Tuesday, March 21, 2017 It’s been almost three years. At this rate, the project might never be possible because new stations open faster than we visit the existing ones. I might learn Chinese from fortune cookies before I explore all the city’s subway line ends. But it doesn’t matter. It’s the journey, right? New York […]

Wednesday, May 22, 2013 Damaso and I were both in town at the same time, which is a lot rarer since he moved to Barcelona and I took a touring job. I’m almost caught up posting the … hang on. My spell check has a squiggly green line under “rarer.” When I hover over the word, […]

Monday, April 9, 2012 Spring break for the Salisbury (CT) public schools usually means Camp Viveca for my nieces., only this year niece number one turned into a teenager, so she went away with a friend instead of coming to stay with me. Niece number two, who just turned ten (whoo-hoo: double digits!), came anyway, […]

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 I read a bit of that Quran, but I didn’t get far. First of all, I hated the defensive translation, which kept inserting parenthetical notes explaining how the text didn’t really mean to kill all infidels, only those who tried to kill you first. Uh, it didn’t say that. Secondly, it […]

Thursday, August 11, 2011 Boy if I thought Damaso changing his order was “cheating” on the purity of this project, how do I justify our actions this week? Neither of us even took the train! We didn’t have a lot of time and wanted to squeak in one more restaurant before Damaso leaves for a […]

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 It’s been almost five months since our last trip, during which time Damaso has been living in Barcelona. I was sure that by the time he got back I’d have viveca.net up and have started publishing these stories. I’m a little sheepish to see him again without any progress to report. […]

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 We take the J because we both live on it, but it’s also the end of the line for the E and the Z. Wait, do I live on the J or off the J? I live off the BQE, but I’m pretty sure I live on the J, and I […]

Saturday, March 26, 2011 Holy end-of-the-line, Batman, Staten Island is really far away! Like, it’s another world far away. Everywhere else we’ve gone, once we get there it feels like the center’s just moved, but in Staten Island it feels like even the locals know they’re far from “the city.” You’d think the separatist movement […]

Thursday, March 24, 2011 We pull a last-minute switcheroo on our own plans to visit Harlem on the 3 train, and we make the long trek to what may be the MTA’s northernmost point. At least it looks the highest on The Map, but The Map is completely out of proportion and oriented to the […]

Sunday, March 20, 2011 Ooph. No beautiful glowing glass art at this station. The first thing I saw was a homeless person, possibly sleeping or possibly dead, lying on the platform. I looked again, and it was just a dirty, green, puffy coat. Large patches of subway tiles were missing, and the water-stained concrete showed […]