NHS '85 40TH REUNION - SEPT 4 DEADLINE

The 40th Reunion of Class of 1985 at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens NY now has a deadline of September 4, 2025.  That's one month ahead of the actual reunion date of October 4, 2025.  The event will be at the Marriott LaGuardia Airport, 7 P.M. to midnight.  Payment of $150 per person is to be done through BillHighway.com .  Contact me at linusly@mac.com to have your BillHighway account created.  I believe we already reached all interested parties and some are just waiting for a deadline to act, so now you have the deadline.  Event is open to all 1980s so bring friends and families!

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!

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.

I YEARN FOR YEARBOOKS

 I run an active Facebook group for my high school alumni.  One feature of the group that makes it lively is the yearbook collection in the group.  After so many years out of school, people lost their yearbooks.  Maybe it was lost during a move, maybe it got flood damaged, whatever the reason, people love to see the pages of the yearbooks.  By some luck, when I got involved with the alumni, my yearbook was sitting right there on the shelf behind my office desk.  I was able to scan the pages and share the content with my class.  But it was just one book, 1985, and the alumni group that I run have people from all over, as far back as 1956 and as recent as 2007.  A few people lent me book from their own year, like 1971 and 1956.  A few other people helped by doing the work themselves, by scanning and uploading the pages.  But for a school that existed over 125 years, there are many yearbooks totally missing.  Enters eBay, mostly.  I set an alert in eBay to notify when the school name, "Newtown High School", is part of an offer.  Newtown yearbooks are hot items on eBay, a few times I had to enter a bidding war, sometimes I lost, other times I won.  But at $70 or so a pop, buying yearbooks from eBay is expensive.  From my point of view, the best case scenario is when someone offer the book(s) to me for free.  It actually happened twice, in bulk.  The first time was when dear Mr. Weinstein passed away and Mrs. W didn't want to keep his yearbook collection.  The school was offered first but they didn't want it.  Other people in the alumni group want pieces of the collection, some may have mentioned willing to re-distribute.  Luckily, many recommended that I be given the collection, because I had the track record of scanning the pages and sharing the work for the group to enjoy.  Another occasion, a teacher decided to give me a collection that cover a few 1990s books.  Over the years, I got a few more, usually it started with someone offering a parent's book and the group would in unison recommended that I be the benefactor.  Thank you, alumni!  With great power comes great responsibility, I won't let you down.

The latest, possible donation I just learned a few days ago is from a 1969 alumnus whose mother attended the same school in 1946.  The donor knows someone in the alumni group, I provided my contact info to the group member and now I just have to wait.  One of these days, I will make the drive to Bayside, Queens NY to pick up the items.  Yearbooks are valuable to me, I prefer to personally pick them up instead of having the items sent through the mail.

DEPOSIT GOAL MET

 Some months ago, against better judgement, I joined the Reunion Committee for Newtown High School (Elmhurst, Queens NY) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion.  I was on the committee back when we had the Silver Reunion (25 years).  I cannot remember why it was painful, but it was.  Lots of work, monthly (?) meetings, hunting people down in many social media platforms, including Plaxo and Friendster - who remember those!?  Facebook was somewhat new for me at the time.  This time around, we already have a good base of interested people, but what I found out recently is fifteen years after the other reunion, many people are no longer active on Facebook, or left the platform altogether.  I cannot blame them.

Proceeded we did, admission price was set and a deadline for collecting x dollars to hand over to the hotel to secure the event space.  I was somewhat worried.  We live in interesting times, a bizarro world with events making writers at the satirical website The Onion scratch their heads.  Inflation, bird flu, uncertain economic future, will people plunk down x dollars to see a bunch of people from high school?  But plunk they did and we now have enough money to cover the deposit.  Whew!  I was worried for a while we won't make it and have to refund the money and lose some more money because the billing service we use charge x percent for every transaction.  Maybe we'll hemorrhage our fund because of the service charges and have to use our own money to cover the refund.  I know of at least one horror story of someone trying to do a reunion and lost $1000s.  OK, not this time for Newtown Class of 1985, whew!

LUKE GROUNDWALKER

For the longest time, my runs are out and back and always a different route from day to day.  I have five or so different routes to choose from and it's nice to have the change of scenery, from waterfront to boardwalk then residential etc.  However, lately, I've made exceptions to my routine.  I pretty much run in my neighborhood, about 3.2 km out and back as if I am a bird, but the actual distance usually comes out to more than 10 km.  How?  I've been experimenting with GPS writing, or gwriting for short.

As a runner wears a GPS watch go about with his running, his path is recorded and can be viewed on a map.  Usually it's just a straight line out and back, or maybe a loop.  But a lot can be done beyond the line and the loop.  I originally found out about gwriting from seeing some route traced out in the shape of a heart, around the time of Valentine's Day.  As an Apple fan boy, my first thought was the Apple logo, but I never tried to do it.  Instead, one day on the futbol fields of Calvert Vaux Park I tried to spell "NYCRUNS", that little race management company that puts out small foot races with a community feel.  I used the Charity Miles app and was able to pause and resume as I went from letter to letter.  Not bad for a first time, but I got the letters for "RUNS" so close together.  The trouble with trying to gwriting on an open field is you have less reliable points of reference.  I thought I used so and so marker on the field but by the time I got back I didn't walk straight and wrote some letters too closely.

The very first time I gave gwriting a try.  It was not too shabby considering I did not use any exact reference points.

The next time I try gwriting the letters were "PPTC", short for Prospect Park Track Club, which I am an active member of.  Appropriately enough, I wrote the letters on Long Meadow of the park itself.  Again, without a good point of reference the letters did not come out perfect.

Appropriately, I tried to spell "PPTC", for Prospect Park Track Club, on Long Meadow of Prospect Park.  Only if the T was not so close to the P.

Some day later I tried to spell "NEWTOWN", my high school in Elmhurst, Queens, New York, in my own neighborhood of Bath Beach, Brooklyn.  Ideally I should do it in the school's neighborhood, but I live quite a drive away and I don't like to combine driving with running.  Unlike writing in an open field, the rectangular nature of the street grid posed an extra challenge.  Also, like the other attempts, the writing appears to be upside down when viewed on a map, with north pointing up.  No problem, I'll try to write better on the next run.  The only down side is I'll be stuck with running in Bath Beach for the time being, no scenic waterfront view.  Starting with this run, I used my GPS watch, which has much better battery life compared to Charity Miles running on the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone.  The one big downside with the GPS is that pausing and resuming do not work as I expected.  A straight line would be drawn from the pause point to the resume point, so I basically have to write continuously.  For some letters I just have to run back and forth along a stroke so to avoid having extra lines.  When there's no choice, I try to keep the extra lines at the bottom of the letters.

"Upside down" NEWTOWN, the first time I tried to "spell" my high school's name.

With today's run, along Bath Avenue and 86th Street and the streets in-between, from Bay 41st Street to Bay 19th Street, I got so much closer to the perfect NEWTOWN.  On earlier runs I used Benson Avenue and Harway Avenue/Cropsey Avenue and had to run around the bus depot at 25th Avenue because the depot took up two blocks.  Using Bath and 86th left the depot out of my path.  Ideally all the letters should be uppercase or all lowercase, but the street grid and time limit do not allow the luxury.  Making the N lowercase solves the issue of the diagonal stroke.  Instead of running two avenues, I can extend to three avenues, but then I will have to cover even more distance.  Not that I cannot cover the greater distance, but I am a slow runner and there is only so much time I can devote to running each day.  For example, the E in NEWTOWN should be wider but by then I was supposed to head back to pick up dinner that my mother already called in to the restaurant.

One thing I enjoyed immensely is that I actually spelled the letters backward as I wrote them, so that they appear right-side up on the map.  I live near the end of NEWTOWN, so instead of running some distance out and spell from left to right, I spelled it backward.  I still underestimated the letter widths and T came out bad, but there's always another run in the future.  In the mean time, take a look at how the route is traced out at

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/289689808

Go to the Player view and click the Play button.  The route is pretty flat, I think the change in altitude is wrong, or probably just me raising my watch arm.

Close-up view of my GPS NEWTOWN.

From far away, it still looks like NEWTOWN, even though the T should be wider.