New York’s incredibly awesome Highline

nyc-highline2

Some creative citizens spearheaded resistance to destruction of the ‘visual blight’ elevated railway built to eliminate rail traffic from the meatpacking district of lower Manhattan that produced so many accidents as street level that it was called Death Avenue in the early 20th century. By the 1960s it was abandoned, and over the next decades plants grew and soil developed.

Now it has become a totally impressive, totally awesome ‘back yard’ for NYC residents, almost a Frederick Law Olmstead (creator of central Park, the ‘lungs’ of NYC) redux.

nyc-gahry-bldg

Here’s a treat, view of a Frank Gehry condo building from the Highline. Even more impressive, we’re told, illuminated at night time.

Bats!

We finally determined that the scratching noises in the roof many mornings just before daybreak are the sounds of bats returning home. Bats are good. Bats in the roof less so.

So how do you get rid of bats yet keep them at the same time? The answer: a bat hotel!

Bat hotel I built for the side of our house, Uruguay

Welcome to the Hotel Murciélago!

I hope.

Mold

moldy wall in Uruguay

Given a combination of brick walls, poor construction (this is underneath a terrace that ‘sort of’ drains), and warm snaps during cold weather, Uruguay offers the perfect combination for growing mold on walls, shoes, and just about everything else.

Looking at building a house in the country (hey, what’s the problem?), we’re interested in alternative construction techniques.  One is steel framing. They call it ‘dry construction.’ A new and exciting construction technique for Uruguay!

Not everyone, it appears, is convinced. A friend tried to explain the virtues of building with insulation to an architect in Montevideo. He put his hand on the wall, and said that in the winter up north, instead of being cold, the inside of the wall would be room temperature. To which the architect replied, well, you can turn on a heater.

As another friend points out, turning on a heater in a damp brick room is the best possible way to accelerate mold growth.

Leñero

firewood truck, Atlántida, Uruguay

Leña means firewood, and the guy who sells it is a leñero. This guy appears on weekends and holidays near the zoo (yes, we have a zoo). He always waves to everybody. I’ve waved to him for a couple of years when I walk the dogs, thinking one of these days I want to ask him about that truck.

Finally did: 1954 Commer (English). He’s got a better one, he says, and plans to put the engine from this into that. I didn’t ask when, or how long he’s been planning that; meaningless questions in the land where ‘next week’ can mean ‘next month.’

Coffee in Yesterguay

Probably 98% of the coffee sold in super (and other) markets in Uruguay is ground and glaseado – meaning sugar added.

As far as I know, the only place to buy real coffee is Palacio del Cafe in Montevideo. They do not have a stunning selection, but they do have rather stunning packaging:

Coffee label in Uruguay in 2014: not exactly politically correct

You can also get their coffee at Tienda Inglesa in Punta del Este (in the bakery section, natch). In that case, however, you’ll get more modern (say, post-1930) graphics.
Current cost UYP 355/kg = USD 7.45/lb.

The Hanging Cow

Now, it’s not a Tarot card.

It’s what happens when you let an idiot put a pregnant cow into a loading shoot where she doesn’t have room to give birth, then produces a stillborn calf and can’t stand up, and your Uruguayan neighbors all show up to help.

The metal bit in the back is clamped onto the cow’s protruding pelvic bones. They rigged a beam between two trees. The back feet didn’t actually touch the ground.

Not our cow. We were called to help before the neighbors – who actually knew what to do – showed up.

Our remarkable new house

We have finally taken possession of a narrow strip of farmland (5.6 hectares, 13.837901 acres) about ten kilometers inland. Most remarkable about the house is that the couple who raised their family in for twenty years or so never got around to installing running water.

The hand-dug well is only about 20 meters from the back door for your flushing convenience. I think there was a basin, since removed.

The bathroom opening (no door) lies behind this brick curtain wall, which became a pile of rubble today in less than an hour.

To the credit of the sellers – who now live a kilometer down the road in a new house with running water and a fireplace (this one had no heat source other than a wood kitchen stove in the little closet of a kitchen) – the place was clean: not a bit of crap in the house whatsoever. A few bits in that rustic (and rusty) galpon (barn), whose side sheathing consists of the sides of metal barrels that have been straightened.