Chronicles Continued

“Strangely, for all the breathless press about the boom in food delivery services, there aren’t many articles on the exploitation that comes with them (food writers, bless their hearts, tend to get caught up in the minutiae of bread absorption rates and flavor-mixing quotients when reviewing services; the destruction of human potential often gets lost in the fray). It may be great that, in 2016, you can enjoy some gourmet eggplant parmesan on your couch, but at what cost? Did you look out the window when you ordered the eggplant parmesan? What was the weather? Did the minimum-wage messenger have to traverse through a blizzard to deliver it? Did you feel less guilty about ordering it because you didn’t have to speak to a human to do so? Did you not feel obligated to tip the driver because the app told you it was fine? Wouldn’t it be even more efficient for everyone involved if a drone could deliver the eggplant parm from a warehouse? Then no one would be inconvenienced, except the out-of-work delivery drivers.”

The above is from the website Eater and the article titled:

DELIVERY WEEK
Counterpoint: Don’t Order Delivery
The unspoken costs of getting another human being to bring food from a faraway restaurant directly to your couch.   by Leah Finnegan Sep 29, 2016,

Written by a self-proclaimed 30 year old, I was surprised by the article saying that the delivery services that are in-between you and the restaurants are making a killing and killing the business on which they feed.  I agree but i thought it was age and attitude that made me the lone holder of such an opinion.

Read the entire rant if you want to know how your order is being sourced out of Silicon Valley by faceless wealth and who is really benefit, in addition to you who has not moved from the couch.

 

http://www.eater.com/2016/9/29/13108262/counterpoint-dont-order-delivery

If the leaf looks like a marigold leaf, and the flower bud looks like a marigold flower bud, then most likely it is not parsley.   The vendor in Chinatown, called it Japanese, said I could eat it raw;  weighed out $.15 cents worth for me. A novel addition to my salad, just toss it in with the nasturtiums and the cilantro.

Calendula (Calendula officinalis) – Also called Marigolds. A wonderful edible flower. Flavors range from spicy to bitter, tangy to peppery. Their sharp taste resembles saffron (also known as Poor Mans Saffron).Sep 7, 2016

As I child I experienced airplane travel: bars in the rear of the plane, red carpet at the bottom of the stairs covering the tarmac, well dressed, gloved and hatted passengers served by tall, slender women in chic uniforms.  How times have changed.  As i waited for the influx of the passenger hoard on my last flight, the proliferation of shorts as attire on men and women was in abundance.  The one that caught me by surprise however was the guy in spandex shorts.  Not a good look by any stretch of the imagination.  Fortunately, for my sensibilities, another shorts-wearer was asked to deplane due to inebriation.  Was not sorry to see him go, but was impressed how quietly it was accomplished.  The cabin personal confided they made the call, and it happened in an orderly fashion because he was not told until in the gangway why he was being separated out from the crowd.  Someone already three sheets to the wind on a 5 hour flight?  Can you imagine!

It bears repeating, that as I was growing up in the West, believing the Ford doctrine that everyman [woman] should have their own car, thankfully  someone else in the East was focused on public transportation.  The fastest, most efficient way to arrive at JFK, New York’s largest airport is to take the E train.  Perhaps it can be a bit sketchy at 5:30 am for a person of my description but one can choose the car, walk between them to another and if need be sit outside the conductor’s door.  Thus far, my experiences have been uneventful.  Last week, I left home at 6;:30 am and by 8:10  am was standing at the entrance to the TSA pre-check line and there was exactly NO ONE there other than myself.  I was the sole, only person in any direction.  That experience: all alone in one huge airport security check-in line is unfathomable.  At moments like this, my first reaction is awe and joy and then the old childhood-fear-of-left-behind-rapture surfaces for a nano-second.

 

Ever astute reader A sent me the following article, which coincided nicely with my planned trip to Chinatown.  So I visited this little shop and while inside photographed the product.    I arrived as it had just opened for the day’s business; it smelled wonderful.  There were already 7 people waiting to pay $7 for a pudding or red bean curd glob with ice cream on top, in an appealing fish-shaped waffle.

http://www.boredpanda.com/taiyaki-fish-ice-cream-cones-taiyakinyc/

One of my favorite bloggers with a life-style presence inserted her ‘favorite bra’ between putting up beans and weeding the garden.  This fits that sort of segway.  For a very long time have looked for tubeless WC rolls. Have always thought they made lots of sense. but where I shopped no one had them until now!

According to a report from USA Today, while it may seem fairly innocuous, Americans have tossed out a lot of those cardboard tubes each year — and it really adds up.

The 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced annually in the USA account for 160 million pounds of trash, according to Kimberly-Clark estimates, and could stretch more than a million miles placed end-to-end. That’s from here to the moon and back — twice. Most consumers toss, rather than recycle, used tubes, says Doug Daniels, brand manager at Kimberly-Clark.

 

A friend with a house and pool in The Hamptons.  ‘Where the wealthy go to play”.

Usually am walking East on this street, but when I walked West I saw this box attached to a pole.  it had been there all along, I just had not seen it.

Stepped out of the train at a new-to-me-stop and discovered this informal wall of names for those who perished September 11, 2001.  Clearly someone typed the names out on address labels and laboriously put them on the tiles.  It happened to be the weekend of the remembrance so I was doubly surprised.

which is the main reading room at the 5th Avenue location of the City library.  What a magnificent building. May the universal concept of a library, that lending of books is free,  endure forever.  This reading room is nearly the size of a football field – how ironic we use that comparison and open to all. More trivia, the lions guarding the 5th Avenue entrance are named Patience and Fortitude.

As I was unable to ‘borrow’ the official images, find them via this link.

http://nyclovesnyc.blogspot.com/2013/01/rose-main-reading-room-of-new-york.html