A moment in time

Visiting the past

I was talking about visiting places back in time in a previous post. It reminds me of a couple of NY stories. This image of Union Square fascinates me since I am always in that location. There are literally hundreds of pictures in that area from the past century and beyond.

Back when I read The Alienist for the first time, I started noticing something – the places written about in the book were written in such vivid detail, even directions on how to get to and from places. So I started writing them down. This was probably 1994, when the book was first published.

It takes place in 1881-82 NYC. There are tv shows now based on The Alienist, but I highly recommend the book.

The next time I was in NYC I started a little tour of all those locations and lo and behold – they were all still standing! Author Caleb Carr used current locations that were there in the 1800s. I remember 19 Washington Square South, where the grandmother lived – still there – part of those high end row houses across from the park. And Wanamaker’s store and Grace Church and all those wonderful places!

Anyway, just recently I saved an old photo of Union Square on my phone, from the late 1800s. I took the photo to Union Square and I held it up to the buildings, trying to match the image exactly. The funny part is that I had the phone basically up to guy’s face as I was searching.

He looked at me, wondering, why are you taking my picture? I showed him the image on the phone and told him what I was doing and we both got a good laugh.

I have seen so many photos of Union Square and so many of those buildings are still there and so are the statues. I also like to visit the two Andy Warhol Factory locations that are still standing at different areas of Union Square – just wondering what life was like back then.

Women voters

There were two beautiful stories on women voters on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday. Here they are . . .

The first is on Susan B. Anthony and how women pay tribute to her every voting day, by visiting her grave and leaving “I voted” stickers.

And this one is called “104-year-old Ruth Rosner on casting her vote.” It follows Ms. Rosner as she votes for president for the 22nd time in her life! She’s so great, so there!

A trip through time

I always want to live in the past. Why? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask a psychiatrist. But I don’t only mean 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, I also mean last week or last month or last year. For some reason, I never want time to pass. Strange, huh?

I follow a lot of sites on Facebook that show vintage photos, some go way back to the 1840s – yes, actual photos. I can stare at them forever and look at the people and wonder what they were thinking in that moment in time. Here are a few I saw recently, but over the years I have seen such great ones – action shots from the 1840s and 1850s and 1900s. Places I would like to possibly visit, if not live.

It would be interesting to visit these places even for a day, or maybe just an hour. I sometimes think that after we die, that we can visit or live at various places and times. Could we possibly choose an era and live it or watch it?

1840s NYC. Would be nice to visit, not sure to live.

This is 1867 on Greenwich Street in NYC. This new fangled elevated railway is on a test run. Now imagine being there, how exciting, this new invention taking shape!

1892 Union Square – a place I visit often.

Chicago 1893 – how the kids lived back then. Hanging out near a dead horse, just another day. No, I don’t think I’d like to visit this location. Probably doesn’t smell that great.

Bathers at the beach, 1897. Yes, I would like to be there for the day.

circa 1900 Madison Square – future home of the Flatiron Building. Yup, right where that Heinz sign is. That building across the way with the cupola on the roof is still standing today, the Sohmer Building, called that because it originally housed the showroom and offices of Sohmer & Co., inventors of the modern baby grand piano, built in 1897-98, a few years before the Flatiron Building was completed in 1902.

1949 NYC. I would love to have experienced that era.

1950s. South Beach. This interest me because before South Beach was South Beach and was plain old Miami Beach, I hung out on these streets with friends – in the 1980s. We had the run of the place. The streets in the 1980s looked exactly the same, and to be honest, most of these streets appear the same today. A trip back in time.

New Orleans 1957. Also a place that looks the same today. One thing I love about NOLA is the history and the way they preserve it.

Under water!

I had a hairy six weeks. Not a good time. I’m not sure how I got through. I think I kept being grateful that we weren’t being hit by those constant hurricanes hitting the Gulf and we weren’t being burned out by fires like on the west coast. That kept me going, but I did have problems here.

For three weeks, I had no a/c. And that’s fine, the issue was having so many a/c guys in and out trying to fix the problem, then trying to install the new system on the roof and other things, but as that was winding down and I got my new a/c system installed, I discovered a leak. I am three floors down from the roof, so I assumed it was my toilet or something. It originated in one of the bathrooms and leaked under the floor into one of the bedrooms. The one saving grace was that it was a bathroom and bedroom I don’t use. A spare room and a spare bathroom!

Well, the leak was coming from my neighbor above, but he had the leak too, coming from above him – from the penthouse.

So in these past three weeks, the water flowed – non stop. We had dozens of “experts” here and spent thousands of dollars to find the source of the leak. Leak detectors, insurance people, plumbers, air conditioning people – in and out for three weeks, revolving door here.

One source was thought to be our messy, wet roof. Another were the a/c lines condensating down from the roof. We were up on the roof, up in the penthouse, breaking walls here and there. And all that while the water flowed! I barely left the house. I met with the non-stop flow of experts and was afraid to leave the non-stop flow of water.

I literally dumped 30 to 40 gallons a day. I vacuumed it up with a wet/dry vac and counted each time I dumped the five gallon tank. It was never ending. For three weeks, I slept an hour, got up, vacuumed up the water and went to bed – I got up after two hours and did the same and so on and so on. Talk about stress!

This went on for three weeks. As people came and went and opined on what the source was, handed us with big bills, no one seemed to do a thing. And I vacuumed up water 24/7 – literally. I didn’t have a life. I threw out so many things that were ruined. And it got so bad that my big lighting fixture and mirror fell off the bathroom wall. The walls were so saturated that everything just sort of melted!

The water then started seeping into my bedroom wall, where the tv is hanging. I kept waiting for the whole 55 inch tv to fall off the wall. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

In the end, after dozens of visitors (experts?), dozens of sleepless nights, and hundreds of gallons of water, we had an a/c guy come and he found the leak – about 50 feet away from where we thought it was – under the toilet in the penthouse bathroom. There are about four bathrooms and this one is never used, as it emanated from their spare room, just like it ended up in my spare room!

The problem was fixed – hopefully – so far so good – this morning I woke up to a dry floor. No water flowing out. Nothing. So far so good. I am feeling thrilled now. Like I could fly. Like I could live!

I literally slept through the night last night, without having to wake up every hour or two to vacuum up the constant flow of water! Now it’s about restoration, but I can breathe now!

Eddie Van Halen

I’m feeling really bad about Eddie Van Halen’s passing yesterday. I’m not sure why. I mean I loved Van Halen, but I loved so many other people who passed, but I don’t feel devastated over their deaths.

I didn’t feel devastated over Michael Jackson, but I did over Prince and Tom Petty. I felt devastated over Audrey Meadows, but not Jackie Gleason. Weird, right? Anthony Bourdain really hit me hard. A friend in my head.

Maybe it’s the state of mind we are in on the day we hear of the passing. I can’t figure out why else I would feel so bad for some people and not others. All people I don’t know and never met.

But they were all part of my life. Part of my youth. When they pass away, is a part of my youth passing away?

I always remember when 1983 was turning into 1984, the first video MTV showed right after midnight was Jump, by Van Halen, the first video of 1984. I think it was the premier of the song or maybe just the video. But of all the New Years eves, this one always sticks in my head. I can picture myself in the family room in front of the tv, sitting on the floor, and I can picture my mother in the kitchen on the phone, probably wishing Happy New Year to someone at that midnight hour. But that’s one of my special memories of two of my favorite years – 1983 and 1984 – Van Halen performing Jump, which was the first time I had seen and heard it.

It’s all about communication

When I look at today’s comic, it reminds me of a few years back, maybe 15 years ago. I have an online business that can be operated anywhere. But 15 years ago, even though it is the same business, which can be operated anywhere, I still felt tied to the office/home.

I had a neighbor, an attorney, who spent her time between New Hampshire and Miami and she told me, “It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you pick up the phone!”

And I always remembered that and it made my life so much easier. She said, “You can be lying on the beach, and I don’t think the client cares, as long as you answer the phone!”

Ironically, I’ve never been a phone person and I avoid answering the phone, I prefer email, which has suited my business very well. But I do answer the emails quickly, especially since I have my phone on me 24/7, but even back then, before iphones, I answered emails quickly.

It’s all about communication. Even from the beach.

Fall is here

So Fall is here! I’m going to miss the cold weather this year. I am usually in NY in October and November. In October, I go for Comic Con, which is postponed this year. Picture it – Comic Con and the fall leaves and cool crisp weather. Although I can remember a year or two ago when it hit 80 degrees in NYC in October.

But New York is full of Batman and Superman and all sorts of Cosplay people. It’s like a precursor to Halloween earlier in the month. Mix that with the cool air and turning leaves and it’s the perfect time of year. And then a month later I head back for Thanksgiving with my family. This year I was going to do one of my usual things – spend a few days in Boston and then take the train down to NY later in the week.

That fall trip by train through New England is pure pleasure. I wrote about one trip one time, which was more about inside the train than the actual views outside. I overheard two older ladies talking behind me the whole way and it was pure delight, you can read it here: “A delightful train ride.”

Last October my cousins and I went to the Hudson Valley and we picked pumpkins and apples. One of my all time favorite days. You know when certain things in life stick in your mind forever? Well that day is one of them.

There’s always next year.

No a/c in the hot summer

So here is a funny and weird story – I didn’t have air conditioning for almost two weeks. Yup, summer in Miami – no a/c. Oddly enough, the way my condo building is situated, it doesn’t get so hot on my side of the building, so I managed without the sun beating down on me. But two weeks – no a/c!

The unit was working perfectly, I only had to have the a/c guys out to clean the coils, because there was a leak, but as for cold air, it was blowing ice cold as usual. Well, the guys came and cleaned the coils and it all went down hill from there. From that moment on, I had no cool air coming out.

They ended up coming over four times, three of those time to try and fix the problem after they cleaned the coils, each time leaving and feeling it was all perfect. In the end – after their fourth visit – the problem was solved. The thermostat was turned off! There’s a button that puts it on “hold” and that stops sending contact to the main unit on the roof, so only room temperature air would flow, when you “unhold” the thermostat – cold air returns!

It’s like having your tv or computer not work and someone says, “Well plug it in!”

I had a feeling something was wrong with the thermostat, but try and tell an expert that you solved the problem and you get an earful on how you don’t know what you are talking about, “leave it to the experts!”

There’s a cartoon in this story somewhere, I’m thinking it over.

It brings back weird memories

asp I have a friend who can’t read or write. He doesn’t know that I know, but I found out one day after showing him this, today’s comic. Lots of my comics are old comics that were never published before. This asp/snake one is one of those.

About 10 years ago or so I showed him this comic and he didn’t laugh. I said, “Don’t you get it?” And he said, “No,” with a straight face. I asked, “How can you not get it?” I was a bit upset, feeling that my comic was worthless. And we had a minor argument. It didn’t last but when I found out he couldn’t read months later, I felt awful.

Every time I see this comic I think of that. I haven’t seen him for awhile, but other than the literacy or lack of it, he is one of the most intelligent people I know. He can fix almost anything, he knows something about everything, but he has that one flaw which is a shame.

He owned a small business in town. For so long I tried to get him to take credit cards so he would get more sales. He lost so many when he told people he didn’t take credit cards. I told him about Square and how easy it is to use for vendors. But now I know it is because his lack of reading was probably a hindrance in him understanding how to operate the credit card processing system once it was set up. I guess there is some reading involved when people hand your their card. I’m assuming his wife handled the other business things – like the books and paying bills. She didn’t work with him, but I guess whenever she could she handled that stuff.

Anyway, I love this cartoon, but it always has that weird memory for me when I see it, even though it’s been redrawn and redone, it still has that affect on me.

No need for a vacation

I was mentioning going to the beach every day in a previous story. I did do that for many years. I need to get back to that. I live right near the beach but I’ve neglected to go. But again, for many years I would be there daily.

Living in Miami, I had many choices and I would be all over. I would go to Miami Beach or Key Biscayne or Matheson Hammock – wherever the mood struck me. Sometimes I would go for an hour to just have lunch and then I’d get back to work. Other times I would spend the day. The first time I ever had sushi was at Matheson Hammock, I got it at a local store and ate it at a picnic table. It was the first time I put the whole ball of wasabi in my mouth, too, not knowing what that putty-like green ball was!

There was a period of time, maybe about three years of my life, where I didn’t travel anywhere, and I was an avid traveler, so this was odd for me, but I don’t think I noticed it. My mother and one of my cousins thought it was because I was afraid to fly. But it wasn’t. My life was perfect, I felt no need to go anywhere “to get away.” And it was true.

I was a printing broker, so my life consisted of working a few hours in the morning – that was it, by 11 am I was free for the day! I would have lunch and then head to one of the beaches. I would come home, shower and many days go to happy hour with friends, then head home and repeat the next day. This was my life. I didn’t need a vacation from vacationing.

Since the pandemic and all the changes we are going through, I feel that that part of my life may return. I’m doing a lot of cartooning now and I could easily fit the beach in around that.

Which reminds me. There was one period where I would go to the beach, I would have a rule – I couldn’t leave the beach until I came up with two cartoon ideas. And I managed to come up with two a day that way! I sold a lot of comics to newspapers and magazines back then – I guess the ideas I got on the beach where pretty good; good enough to be published!