‘We All Put Our Hands Over Our Heads as the Card Passed From One Person to the Next’

@Lodi’s s i Living in NYC is like life in a small town. (I also have a family home in a rural town in CT.) Think of a series of villages with avenues or other boundaries- parks, large buildings or just an imaginary one to divide them. We each have a grocery store, a post office, a dry cleaner, a pharmacy, the corner deli or coffee shop where the villagers gather each day around the proverbial pot bellied stove. People know each other's dogs and stop to pet them. We greet each other- "Hi Joe"- I say to my mailman on the street- "Your "New Yorker" came." he responds. Once I received a Christmas card from a cousin in rural Maryland with only my husband's and my first name on it with no apartment number- he knew what box to put it in-our building has 400 units. The ladies at the bakery save me a lemon bar every Monday and we joke about the patrons who take a hand full of the free samples offered at the counter. There is something about living with so many and such diverse people that forces us to see our common humanity. You are not reading disconnected stories- for most of us this is daily life.

Me, too.

@Clark - same here. I seem to be desperate to hear anything with heart.

@Beatriz And so is my daughter's!

@Factumpactum: Cheers!

@Flo, Before 2012, this is the way it was - it hit the Web once a week, the same day it hit print. In 1976, it was only print, of course, but as soon as the Web came along, the column ran online once a week. The many changes in 2012 were very unusual, even experimental, although I do sympathize with you and others, and I undersand why people love their daily Diary fix. What’s funny is, many of the long-time Diary readers were never aware that the column went online five days a week six years ago. I’ve spoken to many who were surprised when I referenced a story mid-week — they asked how I knew about a story before Monday. Newspapers used to have a similar problem when they ran syndicated comic strips. Ask any news editor from those days: If they experimented and ran a few comic strip for more than a few weeks, they were absolutely impossible to get rid of when people got used to them quickly. It was easier to give a new strip a few days or a week, then drop it quickly. Because once they ran for a while, no matter how bad they were, they were stuck with them. What I love about today’s print edition is that the Diary has very much returned to its look from the early days. I don’t know what other changes the editors have planned, but I am waiting expectantly and optimistically. You will get used to this. And somehow I have a feeling that there are more pleasant surprises ahead. (Including more Lou Craft!)

Dear Caroline, Zelda just called me. All of the publicity it seems led the Department of Public Health to place her in quarantine for an indefinite period of time given the numbers of parasites and microbes in the Gowanus Canal. The Metropolitan Diary may need to send her some black and whites for her December 3rd birthday if they haven’t sprung her by then. Goodbye Zelda, and good luck, and thanks Caroline, for your most imaginative montage. Allen

I love your summaries, Caroline. Thanks! :-) Dean from CT

@Caroline Indeed. Reading all 5 at once is like a fevered dream.

Hi Kate, I agree, as do so many others. Each entry by itself left one with a particular feeling and thoughts both idiosyncratic and rooted in the story told. The daily comments reflected those different reactions and also cohered as a group because all addressed that single and singular story. Less became more. I caught a little film I liked a lot a while ago that I thought did a fine job capturing a particular dimension of life in the City of Brotherly Love. The film, set in the late 1970s, is entitled “Invincible” and tells the unlikely and inspiring story of how Vince Papale succeeded in becoming a member of the Philadelphia Eagles following an open tryout. I found myself wondering if you had ever seen it and, if you did, what you thought of it. Stay well Kate—always nice to see your comments to the Diary entries. Allen

@Kate, it's so strange to think of it as trivializing the entries, since I read in the print edition first, where it looks and reads like each is part of a weekly New York mosaic, especially with the extra bit of formatting attention they've done these three weeks is far. The first week in print (3 weeks back) was suitable for framing by its 5 writers, looked almost like a Sunday feature except on Monday; but lots of detail and I guess hard to maintain weekly in section A Mondays, with stories breaking and placement needing to be flexible. But weeks 2 and 3 had a good look too, with an identifiable graphic. I wonder if they could put a PDF online of what's run section A so the online-only readers can see. I feel hopeful this will get even stronger, at times oddball, articles for them to choose from, as it seems the Print New York Times edition is the big honor (maybe even holy grail) for the people submitting. (Especially since they stopped the champagne! What must New York Times champagne have been like?)

Thanks, Freddie. I just went to YouTube and listened to the link. Love it! It’s funny: sometimes the comments are closed quickly, and at other times they’re open for weeks, maybe months. Like you, I’m tempted. From time to time I’ll see a comment from you with the line “Tune of...,” and that tune will be playing in my head all day. You’ve done a couple of tunes based on “Hello, Dolly” that were wonderful. Also “On the Street Where You Live.” You have an encyclopedic memory for songs, music, theatre, and art. You always make my day!

Dear Dean from CT, I agree with you completely. The Diary entries, when digested separately, maintain their discrete identity and charm and are far more satisfying in that way. Each entry also invites specific, targeted comments which build upon one another in a way that makes the comments section as a whole have a logic and integrity that an array of comments upon entries of very different tone and character can never achieve. I miss your comments Dean because they are thoughtful, thought-provoking, amusing, and frequently as interesting as the Diary entry itself. I feel the same way about Freddie’s always interesting comments, and those of Shawnthedog’s Mom, Anne from the Eternal City, Billy from Brooklyn, and all of the other regular commenters, to all of whom I say: I miss your daily thoughts and reactions to the entries. Ah well, there is much in life these days to make one think about what certainly in this case can be called “the good old days.” Maybe I’ll just have a couple of mini black and white cookies and a small glass of milk—just enough of a treat to be altogether satisfying. Stay well, Allen from Inwood

Dear Allen from Inwood, Ah, the black and whites. Here in Connecticut, it’s apple cider time, and many bakeries are featuring apple cider donuts. I can’t resist. They’ll have to substitute for the black and whites. Yes, I miss you and all the regular commenters. We had a daily community. I guess now it’s a weekly community. Life goes on. Be well, Dean from CT

@Dean, Caroline did post a summary for this week! Scroll through the more recent comments and you'll see it.

@Danny, it's not quite every 365 of the 8.5 million--don't forget the people born on Feb 29!!

@Scott I totally agree. My own spot of happiness comes from a commitment to do a daily mitzvah (although I am not Jewish, my Jewish wife appreciates). I don't brag about them because they are almost nothing. I overhear someone needing a pen. I give him one of mine. Somebody is having trouble adjusting her bike seat and gives up. I fix it for her. Someone appears to be lost. I ask him, figure it out, and then tell him how to get there. I feel good. They feel good.

@Scott, I totally disagree. First I never noticed they were daily recently, but that is probably why I did not find them no my Kindle version at all. Only now that they are the way they always were am I again finding them and able to read them whenever I am on the PC version. The NYT is so big that if I had to find MD daily, it would be so much work that I would miss most of them. I like reading a ton of them at once, so I can start laughing (or whatever) and not stop after just one little 10-liner. Why would you want it to end so quickly?