It snowed yesterday. Manhattan was a Stieglitz photo, drifting flakes muting the colors of the old town and rendering them pointillist and impressionistic. I awoke with Smitty, serene and beautiful, asleep next to me, Zeus her cat snoring lightly … Continue reading →
Yesterday was very interesting. The early headlines focused on who WASN’T totally in the protest, like anyone expected Amazon or Facebook (or Google, for that matter) to actually shut down business for the day. But I think those stories actually … Continue reading →
It’s Martin Luther King Day and it would be nice if we saw it as something more than just another Monday off or another sale. There are still plenty of us around who remember when he emerged and the state … Continue reading →
They took the subway car out of Golden’s Deli today. Golden’s wasn’t Katz’s, where Smitty took me a couple of months ago. But it was a real kosher deli on Staten Island, where knishes and pastrami aren’t as automatic as … Continue reading →
Karl works at the same chain I do. He’s a cranky mess of a smart guy, trying to figure out how to live a real life, hold his health together and maintain a relationship with his son as the world … Continue reading →
So – December 31st. Every year, we stand in a long hall, staring at a door. We can see the side facing us, the details of the year coming to an end. The other side, once we open it, will … Continue reading →
The old TV show began ‘There are six million stories in the Naked City’ and certainly plenty of them had to be fish stories – New York was, after all, the place PT Barnum had a museum (with live … Continue reading →
Vaclav Havel always interested me. Not too many writers become President of their country and then go back to writing. Havel wrote plays that were produced around the world, was arrested by the government of Communist Czechoslovakia, became leader of … Continue reading →
Richard Russo, the well-known author (Empire Falls), has a really good article on the OpEd page of the NY Times today (link here) about Amazon’s new pitch, encouraging customers to go into brick-and-mortar bookstores this Saturday and use Amazon’s price … Continue reading →
I was speaking to a woman in the neighborhood the other day. We’ve known each other for over ten years. She was sitting in the car, waiting for her husband to join her on a trip to their daughter’s in … Continue reading →
