Brooklyn

I had a terrific telephone conversation with Ariel this afternoon. She had just gotten off the phone with Chris, who's arriving this weekend. That's good news in itself. They're going to move to an apartment in the Cobble Hill area that sounds great, sort of near Prospect Heights, where she and Chris were looking, and not far from Prospect Park. A few great things: it's a one-year sublease from a math professor, the rent is very reasonable, and it's close to the water. In fact, Governor's Island looks like it's about 500 yards as the fishies swim from the waterfront district right by. It's somewhere between Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she was telling me there's all these water taxis, and Red Hook, where's there's a nice park and a free, outdoor pool. So I kept saying there should be a boat launch nearby, and sure enough right next to the Red Hook park is a little park on the water where you can see the Statue of Liberty and launch kayaks. And we got to talking about lots of other things. She's got some very good interviews coming up with very good publications and radio programs, but I'll let her tell more as those things develop, and right now she's developing podcasts for IEEE Spectrum. I had just heard this morning on NPR about a play called A Disappearing Number, about a mathematician, and the story sounded very familiar. It also sounded like a very good play, judging from some of the dialogue they played from it. Ariel had done some work on this mathematician and told me about him four or five years ago. I think it was part of her thesis. So it's playing at a festival at the Lincoln Center this weekend. And we talked about an old friend of mine, whose daughter went to school with Ariel at Valley, and Ariel and her friend just had dinner together the night before somewhere in New York City. Ariel says she likes Brooklyn. I would have liked to continue; it was so fun to talk to her. But I had to pay a few bills before the day ended. Now I'm going to run home in the heat.