Giving Directions

I'm one of those people who get asked directions. A lot. I have been places for less than a day and been asked directions. I was unloading the car at a hotel in Seneca Falls, NY, where my family lived before I was born, and had been there for less than 20 minutes, when somebody asked me directions. I was in (then) Leningrad during the day, my first of two, when some young women approached me, apparently to ask directions (tho I'm guessing, since my Russian is real crappy). That evening, as I was walking around taking pictures, a guy with a little bleeding from his forehead approached me, apparently to ask for some kind of assistance, but, as I say, my Russian is so crappy (and my Russian-English dictionary was in my luggage, which was sent to Paris; always take your interlingual dictionary in carryon) that all I could manage was "I don't speak Russian."

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I don't have pix specific to today's topic, so offer some fotos of miscellaneous things that caught my eye. This first is Arneta's Diner at South Orange Avenue and South Munn Avenue in Vailsburg, across Munn from Vailsburg Park and diagonally across the street from the new school being built across from the park. I want to take progress pix of the construction from that corner. But in any case, its partial stainless-steel exterior harkens back to the golden age of New Jersey diners.

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My brother Brian (whose house in the Houston area sustained significant but not devastating damage from Hurricane Ike) is like that too, it seems. (Now he needs some of those people trained in the building trades that I spoke of September 8th.)

New building (left) cheek-by-jowl with turreted old building in the Roseville section of north Newark.

One day, when I was living in Manhattan, I met him at New York Penn Station, which he found his way to from the airport, and we rode the train down to the Shore for some major holiday. Six different people asked us for information in the Station and on the train before we got to Allenhurst.

Closer view of the turret.

In any case, in the past couple of weeks, I have been contacted by several people seeking information about various matters, including two who were intrigued by something I have shown here that they want to know how to get to, in order to see for themselves. What I did not know myself, I knew whom to ask on a couple of the inquiries. And as for public-transport directions, I was able to handle that myself.

On August 3rd, I mentioned that I have seen enormous Queen Anne's Lace in Nova Scotia, taller than the typical car. In Roseville, I saw these tiny Queen Anne's Lace flowers in a well-trimmed minilawn between sidewalk and curb opposite St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. They are at most two inches tall! This reminds me that I got an official notice from the City of Newark that I needed to cut "weeds" in my side yard that were too tall. Yes, the City of Newark is so problem-free now that it has time to hassle homeowners about the height of "weeds" in their yard. Mind you, as I showed here last October 3rd, those "weeds" are, to my mind, wildflowers that produce thousands of tiny flowers around this time of year, but only at the top. I was afraid that if I cut them low, they wouldn't flower. I cut them anyway, to perhaps 2 feet (half-height). Fortunately, they are starting to flower anyway, from the new, lower tops.

Regular readers may recall that I mentioned August 19th that a guy from Metro Manila, in the Philippines, had offered a translation for the Latin inscription on the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Clinton Park. When I wrote to tell him I had used his translation, he wrote back to say:

One of these days I should visit Newark and this statue. I'm now pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University Teachers College and although I reside in New York, I go to Somerset, New Jersey in the weekends to visit my folks. This should not be difficult to find.

Here are other small flowers very low in a different minilawn between sidewalk and curb, this one on Lower Broad Street just north of MLK. I don't know what these little blue flowers are. You can get a sense of their size from the cigaret butt above the clump on the right. The other things in the lawn, that look like litter, are actually, as I remember, bits of bark from nearby trees. Does anyone know what these little blue flowers are?

I provided him with directions, which were easy. This next request seemed a little more difficult:

I looked at your blog about the oculus and I am intrigued. I would love to see this place. I am unfortunately without a car and living in nyc. I'm not from around here and I cant figure out how to get there. Any advise on what train to take and where to get out?

I wasn't sure exactly where the little pavilion with the oculus, on Divident Hill, is. So I emailed Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of the Newarkology website, who was the guide on the Weequahic walking tour in which I saw that pavilion. He said it was in the Park right near Lyons Avenue, which made it very easy: the No. 107 NJTransit bus goes directly there from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, so all she had to do was get off just where the bus turns off Elizabeth Avenue onto Lyons Avenue. I suggested she ask the driver where she should get out. Too easy.

On January 21st, I showed an outdated phone number (area code 201) on a billboard for the Unified Vailsburg Services Orgagnization atop a building (the "Vector Building", I later noticed) at South Orange Avenue and Sanford Avenue. I alerted UVSO to that blogpost, which included other info about UVSO's work, and the director told me that they were planning to replace that outdated billboard with a new one. On August 6th, I saw that the old billboard is down. I have not as of yet seen a new one, but I'll look.

This is all part of my plan (he cackles maniacally): get people to come to Newark, and they will fall in love with it. Ha-hahahahahaha!

Grand old house in Clinton Hill. I think it is now used by some business, but do not know that for certain.