Head Banging

[mallorys_camera]

Met up with BB at the Caffe Aurora for a cappuccino and a quick tromp through what used to be Poughkeepsie’s Italian district.

(The neighborhood was gutted when IBM enticed Poughkeepsie into tearing down most of its historic old houses so that Route 9 could be turned into an urban thoroughfare. This is why Poughkeepsie has no waterfront to speak of.)

Caffe Aurora would need to be vacuumed thoroughly before it could be charming. Still. There were old Italian gentlemen seated at its tables, and as we left, we passed a heated conversation, not in Italian but in the dialetto stretto, the old Sicilian dialect, which I retain a kind of ghost understanding of—

Sabbinidica! Comu si senti?

Little Italy was a mixed use residential/industrial neighborhood around the turn of the 20th century. The old tobacco factory is still standing, transformed into apartments. Here’s where it used to pollute Fall Kill:



I keep wondering: When is Poughkeepsie gonna turn itself around?

It’s such an obvious gentrification target.

But so far, very few takers.

If I were younger…

###

Afterwards, I forced myself to go running. Because it was cold but not brutally cold.

Second-earliest sunset of the year! (Today is actually the earliest sunset.) Clocks are imperfect instruments when it comes to measuring the ecliptic.

When I think about the imperfection of clocks, I naturally start brooding about the imperfection of logic, the rational system of analysis that has been beaten into us since the Enlightenment. According to this system of analysis, no phenomenon is a real phenomenon unless it is an observed phenomenon, and yet, if quantum mechanics teaches us anything, it’s that many if not most phenomena cannot be observed.

It’s a real head banger

Comments

[gale_storm]

"quantum mechanics teaches us anything, it’s that many if not most phenomena cannot be observed."

Absolutely so, and I wonder when that observation will come to be taken for granted and what will pop up on the physics horizon then.

[mallorys_camera]

I'm too math-challenged to understand much about quantum physics or indeed about physics generally. :-)

But I do know that particles can get from one place to another by following paths that mystify scientists. :-)

[bleodswean]

I want to live in that building beside that rushing water.

I understand that desire to re-invigorate a place. I've often thought over the past decade, if I was younger I would lock-stock-and-barrel relocate to Detroit.

[mallorys_camera]

if I was younger I would lock-stock-and-barrel relocate to Detroit

Me too!

Speaking of Detroit... Have you read Broken Monsters (Lauren Beukes)? I loved it.

[gale_storm]

I'm with you there on being mathematically challenged, and my understanding of Super-Duper-Quantum Fizzy-Physics is fairly stuck with the 'Quantum Leap' tv show!