- Circumferential transit (aka a ring or circle line). “Nearly all rapid transit lines belong to one of two categories: radial lines (a large majority), which connect city center with outlying neighborhoods or suburbs; and circumferential lines (a minority), which go around city center and often serve secondary centers and usually intersect all or nearly all radial lines perpendicularly…” New York City doesn’t have one, but there is an idea for one floating around.
- Jamaica, Queens. I had a meeting here yesterday that was cancelled the moment I stepped off the train, leaving me with an hour to kill. So I treated myself to a little walking tour of downtown Jamaica. Some highlights: the King Manor, the Grace Episcopal Church Complex, and the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People building on Jamaica Avenue, which is one of the five Wonder Theaters in New York City built in 1929 by Loew’s Theatres. The Google Streetview of this building doesn’t quite do it justice–it has this ornate baroque facade and a vintage ticket booth at the entry way. Jamaica also was home a several jazz greats.
- The Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960, by Franz Schubert. Despite nearly 30 years of listening to classical music I never came to know this piece until this year, and now it’s as if it contains all the secrets of the universe. I’ve listened to a few different recordings, including ones by Wilhelm Kempff and Maria João Pires, both of which I enjoyed very much. But I keep coming back to Richter, whose slow, meditative take on the sonata finds entire worlds in each moment. There are several excellent live recordings of Richter playing this piece on Youtube, but I keep coming back to the 1972 studio recording. In my Googling I came across a 1994 piece about this sonata in the New York Times by Alex Ross, who mentions that Mahler played this piece as a student. That makes a strange kind of sense.
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