places of birth, death and stuff inbetween. It was good not to have to take the F train to manhattan this morning, as there had been a derailment on Smith and 9th Street. Hmm, maybe I would not have known about it anyway, as I would have probably taken the B or the Q... Hope my neighbors did not get too annoyed with me, as I managed to listen to about 10 hours or so of David McCullogh's 1776... he reads the audio edition himself, which is great, as he knows that the text is brilliant enough and that it does not need some ambitious reenactment. (Oh, how much do I hate it when somebody tries to hard to play all the characters in a book, by clumsily adjusting their reading style.) (Books on tape allow me to draw while it listen...good, no?) I was very interested in the book, as I live on a battle field here, hundreds of americans died in this very street, trying to keep thousands of British and Hessian soldiers from taking over New York. While the book does not go too deep into the details of the Battle of Brooklyn (Or the battle of Long Island, you know the one of August 26th 1776), it was really quite excellent at presenting a bigger picture, one that at times made me wonder why there is George Washington on my $1 bills and not Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd. (Aren't we all looking forward to money with William on it?)... Well, let's say the Americans did not look their very best in 1776... and whenever I am going to look at the fireworks on the 4th of July being fired in the New York harbor, I will now always imagine the 400 or so british ships docked there, with international troops, ready to land and bring back order into that actually incredibly rich place called America... hmm... You know... King George the Third was a really kind man... and the troops were here to bring peace. (I kid you not.) Oh, and Washington having the idea of burning down New York?... hmm... it was nice to hear that not everyone shared this opinion... hmm... yes, the book is a rather good one. It made me feel good again about my Audible subscription. Walking around what were portions of the battle field, just two blocks or so up from my house, I lost myself in the ravine, then spent some time sitting on a boulder, near the shore of a little lake. I then walked through some other made to appear wild area where I kept running into men who also seemed to be just exploring the park. It was not until one of them winked at me and called me "sexy" that I felt a bit less comfortable and a bit too much by myself. Brooklyn is beautiful and I have recently been somehow obsessing about what places here will look like in 10, 50, 150 years? As Manhattan (formerly known as York Island,) turns more and more into a glitzy shopping and entertainment disney land, what is going to happen to places like Kensington for example... and doesn't dumbo look a bit like SoHo with a cool waterfront?... That trip to coney island the other day was also a nice mind expanding experience. I seriously live about twenty minutes from the beach... crazy somehow... I think I will have to take a walk there some day. Ocean Parkway was designed for just that... and wasn't it also one of the routes taken by the british troops? or the hessian troops? Or did they take the path of the D train?... So fascinating... Then, on the other hand... when in germany (in Hanau), I would wait for my bus to my High School every morning standing next to this plaque. How is this in any way related?... I never really know these things...