life before starbucks

An Englishman writing in 1890's re Turkish coffee houses expressed pity for the coffee shop proprietor:  A man buys a cup of coffee costing less than a halfpenny, and may remain on the premises for hours, telling stories or exchanging gossip ...The cafe is the pub of Turkey: no alcohol served but Moslems sometimes manage to get drunk on coffee ... (the writer lamented that, unlike in English pubs, women were not permitted in coffee houses).

Just a distraction/tangent from my research on pirates.

Spending cuts warning

A cautionary tale my dad used to tell, long long ago:  Once a man decided his mule was too expensive to feed so tried to wean it from eating.  Every day he gave it a little less feed than he had given the day before.  Then just when the mule was completely conditioned to living without eating, it up and died on him. 

my year in movies

By rough count, I saw over 30 movies in theaters (you know the kind of place: darkened room, other people, large-ish* screen, admission charge) in 2010.  13 French, 5 American, 5 English, 3 German, 2 Italian, 1 each Mexican, Argentinean, Portuguese,and Iranian.  The high French count is because more French films are available here than other foreign ones.  If I had to nominate:  Winter's Bone (American) for real true grit; White Material (French) for totally engaging yet surprising and puzzling experience; White Nights (Italian, 1957) for director Visconti's combo of neo-realism and dreamscape, and Marcello Mastroanni holding the screen already as he always would.  So far this year, one each English, Romanian, & Portuguese. 

*bigger than a tv set, smaller than IMAX

Life before YouTube

From the book Pirates of Barbary:  "Captain Harris [convicted pirate hanged in 1609] had made a full confession, and copies were on sale all over London within hours of his death."  Plus ca  change ... 

Sunday subway ride

Seen on the subway yesterday:

T-shirt = Make cupcakes not war.  (I'm for it, but alas, the two activities are not mutually exclusive.)

Two boys with their father, legs dangling from the seat, kept lifting their feet to look at their shiny new sneakers.

Woman with tired daughter who tried to get comfortable and also kept looking at her shiny new sneakers.

Ah yes!  School starts this week.

Sat. a.m.

I pick up a copy of the Guardian at a newsstand and go to the Whole Foods cafeteria on Union Square. for coffee and scone. I approach a long table occupied by a man who, I notice, has that certain smell and a grocery-store cart full of bulky black garbage bags. I veer to the next table, occupied by a nicely dressed woman, and sit facing the homeless guy.

As I pull the Guardian out of my bag to begin my eat, drink, read routine, he calls across the tables:

- Is that the London Times?
- No, the Guardian.
- You like The Guardian? (I nod.) What do you like about it?
- The book reviews, and news from a different viewpoint.
- Why not the Times or the Telegraph?
- I’m not sure you can get them here.
- I go to the newsstands when they discard unsold papers and try to find the Times.

Meanwhile, the nicely-dressed woman at my table has started ranting to no one in particular (unless she has a hidden Blu-thing somewhere) about school textbooks.

So the smelly homeless man wants to talk about British newspapers and the proper lady rants away. A parallel universe, perhaps?