Sunday morning, I took a Montauk-bound train across the south shore of Long Island to visit my “long lost,” far-flung relatives that I found via genealogical research and an out-of-the-blue letter. They have a large, comfortable Victorian house on the shore of the Great South Bay, and I got to meet Phil, his wife, and the young families of their son and daughter. There were a few requisite blind-date jokes about how none of us seemed crazy enough to grift or kill, although we soon learned there had been a death in the family. As Phil wrapped up a tour of the grounds, a friend of his son-in-law stopped by on his way to the taxidermist to show off an eight-point buck he’d shot that morning and loaded into the flatbed of his pickup. The kids climbed in to get their picture taken with it. Everyone was promised a ration of venison later. (It makes great chili, apparently.) All of this made me feel relaxed and more at home, as I felt it was along the lines of something that could have transpired at a gathering of my Dad’s side of the family.¹

Back in the sunroom overlooking the bay, Phil unrolled a batch of age-darkened ancestry charts on a table and weighted down the curling corners with reference books. They’re in German and rooted sometime in the 1200s, the patres familias running up the trunk, the boughs and branches of their families spanning for pages. Budding on a distant terminus are a few of my direct, comparatively recent ancestors: my paternal great-great-grandfather and three of his four children. The absence of the fourth dates the drafting of the tree (or at least that page of it) to the early 1890s. Several double-Manhattans later, Phil and I determined, via a hastily penned and much more concise pedigree chart of our own, that our precise relation is second cousins, twice removed, although we both really like Manhattans, so we have at least that to bring us closer.

Phil’s duplicating his charts for me on one of those wide-format engineering photocopiers and I left him with a large photocopied batch of census forms, and birth, death, and marriage certificates detailing his direct ancestors during their early post-immigration years in Brooklyn. He said that when he’s in New York City next, he may visit the family gravesites at Green-Wood and The Evergreens, which would give us an opportunity to hang out again. I’m sure we’ll keep in touch.

¹ One family reunion a few years back, some of the guys got bored and used a cutting torch to dispatch an entire car into pieces small enough that every family head received a handsome parting gift of a plaque mounted with two keepsakes: a family-reunion photo and a random morsel of the car. [back]

Detroit. Camden. San Diego. Cash-strapped cities want to close their libraries, scale back their operational hours, or cut their budgets. Do we need libraries?

Of course we do, dumbass.

Like everyone else who loves libraries, I wrote a little thing already on the knowledge, access and media that people with little money, such as students or the middle class, can get for free at their local library. Those reasons should be enough to keep libraries open.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately: Libraries have stuff you can’t find anywhere else. Literally. That’s right: Not even on the internet. (I know, right?)

Simply put, not everything gets scanned. As Google Books digests every book and periodical ever published, the printed word has appeared and continues to appear in many forms other than books and periodicals. Who collects this stuff? Libraries.

Earlier this week, Salon senior writer Laura Miller noted that the main branch of the New York Public Library owns museum-quality printed items like a draft of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. But it also collects countless ephemera, including pamphlets, tracts, and lapel pins.

...these are once-mundane objects you’d never find in a museum, but they’re an important part of our written culture and well worth saving. The library collects millions of such items — things, and to store and properly display things, you need a place in the world (preferably climate controlled), not just bytes in the cloud. Every human community creates such materials, and they all need libraries to preserve them.

Yesterday, a friend who’s a university librarian listed some of the things she’d cataloged or ordered that morning for her library’s special collections: a pulpy Ace paperback from 1990, a book about drag races in the 1950’s (self-published by an African American drag racer), a dozen church histories, a dozen archaeological surveys, and an exhibit catalog of photos from the Great Depression. None of these things is ever going to be digitized, she wrote.

Collections like these aren’t limited to big libraries, either. During my genealogical research, I learned that the Asbury Park Public Library holds probably the world’s most extensive collection of printed material on Bruce Springsteen, including “books, song books, tourbooks, magazines, fanzines, Internet articles, academic journals and papers, comic books, selected printed items, and newspaper articles.”

More pertinent to my family’s history, I’ve been tracking down obituaries of relatives who lived in New Jersey. The best source for these is the Newark Evening News, which folded in the early 1970s, but for the preceding three-quarters of the century served as the state’s newspaper of record. (The late journalist and Newark historian Nat Bodian wrote that many considered it “the New York Times of New Jersey.”) Where can one access this resource? Only at a library. In fact, unfortunately for people who live elsewhere or fear Newark, only at the Newark Public Library.

They own the paper on microfilm and, crucially for research purposes, indices of the paper’s articles from 1914 to 1972. For every year in that span, the index has three components, in alphabetical order: general topics, people’s names, and New Jersey towns and cities. These indices haven’t been transcribed, scanned, OCRed or otherwise archived. They aren’t online. They exist only as handwritten pages in beautiful hardbound ledgers, each the size of a shoe box. And they’re available only in a library.

Where have I been? In the past. Genealogy, other than being a word I have trouble spelling, consumes my free time, and some of my other time. I’ve been tracking the men of my surname, from my dad straight back to my great-great-great grandfather. My favorite find? Between my great-great grandparents’ German roots and their modern prosperity in northern New Jersey, they lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn! That’s where I live! The proximity excites me. I may have walked the same streets they did, saw the same buildings. I’d had with me all along a crude map inadvertently encompassing the places they’d been born, married and buried. The house in which they lived was a block from where I buy my groceries.

I try to put myself in their time: Brooklyn, make it about 1880. Currier & Ives printed a beautiful map of the place. Brooklyn was so Brooklyn it wasn’t part of New York City yet. There were no subways, of course. The Brooklyn Bridge hadn’t opened. How to get to Manhattan? Take a ferry. Hey, Whitman wrote a poem on that. Let’s apply the Ken Burns effect and pan for details on these characters!

For an amateur genealogist focusing on late nineteenth and early twentieth century America, federal censuses are the easiest source to mine for family data. But they also can be the most inaccurate, given that the data isn’t verified and any damn-fool family member or neighbor could have given the answers. Imagine the average dad-stereotype answering a knock at the door and trying to remember all his kids’ birthdays (or even how many kids he has). One relative of mine has a different birth-year recorded on every federal census taken between 1870 and 1920!

Of course there’s plenty of alternate information on the web. The best two genealogy sites are the subscription-based ancestry.com and familysearch.org, which is free but run by Mormons. Both contain riches of data but much of it is incomplete or transcribed incorrectly in the print-to-digital process. I’ve found that actual birth, marriage and death certificates, supplemented by smaller stuff like draft cards and social security records, are the brightest coins in the kettle. Many of these items aren’t online, or they’re online but missing crucial details. So I make phone calls, ask questions and take notes. I squint at microfilm frames, spidery handwriting and terrible copies of copies, often all three at once. I reason with bitter, reticent government employees. I chat with old ladies who work at cemeteries who I can tell from their voices wear eyeglass frames from the ’60s. I weigh evidence like a detective: Does a relative’s birthdate on a WWII draft registration card and in the U.S. Social Security death index outweigh an alternate date recalled by a family member who knew the guy?¹ And I love it all.

It churns up a weird mix of feelings. There’s initial shock, as of Robinson Crusoe finding a lone, strange footprint on the shore of his island. Then there’s the giddiness of research, confirmation and compilation. It’s like completing a crossword puzzle with humans as the answers to the clues—but many of the clues are wrong, misleading or missing. I’m stubborn and competitive; I get absorbed with filling in blanks. Ultimately, though, comes the sad realization that what I’m assembling are papier-mâché skeletons made of calendar pages. Many of my relatives were of little note so there’s nothing in those dates but the narrowest suggestions of who these people were, what they did and felt, where they went, what they looked like, how they spoke. It’s as if my whole knowledge of something magnificent and somewhat obscure—rhubarb, say—was based only on reading its dictionary definition. It’s a poor substitute for the real thing. But in the case of distant kin, it’s the only option to remember them.

(illustration from Robinson Crusoe by Walter Paget (circa 1896) via the New York Public Library Digital Gallery)

¹ Yes. [back]

Andrew, Jess and I took part in some more of my favorite New York things and some new ones. We had brunch at the French Roast. We wandered through Central Park where we saw goats in the zoo. At the Brooklyn Museum, we mulled over Judy Chicago’s famous feminist installation, The Dinner Party. Walked the boardwalk and rode the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. Then we returned to Manhattan for a costly dinner of lobster rolls and assorted other seafood delights at Ed’s Lobster Bar and dessert at Cafe Lalo.

Bonus photos: Mine are here and Andrew’s are here.

Andrew, Jess and I took the subway to Williamsburg for brunch/lunch with cocktails at the Roebling Tea Room, followed by a trip to Buffalo Exchange for thrifting. Upon arriving at Beacon’s Closet for more thrifting, we reached an executive decision: Jess would shop and the menfolk would stride briskly across the street to the Brooklyn Brewery for the free tour and, uh, beer. We timed it right, as it began pouring down rain soon afterwards. The tour was static and boring and it turns out the Brewery bottles most of its stuff upstate. I did learn that Milton Glaser designed the BB logo and has a tiny stake in the company. Plus, he gets free beer for life. At least according to our guide. The most of our time was spent quaffing plastic cups of beer from a large, communal table area of the brewery set up much like a beer hall. It was pleasantly crowded with much people watching. I don’t know much about cask ales but I believe the best beer the Brooklyn Brewery makes is a cask ale called Blast. Andrew and I enjoyed several glasses of it. It’s a double IPA, so it’s muscular (nearing double-digit ABV), sharp, hoppy and rich, yet paradoxically but pleasantly smooth, with a nice head. Alas, or maybe not for the sake of my moderation, they don’t bottle it—it’s only available on tap at the brewery and select bars.

Afterwards, we trudged through the rain and made our way to Carroll Gardens for dinner with Allison, Beth and Mike at Frankies, followed by cocktails at Clover Club.

My brother Andrew and his wife Jess arrived late last night from Wyoming to visit me for the weekend. For breakfast, we headed to Clinton St. Baking Company for stacks of pancakes. Whether they are the best in Manhattan is open for debate but the warm maple butter served on the side was welcome. Andrew had the wild Maine blueberry variety and I opted for the banana-walnut. We conducted a lot of browsing and shopping in SoHo and thereabouts, and checked out the Salvador Dalí exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. I enjoyed the unexpected video clips looped on giant screens, representing the best of non-static Dalí: the unfinished Disney cartoon, Destino (completed and released posthumously in 2003), the dream sequence from Hitchcock’s Spellbound and, with director Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou. For dinner, we dined expensively at Craft.

Clinton St. Baking Company

• 4 Clinton Street (between East Houston and Stanton)
• (646) 602-6263
• Meal 42 of 52: pancakes ($12) and a side of grilled chorizo ($4).

Neurologist Oliver Sacks resembles my dad.

Then on Tuesday, The A.V. Club published the following photo of cartoonist Jules Feiffer and I thought, holy cats, Jules Feiffer resembles my dad, too!

When they film the biopic of my dad’s life (Forever Young), I nominate Sacks and/or Feiffer as my dad’s stunt double for the bicycle-accident scene.

I tried making my first pie from scratch most of this afternoon and I botched it. It was a learning experience and I don’t regret it. I called my Mom twice for advice: my Dough Hotline. I felt I was taxing her because she clearly thought she was better at showing how to make pie then telling me, but I found if I asked her 100 questions I could coax the technique out of her.

First dough batch: Dry and crumbly; could not resuscitate.
Problem: I didn’t use enough shortening and the shortening I did use I didn’t cut-in well enough (nor did I cut it in small enough; it was big ol’ chunks instead of the pea-sized bits it’s supposed to be in my mom’s recipe).

Second dough batch: Seemingly excellent consistency at first. However....
Problem: I didn’t roll it out enough before giving up on it. It kept falling apart whenever I picked it up. Also it was super-sticky—I had put the dough-ball in the freezer but only for 15 minutes; I should have left it in there longer, especially given the high humidity in my un-air-conditioned apartment.

At this point, I had to give up because I’d run out of shortening and patience. I ended up tossing six cups of Gala and Granny Smith apple slices, mixed with sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. I definitely could have done something with it—bought a ready-made crust, obviously. Mom suggested additional ideas, such as making a sort of apple crisp or applesauce out of it. But I was in an Ultra Mega-Stubborn mood and dumped everything. My garbage smelled great for the remainder of the day.

I will try again. Because although I can be stubborn, I am also tenacious. Next time I will prepare the crust before the filling, while ensuring I have 16 pounds of Crisco and flour on hand.

My award for the best person to talk to on the phone goes to my 80-something-year-old grandmother. I called her on Sunday for no reason other than I rarely call or write her. I realize that keeping in touch with one’s family is important so I’ve resolved to mend my black-hearted ways. Also, a tiny part of me hopes she’ll leave me more in her will than her disgust and those living room pillows she quilted from the neckties of my deceased grandfather.

First, we established that it was I, Jason—Jason Young—her grandson—Jason—that was calling. A ploy on her part to drive home the fact I rarely call? Or hard of hearing? Grandma is crafty and I will never know.

I was walking home from the grocery store just then, bag full of red-skinned potatoes and fresh dill for soup, so I told her about that. She told me potato soup appears often on the menu at her assisted living facility. She also told me about the annual electrocardiogram she’s scheduled for. I thanked her belatedly for her Valentine’s Day card. She asked unsubtly whether I have a girlfriend. Top concerns of an elder: discussing declining personal health and working early angles to build a legacy of grandchildren.

As these topics suggest, she’s cordial in a grandmotherly way, but I’ve never spoken with her on the phone for more than seven minutes, which is why she gets my award. She reminds me of certain businesspeople I call for my job who have a mildly distracted tinge of voice indicating they can’t talk long because they’re busy or expecting/hoping for a more important call. Which is fine by me because although I talk on the phone at work for a living and I’m good at it, I don’t always like doing it. I cover the facts, maybe crack a joke and move on.

I don’t know if the brevity of Grandma’s calls with me involves her not liking to talk on the phone, too, or if she has stuff she’d rather be doing, for she is a busy and sociable old lady. But I enjoy the compactness of our conversations. I wouldn’t want them to meander with uncomfortable pauses and talk of weather.

My brother Andrew sorted through a box of his childhood toys that had been in storage in our parents’ basement. Highlights included G.I. Joe, Transformers and random plastic dinosaurs: ah, the memories.

My dad celebrated his 60th birthday tonight with a group of relatives and friends at his favorite local wine bar. At tables set up in the back near the beer coolers, we began with two whites, then five reds, all of which were poured as a professorial type named Reed talked about the wine’s characteristics, its region, trivia about the wineries’ owners and other such hoohah.

I notice increasingly sloppy annotations on my wine “score sheet,” like how Reed started one sentence, as a lead-in to an anecdote on cask-aging: “One time, I went to an oak seminar....” I also seem to have written “Reed hoards port,” which has nice alliteration, and “I thought this guy said he wouldn’t lecture,” which was a gradeschool-style note passed to my sister. Also, here are paraphrased instructions from Reed on how to decant. (He didn’t pun his title like I did; I was feeling saucy.)

How to Turn a Decant into a Decan

1. Stand the bottle upright at least a day.
2. Train the beam of a miniature flashlight on the neck of the bottle while steadily pouring the wine into a decanter.
3. Stop pouring when you spot sediment.
4. If you have a magnum or a double-magnum, you’re fucked.

Afterwards we took what was left of the wine back to my parents’ house for the afterparty, for which my mom had baked two pies (cherry and apple) and, for my dad, apple dumplings, his favorite dessert.

My sister Dana and I hung out in Williamsburg, Brooklyn today for sightseeing and vintage-clothing shopping. (The above photo of her and the happy hearts was taken on N. 10th Street between Bedford and Driggs.) At Buffalo Exchange she found and bought a crazy Stussy sweatshirt from the ’80s, pink with blue stars on it. She was impressed by the storied local clothing exchange store, Beacon’s Closet, and its organized-by-color convention but it was very busy and difficult to shop with a clear head.

For a late brunch, we took a long walk over to hit Diner. Despite the odd time of 3 p.m., the place was already/still packed, so we ate at the bar. I liked the typewritten menus and the snug diner-design of the place, and the guy behind the bar who was visibly confused by the extra-long-intro version of Steely Dan’s “Do it Again” played over the sound system. (He wondered aloud if it was an instrumental karaoke version.) In the mood for drinking a unfamiliar drink, I had a Van Vleet, followed quickly by a second. I’d not have guessed lemon juice, maple syrup and rum would conspire for sweet-tart tastiness. Dana got the Gruyere cheese breakfast sandwich and I had the ricotta cheese/fresh herb omelet both of which were fantastic, fresh and appreciated. I will have to return someday for dinner when the menu is more dynamic than the more standard brunch fare. Walking back under the Williamsburg Bridge on our way back to the L train, we noticed this vibrantly graffitied truck, which I photographed for the benefit of my friends named Joe.

Diner

• 85 Broadway (at Berry Street), Brooklyn
• (718) 486-3077
• Meal 55 of 52: two van Vleets ($8 each) and a omelet with roast potatoes ($10).

Dana and I loaded our rented Chrysler Town & Country with the milk-crates of books and miscellaneous supplies that have been in storage in my parents’ house for years and drove off for New York City. It was overcast during the 7.5-hour drive with only spots of drizzle.

Midway through Pennsylvania, we encountered a drunk, stoned or distracted driver in a tan safari-like vehicle that frequently crept over the white lines. He’d also do confusing things like leave his left-hand blinker as he drove in the passing lane. We gave him a wide berth and then lost him when we stopped for lunch. Hours later, as we approached the George Washington Bridge just outside New York City, a massive backup of cars clogged the upper-deck tollbooths. Because it was around 5 p.m., we chalked it up to rush hour. But as the line of traffic moved a few hundred feet onto the bridge, we spotted the wayward driver in the tan safari-car who had gotten into an (apparently minor) accident and was blocking the left two of the four lanes at a rakish angle. Sweet, sweet just desserts.

Reaching my apartment building at last, we learned the elevator that had been out of commission for the two weeks before Christmas was still inoperable. We had to make about 10 trips up and down four flights of stairs with all my stuff. When it was over, we were out of breath and ached like old people, and still had a stressful drive ahead of us to return the car to LaGuardia before it turned back into a pumpkin.

Christmas at Grandma’s! It was the usual drill: I ate way too much and had fun hanging out with the family. Here’s Grandma, looking regal as she tears into a gift.

It’s Thanksgiving and I can’t help but notice the staggering, nearly 50-degree temperature difference between New York City and Laramie, Wyoming this afternoon: 64° in Manhattan, 15° in Laramie. But we had a delicious Andrew-prepared dinner of turkey with cornbread stuffing and giblet gravy, mashed sweet potatoes, broccolini and cranberries.

Entertainments, too. A great game even slightly better than karaoke is SingStar, which we played on the PlayStation. You’re judged on your accuracy to hold a tune on a variety of pop songs, the lyrics of which scroll karaoke-style as the song’s official video plays in the background. Battle Mode allows you to square-off by singing alternate verses with a partner. We particularly enjoyed the B-52’s “Love Shack” and Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on SingStar Rocks! and A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and U2’s “Vertigo” on SingStar Pop.

Jason, Dana and Andrew, 1982.

My brother Andrew at Side Cut Metropark, Toledo, Ohio, 1978.

Portrait of the father as a young hunter-gatherer.

We drove back to Cleveland from Thanksgiving at Grandma’s and lazed around in the typical post-gorging stupor. We watched the ABC Movie of the Week, Shrek 2, which I don’t think any of us had previously seen. It was laugh-out-loud funny for all of us. Definitely worth a rental if you haven’t seen it.

It’s Thanksgiving at Grandma’s! We ordered a ready-to-heat-up dinner from Meijer, an easy and thrifty option, and it was better than I would have expected. Good turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, although the stuffing boasted the consistency and flavor of mortar and the gravy left us wanting Dad’s giblet-based secret recipe. Mom rounded out the meal with that famous green bean casserole made with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup and topped with French’s French Fried Onions that brown up all nice and crispy.

Later, in a strange echo of the mouse issue at the homestead in Cleveland, we followed Grandma around the house from cellar to attic, cardboard feed-boxes of d-CON pellets in hand, to place strategically for maximum death tolls. Lke many grandmas, Grandma is very old and somewhat fragile, so for safety’s sake, she prefers to climb backwards down the steep set of stairs from the second story. The best bit was when she hurled her cane down the stairs ahead of her, not wanting to have to clamber down with it. The catastrophic sound of something heavy tumbling down the stairs alarmed folks on the ground floor although Dana and I found it funny.

For breakfast, Mom, Dad and I hiked from my apartment uphill through Fort Tryon Park for brunch at the New Leaf Café, an enterprise of Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, a not-for-profit organization that’s revitalizing grubby public spaces in the city.

I had the challah French toast, served with braised strawberries and, on the side, two plump links of mildly sweet chicken-apple sausage. Delicious. Our server was peculiar in a kindergarten teacher sort of way, not blinking enough as she spoke slowly and obliquely about things like how the gardens at Fort Tryon reminded her of Maurice Sendak illustrations. (The gardens are beautiful, but they’re not Maurice caliber.) Her name was Allison and she signed our receipt with “Allison Wonderland,” which contributed to our suspicions that she was an actor, a stripper, or both.

Afterwards, the garden tour at the Cloisters was informative, although Mom recognized immediately our guide’s mistaken identity of the lavender. “At least she was pointing in the general direction,” Mom said. The tour extended inside to discussion of plant elements in the museum’s famous unicorn tapestries. We learned factual errors, like that pomegranates don’t grow on trees, and that the tapestries teem with allusions to elixirs. Closely grouped but seemingly random varieties of flowers and herbs were depicted to reference the fact that they could be combined to make, for example, an aphrodisiac or a beverage purposed to help women conceive a thoughtful child. Medieval viewers would have instantly caught these references, but to the modern viewer, there’s nothing there but a tangle of plants.

New Leaf Café

• Fort Tryon Park
• (212) 568-5323
• Meal 29 of 52: challah French toast with coffee and orange juice ($15.95).

After breakfast at Edgar’s Cafe in my previous Upper West Side neighborhood, Mom, Dad and I walked through Central Park to the Met for the exhibit Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. Great works by those two artists, among others by Gauguin, van Gogh and Redon. Because it’s a show focusing on Vollard, a dealer, the placards burst with anecdotes about money changing hands and implied how to become a successful art dealer:

1. Befriend the artist when he and his art are unpopular and buy his paintings cheaply.
2. Offload the paintings when the art/artist becomes popular.
3. Profit!

It was oddly refreshing to have so much of the exhibit concern the intersection of raw talent and raw commerce instead of airy ruminations on artistic method and inspiration. Y’all know the story of van Gogh cutting off his own ear. Well, van Gogh thanked his doctor for that incident with a painting, Portrait of Doctor Felix Rey, one of the works in the exhibit. Rey’s parents hated the thing and used it to patch a hole in their chicken coop. Vollard saw it differently. And now, well, it’s worth millions and hanging in a world-renowned museum.

We checked out Grand Central Terminal, then walked to the Empire State Building. The lines there were aggravating Dad and for good reason: a line to go through security, a line to get tickets, a line to get on one set of elevators, a line to board another set of elevators, a line to take the elevators back down, etc., all the while loud men attempt to sell you package tour deals and audio commentaries. (We could’ve gone to the Top of the Rock, with its newness, better organized lines and timed ticket system, but I heard the voice of Marge Simpson: “It’s wall-to-wall landmarks! The Williamsburg bridge! Fourth Avenue! Governors Island!”) At some point, we upgraded to express passes, which at least allowed us to skip the elevator-related lines. Haze limited the views from the 86th floor observatory to a half-mile, but we could still see Queens, New Jersey and most of Downtown. I pointed out landmark buildings, tried to pinpoint the non-landmark one in which I work and attempted to call Andrew and Jess on Dad’s cellphone just to say, “We’re calling from the top of the Empire State Building!”

Back at street level, we shouldered our way though the wedding party getting its photo taken in the lobby then walked over to Macy’s to check out the wooden escalators. On the subway uptown to dinner at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Dad had a brief moment resting his eyes that proved the only way to capture him in the wild without having him jerk away from my camera in annoyance.

After dinner we purchased cabernet sauvignon and Jameson 12-year to drink back at the apartment where we reviewed photos from our most recent European jaunts: my trip with Dana to Rome and Mom and Dad’s trip to Ireland.

Mom and Dad, who arrived at my apartment this morning to visit for the weekend, had a crusty Jewish cabdriver drive them in from LaGuardia who told entertaining stories, like that I was smart to be living in Inwood because it’s inexpensive although there are all those Dominicans to contend with. I was happy to hear the ride was much cheaper than I originally quoted; I thought outward fares from LaGuardia were flat-rate like the $45 ones from JFK, but I was mistaken.

We got lunch at Bite, a closet-sized East Village salad and panini sandwich shop that Time Out New York rated best bet for Union Square environs in its recent and annual “Cheap Eats” cover story. I had the toasted and pressed Nutella-banana sandwich (only $3) and it was a mouth-watering mix of warm, sweet, melty and chewy tastiness. Sandwiches in tow, we walked a few blocks south and gathered at the Alamo cube on Astor Place for a Big Onion walking tour of the Bowery.

We were relieved to see our tour guide, David, at least appeared to be the real deal: he was shouldering a canvas bag from the Strand, and was dressed in jeans that kept falling down a bit and what appeared to be a thrift-store shirt. (Later I learned he’s a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Columbia.) He carried a small stack of laminated handouts he’d occasionally pass around, a pocketwatch on a chain that he’d check for time, and a beard that he would stroke not theatrically but with genuine thoughtfulness. He had a passion for facts both entertaining and enlightening, a keen knowledge of local history and a grudge for gentrification and development. He reminded us in some ways of my friend Joe.

We learned the Bowery is one of the two oldest streets in the city (Broadway’s the other) and that its name comes from the Dutch word for farm; most of the area on which we stood, including Cooper Union, two Starbucks less than a block apart and a Kmart, was once part of Peter Stuyvesant’s farm. At Cooper Union, the country’s first tuition-free institution of higher learning, we were told how the founder made his fortune collecting and disposing the horse carcasses that littered the city’s streets. (Because they’re so heavy, owners often left them where they fell.) Giving fresh meaning to the aphorism “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” Peter Cooper started a glue company, then obtained the first American patent for manufacturing “portable gelatine,” a treat that would eventually be known as Jell-O. His 1845 patent application even specified lemon or lime flavoring. What it didn’t recommend was gelatin made from horse hooves; Cooper called for isinglass gelatin, which is made from fish viscera, but let’s not let the facts spoil a good anecdote. As if his school-founding and dessert-inventing wasn’t enough, Cooper still found time to develop what’s perhaps the first steam locomotive prototype.

David also told of Cooper Union’s place in American history as a rallying point for mobs and more recently home to speeches by political firebrands. An interesting architectual detail: the school was built from blocks of brownstone, a mud-colored sandstone considered a shabby excuse for construction material at the time. After the school gained fame, its unconventional look sparked a short-lived brownstone fad, culminating in buildings of that name sprouting up all over Harlem and Brooklyn.

As we headed down Bowery, we looked at and learned of McSorley’s Old Ale House, at 150+ perhaps the city’s oldest pub and one that didn’t even admit women until 1970 when a court forced it to. It was a happy coincidence to hear David reference Joseph Mitchell’s excellent 1945 essay collection, McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon, which is among my current stack of bedside books.

We also made stops outside flophouses (several of which are still active), the Amato Opera House, the doomed CBGB, the Bowery Savings Bank and McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, one of the most notorious drinking establishments ever, the site of which is now a colossally ugly new glass-and-steel condo complex. I wish for the yuppies who will live there to know that there used to be a bar on the spot that would combine the dregs from the glasses at closing time into a barrel, thread a long tube into the swill, then charge a nickel for one all-you-could-drink suck. Adding a contemporary spin to the seedy topics of the tour, I spotted a fat man near Rivington Street who appeared to be mating with a stove. That’s tough love, man.

The tour ended in Chinatown, so we bought bubble tea at Ten Ren’s Tea Time and took it to drink at Columbus Park, where Chinese men crowded around the game tables to watch rounds of Xiangqi. We walked up to McNally Robinson where we pursued travel guides for Italy and found on a globe Zambia, where my sister Dana may be living and working next. After drinks at Republic, we ate dinner at Craft. For post-dinner drinks and lively conversation, we attended Andie and Eric’s cocktail party. Mom advised Ali, newly a nurse, in the ancient arts of the RN. It was like Yoda and Luke at Dagobah.

Bite

• 211 E. 14th Street (between Third and Second Avenues)
• (212) 677-3123
• Meal 28 of 52: Nutella Banana Ciabatta ($3.00).

This morning I took the first step in formulating a vacation to Rome in late August by booking my flight from New York to Dublin and back, because I’ll be going with my sister. Literally at the same time I was online booking this flight, she was online booking the “inner” flight for us between Dublin and Rome on frill-free carrier Ryanair. As I understand it, their planes are fueled with an ethanol-like blend of peat and stout.

It’s trickier logistically but cheaper for me to do it this way, instead of taking a round trip between New York and either of Rome’s two airports. Orbitz told me that not only do most of those flights start at $800 and creep well over $1,000, but have stopovers in places like Casablanca, London and Düsseldorf, the romance of which one can imagine while sitting captive in an airport terminal.

The next big step is to find out where we’ll be staying now that we’ve learned the Roman house of Dana’s charitable organization is standoffish to houseguests. We can probably hostel it like we did in Ireland, which worked conveniently and cost effectively.

I also need to get cracking on the “what to see and do” part of the trip by picking up some more advice online, from the travel guides Jimi graciously donated to me, and from various Italian experts.

Probably the most vocal among the latter is John, a.k.a. “The Cu” (short for the Italian word for “cousin”), who’s the art director for the outfit in Cleveland I worked at before I moved to Manhattan. John’s “da best,” as he might say. He’s like a more forgiving version of Joe Pesci, with a beard and lots of writing utensils. I turn to him for all things Italian. For instance, here’s a lightly edited excerpt from an email exchange I had with him in March regarding Gesturegate:

Jason:

What do you think about this Antonin Scalia hand-gesture thing? Was it truly disrespectful or did the reporter misrepresent the facts? Is that an O.K. gesture to make after church? What does “Vaffanculo” mean, anyway?

The Cu:

“Vaffanculo” means “up your ass,” capish? (capito, in true Roman Italian dialect). I don’t think he was mad or serious with the gesture, just irritated with the reporter. He’s the man!, cappo di tutti cappo, which means the boss, of the Supreme Court.

Auto parts supplier Dana Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection today and it made me think of my sister, whose name is also Dana but whom I’m fairly certain is solvent.

Dana the company is based in Toledo and so was my family a time ago, and Dana would get personalized swag from a family friend that worked there: Dana baseball caps, Dana message pads, Dana stuffed bears. Dana!

Then I got a postcard today from Dana, recently on holiday in Germany.

She wrote:

Hello from Germany! Apparently I got you a happy birthday postcard, but I just was amused by Muppets speaking German. Hope you are well. Love ya, Dana

Sure enough, the translation from German is:

Waldorf: I feel old!
Statler: What? You can still feel?

Congratulations, Oldie!

Let’s start an annual tradition, shall we?

The smiles are genetic. The glasses too, possibly.

I went out for a short spell with my mom to see if we could capitalize on any post-holiday sale specials. We drove out to Beachwood Place and Golden Gate Plaza in Mayfield Heights. True to my fashion, I only ended up buying some used CDs at the Half Price Books at the Plaza, where everything in the store was 20% off.

For dinner, my mom made meatloaf using one of the KitchenAid silicone loaf pans I got her for Christmas. They’re the consistency and comical red color of a clown’s rubber nose, but the time-tested recipe turned out great. I’ve seen and heard that a lot of kitchen utensils and wares are now made from silicone, but I read a level-headed mini-report in Consumer Reports that mentioned there really aren’t all that many true benefits to using silicone. I suppose you get easier release on your muffins if you bake them in silicone trays, but you still have the usual prep time, cooking time and cleanup.

After dinner, we retreated to the living room, where I built a cheery fire, we uncorked some wine, and watched a terrible episode of CSI: Miami. The wine helped dull that pain a bit, but not too much.

Dana called to tell us that in honor of St. Stephen’s Day, she willingly ran into the ocean. There’s no telling what those crazy Irish people will do next.

Merry Christmas! As I had expected and hoped, Grandma’s gift to me, as well as to my parents, was a generous check. I’ll be putting mine into the Sickles Street Furniture Fund, established last month to rid my apartment of the scourge of end tables constructed solely of empty corrugated cardboard boxes, and a complete lack of chairs. Later, my mom’s brother, John, stopped by to start arguments and lecture us on a variety of topics, including the railroad industrialist Jay Gould, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, his DSL service, and Köblentz, Germany.

For dinner, we had some tasty Cornish game hens my mom prepared with rice stuffing and cranberry sauce.

As always, I got way too many gifts: food, books, music, DVDs. There was the usual passing around of the phone among us to talk with absent family members, Dana in Ireland, and Andrew and Jess in Wyoming.

We drove back home in the afternoon. At dusk, the landscape through the window of a car hurtling through lonesome country resembles a dark, tranquil sea.

We drove down to Grandma’s late this morning for our Christmas celebrations. We hung out at her new place, gorging ourselves on heavily salted snack treats and cookies, Black Velvet and It’s a Wonderful Life, which I realized I’d never seen all the way through.

I hung around with Dad today as he conducted his last minute Christmas shopping, a time-honored tradition for him. As he explains it, it’s less stressful to purchase gifts a day or two before Christmas because he’s more or less stuck with whatever’s left in stock at the store, so there’s not a lot of aimless fretting about to find particular items. We went to Best Buy, Borders and the local mall, where he was able to knock off the majority of his purchases.

Back home, I made a batch of cookies from a recipe I’d saved from the December 4 issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The recipe is standard for ginger cookies with one major difference—instead of oil, butter or margarine, you use bacon fat, three-quarters of a cup. No, the cookies did not taste like meat. They were in fact savory in their rich scrumptiousness. I think the kosher salt may have even made a difference, pleasantly offsetting the sharp tang of the ginger.

Here’s a sample plate of Christmas cookies: the ginger ones are in the foreground; the rest are new varieties and traditional favorites Mom made.

After many valiant attempts by Jess’ Mom to snap a family photo featuring each of us with his or her eyes open and looking moderately sober, a feat as of today unperformed in a few years, the Young children took off for lunch at Tommy’s in Cleveland Heights.

Along the way, we pointed out buildings that were new or gone, businesses that managed to remain and those that had disappeared. We stopped by Mac’s Backs bookstore, peered in the windows at the late, great Centrum movie theater, which appears to be under renovation as an improv comedy theater involving robots, and checked out the expanded Big Fun toy store (for those familiar with the Coventry area of the past 10 years, it’s still in its original space but has opened a large satellite location just across the street where High Tide Rock Bottom used to be).

Wonders do never cease: the Akron-Canton Airport, the same age and size of a Young Mens department at a Montgomery Ward, now has free wireless internet access. Note to self: bring laptop next trip. It will come in handy for passing time waiting, as I had to do today when a suspicious parcel threat shut down LaGuardia temporarily and delayed all flights an hour.

In a sad conclusion to an otherwise fine holiday, when I arrived back at my apartment, I watched Bewitched, a terrible, terrible movie during which I laughed not once.

With a day full ahead of visiting the grandparents, Andrew, Jess, Dana and I set out by fueling both the Taurus (with petrol) and ourselves (with Starbucks coffee and Def Leppard’s Hysteria), then headed south on I-71. There was much chatter and more fine music (They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes, Weezer) as we cut a path diagonally across the state, over a river or two, through woods, with a brief stop in Bucyrus at Wal-Mart for a restroom break and the purchase of a small bouquet of yellow roses for Grandma, which was totally the ladies’ idea, but a good one.

Grandma recently moved into an assisted living facility and I was imagining something depressing, with the scent of urine. But the place is quite fine. We agreed it’s nicer than our own apartments: she has two bedrooms, kitchen, bath, living room, balcony, and all of her comforts of home, as most of the decor and furniture was moved over from her house.

Lunch was served in a cozy common area downstairs with wood tables and chairs, a fireplace, and there were friendly staff members stringing lights on a Christmas tree. The fare was served up cafeteria style and nothing fabulous (the pizza I had whisked me back momentarily to high school), but at $3 per guest meal, I could hardly complain; plus, the price included tapioca pudding. Importantly, Grandma knows many of the other residents, whether because they’re friends or relatives (it’s a small town) or just because she’s a cordial lady. She was saying hello to many, and showing off us kids, which is a top duty of any grandparent. Back at her place, we caught up on our lives and Dana showcased her photos from Ireland on her laptop.

One of my uncles and his family stopped by and it would have been nice to speak with them longer, particularly to find out what my cousins have been up to lately, but it was time to bid farewell and head up north to Toledo.

Grandpa’s doing well for a 92-year-old. He’s unsteady when walking now and uses a cane, which inspired some of his oft-made grumbles about not being able to do all the stuff he used to, like rebuild transmissions and saw down trees and stuff. But he’s got a house full of youth to rub off on him. Living with Grandpa are my uncle Doug and his lady Sandy, who recently added another child to the group, Mason. He’s quite the cute tot, depicted here curious as to how my camera works. I let him play around with it but he was more interested in poking the lens than taking any snapshots.

Like his two-year-old brother, Dustin, it took Mason a spell to warm up to us strangers, but once he did, he was in high spirits, all smiles as he rotated around on the floor (he hasn’t yet mastered crawling), performed an amusing jig while seated and generally acted like World’s Best Baby.

Doug, who was spraying cellulose attic insulation all over the upper floor of the house and himself, stopped by the living room for a few guest appearances, often wearing a gas mask to prevent too much shredded newspaper from entering his respiratory system. We got a tour of another cost-saving energy invention of his: heating the house using a wood burning stove outside, which is connected by underground pipes to a heat-dispersion system in his basement that was crafted of complicated piping, a modified window fan and what appeared to be some car parts.

Thanksgiving! The usual embarrassingly hearty bounty of food was consumed. This year’s spread featured the requisite turkey with Dad’s secret-recipe giblet gravy (the package of organs stored in the turkey’s orifice revealed a random assortment of two livers but no gizzard, though I noticed no difference in the resulting gravy’s succulent taste), mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce.

There were also homemade crescent rolls, fruit compote (the new dish this year), sweet potatoes (a special recipe that last appeared in 2003, reprised this year in a giant 13x9-inch pan), green bean casserole (that suburban favorite, topped with French’s fried onions), and pumpkin pie. Oh, and stuffing, which we discovered afterwards in the kitchen, settled grumpily in its serving bowl and totally forgotten. Lots of scotch, wine and beer, including the eight-pack of Guinness that Dana lugged all the way from Ireland just for the Young lads.

After watching lots of bad TV, we kids played some rousing rounds of that game that’s a hot-potato speed-round of trying to get your teammate to say the secret word or phrase without you saying it.

I rose at 5 a.m. to catch my early flight to Cleveland for the holidays. The plane departed 45 minutes “late” yet managed to land at the Akron-Canton Airport on time. Dana picked me up there and after the sad realization that it was too late for me to purchase an Egg McMuffin, we carried-out soup and sandwiches from Panera for lunch at home with our parents.

Afterwards, Dana and I drove around Lakewood and Rocky River to visit some of my favorite used CD shops, stopping for a caffeine break at Phoenix Coffee, marveling how such a comfortably bohemian little shop could still exist in a city rife with Starbucks, Caribou and another local chain, Arabica. On our way to pick up Andrew and Jess from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, we conducted some Christmas window shopping at Great Northern Mall, stopping at Best Buy for a chatty mp3 player overview by an overly helpful young sales clerk. We perused the sweets at a Malley’s store and Dana bought some amusing socks at Marshall’s.

Thanks, Mom, for:

• Birthing me, particularly that whole labor thing.
• For giving me a normal name and not something like Malachi. (After Michael and Chrsitopher, Jason was the third most popular name for baby boys in 1973 according to the Social Security Administration, a trend that had absolutely nothing to do with a character of the same name on a certain TV show.)
• Spoiling me as the first child, but not spoiling me so much that I turned into an insufferable prick. Just the right amount of spoilage.
• Piano lessons, art classes, Cub Scouts. I may have grumbled (particularly those damn piano lessons), but I think they were good for me.
• Bringing me up on a diet low in sodium and neon-colored breakfast cereals, while high in fruits and vegetables.
• And yet: homemade cookies and desserts! It took me awhile before I realized how lucky I was with this and the whole home-cooked-meal regimen.
• The whole regulated educational TV regimen. I think Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, MisteRogers’ Neighborhood, Captain Kangaroo, Reading Rainbow and, yes, even PicturePages, helped in my childhood development, at least moreso than if you had merely let me watch Saturday morning cartoons and CHiPs.
• Speaking of cartoons, thanks for the allowance of classic Warner Bros. cartoons after school. They well informed the development of my sense of humor.
• Letting us build those exceedingly elaborate forts in the basement. Those were awesome.
• Sending me those care packages in college. Particularly the ones with the chocolate chip cookies.
• Thanks for, whenever I call to chat and you answer the phone, acting like there’s no one you’d rather talk to.

I know I’m missing a lot here, so family members, holla in the comments if you have any others.

Today, Mom, Dad and I checked out the tree at Rockefeller Center and went window shopping on Fifth Avenue, making stops at Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton. A lot of tourists and hard-core shoppers were interested in the post-Christmas sales, so the crowds were thick. At the Museum of Modern Art gift shop, Mom bought a wall calendar on sale and an intriguing Ribbon Vase designed by Peter Hewitt, in which a thin ribbon of metal is suspended between two plates of glass, creating a pocket in which to pour water and place flowers.

We got lunch down at Republic and shopped briefly at Academy Records and Paragon Sports. For dinner, we went to Fred’s, a comfortable little restaurant on Amsterdam at W. 83rd Street.

Christmas! Yay! Mom, Dad and I stayed in from the bitter cold most of the day to eat snacks and home-cooked meals, talk to relatives on the phone and listen to music. Of course, the highlight was an extravagant gift-opening session.

Joe got me an Opus anthology book, which contains classic Bloom County and Outland cartoons featuring Berke Breathed’s mischievous penguin. Dana got me an official Guinness glass, illustrated with one of the classic “My Goodness, My Guinness” posters. Dad also got a Guinness glass and upon opening them, I rushed to the local grocery and bought some Guinness so we could ensure the glasses worked properly.

Mom and Dad got me an official Rival brand Crock-Pot stoneware slow cooker, a Crock-Pot cookbook, three pairs of Old Navy boxer shorts, La Dolce Vita on DVD, and a small Christmas-behatted sock monkey. And of course Dad’s been paying for meals and alcohol left and right the whole time they’ve been here. And Mom claimed this was a “light” Christmas, gift-wise. Har! Mission failed!

Andrew and Jess mixed my Christmas gifts with my birthday gifts, so I got quite a bit of booty from them, including Dial M For Murder on DVD, a leatherbound edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a polo shirt from The Gap, three pairs of Old Navy boxer shorts (I like Old Navy boxer shorts), a bobblehead Jesus doll and two tiny Pontiki characters, which remind me of Kubricks. I also got from them a pen that a.) lights-up when you write with it; b.) is topped with a small toy frog. By activating two levers on the back of the pen, you can make the frog punch its red boxing-gloved fists.

Dad made omelets for brunch, and for dinner, we had steaks, baked potatoes, broccoli and wine. For dessert, we had Ben & Jerry’s low-fat frozen yogurt and several episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends on DVD, which was one of Dad’s Christmas gifts from Mom. Cheers, and happy holidays!

We all slept in today and then for breakfast had some of the cinnamon-raisin bread my uncle baked for me. It was fabulous toasted and spread with butter. Mom and I went grocery shopping for our Christmas Day meals, picking up some steaks and other items at Food Emporium.

Katie called to say her flight to Cleveland to visit her parents for Christmas had been cancelled and rescheduled for late afternoon on Christmas Day, so I invited her along to our dinner at Rosa Mexicano. They make the guacamole right at your table! Our entrees were delicious as well. Katie and I both got the chicken enchiladas with mole, while Mom and Dad got the seafood enchiladas.

Afterwards, Katie went off to hang out with friends in the city and we crossed the street to Lincoln Center for the 7 p.m. showing of “The Barber of Seville.” It was a fascinating performance and we followed along with the small, unobtrusive LED displays in front of us that presented translations of the Italian dialogue. The stage was like a massive lazy susan which rotated to show one of four different sets, or to show characters progressing from one scene to another in a literal sort of segue. Although it has a fairly basic plot dealing with a young couple in love, but with the woman set to marry an older crank of a guy, it’s surprisingly funny, with physical comedy, puns and what’s probably silly opera-nerd sort of humor, like when one character sings to a crowd to be quiet and they loudly respond in song that they’ll do so. Also, I was happy that the show didn’t make me think too much of Chuck Jones’ “The Rabbit of Seville” which I saw plenty of times as a kid during after-school cartoons.

Afterwards, we stepped outdoors to take some photos of the Christmas tree and other holiday decor, and went back uptown to the ever-popular Cafe Lalo for dessert and beverages.

Mom and Dad braved that really nasty Midwest storm and drove to New York to visit me for the holidays. It wasn’t a fun trip, with snow and ice in Ohio, blinding rain in Pennsylvania, gridlock to cross the George Washington Bridge, and then, because that wasn’t quite enough, Dad nearly knocked the passenger side side mirror off his Taurus by clipping it against a movers’ van that was taking up most of W. 85th Street. After arriving in the apartment, he took a swig of scotch directly from the bottle and felt a bit better.

For dinner, I took a rare trip to the East Side with Mom and Dad to Blue Smoke, an upscale BBQ joint that was recommended by Andie’s friend Carolann, who’s from Texas. The BBQ was pricey but spicy, tender and mouth-wateringly good. Dad discovered that a woman at the table next to us was from Shaker Heights, which was an odd coincidence.

For drinks afterwards, we went back uptown on the West Side to Vintage, which sells only wines from New York State. There’s a small wine bar in the back and we partook of the 5-for-$5 deal, where you get to choose any five wines on their menu for $5 total. Whatta deal! Even moreso because they were supposed to be one-ounce pours, which with our generous server, seemed to grow significantly with each round. She even gave us a sixth round free, attempting to trick us into thinking it was only the fifth (only Dad called her on it because he had been taking notes about each of the wines). We finished up with some tasty ports and walked home.

After homemade blueberry pancakes for breakfast, Dad drove me to the airport for my 1:00 p.m. flight back to NYC. In retribution for my smooth flight in on Wednesday, I was punished with a 2.5 hour delay—the wind and rain in New York caused air traffic control at LaGuardia to cancel all inbound flights until at least 3:00 p.m. By the time I arrived, the place was a mass of crowds, screaming babies and people sitting and sleeping on every available semi-flat surface.

On the flight, I sat next to a version of myself from an alternate universe: my age, my height, and like me, hadn’t shaved all week, was wearing a ballcap, jeans, long-sleeve dress shirt and wool winter coat; chewing gum obnoxiously; looking out the window a lot; completely silent; and reading a book, although his choice was Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy, which I think trumped my Last Chance To See by Douglas Adams.

After deplaning, I had some voicemails from Andie about meeting up for dinner, so I dropped off my luggage at home (the elevator was broken, naturally, so I got to lug it up to the sixth floor) and we went to the Hi-Life Bar and Grill again for multiple martinis and turkey burgers. Afterwards, I busted out the cookies Grandma gave me for an early Christmas present, a greatest-hits medley of old-time favorites: chocolate chip, gingersnaps, snickerdoodles and oatmeal cookies.

Mom, Dad and I drove over to Toledo this morning to visit my Dad’s Dad, Nort. He’s doing well for a 90-something-year-old. We went out to Bob Evans for lunch, a time-honored tradition for which he orders coffee, a salad with blue cheese dressing and the bean soup. I showed him some of my crazy New York photos and for some reason ended up talking a lot about how the subway works, based on several questions from Uncle Doug, who wondered why I’d ever want to live in a city so dense with people and buildings. Hopefully I explained my case clearly enough. After the visit, the parents and I drove to Maumee to visit Andersons, an Ohio-based chain of general stores. Mom bought some Christmas gifts and raw peanuts for her famous holiday peanut brittle. I bought a new winter hat. It rained most of the way back and Mom, Dad and I had dinner at their favorite wine bar in North Royalton. I had a flight of red wine and some tasty blue cheese pizza.

John and Grandma left this morning after breakfast and I proceeded to enjoy a lazy day. Got some reading done, listened to some tunes, agreed on some stuff Mom and Dad would like to do during their Christmas visit to New York, worked out a bunch Christmas gift ideas for friends and family, and helped Mom order some gifts off Amazon. I briefly entertained the idea of Christmas shopping (the traditional kind, not online), but decided I didn’t feel like lugging a bunch of stuff back to NYC with me on the plane, bus and subway.

I restocked the wood for the fireplace and then spent a chunk of the afternoon sorting and throwing out a lot of the stuff that I moved from my Cleveland Heights apartment, then just left lying around Mom & Dad’s basement and computer room. I’ve pledged that if I ever move again to merely throw away half my stuff because otherwise it’ll just end up in cardboard boxes in a closet somewhere.

For Christmas, Mom used to regularly make these holiday nut loaves I really liked. She hasn’t made them in awhile so I talked her into making some this year. We had to go to two stores to track down the pesky pecans and the candied pineapple. I mainly helped by stirring the mixture of fruit (dates, with candied pineapple and cherries) and two pounds of pecans, mixed with eggs, flour and some other dry ingredients that create a cement-like paste to hold all the stuff together. It’s an easy recipe, although that stirring can be taxing if you don’t have Popeye-like forearms.

We built another fire, watched a CSI rerun and sampled one of the nut loaves. It was mighty good.

It snowed for Thanksgiving last night and this morning, squally wet snow that accumulated on the lawns but merely left the roads wet. Out the back window, we noticed the neighbor shoveling his grass. Dad stuck his head out the back door and after some friendly shouting back and forth determined that he wasn’t crazy, merely collecting a load of snow so his kids could build a fort out back.

Thanksgiving lunch was a delicious spread. Paula and Dale came over, bringing green beans and the famous cranberry Jell-O salad. John brought rolls and his sassy, rabble-rousing, finger-pointing attitude. Mom and Dad cooked up the turkey with stuffing and giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, and, for dessert, homemade pumpkin pie. And we drank lots of beer, wine and scotch.

We got holiday greeting calls from Andrew and Jess, Dave, and Dana, who said the folks in her house got her and a guy from the U.S. a “happy Thanksgiving” cake.

We played a game of Pictionary but it was difficult to say which team won because people kept leaving to talk on the phone, returning and switching sides. Also, Grandma was content to play on both teams simultaneously. It was a spirited bout. The easiest word was “carrot.” The hardest was “vowel,” with “Riviera” a close second. Shrieking, alternating with wordless, frantic gesturing at key parts of indescribable scribbles. Ah, Pictionary.

For dinner, we ate chocolate mousse Mom made and beef barley soup Grandma made. Later, Dad built the first fire of the season and we watched one of Grandma’s favorite shows (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Spider-Man.

Greetings from Cleveland! Despite having to get up at 5:15 a.m. to catch my flight out of LaGuardia, it was non-eventful and there was no craziness either at the airport or during the flight. Crowds were nowhere to be seen, the plane departed on-time and arrived 10 minutes early and although there were about six babies on the flight, they had all apparently agreed beforehand to behave quietly and save their demonic wailing for later. My seatmate was likewise quiet the whole flight, which was just fine by me. I nodded off listening to Madonna’s Ray Of Light album on my iPod, snapping awake as I nearly whomped my lolling head on the seatback in front of me.

Soon after arriving at the Akron/Canton airport, I used the restroom and, while washing my hands, noticed I had somehow managed to not only put on my T-shirt backwards, but inside-out, so I had been strolling around all morning wearing an Old Navy-Medium tag like some sort of idiot bow tie. After Dad retrieved me from the airport, we picked up the turkey for tomorrow and got some lunch with Mom at Panera.

I then took off to conduct some used CD shopping at two of my old-time favorite spots: the Half Price Books in Rocky River and the CD/Record Exchange in Lakewood. I got lots of great stuff, including albums by Beck, Cat Power, The Pixies, The Stooges and Fairport Convention that had been on my want-list so long that I was nearly ready to throw in the towel and pay retail for them. I also picked up another Bill Bryson book (African Diaries) and a set of Chinese propaganda posters from the Mao era, which are colorful and strangely mesmerizing. But any day now I will get it through my thick skull that I need to start buying Christmas gifts for friends and family instead of more useless crap for myself.

Later in the afternoon, Grandma and John showed up for the festivities. We drank lots of beer and talked fondly about absent family members—I think you know who you are. I showed Grandma some photos from New York that I had ordered from ofoto.com just for the occasion. I tried to choose a representative variety, including most of the Coney Island, High Line and subway photos I took when Dana visited a few months back, as well as photos of Joe from his recent visit. I also threw in a few shots of the NYC Friends Posse, although it was challenging to find one where everyone didn’t look crazed or alcohol-addled or both.

Fasting in anticipation of turkey day tomorrow was out of the question as Mom served up a delicious dinner of meatloaf, baked potatoes and broccoli. For desert, we had baked apples stuffed with raisins and walnuts. Mmm. Perfect food for the miserable weather here—constant, cold rain all day, which may turn to snow tomorrow.

We caught the 10:15 Circle Line tour, a three-hour circumnavigation of Manhattan aboard a decommissioned WWII cutter. Our tour guide, Malachi, gave a running commentary on noteworthy buildings, bridges and landmarks, and mentioned he also frequently plays a police officer on All My Children; in addition, he stressed, tips were welcome.

After returning to dry land, we trudged through the hellish levels of Times Square station and eventually found the NRQW entrance and made our way to Republic on Union Square for lunch. Dad rated the noodles higher than Zen Palate’s fare. I pointed out Katie’s Barnes & Noble and we took a quick tour of the park. Back to the apartment to freshen up and rest a spell, we retreated to Union Square for dinner at Mesa Grill, celebrity chef Bobby Flay’s restaurant on 5th Ave. It was expensive but tasty, with a Southwestern flair, and while we were eating, a Gay Pride parade (“Dykes on Bikes,” according to our waiter) noisily passed by outside.

After dinner, we stopped off at Times Square which was nightmarishly crowded on account of some singers performing on the Broadway island. We briefly stopped in the Toys ‘R’ Us and Hershey stores. Serendipitously, I spotted Margie, sales coordinator for gummi supplier Haribo of America, and an old friend from my days with the candy magazines. She and the company’s U.S. president and salesmen were in town for the Fancy Food Show at Javits, but I never did find out why they standing around Times Square just then.

Mom, Dad and I capped the evening with dessert and drinks at Cafe Lalo on W. 83rd, just beating a massive rush. After having heard a reference to egg creams on The West Wing, I was anxious to try one; the vanilla one I got at Lalo was delicious and refreshing.

Andie called me at work this afternoon to let me know my parents arrived early this afternoon for their weekend visit, catching her just before she was getting into the shower before work. She helped them carry up a bunch of my stuff they’d brought in the car with them — all my CDs and DVDs, my iron and ironing board, and my ancient blue blazer.

Waiting for me to get off work, they checked out Central Park and got drinks at Cafe Lalo. At 5:30, I met them at Fred’s, a popular after-work bar/restaurant on Amsterdam Ave. between W. 82nd and W. 83rd Streets. After a few Guinnesses and margaritas, we walked down through the rain to Zen Palate on Broadway near W. 76th St. After that, we were weary and called it an early night.