Buckets of Fire

Would you be taking note- would you be, say, at all concerned-if your condo burned down, and then your school burned down?

Scriber Lake High School burned last night...they were going to demolish it anyway, so everything was out of it, but still. I told some NEH people about the fires in my life and one guy says, "I'm moving out of I-House." Which is ironic, because...again, I am not making this up...when we returned tonight at midnight, we heard a fire alarm, and suddenly four fire engines were pulling up to I-House. It was only a cooking fire, but still. So, would you be concerned?

And would you be concerned, say, if you ate humbao for your brother, and he just stopped blogging altogether? Just wondering.

By the way, the red in the Imagine sign at Strawberry Fields today...strawberries.

A very full day today, and yesterday...but I'm only talking about today. We went out to Staten Island to see the Chinese Scholar's Garden. So we're going to play a game here. Guess which pictures are from Suzhou, China, and which ones are from Staten Island, NY:


















Ater touring these gardens, which gave me deja vu thinking of last summer, we were treated to a special bamboo flute concert by this very gentle man, right in the garden. He played about five different flutes and the sounds coming out of them were so beautiful.



















We took the Staten Island Ferry back to Manhattan and got a pretty close look at the Statue of Liberty...how can you NOT get chills when you look at that and think of all the hope tied up in it? We got some dinner (not even worth mentioning, can you believe it) and then walked to Central Park where Neko Case was on the (free) summer stage. Neko is from Seattle and I describe her as part Patsy Cline, part Alannis Morrisette. It was fun to hear her here..last time I saw her, at the Woodland Park Zoo, literally, buckets of rain fell after she covered Bob Dylan's song "Buckets of Rain." She even said tonight that natural disasters usually follow that song.

We decided to head home through the park, down "the mall" and went underneath an overpass where we discovered a bunch of people dancing in a circle. Evidently, every Friday night from about 9 on, a man teaches Armenian folk dancing underneath this overpass. We decided to join in and learned three dances-- holding pinkies, not hands. "Pinkies, everyone!" he kept saying. It was fun, and added something new to the statement "I went out dancing Friday night."

Then we walked ALL the way home, which we figured was about three miles. And you know how food tastes SOOOO much better at midnight, well, this falafel was heavenly:

Jerusalem falafel is a famous institution in Morningside Heights (where Columbia is). I don't know what they do to their chickpeas, but they are so good, and they use all fresh vegetables. Then we finally came home to the fire alarm. Jon, the one who made the comment about moving out of I-House, just shot me a dirty look. I had to apologize. I don't know why fire drama follows me! Anyway, Melissa and I got our pictures taken with NY Firefighters, which is a good end to any night, I think.