After the Snow Comes the Sun
Journal days 49 to 53: Life in my little corner of NYC in the age of the Coronavirus
The last few days, the weather, like everything else in 2020, was freaky. Friday was cold, and there were even some snow flurries. Sunday was a glorious spring day with temperatures in the 60s.
I didn’t go out Friday or Saturday — I think that was the first time in ages I stayed inside two days in a row, which made me feel sluggish and grumpy — but I made up for it on Sunday.
I went to the farmer’s market in the morning, which is next to MacDonald Park.
In the photo, the park looks very pastoral. But it’s kind of an optical illusion created by the camera angle. The park is really a narrow strip of greenery right next to Queens Boulevard, which is 12 lanes wide at that point:
Pre-pandemic, you would have seen a lot more cars rushing by. In fact, Queens Boulevard used to be called “The Boulevard of Death”:
According to the City Department of Transportation, there were 72 pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard from 1993 to 2000. In 1993, there were 24, and in 1997, 22. Now, at any given intersection on the boulevard, one is likely to see withered bouquets left for loved ones killed there. One year, someone began drawing chalk outlines to represent for every body lying on the boulevard.
— NY Times, 2006
It’s much better now. The city lowered the speed limit, put fences in the traffic islands to discourage people from crossing in the middle of the block, and made the green lights longer so that older people wouldn’t be stuck in the middle when the lights turned red. There has been only one pedestrian fatality there since 2015.
On the other side of the park is the Sunday farmer’s market:
The bread stand was fully stocked for the first time since the shutdown began — one of many ways that life seems to be inching slowly back towards normal, now that we are on the downside of the pandemic curve.
I bought a loaf of “Health” bread — that’s the bread’s actual name:
The green stuff in the bag is kale, which I bought from another stand at the market. But that was too many healthy things, so I had to balance it out. What could I do but buy a cheese danish?
Later in the day, I went down again to take a walk in the Gardens.
The leaves have come out on the trees, forming green canopies that stretch over the streets:
People were enjoying hanging out in the Garden’s little parks. This one was marked “Private, for residents only,” but I don’t know if the Garden’s security patrol enforces it:
As I wandered around, I sought out gentle hills. I wanted to try to exercise my lungs:
After I finished walking in the Gardens, I crossed Yellowstone Boulevard and walked up some of the hills there:
By the end of the day, I had walked 14,000 steps.
Yesterday I stayed in again — this is not a good trend! Today, I didn’t get out until late. I again crossed Yellowstone Boulevard and walked around the residential neighborhood there, which I’m not very familiar with.
The best thing I saw there was some art deco furniture that I spotted through the window of an apartment building’s lobby:
Today was a historic day, with Dr. Fauci and the other semi-quarantined public health officials answering questions from Senators, and with Supreme Court arguments in the Trump tax-return case. I watched part of the Senate hearings on TV. What Fuaci and the others were saying made sense. I was surprised, and then I realized that was because I had gotten so used to the administration saying things that made no sense at all.
Speaking of which, here’s a brilliant bit of lip-syncing by a comedian named Sarah Cooper, who takes snippets of Trump’s craziest proclamations and turns them into comedy gold:
