Flashers

ALBANY, N.Y. - One night, about a year ago, a friend and I were walking across Albany's Empire State Plaza on the way to a concert in the Egg.

It was a warm night, so we walked slowly. The Plaza is a long promenade that connects the State Capital to the State Museum. Created in the 1960s by bulldozing the city's old Italian section, the Plaza is the symbol of Albany, the thing that appears on the few postcards sent each year from the city.

The sides of the plaza are flanked by office buildings, four smaller ones on the west side, and the Corning Tower, Upstate New York's tallest building, on the east side. On this particular night, ambling toward our destination, I looked up at the night sky.

Somewhere between the ground and the few stars that penetrate the urban light pollution, something was wrong. The Corning Tower looked alive. Lights were flashing, randomly, at all of the tower's windows. All 42 floors were illuminated and then dark, dozens of times each minute.

"What's that?" I said. My friend stared at it for a while and shrugged.

I stood in front of the Tower and frantically narrated a digital camera video on what might be causing the light show. Aliens? Terrorists? A government conspiracy?

After shooting, we hurried quickly into the concert. Two hours of Aimee Mann's country rock later, the lights were off.

Two weeks ago, that same friend and I were talking about that night. He said off-handedly that he later found what had caused the display.

"That's what happens when the fire alarm goes off," he said. "Those lights were the emergency flashers."

The lesson of the evening: In Albany, things are often duller than they seem.

A Russian Master

ALBANY, N.Y. - I'll cop to putting some unusual things on the blog this week. Poems, old articles and weird pictures. That's just the way it's going to be sometimes on here.

This morning I had tea with a Russian woman, Irina. Irina is in her middle 40s and came to our meeting in a full-length formal coat and black slacks. Her wavy hair was recently highlighted.

I wore a mint colored button down shirt with a yellow and blue band near the shoulders that said "RedEx: Redhot Express" across the front. It cost $5 at an export shop in Hong Kong.

We met at Border's Books and Music in the Albany suburb of Colonie. My father was there, and so was Irina's daughter, Tonya. Tonya, 15, is a ranked chess player, future AP student and anime fan. By coming to Albany today, she missed anime festival in New Hampshire. She made an elaborate costume for Halloween this year, a hooded warrior that took more than 20 hours of sewing between Irina and Tonya, and plans to wear it at future anime gatherings. I told her about my recent trip to an anime festival, where I saw a number of people walking the hotel event room floor with eight-foot keys from the game Kingdom Hearts.

"That's a very popular game," Tonya said. Apparently anime tastes in the Northeast aren't terribly different than in the Heartland.

Tonya and Irina live in Montpelier, the tiny capital of Vermont. (Tonya said it only has 8,000 people, Wikipedia says 8,035, which is pretty damn close.) They're originally from Moscow. I'm not sure why they came over here: I was too busy talking about anime to ask.

Irina and I met because I've recently begun planning a trip to Russia. I tentatively thinking about flying to Moscow from New York in early February, and making my way to language school in Beijing by rail. Paul Theroux, the chronicler of train journeys, has convinced me to take this long trip. Irina's never been on the long train, but she had some advice on the Moscow leg of the trip.



"The plane food was O.K.," she said. The best part about Aeroflot - the Russian airline - was the free rubber duck provided in coach.

Moscow has terrible traffic. It always moves, just at a slow pace. Obviously Irina does not travel with the blue light buying sect in the city.

I shouldn't travel places at night, it's not good. What will happene, I'm not sure, but Irina didn't get into I didn't want to ask.

There's a cool chocolate factory near the riverside monument to Peter the Great. Sounds yummy.



And best of all, Irina agreed to hook me up with an American friend living in Moscow to be a companion, guide, friend and possible host while in the city. For the price of a cup of Pomegranate Green Icea Tea, I learned quite a bit.