Equinox stroll

For no other reason than because the equinox was nigh, I took a stroll around a four‐block radius from my apartment building early this morning. I didn’t expect many persons to be out and sure enough the streets seemed to have even less human activity than usual, especially 37^th Road. (Noteworthy was a very large, drooping sash or scarf of unknown significance tied between two poles on 37^th Road near the corner of 73^rd Street, and I wondered if it were somehow related to ʻIdu‐l‐Aḍḥa/Qurban Bayramı.) There was nothing to see and nothing to do at that hour on a weekday, certainly nothing related in any way to the equinox, so I soon went home, but I was glad to be out breathing the night air and having some interaction, however minimal, with neighbors.

September 2015/Tishre 5776 equinox

♍ In the New York City area, the equinox will be Wednesday morning, the 23^rd, at 04:22 EDT, coinciding with Yom Kippur. 🌐 ☀

• “Sun at the Equinox,” uncredited illustration in A Short Course in Astronomy and the Use of the Globes, by Henry Kiddle, New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 1871, 31. (In the public domain.)

Notes on Conversation Last Night

Some notes on conversation last night

• Though many persons say the phrase root beer more like roo’ beer, the beverage is in fact not made from (or for) kangaroos.

• Gram snacks are not served in India with peppercorns but in paper cones.

• My friend said neither optimist nor octopus as I had thought, but alchemist.

• The same friend became incredulous and asked “Does it eat?” when told about a cat that doesn’t shed. I then emphasized that the word he had misheard was shed.

• It’s fun to say cashews and pistachios as if they rhyme.

• Saying a man is subdued is not referring to him as a lesser type of dude (a sub‐dude).

Memory Card Woes

I got the catastrophic news on Thursday from the data recovery company that not a shred of data could be recovered from my camera’s memory card that abruptly failed back in April, and so all the photos I took with my Nikon camera (as opposed to those with my smartphone camera) from February or March to April are forever lost. Of course, I should have backed up my photos more frequently and thus had fewer images on the card when the calamity struck, but I am grateful that I was very lazy during those months and shot most of my photos with my smartphone anyway. However, I did lose my photos of the St. Pat’s for All parade, of the Sunday Assembly in April and of the spectacular Persian Parade.