Walking in the City

Come with me, walk with me

Walking in my city

Una passeggiata, you and I 

I had a lot of time for pondering during my road trip across the country. Somewhere along the way, probably after being pulled over by a very kind state trooper in South Dakota who let me off with a warning, I began to analyze my tendency to speed. It’s in my blood, quite honestly – the Wheelers are known for having lead feet. But I still wanted to parse out the specifics.

My uncle Gene, having married into this crazy family, has mentioned before that the motto seems to be ‘pass just one more car.’ (Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him say this, or if I’m only recollecting my aunt Carol quoting him, so take it with a grain of salt. Wheelers also have a tendency to improve upon quotations. No offense meant, Aunt Carol.) 

Regardless of the origination of this quippy phrase, the truth resonates. Somehow, it just feels more comfortable to be out in front with a span of open road ahead and all the traffic behind. Elbow room, even for our cars, isn’t that the American Way?

For me, it seems almost a game of strategy. I feel like a master at tactical maneuvers if I can manage to get around the guy who’s traveling slowly in the left lane before getting trapped behind him when the traffic in the right lane catches up.

So what does this have to do with walking in NYC? Well, without my car, I need an outlet for all my latent tactical skills. Bobbing and weaving around the tourists along with the businessfolk is very satisfying. It’s also good practice, walking with purpose. From a safety standpoint, it can only help for me to look like I know what I’m doing.

Of course, until that glorious day when I can pop out of the subway and have an innate sense of which direction I am facing, this will continue to result in wrong turns. As it happens, looking like I know what I'm doing and actually knowing what I'm doing are two different things. The signs at each exit that tell me which cross street I’ll be popping out onto don’t seem to help. Even the ones that say “NE corner” mean little-to-nothing in my mind. I squint at them and try to think of what meaning they are attempting to convey, and then I give up. Reading maps has never been my forte, much to my mother’s dismay.

It would be of great benefit if I would sit down with my smart phone and figure out how to make it show me the map relative to which direction I am pointed. But until I do that, I continue to wing it. The result, which has been at least a daily occurrence, is that I bluster off in the wrong direction for a block or so until I realize that the street numbers are going the wrong way, or the Empire State Building is actually *behind* me, not in front. Flushed and frustrated, I zip back around and arrive at my destination a few minutes later than expected. It’s all a part of the game, and this tactician will just have to get better at it.

The Saga of Packing

We’ll pack up all our junk and fly so far away

Devote ourselves to projects that sell

The process of packing is always horrendous. You’d think I would find a way to get out of the annual habit, but here I am, another year, another move (another suitcase in another hall?). This will be my first move with a moving van – wish me luck…

Packing makes me hate having things. For this brief period, I wish I could live an ascetic life. Late-night, chaotic packing makes me say desperate and near-blasphemous things to the empty air, such as “Would it be so bad if I just never baked anything again? I wouldn’t even need this box of cookie sheets and muffin tins, in that case.” Don’t worry, a small voice of reason still exists in my head.

Speaking of talking to myself, I knew that I reached a point of desperation in my packing when my self-talk started using outdated nicknames. Pull it together, Katie Lou. Do the Next Thing. Stop dawdling. By the end of that day, my personal preference for Katrina had at least negotiated a compromise, and my interjections were addressed to K (my solution to navigating the process of switching to my full name during college. For the record, Katie is in limited use, only for those who’ve been pre-approved).

Of course, packing and moving things to storage didn’t have to be so terrible. I could have sought help. I had many offers of help. But it was tough to know how to let others help me. I personally had to handle everything as it went into boxes, because I was sorting what should go to NYC, what should go to Goodwill, and whether anything should go back to Oregon on my road trip to be stored in my parents’ garage. I did take an impressive load to Goodwill for donation, but we won't talk about how much of it was originally Goodwill purchases.

Organizing as I packed made the process take even longer, and then I dawdled further by cleaning the house in spurts as I went. Had I focused on the packing, I might have had enough done to take loads to storage at a reasonable time of day. As it was, I did unload one carful with the help of friends, whom I recruited in a sneaky way by having them over for a game night/goodbye party and casually mentioning that my car was full of boxes… The next big load, however, happened at midnight, so I was on my own for that, hoping all the while that I wasn’t waking up the friends who lived above.

The last day of packing was supposed to be Saturday. In an ideal world, Sunday afternoon would have been devoted to cleaning and touching up paint. When I got back from church and jumped back into the fray, I soon realized that the remainder would take me too long on my own. I had small but awkward furniture to deal with and those boxes of final items that just don’t fit well together. I had also run out of packing tape, so everything was a jumble. My goal became simply to get things over to storage, where I could sort it out on Monday before hitting the road. But I could see that I would not have time to load and unload what would be two trips and also finish my cleaning. So I broke down and made my panicked phone calls.

Laura Schmidt, bless her forever, heeded my call. She deserves a special recognition for giving me exactly what I needed to get through that last day on Brittany Court. After recognizing the desperation in my voice, she dropped everything and came to my rescue. I met her at the door in full ISTJ catastrophe mode, promptly bursting into tears. Her response was perfect – she gave me a hug, stepped back, and asked if I was hydrated. I whimpered out “um, well, I *sniff* don’t know.” “When did you last drink water?” she clarified. Since the answer was “at church this morning,” she made me stop and take a drink and then got down to business. That’s the way to do it. Offer comfort and then get practical. This pulled me out of what was threatening to become the depths of despair. I called my landlord to set up a later time for the walk through, and then Laura and I both drove our cars over to storage. After unloading, she came back with me, helped load up a few last things, and whisked away the empty, unwanted boxes.

I finished the cleaning under the watchful eyes of my landlady, who came over early to give the new tenant a second look at the kitchen, which was still being cleaned by yours truly. However, the diligence paid off, and the full security deposit was refunded. Bidding farewell to the house, I managed to catch the last few minutes of Amy Heck’s goodbye party before calling it a night.

Those final, jumbled bits somehow made more sense on Monday morning, and I was able to leave my boxes in an organized pile. The packing saga will continue on Saturday as those boxes and my odd collection of furniture go into a moving van and across six states to my new home.

New York Public Library

For the civilized world accepts as unforgivable sin
Any talking out loud with any librarian
Such as Marian - Madam Librarian

 

One of the upshots of visiting the campus in February is that I learned a thing or two about what to expect as far as research resources that the CUNY website will not tell you. Though I cannot verify all of this information, this is a cobbling together of what I know from the mouth of current students, faculty, and maybe just a hint of Wikipedia.

Once upon a time, the CUNY Graduate Center was located in Aeolian Hall, a building next to Bryant Park and thus looking at the New York Public Library from across 42nd street. Because of this, CUNY did not put much effort into compiling a high-quality research library. The ease of access to NYPL's resources made it unnecessary. The school has since moved, and therefore has its own library, but that library is not much to speak of. 

Because of this history (and this is where hearsay enters the story and I cannot be blamed if this turns out to be apocryphal), the Graduate Center students have a special privilege to apply for a library card that allows access to otherwise non-circulating materials at NYPL. I also heard that we can apply for study carrels at the public library, which would be amazing. The Graduate Center, for all its strengths, does not seem to boast of much study space. Considering I will probably have the world's smallest apartment, I may find myself craving study space as I never have before. 

In honor of this possibly inaccurate but interesting story, I paid homage to the midtown Manhattan location of NYPL while on my visit. I might be hanging out with this guy pretty often:

... so long as these* don't kill me first:

*Sycamores/Plane Trees. I didn't know I was allergic until experiencing a massive sneezing fit accompanied by streaming eyes in London as I walked through Holland park to get to Holy Trinity Brompton for church. Oh... maybe that's why they prayed for healing of someone's hayfever during the service. Hm. Three years later and I may have just realized that I was missing a prophetic word thanks to my unfamiliarity with certain British-English vocabulary...

A New Adventure

These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it
New York, New York 

August 28, 2013 - the day that Katrina begins her PhD program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York! 

CUNY (pronounced cue-nee) will be my academic community for at least the next five years as I study History in Early-Modern Europe. I will specifically focus my work on the history of Christianity in France during the Revolution (late eighteenth century into the early nineteenth century).

I am excited to take on this adventure as a step towards my ultimate goal of teaching as a college professor. Some day, as Dr. Wheeler, I hope to bring France back into the discussion in history of Christianity courses. In the meantime, I'll work on my studying and writing, teach World History, and plan to get myself back to France at some point for archival research.

Stay tuned for stories of school and of what is undoubtedly going to be a beautiful and challenging adjustment to living in NYC.