Winter is for Walking!

I have been away from my blog for some time now, and I apologize to my followers for leaving them adrift - in the sea of holiday shopping, of family feasting, and now - January fasting! We shall get together again.

But, now, on the subject of food, feasting and fasting, have you noticed that Fairway is now on E. 86th St., between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, on the south side of the street? So, now you can get all kinds of olive oil - and taste each one on a piece of Fairway baguette that they have prepared for you (free lunch?). It's altogether a surfeit of food to be sure - but beware the mothers with their strollers! Traffic jam! Never was a place so demanding of one's patience and stamina for politeness!

But, as I did, you may be able to walk home by one wonderful echo of Yorkville's German past.

This is the Zion-St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, on E. 84th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues - in the evening. Constructed in 1888, by a certain J. F. Mahoney. The church did have financial problems in its first decades, but while originally one congregation - the Deutche Evangelical Kirsche von Yorkville - it joined with the Zion-St. Marks congregations from the Lower East Side's Kleinedeutschland after the terrible event of June 15, 1904: the loss of 1000 women and children in the sinking of the General Slocum at Hell's Gate.

There's more to learn, and this may be a part of one of my Spring Slow Walks, which I shall be detailing soon in my newsletter (The Street Teacher Bulletin - let me know if you'd like to be on that list! Send me a note!).

A New Year, New MacBook! New iPhone!

No, I'm not bragging! Not at all. But, well, my equipment was getting old ... and the iCloud is coming - but I also broke my display on my older MacBook when it fell out of my bag after being checked at the courthouse downtown when I was doing my jury duty. So, now, new.

And there's new stuff to learn! But, I may have more and better pictures (see above - what do you think?) to come.