07 Mar 2010

R: Spring is the air and everybody in New York is hitting the streets. Damn prostitutes.

I went for a walk around the West Village/Greenwich area and was going to try for a picture in Washington Square Park. But I didn't count on the fact that the park is under construction again so the usually crowded park was even more crowded as sunshine-seekers perched themselves all over the fountain and surrounding areas. Instead I found this church unexpectedly in the middle of a residential-ish block. Not unlike the church near me where I volunteered in the morning.

On that note, my time at St. Francis Xavier's All Saints Clothing Room was pretty uneventful experience. I worked under a funny little lady named Aida or some variation of that name. The other volunteers and I just sorted clothes, while Aida made ridiculous, barely comprehensible commentary about various things she found in the piles of donations. Mostly she expressed disdain for people donating what is very clearly trash that no one would want or use for any number of reasons. Some of the items that ended up in the bin looked like freebies that people thought would be better dumped on homeless people than in a landfill. Too bad homeless people don't want useless trash either.

C: A Ukrainian friend, who I met in one of my Harvard classes, was married this afternoon in a simple ceremony by the Charles River. There were no more than ten of us in attendance (plus two if you count the bride and groom), and the breezy, cloudless March day by the Harvard Pedestrian Bridge provided a beautiful backdrop for hers and K's day. After sadly failed attempt to get her family on Skype from overseas to participate, the less-than-fifteen minute ceremony was recorded by all nine of us on compact and SLR cameras, camcorders and iPhones; we synchronously danced around A, K and the minister while he read their vows from his Kindle. Technology can be wonderful, after all.

The sunflower is a Ukie tradition for weddings (and other celebratory events, I imagine), and her bright yellow bouquet perfectly complemented the day.