Back in the Real World

PH and I spent the weekend up in Brooklyn, where StrongOpinions has moved. We were blessed with a beautiful rainbow on Saturday evening as we went to dinner at The General Greene, a really fun restaurant. What was equally fun was watching folks react to the rainbow. People stopped in the street and took pictures with their cellphones, talked to each excitedly, turned and looked at it over their shoulders....kitchen workers came out of the back to look at it. Everyone was grinning madly. One fortyish hipster stood on the sidewalk on the verge of tears, saying "that's only the second rainbow I've seen in my whole life."

People say New Yorkers are too cool by half, not cheerful, don't interact...but give them a rainbow and they'll turn into Pollyannas in...what? A New York minute?

We brought stuff to the new apartment, which, although pretty messy, is a step up from the one in Spanish Harlem. Yeah, she's got to take the A train for 45 minutes to get to school, but the neighborhood is better, and the roommate is much better. We visited Columbia, the Cathedral of St John the Divine, drove around looking for my favorite kitchenware shop (Bridge - it has decamped to north Jersey, darn it), ate a lot of great food, got our fill of NYC traffic jams, and helped her buy a used bike in Jersey City. It was fun to go to Jersey City, and I showed SO the house I grew up in as well as my college, even getting a peek at the auditorium where I gave my senior recital. We even managed to get all the paperwork tended to so that her passport will be renewed in time for her trip to Paris in a couple of weeks. We stayed at a great little B&B in a Brooklyn brownstone about five blocks from SO's place. It's in the midst of a Muslim neighborhood, so we were awakened by the sound of the muezzin doing the call to prayer early in the morning. Made me feel like I was back in Qatar.

In the midst of this, I also did a phone interview for a job in the Windy City. Don't know how that one will proceed, but one of the local jobs seems close to extending me a call, and it's a good fit. We'll see what happens next. In the meantime, I'll start work on Wednesday as Interim Vicar of the parish where I was a seminarian. It is temporary, but it gets me working and gets me health insurance, which is a good thing.

The drive back was okay until we hit Delaware, where it took us almost an hour to go a couple of miles. We dropped off of Rt 95 to a local road and sailed along, staying local until we were just above Baltimore and had to get through the Harbor tunnel. It was good to be home some six hours after we left Brooklyn - should have taken about four - and eating a little light homemade dinner instead of restaurant food and going to sleep early.

No rainbows back home, just prep work for the new job and laundry. Life is good, though. Very good indeed.

P.S. Am I the only grinch who is wishing the wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson's demise would cease? Yes, he was a great entertainer. Yes, he was a troubled soul. Yes, it's a tragedy that he died so young. But there are so many other folks whose deaths are mourned, so many other tragedies that call for our tears, and they all go unspoken in the larger culture. Enough about MJ, please, and let's say a prayer for each soul whose death went unmourned, whose life went uncelebrated. May they rest in Jesus' arms, beloved, peaceful, attended to by the one that matters. And I don't mean by Larry King.