new york, new york

We have trees here too. Including a stinko ginko.

And the sun shines on us.

And so does the moon.

People have animals. And cameras, and lives. And somehow, as the sun comes up later and sets earlier, and the moon rises, and the rains and winds sweep in, we go on.
 

tnxgvng redux

 

This is a good day to repost Arlo Guthrie's Thanksgiving song about Alice and the restaurant. But it's also a new Tnxgving, a much quieter one for me in contrast to the wall-to-wall relatives and 25 sitting down to dinner in the living room. I don't mind upending tradition, however.

So yesterday I drove down to Donna's in TriBeCa and delivered pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and a chocolate turkey for her grandson Ryan. And she delivered me a Happy Thanksgiving card from Ryan and our old classic dinner roll dough made this year by daughter Fanny. And we had a picnic on the tailgate of the truck. Today, Thanksgiving day, I will cook a chicken, Debby will make stuffing and green beans, and we will deliver each other dinner in the building. 

Yesterday was a really good day for Donna, because many of the pictures from her forthcoming book were set to music by an Italian composer, and the resulting video was dropped by The Guardian and Universal. Please donate to her Kickstarter here. She needs $20,000 more pledged in a week or she doesn't get any money.  You can watch the pictures and listen to the music on You Tube here or in the post below.

holy ferrato!

the saga

So here's the thing. Life is long. It can begin with twirling and dresses and end with walkers and pills. The deal is, you have to try to enjoy each stage.

 

fire department

Some say the world will end in fire, per Robert Frost, and we've certainly had fires this year. Mostly in forests. But I came home to one in my building yesterday morning. Leaning out the window, I could see a herd of fire trucks, lights flashing. People were sent to the hospital, but supposedly not badly injured. Two apartments were destroyed—one by fire, the other by flood, and many other people were chased from their apartments by smoke. I went out later in the day to see windows boarded up. But it is the possessions strewn on the sidewalk and in the street that remind you that people have lives, now upended.
 

empty nests

So I draped the beds and cleaned out yet another refrigerator and loaded the truck with its frost-flowered windshield (alas poor fern in the back) and set forth from the land of Farmers For Trump, crossing the Mississippi River and passing Dayton, Ohio, and singing that Keep Going song in my head. (But I did not stay at Sean's parents' house—there was no room—but at the Deluxe Inn, where I wished I could have shared the owners' curry dinner. It smelled so good.) I just kept going on. The next day dawned later than I would have liked, at like seven o'clock. It was windy and cloudy, but it didn't start to rain until later. And then it began to sleet somewhere in the hills of West Virginia. And then it began to snow in the hills of Pennsylvania. It was beautiful, but of course I could not stop to take a picture. While on a detour, creeping along behind a salt truck, I grabbed a pic. In case you don't believe me. 

 In every hour of the drive, I saw more vehicles, mainly semis, than I saw in the entire half year in the Ozarks. And in my head I was now singing "Take me back to Covid City where the people are masked and the streets are gritty./Oh, oh/ take me home." To the tune of Guns n Roses Paradise City. Perhaps you can understand why I don't need to play the radio. 

After blowing all over the road in New Jersey,  I could see Covid City beckoning silver in the late afternoon light (ie three o'clock) from across the Hudson. And I made it in time to have the building guys help me inside with my bits and bobs and my half-dead fern and my exercise bike. And then I totally caved and put my truck in a garage for a month for $1000. You read that right.  It was so worth it. And I fell on my bed—I had forgotten oh how comfortable it is—and looked at all the stuff I hadn't seen for eight months and thought, "Why do I even have this?" Shall we unpack that thought (to use a locution I abhor) or maybe should we do that after I actually unpack? I have been hauling the same duffel around since Hawaii. I seem to change venues but not clothes. But what with social distancing, who's to notice.

 

visiting

As several people have pointed out, I have a lot of catch-up to do on my blog. But it probably won't happen until I am ensconced in NYC. Carly is visiting the Goose, with son and animals. I saw her a couple weeks ago in Arkansas. I just took this picture of her.

And she took this picture of me in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I spent much of my youth.

ansel adams' amerika 4

 Let me just say again: The Times They are a Changing. But maybe not so much. We are rooted in our pasts. You can see this in the Ansel Adams' show. Granted, the contemporary photographs were chosen specifically because they reflected the back story. But still.

I tried to understand what a Tent-Camera image was, but failed. It has something to do with mirrors, but that's as far as I got. I like the picture though. 

   Happy changing times! What version of America will we get?