At the main entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue, you can hardly hear yourself think for the sound of the parrots. In the late 1960s, the urban legend goes, a crate of Argentinian long-tailed green parrots, known as Quaker Parrots, cracks open like an egg and the birds escape, eventually to make their way to the 1861 monumental brownstone arch built by Richard Upjohn, the builder of lower Manhattan’s Trinity Church.
Here, at the leeward side, because even on the warmest days there is a New York Harbor breeze, and in winter, Arctic at times, the parrots have made their nest out of the wind. In recent years, during renovation, the nests were destroyed and for a season they made do elsewhere before moving back, in exactly the same place they’ve been for decades, out of the wind.
I confess to a touch of Schadenfraude when, during the racket of the birds at 10 a.m. Saturday, the last day of Week Eight, the security guard waves M and I through to join the Sketch Walking Tour. I can’t be sure if he is the same guy who stopped me (See Running for Your Life: Week Four) on my first trip to the entrance. Now, though, I see that there might be a reason for him to be a bit grouchy (if not trigger happy). There must be dozens of birds up there, squawking like there’s no tomorrow.
Running for Your Life: Rest Stop: A Tornado Hits Home
M and I recognized B from our years skate-dancing at Prospect Park’s Wollman Rink the day after the tornado hit. In the old days, she ran the rink, but for the past several years she’s been on grounds, and I often exchange waves with her during my alternate-day runs.
Today, with a push broom half her size, B is vainly trying to clear the park’s north end road of debris.
“Careful, be sure to look up,” she says, pointing to the tree canopy above. “Watch for loose branches.”
We are crossing the road, not fearing the debris, rather the bike racers, who are zipping along the roadway, picking their way through sizable branches, twigs and mounds of leaves. Runners, too, the serious are legging it up the north-end hill. To our left is a giant uprooted tree, drawing rubber neckers to its underside like a Mayan calendar.
Today, with a push broom half her size, B is vainly trying to clear the park’s north end road of debris.
“Careful, be sure to look up,” she says, pointing to the tree canopy above. “Watch for loose branches.”
We are crossing the road, not fearing the debris, rather the bike racers, who are zipping along the roadway, picking their way through sizable branches, twigs and mounds of leaves. Runners, too, the serious are legging it up the north-end hill. To our left is a giant uprooted tree, drawing rubber neckers to its underside like a Mayan calendar.
Running for Your Life: Week Seven
Catching up to real time; Week Seven is September 12-18. Note to self: When climbing the Prospect Park stone staircase to the manmade lake overlook the second and third weeks in September, wear a sturdy hat, if not a helmet. Squirrel-bomb acorns threaten serious head-beaning. No joke.
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My foot hurts like hell. On Saturday, the end of Week Six, I bought a new pair of Brooks Defyance at JackRabbit in Park Slope, Brooklyn. When I examined the old pair, the sole seemed to be holding up well, except for a spot on the left shoe, which had worn down to a thinnish layer where on the ball of my foot a callus had hardened. I’d been wearing the Brooks brand for years, usually for over a year before replacing them. But these I’d just purchased in April, a few weeks before the Pittsburgh Marathon. Perhaps, I thought, there was something wrong.
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My foot hurts like hell. On Saturday, the end of Week Six, I bought a new pair of Brooks Defyance at JackRabbit in Park Slope, Brooklyn. When I examined the old pair, the sole seemed to be holding up well, except for a spot on the left shoe, which had worn down to a thinnish layer where on the ball of my foot a callus had hardened. I’d been wearing the Brooks brand for years, usually for over a year before replacing them. But these I’d just purchased in April, a few weeks before the Pittsburgh Marathon. Perhaps, I thought, there was something wrong.
Running for Your Life: Week Six
Finally, temps are in the 70s. Payback for those punishing August runs. The first day, Sunday, before my shift at the New York Post, I shoot for an hour, five minutes: 1:05. My lucky number, and a seven interval up and down the stone step stairway to the overlook of the manmade lake in Prospect Park. When I catch my second wind, halfway through the staircase interval, I’m Cameron’s Avatar, on Labor Day weekend 2010, and I feel my leg like it was before my blood clot. Like a 20-year-old, with a memory of one.
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The bellmen had the best jobs and the hearts of the prettiest maids. Front line with the tips, big-forehead handsome and beefy. Career hotel keepers held the manager posts at Chateau Lake Louise, an historic Canadian Pacific Railroad hotel, a mansion on a glacial blue lake, during the summer of 1976, but college students flocked there to fill the menial ones.
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The bellmen had the best jobs and the hearts of the prettiest maids. Front line with the tips, big-forehead handsome and beefy. Career hotel keepers held the manager posts at Chateau Lake Louise, an historic Canadian Pacific Railroad hotel, a mansion on a glacial blue lake, during the summer of 1976, but college students flocked there to fill the menial ones.
Running for Your Life: Week Five
It’s ghastly hot and humid, the forecast is calling for a brutal week, when I have the dream:
I’m at a place of supreme importance, although I’m not sure exactly where. I’ve set aside an ice-cold bottle of Champagne for toasting the event in which high performance is required. I’m sitting in what must be a dressing room next to a famous person (athlete?) who also has a bottle of Champagne. Both bottles are morphed into the shape of a leg and a foot; large, magnum-size.
I put on socks and lace up my skates. I have packed very carefully for the journey to this place, but have forgotten, inexplicably, to pack my hockey gear. I think to put on my hockey pants, but then see that I’ve left them at home. Briefly, I think I can dash to Brooklyn and get them, or wing it in some other fashion, but immediately reject the idea as absurd.
Then, in a panic, I wake up. It is 8:15, on Sunday, Week Five, half-way to the marathon.
I’m at a place of supreme importance, although I’m not sure exactly where. I’ve set aside an ice-cold bottle of Champagne for toasting the event in which high performance is required. I’m sitting in what must be a dressing room next to a famous person (athlete?) who also has a bottle of Champagne. Both bottles are morphed into the shape of a leg and a foot; large, magnum-size.
I put on socks and lace up my skates. I have packed very carefully for the journey to this place, but have forgotten, inexplicably, to pack my hockey gear. I think to put on my hockey pants, but then see that I’ve left them at home. Briefly, I think I can dash to Brooklyn and get them, or wing it in some other fashion, but immediately reject the idea as absurd.
Then, in a panic, I wake up. It is 8:15, on Sunday, Week Five, half-way to the marathon.
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