Pages

Friday, May 6, 2011

Friday Morning at Brooklyn College: Breakfast at the Lily Pond


Taking the B48 bus down Lorimer and Franklin to Fulton Avenue, the B49 bus down Ocean and Bedford to Foster Avenue, and the B41 bus (where the person sitting behind us tapped us on the shoulder, saying, "Hi, Professor!") down Flatbush to the Junction, we went to have breakfast -- a bagel and Starbucks iced tea from the stores across from each other on the corner of Hillel Place and Kenilworth Place -- at Brooklyn College's lily pond. The lilac bloom that we captured last spring is over. The trees are green and leafy but lots of lilac flowers still blanketed the ground and the water.

On the quadrangle were nice red and yellow tulips, though perhaps not quite as fine as the ones we saw at the Fordham University Lincoln Center campus this week. We remember getting our tulip bulbs at P.S. 203 and planting them in the backyard about half a century ago.

About forty years ago, there were four temporary buildings on the Brooklyn College campus to accommodate the hordes of us baby boomers. We sponsored a "name the temp" contest and got good suggestions like "Monty Hall," "Robert Hall" and "U Haul" that were never used. (Nor was a Dark Shadows fan's suggestion, "Grayson Hall.") This morning we saw the first temporary building in decades,

but it's only for the duration of the construction project.

Unlike at least one of its graduates, the BC campus is a lot handsomer now than it was in the 1970s.

No comments: