STATEN ISLAND STRIDING

CitStrides.com is a web site that collects your walks and runs onto a map.  It's fun to look at the map and see where you have been to.  To make it even more interesting, you are ranked against other walkers and runners in the cities you have activities in, in terms of completing streets.  You can make things private and only you can see where you have been to.

When I first started using CityStrides, Brooklyn NY was my target.  Some guy named Dan was at the top of the list, I was in the top ten somewhere.  I was still an active long-distance runners and competed with a few others to maintain my spot.  All for bragging right!  On more than one occasions, I sailed past my competitor in the morning but she then inched past me, so I went out for another run, on the same day, just to beat her again.  At least temporarily.  What a silly thing to do, but it was so enjoyable.

At a past job, I traveled all over Long Island and the five boroughs of NYC.  I would either leave for work early or pull over at some strategic spot on the way home just to get a walk in, to complete a street or two.  At one point, I became the champion in Staten Island.  Years later and at another job in New Jersey, I started to cover areas in New Jersey.  Elizabeth, Rahway, Carteret, victories came with some work.  One day I happened to glance at my position in Staten Island.  What?  Since when did I get to #2?  And not just by a little, the gap was over 100 streets!  Time to regain my #1 title in Staten Island.  I don't know how long it took but around the end of June 2025 I finally made it.  I don't know what my challenger's plan is, I know I will keep widening the gap until it is over 100 streets.  Then I will re-visit the counties of New Jersey again.  I lik to see new areas, even if they are just people's home or public parks, nothing too exciting, but it's my thing.

THE LANTERN - FIVE FOR $25!

 I run the unofficial alumni association for my high school, Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, NY.  One feature of the group that I am proud of is the collection of yearbooks, made available completely in the Facebook group.  Over the years, the yearbook collection is quite good, from donations by teachers and other classmates, plus purchases from eBay, which isn't cheap.  Off and on, the school had a literary magazine called The Lantern.  Until recently, I only had two copies, one donated by a former student and one I bought from eBay.  Then this past weekend I was alerted to a bundle of five Lantern magazines from around 1958.  I immediately bought the bundle, for $25, which is a very good price.  Someone mentioned that he has some copies from the 1990s, which raised the question, "When was the last issue of The Lantern?".  I hope to know the answer some day.

PLAYED TOURIST - AMSTER YARD ETC

I recently took a day off to play tourist in my own home town.  First, I took the subway from near Coney Island all the way to Elmhurst, Queens, to visit my high school, Newtown High School, to pick up gym shirts I ordered for my alumni group on Facebook.  I miss the buskers on the subway and there was one in the tunnel connecting the Sixth Avenue train line (B/D/F) to the 7, but he wasn't that good.  I think he was singing some Whitney Houston song but I didn't catch it right away.  I actually got off the R train a station early to do some CityStriding.  I don't go to Queens often so every little bit helps.  By the time I was done it was lunch time.  Stopped by Phở Bằng, near Broadway and Elmhurst Avenue, for lunch.  I didn't enjoy sharing a big round table with two other lone diners.  Next time, maybe I will try Phở Bắc, further in in that same strip mall.

First stop in Manhattan was a re-visit to Amster Yard on East 49th Street.  It's a courtyard garden for a private Spanish library, Instituto Cervantes.  Without reading about it I wouldn't venture past the gate on 49th Street.  But it's open to the public, I used to go there regularly when I worked in the area, indirectly for TIAA-CREF, or whatever their name is now.  It's nice to be there and not hear the noise of the city outside.

Next stop was the "rooftop garden" of the re-built NYPL Midtown Manhattan Library.  I know, it's now known as the Niarchos Foundation Library, but old habits die hard.  I read about the "rooftop garden" but haven't had a chance to visit.  It's actually referred to as a "rooftop terrace".  My fault really, I like "rooftop gardens" so that was my expectation.  Lots of sitting area but very little greenery.  There was some area under construction, hopefully that will add some plants etc to the terrace.

Lastly, I visited the "new" Moynahan Train Terminal, which is where the Main Post Office used to be.  The post office windows were still there, perhaps preserved for historical purpose, but behind them toward Ninth Avenue there is a large area with skylight, shops etc.  I heard much about the Moynahan Extension of the High Line.  I expected it to be a part of the Moynahan building but it turned out it's an avenue over, on the block across Ninth Avenue, an area called Manhattan West.  The nice thing is where the Moynahan Extension ended is a plaza a few floors above the street.  Such plazas were popular in Hong Kong, the last time I visited the "island nation".  "Sky bridges" would connect a few such plazas so people can travel from one part of town to another without ever being on street level.  I love walking and enjoyed such walk very much, no need to deal with vehicular traffic.  I traveled the entire Moynahan Extension, past the giant pigeon sculpture, back to the High Line near Hudson Yard, back toward 23rd Street.  Took the C downtown to transfer to the D and got off at Grant Street station - Chinatown.  I love Vietnamese heros - bánh mì - so it was necessary to stop by Saigon Bakery to get some.  I also got some nem for my mother, from Tân Tín Hưng grocery store.  Another long subway ride home and that was my day being a tourist in Manhattan.

'85 REUNION ANNOUNCED ON SCHOOL WEBSITE

It is official - Newtown High School (Elmhurst) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion is announced via the school website.

https://www.newtownhighschool.org/apps/pages/reunion

The promo flyer went through a few changes, things were too quiet after I submitted it to the school, but eventually it was up.  Hopefully this will fetch the reunion a few more paid attendees.

The promo flyer is repeated below for even more exposure.  The QR code is a nice touch.  It brings up the texting app on a smartphone, my phone number already entered.  Got to make it easy for people who are interested.  I already receive regular junk text and phone calls, I suppose it won't get any worse.

While it is marketed as a 1985 reunion, alumni from other '80 years are welcomed.  We already have people from '84, '86, and '87, maybe ten total.  Reach out if you are interested!

FREE COMPOST ETC

 The best thing in life is free.  Really.  Especially when the free stuff aligns with your belief.  In particular, I am talking about recycling.  New York City recently made a big push to get more organic recycling to happen.  For a brief time, it became mandatory, fine would be issued if houses have no compost bin out for collection.  Sadly, people complained loudly and now there is no fine, I am sure some people just take that as a sign not to bother participating.  I really like that after separating out paper, metal, plastic, and now organic stuff, there is little left of garbage.  The City pays a lot of money for garbage to leave town, on trains destined for some neighboring or faraway states.

Anyway, what's the use of collecting all that organic waste and not making use of the end product?  Free compost!  It's a bit of a challenge to sign up for these events.  You need to check in regularly, the dates are open for registration for like two weeks ahead.  I managed to snatch a ticket for this past Saturday May 31, from the NYC Department of Sanitation depot up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn North.  It's a long drive but for ten 40-pound compost, it's worthwhile.  I like that it was in the morning, traffic was low and I was home by ten or so, still time to do other things.  I plan to share my loot with members of my local Buy Nothing Group, in Bath Beach/Gravesend.

While waiting for the depot to open, I happened to discover the Kingsland Avenue entrance of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk.  I first discovered the Walk's Paidge Avenue entrance but I was in the area for something else and didn't have time to actually visit it.  It was a few years ago, I vaguely recall it was Phase I of the Walk.  It is a great idea.  All these waste treatment plants are already all over the area.  Instead of fighting them, the Walk just meanders alongside them.  Granted there are walls to keep the Walk away from the facilities, some tanks are so huge you cannot avoid seeing them.  Along the Walk, there are trees, bushes, benches, waterside seats, and more.  Look out the water and far away you would see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, plus a few in bustling Long Island City.  I only walked a few steps in from the Kingsland entrance because I didn't want to miss the queue of cars quickly forming outside the DOS Depot.  After I got my freebies, I made a leisurely visit to traverse the entire Walk and back.  The sky looked like it would bust open any minute so I didn't take the chance of making a big loop south to Greenpoint Avenue and back.

Free walk, free compost, wait, it got better!  By chance, in the afternoon, I happened to notice a freebie event at the Latino church near my house.  From far away, I thought it was a fund-raising event for the church, perhaps the items were offered at low price.  No, they were totally free!  Clothes, shoes, some packaged food, some toys, and dear and near to my heart, music CDs!  Call me old school if you must, but I still like to play music from CDs.  I do have a collection on my phone, but it's a nice feeling to just pop a CD into a player, and play the music loudly in the living room.  Or in the car.  I have a portable DVD player that can handle music CDs just fine.  I got a stack of music CDs, mostly from the 80s.  It was a great weekend.

THE JOY OF GARDENING

This is the blog post that was supposed to be written the weekend of Saturday May 24 and Sunday May 25.  Life got in the way.  The days leading up to the weekend were plagued with rain and generally lousy weather.  It felt like winter had returned.  Then came Memorial Day weekend, weather was nice.  Sunny, not too hot, great time to work in the backyard garden, what little there is.  I live in Brooklyn, New York after all.

I am no gardening expert but I do enjoy weeding, sweeping things up and adding the stuff to one of my compost containers.  Two of the containers were pickle barrels, something left behind at a house that a friend of mine was selling, as a real estate agent.  The third one is a spare garbage bin.  Nothing fancy, no tumbling mechanism, other than the occasional rolling around I give to the barrels.  I enjoy smashing the stuff inside, either with an ice-breaker, or with a shovel.  I also use a trident to turn things over, occasionally.  In general, I just let things rot.  If heavy rain is expected, I would open the containers' lids and let them help catch some rain water.  It happened once that the rain came down so fast and so heavy that water got into basement.  The French drains could only absorb so much.

Besides fiddling the compost bins, I also cleared out the so-called lattice I created for the chayote vines to climb last spring and summer.  To make room for a loquat tree that my wife has kept in a pot in the backyard.  The plan is to cover it up during the winter.  We will see how that goes.

The final thing I did in the garden for the long weekend was to empty out one of the compost bin.  I like to think of it as compost cash-in.  I don't think the stuff was as good as it could have.  Probably too much of the same stuff, namely dead leaves, vines, etc.  I saw maybe only one or two worms.  Oh well, hopefully with the weather gets better in June I will spend more time tending to the compost bins.

NEWTOWN HS CLASS OF '85 - 40TH REUNION - INCENTIVE

 Newtown High School of Elmhurst, Queens NY Class of 1985 40th Reunion just got a boost it badly needs!  While the reunion is still a few months away, on October 4, 2025, we will soon have to pay deposits for the DJ, photographer, etc.  As an incentive for buying admission tickets, each 1985 alumni will get a chance to win a vacation package from Holiday Inn Express in Cambridge, MA.