Here’s a book I feel strong enough about after only 40+ pages to jump up and down about. I’d stared at it for the last few years on shelves and tables in bookstores. I fought getting it and when you do that with books or movies and then you finally give in, you see within 10 minutes what the big deal is.
I’VE TAKEN PICTURES of so many people on bicycles this last year. There may have been more bikes than the year before or maybe I just noticed them more with less car traffic dominating the streets. I enjoyed having something for my phone camera to do on my morning five minute trip-and-back to the store. Now things are busier here. More cars. More people on the curb looking for a yellow cab or the Uber they ordered. Busier sidewalks. I’m glad for the world that things may really be getting better. But I liked the small, quieter world we had for awhile.
The bar you’d sometimes go to after you bought a book at Strand or a new notebook at B&N and wanted to just look at them by yourself and have a pint in front of you while you did. I walked by it yesterday and it’s open partially. The outside bit is a new thing. The food is nothing special, nor is the way they pull a pint. But it’s a very great space. It used to be part of Letterman’s opening montage. It’s been some kind of tavern since 1892. First German, since Irish though the quirky son of the son says it’s not an Irish bar, it’s an American bar.
FOREVER YOUNG. OY.
I bought a book this morning
that just came out
written by a young woman
my daughters’ age
which I try not to do
or to listen to music that’s for them
or watch what they’re bingeing on.
I don’t watch Saturday Night Live either because
if I’m watching it at 73 is it contraband anymore?
Kids and grandchildren need contraband.
When I was home from college and
getting ready to go out and
had The Mamas and The Papas on
the record player
my father didn’t
stick his head
in the door and say
he really liked that new song
that Mama Cass was belting out.
He probably just wished
I’d turn it down.
‘I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.’
-Booker T. Washington
