Your Moment is Now

Prospect Park was planned out, in the 1800′s, to be a place of natural beauty and wonder in the middle of the city.  As the cities population exploded construction was taking place on some of the finest restaurants and best hotels, Manhattan however was losing space, open space, and the creation of parks such as Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Central Park in Manhattan, was a way to ensure that in the future, New Yorkers would have some where to go to escape the hectic city life, a bit of nature in the metropolis.

The well known designers of the park, Calvert Vaux and Frederick L. Olmsted were pioneers of their time.  The Ravine is a section located in the center of the park, which at the time was a remote area with topographical challenges.  They wanted to construct a man-made version of the outdoors that would resemble the look and the feel of wandering through the remote wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains.  This land was one hundred and forty three acres of rugged space that needed to be cleared and shaped into the man-made wonder that it is today, complete with trails and a waterway running through it.  Due to the thoughtful design and careful planning,Vaux and Olmsted managed to clear away the Ravine, while still maintaining the natural beauty, this does not look like nor feel like a human designed creation.

The mountain scenery and much of the natural landscape and forests remain, and it really does give one the impression that they are far away from the buses, the trains, the taxis and the skyscrapers.  There is even a waterfall flowing into a swimming hole.  For many years, this area become affected by years of over-use, with erosion threatening the Ravine.  However, the Prospect Park Alliance stepped in as the always do, to restore it to its “natural” beauty, preserving it for the escape it has offered to so many people in the past, and the escape from the city hustle and bustle it will now provide for people in the years to come.

For many bringing a child into your home is a wonderful thing. It often requires a lot of preparation; making sure they have room, clothes, food. It is also important to make sure they are safe. When new parents bring their babies home for the first time they have often gone to great lengths to ensure that all the cabinets and doors have safety latches and all the fragile items are safely stored. One area that is not often thought of is the window treatments. There are several things that you can do to keep your children safe from dangerous blinds, as well as preserving your blinds from rambunctious kids.

The concern that comes first and foremost is your child’s safety. Blinds that have very long chords can present a choking hazard if your child were to get caught them. The safest option is to install cordless blinds from Next Day Blinds or adjust them so they will be well out of the way of curious little fingers. Another concern with mini-blinds in particular is lead poisoning. Some brands of vinyl mini-blinds have been shown to contain lead. Poisoning can occur very easily by either chewing on the blinds or touching the blinds containing lead dust and then touching their mouth. It is important to find out if your mini-blinds contain lead by reading the box or contacting the manufacturer and replacing them if they do.

Once your children are safe it is time to move on the windows. Some of the easiest blinds to damage are mini-blinds. Because they are thin and made from either vinyl or aluminum, they bend very easily. Most of them also require a well-practiced technique to move them up and down; which is difficult for a child to master and will probably result in more damage to the blinds. Consider some sturdy wooden blinds or shutters from Next Day Blinds. They are made of much thicker and stronger wood so they won’t break easily, as well as an easy to use opening device.

The next time you do a safety check after your home, don’t forget to check the windows.

When I first visited the state of Virginia on business, I had found a hotel, put away my things, and was ready to spend the weekend resting up for the busy week ahead of meetings.  I received a phone call however, from a college friend who knew I was coming to town, and he had other plans.  Driving and camping plans, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I love the outdoors, but I was really looking forward to settling in and finishing a book I had been reading about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  He reminded me that I could read at home, and told me to pack.  He would be at my hotel door in one hour. 

Now I had read a book by Bill Bryson, about a trek he had taken through the Appalachian Mountains, unprepared, and I was a bit apprehensive about taking off into the woods myself.  I love the smell and the fresh air of the outdoors, but I also love soft pillows and warm blankets.  It was not until later on that night, that I realized how well my college friend knew me as we checked into a fine, a warm and a cozy cabin along the trail.  As we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway, I felt the stress of city life just kind of fade off.  We stopped a bit for a hike, a little birdwatching, and a picnic. 

We found a small spot exhibiting relics and artifacts left behind by the Cherokee Indians, and listened to the tales of an old man sitting in a cafe who gave me a pair of earrings he said, where the tears of the Cherokee.  We talked a lot as we were driving, and he told me how happy he was that he had chosen Virginia as his home, it is the place for lovers after all, he said.  A couple of days passed and we were pulling back into the parking lot of my hotel.  I decided then, that I would extend my business trip for another week, and we made plans to hike back into the mountains, and camp.  Actually camp.  He promised that he wouldn’t tell if I brought just one of the hotel pillows with me.  And with that, I spent the next week waiting for my next journey into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

A trip to Knoxville can be filled with unexpected sights and experiences, so it’s best to stay a few nights.  To find a Knoxville hotel, click here, and spend some time exploring the Marble City.  The city gained its nickname from a number of  quarries that provides the marble for public buildings around the nation, including Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art.  The second oldest city in the state, after Nashville, originated in 1779, just three years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It’s the home of the University of Tennessee, whose sports teams, known as the Volunteers, are so popular that the county’s area code is 865, which alphabetically is VOLS.  It’s also the home of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, which you may wish to visit, especially if you’d like to see the world’s largest basketball, a fixture outside the building that weighs approximately ten tons.  But Knoxville isn’t just for sports fans.  It contains some interesting historic sites, especially from the Civil War, and that includes the Mabry-Hazen House Museum and Bethel Cemetery. 
 
On the list of the National Register of Historic Places, the Mabry-Hazen House Museum may be found on top of Mabry Hill; it’s a Victorian home, containing among the biggest collections of that era’s artifacts in the U.S., including antique furniture, crystal, silver, and china.  The home was built in 1858 and remained home to the same family for three generations, lasting from 1865 to 1987, a period of a hundred and twenty-two years.  During the Civil War, this place was headquarters not only for the Confederate Army, but also for the Union Army, presumably not simultaneously!  Four of the home’s five acres is taken up by the Civil War Bethel Cemetery.
 
The Bethel Cemetery holds over 1,600 Confederate soldiers, three hundred of whom were killed during the Battle of Fort Sanders.  There also Union soldiers here, too, but far less: There’s fifty union soldiers, as well as twenty Civil War veterans buried here.  You’ll find a monument for the Confederate dead that was put up by the Ladies Memorial Association a hundred and eighteen years ago in 1892.  The last owner of the cemetery, a Miss Mamie Winstead, willed the burial grounds to the Hazen Hisorical Museum Foundation in 1989.  You’ll see here, too, a white framed house, which was built in 1886, which was constructed on behalf of a Confederate veteran who, during the Battle of Gettysburg, lost a leg. 
 
The Mabry-Hazen House Museum and the Bethel Cemetery is just one of several historical sites available to travelers in Knoxville.

There are a couple of “first things” I must do when I am in a new city.  If it is a city on the coast, I must make my way to the water…feet go in the water immediately weather permitting, and if the weather is not permitting, a cup of coffee on the closest pier.  If it is big city, I look for the main park, look for the public art.  One of the examples of public art, according to me, is the carousel.  Every city has one, a merry-go-round, and I am not certain if it is the nostalgia, or the carved and painted artistic horses, or the lights and the carnival feel, but I must find them in the city.  There are beautiful carousels on the Santa Monica Pier,  and an incredible one on Navy Pier in Chicago.

There seems to be a history to the merry-go-round, as every one I have come across either in person or online, seems to have been built at least one hundred years ago, are there any new carousels, and if there are, are they so beautiful?  I doubt it.  Just as computer animation has taken over the ideas of Walt Disney, something strange may happen if designers were to start making modern carousels.  There is one carousel with a history that led it to New York, took it away, and then led it back again.  It was created in the city of North Tonawanda, NY by the designers at the Herschell-Spillman Company, during the years of 1912-1916.  When it was completed it was installed in a park in Wellsville, New York.

The Herschell-Spillman Company was the leader in the art of the merry-go-round, many of their works still turning today on Long Island, in Central Park, Brooklyn and throughout the city.  This was a time when the artistry was delicate and precise, along with the kitsch that is the neon lights and the plucky music.  The Wellsville Carousel was taken to Cuba, NY and installed for many years at the Olivecrest Amusement Park.  However it was returned in 1974, and now is on exhibit in the New York State Museum.  When I was visiting the city last summer, I found incredible hotel accommodations at http://www.bestmanhattanhotel.com, and the young man working at the front desk told me about the museum when I mentioned my fascination with merry-go-rounds.  The museum has many different exhibits, this being just one, so find your way to all there is to see at the museum, or you may just want to take a walk through one of the parks, take it from me–you will always find a merry-go-round in Manhattan.

There are plenty of luxurious hotels located in Irvine California that are the perfect start to enjoying the whole Orange County area. Not far from the suburbs of Irvine you will find some great fun at theme parks, Shopping Malls, Golf Clubs and a trip to the beach if you have a day or two to spend. So leave behind all the fantastic amenities like high-speed internet, flat screen televisions, cable and the HBO Channel and get out for some fresh air.

How about Disneyland! It’s not to far away. Disneyland is the only theme park of Disney that was designed and built under the direction of Walt Disney himself. All of the other Disney theme parks around the world were created by the “bigs” at his company. Disneyland was open to the public on July 18th 1955. From the time of its open to its 50th anniversary there had been 515 million visitors who came to see and experience this special world. Presidents and Royalty have come to visit as well.

The idea came to Walt Disney when he spent some time in Griffith Park with his daughters. He decided it would be great to have a place where children and there parents could go and play together. It took sometime for him to make the idea happen but eventually the park came together. There are many fantasy themes within the park. When it first opened there were five areas. Main Street in the spirit of a 20th century midwest town, Adventurland which featured things of the jungle, Frontierland of course western style, Fantasyland which was Walt’s childlike fantasy and Tomorrowland which was a look into what the future might be.

The park has added on four more themes since it opened. There was Holidayland which had a circus and baseball field but it was closed in 1961. Still there today is New Orleans Square, Bear Country with mountain forest that is now called Critter Country. Then there is Mickey’s Toontown which is the theme of the Toontown in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. there is also a narrow gauge railroad that travels around the park.

I was working at a bookstore in Saint Paul when I first heard of David Sedaris.  I was surrounded by a number of young people who read extremely esoteric works of fiction and non-fiction, and were some of the most intelligent, and poorest, people I knew.  Bookstores are always like that, because they attract those rare intellects that see reading as necessary as food, and will sometimes give the bulk of their paychecks to their library rather than their refrigerators.  Like some of my co-workers, I would make angry and embarrassed noises when I was close to the humor section, because it was one of those necessary evils of a bookstore.  Occasionally, writers of merit could work their way out of the category humor and into literary non-fiction.

One of the workers, however, had other ideas.  He saw this as a chance to get some connections in the publishing field, and would spend his paychecks on New York business hotels, where he would rub elbows with the literati during conventions.  We tolerated him the way experimental theatre artists tolerate movie stars.  It’s related, but it’s a degradation of the lofty occupation we all had.  It took a few months before I started to realize that his tastes were actually pretty extraordinary, and I started to think that maybe I should even have a look at this David Sedaris fellow.

He came to the store once to sign copies of his new book, and to give a reading.  I still didn’t know who he was, and hadn’t bothered to skim even the back cover of his books.  We had to give out tickets to the signing, which was unusual for our populist bookstore.  They were expecting a huge crowd.  The tickets were gone in twenty minutes, no mean feat in a city that’s often less than 0 degrees for most of the year.  After the event, which was a smashing success, Sedaris sent us a postcard from Amsterdam.  He wrote something like, Thank you for letting me smoke in your store.  He was a big cigarette smoker at the time, and Minnesota is one of those places where the smoking ban came long after we’d all decided to do the right thing and smoke outside on our own.  So this, more than anything, convinced me that he was worth reading.  If he can charm a crowd here, and blow smoke in our faces, then he’s got something pretty extraordinary.

Stewart was thrilled when he heard that he would be going to Miami, Florida to represent his company’s region during its annual convention and excellence recognition week. It wasn’t that he felt particularly honored to have been chosen for the task, he was simply thrilled that he would be staying in one of the hotels Miami for a week. For the last three years the conventions had been held either somewhere back east or in the Midwest, which Stewart had nothing against, other than the fact these places tended to be cold in October, which happens to be the month his company chose for their annual event.

Stewart wasted no time in inviting his girlfriend Amy who insisted that she be able to bring her friend Denise. Stewert resisted at first and also thought it was a bit odd that Amy would want to bring another friend, but then he realized that he would be tied up with meetings, presentations and other programs throughout most of the day and that Amy would want to investigate some of the city. He decided this was a great option and that it would be better and safer for the directionally challenged Amy to have her friend with her. So it was settled, the three of them were headed to sunny Florida and had no idea the amazing time that was in store for them.

Denise and Amy spent the first, okay, the first three days on the beach before finally decided they needed something else to tell Stewart they had done with their time. So, instead of heading straight for the beach on their fourth day they discovered that there was a Bacardi Building in Midtown. They thought they would tour it and enjoy a few free samples but were surprised to find out it was actually a unique and interesting building. It was part of the MiMo movement, which means Miami modern architecture and was really impressive in its design. This actually turned out to be an extremely interesting experience to share with Stewart later that afternoon. And they were happy to share their newly acquired knowledge of Miami architecture.

So I am decidedly decided against fighting the fact that retro is in fact, in, and furthermore, am starting to recognize its coolness, which means that I’ve finally become as culturally savvy as the characters on sit-coms for children.  That’s all right with me.  There are some excellent dressers on some of these shows, and I would give a month’s salary for some hints on accessorizing, and maybe a short shopping trip with their wardrobe team.  It does bother me, however, when I see that the kids on the shows seem to know more about Manhattan than I do, even though I was born here, and even though I’m not a cartoon character come to life.  But we all seem to agree that retro is in.

This suggests to me that we’re coming to see that some of the best things in life have not changed all that much.  The idea of visiting New York, and staying in a hotel near Central Park, is still an iconic notion that always turns out to be a great idea when it’s realized.  There’s something about it that goes back a few decades, and has the same shine on it now as it did back then.  There’s a lot about New York then that’s appealing to us now.  It might have something to do with the idea of recycling, where ideas and institutions get thrown into the mix, and it might have something to do with how we’re all starting to save things again, and reuse, and that builds a kind of instant nostalgia for the things that vanished. Chock Full O’Nuts is a great example of this.

Most people know it as a kind of coffee.  New Yorkers over 30 recognize it as an important institution, as the homey diners of the same name, that served the coffee, along with a lot of other things.  Their sandwiches were supposedly untouched by human hands, prepared with tongs.  Their nutted cheese sandwiches made every kid feel the first pangs of pleasure from comfort food.  Thankfully, this institution is going the way of all retro things, by coming back from vanishing away.  They’re opening Chock Full O’Nuts eateries all over New York, and in New Jersey, to remind the next generation of the things that made their parents happy, so we can pass it on to our kids, who have so much to teach us about retro.