Rallying!

The stock market has been rallying lately, but no one seems to really know why. It can't be because the economy has turned around. Things have just been inexplicably better.

Ditto my mood. Last week began like a disaster. But by the middle of the week, I had recovered. I don't know why. Nothing had really changed in my life. Things just seemed better.

In fact, today's Thursday and I'm still flying high.

I'm trying to tell myself that it had nothing to do with my weekend trip to New York. But I really think it did. Like always, it was a mix of the good with the bad. And toward the end it was a race against the clock.

But it definitely was memorable, and I'm just not saying that because I heard a song called "Big Ups to Jesus" in church on Sunday.

Then most jarring occurrence happened as my trip was coming to a close: My phone died on Monday morning. This was doubly upsetting because i had planned this to be a photo blog with pics taken on my cam phone.

...Okay, It's gonna be a photo blog anyway. Just use your imagination:

The Troubadour: This is me strumming an acoustic guitar at a friend's apartment in Astoria, Queens. I walked in and there was a guitar in the living room. I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd be singing a nonsensical song.

The Bride: I did make it to the Queens Museum of Art as I wrote about in "Queens for a Day." It was a really lovely area, next to the Unisphere. There was a park with people riding bikes, playing soccer and just generally relaxing. As I got closer to the museum, there was a bride having her picture taken. It's relatively common to see brides being photographed in New York. I used to see wedding parties all the time along Museum Mile and near Grand Army Plaza. But this was a touching scene, so I snapped a picture with my camera.

The Crowd: After I finished with the museum, I got swept up in the crowd from a Mets baseball game (the museum and the Mets' new home, Citifield, share the same subway stop). But I must say, New York knows how to handle a crowd. There were tens of thousands of people, but there were ample cops and subway personnel on hand to handle the situation. One subway employee had her script down in a rap:

"Express down stairs/Local to the right. Express down stairs/Local to the right."

I couldn't help but think about DC and the fiasco that was the transportation for the inauguration. It really wasn't well coordinated. The L'Enfant Incident will live in infamy!

The College: This is a photo of the main administrative building on the campus of Medgar Evers College. I just happened upon the school while walking in Brooklyn. The school is named for Medger Evers, a fellow Mississippian and civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1963.