First Time

The first post to my new blog. It feels like it ought to mean something, but it doesn't mean much. I managed to get the thing up and running. I am in New York City and from the window in front of my desk I look down into Times Square at 47th Street. Huge images of human beings marketing television shows or movies or Jewish Dating Services loom a block away, just beyond the W Hotel, which houses one of our favorite restaurants, Blue Fin. Morgan Stanley's office building is just to the left of Times Square. We used to be able to see TKTS down there, but it's moved. On Thanksgiving we can see the Macy's Parade as it passes. It's especially fun when the big floats pass between the buildings like UFOs. On New Year's Eve the roar of the city was strangely comforting, like the background hum of the universe magnified. At midnight the sky outside filled with confetti drifting up the way snow does (we're on the seventeenth floor). Of course, we watched the ball drop on television. No way we were going out there in the midst of all those people. Two years ago we went down to the harbor and stayed at a hotel. From our room we could watch fireworks on the harbor. There was almost no one watching. It was as if no one knew you could go down to the harbor and see fireworks on New Year's Eve and be practically alone. This year the street cleaners came out before all of the people were gone, around 12:30, and began sweeping as the rain started to fall. By morning everything was gone, litter, people, the old year. It's the way we prefer the city: quiet and empty on holiday mornings when the midwesterners are still eating breakfast and the New Yorkers are sleeping.