Category: NYC

Memorial Day Weekend

I think this is the end of week ten since I started working from home. It’s probably time to stop keeping track of which week it is. This is just the way it is now. My employer is starting to talk about reopening our offices, slowly, but they haven’t officially announced anything yet. Right now, the official word is that we’re all still working from home through June 1. I’m fairly certain I’ll still be working from home through June. I might have to start going back into the office on a limited basis in July. We’ll see. It would be nice to have more certainty, but, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his column this week, “Let’s Remember That the Coronavirus Is Still a Mystery.” I’m trying to accept, with humility, the uncertainty that there is around this thing and take things day by day.

NJ’s COVID-19 dashboard shows that we’re now over 150,000 cases, 10,000 deaths, and 500,000 tests here in NJ. Gov. Murphy has been gradually loosening restrictions. The maximum size of a “gathering” has been increased from 10 to 25. Beaches are open this weekend, with some restrictions.

I’m definitely not going anywhere this weekend though. I’ll be staying in, reading comics, maybe playing some video games, and just generally puttering around the apartment. I generally spend Memorial Day at home, watching the Tour of Somerville. The tour has, of course, been canceled this year, for the first time since World War II. So it’ll be quiet in Somerville on Monday.

I had wanted to “attend” a number of the sessions from Microsoft Build this past week, but we had a bit of an emergency at work that took up most of my time, so I pretty much missed it all. I did have some time Friday afternoon, so I went back and watched some of the stuff that’s available on-demand. I have a few more sessions bookmarked, and I’d like to watch those this weekend.

I got an email from the Metropolitan Museum this week saying that my membership would be extended for however long the museum is closed. I was expecting that, and I suspect that MoMA will do the same. (MoMA had extended all memberships when they had closed for renovations last year, so they’ll probably do the same for this situation.) The Met is now tentatively planning to reopen in August. I think that may be a little optimistic, but it’ll be great if they can. I haven’t heard anything about MoMA or any other museums in NYC making plans to reopen yet. Museums elsewhere in the country are starting to reopen, but of course no other city has been as hard-hit as NYC. I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable going into New York for museum trips (or anything else) until we’ve got a vaccine and/or an effective treatment for COVID-19.

When this thing started, I, like many other people, started looking into the possibility of getting groceries delivered, or at least just doing grocery pickup. At that time, all of the various options for grocery delivery were overwhelmed, so I just kept making my weekly trips to ShopRite as usual. This morning, it was raining pretty hard and I decided to check and see if grocery delivery was possible. Surprisingly, it was. ShopRite had delivery slots open, but not until the middle of the week. Whole Foods, on the other hand, had same-day slots open. So I went ahead and placed an order. I put in the order at 8 AM, for delivery between 10 AM and noon. It’s 11 AM now, and the order just arrived. The process was pretty smooth. They were out of stock on one item, though, so I guess I’m going to run over to ShopRite today anyway, at least for a quick trip. I don’t think I’ll switch over to delivery on a regular basis, but it’s nice to know that it’s an option.

This was a pretty random post, but it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged, so I thought I should gather my thoughts and write something. I may write some more later this weekend, if I get bored and/or feel the urge.

 

ready for May

I’ve been blogging about once a week through this pandemic. But, for some reason, I’m going for three days in a row this weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). I’m not sure why. Probably because it’s the end of one month and the beginning of a new one, so I’m taking stock and thinking about stuff. The Washington Post published a long overview article about April yesterday, and it’s a doozy.

I did a couple of fun things yesterday evening, including watching most of Mark Evanier’s Cartoon Voices panel live, and all of a live webcast of Neil Gaiman speaking with N. K. Jemisin. So I got a little bit of the feel of being at a good comic con. And, for some reason, watching these things live always feels a little more exciting than watching the recording later.

I’m feeling a little better this morning than I did yesterday. I didn’t sleep too well last night, but it was better than the previous night. And since I have nothing at all on my to-do list for today, I can just take it easy. I went out for a half-hour long walk this morning, and that was quite nice. Not too many other people were out. The rain had stopped, the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping.

After my walk this morning, I uploaded some more photos to Flickr, updated my March/April album, and created a new May album. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep taking photos and uploading them, but, for now, it’s a nice little thing to do.

It’s supposed to get up to 78º later today, so that might be a problem. I don’t really want to close the windows and turn on the air conditioning, but I might have to. Otherwise, my allergies will really kick in and I won’t be able to sleep again tonight.

I’m again looking at the “On This Day” sidebar on my blog, and I see that five years ago today, I went into NYC, and visited the Whitney and the High Line. This would have been a great weekend to do something like that.

I’ve been meaning to post a bit about the music I’ve been listening to lately, but haven’t gotten around to including that in any of my other recent posts. I’ve been listening mostly to slow, quiet, stuff. Yesterday, I pulled up Max Richter’s Sleep to help me relax and take a little nap. (I bought a copy of that back in 2018, and it’s come in handy on several occasions.)

And I just bought a copy of Ludovico Einaudi’s Seven Days Walking, which is a seven-part work, coming in at about six hours total. It’s quite simple and relaxing, and works well as background music. I didn’t know much about Einaudi, but I’ve looked into him a bit, and he’s apparently quite popular, as classical composers/musicians go. He’s “the most-streamed classical artist of all time,” according to this article. But, apparently, he’s somewhat looked down upon by serious critics, if this review in The Guardian is any indication. Or this one, which compares his music to Thomas Kinkade’s painting. (Ouch.) I’m fine with that, though. I’m enjoying his music, and it’s helping to keep me sane.

And for a couple of shorter works: I recently bought Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV), by Brian Eno and the ZeroZeroZero soundtrack by Mogwai. I’ve also been thinking about picking up some stuff by The Necks, after listening to a bit of their album Drive By and reading some stuff about them, including this old article from the Times.

So, as you can see, it’s mostly been quiet, slow, instrumental music. I’ve also been listening to a bit of WQXR on weekday mornings. That gets me started with some shorter classical pieces, some nice chat from their morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, and a little bit of news (but not too much).

It’s nearly 11 AM now, so I should really wrap this up. I still don’t have much of a plan for today, but that’s fine. I think I’ll go out for another walk before it gets too hot out, then have lunch and read some comics.

still here, still home.

My Day One journal has been showing me some interesting stuff via the “On This Day” feature recently. I’ve also been poking around my blog, via the “On This Day” plugin. Here are some examples:

  • One year ago today, I was on my way to Redmond for a Microsoft event. (I mentioned it here when I got back.)
  • Four years ago today, I went into NYC and went to the Met and MoMA. (I just checked, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been to the Met or MoMA since October 2019.)
  • In 2005, on this day, I went to a Dreamworks Animation presentation in NYC with a friend.
  • Three years ago on 4/29, I went to the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga with a couple of friends. (We’ve talked about going back again this year, but hadn’t made any plans.)
  • One year ago on 4/27, I went to the Somerset Patriots season opener. (The Patriots are doing an opening day at home thing today. It’s a nice effort, but there’s not really much point to it.)

The general theme here being, of course, that late April and early May are usually a good time to get out of town and do some fun stuff. Not this year though!

We just got the news at work today that we’ll be working from home through to at least June 1. And, while Governor Murphy is reopening state parks this weekend, most of the “stay at home” restrictions will likely remain in place through most (or all) of May. We’re making some progress in NJ, it seems, but there’s still a long way to go. And I think it’s going to be a very long time before I want to go into Manhattan and do any of the things that I used to enjoy doing in NYC, like visiting museums, seeing movies, and all that stuff.

I’m trying to enjoy some of the “at home” stuff that’s being done lately, but I haven’t had time for too much of it.  I did watch the Space Songs: Through the Distance event that the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum did last night, and that was quite good.

And I want to watch the Cartoon Voices panel that Mark Evanier is going to do on YouTube tomorrow. I missed the Sergio Aragones thing he did earlier this week, but I will probably watch the recording of that later. (I would have liked to have gone to WonderCon this year. And San Diego, though that was already ruled out for me.)

The Met and MoMA have both been posting a lot of interesting online resources, but I haven’t had the time to look at any of them, really. I should maybe take some time for that this weekend too.

Anyway, I guess I’ve survived working from home and spending approximately 98% of my time alone in my apartment through most of March and the whole month of April, so there’s no reason why I can’t make it through May too.

one more Coronavirus post

OK, I should stop now, but here’s one more Coronavirus-related post. I took the day off from work today. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and had originally planned on maybe doing something fun with the rest of the day. Well, obviously, that plan got scuttled.

For the record, the doctor was an ENT guy, and I was just getting my hearing checked out. Nothing surprising came out of that: I’ve got some hearing loss in my left ear, but not enough to warrant a hearing aid. He told me to stay away from loud heavy metal concerts and get my hearing checked every year from now on.

After the doctor’s appointment, I went to ShopRite to see if I could get some grocery shopping done. It was, shall we say, a madhouse. It was very busy, and people were buying a lot of stuff, but I managed to get pretty much everything I needed. They’re still out of hand sanitizer, and now also nearly out of liquid soap. There was plenty of regular bar soap. The shelves where they keep the toilet paper were empty, but they had a pallet of 20-packs of Scott TP out. Luckily, I don’t actually need toilet paper or hand sanitizer right now. If they’d had six-packs of TP, I would have bought one, just to be safe, but I really don’t need a 20-pack.

My employer issued some more Coronavirus guidance, but they’re still not requiring or encouraging anyone to work from home. So I guess I’m going in to the office on Monday. We’ll see how that plays out.

Meanwhile, I see that both WonderCon and Tribeca Film Festival are canceled. (Technically, they’re both postponed, but  rescheduling either of them would be difficult, if not impossible.) I went to WonderCon last year, and was seriously considering going to it this year. Then, when that started looking like a possibly bad idea, I started looking into going to a few movies during TFF as a lower-risk mini-vacation. But I guess they’re both off the table.

Once I got the doctor’s appointment and the shopping done today, I spent most of the day reading Batman comics and listening to WQXR. That was a good break from both work and my Coronavirus anxiety. I even worked in a nap and a walk. So I guess the day wasn’t a total loss.

[EDIT: Ten minutes after I posted this, I got a memo saying that we’re allowed to work from home next week. Yay!]

MoMA and WNYC follow-up

Here’s a quick follow-up on two subjects I’ve posted about recently. First, WNYC announced today that they’re keeping New Sounds, after previously announcing that they were canceling it (and all their other music programming) a couple of weeks ago. This is really good news, and I think it might inspire me to actually listen to New Sounds more often.

Second, MoMA is now open to the public, and the NY Times has run a couple more articles about it:

The Times may have overdone their MoMA reopening coverage. I think I’ve seen six articles about it so far, and I’m not even really looking for them. I probably missed a few. But hey, it’s still interesting to me, and I guess it really is the kind of thing you’d expect the Times to cover thoroughly. I really did enjoy the member preview. I’ll probably go in again at some point in the next month, if I can. Hopefully, the crowds won’t be too bad.

New Sounds

I read in the Times last week that WNYC is dropping New Sounds, after 37 years on the air. I think I started listening to New Sounds when I was in high school, so I guess I was in on it almost from the start. It’s always aired at 11 PM on weeknights, so that’s usually past my bedtime. But I used to stay up late sometimes, back when I was a lot younger. I know that I discovered a few artists on New Sounds that I still love, like Brian Eno and Harold Budd. I remember first hearing their album The Pearl on New Sounds. Coincidentally, I just heard Late October from that album on BBC Radio 3 a couple of days ago (via my Sonos One). It was an unexpected surprise, and a nice way to start my morning.

Both New Sounds and a show called Synthetic Pleasure on WFMU were responsible for me expanding my musical horizons beyond classic rock and getting into electronic music and other experimental stuff,  back when I was a kid. These days, I get most of my electronic/ambient music from podcasts, like Monday Graveyard and Future Astronauts, and from recommendations in Warren Ellis’ newsletter.

If there was an easy way to time-shift New Sounds and listen to it as a podcast, I’d be listening to it regularly too. It’s easy enough to listen to it online, but no easy way to download it. And there’s a 24/7 New Sounds stream that I can listen to on my Sonos, but it’s not quite the same as listening to the actual show.

It’s kind of amazing that the show has lasted so long, at the same station, in the same time slot, with the same great host, John Schaefer. But I guess all good things must come to an end. The Times article says that WNYC will work with Schaefer “to find a new home for the New Sounds brand.” I hope they come up with something to keep New Sounds going, in some format. Clicking around on Twitter and Facebook, I see that there’s some grassroots efforts going on to save the show. I hope that leads somewhere positive, whether it means the show stays on WNYC, or moves to WQXR, or even if it goes online-only.

NJ Transit

I stumbled across this headline in the NY Times yesterday, and briefly thought that they’d actually come up with a deal to replace or repair the Portal Bridge: “This New Jersey Bridge Will No Longer Sabotage Rush Hour.” But no, they’ve only come up with a deal to avoid opening it during rush hour. So it’s still going to sabotage weekend riders like me. (The NJ.com headline is more direct: “The rusty, commute-killing Portal Bridge will never open during rush hour again.”) The current status of the Portal Bridge replacement project is still, basically, stalled and going nowhere, as far as I can tell.

Meanwhile, the North Jersey Coast Line 2606 has been declared “the Very Worst Commuter Train in America” in a NY Times article. And NJ Transit has canceled as many as 29 trains in one day, due to a lack of engineers. But, hey, they added seven new engineers yesterday, so that’s a good sign. But, as the article points out, “they need a staff of 400 qualified engineers to avoid service interruptions. The current complement is 343.”

post-MoMA trip report

OK, so this isn’t really going to be much of a “report,” but I needed a title for the post, so here we are. Per my earlier post, I did indeed head into New York for the MoMA reopening preview. My verdict: I liked it! (Keep in mind that I’m a computer nerd and not an art and/or architecture critic.) There’s a lot more space, and they’ve certainly used it to display a lot of art. Some of it is stuff I like, and some isn’t, and that’s all OK. I managed to locate most of my favorite stuff from the “old MoMA,” including Monet’s Water Lilies, a couple of Pollocks, and Ruscha’s OOF. (Somehow I completely missed Starry Night. I know it’s in there somewhere though.) A lot of the new stuff (or at least “new to me” stuff) was interesting. Some was puzzling. Some was funny. And some was just “meh.”

The preview was well-attended but not too crowded. (And it’s always nice to visit MoMA on a day when there aren’t going to be any tourists there.) It’ll be interesting to see what the new MoMA is like on a “normal” day, with the usual crowds of tourists. Will the larger space allow the crowds to thin out a bit? Will the crowds congregate around the popular exhibits and leave some other areas a bit sparse? Will the larger space just attract bigger crowds? (Probably that last one is most likely.)

I’ve uploaded some random photos from today here. And the last one is a photo of my lunch. MoMA’s two cafes weren’t open for the preview, so I had to go somewhere else to eat. I decided to go to La Bonne Soupe, a small French restaurant I first went to back when I was in high school. It’s only about a block from MoMA. It’s kind of cool that a restaurant I went to so long ago is still in business, in the same spot, and with nearly the same decor and menu. (Well, OK, there are a bunch of changes to the menu, but they still have some of the old classics.) I had a $22 lamb burger and an $8 beer. Both were good, though maybe not “$30 total” good.

The last thing I want to mention: The NJ Transit train broke down on the way home, and I had to take an Uber the rest of the way home. Initially, I waited on the train to see if they’d get it working again, but decided to bail out after 10 or 15 minutes. I figured they’d probably get it running again right as my Uber showed up, but I just checked, and nope, they had to cancel it. So if I’d stayed, I’d have been stuck for a full hour. Not a big deal for me, but I feel bad for people who rely on NJT these days, and don’t have a lot of spare cash for Ubers and Lyfts. They’re having a lot of these delays and cancellations lately, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.

a bit more on the MoMA reopening

Following up on yesterday’s post, here are two more articles from the Times on the MoMA reopening.

First, Holland Carter’s general review of the new MoMA. It’s a pretty positive review. He gets a little cynical near the end:

My guess is that in some hopefully ever-improving version, this 21st century MoMA will work, if only for self-preservative reasons. Multicultural is now marketable. To ignore it is to forfeit profit, not to mention critical credibility. And the new MoMA is obviously tailored to a new and younger audience, one that has no investment, nostalgic or otherwise, in the old pre-Taniguchi model, which now lives on mostly in the memories of a fading population (…).

I guess I’m old enough to be part of that “fading population,” but I am interested in seeing what they’ve done with the place. As long as I can still find Monet’s Water Lilies in there somewhere.

The second article, Backstage at the Modern, is a short piece from the Times Magazine.

I plan on hopping on a train today and going to the member preview, so hopefully I can share my own opinions later today.

MoMA reopening

I’m currently several months behind in reading the stuff in my email “read/review” folder. So far behind, in fact, that I just hit two NYT articles about MoMA’s closing, from back in February:

MoMA to Close, Then Open Doors to More Expansive View of Art

MoMA, the New Edition: From Monumental to Experimental

I may or may not have read them (and/or posted them here) when they were published. (February is a long time ago. Also, apparently, the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Sigh.) The first one is a straightforward news article, and the second is a “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Holland Carter.

And here are two more recent articles, now that the reopening is almost here:

The New MoMA Is Here. Get Ready for Change.

With a $450 Million Expansion, MoMA Is Bigger. Is That Better?

The first is a fairly long feature article and the second is a “Critic’s Notebook” piece, by Michael Kimmelman, more about the architecture than the art. It’s a pretty interesting piece that digs into the history of the site, and includes some diagrams showing how the museum’s footprint has grown over the years. I have mixed feelings about the way Manhattan has evolved recently, with so many new “supertall” skyscrapers, like the 53W53 one that’s now tied into MoMA, but I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole today.

The first day for member previews is tomorrow, Sunday. Since I was in NYC last weekend for NYCC, I wasn’t really thinking about going back again this weekend, but I think I probably will. The weather looks pretty reasonable, and I’m feeling mostly recuperated from the con.