"Christ Is Risen!", "Allah, Be Praised!", "So, Nu?"
It's been a while. Somewhere along the way, I have celebrated my twentieth year in my present abode; 71 years on the planet and 17 years at this blog.
And, no. I didn't give it up for Lent.
What had happened was, a form of parenthood. I don't know if I ever blogged about this very much, but I've always considered myself a bit of a fish hobbyist. Not the kind that caught them for eating or trophy purposes, but to keep them in captivity, usually in a glass tank filled with water. It's been a fascination of mine since I was tall enough to stand on tippy toe at the bathroom sink and watch my Dad change the water in a tiny fishbowl my mother and he acquired somehow during our stay in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
It's clear to me now that someone must have gifted it to them along with a goldfish; they would never have spent the money on their own on such a trifle. It was very likely a promotion of some sort: Buy a fish, Get the Bowl for Free. That sort of thing. In any event, the fish soon died, probably from over-eating. My Mom's maternal instincts would have been the exact opposite of a goldfish dietary regimen. They eat until their guts burst.
But, I did not know that until a decade or so later by which time I had saved up enough allowance money to purchase my own aquarium, a modest 2 gallon affair, barely a step up in size from my parents' glass bowl. I began to get the hang of it once we moved to Queens and I was allowed to use electricity to run a basic filtration system. That, and, a heater enabled the further step up to keeping exotic warm-water fishes like guppies.
Guppies and other live-bearing freshwater fishes had the added fascination of multiplying themselves effortlessly just by pairing them with the opposite gender of the species which was a much easier process for them than for goldfish; the sex specific di-morphism displayed by guppy males was quite astonishing. Unlike humans, they were the ones who got to wear bright colors and wriggle their butts to attract the opposite sex.
The move to Queens offered the added benefits of an alternate water source than the rest of the city; the brackish mineral rich content of the Jamaica ground water - which homeowners pay for like electricity and gas - was also highly conducive for aquatic plant growth. I never had trouble getting plants bought from the mom-and-pop pet store downtown to root and grow until they had to be cut. Over time, I got quite proficient at replanting the stems in nothing more than plain gravel and having them sprout roots too.
I had become, in my own way, a farmer like my ancestors.
This went on through high school AND senior year when I was admitted to my first-choice college. In preparation for what would be a four-year sojourn away from all things familiar, I took down the aquarium which had grown to about 17 gallons by then and put the equipment away. I didn't want to be identified as a nerdy kid with a strange hobby once I arrived on campus.
Fast forward about fifty years and January of last year I began to take up the hobby again in earnest.
i'd acquired a ten gallon Chinese porcelain bowl many years ago. It was the product of a manic phase I was going through. I had somehow latched on to the idea of having a koi pond in my new apartment. And, it worked for long periods of time (as reported in many lj entries in the early 2000s.) But, gradually, no matter how clean the water looked the fish would eventually succumb to a mysterious debilitating disease. I chalked it up to something in my Brooklyn water supply or in the pipes in my buillding and reluctantly stopped buying pet fish.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
And, no. I didn't give it up for Lent.
What had happened was, a form of parenthood. I don't know if I ever blogged about this very much, but I've always considered myself a bit of a fish hobbyist. Not the kind that caught them for eating or trophy purposes, but to keep them in captivity, usually in a glass tank filled with water. It's been a fascination of mine since I was tall enough to stand on tippy toe at the bathroom sink and watch my Dad change the water in a tiny fishbowl my mother and he acquired somehow during our stay in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
It's clear to me now that someone must have gifted it to them along with a goldfish; they would never have spent the money on their own on such a trifle. It was very likely a promotion of some sort: Buy a fish, Get the Bowl for Free. That sort of thing. In any event, the fish soon died, probably from over-eating. My Mom's maternal instincts would have been the exact opposite of a goldfish dietary regimen. They eat until their guts burst.
But, I did not know that until a decade or so later by which time I had saved up enough allowance money to purchase my own aquarium, a modest 2 gallon affair, barely a step up in size from my parents' glass bowl. I began to get the hang of it once we moved to Queens and I was allowed to use electricity to run a basic filtration system. That, and, a heater enabled the further step up to keeping exotic warm-water fishes like guppies.
Guppies and other live-bearing freshwater fishes had the added fascination of multiplying themselves effortlessly just by pairing them with the opposite gender of the species which was a much easier process for them than for goldfish; the sex specific di-morphism displayed by guppy males was quite astonishing. Unlike humans, they were the ones who got to wear bright colors and wriggle their butts to attract the opposite sex.
The move to Queens offered the added benefits of an alternate water source than the rest of the city; the brackish mineral rich content of the Jamaica ground water - which homeowners pay for like electricity and gas - was also highly conducive for aquatic plant growth. I never had trouble getting plants bought from the mom-and-pop pet store downtown to root and grow until they had to be cut. Over time, I got quite proficient at replanting the stems in nothing more than plain gravel and having them sprout roots too.
I had become, in my own way, a farmer like my ancestors.
This went on through high school AND senior year when I was admitted to my first-choice college. In preparation for what would be a four-year sojourn away from all things familiar, I took down the aquarium which had grown to about 17 gallons by then and put the equipment away. I didn't want to be identified as a nerdy kid with a strange hobby once I arrived on campus.
Fast forward about fifty years and January of last year I began to take up the hobby again in earnest.
i'd acquired a ten gallon Chinese porcelain bowl many years ago. It was the product of a manic phase I was going through. I had somehow latched on to the idea of having a koi pond in my new apartment. And, it worked for long periods of time (as reported in many lj entries in the early 2000s.) But, gradually, no matter how clean the water looked the fish would eventually succumb to a mysterious debilitating disease. I chalked it up to something in my Brooklyn water supply or in the pipes in my buillding and reluctantly stopped buying pet fish.
[TO BE CONTINUED]