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Humidity of Home

Humidity of Home

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It’s not that Manhattan defies seasons, not completely. It can be stiflingly hot there, and bitterly cold. But weather does not rule as it does in other places I’ve lived. 

I remember my first winter in the city, being amazed when snow finally stuck on the pavement. I thought that all the heat underground — the subway, smoke belching from grates — would make it impossible for white stuff to accumulate. It eventually did, of course, but the city itself is an excellent distraction from all things meteorological. 

All this is to say that last week I was ensconced in a season-free bubble, so this week I open my eyes (and my pores) to the new season in town: summer. I know this not just from the calendar, and the writing on the street, but from the humidity, which began building Saturday and is now gearing up for a sticky, months-long run. 

What can I say — it can be miserable, to be sure, but it’s the humidity of home. 

Charm and Caution Tape

Charm and Caution Tape

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I write this morning from my quiet cocoon in the suburbs, pining for the cacophony I left behind. I stayed near NYU Hospital and the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and except for the dead of night there was seldom a time when sirens weren’t sounding and horns weren’t honking.

A nuisance? It would be if I lived there. But as a visitor I accept it as part of the bargain. You come to the largest city in the country not for silence but for stimulation, and of that there was plenty. 

As I lace up my trusty tennis shoes for a walk through the neighborhood, I think about what they took me through yesterday: up and down the East River Greenway and across the city to Penn Station, dodging traffic, construction and the yawning maw of open basement stairways. 

The whole city should be wrapped in yellow caution tape. But that, strange to say, is part of its charm.

(I snapped this photo on yesterday’s walk.) 

Manhattan Monochrome

Manhattan Monochrome

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The clouds moved in and gave the photos from Roosevelt Island a monochromatic moodiness. But they didn’t spoil the views of Manhattan, which are primo from this two-mile strip of land in the East River.

There’s the United Nations building on the left and the Chrysler Building and One Vanderbilt faint gray in the middle of the shot. There are skyscrapers made of steel and glass and masonry. There is the city in all of its heft and all of its of splendor.

I lived in New York City for five and a half years and never stepped foot on Roosevelt Island. I made up for it yesterday. 

It’s Baaaack!

It’s Baaaack!

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Where to start, except to say that this place I once lived, this place I once feared had fallen prey to the emptiness and ennui that plagues many cities these days, has not only survived, it’s thrived. 

New York City is back … and it’s better than ever! Or at least that’s my humble opinion, influenced no doubt by a spot-on day of walking from east side to west side, uptown to down. Others might disagree, might say it’s dirtier, more crime-ridden. And I wouldn’t argue, given my tourist perspective. 

But as a place of great energy and drive, where people of all types rub shoulders with each other, where sirens blare, horns honk, street music sings, it cannot be beat.  

Big Apple Bound

Big Apple Bound

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It’s been a two years since I took in the Big Apple, so I’m heading up there today, to walk, visit with a dear friend, and soak up the big city vibe. 

Though I’ve traveled far and wide since then, it still seems like the place of places to me, where all roads lead. In my case, train tracks. But then, a lot of tracks lead there, too. 

I’ll do what I always do in any city, but especially this one — I’ll put as many miles on my old tennis shoes as I possibly can. I’ll become, at least for a few days, a walker in the city. 

Vistas

Vistas

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Seattle is a city of vistas: heading west to the bay and the sound, islands on the horizon, ferries and tug boats and freighters plying the deep, unfathomable blue. 

Or looking east, to the lake and Capitol Hill, the muted colors of sky and clouds, small sailboats on the water and a cathedral on the summit. 

Or the most iconic of Seattle vistas, the one with the Space Needle, of course.
Twenty Years

Twenty Years

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When I visited Lexington last month, Phillip drove me through the University of Kentucky campus. He  wanted to show me that the twin towers were gone. Not those twin towers, though Phillip saw those come down, too. He was working in New York at the time, his office less than two miles north on Hudson. But it was the absence of the Kirwan-Blanding Towers he wanted to show me, two 23-floor dormitories that housed students for almost 50 years and that came down carefully, a floor at a time.

Not so with those other towers, of course, which pancaked to the ground 20 years ago today, taking the lives of almost 2,700 with them. As is so often the case, we hadn’t known what we had until we lost it. We also hadn’t known that terrorists with fake IDs were learning how to fly planes — but not to land them. There was ignorance within our innocence. Perhaps there must always be.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, I cooked up a storm. I made bacon-and-egg breakfasts, chopped vegetables for stews and soups. I drug out the crockpot and pressed it into service. I was making food for the bereaved and serving it to my family. It felt like a way to heal.

But that was long ago. Our problems have metastasized. The terrorism is still present but now we also have a pandemic, climate change disasters, and an ignominious end to the war we started to avenge the 9/11 attacks. So many challenges … and so little consensus on how to deal with them.

Ten years ago, I wrote that our children grew up in a different world. Now my children have children. What kind of world will they inherit?

Lower East Side

Lower East Side

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The New York City expedition was two weeks ago, but I’m still thinking of the city and its pleasures: the cacophony of drill hammers, car horns, trucks backing up, people talking, gesturing, all while walking, of course — life happening everywhere you go.

The destination of our trip was the Lower East Side, a neighborhood I seldom ventured into after dark back in the day. But there we were, wandering down Delancey and Essex and Orchard, dodging only rain, not bullets. 

I ‘m stretching that a bit; it was mostly muggings we were trying to avoid in the mid 1980s, carrying a folded $10 or $20 in a back pocket, “mugger’s money” we could offer if accosted. 

But still, it was hard to visit the area and not notice the sheen of danger.  Maybe that’s part of its charm.

Shank’s Mare

Shank’s Mare

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Today, my feet are in the suburbs but my soul is in the city. I’m missing New York City in many ways, especially in this one: walking there is purposeful. It’s about getting where you need to be, not taking 10,000 steps.

You don’t bother with the subway if you’re just hopping 20 blocks. Taxis are harder to come by than they used to be, and on Thursday night, Uber was asking $120 to take you from the Upper West Side to the Lower East Side. Yes, they are on opposite sides of the island, but come on!

Which brings us to shank’s mare, that most dependable mode of transportation. It might be hot and it might take a minute, but walking will get you where you need to be.

Yes, I rhapsodize about the practice of walking. It calms and inspires me on a daily basis. So much so that it’s easy to forget its original purpose, which is to get us from one place to another. In New York City, you don’t forget.

A Symphony

A Symphony

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If walking in the suburbs is a sonata, walking in the city is a symphony. It is the cued entrance of  countless well-tuned players, the trilling of a piccolo, the thrum of a timpani. It is pedestrians striding through the square and construction workers in hard hats taking a break. 

It’s a stroll on the High Line and a view of lower Manhattan from Little Island, the city’s newest park. 

It’s meandering through the West Village, down Bedford and Barrow, past the Cherry Lane Theater and on to Bleecker, where I’ll grab a Napoleon and watch ten white-habited monks who’ve come from Our Lady of Pompeii to buy some cannolis. 

It’s the plume of a fountain in Washington Square Park and the chess players and weed hawkers and pickup jazz bands that gather nearby.

It’s a trip to the Strand Bookstore (still there!) on the way uptown, then dinner at a hundred-plus-year-old bar and grill.

Four movements, none of them replicable. A city walk. A symphony.