Apt. 11D

DIY Fail and Guilt

We moved three months ago, and we're still not settled. While this house isn't in the desperate straights as the first house that we bought, it still needs lots of work. The previous owners last decorated their home in the early 80s, so the shrubbery is overgrown, the walls are covered in country wallpaper, and the light fixtures are dusty and dated. 

When we moved in, Steve and I figured that we could do much of this work on our own. We like feeling self-sufficient. We also like saving money. So, even though the house is surrounded by towering oak trees, Steve spent his weekends raking leaves, rather than hiring a landscaper. I pulled out the old junk left in the basement and painted the walls with waterproof paint. I painted the living room. Steve changed out some old light fixtures.

Last week, I started pulling down the orange starred wallpaper off the dining room walls. After three evenings, I stripped about three feet of paper. The stuff was stuck on with super glue. And under the wallpaper, I found bumpy walls. Someone had put primer over old wallpaper glue. The walls needed to be skim coated with plaster. Sigh. Skim coating is outside of my pay grade. I called in Eddie the painter. 

So, Eddie and his guys are doing the dirty work for us. For four days, they've stripped and painted the dining room, the kitchen, the TV room, and the entrance way. This job would have taken us a year to do on our own, and it wouldn't have looked so good. I keep sneaking upstairs to take pictures of the before and after. (That purple in the dining room is primer. Today, they should paint the upper walls a light grey.)

As happy as we are with their work, we still feel a little guilty. Yes, we're saving time. Time that can be used to play with the kids and pitch article stories. And we can afford this. But we still feel spoiled. 

Down the block from us, a huge mansion is being built. Someone bought a house for $700,000 and then knocked it down to build a house the size of a small town. Every morning, twenty trucks are parked out in front to install the plumbing, granite counter tops, decorative woodwork, in-ground pool. They've been working six days a week, since we moved in at the end of August, and they are still not finished. 

Painting four rooms is not in the same league as the mansion project, but living in such close proximity to extreme wealth is frightening. We're the people who used to live in a cockroach covered apartment with a four floor walkup. That year when I owned one pair of shoes. We're struggling to remain ourselves with our DIY projects amidst all this insanity.

Because of the weird turn of the market, we were able to buy a wallpapered house on a block filled with the 1%, and we're still not at peace with it. So, I find myself googling directions on how to remove polyurethane from slate floors without hiring a contractor. 

Suburban Love Fest

The spring always makes me happy that we made the big move to the burbs. There's the wonders of my tiny yard - a dogwood, three lilac trees, crab apple, and the magnolia. I could make out with all of them. My peonies are seconds away from popping. Also, the warm smell of cut grass, the folding chairs on the soccer fields, and the grill in the backyard. There are parties galore; someone is always handing me another glass of wine. 

So, I was in a perfect mood for this article: 5 Reasons to Love the Suburbs (via Jeremy S.). 

I also fooled around a bit on this website. My freelancing writing chick friends, a new venue? 

Detroit

Check out this photo series at Huff Post about the decline of Detroit. 

(I'm super busy today and don't have much time to surf. Please send me cool links.)

More Snow

The robocalls from the school district woke us up at 5 am. Early dismissal. Again.

Opinion about this snowfall is massively divided among my facebook buddies. There are jubillant teachers on one side and the working moms on the other.

I have to compress a day's worth of chores into three hours. Supermarket. Home depot. Writing. Productivity ends when the school bus arrives.

I was planning on driving into the city today to see Pioneer Woman give a book reading at Barnes and Noble in Union Square. I'm fascinated with her as a business woman. Did you know that she has 62,000 subscribers to her RSS feed, while the top political bloggers have between 5,000 and 14,000?

I also have a weakness for the farm porn that she puts on her blog. All that bucolic ranching and prarie goodness. From time to time, Steve and I fanticize about ditching suburban life for an organic farm in upstate New York. But after this winter, I realize that I'm not cut out for the isolation. I'm craving the noise and activity of city life. I'm ticked off that my plans to meet up with some friends and listen to some campy writing about farm life has been aborted.

Well, there will be lots of noise and activity in a few hours when the kids return, so I'll write one more blog post and then head out into the blizzard.

St. Elizabeth's, Wadsworth Avenue, NYC

On Sunday, after a wonderful brunch at the New Leaf cafe, we went to mass in Washington Heights at St. Elizabeth's. When we used to live in the hood, Mother Cabrini chapel was our usual joint; it was closer than St. Elizabeth's and had the added benefit of a dead saint. 

I guess I should explain. Mother Cabrini was a very nice lady who helped out the immigrants who flocked to urban areas at the turn of the century. She was such a nice lady that after she died, people said that she must be a saint and, like all saints, her body probably didn't decompose. So, they dug up her body. However, as a plaque thoughtfully explains, Mother Cabrini's body was indeed "subject to the laws of decay." But that's didn't daunt her true believers who put a wax mask and hands on her bones, put her in a dress, and then enshrined her in a glass box, which has become the altar where the priest says mass every day.

I love gruesome Catholic practices.

Even though St. Elizabeth's wasn't our usual church, both Jonah and Steve were baptized here.

I love these gothic churches in cities. These churches are dinosaurs and are closing all over the country as the numbers of Catholics dwindle. St. Elizabeth's has some nice murals and an excellent organ.

Scouting New York

Yesterday, I got a "Get Out of Jail Suburbs Free" card. I ditched the family and roamed around the West Village with some friends. We looked in some stores and gazed in the windows of some stately brownstone apartments in the section of the city where the streets curve and have names instead of numbers. We sighed and wistfully said, "when we win the lottery..."

I made my friends walk for ages, because I wanted to check out the Spotted Pig that was so lovingly described in the New Yorker. But we were hungry and tired and couldn't walk another block, so we settled for the White Horse tavern instead. The White Horse is a dive, but you gotta love the place just because that's where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death.

Wendy just sent me a link to a fabulous blog, Scouting New York, which has tons of pictures of hidden corners of the city as found by a movie location scout. It's eye candy to amuse me in the grey burbs. Check out the abandoned castle on 5 Beekman.

Can We Make a Profit on Community?

The New York Times' Sunday business section had another good profile of an entrepreneur. This week, they focused on the creator of Twitter. It's an interesting story of how this company stumbled into a big thing.

Like most bloggers, I use Twitter quite a lot. I don't use to it to follow friends, but to get ideas for blog posts. It gives me a heads-up on what people are going to write about in the next hour.

I also use Facebook, but much less frequently, because I can't figure out how to write a status that is appropriate for my former students, my mother-in-law, my cousin in Toronto, Apt. 11D readers, my grad school adviser, and the guy who used to follow me around in high school. It's too much pressure, so I've been keeping relatively quiet lately.

I've got Facebook and Twitter running in one app in the background right now and will check in throughout the day. I guess many people use Facebook and Twitter in different ways, but that Facebook is more popular, because it connects people who have real connections with each other.

Last week, I spent a lot of time online looking for real groups. Because Ian doesn't attend the school in our town and because  he has special needs, we have to work a lot harder to find after school activities for him. It can be done, but it takes some research and some driving around. I've also been looking for a writing group, because I've been working in the local library with the crazy people for the past month and I wanted to join a group to get feedback on the rough draft.

It was very time consuming work to find these groups, because there is no central location for this information and because the local groups that offer these activities aren't the most technologically savvy.

Community life is a good thing. It makes us happy. It's good for political life. It makes us live longer. So, why does it take a week of research to find it?

It's a hackneyed observation, but I'm going to say it anyway. Online community has taken a real hit to real community life. Or perhaps it stepped in to fill a vacuum. I'm not sure. I can tell you that I don't know the name of the weird couple that lives across the street. Steve has given them nicknames -- Freddy Mercury and Horse Lady. We've lived here for six  years, and we don't know their names.

I wish it was more profitable to create offline community. Other than Meetup, which has managed to nicely bridge online and offline community, real community building is non-existent on the Internet. Virtual communities don't require a physical space. You don't have to train organizers or pay them salaries. 30 geeks in a room can write code, and there's no need to hire a bus to pick up seniors to take them to a community center for an evening of Bingo. Virtual community is cheaper and easier.

Instead of being made the Mayor of Starbucks, I wish that one of these coding geeks would create a virtual community bulletin board. I think that there's a way of making a profit doing it. If you give me a cut of the dough, I'll tell you how to do it.

Geek Convention

On Saturday, Steve and I decided that we needed a break from the soccer field, so we ran away into the city with the kids. First, we went to check out some exhibits at MOMA (pictures later). Instead of horsing around at playgrounds of Central Park afterwards, Steve decided to take us downtown to see a record fair, which was run by the local alt-rock radio station.

The boys got a subway ride out of the deal, which is always a cheap thrill. When we got there, I set them up with iPhones in the corner. Steve joined the other geeks and shuffled through old albums in milk cartons. I took pictures of the geeks.

I have a weakness for subcultures and there was plenty of awesome subculture action at this Record Fair.

It was almost all guys with a few gender-ambiguous types thrown in.

I remember sifting through racks of albums at Bleeker Bobs back in the 80s. These guys never left the 80s.

I've heard that albums are making a come back. People are nostalgic for the old pops and crackles of the old albums.

The Record Fair was super crowded. It's nice that there are places for people like this -- people who have strong opinions about Kulturbeutel albums.

He's so happy with his new purchases.

Steve could have spent a long time at this place, but the kids were tired and I had enough pictures.

People complain that New York City has become too bland in its tastes. They say it has lost its old grit and quirkiness. For the most part, they are right, but there are still corners of the city where geeks can come out to play.

Poverty in the Suburbs

The Economist discusses poverty rates in the suburbs.

"According to two new reports from the Brookings Institution, over the past decade the number of poor people in the suburbs has jumped by a whopping 37.4% to 13.7m, compared with some 12.1m people below the poverty line in cities. Although poverty rates remain higher in the inner cities, the gap is narrowing."

Social institutions out here in the suburbs are struggling to deal with these new facts. My dad runs a food pantry that is struggling to keep up with the long lines of people who walk several miles to pick up a bag of groceries. The school principal rants about the Mexicans who live in the rental units by the railroad tracks that drag down the school test scores. The school nurse doesn't know how to handle the children who come into her office with rotting teeth. Cash-poor neighbors moved out this weekend; their possessions were thrown in the back of dump truck and a mother didn't know where her four children were going to sleep that night.

Camden: The Most Beautiful City in All the Land

Yesterday, I learned that I have a whole lot of readers in South Jersey and Philadelphia, who have very strong feelings about Camden. I will never again malign the good city of Camden.  A letter from a regular reader:

Dear Dr. McKenna,

I must take issue with your description of one of my very favorite cities in NJ - no the world.  Camden is a fantastic and very under appreciated city.  The people are amazingly resilient and lovely.  The best pizza, lattes, and french fries can be found in Camden.  There's an outstanding state university and LOOK!  It's a GREAT city!