Pres in My Neck of the Woods

Yesterday's big local story was President Obama's appearance at the Tappan Zee Bridge to discuss the need for spending billions of dollars to repair our crumbling infrastructure. I've discussed the Tappan Zee before. While I applaud the new bridge construction, I maintain that the proposed new bridge is, basically, crippleware because it will lack a light rail component. Back in 2011, I wrote:


The very idea of nickel-and-diming infrastructure projects until they are "built broken" is asinine. The whole disposable culture has got to end. Remember when things were built to last, and one paid a fairly high price for durable goods? Now, we buy cheap crap that we have to continually replace, which is wasteful and stupid. It's wasteful and stupid when such items as shoes, clothing, and small appliances are concerned, it's tragic and suicidal when major infrastructure is concerned.


Here's the video of the president's speech, which took place in an area I know very well, the beautiful Tarrytown waterfront:





In the opening to his Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving described Tarrytown in terms which would be accurate today:


In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic.


While Tarrytown is a lovely place in which to... uh... tarry, the I-287 corridor, with the Tappan Zee Bridge bottleneck, is not the place to do so. I imagine the president's visit snarled traffic even more than is typical for the already congested area, but his theme of improving infrastructure and creating jobs is one of importance. I don't know how long he tarried in the area, but I sincerely hope he made a side trip to Lefteris Gyro, my favorite restaurant in the area.

I also appreciate his shout-out to the NY congressional delegation- I am a huge fan of Nita Lowey, a former representative of mine, and Eliot Engel, my current rep. I was glad that he excoriated congress as a whole, however. Hopefully, the president will campaign for Democratic congressional candidates in the crucial upcoming mid-term election.

Tapp Out

The big local story for the day was the controlled demolition of the old Tappan Zee Bridge. The eastern portion of the bridge's superstructure was unstable, so dismantling it by crane would have posed a danger to the demolition workers. The Tappan Zee Bridge was the major Hudson River crossing in my beloved Westchester County, so I have blogged about it quite a bit over the years.

I had toyed with the idea of watching the demolition, but decided against it. I finished work at 4AM, and though I work not too far from the bridge site, I really didn't want to hang around after work for seven hours... a guy has to sleep, after all. Taking a nap and driving to a place with a view of the old bridge wasn't appealing- the roads were a disaster this morning because of the demolition. Plus, it was below freezing this morning, and I had already been out and about during my shift- a nice warm bed was more appealing than watching the demolition. That being said, the footage of the demolition was interesting:





I didn't need to see the bridge being taken down... I had already seen it falling down for years.

A Beacon in the Darkness, Literally

Yesterday, the news was too depressing- with the cumulative effect of coverage of the Nice massacre and the Baton Rouge ambush dominating the airwaves, I decided that I needed to get out of the house early, so I headed to the Lighthouse at Sleepy Hollow for one of their annoyingly rare tours. The lighthouse, finished in 1883 and decommissioned in 1965 when the lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge rendered it superfluous, is accessed from the gorgeous Kingsland Point Park, one of the jewels of the county parks department.

The tours are run in a perfunctory fashion- while there is a sign declaring "you must make a donation for the tour", there is nobody to collect the money, merely a box which one would fill on the honor system. Being an honorable guy, I put in a fin. Here's where I note that anybody could have run off with the till, so kudos to the honest people visiting Kingsland Point Park. While I stood around waiting for something to happen, I took in the spartan surroundings of the first floor living quarters, with its antique stove and store of firewood:

In the foreground, on the table, you can see the cashbox- it's a rather nice box, and I suspect that one would be more tempted to steal the box and leave the money than to steal the money.

As I was taking in the surroundings, I met a really nice New Jerseyite who was visiting with his two teenage children. He was a lighthouse aficianado and showed me his "lighthouse passport", stamped with the sigils of various lighthouses he had visited up and down the Eastern Seaboard. After a brief discussion, we decided that I would ascend the stairs in order to find a tour guide. The second floor was even more spartan than the first, merely festooned with posters describing the typical ships of the Hudson River fleet and nautical charts of the vicinity. With its porthole windows, the lighthouse has an appropriately nautical air:

As one climbs higher, the place becomes even more austere:

When one emerges at the top, one is greeted by a gentleman from the local historical society who explains that there is no structured tour, but if one has any questions, one merely need voice them and they would be answered to the best of his ability. The view from the top of the lighthouse was magnificent, with a particularly nice vista of the Hudson Highlands rising to the North and Northwest:

I descended and explained to my new friends from Jersey that the tour was pretty much self-guided, then climbed again to take in the glorious view- here's the new Tappan Zee Bridge rising just north of the old, increasingly dilapidated TZB:

And a view of the metal gangway leading to the island on which the lighthouse stands:

That post-industrial moonscape visible at the top of the photo is the site of the former North Tarrytown General Motors Assembly Plant. Old-timers will tell you that you could tell what color they were painting cars by what color the river was running. There's a reason why one is not supposed to eat Hudson River seafood more than once a month.

After taking in the view, I spied one of my co-workers walking across the gangplank with her two tall, rangy sons. I had a nice chat with them before leaving, noting that the scarcity of tour dates was what led to our meeting, that and a desire to get out of the house on a scorchingly hot summer day. It was a nice bit of good fortune, I hadn't seen her boys in months. After bidding them goodbye, it was time to head over to work. Visiting the lighthouse was a nice way to spend an afternoon, I just wish that it were open more often. I'd recommend a visit to anyone, but they'd have to either plan it out well in advance or be really, really lucky.

What Would Be the Point In Replacing It?

I'm going to geek out on a local issue now, so please indulge me. The plans for replacing the Hudson River spanning Tappan Zee Bridge have been unveiled and, frankly, they stink. The proposed design of the bridge lacks any mass transit component- the current four traffic lanes (during rush hour, there's a movable divider) will be replaced by... four traffic lanes, thus ensuring that the current congestion problems are not solved. Some of the comments on the CBS web page are great, including the observation "They are replacing a 1950′s bridge with a 1950′s bridge." County Executive Rob Astorino's comment was "We can’t build an eight-track bridge in an iPod world." When one replaces a badly-needed piece of infrastructure, it's foolish to hamstring the construction to save money. Why the hell would anyone cripple this project right out of the starting gate?

Personally, I would like to see a light rail line along the entire I-287 corridor, connecting stations in Rockland County to the Tarrytown, White Plains, and Port Chester train stations, linking the three major rail lines and creating a real regional mass transit network. Of course, I would also put in bicycle/walking paths, as Town of Greenburgh supervisor Paul Feiner has suggested (Mr. Feiner is one of my favorite politicians- he has good green credentials and is a tireless promoter of bicycling). Actually, Mr Feiner has introduced a plan to convert the existing Tappan Zee Bridge into a walking/cycling path, which would be awesome (I've ridden my bike across the Tap' during several MS bike-a-thons).

The very idea of nickel-and-diming infrastructure projects until they are "built broken" is asinine. The whole disposable culture has got to end. Remember when things were built to last, and one paid a fairly high price for durable goods? Now, we buy cheap crap that we have to continually replace, which is wasteful and stupid. It's wasteful and stupid when such items as shoes, clothing, and small appliances are concerned, it's tragic and suicidal when major infrastructure is concerned.

Kept the Beaches Shipwreck Free

This being the season when my weekend workdays give me no opportunity for peaceful "alone" time, I figured I'd schedule a post with some pretty pictures. When I visited Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow to watch a giant crane "limbo" under the Tappan Zee Bridge, I took a couple of pictures of the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse, which was built in 1883 and decommissioned in 1961.

Up close, it looks like it could use a touch-up paint job:

The area is such a pretty one, it should be more of a tourist draw. Sadly, the visitation hours of the lighthouse are way too scanty:


2014 Lighthouse Tour Dates: Sundays: April 27, May 11 and 25, June 8 and 22, July 6, 20, August 3, 17, 31.
Time: 1:00 pm–3:00 pm, last tour begins at 2:30 pm.


Local scuttlebutt (I'm not naming names) has it that the guy who runs the site doesn't have the time to run it, but doesn't want to step down from the position. I don't know how much it would take to run the lighthouse on a regular basis, but I sure wish somebody would make a go of it. It's a fascinating building, and its setting is unparalleled. I don't want to create a local controversy- this is a plea, not an accusation.

Just as the title of my "crane" post was cribbed from a tune by TMBG, this one is as well:





Why buck a trend? I'll have to see if any other TMBG songs match up with park features...

Don't Wait, Walk!

Yesterday was a busy day for me, the last day of working the graveyard shift for a while. I had been working midnight to 7AM, but have pulled a switcheroo with my teammate becuase we have events coming up, and I will have to work afternoons locking up one site before moving to another site for the duration of the shift. The alternative would have been working ungodly split-shifts on the weekend. 

As luck would have it, I needed to get the oil in my car changed- it had hit the 5% lifespan level. I also needed a new tire, the treads of my front driver's side tire were starting to separate from the sidewalls. It's easier to bring to car to the shop at 8AM after you've finished the workday at 7 than it is to bring the car in before work. 

When I arrived, there were a couple of people already waiting outside the place, but I have an ace up my sleeve- I always give the crew enough of a gratuity to buy a couple of pizzas (I know the folks at the pizzeria too, so everybody wins). My car was first in the service bays. After about forty minutes, the manager called me (I was hanging out outside, on the phone with Mom while I waited)- I would need two tires, the other front tire was developing a bubble. It would take three hours for the tires to be sent from the warehouse. Three hours? I figured it would be just enough time to walk across the Tappan Zee Bridge (we won't be using the official name this week).  

The last time I had walked the bridge was just about a year ago, I met with friends at the Tarrytown train station, and we took a free shuttle bus to the Rockland County terminus of the span.  It was a festive walk around sundown, with the bridge gradually transitioning from a pedestrian suspension span to a brightly-lit gossamer miracle.  Still, the superstructure is a diaphanous beauty:

 

This time, the walk would be twice as long, with the regular truck traffic to and from New York City, the pace a little more steady, without the distraction of socializing.  There were fewer pedestrians, with most 'normies' being at work:

 

The scenery was, of course, magnificent, with the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse being a highlight.

The walk wasn't too arduous, even though I've had couch potato tendencies throughout much of the pandemic.  I figured I needed a good, seven mile walk before I have to start working events this weekend  That being said, my feet were sore enough that I took dos aspirinas when I finally got home.  As a beneficial side effect, a head cold and runny nose (only one nostril, though) that I had been nursing all week dried up- I don't know if it was slight dehydration or breathing in the fresh Thruway air that did the trick.

When I finished the walk, my car was just about ready, the oil change had been accomplished, the tires replaced, and the finishing touch of a re-alignment was being wrapped up.  I felt good about being active while the car was being worked on- I figure it was a sort of tune-up for both of us.

I finally got home around 2PM, having left the house around 11PM the preceding night.  I was pretty much wiped, but that doesn't really matter, my entire sleep/wake schedule is going to need an overhaul anyway.

The Most Popular Woman in New Jersey

The plan was simple- leave mom’s house before 9AM and drive straight to work, leaving a couple of hours of grace period in case of bad traffic. Everything was smooth sailing until I got to Interstate 80- a roadside flashing sign indicated that the entire highway was closed at exit 30 in New Jersey due to an overturned tractor-trailer. The road had been closed from before rush hour, and I found this out around 1:30PM. I crossed into Jersey at the Delaware Water Gap and stopped at the Information Center a few miles into the state. That’s where I met HER... I grabbed a road map and, like everyone else, conferred with her about bypassing this 100% blockage of a major traffic artery. She went over the route with me: get off I80 at the exit for State Route 206 northbound, then turn onto Sussex County Route 517 northbound, then exit at State Route 23 southbound (which is a southeasterly route), and take it to Interstate 287 northbound to 87 east and the Tappan Zee Bridge.

I thanked her, and complimented her on her graciousness and good humor. She was being put through her paces on a rough day, and her charm and élan never faltered. In retrospect, I should have gotten her name so I could write a letter to the NJDoT. Besides providing information, she provided me with the Call to Adventure (if not the Lady of the Lake, she was the Lady of Lakehurst). I found myself on meandering rural roadways snaking through the hills of northern Jersey, suddenly traversing quaint hamlets thick with antique shops. If I hadn’t have been constrained timewise, I might have played the tourist in this region which, somewhat disconcertingly, was within range of my radio presets.

I made it through Jersey Rurality and emerged onto familiar roadways, right around the time that a single lane of I80 was opened. The imparted wisdom of the patient, good-humored Jersey Girl has won me through, and I arrived on the job with plenty of time to spare.

Sore Feet, Soaring Heart

Last evening's walk was glorious, but I ended up with a case of sore feet (no blisters, though). I have to confess that this five mile (8km) stroll was the first long walk I've taken since the COVID-19 outbreak. My friends and I met up at 7:30PM in front of the Tarrytown train station, where free parking is to be had on the weekends. If I were to undertake this hike on a weekday, I'd take the 25 bus from an intersection three blocks from my home to the Yonkers train station, then take the glorious Metro North Hudson Line trip to Tarrytown. At the train station, we caught a free shuttle bus to the West Nyack trail head, and the journey began.

The Governor Mario Cuomo Bridge, like it's predecessor, the Tappan Zee bridge, spans the widest section of the Hudson River, named by the Dutch for the indigenous Lenape people. It might seem counterintuitive to build a bridge across the widest section of the river, but the site was chosen because it was about as close to New York City as could be while outside the purview of the New York/New Jersey Port Authority, being under the New York State Thruway Authority.

The bridge itself has always consisted of a superstructure close to the eastern bank of the mighty Hudson, with a long causeway forming the western portion of the bridge. There are high barriers on the sides of the bridge to forestall despondent people from taking swan dives:

The actual pathway is divided into a four foot wide pedestrian lane and an eight foot wide bicycle lane:

Along the span, there are six wide areas which double as observation posts and rest stops:

All along the watchtower causeway, the central superstructure beckoned like a... uhhhh... beacon:

As night fell, the view of the superstructure became more and more breathtaking (or maybe that was the upward incline), especially when contrasted with the view of the river below. Passing cars, though, made focusing the camera a pipe dream:

A plaque on one of the towers of the bridge eulogized the late, great governor of New York State:

There were quite a lot of people walking across the bridge, and the atmosphere was pretty festive. It's impossible to be in a cranky mood when the view is so gorgeous, sore bodies notwithstanding. By the time we reached the eastern shore, we were fairly tired, what with the distance traveled and the heat, and we had approximately a mile's walk remaining between the eastern visitors' center and the Tarrytown train station. We arrived in T-town just at the tail end of their COVID-19 related closure of Main Street to allow outdoor dining. I was able to hit a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that was still open for some tacos and a restorative horchata. It is said that hunger is the best sauce, but La Perla Poblanita's food needed no additional embellishment.

I parted with my friends in order to go to work, and as soon as I arrived, I took a couple of aspirinas. Yeah, my feet, between balls and arches, were still a little sore. As I confessed, it had been a while since I'd taken a long walk like this, which means that I need to get back to a routine in which such beautiful expeditions are... uhhh... routine.

The Little Chips Don't Know Where Home Is Anymore

In yesterday's post about the "obsolete-before-it's-built" plans for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, I concluded with the observation:

The very idea of nickel-and-diming infrastructure projects until they are "built broken" is asinine. The whole disposable culture has got to end. Remember when things were built to last, and one paid a fairly high price for durable goods? Now, we buy cheap crap that we have to continually replace, which is wasteful and stupid. It's wasteful and stupid when such items as shoes, clothing, and small appliances are concerned, it's tragic and suicidal when major infrastructure is concerned.

Speaking of tragic and suicidal, we can't even build killing machines (something we used to excel at) that work any more... weapons manufacturers have purchased over 59,000 cheap Chinese microchips for installation into weapons systems. Some of the chips may have been hacked so that they will fail at critical moment. Personally, I am appalled at the hypermilitarization of our culture and believe that we should have relied on "soft power" in foreign relations rather than a bloodthirsty policy of "kill them and take their stuff". That being said, even the bloodiest of hawks would be appalled that we are now buying cheap foreign components for our vaunted weapons. At the end of the Cold War, pundits were speaking of aUnipolar Moment (I believe that Charles Kraphammer coined the phrase, but I won't send any hits that ghoul's way), when the U.S. was a single "hyperpower" after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, after eight years of Dubya dumbassitude and ten years of continuous war, we have now reached "banana republic with nukes" status. By cutting corners even in the construction of our war machine, with the resultant increase of profits for the war profiteers (reminiscent of Arthur Miller's All My Sons), we are even losing that dubious distinction. With the renewed drumbeat for drumbeat for strikes against Iran, the possibility that our weapons incorporate faulty chips could make a really, really bad decision into a positively disastrous decision. Hell, we're even losing the ability to be a belligerent rogue actor on the world state.

The "bad chips" scandal reminds of a key plot point in Jack Vance's novel The Killing Machine in which **WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER** the protagonist incorporates an intentional design flaw into a weapon which is being designed at his enemy's behest, a design flaw which is instrumental in the protagonist's victory over his foe. I don't know if any of the Chinese military brass are Jack Vance fans, but the intentional sale of flawed components to a greedy, stupid U.S. military industrial complex would be a plan worthy of a fictional mastermind.

Of course, the title of this post is a riff on a lyric from Making the Bombs by the Circle Jerks:

National "Have Lunch With an Engineer" Week

My sister, her husband, and my two awesome nephews took a road-trip to Boston last week, so I met them for lunch as they stopped in New York state on the drive home. I met them in Tarrytown, NY, in the shadow of the Tappan Zee Bridge. My sister and her husband are bona fide rocket scientists... aero/astro engineers, to be precise.

Today, I met up with N__B for lunch and a beer in The Bronx. Of course, he had a lot of pictures of "Baby Bear", who is a fine looking baby. POST MOAR PITCHERS, NED!!!

All told, "Have Lunch With an Engineer" week has been a rousing success. Hopefully, "Have Drinks With an Architect" week will arrive sometime in the near future... I seem to recall having a rum collins waiting for me somewhere.

I Used to Like Driving

Like most Americans, in my youth I actually enjoyed driving. The American love for driving is legendary, and I used to buy in to some extent. Those days have been over for a while- driving is now an annoying task that has to be undertaken in order to get from point A to point B. This week has been a terrible week on the roads of the region. On Wednesday morning, there was a twenty-five car pileup on the Tappan Zee Bridge during a snowstorm. Luckily, management cancelled a meeting concerning our company health plan that was scheduled for that morning, so I didn't have to fight the horrors of rush hour compounded by some serious dumbassery.

Yesterday, while driving home from work at stupid o'clock, I passed a terrible accident that had occurred in the opposite side of the highway, a wrong-way crash that landed seven people in the hospital and closed the Bronx River Parkway for six hours. Seeing the extent of the police activity, I immediately turned out the all-news radio station for the litany of horrors. Luckily, I wasn't affected by this crash, which was eerily similar to another wrong-way crash which delayed my homecoming for over an hour a few years ago.

Theoretically, I should enjoy driving- I have a small car with a manual transmission that is fun to drive under ideal conditions... it's the conditions that leave something to be desired. The roads are in rough shape, and the drivers are worse- people are distracted, they are aggressive, I have noticed recently that a lot of them have trouble even staying in lane. More and more, the roads seem like the 'suicidal race' that that Stang-fella sang about decades ago. Fun fun fun, my ass!

Show of Solidarity

Like most people in the West, I have been obsessively watching coverage of the invasion of Ukraine.  Like most, but not all, Americans, I view the Russian aggression against the Ukrainian people as a war crime.  As a New Yorker, I have an affinity for Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian people, and I'm not alone.  The governor has expressed solidarity with Ukraine:

New York stands with Ukraine pic.twitter.com/kikP37O4L6

— Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) February 26, 2022

That structure in the bottom right-hand corner is the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is visible from my workplace. I took a couple of pictures, but trees in the foreground messed up the focus. 

The producers of SNL began their broadcast with a choir singing the Ukrainian national anthem, a truly touching moment. 

As for myself, I figured that my tax dollars were providing lethal aid (what a phrase!) to Ukraine, and I personally need some moral clarity right around now. I sent a donation to World Central Kitchen:

People of the World…Like you, I am distraught watching Ukraine under attack. We must come together as a force for good! @WCKitchen is on Poland border delivering meals tonight—Romania soon. In addition to your donations…I am committing support from the Bezos award to Ukraine.🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/ws0EFl8zLd

— José Andrés (@chefjoseandres) February 25, 2022

Man, I love that man, and all his works, and I'd rather contribute to the care of the afflicted than the destruction of the oppressors, though I recognize the need for defense against aggression. As I said, I need moral clarity, and there's little to be had.  

It's not a lot, but at least there was some way in which I could express solidarity with the Ukrainians.

Escape from New York

A standard joke of mine is that the movie Escape from New York didn’t have to be a Sci-Fi flick- a simple documentary about getting out of the city on a weekend would have sufficed. Today being the Friday before a three day weekend, I knew what I was potentially facing, so I left the house a half hour earlier than usual. Thankfully, I only ran into heavy traffic along a half-mile stretch of highway, though the Tappan Zee bridge bound traffic looked like hell.

I will be working all weekend, which suits me fine. I have become curmudgeonly, and really have no patience for crowds. Who needs to sit in an overheating car, stuck in traffic en route to the beach on a weekend like this? Having gotten to work, I had visitors tell me that they had fought traffic jams on their way up from the city. I’d rather be a designated non-combatant. Hopefully, the traffic will be thin on Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday, I will be going against the flow of vacationers returning from the Catskills and the Jersey shore. I have all midweek to go gallivanting.

Cold Comfort

When the whole world seems to be going to hell, the best way to seek solace is to find a beautiful natural locale... while they still exist. One of the places which is near and dear to my heart is Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow, which is one of the most scenic spots in the lower Hudson River Valley. It overlooks the Tappan Zee, the widest section of the mighty river:

While it wasn't a frigid day, the mercury was at 37 Fahrenheit (not quite 3 Celsius), a persistent high wind off of the river made it feel about ten degrees colder. The river itself was decorated with whitecaps:

I didn't stay long, it was just a quick visit before heading to work, but it took my mind off of the current geopolitical climate... I prefer the cold of a winter day to the heat of irresponsible rhetoric.

Looking Back on 2015

Generally speaking, 2015 was a pretty good year for me, I received a substantial (though not outrageous) raise at work, the social calendar is filled with comfortable routine- the monthly Secret Science Club lecture-with-beer and the weekly Tuesday night trivia contest at a local bar (our team has the winningest record for the year, but we've established a friendly rivalry with our closest competitors), the Saturday coaching gig is going well, and I was able to use my vacation time to spend some quality days with family. As is typical, I am working on New Year's Eve. I've always seen it as "amateurs' night", a night when the bars jack up the drink prices and some people tend to get stupid. It's quiet, and I've had a chance to reflect on the past year, and it's not a particular standout year. All told, on a personal level, 2015 was decent, though nothing truly spectacular (good or ill) occurred.

As far as "personal growth" goes, I'm pretty much skating along. The single greatest accomplishment I've achieved this year was getting comfortable enough with wild mushrooms that I've added them to my foraging repertoire... that sounds like a big "ho hum', but being able to find prized fifteen pound mushrooms isn't a bad skill to have. I've been a forager for years now, but this is taking it to the whole level.

On a broader basis, 2015 was a lackluster year- the problems of violence, systemic racism, and misogyny that have been with the U.S. since its inception continue, with no foreseeable hope of abatement. The inability of the Congress to get its act together to pass useful legislation is annoying, but on a local level, I see the new Tappan Zee bridge going up at a good pace, and the trains in the area run on time, so at least some stuff is getting done. Politics has seemed more stupid than usual this past year, but I think that's mainly due to the fact that a stupid, vulgar amateur has campaigned long after his suspected "past due" date, much longer than 2012's crop of numbnuts novelty candidates.

All told, it hasn't been a bad year, or a great year, or a particularly challenging year- there's a certain amount of stasis that seems to have set in, nothing of import is really occurring. Given the stupid attitudes of much of the public, and the media's complicity in the dumbing down, I don't know if I'm looking forward to an exciting 2016.

They'll Need a Crane

The big local story on the news was the arrival of a super bigass crane to the Tappan Zee Bridge construction site and its subsequent journey under the bridge, conducted during the low ebb tides caused by the full moon (unless you're Bill O'Reilly).

I headed up to the gorgeous Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow, NY to take in the scenery and to watch the giant crane being moved:

I can't wait until they erect that sucker. I've always been fascinated by heavy machinery... I'm pretty much an overgrown eight year-old.

Post title yoinked from one of my favorite TMBG tunes:





A friend of mine discovered the "Giants" after their Flood album came out, and remarked how whimsical the band was. I set him straight, TMBG may have had a whimsical facade, but the vast majority of their songs were about heartbreak, ennui, and disillusionment. The audio of the official video for They'll Need a Crane is clearer than the live version. Just listen to the bridge and tell me that these guys were ever in it for the laughs.

We'll Cross That Bridge When We Come to It.

A little over a month ago, a pedestrian/biking path the new Tappan Zee Bridge (named after Governor Mario Cuomo) was opened. This evening, after a scorching day, I am planning to meet some friends to take a free shuttle from the Tarrytown train station to West Nyack, on the other side of the river, for a walk back along the path. It's a 3.6 mile (5.79km) walk back east. It's the sort of walk which should ordinarily take an hour, but with the scenery and the undoubted stops for hijinks, it should take us a bit longer than that... hopefully leaving time to dine in one of the charming restaurants in the charming village of Tarrytown, a town perhaps best summed up by this guy:





Hopefully, we'll get a glimpse of NEOWISE as we stroll along, though the bright lights of the bridge may interfere with any skygazing.

Anyway, speaking of bridges, how about an extremely earnest song by an extremely earnest band of Bono protégés? Here's the band Cactus World News playing the 1986 Self Aid concert:





Teh Wiki, which never lies, indicates that these guys reformed in the twenty-first century. I hope they are having a good run in this bad century, they always came across as nice, earnest guys.

Pre-Christmas Expedition

It's a week until Christmas, and I had a little free time this afternoon before I had to be at work. Having an aversion to shopping malls at even the least congested times, I decided to visit places far from the shopping crowd. I decided, oddly enough, to visit Sleepy Hollow Cemetery on an unseasonably warm, but overcast day. Of course, the premier occupant of the cemetery is beloved local figure Washington Irving- author, diplomat, bon vivant. Irving's grave is perpetually festooned with an American flag, appropriate for the United States' first successful professional author and a public servant of long standing:

The fence surrounding the Irving plot was decorated with a wreath:

This is appropriate, seeing that Irving wrote extensively of English and American Christmas celebrations.

Watching over the Irving plot was a regal red tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis):

After bidding goodbye to Mr Irving and his avian overseer, I headed to Kingsland Point Park because I'd heard that the lighthouse was illuminated for the holidays. Sure enough, the beacon lamp was lit, and some small lights, barely visible in the gathering dusk, were strung along the tower:

Note the construction of the bridge to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge in the background.

After spending some time braving the wind off the river, I decided that I would thaw out by heading into downtown Sleepy Hollow in order to buy empanadas from the Los Andes Bakery for an early dinner. Los Andes is the perfect place to enjoy Chilean baked goods and Chilean hospitality. After joking with the counter-help for a while, I settled upon two empanadas and a torta mil hojas and bought a box of alfajores for my co-workers.

Every once in a while, I write about Sleepy Hollow, an interesting little working-class village with an extensive Latino population (about 50%). It's the sort of community that send a xenophobe into a tizzy, but I've always found the residents to be hospitable. It's funny how not being an asshole tends to be rewarded... though to be fair, being an asshole is all-too-often rewarded even more handsomely. Oh, well, it's not like an asshole would get a chuckle and a warm season's greeting from the empanada baker.

I Don't Ordinarily Bleg...

I don't ordinarily bleg, but I do make an exception for the Secret Science Club, which is hosting a fundraising campaign. My friends Margaret and Dorian are great champions of continuing science education, and the monthly lectures are free.

Back when I worked in a big insurance company, in an office with one-hundred co-workers, I would shake the tin cup every year when I rode in Multiple Sclerosis Tappan Zee bike ride, asking everyone for two dollars, figuring that I'd rather get two dollars each from one-hundred donors than one-hundred dollars each from two donors (most people gave more than two dollars). I certainly wouldn't ask people to give more than they can afford, but if you can throw a couple of dollars in the tip jar, it would help to keep this worthwhile educational and cultural institution going, and I would be extremely grateful.

This country is going to need all the intellectual boosting it can possibly get.

A Local Triumph

It's been a while since I have written about infrastructure. The conventional wisdom is that American infrastructure is subpar. The big local infrastructure story in my neck of the woods, which I have devoted multiple blog posts to, was the deterioration of the Tappan Zee Bridge, which spans the Hudson River, and the construction of a new bridge. Yesterday, Governor Andrew Cuomo cut the ribbon on the westbound span of the bridge, which has been named after his father, the late Governor Mario Cuomo. While a fan of the late governor, I really don't think that the bridge should have been named after anyone- the old name honors both the original indigenous people and the Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley, so I will stick with calling it the 'Tapp'.

The eastbound span of the bridge should open to traffic in the fall, just in time for the main upstate Autumn foliage tourism. It's nice to see a local infrastructure project come to fruition. My one beef with the new bridge design is the failure to incorporate a light rail line into the structure to connect the I-287 Corridor to the three lines of the Metro North railway system, thereby linking New Jersey to Connecticut via rail. Oh, well, that's me, ever the curmudgeon... at any rate, at least something has been accomplished.