Found Squirrels: Playground Squirrels

So my friend M has a blog all about swingsets in the greater Seattle area. I'll admit I thought it was strange at first, and then I remembered that I have a whole damn blog about one type of rodent so I'm not really one to judge. Also his blog turns out to be kind of cool.

Anyway, in doing research for his own blog, M came across some fodder for my blog!

Behold! Some sort of crazy squirrel-themed playground item! I don't even really understand what this is, or what one is supposed to do with it, but it's awesome. The squirrel outlines are quite well-done; the one on the right even looks like he's about to hug me! And the one on the left is delightfully fat!

All in all, an excellent bit of playground equipment. I wish more playground designers would realize what a great theme squirrels make for a playground (not to mention a blog!).

Easter Weekend

Well, I think it was around this time last year that I started this terrific little blog. It seems to me my first post was about kosher soda and my second post was about Easter and how it's a real non-holiday for us non-family-oriented non-churchgoing types.

It makes me wonder, are holidays pretty much just for kids? If all of a sudden the human race lost the ability to reproduce would we cease celebrating holidays once there was nobody under the age of 20 left?

But I digress. I wanted to post about our little trip out to Forest Hills Gardens in Queens. I was still recovering from whatever cold/flu took me down last week and B was already getting sick so we weren't really up for a big, exciting Saturday.

We rode the bus out to Forest Hills Gardens, which is a nice little "cottage community" in Queens. It was really, really hard to believe that we were still in New York City. Does this look like New York City to you?

No, no it does not. This looks like a quiet little street in Saint Paul, Minnesota! We thought it was just crazy. We walked around for a long time, just generally exploring, and staring in wonderment at all the single family detached housing! And the yards! And green grass!

They also had this cool relief sculpture erected in honor of men who had lost their lives in World War I. I'm a sucker for relief sculpture, so here it is.

And of course we saw tons of squirrels, but most of them were way too quick for me to take a good picture. We did run across one little guy in front of the local library who was chowing down on a nice cache of nuts somebody had left for him. So I finally got a decent picture of a squirrel.

Although as far as squirrels go, he's not the cutest speciment. You know how the judges in the dog shows have to judge the dogs based on their ear length and their gait and all sorts of other things? Well I feel like I'm becoming an expert in judging squirrels and I have my own set of criteria regarding fatness and bushiness of tails that has to be met before a squirrel can be deemed highly cute. Somebody please sign me up to be a judge at the next American Rodent Club competitions.

Folks all say we are the cutest two!

I want to blog today about the very first squirrels I ever loved, a pair of chipmunks called Chip and Dale. You may be familiar with them as rescue rangers, but my sister and I came to know them first as just simple chipmunks whose only goal in life was to store up enough nuts for the winter and annoy Donald Duck as much as possible while doing so.

We watched a lot of Chip and Dale as kids. I think we had a copy of one of Disney's Chip and Dale collections so we were very familiar with several of their shorts, almost all of which involved poor Donald Duck. I've never seen anyone else so tortured by squirrels!

One of my favorites was the one in which Chip and Dale live in Donald Duck's chimney and they come down into the house to steal pancakes from him. The episode ends with the assistance of a rubber cement pancake, some well-placed butter, and a not-very-politically-correct depiction of Donald Duck as a person of Chinese descent.

Another one of my favorites is Out of Scale, wherein Donald Duck is building a large village for his toy trains in his backyard. Everything has to be "to scale" and he removes Chip and Dale's tree because it's "out of scale." They take up residence in one of the tiny model homes and Donald decides that they are "just right" to live in the house.

I really got a kick out of Chip and Dale living in that tiny house and eating tiny sandwiches. I still get a kick out of it, actually. Quite a few of these shorts are on YouTube.com now, which has allowed me to revisit my youth in a pretty great way. I've even discovered some Chip and Dale shorts that I hadn't seen before!

Is this where my deep love of/appreciation for squirrels comes from? Or was this just my first outlet for my love of rodents in general? I'm not sure, but I do know that if anyone feels the need to buy me some Chip and Dale-themed items they should feel free to indulge said need.

Your Favorite Book Undoubtedly Didn't Make The List

WARNING: There will be no mention of squirrels in this particular post. Please check back in the future for more squirrelly goodness.

So I recently found out from a fellow blogger about a little game being played in the blogosphere wherein one lists the ten books that have "most strongly influenced their world views." I've looked at a few of these lists on other blogs, assuming that I would see a lot of Thomas Friedman on there. But no, oh no. These are true literary people; people I would not even dare to engage with in conversation at the bar. I didn't even recognize 75% of the books on their lists!

So I'm making my own list, but with a few changes. I'm not quite sure how to interpret "world view" and to me the phrase conotes some understanding of politics, and I am so not interested in politics. So I'm going to list the books that have just influenced me in whatever way. Also, I'm only listing seven, because that's all that came to mind. It's my blog.

Books That Have Most Influenced Me (in chronological order, as in, the order in which I read them):

1. What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry
There is one section in this book where they build a house and I spent hours staring at it trying to figure out how the hot water and cold water pipes related to each other. There was a some sort of goat who was Farmer Alfalfa, and I pictured him as my grandfather, and I remember there was a cat in a hardhat sitting in a bulldozer on one page and that was my mother, in my mind (she's an engineer). As a small child, I definitely came up with ways to relate everything in my life to what I had seen in this book.

2. The Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Did I mention that I have an active imagination? I'm pretty sure that from the age of about 7 to the age of 12 I pictured myself as a pioneer girl just like Laura. If I was walking to school then I was walking through the winter blizzard of 1878 to the one-room schoolhouse. If I was baking a cake then I was baking with Ma in her kitchen. If we were driving to Seattle in the Subaru station wagon, then I was Laura in the back of a covered wagon making my way to a new homestead. I'm not sure if this book influenced me more because I grew up in the West and so felt like I was a real pioneer (nevermind that my relatives arrived in Washington via train, not covered wagon).

3. The Source by James Michener
This was the first book that showed me what I refer to as "the long view" and gave me a deeper understanding of how incredibly small each one of us is when you examine the entire history of humanity. Man's relationship with God is also examined closely in this book, and although it's fiction it certainly influenced the way I think about the history of religion.

4. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
I went through an Amy Tan phase and read pretty much everything that she wrote before 2000. This, I think, is actually her best book, better than Joy Luck Club, but doesn't lend itself well to movie-making. This book makes the list not because it's great (I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't call it great literature), but because of the reincarnation theme that becomes apparent about halfway through. I had always believed in reinarnation, and I remember this book being one of the first I had read to address the issue and make it a major plot point. Basically, this book told me, "Hey, you know that crazy thing you think about people being reborn when they die? Well other people might believe it too, and they might even write books about it! How about that?"

5. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
I would say this book was influential in my life because of the writing. I will admit right now that I read this book when I was way too young and because of that I really didn't totally "get" the story. What I love about this book, and what makes it important to me, is the writing. I would say this is the first time I had read a book and was really blown away by the writing. Arundhati's prose is just gorgeous, and I was stunned. Later I would discover Jhumpa Lahiri and would be even more astounded, but Arundhati Roy will always be the first author whose writing really meant something to me as an art.

6. Some Random Book About Religion That I Came Across In The School Library
I wish I remembered the title of this book. It had a section on each major world religion, and I remember this was my first real taste of Judaism. I reached the section on Buddhism and was really impressed with the tenets of Buddhism. I liked it and decided maybe I should be Buddhist. And then I read the part about how Buddhism is basically an atheist religion. And I was shocked and said to myself, "But I can't NOT believe in God!" And then I realized I could. And thus began what was probably about seven years of atheism for me. I no longer consider myself an atheist, but I think those seven years or so of atheism were really important for me spiritually. Having grown up in a church I always just believed what they told me to believe and I think it was really important for me to walk away from God for a while, and to have to work through spiritual questions on my own. Ultimately I came back to my belief in God, and I think my relationship with Him is stronger for it.

7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I read this last autumn while we were on our honeymoon. When I finished it at Grand Teton National Park I threw the book across the tent, frustrated. All I can say is that this book feels very important when you read it, the ending offers no resolution (some may disagree), and I still feel as if the book has a very important point that I am missing. I often think about this book when I'm on the treadmill or on hold with technical support at work or when I'm hanging out on facebook. I'm still trying to figure it out.

So that's my list. I'm sure later today I'll recall some important book that I neglected to put on my list, but that's okay. These are the first ones that came to mind so they must have some importance.

I promise a return to posts about squirrels in the near future.

The Panorama

I've been sick for almost a week now, so we haven't had any outings or squirrel-related adventures in about that long. I have been meaning to write about our little trip to the Queens Museum of Art, which is located on the old World's Fair fairgrounds that I wrote about a while back.

The Queens Museum of Art is small, and doesn't have much of interest to me. It was mostly modern art when we went. The major draw, though, is the giant 3-D map of New York City, which they refer to as "The Panorama."

It's a three dimensional map of New York City, all five boroughs. Some of the buildings are quite detailed, and I believe they try to keep it up-to-date now (except for the WTC Towers you see here; apparently they are keeping those in place until the new structure is completed on that site). This was originally built for the 1964 World's Fair.

It's very cool, and is kept in a large room with a walkway all around so you can get different angles on everything. Unfortunately, our part of Queens is pretty much right in the center of the thing so we couldn't get a close enough view to really pick out our neighborhood.

This was a really cool little exhibit, and I think anyone who has lived in New York City for a decent amount of time would enjoy it. I'm glad we dragged our butts out to Flushing to see it. Now I'm interested to see if my geography nerd friends chime in with interesting facts about this map.

Squirrels on Banks

So this past weekend we went to the Brooklyn Flea Market. I enjoy flea markets because I just love looking at all the old random stuff. I never buy anything. But where else could you find the guide to the USSR's pavilion at the 1934 World's Fair or postcards from 1942? That's the kind of stuff I enjoy.

We also went to this flea market because during the winter months it's held indoors, in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, a landmark now turned to condos. The market is in the main hall and the food vendors are downstairs in the vault. It's a very cool setting for a flea market.

So of course I was there to try to find squirrel items, because that's pretty much what I'm always doing. The flea market disappointed me; not one squirrel was to be found there. The bank, however, had many!

Some of you loyal readers will think that this squirrel looks awfully familiar, and the rest of you will scroll down the rest of the way on the page (unless you're on Google Reader, in which case you are lame) and note that I found a squirrel almost exactly like this on an old bank in Manhattan just last week.

And that wasn't the only squirrel! There was also a squirrel in the interior, right in the staircase!

So has anyone else ever noticed that squirrels frequently make an appearance in the sculptural program on banks? It makes sense, since they are the savers of the animal world, but I still think it's a little weird. I did some googling about this and couldn't find anything on the Internet about it. I'm going to have to look for more examples of this phenomenon. Maybe I'll start up a catalogue or something and become the renowned expert on squirrels in sculpture.

New Calvary Cemetery

So our new apartment (not so new anymore, I guess) is located pretty close to a cemetery. Now, I come from the West, where cemteries aren't quite as old. I actually grew up pretty closet to a cemetery, but it's one of those that have only flat headstones, no cool sculpture, and not much character.

I am strangely attracted to cemeteries. It may be because there are squirrels.

But I also am intrigued by the sculptural programs and general types of art that surround death. This cemetery, New Calvary Cemetery in Queens, is Catholic (I think) and has particularly excellent sculpture. The addition of the votive items brought by living relatives makes it even more interesting.

Some of the sculpture is in really good shape, and some of it isn't. But even the stuff that isn't makes it all the more interesting. This is one of my favorite views from the cemetery.

The building on the left is the Empire State Building and the one on the right is the Chrysler Building. There are some truly fantastic city views from this cemetery, but this is not a place to rest for eternity if you actually want peace and quiet. They've built a huge freeway over the cemetery and it creates a constant stream of noise.

I'm hoping to explore this cemetery, and the others in the neighborhood, a little more in the coming year. Did you know that there are more dead people in Queens than living people? It's true. The real question, though, is how many undead are there?

Squirrel Stuff I Own: Squirrel Earrings

So I obtained this new squirrel item an embarrassingly long time ago, and it took me forever to post about it, in large part because of the new job, but also because getting a decent picture was a bit difficult.

Yes, these are my new squirrel earrings! My friend A sent them to me, and I just about shat my pants when I opened the package!

THEY ARE CARRYING TINY ACORNS, PEOPLE. IS THIS NOT AMAZING?!?!

I'm clearly still a little overexcited about them. This is my first piece of squirrel jewelry and I'm wearing them right now. It's the perfect squirrel accessory because, unlike a squirrel shirt or squirrel tattoo, these earrings don't scream, "Hey! I'm a crazy person!" No, these are tasteful and small and every once in a while someone might notice and think, "Wait, is that girl wearing squirrel earrings? And are they carring TINY ACORNS? Wow, how awesome is she! I should make friends with her and buy her lots of beer!"

So thank you A, for giving me the gift of tiny acorns and beer.

Found Squirrels: Bowery Savings Bank

Sorry to have let this blog fall into hibernation for so long! I ended up becoming employed again, and it appears that full-time employment takes up a lot of time! I also somehow found a job that does NOT involve me thinking about squirrels all day, which is a pity, really. If anyone hears of such a job please let me know.

Anyway, I am still alive and scampering around New York City, as is my habit. I now work in an area that has a huge squirrel population, and yet my first post back from my break is going to be about an inanimate squirrel.

Here he is! I found him on the Bowery Savings Bank, which is right by Grand Central. This is on the back of the building, on 41st Street, and I'm surprised I noticed it since he's placed so high above eye level. It's a terrible picture, and I apologize for that. This is actually above the back door, and 41st Street right there is a little weird and I think people were really confused about what I was taking a picture of. Anyway, despite the fact that this squirrel is a little creepy, it warms my heart that somewhere out there someone cared enough to carve him into a bank.

Not Squirrel Related, Sadly

The final season of Lost premiered tonight, and we celebrated in a fine fashion.

Yes, that's right, I made Dharma Initiative beer! Who says I'm not crafty? Our Lost-obsessed guests certainly seemed to enjoy it.

More squirrel news coming soon, I promise!