Theory of Picture Hanging

Some time ago we bought a run-down brownstone townhouse in a nice Brooklyn neighborhood. Constructed in 1895, the house has suffered bouts of neglect and limited maintenance. Miraculously, almost all of the plaster detail has remained intact as has the original woodwork including the staircases, doors, windows and moldings. All but one room has been stripped of the parquet flooring. Four of the six fireplace mantles have Victorian wooden escutcheons and the other two are carved bluestone. Good bones throughout.

We bought the place with fair notice of the amount of work required to meet code as well as meet our own standards. Soon after we moved in, the renovations began. Using contractors for the garden level apartment rental and the heavier roofing, plumbing and electrical work we handled everything else ourselves; everything from joist to joist and wall stud to wall stud. We’ve mastered flooring, tiling, skim coating, cabinetry, finish carpentry and refinishing.

I’ve discovered along the way that I curse almost as much while working on the house as I do when I bake. (My wife thinks I have renovation triggered tourette syndrome – I deny this.) I also discovered the Theory of Picture Hanging (“TPH”). TPH holds that for each picture you hang on a plaster wall, there is an incalculable number of linearly connected consequences resulting in unforeseeable theretofore-unexposed issues.

Basis for the Theory:

1. Select the wall where the picture will hang.
2. Select the smallest fastener that will handle the weight of the picture.
3. Using the lightest hammer in the toolbox, gently tap the fastener into the wall.
4. Step away from the wall and watch helplessly as a hairline crack snakes its way from the site of the fastener all the way up to the crown molding at the vertex of the wall and ceiling.
5. Curse.
6. Remove fastener.
7. Begin crack repair.
a. Using a small tool, open the crack slightly to create a suitable “key” to accept the repair material – in this case 90-minute setting joint compound.
b. As you delicately excavate the hairline crack, a 4’ by 4’ sheet of plaster releases from the lath and crashes down onto the floor.
c. Curse.
d. Examine now exposed lath and discover behind it a long abandoned vent stack that has been wicking moisture from the roof down to the site behind the lath for forty years resulting in loose plaster.
e. Begin lath removal and vent stack repair.
i. Using a small pry bar, slowly, carefully remove each piece of lath from the framing studs.
ii. Expose vent stack and notice that building directly abutting your house has used the vent stack area in your common wall to run their live, non-armored electrical conduit.
iii. Confirm that conduit is live by licking thumb and forefinger of right hand and touching conduit.
iv. Curse.
8. Contact building department to file a formal complaint against bastard neighbor.
9. Address bastard neighbor’s concerns about building department shutting off his electricity by laughing into telephone receiver.
10. After bastard neighbor discovers the only way to have building department turn his power back on is to correct violation, neighbor arrives at door with 12-year-old bottle of single malt.
11. Good neighbor’s contractor allowed access to electrical problem for repair.
12. Contractor is not a skilled cursor, uses only one language.
13. Contractor finishes work, good neighbor’s power restored, work resumes on crack.
a. Water leak appears to have originated at junction of vent stack and roof.
b. Go up to roof and wiggle vent stack to test flashing.
c. Flashing disconnects from vent stack exposing a hole in roof two feet in diameter.
d. Curse.
e. After almost two weeks of cloudless skies, a thunderstorm arrives from the east.
f. Rain falls for three days straight.
g. Plastic sheeting prevents most but not all the water from dripping down the vent stack through the walls.
h. Call roofer to eliminate vent stack and repair roof.
14. Roofer provides reasonable estimate for vent stack repair and warns that entire roof must be replaced otherwise he may have to call building department to report dangerous roof condition.
15. Replace roof.
16. Resume repair of crack.
a. Reaffix lath.
b. Apply wallboard over lath.
c. Skim coat wallboard level with existing wall.
d. Feather sand wall flat.
17. Paint repair to match wall
18. Decide picture would look better in my office.

Tarte Tatin

Making cakes take time, lots of time. Anyone who has tried to bring a mousseline together for a weekday dinner knows about this. I also curse a lot when I make cakes. I recognize this as a shortcoming but my theory is it may serve to keep me focused. Yes, I know, bad around the children, however it could help them to become passionate about cooking. It’s the best rationalization I can come up with on short notice.

As the weather starts to cool and baking doesn’t seem to be such an insane idea I start thinking about tartes; big, overflowing, juicy fruit tartes and berry tartes dripping with sweet sticky flavor. Tartes are incredibly easy to make and so with little time and practically no cursing I can prep and have ready for desert a very presentable finish to a weekday dinner. I can make this freeform tarte tatin and have it ready for the oven in about a half hour after I get home from work. If my wife has had a particularly bad day at the office I can make her all weepy by pulling it out of the oven just as she arrives home. Bad day forgotten, I’m a hero.

Pastry

Cut a cold stick of butter (227 gms) into small pieces. In a medium bowl add 1 cup of flour (227 gms) and a dash of salt and stir to mix. Add the butter pieces to the flour and squish the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is all incorporated. Use your fingers. Add just enough cold cream to bring the pastry together – about a quarter cup (60ml). Mash the pastry hard with the heel of your hand a few times on a work surface to finish it. Wrap it in plastic and throw it in the icebox until you’re ready to roll.

Filling

Peel, core and cut into quarters about three or four gala, macintosh, fuji (in a bind) or granny smith (if desperate) apples. Then cut the quarters into thin slices. Put the sliced apples in a bowl and sprinkle them with a little lemon juice.

Remove pastry from the fridge and roll it out into a large oval about 1/8 inch thick. Arrange the apple slices artfully in the middle. Bring the edges up and around the apples to form an edge. Brush beaten egg on the exposed pastry. Sprinkle a good deal of sugar on the apples and pastry. Bake the tarte on parchment paper on a baking sheet at 425 until the crust is crisp and golden, the apples bubbling and the aroma starts to make you crazy. Serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Go ahead, make someone cry tonight.

Cricket News

In an effort to keep american cricket enthusiasts up to date on important news, I'v included a few items of interest.

Australia still leads England in the rankings with Australia starting a four day match this weekend against Pakistan.

Good Luck to the Baggy Green.

On another shameful note, in response to shocking allegations concerning his behavior while in Mumbai, Muttiah Muralitharan had this to say:





"I have been compelled to make a public statement following wholly inaccurate and defamatory speculation of me by certain sections of the Indian media during the past few days.

These media reports have insinuated my possible involvement in a gambling and match-fixing controversy with which I have no connection. These allegations are shocking and totally baseless.

I have traveled to Mumbai on a few occasions in recent years for official award ceremonies and to attend to family business matters. On one occasion, I met actor Aditya Pancholi who invited me to dinner. Afterwards, we visited Deepa Bar for approximately one hour before I returned to my hotel.

Contrary to media speculation, I have never been introduced to and nor do I have any links whatsoever with a woman called Tarannum Khan, who was apparently a dancer in the Deepa Bar. In addition, this was also the only occasion in my life that I visited this particular bar.

Reports appearing in recent media reports of my close alliance with this bar or the dancer are therefore total fabrications. I have been associated with a match-fixing controversy on the basis that I innocently patronised a bar a few years ago, which I believe is grossly unfair.

These reports appear to be made in express malice and also seem to have the ulterior motive of holding me out to public ridicule and contempt.

Representing Sri Lanka as a cricketer is a truly great honour.

We believe you Muttiah!

Book Review

Orhan Pamuk’s recent novel, Snow, will cradle you along on a snowy journey of unbearable annoyance. In fact, reading the book should put most people to sleep faster than Lunesta.

The story takes place in modern time. A Turkish poet living in Frankfurt travels back to his home village of Kars with the intention of (i) writing poems, (ii) finding god, (iii) solving the mystery of why the veiled girls are all committing suicide and (iv) getting laid. It snows while he’s in Kars. He drinks Raiki in tea houses. He writes poems. He dies.

I’m sure some readers might be intrigued reading a novel about political/religious/social conflict and clashes between the secularist and fundamentalist. Some people need the particular stimulus offered by this type of material. Then again, some people don’t.

The book has a pretty gold seal on the cover announcing it as a New York Times Book Review Best Book of The Year. I’m now convinced that graft and corruption is as prevalent in publishing as it is in American politics. I’m also pretty sure the only reason this lump made it onto the list is because of the timely Moslem extremist characters and subject matter.

I gave it my best shot. I read almost three quarters of the book before realizing it wasn’t going anywhere. In spite of my curse of having to finish what I start, I retired the book to the shelf unfinished. I can no longer punish myself by reading awful books to the end, watching banal movies until the credits roll and attending tortuous plays until the final curtain. I know when to jump and I’m not going to waste quality time with bad writing when there are so many good authors out there.

This is truly an abusive book.

Viva Mexico - Viva la independencia

Here’s a salute to Father Hidalgo and his brave efforts back in 1810 to unite the people of Dolores to start the revolution that ultimately lead to Mexico’s independence from Spain.

Today marks the anniversary of Mexico’s declaration of independence and tomorrow we celebrate the hard won victory over Spain.

Why Not Get A Dog?

We live in a big, old rambling house, within two blocks of one of the largest parks in the city. At least one child resides with us all the time. We have looked after other people’s dogs for short periods without any major disasters. Someone is always home except for vacations. The abundant availability of books, training and veterinary services in our neighborhood would make the transition from dogless to dogged very easy.

Many families have dogs. They don’t seem to object to the obligations associated with their care, feeding, walking, neurosis, etc. If anything, I am a dog person. I pet strange dogs on the street. I’ve changed the diapers of a meat-eating 2-year-old children – how hard can it be to pick up after a dog?

We have cold winters. Dogs still need to walk even when I may not. I can think of a hundred other reasons why not to get a dog.

But, why not get a dog?

That Awful Day

Four years later and the site of the World Trade Center is still just a vast excavation. Looking across from Church Street where the tourists gather every afternoon to take digital pictures of the emptiness, I still feel the sadness I experienced that morning when I first saw the billows of black smoke and orange bursts of flame erupting in such impossible quantities from so high up in the air from the burst windows and gashes in the sides of the buildings.

That morning, I followed a set routine of commuting to the office. I live in Brooklyn and work in Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from downtown New York City. Normally from door to door the ride used to take 50 minutes. I bought coffee at the muffin shop, walked to the subway, rode to my stop at Rector Street and stopped at the Bank of New York Branch on Broadway and Wall Street. I remember walking up Broadway after making the deposit and seeing the armored black SUV parked at the top of Wall Street and thinking, too bad security at the Exchange has to be so tight.

I continued walking up Broadway then cut across Liberty Park to the southeast entrance to the World Trade Center to catch a PATH train. The lower area of the WTC used to contain a large shopping mall. To get to the PATH Station in lowest level of the complex I walked through the lower mall, past the newsstands, NY transit hubs, GAP, Banana Republic, J Crew, flower vendors and then down an escalator. I had no idea what was happening above me.

I remember that I did not have to wait for a train that morning. I walked down to my platform, boarded my train and started reading New Yorker, unaware that a madman was at that time flying a loaded airplane into the side of the building above me. The ride to Jersey is very short – maybe 7 or 8 minutes.

When I walked out of the station in Jersey City everyone was pointing back across the river towards the city. My first thought at seeing the tremendous smoke and flames was that many people had died instantly and that many more would be burned. I also thought that this was a terrible accident involving pilot error or mechanical problems. During WWII a plane had flown into the Empire State Building on a foggy night. I thought this would be a huge cleanup project, maybe part of one of the towers would be closed for repairs, maybe the trains would run differently.

I went up to our offices on the 36th floor and gathered with a group of traders in a room overlooking the New York Harbor and downtown Manhattan. From there we could look directly across the river at the smoke and flames pouring out of the North Tower. Again, we thought it was just a terrible airplane crash. Then we saw the second plane make a sweeping turn around our building and then smash into the South Tower. We all looked at the TV tuned to CNN because we did not believe what we had seen.

I tried to call my wife to tell her I was OK but couldn’t reach her, I called my parents in California and they were already awake and watching everything unfold on TV. The markets announced a delayed open so we made arrangements for contingencies in case we had to move. Our building did not at first call for an evacuation but many people already had their bags and briefcases and were heading home. I shuttled between the room overlooking the towers and the trading room.

All of the Ferries had moved to the middle of the Hudson rather than dock at World Financial. They all sat in a row as if awaiting instructions. When the South Tower fell we gasped or screamed. As the dust and debris cloud enveloped all of lower Manhattan, the ferries moved as one away from the shore and made their way to the Jersey side. I saw grown men - gristly old traders - crying streams of tears, secretaries with their hands over their mouths, some people just shell shocked at the sight of only one of the towers standing. My assistant Carol whose brother worked in WTC was panicked. CNN was also reporting the crash at the Pentagon and speculating about more missing planes. After the first tower fell, our building announced an evacuation. I stayed with a few of the senior officers to close down our markets and secure the floor.

Thinking I was cut off from home, I made arrangements to stay with a coworker, Anthony. Anthony is a big guy who used to play football for Miami. At this point I was unsure whether the country was now at war. If we were at war, I thought it best to stay very close to Anthony for the rest of the morning. We made it downstairs and watched from the garage as the second tower fell. One of the VP’s at our firm lived close by so we arranged to meet at his house. There was so much confusion. While we drove, I remember listening to the radio announcers talking about F-18’s chasing airliners up the Potomac River in WDC, and unconfirmed reports of planes heading to the Capital and the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The police had closed roads near the office leading to the tunnels. Anthony spent more than an hour to make a trip that would normally take about 12 minutes.

We arrived at Steve’s house and made plans for safeguarding the business and the staff. We still had so little information to rely on. All we really knew then was that this was certainly a coordinated intentional act. I tried to leave messages with people to contact my wife. The cell phone service had abruptly stopped when the towers collapsed.

I just wanted to be home with my family at this point. Although Anthony graciously offered me a place to stay, I really needed to get to Brooklyn. One of the drivers at Steve’s house lived in Crown Heights and said if I was willing, he would see about making the trip to Brooklyn. After almost eight hours on the road, past many roadblocks, diversions and traffic jams we got to within a few miles of my house. I walked the rest of the way and will always remember the welcoming sight of my family sitting on the stoop as I walked down the block. I was never so glad to be home.

Even in Brooklyn we could smell the smoldering fires at the WTC. Every now and then pieces of paper from the site would drift down. It was an awful day.

New York closed for about a week after 9/11. We stayed very close to home, cooked, watched way too much TV and tried to stay in contact with our friends and relatives. The neighborhood bookstore turned into the local depot for news, relief efforts and support. At some point, a call went out for crowbars, socks and cigarettes for the guys working down at the site. We hauled all our crowbars out of the basement, emptied our sock drawers and even threw a carton of Marlboros into the pickup truck outside the bookstore hoping somehow these things would save a life, support a rescue worker or at the very least save a smoker from a nicotine crave.

Eventually, they let us back into Manhattan, got the subways running again and after a very long time even restarted PATH service from the World Trade Center site. I still make the same commute. Although now, when I walk through the bare bones construction shell inside the World Trade Center foundation I think about that day and all the lost lives drifting around like so many particles of magic dust.

It doesn’t really seem like four years ago…