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Yesterday morning’s rent check marks the 119th rent check we have written for our apartment in beautiful uptown Astoria, which means that next month, when we write check number 120, we will have lived in the same apartment for ten years.

It’s a pointless question to ask, “how do you know when it’s time to go?”, because the real answer, the only one that counts, is “when the money runs out.” We live in three rooms (living, bed, kitchen), 350 square feet, second floor, back of the house, view of the Triborough Bridge, the landlord’s backyard and garden, and the backyards of our neighbors.  Our previous two apartments together were studios, the first a mid-sized one in Philadelphia, the second a closet-sized space on the Lower East Side, so the thought of being in an apartment where you had a whole other room that sat empty while you sat in another room doing something else was exciting.  Now we look at the ten years’ worth of stuff accumulated, the stuff we have not yet moved into storage, the stuff that could fill a bungalow quite cozily, and we think, we have to go.

Except, of course, we can’t, at least not here.  Back in 1994, when we met with the real estate agent who was helping our landlord rent the apartment, we told her we were looking for a place with a rent of $500 to $600.  She took us to various small, dark, scary apartments, and then she brought us to this one.  Enough space, big kitchen (I had yet to learn that square footage is meaningless if you don’t have workable counter space), views of Manhattan, walkable shopping, subway around the corner.  We’ll take it, I said.  The landlord wanted $750.  “Don’t even think about it,” said the realtor.  We met him halfway, at $675.  “I still think you’re paying too much for this apartment,” sighed the realtor as we handed her a check for the first month’s rent plus security deposit.  Maybe we were, but in exchange for ponying up, we got a terrific landlord and landlady, who were enthralled by our newlywed status, who gave us tomatoes and peppers from the garden in summertime, and who didn’t raise our rent for the first four years we lived here.  Now we are paying $1,000 a month in rent.  We have the best deal in town.  Were we to move from this apartment into another one of comparable size, we can expect to pay, at minimum, about $1,300 for the privilege.  This means that when the time comes to go, we really have to go.

Thus starts the dance in my head.  Step forward, This is my home.  Step backward, Get me out of here.  One, two, love it here; three, four, out out out.  On good days I walk around the city and absorb the energy pulsing up from the sidewalk, propelling me and 7 million other people through space and time.  On bad days, I huddle and race, holding my breath until I know the worst of the bottlenecks are behind me.  On good days Lloyd and I go to the movies, or he accompanies me to the farmer’s market, or we go to the park. If the weather is nice and the crowds are amiable, it is easy to feel like we are a part of a larger picture, that the city is spreading out its best for us, inviting us to marvel at its hundred hundred little marvels, like Patchin Place, the little street in the West Village where E.E. Cummings lived and worked; or Prospect Park, where you walk through a narrow, dark, shady path, cross under a bridge and reemerge into the most open, beautiful green space you could imagine in a city; or my beloved Fort Tryon Park, with spectacular Hudson School-views of the river and a Heather Garden so beautiful, quiet and sweet that it is almost beyond imagining that such a space is in Manhattan, half an hour from midtown.  On bad days...well…

December 23 was a very bad day indeed.  It was my last day at LuthorCorp before heading to Philadelphia to spend the Christmas holidays with my parents.  I was brooding.  I was too tired for Christmas, missing my recently-deceased grandfather, feeling a fresh round of misery because it was two days past what would have been his 83rd birthday.  In addition, I was feeling quiet and thoughtful because the previous week I had read a Hartford Courant article about and which orionoir had written and linked, about twin sisters, one a psychiatrist, the other suffering from schizoaffective depression.  It was a terrific article, fascinating, occasionally funny, thoroughly heartbreaking, and it made me realize that the more one learns about mental illness, the more one realizes just how much we don’t know.  I thought about this article, as I did every morning for a week, as I rode the escalator out of the Grand Central Station subway stop, as I listened to a homeless, schizophrenic, possibly psychotic woman harangue all of the white men riding up the escalator with me as neo-Nazis trying to rape her mind.  Every day, the harangue was different, but my thoughts were the same:  this is somebody’s daughter, maybe somebody’s mother.  Where are all of the outreach people the NYCTA claims to have on staff to help homeless people get the help they need?  Why isn’t anybody doing something?  Why am I not doing something?

On the 23rd, she was still there, crying out that John Ashcroft was trying to steal her thoughts, but she wouldn’t let him.  I started turning over the same thoughts...then I heard the guy on the step behind me, parrotting her words right back at her, loudly, shouting her down.  I stood perfectly still, wondering what was coming next.

She kept yelling, seemingly impervious to the guy behind me.  He did it again, in a snotty teenage voice.  He’s mocking her, I thought.  As he talked, there was another voice, a high-pitched female giggle.

“John Ashcroft—“ said the homeless woman.

“I’m a Republican,” yelled the guy.

His wife/girlfriend giggled again.  “Why do you want to do that?”

“Because I’m a Republican, and I think she should shut up.”

“Why?” The woman was still giggling, and she had a whiny edge to her voice that made me feel like piano wire was wrapping itself around my head.  “It’s a free country.”

“Yeah,” said husband/boyfriend.  “It’s a free country, and I’m free to tell her to shut up.”

It started deep inside.  It was like the famous “Click!” of the 1970’s, the moment when feminists realize for the first time that they are feminists, except this was less a click than a snap, something breaking apart rather than coming together.  In my heart I knew that only trouble would come from this, but, officer, there was this snap.  I turned around.  They were both dressed in business attire. He was wearing aviator shades.  She was about 5 feet tall.

“That was really brave of you,” I said, “fighting with a schizophrenic like that.”

“Hey,” he said.

“No, really.  Obviously she made a choice to be sick, and to be here, and to purposely ruin your commute by suffering, but you really showed her!”

Wife/girlfriend glared.  “You need to mind your own business,” she said.

“Well,” I replied, “when you pick a public fight, you make it everybody’s business.”

I had resolved that once I had said my piece, I would stop, because the one thing I hate about your garden-variety New York City fight between strangers is the bickering aspect, the desire to get the last word so strong that anyone unfortunate enough to listen to you is treated to profanity-laden versions of “you are!” “no, you are!” So I turned back around, which was just as well because a) we had reached the top and b) before I’d made it to “everybody’s”, the guy had already told me to shut my fucking mouth.  As I walked toward the main concourse, I heard him continue on, as once again wife/girlfriend giggled for him to stop, continue to hurl more words, every version of every epithet that could contain “ugly” or “fucking.” I think a comment was made about my ass, too, as well as to my obvious frigidity AND lesbianism.  (At least I give the appearance of versatility.) It was not the words I minded nearly as much as the fact that this was going on during rush hour, so as he yelled, people turned to see who he was yelling at, so I was treated to everyone around me swivelling their heads, Busby Berkeley-style, to see the target.

I should have had adrenaline on my side, and for about 30 seconds I did, but it was instantly replaced by sadness.  What had been accomplished by all of that?  Who did it help?  Not the homeless woman.  Not the guy, or his companion.  Not anyone who had had the misfortune to listen to us.  Certainly not me.  I went to work, spent the day listening to customers yell at me, went home as quickly and quietly as I could, flung myself on Lloyd and cried get me out of this fucking city, please!

And yet, and yet, and yet.  Last week Lloyd came home from his temp job at Great Financial Behemoth, LLC, where he works with executives and partners in the firm, and told me about a conversation he had with two of them, guys who commute in from fancy suburbs in New Jersey, both of whom said, with venom, that they hated New York, only come in to work and then get the hell out, they don’t understand people who come in on weekends, why would anybody want to do anything here, because they sure don’t, and god, why would anyone live here?  And my back went right up.  I wanted to go to work with him the next day, invade the personal space of both of these guys and say just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?  If you hate working here so much, why don’t you get a job in Metropark and leave this city to the people who want to be here?  Now take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! And get the hell off my lawn!

How do you know when it’s time to go?  What do you do when it is?

Dear friends,

Lloyd and I are both fighting something off tonight, so the long-winded bloviating will have to wait until tomorrow.  Apologies, apologies.

Until that time, please allow me to share with you two really good things…

Although it’s already in my photo album, I am posting this picture of my street during our first real snowstorm of 2003-2004.  Everything looks pretty with a fresh coat of snow on it, of course, but there is something about my street that I just love in a snowstorm.  On overcast days the neighborhood is suffused with a bright greyness that makes everything look sharp and soft at the same time.  When you add snow to that, the whole neighborhood just looks bright, glowing, lit from within.

A few interesting trivia points about this picture:

Yes, I stood in the middle of the crosswalk to get this shot—and yes, that is an oncoming car.

The red brick house behind the trees, the one with the bay windows, is our apartment building.

The overpass carries both freight and Amtrak trains to Boston, Springfield and points north.

The church, which you can see through the overpass, is the Church of the Immaculate Conception on 29th Street and Ditmars Boulevard, and can be found on page 807 of the AIA Guide to New York City.  It is a lovely church, and the bell tower is grand and dramatic.

One of the good things about fighting something off is that we don’t have to waste our time tonight on idle pursuits such as dusting or doing dishes, and thus can spend our time enjoying our Firefly DVD box set.  If you were a fan of Firefly and you still haven’t forgiven Fox for not doing right by it, then snap this set up, if you haven’t already.  If you’re not familiar with it, and if your sole impression of Joss Whedon is “that guy who makes the silly vampire shows for the kids,” then shake the cobwebs and free your mind, baby.  It strikes me as unfair in the extreme that Firefly didn’t even air for a full season, but Gunsmoke was allowed to run forever.

Yet Another Reason to Thank Lloyd:  Two of the last people in the New York City metropolitan area who hadn’t yet seen ROTK saw it this morning.  Funny how 3 1/2 hours flies when you’re having fun.  And I was having fun, if you define fun as “crying like a baby at the displays of fellowship, fealty, melancholy and discovery depicted therein.” My face must have been shining like a diamond, because the people leaving the theatre during the credits gave me a wide, wide berth.  I blew my nose, dried my tears, took Lloyd’s hand and together we emerged into the grey rainy light of Steinway Street.  We stopped at Rizzo’s for thin-crust Sicilian pizza, our usual post-movie ritual.  We walked hand-in-hand down 30th Avenue.  I had the strongest urge to start singing “The Boy Next Door,” but thankfully I did not.

Round about Astoria Boulevard, I said, “Well, that was really beautiful.”

“Yes, it was,” said Lloyd.

“One thing, though,” I said, “anything else we should watch today should be really silly and/or dumb.”

“Of course,” said Lloyd.

“I mean, really silly.  No life lessons at all.”

“Sure.”

“Gratuitous boobies would probably work, too,” I said.

“Oh,” said Lloyd, “those are never gratuitous.” Bless his little heart.

In the end we gave gratuitous boobies a miss, in favor of our New Statesman videos, starring Rik Mayall as Alan B’Stard.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Thanks, Lloyd.

Yet Another Reason to Yell at Google: Someone hit my page based on the search for crispy creem lady magazine.  As my friend Marge said, Homer, I don’t know what you have planned for tonight, but count me out of it.

The bittersweet just keeps on coming at PTMYB:  As I mentioned yesterday, I finally got to break in my new copy of the beautiful Lands of Plenty:  Authentic Sichuan Recipes Personally Gathered in the Chinese Province of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop.  I have several Chinese cookbooks, some of which I even cook from semi-regularly (like The China Moon Cookbook by the late Barbara Tropp), but in this one, I think I’ve found something from which I could cook regularly, on weeknights, even.  This is a beautiful, special book.  Fuchsia Dunlop is a writer and East Asia specialist for the BBC World Service.  She came to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, in 1994 on a British Council Scholarship at Sichuan University.  While there, she and a friend were allowed to take private cooking lessons at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine.  After completing her course at Sichuan University, she dropped in at the culinary school to say hello to her chef-instructors, who invited her to enroll in the full-time professional course.  She became one of the few women, and the first Westerner, to complete this course.  She is a peerless cook, a thorough scholar, and an enthusiastic connoisseur of this noble and glorious cuisine.

When we came home today, I was loaded for bear, all ready to tell all of you to run right out and buy this book.  I wanted to wax rhapsodic over the braised chicken with chestnuts that I made for dinner last night, chicken and chestnuts made fragrant with ginger, scallions, double-black soy sauce, brown sugar, Shaoxing rice wine (sherry works as an admirable substitute, by the way), and half a pint of the rich turkey stock that I made and froze on Thanksgiving weekend.  This is not only one of the nicest things I’ve ever made, it was also one of the easiest, with none of the exhaustive prep and frenetic last-minute activity that tends to scare people away from stir-frying.  I started writing.  I went to Amazon to pick up the link.  I blanched.

Don’t get me wrong.  The reviews were stellar.  But one of the reviewers issued a caveat:  Most, though not all, of the recipes call for Sichuan peppercorns.  I remember my friend Sue telling me that the U.S. government has banned the import of Sichuan peppercorns due to the presence of a canker in this year’s crop that ravaged orange groves in China and has the potential to do so here.  The reviewer said that the ban could be in place for decades.  I went to both the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration websites, at the end of which I felt like I had been poked repeatedly in the head.  Nothing about a decades-long import ban.  World Merchants in Seattle said only that that they would be out of stock until the new crop came in, at the earliest.  Penzeys, which has carried them for years, did not even mention them.

The question may be asked:  But Bakerina, can’t you just substitute black or white peppercorns for the Sichuan pepper?  Well, yes, you can, in the same way that you can substitute parsley for mint:  you will still get something good, but there will be a noticeable difference in flavor.  Sichuan peppercorns are their own creature.  They are spicy, not overly hot, but with slightly mouth-numbing properties, and have a distinctive, vaguely camphor-like aroma.

I would still recommend that you pick up Ms. Dunlop’s book, if not for cooking, then for the exhaustive research and beautifully-written annotations to the recipes.  There is much in here to make you smile.  The following information, new to me, made me glow on the inside:

The 23 flavors of Sichuan are:  homestyle flavor; fish-fragrant flavor; strange-flavor; hot-and-numbing flavor; red-oil flavor; garlic paste flavor; scorched chili flavor; tangerine-peel flavor; Sichuan pepper flavor; Sichuan pepper and salt flavor; hot-and-sour flavor; fragrant fermented sauce flavor; five-spice flavor; sweet fragrant flavor; fragrant wine flavor; smoked flavor; salt-savory flavor; lychee flavor; sweet-and-sour flavor; ginger juice flavor; sesame paste flavor; mustard flavor; salt-sweet flavor.

The 56 cooking methods of Sichuan are...all right, I won’t list all 56 cooking methods, but they include some shimmering, evocative terms, including “clear-steaming”, “pot-sticking”, “red-braising”, “hanging oven-roasting”, “deep-fry and receive” and my favorite, “explode-frying,” a way of fast-stir-frying, in very hot oil, foods like kidneys and poultry gizzards cut into crosshatch, so that they explode into flower-like shapes.

Thankfully, I still have some Sichuan peppercorns of my own, a little less than half a one-quart mason jar’s worth.  They are still pungent and flavorful.  I hope that by the time they are gone, I will be able to buy more.  It is entirely possible that I won’t, that it may be 20 or 30 years before I will ever taste them again.

Dear friends,

The good news is that I am in cookbook love.  With the gift certificate that one of my boss fellas gave me for Xmas, I picked up some goodies, including the wonderful, wonderful Lands of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop, and tonight I got to test-drive it for the first time.

The bad news is that I waited until I was thoroughly exhausted before sitting down to write about it, and as a result I have lost the ability to edit, rewrite or speak English.

The good news is that I know that all I need is a good night’s sleep and an early morning show of ROTK tomorrow, and I will be back in form, and when I am, I will be more than ready to tell you why this book is worth its weight in pepper.

In the meantime, since I am still too compulsive to leave well enough alone, here are some more pieces of evidence that I am pleased as punch with my ability to download my pictures off my new camera…

Picture #1 is the view from my front stoop, facing southeast (albeit in a wide-angle view; objects, such as the intersection of 29th Street and 23rd Avenue, are closer than they appear).  As I pressed the shutter, I heard a loud noise behind me and, startled, I moved the camera.  When I looked at the thumbnail, I saw that the brick building across the street had this interesting stripy moire pattern.  I was dead pleased with myself.  Look at that, I said to myself.  I am an accidental genius.  If I had tried to do that on purpose, it never would have worked.  Just wait till I show this to all the cool kids!

Then I downloaded it and discovered that it was a thumbnail-specific effect, and that once you enlarge it, a brick wall is a brick wall is a brick wall.  Nice work, genius.

I still like this picture, because it feels friendly, much like my street.

Picture #2 is of something I found on yesterday’s field trip.  I was so enamored of it that I went back after my regular Saturday morning trip to the Greenmarket and bought two bottles of it, along with a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome 2002-03, one of the real pleasures of winter for us, and a bottle of Lindemanns sour cherry lambic, which, if you like lambics, is one of the nicest things you will ever drink.  (If you don’t like lambics, then, uh, never mind.)

The Grail Ale, incidentally, is brewed by Black Sheep Brewery in Yorkshire.  It is actually a decent ale, a bit bitter but with a nice lingering finish...which, oddly enough, sounds like “Nnnnnnnnnni!”

Lloyd and I had planned to see ROTK today, but decided instead to postpone until Sunday so that we could sleep in.  This left me with a nice unstructured day to do whatever I wanted.  I decided to catch the bus to Jackson Heights and poke around in Indian groceries for a few hours, but first I read this little heartbreaker of an article in the New York Times about the hard fortunes of my beloved Pittsburgh, where Lloyd and I had been planning to move until we learned just how broke the city was, and how uncertain its future is.  If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a city when its primary industry disappears and the tax base shrinks (40% of city property is tax-exempt, half of city-based corporations are tax-exempt, and 2/3 of the workforce commutes in from the suburbs and is subject only to an annual $10 occupation tax), well, this is it.

After that, a nice field trip was in order, so I walked around the block and got on the bus.  Imagine my surprise to discover that the bus did not go to the heart of Jackson Heights, but rather to LaGuardia Airport.  I took this as a sign that I needed a nice long walk, and after several bizarre detours that will be shared at another time, I found myself on Steinway Street, the largest and most famous shopping drag in Astoria.  I stopped in an Indian grocery on 30th Avenue, where I found a tub of bitter melon, and, inspired by aethele’s beautiful photographs of broccoli romanesco that she took in Germany, I asked the nice man behind the counter if I could get a picture.  He was more than happy to oblige.

When I got home, after first popping into Manhattan to have some arepas for lunch, I decided that I’d had enough bitter for one day and was ready for some sweet instead.  Since I have received a lot of e-mail about the ginger fingers, I thought that I might as well make a batch of them and take a picture to a) convince the fence-sitters that these are definitely worth the effort and b) remind myself that even without a bakery, I am still a bakerina.  (Go ahead, bake a batch.  You know you want to.)