A Year In New York

The battle for New York City’s green future arrived in my mailbox last week. It took the form of a fundraising appeal from MillionTreesNYC, a campaign to plant 100,000 trees every year for a decade, and bore the signature of that eminent environmentalist, Bette Midler.
Which immediately brought questions to mind. Who made the star of [...]

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Early this morning a congregation of about 150 Jews stood by the United Nations building and did something that seemed almost pagan: They blessed the rising sun.

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In March the Union Square farmer’s market is a meager proposition: onions, potatoes, and some apples. I spent a more fruitful time having a guy write me a poem.
“What do you want your poem to be about?” Benyomin Spaner asked.

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This man’s name is Charlie and the cat’s name is Nicolas. Some Union Square panhandlers just ask for change, but the more enterprising ones have a value-add. Charlie created value by adding Nicholas to the top of his head.
The combination coaxed three dollars out of me. I think Charlie is on to something.

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In the frigid air of March, in the gloom of a deep recession, Manhattan’s clothing merchandisers have announced the dawn of a new, happy age in which everyone wears lime-colored golf shirts and bright peach polos. New Yorkers pull up their collars and seem unmoved.

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This morning I pulled the shade to see if the forecast foot of snow had arrived. Not quite. But six inches lay on the ground with more pouring from the sky, and I felt the pull of the wild.
In response, I pulled on my fleece jacket and Gore-Tex shell and the snow boots I’d bought [...]

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My friend Jen is visiting from Amsterdam to debut her erotic film, and yesterday we made a visit to the Guggenheim. We lingered at “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia” exhibit. This piece in the lobby summed it up neatly. Listen up, everyone! Ice is melting.

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I am concerned that President Obama has passed two and half weeks in office already, distracting himself with Economic-Stimulus-This and Closing-Guantanamo-That, while one of the hairiest questions of his presidency hangs fire: who will be our First Dog?
You’ll recall that, in the misty-eyed moments after he won the election, Obama walked onto the stage at [...]

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February is a tough month to be a New Yorker. Holiday cheer is far behind, spring is well ahead, temperatures clamp down in the 20s and the earmuffs aren’t fun anymore. But I am new enough to the East Coast thing to get blissed out when snow falls from the sky.
It toyed with us yesterday [...]

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To mark Super Bowl Sunday, I joined some fellow writers for a game of ultimate Frisbee at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. We met in the big meadow under a weak sun. The grass was dead, with just a few patches of snow, and we dashed around for two hours like Labrador retrievers. We mixed the [...]

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