Posts Tagged ‘my neighborhood’
In the pipeline?
I’m being a little optimistic here, in that I’m hoping that the presence of these two trucks parked two blocks away from my house for the past few days means that my neighborhood is getting prepped for Verizon’s Fios service. It’s no secret that I feel confined by the speed of my current DSL line, and I’m hoping that some upgraded service might be forthcoming. Of course the problem might arise that the Fios cabling might need to follow the same route as the cable tv wiring, which would mean that it wouldn’t work for our house, but I’ll worry about that once there’s some concrete possibilities one way or the other.
I could be completely off base here anyway, since the presence of Fios ads on Verizon trucks might have no relationship to what the crews are actually doing underground.
Meanwhile, Summer seems to be coming on at last in New York City, so much so that I’m thinking I should put much more effort into walking everywhere, now that the weather supports it.
I heard a chilling summation of the economic underpinnings of of online interactions yesterday; “If you’re not the purchaser, you’re the commodity” That is, TV programming is free: you don’t purchase it because the real transaction is the selling of your eyeball time to advertisers. Facebook is free to you because your information is the product that is being bought by someone else. In the light of that, my eagerness to have an easier online experience is something I should reconsider.
Up my block let the summer expire…
I was up and around early enough to catch some of the West Indian Day Parade as it passed by my apartment. It was barely 9:30 and people were already partying with abandon. Admittedly, events have been going on in all the surrounding neighborhoods for the past few days. It’s the last pulse of summer, and mercifully the weather has cooled enough to bear convince me that it’s well and truly September. I feel like I’m shaking something off that’s clouded my mind for the past couple of months. I keep saying that in one way or another, but this summer has been a confused and blank one. This weekend I had a few conversations with friends that served to highlight for me how much fear has been crowding around the edges of my consciousness recently. Seeing people out and joyous is the true corrective to that.
Labor day: time to think about work about working, about ending this odd dark vacation of a summer. today I listened to this podcast from the Poetry Foundation that put some of this Labor Day stuff in context: that pie in the sky by and by? That’s a lie.
Fuck You, New York Times Real Estate Section
I watched this happen ten years ago to my old neighborhood, Fort Greene. It’s the beginning of the end for the neighborhood. Now will come the weekends of people wandering the streets “getting a feel for the area” and then the one of the big realtors will swoop in and then comes the pricing escalation until there is no choice but to leave.. The formula these articles follow also nauseates me: “never thought I’d leave Manhattan, now I’ve got a kid, got so much more for our Million than we would have gotten in Park Slope,” feh.
I know I should think of myself as the leading edge of the encroaching buzzards of gentrification rather than as some one distinct from them. I’ve only lived here eight years after all. But I can’t escape the feeling that the I’m being chased from neighborhood to neighborhood by the Times.
One block away…
I’ve been passing these on the way to work for the last week or so; they’re a block away from my house in someone’s front yard.
The school year is wrapping up, and as it does, I’m frightened to realize how much planning I need to start doing for the coming one. Running a program really means that one doesn’t have the same sort of academic calendar that one does while teaching.
I am a bit more relaxed overall, and can start looking to some summer projects. There are some work ideas that have been floating around in my noggin that I’d like to get a start on. There’s also some additional teaching I’m going to be doing that I’m starting to get excited about.
A decision, of sorts…
I’m being offered exciting additional responsibility in my life. I’ve spent a full weekend having some serious meltdown about everything that I’m currently committed to. It’s affecting my emotions and my health, and so I’m going to take the excellent advice that some of you have offered me in the past: I’m going to let some things go. “No”‘s are going to have to be said. By me.
The step beyond that? Asking for help.
Yassuh…
Dear Pepsico,
When marketing your canned chemical/corn syrup infused water brew in neighborhoods whose population is primarily African-American, it might be better to think for a minute before using slogans that are so redolent of the dialect stylings of Messrs Amos and Andy.
An’ dat’s de troof!
