MARCH MEET-UP FOR BUY NOTHING BB/G BROOKLYN NY

 For those local to Brooklyn's Bath Beach / Gravesend area:

HAKKA

Regrets, I have a few. Actually, probably many, I am nowhere as perfect as Mr. Sinatra. The regret I have in mind at this moment is that I didn't meet my late father's expectation of learning the Hakka language.As you may know, Chinese has the main language, Mandarin, but many dialects. Cantonese is a popular dialect thanks to Hong Kong, Toisan is well-known because of the many early immigrants. Then there's the Hakka people and their dialect, the Chinese for which literally means "guests". Supposedly they were displaced by other more aggressive Chinese and had to live in lousy places, when they visit civilizations they were treated as guests. So the story goes. Both my parents' root trace back to some Hakka villages. Two separate ones, I have to ask my mother the name of said villages. To make things even more complicated, I learned from my friend Robert, that Hakka people from Taiwan has their own variation! (Yes, same Robert from whose mother I learned how to make those origami boxes.) Anyway, it was a challenge I just couldn't meet. I learned some Mandarin in school, spoke Cantonese with the neighbors, but my late father wanted all the kids to speak Hakka at home, instead of Vietnamese. In the U.S., we next had to learn English, and slowly through disuse my Chinese, dialect or otherwise, just became forgotten. I know at one point one a sister of mine had a notebook with many Hakka phrases written down. I am going to try to use modern technology to make some recordings of whatever I still remember. I made a quick search on the web and came across some web site that probably tries to sell lessons, as the phrases they show were long and spoken at a fast pace.

Strangely, perhaps because of the humorous aspect of it, one phrase in Hakka I remember more clearly is the one in the video. Translated with much poetic license just to have the rhyme in place with no regards for meters and such, it goes

Fart
If you can, do your part
If you cannot, then depart








COMING UP NEXT: PROOF THAT LIZZIE BORDEN WAS A HAKKA.

PAT

For some road runners, the route is the same everyday. A few loops around Prospect Park, a few trips up and down the waterfront by Belt Parkway, a few times around Lafayette High School, you get the idea. I cannot do that anymore. I did start out that way, the block of Scarangella Park was my go-to route. Eventually I went all over, I need to see something new, something different with each run. Lately, I feel better if I go somewhere further out. Today, it was the Little Free Library on East 71st Street in Bergen Beach. I like that area because the B3 bus takes me there, no need to drive and pay through the nose for gasoline. The walk from the bus terminal to the LFL was my warm-up. With Saint Patrick’s Day being the day after tomorrow, I thought writing his shortened name would be fun to do. I have neither the stamina to spell the full name, “Saint Patrick”, nor the room to fit that many letters.

In case you wonder, no, I didn’t climb over some fences to make the letter “a”. It is a little trick of pausing and resuming the tracker, in this case Strava app on my smartphone. While heading toward Avenue X, I paused the app when I was about midway through East 72nd Street. Then I ran back on East 72nd to Avenue W toward East 71st Street. About midway down 71st Street, I un-paused Strava. The computer only knew that I was last on East 72nd Street and that I now re-appeared on East 71st Street. There are many ways to get from Point A on E. 72nd to Point B on E. 71st but the shortest distance is the straight line, so that was what the computer chose. Everything else involved actual running.

 

SOME HEROES WEAR DUST JACKET?

Much as I like to do heroic things, I am not one to declare myself a hero, but I like to make jokes and puns.  The typical superheroes, at least in the Western Hemisphere such as those in the Marvel or D.C. universe, wear capes.  Batman, Superman, Thor, you know the drill.  The saying goes "not all superheroes wear capes", meaning some people do heroic work but are just normal people.

This past friday the 6th of March 2026, a member in my Buy Nothing group alerted the group that somebody dumped a few bundles of books at the base of the Little Free Library on 15th Avenue between 84th and 85th Streets.  She already took some but there are many left, in four or five neatly tied bundles, and the Little Library itself was pretty full.  The Library is in front of a medical office, but, I just checked, back in 2024 the building was occupied by the United Chinese Association of Brooklyn.

Whatever the business, if the books were left alone at some point they will resemble garbage.  The business will not like that and will treat them as such.  Besides, it may rain the next day and the books would be ruined.  To a book lover like me, that is unacceptable.  On my way home, I got off the highway one stop early and went a little bit out of the way to rescue them.  The bundles of books were still there, some bundles probably had books take out of them so the strings couldn't keep the books together.  I rescued them all, about 30 books.  Over the weekend, I added them to a catalog in LibraryThing that I named BuyNothing20260306 and shared a link with the Buy Nothing group (Bath Beach/Gravesend).

Free Books if you are in Bath Beach/Gravesend areas

In recent memory, this is the third time I rescued books.  Before this incident, someone asked the local library if they take old books.  It's an old policy, they don't.  Or at least not the local branches.  You would have to go to the Central Library by Grand Army Plaza, I think.  The nice thing to do with all those books is to find someone who may want them.  But this person wasn't interested in doing the right thing.  They just left a Target shopping cart with two big boxes of children's books.  The librarian lamented about the situation on social media.  Once I found out, I took possession of the cart and put the books away in a safe place, away from the element.  The next day, I returned the cart to Target at Caesar's Bay.  Over the next few days, I shared some of the books with a few members of my Buy Nothing group.  On the 5th of March, I happened to visit an LFL in Jersey City that was mostly empty.  In went all the remaining books from the loot, about 30 of them.

Before the Library incident, there was a Curb Abandonment alert about books on 65th Street near West 1st Street.  For that incident, I left the house early and was able to rescue the three bags of books.

All this book-rescuing work, I would like to come up with a catch alias.  The Book Rescuer is too obvious, I prefer something that, even if contrived, present a little puzzle.  Maybe a tongue-twister or some alliteration.  Got to think hard about this...

WINTER'S REVENGER 2026 FEBRUARY

 It is interesting that just as I wrote a blog about the warmer weather, with snow melted in many places, this weekend winter came back with a vengeance.  At first the forecast said snow, but just 3" on Sunday then up to 6" on Monday.  That didn't sound too bad but then as the weekend drew closer the dire warning is up a foot of snow, with blizzard!  As of now (3:30 PM Feb 22, 2026) the prediction shot up to two feet!!!  Argh!  At least I know now I will be able to work from home Monday.  The time I save from the commute can be put into shoveling.  I hope to have the energy to shovel around the fire hydrant two houses over from me.  The responsibility rests on the house closest to it, but it's a Chinese family, usually not civic-minded, not sure if the snow will get cleared.

HALLELUJAH FOR WARMER WEATHER

 After a few weeks of freezing cold weather, Brooklyn NY and nearby area finally had some warmer weather.  Funny how 40 degree F is considered good weather.  It is all relative, I guess.  Maybe it is a sign of being older but I used to prefer cold weather.  I can dress for it, whereas when it was scorching hot, no matter how little clothes I wear I would still sweat profusely.  But not this winter.

First it snowed heavily.  As usual, unlike rain, snow just silently fell.  I like to shovel snow in layers so I did some in the morning.  Then another shovel job later on when it finally stopped.  Thanks to a huge tree and its expanded tree pit, my sidewalk is narrower than most of the block so I didn't have too much to do.  Being the civic-minded type, I cleared a path from the sidewalk out to the street.  Most people would just clear their sidewalks and would create snowbanks separating the sidewalk from the street.  People who want to cross the street would have to either climb over the snowbanks or go to the corner in hope of finding something more navigable.  I also cleared a path for my alley.  It's always good to have multiple exits from a house.

Next day, next task was to make sure the car can leave its parking spot.  I was fortunate enough to find a spot on the left side of the one-way street.  Department of Sanitation's plower always push snow to the right side, so the unfortunate cars that were parked on the right side ended up being locked in by tall snowbanks.  If you really need to get out, you would have to move quick and blast through those snowbanks, whether with professional help or lots of your own time and elbow grease.  Not in my case, but I still had much to do to make sure the car is useable, to get to work the next day.  The windshield obviously needed to be cleared of snow and ice, but a recent law in New York State required that the roof also be free of ice and snow.  It makes total sense, especially on highways.  You wouldn't want to be hit by a small avalanche of snow and ice that can temporarily blinds you or worse, like cracking your windshield.

I think overall the City did good with clearing the roads.  Not only the avenues were plowed, the side streets were too.  The challenge was in finding parking spots, which this year I was lucky and always managed to find a place to park after I came home from working in New Jersey.  Mind you the spots were not perfect, in that I had to spend an hour after parking to dig around the car as much as possible to ensure a smooth departure next day.  I didn't want to be late for work because I couldn't easily exit the parking spot.  I tried to be considerate but one night I had to park in the third spot of a three-car strip.  A car was already in the first spot, under normal circumstance I should park in the second spot, but there was a good chance someone would park behind me and I would have a difficult time getting out next day, because of all the snowbanks on the side of the road.  Somehow someone was able to take the second spot, it seemed the driver was able to backup into that spot.  All my worrying was not necessary.

Park, shovel, drive, rinse and repeat.  At long last, temperature reached 40+ degrees and while parking spots are not back to normal, i.e. there are still a few small hills of snow taking up precious parking spots, at least getting in and out of whatever available spot is not as difficult as it was just last week.  Well, tonight I did have to park at a meter spot and to my surprise even on Presidents Day, the big holiday about Presidents, the meter will need to be fed tomorrow.   I already have my alarm clock set to remind me to move the car before the meter goes into effect.

MEET-UP AT CASS 124 AVENUE O BROOKLYN NY

For a few years now, for my local Buy Nothing group, I help organize a regularly-scheduled free Swap Meet, or rather Meet-up, a physical event where people meet in the flesh, to give away items or take free items.  The group is fortunate to have the support of the local public library, Ulmer Park Branch of Brooklyn Public Library.  Because most of us work during the week and the library isn't open on Sundays, all the events so far are on Saturdays.  Some members, however, work Saturdays so they could rarely attend the event, unless they take the day off or not feeling well enough to work but can take a break from being out sick.

Through working with staff at Councilman William Colton, I was recently able to find a place that opens on Sunday which agreed to host us.  It's the Chinese American Social Service Center, or CASS, at 124 Avenue O.  It's a smaller place and not local to Bath Beach and Gravesend, but it's not far either.  Hopefully the usual crowd from the Buy Nothing group will attend, especially those who worked Saturdays.  Depends on how things go, maybe we will have it regularly, say, every other month.  We are already doing the library event every other month, CASS can fill in the gap.

Come attend the event!  Donate some portable, clean, unbroken stuff, take some, do both, or do neither, we are flexible.  Even better, come volunteer your time to help sort the donated items, to help keep things tidy, or to load stuff into the St. Mary's Church van that is scheduled for a 3 PMish pickup.