Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday, and I won't say which one (not because the number is too high but rather because it's not for me to say).

Every now and then dad used to joke — or half-joke — that he didn't expect to live past 55. He passed that some time ago and is still going strong as they say.

He might now joke that he's living on borrowed time. I like to think that he's accrued this "extra time" fair and square for a host of reasons and memories and that he's owed it. And a lot more besides.

Love you, dad. Happy birthday.

School Daze Update

(NYC - Battery Park City: World Financial Center Plaza, originally uploaded by wallyg. Photo used under Creative Commons license.)

Battery Park City and Tribeca has been abuzz lately with school stuff. As I mentioned a little while ago, our two downtown public elementary schools, PS 89 and PS 234, are some of the best in the city. That lure plus the incentives provided by the City and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation offered after 9/11 really did revitalize the neighborhood. Revitalized the heck out of it. PS 234 is way over capacity — even with its new annex — and the principal of PS 89 has had to get crafty with the building plan to carve out new classrooms.

With the recent news that many kids had been put on the waiting list, the issue seems finally ready to boil over (again). Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer came to the PS 89 auditorium yesterday for an open forum on downtown overcrowding. I didn't get a chance to go, but my lovely wife did attend for a while. It was packed, she said. Stringer vowed to work to get all the kids who wanted to go to 89 and 234 in their doors. Small problem, though: there isn't any space. Ideas were floated, such as commandeering more space in the buildings (though not much is left), or bringing in trailers as temporary classrooms. Someone also suggested that Stuyvesant, the nearby high school, lend some of its classrooms for PS 89, but the principal of that school was on hand to regretfully point out that they're squeezed as well, so no dice. As it stands, then, PS 89 will have 6 Kindergarten classes next fall (which comes out to about 25 or 26 kids per class), some of which may very well be coloring in the stairwell.

The trailer approach is typical in that it's short term. As a friend of ours from the building pointed out, these Kindergartners aren't likely going anywhere, which means that the year after these schools will be struggling to find space for all their first graders as well as their new crowd of five-year-olds. The solutions sound temporary but, as is often the case, the problem isn't.

That same friend from our building suggested that parents hold meetings on the latest construction site —where another luxury apartment building is beginning to rise — right across from PS 89. Perhaps if the big real estate developers can't make their money, the city government will finally feel the pressure to do some sound city planning.

Battery Park City is back; now it's time for the City to pony up.

The City at play

The New York Times recently published a feature story on the city's best playgrounds (best according to the Times anyway). Our own Teardrop Park made the list, which, though it certainly should be on the list, is somewhat unfortunate because now the secret is certainly out.

In any event, for those who have a hard time imagining what kids in NYC actually do (besides slinging their pants low and spraying graffiti all over), I suggest having a look at the Times's slide show of some great spots to let Q and The Boy loose. We've been to the first on their list, what they call the Jane Street Playground and what we call the Water Playground, and the second is where we unwind every night.

Not a bad place to spend your early years, all in all.

The Big 5

The Boy turns 5 today. The gifts have been trickling in from all over, from family, friends, and his babysitter. And though his party won't be for another week, we gave him the present from us, too. Since he's such a big kid now, we hooked him up with a skateboard (with skulls on the bottom, of course), a new fire-red helmet, and pads for his knees and elbows. He's been asking for a skateboard for awhile now, so after pulling it out of the bag and holding it like a freshly caught fish for only a moment, we went right out to the park paths to try it out.

This photo just hints at him; he's big and full and funny. And five.

Happy birthday, son. Mom and I are proud of you and love you. Welcome to the last year you can count on one hand.

Now that's a close marriage

The New York Times recently featured a Buddhist-teacher couple, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, who have never been apart in in their 10 years of marriage. And by never being apart they meant never being more than 15 feet apart. The Times reporter, Leslie Kaufman loves to add perspective throughout the article, such as:

If they cannot be seated near each other on a plane, they do not get on. When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door. And when they are here at home in their yurt in the Arizona desert, which has neither running water nor electricity, and he is inspired by an idea in the middle of the night, she rises from their bed and follows him to their office 100 yards down the road, so he can work.

They eat from the same bowl, read each page of each book together, the works.

No doubt this article is designed to get readers to thinking about distances of all sorts in their marriages. (Sure did the trick for me.) The story so intrigued David Plotz, now the new editor at Slate, that he and his wife decided to try out the fifteen-foot rule for a day. And Slate filmed their "stunt" (as Plotz called it) for their video site SlateV. The short piece goes like this:



Like Plotz and Rosin, my lovely wife and I have our own professions and places to go to practice them. Unlike Plotz and Rosin, our professions are deeply distinct, and at the moment I spend weekdays 80 miles or so from my wife. Our experiment of this sort, then, would probably be more dramatic and more revealing to both of us than it was for them.

As Rosin notes toward the end of the video, spending the day so (literally) closely together left them little to talk about when most wives and husbands, us included, do become close at night. It's that expansion and contraction of distance that provides some of the good kind of mystery, I think. Besides, you can't reliably measure the closeness of a marriage with a piece of tape.

Now I'm off to the train and to think about my wife.