlucks - all lots of fun. I also went to a few City of Water Days there before we started doing City of Water Day In Your Neighborhood open houses in Canarsie. This year, though, the main City of Water event moved to the South Street Seaport Museum for unstated reasons. Actually one of the coolest things about the early City of Water days was that participating boaters got to bring our tents and camp out for a night, that was so much fun - I would pick that over glamping (starting at a hundred and fifty bucks a night and going up to $800 a night!!! for two people!!! gaaah!!! oh, but you get a concierge so I suppose that's not so bad, right?) ANY DAY. :(

Anyways, pardon me for a somewhat blithery post, I am really just chucking this out there fast because the cutoff date for comments is so darned close and although this blog is not as rabble-rousy as it was back when I was fighting for storage on the Hudson River waterfront, I still think it's very important for people to make themselves heard when they are given the chance. If you read that Times article and find you have some thoughts on the matter, please do try to get them in to the powers that be - I don't know if it'll make a difference but it's worth trying. I am hoping people who care are more aware of this, I've been really caught up in other things for the last couple of months and this just totally took me by surprise when I finally really started reading stuff tonight.

Thanks!  

Good article on the storm surge barrier

Click here for a good article on the flood control project, courtesy of Bob, the Sebago clubmate who was also at the meeting.

Again, here's the project website:
http://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Projects-in-New-York/New-York-New-Jersey-Harbor-Tributaries-Focus-Area-Feasibility-Study/

NYC residents and other folks along the Hudson are all considered stakeholders in this; email NYNJHarbor.TribStudy@usace.army.mil to join the Stakeholder Mailing List and receive updates on the project.

This is a big thing here in NY Harbor - hope folks will get involved, this is going to have a big effect on the "Sixth Borough", and we should pay attention. 

One more memory...

These, I'm keeping.

September '08 - Obama had just been declared the Democratic candidate...

January 2009. Kind of chokes me up looking at this now. Miss them.

Families Belong Together NYC March 6/30/2018

The picture above was one of my favorites from the day - click here for a Flickr album with more. 

I didn't manage to get out in a boat last weekend, but I did join some friends and thousands of like-minded New York City folks for a great stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge. It actually would've been a really nice day for paddling, but one of my paddling friends suggested meeting up for the Families Belong Together march instead, and I thought that sounded like a good idea.

I've made some donations to groups that are working to give legal assistance to the immigrants who've been caught in this mess created by the Reality Show White House. I'm figuring that's a good practical response, since I'm sure there's a nightmare bureaucratic maze to negotiate for any child to be reunited with their parents and, for all people joke about lawyers and sharks, lawyers with good hearts are going to be best equipped to help. My largest donation went to Kid Lit Says No Kids In Cages, I work for Scholastic so I'm in that business, and when the company offered to match employee donations, I jumped on that. I also like the fact that they are splitting the donations among several organizations, that seems like an effective way to do things.

But these marches do make statements that I want to be part of - I'm not sure how much difference is made by those statements being made, but it's at least a satisfying way to express my frustration with the current administration.

It was hot, but we were able to find a shady place to stand while we waited in Foley Square for the march to start, and once we were on the Brooklyn Bridge there was a nice breeze and the crowd kept moving nicely. Marching across the bridge was great, that's a walk I always enjoy anyways, and there was such a good positive spirit among the marching crowd as we made our way to Brooklyn. Drivers in cars were tooting their horns and giving thumbs up and fist pumps as they drove by, and the crowds on the walkway whooped and cheered in response. Yes, New Yorkers really do care!

I did manage to get some good water time into the weekend too - I had an unplanned day on Sunday (hooray) and it actually ended up being too hot for pretty much anything but a swim (actually a falling-out-of-boats practice day would've been fun but that would've required organizing, plus after the heavy rains during the week I was a little suspicious of the water quality in Jamaica Bay, which is much more closed-off than Coney Island and Brighton Beach) so I ended up going out to Brighton Beach and found the CIBBOWS gang at Grimaldo's Chair. The water temperature was just beautiful and I ended up swimming almost a mile, really slowly, with frequent stops to just enjoy the coolness - then I just hung out at the beach for a couple more hours. An excellent place to be in a heat wave. 

America Lives

feeling patriotic today, had to find a flag picture! :) 

Voted this morning. The table where I signed in and picked up my ballot was staffed by an African-American lady, a young lady in a hijab, and a young man with a kippah, I was ushered to the scanning machine by a lady from the Caribbean, and I voted for the son of Ugandan war refugees.

America lives. I love Brooklyn.

Happy Spring 3

That's more like it!

"Just plain silly" label ends here.

New Yorky/real politics. Splendid day for a March for our Lives. Central Park and 81st Street. For more photos from the marchon Flickr - click here. 

Women's March NYC, 1/20/2018

Pardon the blog break, been catching up with life after a kind of rough finish to 2017. Work had been a bit crazy and I was clinging to the idea of a year-end staycation for the last week of December, which I then couldn't really take - worked out OK because we had an office move the week before Christmas and it was actually very helpful to have a couple of quiet days in the office to get my crates unpacked, rather than coming back and having to unpack AND deal with the usual month-end close reporting that happens the first week of every month. Still a bit of a bummer to be looking forward to a week off and then realizing it's just not going to happen.

Move and close are both all done now and so far January's been reasonably quiet; sadly no kayaking because the weather's been kind of cold and blowy on weekends, so I've been having some good chances to catch up with myself. Apartment's getting tidier, ukulele's getting practiced (YES I HAVE A NEW TOY! TQ is SO good at presents, he floored me with this one, more on that another time!), Irish music and dance is being done (and so was some Hawaiian music and dance, more on that at another time too cause there's more in the offing), new shoes and socks (both sorely needed) have been acquired, etc., etc. - and last weekend I was able to join friends for the Women's March here in NYC, and it was a wonderful afternoon. The trains were royally messed up but the march was still going strong when we got there, the weather was beautiful, the signs were funny and angry and strong, sometimes all at the same time, and I was so glad to be there.

More photos on Flickr. Enjoy!

doodle du jour

This was a post-it doodle I drew a while back. Somehow reminded of it this week. 😉

NYC Earth Day March for Science

I mentioned that Saturday's rain wasn't enough to dampen spirits at NYC's March for Science; I was able to say that with confidence because I was able to go march with local members of the Okeanos Foundation who had built a beautiful scale model Polynesian voyaging waka to carry in the march and who invited all Pacific Islanders and their friends and supporters to join them.

After joining in more protests in January and February than I've been in in my entire life, I'd had to take a bit of a break during March and April because of things that came up in both my personal life and work, but I'd been considering trying to fit the March for Science in before my tin whistle teacher's memorial service, and when I saw the beautiful model and the invitation on the Facebook page of one of my Hālāwai friends, that settled it.

I've been very concerned by the various cuts and restrictions that the new administration seems hell-bent on putting on various government-run scientific organizations (NOAA, for instance, weather.gov is the first place I go for my weather but there was an interesting article in the Times this week that spells out impacts beyond those that a layperson like myself might think of), so I was very glad to join in. It was a great morning, I overheard someone say "This is the geekiest march ever, and I love it!", and I totally agreed.

There were a couple of students from the Rutgers Documentary Club who were talking to participants and asked me for a few words on why I was there, which was almost impossible because, you know, where do I even start? As a cancer survivor? As a paddler and swimmer who can play safely in the waters of NYC because of the tremendous improvements brought about the Clean Water Act? As a fan of citizen science groups like Gotham Whale (oh jeeze that reminds me that I still need to get them reports from my seal paddles, I'm sorry Paul!)? Or on a more basic level, as someone who has walked through old graveyards and been amazed at the percentage of people who died in what your average modern US citizen would consider midlife?

As it was I tried to say all of those at once and it probably came out as a babble. Of course the next day, I came up with the sound bite I wanted:

 You can't care for something if you don't understand how it works. We need to care for our home here, along with everything on it, and good science is our best chance to understand how we can do that. Malama honua!

More pictures on Flickr, unfortunately with the beautiful waka I forgot to take non-waka pictures and there were some very clever signs, but this gives some idea of how the day was. So glad I was able to stay for the whole event and still make it to the memorial service on time. It was a great event. 

Sunday Fun Part 2 - Touring the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Atlantic Salvor of Dry Dock 1

Sunday Fun part 2 - but not Part 2 of Friday's "Sunday Fun". Nope, this goes much further back!

Early February in fact.  Part 1 was the Brooklyn Bridge walk and dimsum at Jing Fong. Remember? After brunch, Laurie and Rosa and I set out to walk back to Brooklyn, this time across the Manhattan Bridge. As we walked up the section of the bridge that extends into Manhattan, we saw a little knot of people looking down into the street below, and it turned out that the Lunar New Year Parade was just coming into view, heading for the bridge! Laurie and Rosa stopped to watch, and under ordinary circumstances I would've stayed (and in fact I'm going to keep that in mind for next year, I think some overhead shots of the parade could be fun), but earlier in the week, I had run across a Facebook post from Turnstile Tours talking about a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with "a special spotlight on the experience of African-American sailors and workers for Black History Month. Learn about how the struggle for racial justice played out on the ships and in the shipyards of the US Navy, and how the Yard's 70,000 sailors, shipfitters, caulkers, and chippers of all backgrounds transformed it into the world's busiest shipyard". I wasn't able to talk any friends into joining me, but I'd gone ahead and signed up for it, because it sounded interesting.

That was starting at 2, and we'd already stopped to look at a few things that caught our attention on the way to the bridge, so I needed to head on.

It ended up being a very good tour - and private! That's right, I  turned out to be the only person in the entire city who decided that touring the Brooklyn Navy Yard was a good way to spend the afternoon of Super Bowl Sunday. As I said on Facebook afterwards, I figure I have now genuinely earned my boat nerd card, if I hadn't had it before!

It took me a while to do this post because I had a bit of a writer's block problem - aside from posts on waterfront politics (which I stopped doing as much after I left the Hudson River, in very discouraging circumstances) and boating safety, most of what I post here is pretty fluffy, and talking about a tour where I learned about how the foundations of the civil rights movement were being laid amidst the building frenzy in the leadup to and during WWII...well, that's not fluffy at all, and I just don't really know how to write about it. Apologies for that; for what it's worth, here are a couple of thoughts -- then I will send you off to the Flickr album from the day, where I'll talk more about the tour itself.

It was a very well-done tour. My guide, Andrew, was one of the owners of the company; he was extremely knowledgeable, presented the day's information in an interesting and logical fashion, and answered all of my questions easily and thoroughly. In fact, my main regret in not having other people along was that I think other people's questions and perspectives would've added more dimension to the tour.

The way the tour was tailored to Black History Month was by working specific stories into an overall framework, and I could see how the presentation could be similarly tailored to a wide range of subjects (as Turnstile advertises on their website). Andrew went through a general overall history of the base, talking as we rode from building to building. At certain points, he would focus on how and where African-Americans fit into the story, either telling the history as part of his talk, or in a couple of cases, showing photos and playing recordings of people who actually worked at the yard during WWII telling their own stories. Some of the stories were hopeful, some horrifying, and (as already mentioned), I do feel like maybe a few of the many gaps in my knowledge of the history of the civil rights movement got filled in over the course of the day. We did also get a little window into women's history, as the yard was one of the places where "Rosie the Riveter" went to work.  

The tour actually dovetailed well with a couple of books I've read recently, one on Plessy vs. Ferguson, one on the history of the fight for civil rights in Mississippi - the latter actually started in the 1940's, so resonated very well with what I learned from the tour; before those books and this tour, I would say that most my awareness of the Civil Rights movement was mostly focused on Dr. Martin Luther King; I was still in the 1940's section of the Mississippi book at the time that I took the tour, and although the situation in Mississippi sounded much more brutal than that in Brooklyn, the same groundswell of people standing up and demanding equal treatment was working in both.

Fascinating getting to know more of our history this way - and I thought it was very relevant to where we stand now. I'm glad I went - wouldn't have spent Super Bowl Sunday any way other than the way I did. I might have to take my folks for a tour next time they're here, and if you live in NYC and have visitors who are interested in history, I can definitely recommend Turnstile Tours. In fact I may join them on another tour even without visitors, they have a wide range of places and topics that sound interesting.

Click here for the day's Flickr album.

Sunday Fun for a Good Cause - Sanctuary Sessions for the ACLU

Kicking off the St. Patrick's season with some great music for a good cause! I'm looking forward to the NYC one, which will be held from 1 to 4 in the afternoon at the Four-Faced Liar pub in the Village, at 165 West 4th St, between 6th and 7th avenues.

You can read more about the sessions in The Irish Echo, and you can find a complete list of locations on their Sanctuary Sessions Facebook page.  

Marching again - Rally and March for Immigrants and Refugees, NYC, 1/29/2017 (and farewell to a friend I never got to meet)

Starting at Battery Park (appropriately within view of the Statue of Liberty, right by the Immigrants Memorial, and across the street from the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian) and travelling up to the US Courthouse at Foley Square. The new ban is un-American by my way of thinking, and I'm grateful to have had the chance to march with fellow New Yorkers of all types to say so. And I marched today in honor of a wonderful FB friend who passed away very unexpectedly a day or two ago - she was one of the founders and moderators of the Facebook group Church of the Double-Bladed Paddle, (FB membership required to view) and we'd had enough conversations for her to be squarely in that group of FB friends who I genuinely would have loved to meet someday. I think she had that effect on a lot of people - she was so genuine and warm in her love of the sport.

A lot of the "parishioners" went out paddling in her honor today; I had at one point (before the news broke) had thoughts of paddling today, but then I found out about today's rally and decided to do that instead. The FB group is apolitical, it's just about sharing the joy and peace and beauty that people all over the world find on the water, but on her own wall, Cat had been following the various protests with enthusiasm up until the end. As I looked out at the shining water of NY Harbor when I first got to Battery Park, I thought "This one's for you, Cat". I think she would've liked that. Can't believe she's gone.

It was a good day, an estimated 10,000 people turned out. That's it for the writeup, click on any photo for a slideshow.