Snow on the ground and a huge storm on the way, at least according to those pesky weather people. We’ll see the true outcome tonight I suppose.
The trains are completely wonky again this weekend. All 2 and 3 trains have their last stop at my station where shuttle buses (of which there are never enough) fill up quickly and take never quite all that are waiting the rest of the way home. Those that cannot fit on the buses wait, sometimes for 15 or 20 minutes. They stand like soldiers on the side of Eastern Parkway shivering in the snow. Babies wait in strollers wrapped in heavy plastic, older people with no place to sit down simply make do. Yet though all this inconvenience you see no complaining, no anger, just a level of acceptance and plainly visible drive to simply endure. It is the core I think of what is needed to survive in this city.
Abiding my personal effort to stay off the trains this weekend I started off the day yesterday with a walk to Grand Army Plaza, for a visit to the farmers market which sets up shop there each Saturday. In the winter the selection is sparse but there is still plenty to be found and just being surrounded with other people that take some joy from shopping locally makes me happy.
I picked up some amazing local grown produce, wine, cheese and bread. All of it made for a delicious lunch of grilled portobello (brushed in a tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil) with balsamic vinegar, some fresh chopped garlic and delicious goat cheese melted on top. I served it with a piece of rosemary flat bread and a little spinach salad leftover from the day before. Delicious. The best part was the fact that I knew where almost every part of my meal came from. I met the woman who miked the goat and made the cheese. She told me her stock was lacking a bit as of late since she had to share the milk supply with all the baby goats. Sigh. Baby goats. It is in my personal opinion that a baby goat may well be the cutest thing I have ever seen. It’s that time of the year, or so the woman said. I think I have a plan forming for my next trip out of the city. Maybe I’ll line it up after the huge snowboarding trip at the end of this month.
I did want to note something I was thinking about yesterday when I returned home from working out (one of two trips I begrudgingly made on the train yesterday – it was cold!)
Many months ago, when I first moved here I observed this, and I think I even blogged about it, but yesterday it struck me to a more acute degree. All those people, inconvenienced at the subway, babies crying and people freezing, still somehow they all managed to maintain a modicum of order and respect and peace. There could have been a ton of pushing and scrambling resulting in injury and probably violence. I’ve seen it happen often enough in similarly cramped situations at ball games and live music events, even in crowded high schools. Yet there is a code that people know and obey, regardless of size, race, age or status when navigating NYC public transit. We are all pushed and squeezed and forced to endure what most of America would consider very much an invasion on their own personal space. Yet problems, relatively, are few. It’s fascinating to me, and makes me think of psychology, sociology, social structure and culture. It would seem to me that we all default to a desire for order, but how does that occur when so much of what we are exists in chaos? If physics is to be believed we emerged from it, so why don’t we default back to it? Is it learned? Who came up with the code that makes us all coexist peacefully in the closest and presumably most likely dangerous of cramped spaces, surrounded by a tube of steel and up to a half mile of bedrock? Why does it work?
Food for thought on a Sunday morning.
