01.25.08
Posted in Arts & Culture, BookCrossing, Books at 1.44 pm by Caitlin
Since I have just spent two or so weeks in Brooklyn, it is fitting that when I arrived home to London a copy of Betty Smith’s classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was waiting on my doorstep. It was a BookCrossing copy, and had come to me from the US via Canada and the UK and will be winging its way to Portugal next.
This is the tale of the Francie Nolan and her family, growing up poor in early 20th century Brooklyn. It’s a portrait of the poor people of Brooklyn and of Francie herself, an intelligent, imaginative child. The dogged determination of the tree growing up towards the sunlight, no matter what the obstacles, is a poignant metaphor for Francie’s coming of age. The writing has a deft but light touch and interesting in the way that it does not progress in a strictly linear fashion.
It reminded me a fair bit of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, which is set in the slums of inner-city Sydney during the Great Depression. It’s also about a poor Irish immigrant family in the new world and the challenges and prejudices they face, although it’s set about 20-30 years later than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and in a different city, on a different continent.
The setting is Brooklyn, mostly Williamsburg and a bit of Greenpoint in north Brooklyn. This area is now very trendy, populated with young urban hipsters and also a large Hasidic Jew population. I spent a little time there and this was where the fabulous Queen’s Hideaway restaurant is. However, I stayed mostly in south Brooklyn, around the Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens area.
This is part of my challenge to read the top 100 books of the 20th century. All previous entries are on this site, and also on a dedicated site Century of Books. I’ve read 15 from the list since I started and I’m now at 40, with 60 to go.
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01.24.08
Posted in Life, London at 5.15 pm by Caitlin
In the battle of Caitlin versus the weather, the London winter has been winning. I don’t have the winter blues but I have been finding it very hard to exercise. I prefer to exercise outside and in summer I happily skate and run to stay fit and have fun as well. In winter, well, less so… it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s often wet, and I can cope with one of these things but not all three.
Today has actually been quite a nice winter’s day, with clear blue sky and even some watery sunlight. Even so, it’s starting to get dark already and it’s only 4pm and I’m still in the office.
So I have finally conceded defeat and joined a gym. There is an excellent public leisure centre up the road – there is a well-equipped gym, a swimming pool, squash and tennis courts, a climbing wall, and a cafe and public library attached. I had my induction yesterday and had fun trying out some of the weird and wonderful cardio machines.
It took me a while to get this sorted because I’m an idiot and the gym is paranoid. You know those health questionnaires you fill out with your membership applications? One of the questions was ‘have you ever suffered from fainting spells?’ Now, like most people, I have fainted in my life. Maybe two or three times. So I ticked ‘yes’ and then in the space for the explanation added that this was not a regular occurrence and had only happened a few times in my life.
Bad move. The gym made me go and get a form signed by my GP. Do you know how hard it is to get a GP’s appointment in this country? Doctors’ surgeries are only open during business hours Monday to Friday. Most appointments are not pre-bookable, you have to call at 8am on the day for a morning appointment, or 12pm for an afternoon appointment. (It’s easier to see a nurse who do many of the routine procedures, like checking your blood pressure and pap smears).
Fortunately, I was already booked in to see the doctor on another matter. But when I got there, the doctor took the form and said that she could not do paperwork during a consultation and I would have to pick it up the next day. (The “paperwork” consisted of ticking a box saying I was permitted to exercise and signing it).
So I came back the next day, as requested. I was told it would be ready from midday but when I got there at 2pm, it hadn’t been done and the doctor was in a meeting, with her consulting room locked. My gym induction was at 3pm. I finally got the form at 2.45pm and high-tailed it up to the gym. Finally, it was all sorted!
After all that, I am even more determined to get some use out of my membership, at least until summer is here again! I would still like it to stop raining but at least now I won’t let it impede my fitness efforts.
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By the way, I have removed the requirement that you have to be registered to comment and installed a spam filter instead. I have done this at my food blog, the Gooseberry Fool, and my travel site, Roaming Tales, as well. Please leave me comments – I love getting comments (except spam). Sometimes I get emails but it’s much more fun if you leave a comment for everyone and it should be much easier now.
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01.17.08
Posted in Career, Media & Internet, Travel at 9.25 pm by Caitlin
I’m in the New York Times! There are few outlets for a journalist more prestigious than this but I can’t lean back and say I’ve made it because sadly I’m not in it as a journalist. I’m in it as an average Jo Citizen (if that’s possible without actually being a US citizen).
The travel section has an article on New York’s botanic gardens and it kicks off with a walking tour of Brooklyn Botanic Gardens on how to get the most of the gardens in winter and how to beat the winter blues. (The article is dated January 20 but it’s actually online now). I had no idea this was going to happen (maybe because I joined late) but I was on that tour and that’s me in the photo on the far right with the floppy wide-brimmed black hat. (One of several hats I bought in NYC – I’m having a bit of a hat moment).
So I didn’t make the New York Times in the journalistic sense but I did make the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s English language newspaper, which I’m pretty pleased about. More on that over at my professional site.
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01.14.08
Posted in Family & Friends, Life, London, Skating at 12.22 am by Caitlin
This weekend I did a two-day slalom workshop with Naomi Grigg. I’ve never done slalom before so while the others were learning new cone dodging tricks like the Sun, the Marbrook and the Crazy, I was doing more basic stuff. First I mastered forward criss-cross, then I started working on backwards criss-cross, and I also tried the Nelson and some of the building for grapevine (which is freestyle not slalom so it doesn’t involve cones). It was bags of fun and I learnt a lot – thanks Naomi!
We lucked out with the weather in the park – yesterday was a beautiful clear blue day and today was colder and greyer but it didn’t rain. Yesterday we also had a cool celebrity sighting – Elle Macpherson was down in the park with her two sons (the younger one had a go riding his scooter through my cones). She was wearing a tight leather jacket and the two boys were wearing blazers – and they were a very good looking family indeed! I don’t recognise most people who count as celebrities in Britain, but I do recognise Elle – I’ve recently decided the definition of A-list is if I recognise them. Apparently she comes down a lot but it’s certainly the first time I’ve ever seen her there. What I thought was nice was that no one bothered her. We all knew who she was but we acted cool and let her be – one guy, an Australian, said “g’day Aussie” as he skated past, which made her smile, but that was it.
This afternoon I rushed back after slalom as Tash and Matt were coming over. We made homemade pizza (my other half made the dough and I did the toppings) and played on my new Wii, which I got for Christmas. We have the sports games that come with the console and Lego Star Wars, and it’s all a lot of fun!
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01.12.08
Posted in Family & Friends, London at 8.22 pm by Caitlin
Last night was the birthday celebration for Andrew (hubby of Jess). We kicked off the festivities with bowling at Queensway. The last time I went bowling was about a month ago at the Media Guardian Christmas party. I managed to disgrace myself with a series of gutter balls and a total score about 32. This time, amazingly, it all seemed to come together. I three two strikes in a row, a number of spares, and came away with a total score of 109. If I hadn’t messed up the last shot, I might even have won my lane, but in the event the title was taken by Matt (hubby of Tash).
From bowling we went on to dinner at a pub in Lancaster Gate called The Mitre. We had a private room upstairs and it was a joint celebration for Andrew and another girl called Hildy. Quite a big crowd turned up and we had to move tables about to fit everyone in. I think everyone had a good time. Happy birthday, Andrew! (And Hildy).
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01.11.08
Posted in Life, London, Theatre at 7.32 pm by Caitlin
Pantomime is a Christmas tradition in Britain. It involves retelling well-known stories – such as Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Puss in Boots – and lots of cross-dressing and bawdy humour. The humour usually works on two levels – slapstick humour for the kiddies and knowing innuendo for their parents. Sometimes the adult jokes can be less of the innuendo and more of the downright smutty but that depends on the play.
I am sure that I must have been to a pantomime at least once as a child in Australia but it doesn’t really feature as a major part of the cultural landscape like it does here in England. I think one reason is the seasonality – Christmas in Australia is high summer and a time for backyard barbecues and frolicking on the beach rather than going to the theatre. Another thing is the fact that the whole fascination with cross-dressing is markedly different in Australian culture. Brits seem to find the sight of a man in a dress the most hilarious thing ever. Whereas in Sydney, home of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, drag queens are considered a serious expression of self identity and art, and not something to be laughed at. (And the more old-school, homophobic brand of Australians probably find them troubling rather than funny).
This year I decided to satisfy my cultural curiosity and find out what it was all about. We booked tickets to see Cinderella at the Old Vic, partly because it was by Stephen Fry and I thought the writing would be good. And it was. It was also very obviously by Stephen Fry, featuring jokes such as “we love Tesco, don’t we? It keeps the riff-raff out of Waitrose”, and a reality TV contest for the fairytale ball. It was enormous fun, blending what I understand to be the pantomime traditions (the audience yelling “behind you” and “oh yes you did”, the men in skirts playing the ugly stepsisters, and so on), good songs, clever jokes and a parallel storyline where Buttons is looking for the man of his dreams.
Of course there comes a moment where some of the children in the audience get to go on stage – an eight-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy who helped Buttons make lunch. (One of the cutest moments was when the narrator asked them what they might add to a meal to make it taste better; the girl said “pepper” and the boy said “celery”! This of course prompted a joke about how they had, after all, come from the best seats in the house).
I am fine with the cross-dressing but I found it more or less passed over my head – the Ugly Stepsisters in a pantomime version of Cinderella are obviously funny characters but to me that’s because they are wearing over-the-top clothing and hamming it up and doing stupid things. I would probably find them just as funny if they were played by women, but it would lose a big part of the appeal for the British audience.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself but I’m not sure that I’ll become a regular fixture at the panto – perhaps now and then, or perhaps I’d borrow some children to take with me.
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01.08.08
Posted in Life, Travel at 3.13 pm by Caitlin
Before Christmas, my boyfriend and I went to Washington DC for a few days for a mini-break. We caught the train from Penn Station, which is a nice way to travel, but also slightly frustrating because the Americans buy expensive high-speed tilt trains from the Europeans and then hobble them so they don’t tilt in order to meet out-dated safety regulations. So the train that is capable of going 300 miles per hour runs at 50mph instead! Even so, Washington is only a couple of hours away by train so it’s no problem.
The best thing about Washington is just walking around and admiring the buildings and memorials. The architecture is very elaborate and Romanesque and the boulevards are wide and grand like Paris. We didn’t go inside the White House or the Capitol as these days it’s a big deal to organise but it was cool to see all of that from the outside.
We did visit the Smithsonian Institute, including the Air and Space Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum and the Freer Gallery (includes Asian art and Whistler paintings) and the very excellent national zoo. At the zoo we saw all three of the giant pandas, which is what we went for but we also really enjoyed the rest of the zoo, including the toucans and bird of paradise in the bird house, coral and octopus in the Invertebrates House and golden tamarins and marmosets in the Small Mammals House.
The Air and Space Museum was cool. It’s amazing how dinky and small some of the space ships look in real life – a lot less solid or professionally made than the old aeroplanes. Appearances are obviously deceptive!
We stayed in a boutique hotel called Hotel Rouge, which was decorated with a red theme.
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Posted in Media & Internet at 11.58 am by Caitlin
An American soldier in the Iraq war wrote a blog post to be published in the event of his death. It makes interesting reading.
Update: This went down but seems to be back up again now. If it goes down again, you could try searching for ‘Andrew Olmsted’ in a search engine and clicking on the cached page.
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Posted in Family & Friends, Food, Travel at 11.34 am by Caitlin
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…
Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
Our last two days in Brooklyn passed pleasantly enough. On Saturday we had a late breakfast and then went for a walk in Greenwood Cemetery, a big old cemetery full of tombs and mausoleums and Victorian-era statues of angels. It’s meant to be full of famous people but we didn’t have a map so we were more or less just exploring. I did stumble across the tomb of the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – he had a pyramid and a huge casting of a horse, chickens, dog and cat on the ground in front. We got back to the gate just as closed but fortunately the groundskeeper agreed to give us a lift to the main entrance. I’m not sure we would have found our way out on our own and it was also miles away.
We went to Greenpoint in north Brooklyn for dinner at Queen’s Hideaway. The menu changes daily depending on what they find in the market that day. This was probably the best meal I had in New York – and I had a few! We sampled most things on the menu that day and my favourites were the black bean soup with boar bacon and smoked ham hocks (served over rice and topped with sour cream and pickled red onion and corn relish) and the corned beef brisket (house-cured), which came with cider gravy, potato rosti, and cabbage braised with pears and smoked sausage. We also had hush puppies with hot sauce, bruschetta, dutch pancake, grilled endive salad and smoked trout salad. Yummo!
Sunday was our last day in town. After taking the Christmas tree to the local park for the tree mulching collection, I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, next door to the Brooklyn Museum and Prospect Park, for about an hour. I wandered around for a bit and then I joined a walking tour on winter plants and beating the winter blues. It’s quite interesting seeing the gardens in winter as you see the bones of the park – the shape of branches, the colour of bark, the rock structures. And when it gets cold, there are always the green houses! The highlight was the lovely Japanese garden, with a pond and a Shinto shrine.
The flight back to the UK was largely uneventful, though neither of us got any sleep. We had a lovely holiday but it’s nice to be home as well. Thanks so much to Mike and Jessica for letting us stay and for so long too.
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01.05.08
Posted in Travel at 6.45 pm by Caitlin
On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…
Eleven pipers piping, ten lords a leaping, nine ladies dancing, eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
As I stood on the corner of Malcom X Boulevard and 135th Street in Harlem waiting for my walking tour, a man walked by wearing – get this – a reddy-brown cow hide coat and a red fedora with a feather, and carrying a ghetto blaster blaring loud music. Awesome!
The walking tour was not nearly so interesting, mainly because it was damn cold and there was more talking than walking. The history of Harlem is fascinating and the tour guide, a PhD student in US history, was very knowledgeable but it was uncomfortable to spend two hours out in the freezing weather standing around on street corners. Also, it meant that most of the two hours was spent facing her and a group of 20 other people rather than looking at the surrounds of Harlem and its people.
Harlem has some beautiful old residential buildings – it was a wealthy, white neighbourhood before it became a poor, black one. One of the highlights was seeing City College, part of City University New York, which had free tuition and, at one point, open admission. Another highlight was the Abyssinian Baptist Church, founded by Ethiopian traders and African-Americans, and where Adam Clayton Powell Snr and Jnr had their ministry. Adam Clayton Powell Jnr was in Congress – the first black Congressman from New York and the second from any state bar Illinois.
However, sadly much of Harlem’s unique heritage has been lost. The area has been sorely neglected by the Landmark Commission and many of the original buildings no longer existed. We stopped at two beauty salons that were former meeting places of important black political groups. And buildings such as Madam CJ Walker’s mansion have been torn down and replaced with ugly modernist buildings, while the Schomburg Centre (a primary resource library on black history) and the Harlem Hospital have been renovated beyond recognition.
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