We are less than a month away from annual tributes to the September 11 attacks, and for a few tense days it looked like one of the most enduring traditions around the commemoration, the Tribute in Light—two columns of light projected from lower Manhattan close to where the Twin Towers were located—may not go on…. Read more »
Long Beach Island, New Jersey How does an area centered on catering to crowds of tourists manage to keep people safe during the heavy tourist season? Long Beach Island is coping in the time of the pandemic. It has been a family tradition to come to Long Beach Island for about a week every summer… Read more »
What grinds us down most is not the presence of stress, but the absence of joy. Even during the darkest times in human history. People survived not just on food, water, and medicine but on jokes, songs, and stories. It’s not a coincidence that in addition to our stockpiling cleaning supplies and toilet paper, the… Read more »
I count myself among the many fortunate souls that quit drinking before the use of camera phones became ubiquitous. I know of at least one video taken of me passed out drunk in a friend’s kitchen that existed on a friend’s mobile phone. If there are others I don’t know about them but suffice to… Read more »
Years ago, when I lived in Inwood, I walked to the public pier at Dyckman Street on the Hudson River to see fireworks on the Fourth of July. The sightings were disappointing. Through clouds in the distance I could see the faint glow of a few shows over New Jersey and could see none of… Read more »
In John Carpenter’s 1984 film “Starman,” Jeff Bridges stars as an alien who is stranded on Earth, and goes on the run from U.S. government agents with the widow of a deceased housepainter, whose body he has cloned as a disguise. They have misadventures while eluding the authorities and the widow (Karen Allen) falls in… Read more »
A few years ago, I was crossing Madison Avenue at 23rd Street in Manhattan and had the ‘Walk’ signal. A car made an illegal left turn from 23rd Street onto Madison, coming inches from people who had the right of way in the crosswalk, and the driver had the chutzpah to honk his horn at… Read more »
A Song for the Silent StreetsJust the other day it all seemed the sameas we followed the routines of our livesbut now everything has suddenly changedand we’re all locked up together inside. Makes me think how a month agoI was carefree in a crowd at the parkor at the theater for a new show,sometimes we’re… Read more »
Life during this pandemic has taken on a negative pattern. I wake up, I work 12+ hours at home, I have dinner, put the kids to bed, watch an hour of TV (usually Ozark now), and then go to bed. I’m too tired and demoralized to do much productive, and maybe that’s OK right now…. Read more »
In New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., life is slowly adjusting to a new, temporary normal that is at once both dreadful and mundane. What is cruelest about this epidemic is that it keeps us from one another in times of great need and hardship, when the embrace of… Read more »
