what about the plastic animals?

Thums Up

Thums Up is a cola-like soda from India.  I found it at the insane Jungle Jim's supermarket extravaganza in Fairfield, Ohio, on the outskirts of Cincinnati.  Jungle Jim's is the southwestern Ohio equivalent of Stew Leonard's, but with fake jungle animals in a tiny fake zoo at the main entrance.  Jungle Jim's has an excellent selection of international foods. 

Anyway, Thums Up is known for its "strong, fizzy taste and its confident, mature and uniquely masculine attitude.  This brand clearly seeks to separate the men from the boys."  Clearly, that's the brand for me.  I thought it tasted like Coke but with extra caramel flavor.

Ski Harlem

There was a single ski on 125th Street yesterday afternoon. 

Please don't click on the link if strobe lights upset you but, thanks to a suggestion from Ben on Flickr, I made a lurid animated gif of the Helmsley mausoleum.

Barnerd, Martlenghs and Zuricher

You know, I was ready to move from the Old Dutch Burying Ground to the zillions of pictures from Ohio and Pennsylvania.  Then, when I was home with a cold last week and not doing much of anything, I actually read the guide book to the cemetery that I had bought.  There are interesting stories attached to these stones and to the people under the stones.

Abraham Martlenghs and his wife moved to the area in the 1730s.  He was a deacon in the church.  His farm makes up much of present day Tarrytown.  Martlenghs sons Abraham and Isaac anglicized their surname to Martling.  Abraham junior was in the militia during the Revolutionary War and once led a successful raid against British troops in Manhattan. 

Isaac was also known as Isaac the Martyr.  The winter of 1778-79 was harsh and many people were sick and hungry by the time spring came around.  A wealthy British sympathizer named Nathan Underhill refused to share his bounty with the less fortunate neighbors.  Isaac, who lost an arm in the French and Indian War, led a raid on Underhill's home one spring day.  The mob strung Underhill up and forced him to eat dry grain.  This, as you might imagine, upset Underhill.  Some time later he ambushed Martling and killed him with a sword.  Underhill quickly fled, probably to the home of many Tory sympathizers, Nova Scotia, and was never seen in Tarrytown again.

Abraham Martlenghs had a third son, Daniel.  On March 4th, 1768 James Barnerd was on a boat owned by Daniel Martling that capsized in the Hudson, drowning Barnerd.  The verse on the gravestone refers to the drowning.

Both gravestones were carved by John Zuricher of New York City.  The soul effigies he carved typically had puffy cheeks and stylized feathers on their wings.  The crowns Zuricher carved above the head were rather abstract and often looked like flowers or flames.  Many of the other graves in the cemetery, such as that for Catriena Ecker Van Tessel, were carved by Solomon Brewer or his son James.

Sifers Valomilk

I was in Economy Candy the other day where I saw these Valomilks.  Not having seen one before, and intrigued by the old-fashioned label, I decided to try it.  They are similar to Mallo Cups without the coconut.  The chocolate is quite good but the runny, sticky marshmallow center was too much of a corn syrup blast for me.

The Valomilks (V is for vanilla, ALO is for marshmallow, MILK is for the creamy center) were mixed in with British candies but they are actually made in Merriam, Kansas.  The Sifers family has been making Valomilks since 1931, making them five years older than the Mallo Cup, which claims to be the first cup candy in the United States.  The peanut butter cups made by Harry Burnett Reese were being sold in the mid-1920s.

I Saved 20 Cents!

I saved $0.20!  Or not.  I paid 99 cents for a quart of milk.  A quart of milk at Fine Fare has cost 99 cents for months so it is not clear where that 20 cent savings came in.  I like to think that my savings was more like $3.90.  Fairway only charges 89 cents for a quart of milk but that savings would be offset by the $4 round-trip subway fare.

Super

In past elections it has taken only a few minutes to vote at my local polling place.  Yesterday it took three hours.  It was a good time.  The weather was nice and the mood was festive, if not electric. 

Thinking the vote was going to take a few minutes I had skipped breakfast.  For that reason the Dunkin' Donuts donut I ate on the walk home was about the most satisfying Dunkin' Donuts donut I've ever eaten.

Standing on line for three hours put a damper on wanting to go for a long walk.  I still went for a walk, and had a conversation with a charming cheesemonger, but my energy was rapidly fading and I could tell I was coming down with a cold.  I mostly slept through the election returns last night and spent today on the couch sleeping, reading the paper, and watching Cocoa Tea.

Hope

Steubenville, Ohio

Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania

I hope everyone votes tomorrow.  Election day is a Columbia holiday.  The weather looks good so I will do my usual election day routine:  Vote early and go for a long walk around town.

Repurposed HillMobile

There's nothing like a patriotic art van to bring a smile to one's face.  I saw this awe-inspiring HillMobile turned BarryMobile in downtown Marietta.

Rangel Obama

Unlike what I saw in Ohio and Pennsylvania there's not much in the way of election signs in New York.  One that popped up all over Harlem last week was this Charlie Rangel sign.  I like how the design makes it look like Obama is the congressman's running mate.

Not Near the Little People

Run away it's Leona Helmsley's mausoleum!!!  When he died in 1997 Harry Helmsley was entombed in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.  In 2004 a community mausoleum was opened near Harry's place of rest.  Spending eternity near common people was not acceptable to the Queen of Mean so she went and found a more suitable plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  The site is in a nook at a distance from other graves.  A volunteer for the cemetery, not the talkative Old Dutch Church guy, told me that she demanded that, contrary to cemetery convention, the 1.4 million dollar Helmsley mausoleum face away from the other burial plots. 

The mausoleum does have a nice stained glass window of New York's skyline.  The Helmsley's once owned the Empire State Building so I'd guess other buildings of theirs are also featured in the window.

I hope this did not frighten anyone too much!