Tomversation by Tom Falco

A world of pigeons

I laughed out loud when I saw this cartoon “Too Much Coffee Man” by Shannon Wheeler.

It reminded me why you should never throw a piece of bread down when in NYC or you’ll end up like this or worse.

I was in the Flatiron District and I got a sandwich at Panera Bread which is on 23 Street, right down the block from the Flatiron Building. I brought the sandwich back to the building and sat right outside the building where there are tables and chairs on the east side.

A pigeon came by, and sniffed around the ground. I threw a piece of bread down for him, and all of a sudden, it seemed like a flock of 100 pigeons surrounded me. It was a reminder of why you shouldn’t do that.

In Boston, I’ve had little birds, like sparrows, or something like that, come right onto my table and eat from my plate. Luckily the pigeons don’t do that in NYC. They call pigeons “flying rats” in NYC. I don’t feel that, but I don’t want a flock of them surrounding me. It’s sort of scary, like that old Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.”

A screen shot from my video of the MET Lady with her pigeons

In NYC, I’ve seen people feeding pigeons in the parks and they are surrounded by them with some on their shoulders. There is a lady who does this in front of the MET Museum. I filmed her one time and she got mad and chased me away because she said I was scaring the pigeons.

I took a screen shot from my video. You can see the lady cutting up the food and making a thing of it, using an ironing board as a counter to work on.

Can you chase pigeons away from free food?

Till next time . . .

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Faces of history: 1908 Union Square

I love seeing old photos online. This one is from February 2, 1908, a Suffragette meeting in Union Square in NYC. I’m thinking the background building are on Union Square East/Park Avenue. Sort of where the old Tammany Hall building is today. I don’t see the Suffragettes, they must be behind the camera, on a stage or something.

Here is a current image of what I believe the background is in the 1908 photo. That building with the dome over it is the final Tammany Hall building at 44 Union Square East (also 100 East 17th Street). That Tammany Hall building was built in 1929, the previous location was on 14th Street, near 3rd Avenue from 1868 to 1929. And the first, in the early 1800s was at Nassau and Frankfort Streets.

I love looking at the faces, realizing they were all born in the 1800s and thinking they were living in the most modern of times. They didn’t have tv or radio, but they had something new called “moving pictures,” silent of course, and they had electric lights and telephones. And possibly automobiles.

What I find interesting in the photo is the guy in the center, looking straight at the camera. He looks a bit scary, like he’s guilty of something – maybe murder, maybe running away from something, maybe pick pocketing – very guilty of something. Like is that Jack the Ripper? He did end up in NYC, didn’t he?

It looks like every guy is wearing a hat, which today, might be a baseball cap. And I was going to ask where the ladies are at a Suffragette meeting, but I see one a the left and one not to far behind her, by the pole.

Speaking of Suffragettes, there’s a funny show I see on PBS called “Up The Women,” from 2013, about British suffragettes in 1910, it’s a sitcom, very funny. Unfortunately, like so many British tv shows, there are a small limited number of episodes – only nine.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Apple, oranges and a red balloon

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

908 seems to be my lucky number

It’s called the Ultimate Steakhouse Whopper at Burger King.

It looks like 908 may be my lucky number. I may have to try it playing the lottery or something. The Universe keeps sending that number to me. In the form of receipts.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been to three fast food places and the bill at all three places was $9.08.

I had a taco salad at Wendys, it was $9.08, I had an All the Way Tropichop at Pollo Tropical, it was $9.08, then I went to Burger King to try that new deluxe steak burger, it was $9.08.

By the way, the Burger King steak burger was awful. I thought it might be good because it’s steak and it had mushrooms, but it had a bunch of other stuff I wouldn’t eat – like bacon, onion rings and some strange sauces. Plus the taste was blah.

I put watercress on everything I eat these days – even the watercress could not save the burger. I took a few bites and threw it out.

I ended up having lentil soup, which warmed me up and was good for this bitter Florida winter we have been having. I added Maitake mushrooms, watercress and extra virgin olive oil to the soup.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Winter finally arrived in Florida

I woke up to 35 degree F weather this morning. Windchill is in the mid 20s.

I know, that’s nothing to you guys with minus degree weather. And I’m always in NYC where I’ve been in 17 degree F weather at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but I guess down here in Miami, the cold doesn’t feel the same – maybe it’s the humidity, but it feels much colder.

People ask how we can stand the heat and humidity of the summer, which we really don’t feel if we live here – I honestly feel hotter when I’m in NYC, so I guess with the cold, we feel colder even when it’s not as cold as up north.

Summer has been brutal in NYC these past few years – I almost had heat stroke a couple of summers ago. I’m just saying.

The last time it was 32 or 35 degrees here was about 15 years ago. I remember it well. We had a food festival in the village and I remember trying to sell drinks, sticking my hands in the ice to get the glasses ready, all bundled up. Every once in awhile that photo of me bundled up pops up on social media.

One of my cousins told me that she doesn’t want to hear any complaints about it being too hot this summer from anyone, since we are all wishing for warmer weather now.

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to cold weather in Miami. I guess as you get older, you don’t wish for cold weather anymore, although I do wonder about those people who live in the Dakotas, Minnesota and areas near there that say they love the cold and snow.

I saw a show on PBS not long ago about a town in Maine where they waited and wished for the snow – and they then did everything out in the snow – I don’t mean skiing and winter sports – I mean holding school classes at picnic tables and having picnics and of course swimming. Yes, they loved doing polar bear swims – more than once in the winter.

Some of my favorite tv shows are Alaska-basked – “Life Below Zero” and “Port Protection Alaska,” etc., and the residents there thrive on the cold.

I don’t want to say I thrive on the heat, but I now do prefer a 76 degree day to 35 degrees. I know the iguanas prefer it, too.

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Cold comics and more

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts are sent during the week.

Meeting up with friends before cell phones

The other day, I was telling someone to text me when they arrive in town and we’ll hang out and of course, that’s how we do it. But I was thinking about years ago when I would meet my friends when we were both out of town and we would always meet up without arranging things and texting.

I think I talked about this before, but it always intrigues me how we did things in the past. You know, like missing a tv show if we didn’t see it when it was on, not being able to tape, DVR or stream it and things like that.

I live in Miami and I would go to NY a lot during the year, and I had so many friends in Miami, and I don’t know how I told them all, but I guess I would do it separately, one at a time, and I would say, “I am going to be in NYC from Nov. 15 to 30, so if you are going to be around, let me know.

Now these friends and I were in Miami at the time, we lived in Miami, and I was making plans for NY maybe a month or two away.

And we would arrange to meet – a friend would respond, “OK, I’ll meet you in front of the Empire State Building at noon on Friday, November 28, see you then.” And we would actually meet then and there, after making these plans a month or so in advance.

We didn’t call each other on the phone, I mean landlines – I don’t remember why, but I don’t remember anyone calling me at my cousins’ houses or at hotels I was staying at, but there they were on the appointed date and time.

I remember meeting one friend at my hotel, the Grand Hyatt on 42nd Street, one night in December. I remember another meeting me at the Empire State Building one day and another meeting in Greenwich Village somewhere and that always happened.

We made a date and time, and we showed up.

Now we text back and forth 100 times before meeting up for lunch on the same day.

I liked it better the old way.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts are sent during the week.

It’s a mess out there; but for a good cause

It’s almost like the pandemic here at home.

I don’t mean anyone is sick, what I mean is that we are sort of in quarantine here at the building.

For the past few months, our cul-de-sack has been getting new pipes buried in the street, which involved the streets being cut up and pipes being taken out and replaced. The workers are quite methodical. At first I thought the whole area would be dug up at once, and we would be navigating piles of dirt and big ditches in the streets, but they seem to work in sections of about 20 feet.

They dig up a 20 foot section and do their thing taking out the old stuff and putting in the new.

From a distance, it looks like a movie scene is being filmed on one corner. Everyone and every large piece of equipment is concentrated on one area – everyone in a large circle is looking at the same thing – the center of attention. Sort of like “lights, camera, action.”

When they leave at the end of the day, it looks as if they weren’t here. The street is all cleaned up, the huge ditches are covered up with some sort of metal covering, the areas are all hosed down and I guess until they lay the new street down at the very end, it looks nice, clean and tidy.

For the past weeks they were in one area, not far from me. Now these past few weeks, they have been in front of my building. I was hoping it would be when I was out of town a few times over the months, but it’s now. So for now, we stay home most of the time, but to be fair, we are able to get in and out and exit and enter the neighborhood through various ways.

But sometimes, it’s just easy to just stay home.

I waited a bit the other day to get out because large equipment was blocking my exit, but I made it out and back home. UPS, FedEx, the mail carrier and Amazon all make it through. Which reminds me, I still haven’t given the mail carrier her Christmas present, guess I’ll go down and look for her this week.

Unlike the pandemic, it’s noisy, where during the pandemic is was so quiet and the streets were empty. Out back on the bay, I would see people kayaking, boating, water boarding and things like that. There was a couple who would be in some sort of gray float or inner tube and daily they would flow out with the tide and then back in again, talking with each other the whole time, just taking life easy.

Being confined to the house reminds me of that period. Only now the bay is quiet, since people are at work and school. But the street out front is very busy with the construction crews doing their thing.

But again, they are methodical and neat and accommodating, but I do look forward to the day when they are done and gone.

I know- first world problems, and at least we aren’t dealing with the major snowstorms which are affecting millions of people in the country this week.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts are sent during the week.

It’s been a cold week

Read my blog: Tomversation.com
Subscribe via email to my cartoons here – they will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts during the week.

Read my blog: Tomversation.com
Subscribe via email to my cartoons here – they will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts during the week.

Florida’s bizarre winter: Falling iguanas and snow

It’s been a cold winder in Florida. Last week, it was about 39 degrees in South Florida with the wind chill one morning, and in the teens upstate in the Panhandle. It actually snowed an inch or less, but still, it was a white snow covering.

I can usually tell when it will be a cold winter from the weather we get in the Fall. If we get a day or two that’s cold in September or October, inevitably, it is a cold winter in December, January and February – not every day, but on and off during the season.

The thing all over the news, local and national, is the falling iguanas, who freeze up from the cold and fall from trees. It’s because they are cold-blooded and can’t regulate their body temperatures. They art sort of pliable, not stiff, and they don’t get hurt, they just make a plopping sound when they hit the ground. It’s almost as if they are playing dead.

I’ve seen thousands of iguanas around Miami all my life, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that has fallen from a tree. But I’ve seen it all over the news this week.

At times we’ve been in a park having lunch and look up and a bunch of iguanas are running through the lawn in unison, it looked like a mini Jurassic Park. They are ubiquitous around here.

One of my nephews had an iguana. His name was Iggy. He was well trained. He went to the bathroom in the bathtub and he had the run of the house. You would just be sitting on the couch and he would be walking, very slowly, behind you on the top part of the couch.

One time I had to go to their house to get something, no one was home. I walked into the kitchen, and there is Iggy, up on the counter, grabbing for the bananas. The large green body against the yellow bananas was startling.

One of my nephew’s first internet handles was “Iggy Falco,” which I laughed at every time I saw it. It was such a funny name.

I have a friend from New York who calls Miami the land of Peacocks and Palm trees. We of course have palm trees and we also have peacocks walking all over the place. We have to stop while driving to allow them to cross the street – everyday. And we also have roosters and chickens and of course iguanas all over. Yes, roosters and chickens. I hear a rooster crowing from down the block as I type this. A rooster. In an urban area. Don’t ask.

One time I was leaving Publix and a chicken and baby chicks were blocking my path. I got out of the car and waved a newspaper at them to get them to move (yes, a real printed newspaper). I looked up and a cop who was sitting in his car was watching and laughing.

Life down south.

Till next time . . .

Read my blog: Tomversation.com
Subscribe via email to my cartoons here – they will arrive each Friday plus 2 short blog posts during the week.