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Posts Tagged ‘sally ryan’

Drop a Toy on the Tracks? Call a Finder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2014| 1 Comment »

When you drop your cellphone on the subway tracks, who ya gonna call?

In New York City, you call the pick-up crew.

According to Matt Flegenheimer in the NY Times, the need for these finders is increasing as travelers seem more distracted than ever.

“The requests trickle through the bowels of the New York City subway system, funneled to workers more accustomed to calls about tunnel fires or ceiling leaks. A problem is reported at Columbus Circle one recent afternoon. A passenger could be in great distress. Delays are minimal, but movement on the tracks has perhaps never been slower.

“So would a crew mind collecting its helmets and hauling its mechanical claw to rescue the turtle — fumbled by a rider — currently plotting its very methodical getaway from Midtown train traffic?

“ ‘It’s a big city,’ a transit worker, Vinny Mangia, had said a day earlier, reciting a mantra of his office. ‘Somebody’s going to drop something.’

“And somebody, if the item is sufficiently treasured, is going to try to pick it up. These are the fishermen of the subway system, cobbling together homemade instruments to pluck items from the tracks and release them to a grateful city.

“Workers have returned a bag of hospital-bound blood and corralled a collection of artificial body parts, scooped engagement rings from the rails and reunited children with stuffed animals. …

“There is the occasional aggrieved passenger, chafing at the response time if a crew is traveling from another call at a far-off station. But almost universally, riders are appreciative. A few have tried to tip the workers, though they say they have never accepted.

“ ‘A little hug, we take,’ Leonard Geraghty said. ‘I usually tell them, if it’s a man: “Take your wife out. Have a good time on us.” ‘ “

More here.

Photo: Sally Ryan, NY Times
Bob Devine uses a mechanical claw to grab a book lost at 34th Street.

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Persistent Innovator in the Kitchen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 2, 2013| 3 Comments »

Here’s an inventor who doesn’t know the meaning of giving up. After 19 years of keeping the faith, she finally got the attention she needs for her culinary invention — a marinating stick.

Jack Hitt has the story at the NY Times.

“Mary Hunter has always been happy to cook for her congregation at the Yes Lord Church in Gary, Ind. Her recipes, she told me, come directly from God.  … Prayer is ‘where I get 99 percent of my recipes.’

“Mrs. Hunter, who is 73, likes to cook big roasts for her church, ‘and if I had a difficult piece of meat I might marinate it in some beer and celery’ with a blend of her secret seasonings. When she learned that she had diabetes and high blood pressure, though, she had to cut out her salty marinades and cook the meat more blandly.

“Then, one day, God had an idea. ‘I was writing down some recipes and God said to me that I should take that ink pen and stick holes all through it and put a clip on one side so that you can open it’ — lengthwise — ‘and then put your onions and your garlic and your aromatics down the middle and put it inside your meat — then, you won’t have to eat bland foods.’ And so was born her invention, a long stainless steel device that, according to tests in restaurants and elsewhere, far outperforms those herbal injectors and other disappointing methods for introducing flavors into the interior of a big piece of meat.

“Later this month, Mary’s Marinating Sticks are scheduled to go on sale in Target stores.”

It was a long road, and it started back  in 1994. Read how stick-to-it-iveness and determination finally won the day, here.

Photo: Sally Ryan for The New York Times
It was 1994 that Mary Hunter got her idea for an innovative marinating stick. Today her persistence has paid off.

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