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Unreasonably Good Donuts
Sep 11, ’11
9:01 AM
Sara guided us to the waterfront yesterday afternoon to visit Williamsburg’s weekly flea market-style food fair Smorgasburg. There were lots of tempting food stands, each one filling a very specific gourmet niche. Out of all there was to offer we sampled mole tempeh tamales and smooth Basque gazpacho from Txikito, but the best in show were the killer donuts from DOUGH, a donut only bakery on Fanklin Avenue.
We ordered one cafe au lait, one toasted coconut, and one candied blood orange for us grown ups and Bannack got a dollar’s worth of cinnamon sugar donut holes. I’m going back because we still have to try lemon glazed poppy seed, hibiscus, or passion fruit with chocolate nibs.
The cupcake revolution is over, long live the donut.
Redeployed: Afganland VI
Sep 10, ’11
10:02 AM
My old friend Sgt. Butler redeployed to southern Afghanistan this summer. We’ve been in touch lately and he’s send me some great photos of the rural world he’s been living in and what exactly he’s been up to. We even got to video chat this week for almost and hour. It’s still surreal to be able to open a little portal from New York to Afghanistan so my sister and I could talk to Kenny as he ate his gross cafeteria dinner.
Kenny is in the part of the army they used to call PsyOps. That started sounding little too video-gamey so they changed it to the innocuous sounding “4th Military Information Support Operations Group” even though they do the same work they used to. And although I like to imagine Kenny participating in some Manchurian Candidate operation or dosing village water supplies with LSD he says what he actually does is pretty boring, “I watch TV and movies on my computer all day.” He would occasionally get assigned as an RG-33 driver when the Special Forces guys need to get Kabul. Kenny says:
The first time that I was put on a mission to drive I got in and told the truck commander, that’s the guy who sits shotgun and calls the shots, that I had never driven before he had me switch out with someone else. Then they just kept putting me on missions as the driver and eventually I just had to drive.
But lately his group has been focused on preparing to wrap up the bigger Afghanistan mission and that means training local police forces so they can take over when our army finally leaves. Ken sent these photos of some of the local police recruits. Check these dudes out!
Imagination Playground
Sep 8, ’11
8:39 PM
Sara, Bannack and I made it to Imagination Playgound today. It’s a very well designed little stop on the South Street Seaport, not terribly far from the Cooper where Chris is attending school. The park is split into three sections, a sand box, a set of massive blocks and a little water park. Bannack played until he was drenched and literally couldn’t lift himself off the ground.
In spite of his best efforts He only played with about 30% of what was available to him in the half acre or so of playground. I guess that means we’ll just have to play here again.
Champagne Tennis
Sep 7, ’11
8:39 AM
We spent the afternoon with cousin Jill sipping Belvedere cocktails and playing Nerf tennis in Moët’s spaceport headquarters. Her company sponsors the US Open so they built a miniature tennis court in front of the bar, just big enough that you don’t have to put your drink down to play.
Bannack was pretty good at swinging the racket like an ax and yanking at the net but preferred running the ball back to the server to return it so I out-scored him pretty early in the match.
Before heading back on the train to Brooklyn we all got wide slices of pie at a little hole in the wall in Chelsea. We were just a few doors down from The Leo House, the small nun-run hotel that our family used to stay in for our first few visits to New York with the Carroll College plays.
Seeing the front door triggered memories of eleven year old me eating cold porridge from the early morning breakfast buffet, talking with my mom in the drizzly shabby back garden and asking the elevator operator for a lift to the sixth floor please.
“Are you sure?” He asks me from his worn out stool.
Suddenly unsure, I nod, “Uh huh.”
He closed accordion elevator grate and pushed the brass handle forward starting our slow and silent climb to the top floor. I took one step out of the elevator and knew immediately that I didn’t belong. The nuns lived on the sixth floor. I met one in the hallway and without a word she returned me to the elevator. I can’t remember if the operator apologized to her or not but it was an awkward ride down to whatever floor I was supposed to be on.