Day 120- September 10

By Al
Today, I went to a free Japanese language class at Bryant Park.  They have occasional beginning language classes at Bryant Park.  It was very basic and I didn't learn more vocabulary.  However, it was useful to help me with pronunciation. After class I went into the main library at Bryant Park.  This is the famous building with the lions in front.  It is quite a nice building inside and I plan to go back some day to look it over some more. 

They had a display about lunch and lunch carts.  It was interesting. The part that most interested me was the part about lunch.   Lunch originally meant a meal between more substantial meals.  Daniel Webster defined lunch as "a large piece of food." In many parts of rural American even today, lunch means a small meal between regular meals.  I had a criminal trial where this definition of lunch became an issue.  In any case, the picture below explains how lunch came to its current, more common definition.

I then met Sally to head out to the Mets game. Readers may remember the problem I had with getting a senior ticket to a Mets game in August and that the Mets called me after I complained and offered two tickets to another game. Tonight was that game. It was against the Washington Nationals. They have the best record in the major leagues, so we looked forward to a good game if we had decent seats. We did. The Mets made up for the prior problem. Unfortunately, the Nationals put the game out of reach early with several home runs. One interesting things was an unearned home run by the first batter in an inning. After that, in the same inning, two other batters hit earned home runs. For those who care, this must be pretty rare. I don't know, but I would think so. This is how it happened. The batter hit a pop up foul ball behind home plate. The catcher dropped it. So, he should have been out but for the catcher's error. So when he then hit a home run, it was unearned. The next two home runs that inning were earned.

This is Paul Rodgers, founding member of Free and Bad Company, singing the National Anthem.

The view from our seats.

Gio González, the Nationals' starting pitcher.

Collin McHugh, Mets pitcher.

The war horse, from the play "War Horse" who helped cast members lead the seventh inning stretch.

Sally's Day

I spent the morning at a volunteer project bagging food to distribute the low income seniors at a senior center next to Lincoln Center.  We had foods that I had not seen in many years-  canned meat from the USDA, farina, canned apricots, and other canned vegetables.  I hoped that the people receiving the food had some food in their cupboard because I had a challenge trying the come up with recipes using the foods that people would receive.   I was not aware that the USDA still distributed what we used to call "commodities." 

I took my knitting to the baseball game.  The stadium seems to have one entrance for everyone to come into the stadium.  It has a huge display honoring Jackie Robinson.