Carnivaless

A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child in play.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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Hello Val
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night may be quiet again someday.
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Well, the carnival has shut down and left. No one showed up to accompany me, to be my better eyes (and my better self, no doubt). So I didn't get to eat the pizza, the sausage, the funnel cake, snow cone or cotton candy. I didn't get to ride on the Ferris wheel, the swinging gondola or the merry go round. But I got to hear the Bingo numbers on a loud speaker, the loud scraping metal of the rides and the loud screaming children. I vow to myself that when I return to New York I will go to Coney Island and some of the other amusement parks around there for certainly a ride on a roller coaster, because I am just a loud screaming kid at heart.

Soon it will be September 9th and that will mark the anniversary of my moving to Bristol. I moved here 11 years ago, and I still have no friends here. I did have one friend for a few years who I trusted, but she turned out to be dishonest, devious, deceiving and linked to her own narcotic needs. So now there is no one in Bristol.

There are two good reasons to return to New York. I have old friends there I know can trust and I'm a performing artist who for the past 11 years hasn't been able to do any of it. I yearn to go back on stage. I can also return to the Art Students League and learn more about painting. I can be with the other artists I have known and admired and reach a higher level in my own art and my writing. And, best of all, in New York City the carnival never shuts down.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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Sing A New Song

I have sung my swan song so many times I no longer believe it.

Dana Bate
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Hello Lily
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"Swan song" is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. (Wikipedia)

I've made those sweeping dramatic gestures in the past of endings, last acts, final curtains, finishes, Usually it was done out of a feeling of disgust or dissatisfaction with what I was doing. Sometimes it was an emotional reaction, sometimes it was just the end of a contract, once or twice it was a matter of drop everything and run. Those were the necessary terminations.

Now in my golden years I don't want to think about endings. Things are never over in my mind. Everything in my life has a future to it, especially myself. Now I am more than considering, I'm planning to return to New York City where I belong. What for?

When I was a teenager I discovered I had talent as an actor. I took that talent and increased my skills to include being a broadcaster. Along the way I studied art and became a painter. There is more to learn about all of those skills. After I retired (another swan song) I became a writer, having nothing else to do.

Now, with an accumulation of creative skills, I'm living in a place where I can't use them. So the only sane and sensible thing to do is to go where I can. There are ideas in the fire to get me there. But I always have an open invitation for anyone who can help me do it.

I have things to do. I have made many investments in my future. I need to get there to collect.

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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New York

Everything that furthers companionship is a dress that properly clothes virtue.

Immanuel Kant
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Hello Sandy
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I don't know what furthers companionship any more because I don't have any. There was a time when I lived among people I admired and was admired by them for what abilities and talents we had and how we used them. Now I live among petty criminals who are admired for their ability to go undetected. What has brought me to such a wretched state? Never mind. I don't want an answer to that. I want an answer to how I get out of here and back among people I can admire for good reasons.

There is virtue to be found in the world. I know that. But for a gregarious man like me to be stuck in a place where virtue is not a goal and a practice makes for a hard and painful life. Companionship here seems to consist of getting together and getting stoned. Where is the desire for a better life?

I seem to be living in a community of people who have given up in one way or another, as if there was no other way to live, as if there was nothing more to life than just existing until you die.

Help!! Get me away from this masquerade. I never want to fall into that mentality and have no temptation to do it. I don't fit in here, obviously. In short I'm not happy here. But where will I be happy, or at least alive?

These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New York
(Ebb)

Is there crime in New York, petty and otherwise? Of course. a lot of it. But there are also artists, actors, musicians, writers, thinkers. For every one hundred people who don't give a damn, there is one who does, and with millions of people living there that's a lot of people who care, a lot of -people to admire.

Well, it's a dream. But it's one that has occupied my thoughts most of the day, every day, since I was finally convinced. by irrational reactions to virtue itself that I live in a dead end town.

Now I have to make a long, painful walk on my crutches to do some food shopping. In New York that would be just to the corner. or on a bus. Please NYC, take me back. I'll be a good companion.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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Drive On

We're actually still changing the world, aren't we?

Rick Danko
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Hello Marty
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My mother was an excellent driver. When I was a youngster my sister lived in Boston and we would occasionally visit her by driving up there from New York. In those days the main highway out of the city was known as the Merritt Parkway. Along the way there were strips of commerce, restaurants, gas stations. motels, shops. Otherwise the scenery along the way was very pleasant. The Merritt passed under many bridges, there were side roads and the evidence of communities near it.

The Marritt Parkway is still there but it has since been replaced as the major road by a super highway, I 91, which runs through Connecticut and hooks up with the Massachusetts Turnpike. It's also surrounded by some very attractive scenery, planted and landscaped to adorn the highway.

As I grew older and made the trip to Boston and back I wondered what had been there. What communities, patches of forest or lake had been removed to make way for the Interstate. Whereas the Merritt had given glimpses of local life along its path, I 90 merely had signs and exit ramps. Whatever was there before the highway was built is gone forever. It can never be brought back.

In the 40s and 50s there was a city planner in New York named Robert Moses who, although he didn't drive himself, saw the automobile as the future of America. He built a major highway in northern New York City called The Cross Bronx Expressway. If you drive down it you will see on either side apartment buildings. In order to build that highway, many blocks of apartment buildings had to be torn down and a huge trench carved into the ground. A great many people had to be removed from their homes and neighborhoods. People who could walk a few blocks to their doctor's office or their favorite shops could no longer do that. There are pedestrian bridges that cross it, but not many. The buildings, homes. parks, neighbors, lives are all gone now and will never be returned.

New York City changes so fast that there's a joke which says that if you turn your back on it for one day they have torn down one building and put up a bigger one.

No one would deny those two highways and others like them all around the country make travel faster and easier for the motorist. The unfortunate thing is that no one can remember what was there. It is forever gone from sight and memory.

Progress and development is taking place all over American to provide better transportation and housing. Forests are being cut down, bays and wetlands are being filled in, mountain tops are being leveled. And all the while changes are taking place in the American people. We have become a nation of the convenient, the instantaneous and the forgetful. Instant coffee, fast food, immediate entertainment, instant gratification. What is gone about us that will never return?

In his epic poem John Brown's Body, Stephen Vincent Benet wrote about the mountains, the people and things that are gone

They are our last frontier.
They shot the railway-train when it first came,
And when the Fords first came, they shot the Fords.
It could not save them. They are dying now
Of being educated, which is the same.
One need not weep romantic tears for them,
But when the last moonshiner buys his radio,
And the last, lost, wild-rabbit of a girl
Is civilized with a mail-order dress,
Something will pass that was American
And all the movies will not bring it back.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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This invitation is still open for anyone and everyone to post an entry of their own on my journal, Vagabond Journeys http://vagabondjourneys.blogspot.com/.

A new year is upon us and since it is a time for celebrations, remembrances, resolutions and plans for the future I think people have things to say.

Not to take away from the postings on your own journals, but to add to the joy of my own is why I invite you to write for me.

I want to read what your thoughts are about this magical time of the year. This invitation is open to everyone: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists and the Uncertain or the Confused. Tell me your thoughts on any subject you wish.

There are no limits in regard to length. The only limitation is that, for reasons so far unexplained to me, my blog does not take photographs, animations, videos or pictures of any kind. I deal in words.

Please accept my invitation. Send your entry to my email address dbdacoba@aol.com I will copy and paste it into my journal and it will be displayed promptly. You may sign your name or not as you wish, and you may leave a link to your blog or your email or not, as you wish. I will do NO editing or censoring. Eloquence is not necessary, mind or heart or both is all.

I have 13 Guest Authors so far. Check them out.
All are welcome. Admission is free.

DB - The Vagabond
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A Patch Of Ground

That sun's gonna' shine in my backyard some day.

Jim Kweskin
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Hello Teresa
***************
In New York City, as I'm sure in other cities, there are abodes known as "Garden Apartments." In New York they are ground floor apartments with a plot of land at the back. The plots in Manhattan are quite small, four giant steps will take you across one, and they have fences or walls at the edges to separate your plot from your neighbor's plot next door.

What people do with these plots are as varied as there are people living with them and they tend to express the character of those people. I was lucky. The man who lived on the ground floor of my building on West 75th Street had a small tree and a nice array of flowers growing in his. I was on the third floor and my place had a terrace in the back, so I could look down on his garden.

The man who lived across from us, on the 76th Street side, only grew grass in his. And once a week he would mow it with a mammoth lawn mower which made an unimaginable noise. He didn't care how much it disturbed his neighbors.

There were interesting stories about some of the other backyards in Manhattan. One man built a shed and kept a goat. He fed and took care of the goat and it would sometimes come out of the shed and eat whatever was growing in the plot of ground. I knew a couple who built a large cage with a roof and kept two wild bobcats in there. In the early days of the NY State Lottery, the first city resident to win it said he was going to retire, put in a tomato patch and tend it. There was another resident who used the plot as a dump. He had nothing going on in there but weeds and trash. And there are some who are struggling to do well enough to turn their tiny plots of land into something nice, someday.

There are almost no alleys in New York, so those buildings abut each other and if you drove or walked down one of those streets you would see the facades of apartment buildings that looked in good shape, with several floors of windows and evidence of people living there, but you would have no idea what was in the backyard.

If you walk down any city street you can see people going one way or the other, some dressed in suits or skirts on their way to an office, some in workman's clothes, maybe a few carrying musical instruments. When you get to your own job you will see associates, colleagues, customers, representatives and others. In almost every case what you see are facades, the public faces, the professional covers of the books of their lives. And you cannot tell what actions, events, worries, griefs, gripes, mysteries and secrets are hidden away behind those facades.

Are they the confident, contented life of flowers and trees, the desperate noise of callous egotism, some sort of bestiality, a simple life of a tomato patch, a life of ruins or a struggle to make a good and happy life, someday?

DB - The Vagabond
(Never Give Up)
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AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Only 5 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answers.
DB
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Waiting For Irene, Part 1

Will there be a Waiting For Irene, Part 2? Who knows. That there is a category 3 hurricane approaching is a sinister enough experience to live through. But there is something grotesque about waiting for it.

A day or so ago I read that Irene was down in the Caribbean. She's still in the Caribbean. A day or so ago I read about what damage she had done in the Bahamas. I'm still reading about the damage in the Bahamas. It's as if Irene is waiting around until everyone is sufficiently frightened or sufficiently evacuated before she launches her attack. Or she's inching along, driving in the slow lane and taking her sweet ladylike time to get here.

Reading all about what is liable to happen when the hurricane finally arrives, the 100+ mile per hour winds, the foot or more of rainfall, the surges and all, is like watching the coming attractions of a Hollywood Blockbuster film I don't think I want to see.

Governors are declaring states of emergency all up and down the East Coast, news organizations with their high tech maps are showing where the hurricane is likely to go as if colored dots on a wall could describe such an event. In some cases we get photos and videos of past hurricanes to further illustrate what the possibilities are. Hurricane experts are trying to describe the extent of the danger to the land. And yet, as usual with natural disasters, overhead hangs the sword that no one really knows what's going to happen.

Irene will probably make landfall in North Carolina, but maybe not. She could possibly blow out to sea and spare everybody, but maybe not. She could zip right into the middle of New York City and cause damage that is impossible to imagine or calculate, but maybe not.

The local forecast is for "heavy rain." Oh really? New Jersey is one of the states that is supposed to be the most vulnerable to Irene's fury. If you look at a map of New Jersey you will see that it bends slightly in the middle and where it bends a bit of Pennsylvania is pushed into its side, like a punch in the stomach. In that bit of Pennsylvania is where I live. So does that put me in the path of Irene? Probably, but maybe not.

This is an adventure story. Will it have a tragic ending or a happy ending? Who knows. Stay tuned for "Waiting For Irene, Part 2"

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up.
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SUMMER QUESTION

Summer is moving along, people.

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

18 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Close Encounters

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries
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Hello Addis Ababa Ethiopia
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New York City has a number of amazing zoos. The Bronx Zoo, which is actually The New York Zoological Society (since many things in New York have two names) and the small but excellent Central Pork Zoo, where, if you're in New York City, you should go to see the penguin exhibit among other things.

Otherwise there is the general wildlife of New York. The ubiquitous pigeons, squirrels and cock roaches (which, I'm told, is the only creature that servived the atom bomb).

There were also some strange spottings of animals over the years: an alligator living in one of the waterways, a coyote loose in Central Park, a family of Peregrine falcons nesting in the top of one of the tall buildings.

Then there was the Siamese cat.

Some people in the city keep strange animals in their apartments. I once went to a rehearsal in an apartment that had a boa constrictor living there. The snake didn't move. It slept the whole time I was there which was alright with me. And I knew an actor who turned his bathroom into an aviary for a flock of birds. He also had a parrot in the ktichen.

I went to visit an actress friend and her husband. Their apartment building had a garage attached to it. He was working in the garage so we went there. There was a monkey in a cage who was so glad to see me he pissed on me.

Then there was that Siamese cat.

Some of the ground floor apartments in the city have back yards. I knew a woman who kept her pet sheep out there.

But the strangest encounter I had was with a bobcat. I went to the ground floor apartment to rehears and found an apartment full of animals: a strange tropical bird in a cage, a turtle, a small furry dog, a Siamese cat and two bobcats. The people were environmentalists who were into saving the bobcat, so they had two of them. She told me that one of them was nice and the other one was nasty. She tried to get them both into the back yard, but while I was sitting on the sofa going over the script I was suddenly joined by a creature who jumped up on the sofa to check me out. I turned and was face to face with a wild bobcat. It was about 6 inches from my face and staring at me. I was scared. I wondered wither it was the nice one or the nasty one. But just at that moment the Siamese cat appeared from somewhere and sat down. When the bobcat saw it he lowered his head and slunk away into the back yard. With all those animals in the house I was impressed to see that the Siamese cat was the one in charge. Without lifting a paw it told the big dangerous bobcat what to do and where to go.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
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Never give up.
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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The Day I Owned Times Square

These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it,
New York, New York.

Fred Ebb, John Kander
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Anyone who spends any time in New York City has New York stories. Adventures automatically occur in that remarkable, aggravating and rewarding place where anything can happen. This is one of my many stories and it's true, with no embellishments, I promise.

If you have ever been in Times Square then you know how big it is. It is actually two squares: Duffy Square on the north end and Times Square on the south, which are connected Two large boulevards, Broadway and Seventh Avenue proceed southward through it and cross each other. There are five cross streets, one of them going in two directions. It's huge.

If you've ever been in Times Square then you know how busy it is. Theatres, office buildings, hotels, bars and restaurants, shops, side walk vendors, busses, trucks, taxis, cars, bicycles, horses and everywhere there are people going here, going thee or standing around gawking, twenty four hours a day. It is truly a place that never sleeps.

I had a job as a relief announcer for WQXR, which was the New York Times radio station. That meant that I was on call, sometimes on short notice, to fill in when one of the other announcers couldn't be there.

One Sunday morning I got a phone call at 4 a.m. from the morning announcer telling me he couldn't make it in to work, he lived in New Jersey, could I take the shift for him. In those days the station did not go all night, so someone had to be there to do the sign on and the morning programs beginning at 6. So I got up, had some coffee and something to eat and left my apartment building at 5. I lived on 56th Street and 6th Avenue. As soon as I walked out the front door I could see why he couldn't get to work. There had been a major, MAJOR snow storm, one of the worst, the city was covered with snow.

I walked down 6th Avenue, crossed over to 7th and entered Times Square at the northeast corner. My destination was at the southwest corner, 43rd Street. I was amazed to see there was no traffic, and there hadn't been any for quite a while. There were no tire tracks or footprints in the snow. It was deep, over my ankles, but I trudged diagonally right across Times Square, something one could never do at any other time, brazenly walking down the avenues and the streets. In all that vast area I was the only creature moving. Even the ubiquitous pigeons were tucked in somewhere.

In the 5 to 10 minutes it took me to walk to work I was the only business man, the only proprietor, the only tourist, the only resident, the only citizen, completely alone and by myself in the center of what is the busiest place in America. And these "vagabond shoes" were straying through "the very heart of it."

It was a strange, surreal, Fellini-esque, Doctor Zhivago type adventure. I felt like an explorer. I felt like I should stick a flag in the snow and claim it for myself. I owned it. I owned Times Square.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Puzzle

Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.

Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov

Good luck
DB
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The Touch Of Silence

Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?

Lawrence Durrell
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I awoke at 7 o'clock in the morning. It was 19 degrees. That's -7.22222 Celsius for my Canadian, English and Australian friends. An hour later it had dropped to 18 degrees. I don't much mind the cold. Having spent half my life covered in a blanket of ice and pummeled by the freezing rain of New England winters, my steel has been properly tempered.

With the Winter Solstice knocking at the door it's a signal for the end of the year festivities. Since I am in a better place mentally and emotionally than I was last year when I had the wolves circling around my life, growling and snarling, I've been wondering if I should do something to celebrate Christmas, like decorate.

The first winter I spent here I bought a small fibre optic tree and set it up on the front porch. The next day it was gone. Someone stole it. Since then I haven't thought much about any tokens of celebration. This apartment is too small for a real tree and since no one is coming to visit me, to share Christmas dinner or anything else, there will be no prettily wrapped packages to put under it anyway. I could hang some colored lights, I suppose, but way up here in my third floor aerie no one would see them from the street. So maybe I'll just make some cranberry cookies for my housemates and let it go at that.

In the apartment below me lives Dan. He's a nice fellow, intelligent and friendly, but he has a temper. He works as an odd job carpenter and hearing him tell stories of some of the people and circumstances he has to work with I'm not surprised. Sometimes he slams his door. I always jump when he does that because it's unexpected. I don't mind it because I know what it is, and in fact I'm glad he does it because it tells me there is life going on in the building. It is also, sometimes, the only sound I hear.

I've never before lived in a place that was so quiet. The other half of my life I spent in New York, which is not only the city that never sleeps, it's the city that never shuts up. There's 24 hour noise. If I wasn't there I was living with someone, so there was human conversation and activity around me. But here there is such delicious quiet that it sometimes seems I am alone in the universe.

I have come to enjoy and cherish the quiet and also to respect it. It is a blessing to trade the cacophony of the world for silence. Abiding graciously the loneliness from the lack of human contact affords me the gift of sharing with myself my own best company.

I will play music which helps to define the silence like a frame around a work of art. But silence is the best music. Silence invites me to listen, it unfolds things that can't be heard in any other way, it opens a dialogue of ideas, impressions and realities which only it knows. And silence listens, without judgement or argument, to my thoughts, and forms them to fit it's own accumulated wisdom. It gives back more to me than I give to it.

Sometimes I talk out loud to myself just to put the sound of my voice into my space. The silence waits patiently for me to finish and then fills up the empty space with it's own oratory, richer and more majestic than the mere plodding of human thought.

How do I interpret the silence around me? In bright daylight or dark of night as a friend, a companion, a teacher, a traveler who has been everywhere and knows everything, an unlocked chest of treasures, a benign and mysterious ghost frightening only in its grand and persistent presence.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

Only 9 responses so far. Autumn is almost over. I await your answer.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Standing Up To The Man

To really enjoy the better things in life, you must have experienced the things they are better than.

Oskar Holmolka
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One day I was having a bite to eat at my local restaurant in New York City. I was by myself. A family of four came in and took a table. After they had ordered, one of the men started talking about New York in very uncomplimentary terms. They were obviously tourists from some place out west.

The man started railing about the city: the crowds, the dirt, the noise, the subway system, the cab drivers, and the food. He began to suggest that New York should be dumped by the rest of the country and fend for itself if it couldn't "clean up it's act."

Then he made jokes about it like who wants to live in a place where you never see the sun because the buildings are in the way. He made some remarks about dirty immigrants.

I was getting very annoyed but I wasn't going to say anything. However, there was a man dressed in work clothes sitting at the counter having his supper. He had his back to them and when he heard the remark about immigrants he turned around pointed his finger at the scoffer and said, in a foreign accent which sounded Eastern European, "You. You don't know what you're talking about."

He went on to say that he was from Europe, that he lived in places where he and other people couldn't work or find a place to live because they didn't have the right papers, or the right name, or the right language. Or they didn't belong to the right political party.

He said he fought in the war for the Hungarian army and when he got out he joined the French army. He said he had seen cities all over Europe, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Paris. Genoa, Rome. He said "This is the greatest city in the world." He said here he can work and be free. He went on to say that he hoped the man would go home soon and not come back. Then he returned to his meal. There was no further discussion about New York City.

Oskar Homolka was an Austrian actor with a long and varied career in Austria, Germany, London and the United States, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in "I Remember Mama."

He and his wife fled Germany when the Nazi's came to power.

Homolka could have been that man in the restaurant who stood up for New York. He certainly experienced things that his life was better than.

DB - The Vagabond
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WEEKEND PUZZLE

You are to finish the following sentence by filling in the blank spaces with whatever words you choose.

Once I had ___________ and I _____________ but ________which was too bad, but _____________ any way, and _________________ at last.

The best sentence wins a prize. The decision of the brain challenged judge is final.

Good Luck
DB
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Eat, Sing, Mingle and Enjoy

You can miss most of New York’s street fairs but you can’t miss this one.

Unknown
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This coming weekend is the 9th Ave. Food Fair. When I lived in New York it was my favorite festival. The reason is that it is truly an international event. There are no prerequisites. You don't have to be Irish, or Puerto Rican or Gay. It is just a grand mixture of New Yorkers having a good time. And so it is a mirror of what America can be, and is in some enlightened minds and enlightened counties.

I lived on the corner of 9th Aveune and 57th Street so when the horns started honking I knew the barricade was up and the fair had begun.

EXTRA EXTRA -- READ ALL ABOUT IT

DB
Saturday May 15 – Sunday May 16 (9:30am – 6:30pm)

The Ninth Avenue International Food Festival in May has become a favorite weekend for New Yorkers since it began in 1973. From 37th Street to 57th Street, Ninth Avenue closes to cars and the festival takes over. More than a million people visit the festival each year. It’s unique and amazing, celebrating the joys of ethnicity through food, entertainment and every kind of street fair stall.

Most street fairs in New York all look the same but this one stands out. The food is the big draw, but the festival is a fabulous expression of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood – teeming with ethnic food shops and fine restaurants and offering an eclectic global smorgasbord of national and regional foods. Outside venders participate as well, but the Ninth Avenue merchants and restaurants and the community organizations of Hell’s Kitchen are out in all their neighborhood glory.

Come for Argentinian, Brazilian, Cajun, Chinese, Cuban, Dominican, Ethiopian, French, German, Greek, Haitian, Indian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Moroccan, Pakistani, Polish, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Senegalese, Sicilian, Southern, Spanish, Thai, Trinidadian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese food – and more!

Working up from the south end of Ninth Avenue, you will be enticed by:

chorizo sandwiches – from Esposito Pork Shop, at 38th
the best sausage and pepper hero ever – from Giovanni Esposito & Sons at 38th
clams and oysters on the half shell at the seafood stands (Central Fish and Sea Breeze) around 38th Street
soupy, spicy gumbos, crab cakes and chicken curry – from Chantale’s Cajun Kitchen near 38th
suckling pig and quail stuffed with fresh Greek spices and feta cheese – from Ninth Avenue International Foods, near 40th
peppery crisp squid – from Siam Grill, near 42nd
iced coffee and iced cappuccino – from the Empire Coffee & Tea Company near 42nd
bourbon ham sandwiches, Texas chili with corn bread, mango barbecue wings and macaroni and cheese – from Good And Plenty To Go, at 43rd
carrot cake and apple pie – from the Little Pie Company at 43rd
chicken salad made with corn, black beans and jicama, and barbecued pork tostadas – from Zuni, at 43rd
meatball hero – at The Holy Cross church stand on 43rd
corn fritters gently flavored with shrimp, crisp spring rolls and nasi goreng – from Bali Nusa Indah, near 45th
spanakopita and tiropita surrounded by the most delicate phyllo pastry that you will ever find, and then baklava or strudel – from Poseidon Greek Bakery, near 45th
breads, brownies, cookies and cinnamon-raisin, garlic, rosemary or black olive fresh bread twists – from Amy’s Bread, near 47th
jambalaya – from Delta Grill at 48th
pork in mole sauce, wrapped in a corn tortilla – from Tacocina at 49th
huge, inexpensive portions of Brazilian foods like bolinho bacalhau, a fried salt-cod casserole – at Rice ‘N’ Beans, near 50th
Greek barbeque, octopus, lamb and chicken souvlaki – from Uncle Nick’s, near 50th Street
pad thai, dumplings – from Wondee Siam, at 54th
roast pork – at Ned Kelly’s bar on 55th
And somewhere along the way you will also come across:
alligator, shark, lobster, shrimp and catfish nuggets
burritos, jerk chicken and curried chicken
cheescakes – from Martha Francis
french pastries
fried elephant ears
full pigs rotating on spickets over an open fire
grilled corn on the cob
kokoretsi (lamb livers and sweetbreads wrapped in intestines)
paella
soft shell crab
steak sandwiches
turkey drumsticks
Even at the Ninth Avenue Food Festival, there are the standards – mozzarepas, zeppolis, funnel cakes, and egg creams – but this is one street fair where they are outnumbered by fabulous foods that you actually don’t see at other fairs.

There will be a stage with live entertainment of international music and dance at 55th Street on Sunday. You will see Egyptian belly dancing, German folk dancing, and Arabian scarf dancing, Midori & Chad performing Lindy Hop, Charleston, Peabody, Blues and Salsa routines, the New York Celtic Dancers sharing the traditional dances and music of Scotland – plus other performers and many local bands.

There are also over 200 street fair vendors selling inexpensive clothes, sunglasses, accessories and socks. If you like jewelry, there are always rings, bracelets, earrings, and pendants available. You’ll also find the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market vendors selling their various wares down 39th Street.

Bring a big appetite, wear comfortable shoes and loose-fitting clothes. If you need to offset your gluttony-guilt, remember: the Ninth Avenue Food Festival is held to raise money for the community groups in Hell’s Kitchen.

The festival takes place each year the weekend after Mother’s Day. There is no admission fee and the festival extends from 37th street to 57th street. It starts at 9:30 am and ends at 6:30 pm. You can miss most of New York’s street fairs but you can’t miss this one.

(from wikipedia)

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Joyous Jump 4/14/09

Have no fear of moving into the unknown.

Pope John Paul II
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Come jump in with me.
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I set out today to write something completely different. It was to be a story of playwrights and actors, a topic I know something about, of kings and queens, a subject I know almost nothing about. But instead I don't know what I'm writing about, I'm writing about the unknown.

When I came across this quote from the late, great Pope John Paul, I decided to accept the challenge amd plunge into a topic that does fascinate me but also sometimes leaves me speechless or, in this case, wordless.

There are many paths in life one can take where the journey is unfamiliar but the destination is known. Who has the courage to venture out not Knowing what the end of the journey may be? We grow to depend on certain things. If we head home we know where home is. If we put the key in the ignition we expect the car to start. When we log on we are sure we will get our own mailbox site and not some strange blogger's email. I suppose it's that sort of dependability that helps to keep us sane.

But what about sailing forth into unknown waters? What if we are actually crew members on some vast Star Trek expedition, off to visit hostile environments with strange, dangerous creatures? What if, lost in the woods, we came upon a civilization we've never heard of and didn't understand? How do we cope? If we find ourselves deep in the forest or in deep space with no landmarks to tell us where we are and no way known to get back to the nice warm safety of "Home" what do we do?

The answer is that we learn to live there. We make the unknown known. When the first pilgrims came to this country it was a wilderness. They didn't know where they were or what the dangers were. But they set down their bundles and started to make lives. Manhattan Island, New York City, where I lived for a good part of my life, was a total wilderness. Some small isolated parts of it still are. Slowly but certainly the people who came here tamed the wilderness and made, not only a home, but eventually a great city,

On the east side of Manhattan sits the Headquarters of the United Nations. Any citizen of the world has a right to visit the UN. And when you do you come to understand that it is not about "The Distinguished Representative from France" arguing with "The Distinguished Representative from Chine" or blue helmeted soldiers invading some war zone, but a vast complex of international workers, citizens of the world, from diplomats to janitors, working, one by one, in small, unpublicized ways, to try to make and keep peace in the world, to try to sew together out of all the disparate tribes, nations and cultures a world community, to try to understand and establish that strange unknown entity known as civilization. .

On the grounds of the UN there's a park, with grass, trees, benches and paths. I was sitting there one day watching the East River boats when a man came out of the UN building with his young son. I could tell by the way he was dressed and the language he spoke that he was not a New Yorker. He seemed to be from some South Asian country, possibly Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. As they walked along I could see he was wearing sandals. I watched his feet as they stepped along the path and I thought that, just as he was able to walk on a gentle path in what was once wild and savage wilderness, the people inside the building were working to tame all the savagery, hatred, prejudice, war and poverty in the world, to put it all under foot and make it livable. Nothing could have been more eloquent to me than seeing that man with his son. He was a citizen of the world simply and silently saying "look at what we can do."

That experience also eventually taught me how important it is to overcome the wasteful wilderness in myself. If I could not tame the hatred, anger, sarcasm, fear and negativity of my own life, how can I expect there to be peace in the world? There were many things about myself that I didn't want to face. There still are. Those are the unknowns. But I'm learning not to fear jumping in there and putting them under my feet.

"Let there be peace in the world and let it begin with me."

DB - The Vagabond
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Visit a favorite place today.
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