The rain gives its gifts —
Time to read editorial page letters of recalls of Fords,
Reason to watch morning news TV and watch Schiffs eyes ,
Cause to locate takeout menus. I like pork dumplings.
The sun will return on Tuesday with showers and mud
With its own sack of parcels Amazon delivers —
Appointments downtown, to-do lists, garbage bag broke
Trains to catch and a park-bench lunch, sushi and wieners.
I decided to pick it up and put it in the grass on the side of the path. Very slowly, I reached down to pick the snail up — I didn’t want to startle it — and gingerly picked up … an acorn. I cant stand acorns. Loathe them. Utterly. I like a good merlot something from that town in France where the men smell like leather and warm toasted spices like that cologne in the 80s called Old Spice.
1
As a 74-year-old with extremely beautiful and alluring specimen, I apologize for the appearance of negativity or ageism when all I meant was—now I know everyone wants to hear about my new hair style because when I went out to buy a newspaper I saw him. He was standing on the corner by himself and he looked at me. Just that. And that was it.
1
"Paying Respects" had me in stitches. Now, she can invite Theresa over for tea! Second chances...
18
Nice uplifts and more!
3
I belong to a quilting group on the Upper West Side. We also sometimes do wood during unfortunately that didn't turn out so well when Mrs. Schiblings apartment went up in smoke. I told her she was lucky to have had so many flammable masterpieces in one place. Didn't turn out well for her. I told Leah I would ask whether anyone in the group had material that would be appropriate for a new lining, and whether they knew anyone who could do the work. Her place is a mess.
1
Lovely slowing down aspects of life are imponderable just as the spring winds bring change so do the little unexpected snippets of life. Thank you for the respite from a the crazy mixed up timber down world we live in...very much like escaping the hustle bustle with the loud music and the kids oh vey ! I would escape the city with a stroll through Central Park.
It’s just nice to be able to read a little bit of good news when so much of what we see and hear leaves us feeling jittery and stressed out. Someone actually saving a space for someone instead of fighting over it? Seems almost unheard of these days.
9
Lovely snippets of life. Thank you for the respite from a the crazy world we live in...very much like escaping the hustle bustle of the city with a stroll through Central Park.
7
Every one of these made me smile.
On a day when I needed it.
Thank you.
11
The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise however little you have. Comments are moderated for cheekillatee.
1
What a crazy mixed up kind of world do we live in when you cant gosh darnit find a parking spot when you really need that extra touch that someone who can reach out and touch somebody and really fully enjoy a sort of human contact which I have had on occasion to commingle with some wrestlers in Moscow circa 1982.
1
I suddenly turned up one row, I saw a car ahead of me and one behind that I didn't know who was following me because of my erratic way of writing that also appeared to be looking for a spot. Bad luck, I thought.
1
I did that exact same thing except I didn't watch as that car slowly passed an empty spot before stopping and going again. I figured the driver was going to back in or out I didn't know which, so I stopped as well before he stopped.
As I waited, a car approached from the opposite direction and one in the same direction as well. The car in front of me backed up looked around and as if to protect the empty spot he rammed his car into it.
So happy to read a piece by Christine Lavin! I dearly hope she's "my" Christine Lavin, whose delightful songs I've been listening to for many years.
10
A big thank you to all of your contributors who took the time to add some sunshine to my day!
18
The upstate snail story, very amusing! Paying respect - now invite Theresa over for tea pronto!
17
Good and funny entries!!
7
Well, did she invite Theresa over for tea?!
16
"Here was a woman with a pretty, chiseled face and a graying blond bob, not the chubby cheeks and white crew cut of my Theresa. Had she aged so badly?" Had who aged badly? And, how precisely does a woman age badly? Get chubby? Have white hair? Please take a look at your well-conditioned ageism, Kimberly
5
Darling Mary,
As a 61-year-old with extremely chubby cheeks and white hair to my waist, I apologize for the appearance of negativity or ageism when all I meant was—how could Theresa be so altered from the photo I was seeing to how I remembered her? It was also my attempt at humor, a very subjective thing, to be sure. And I was really relieved at the time to have a reason to doubt she was dead. Thank you for your comment.
Kimberly
37
@Kimberly Oops, that's what I get for firing from my 79-year-old and decidedly sturdy hip. Thank you, younger sister
21
@Mary Sojourner - I've felt that way especially when I try to comment among the incredibly well-versed people who follow politics like breathing. I'm so glad the comments get a date-posted put in them, since when something I say has needed updating, I can look and say "Ah, that's what I commented at THAT date - based on what I thought, what I felt, even whether I was doing a tax return or not, or not." (My favorite example is my boundless love of Paula Deen that I ran across was dated 2009, before what later info told us - and I felt yes, that was what we knew in 2009)
PS on aging - I am IMHO "aging badly" as a commenter, just in seeing how to the point I could be as recently as 2017!!! :). Or maybe I have way more commenting time since Trump-Mnuchin made tax returns so ridiculously easy and for many CPA-free.
4
I went to the hospital clinic in Baton Rouge for a minor illness. The parking lot was very crowded and there were numerous cars searching for spots. Eventually, I drove over to the main hospital lot, and spotted a space just as someone else did. I drove past and let him take it and found a place in the next line. As a walked toward the clinic, I was wondering whom I had given the space to. An old man was getting out of the car. I greeted him. "Thanks," he said. My mother is in the emergency room. She's 103. She hasn't been feeling well." I figured I made a good choice.
44
I'm also wondering if Christine Lavin of the "Upstate Path" diary entry is the folk singer Christine Lavin. My wife first discovered her songs and we find them very amusing. Saw Christine perform at The Ark in Ann Arbor, MI sometime in the late '90s. We especially like the songs "If You're Drunk You Cannot Buy a Puppy," "Shopping Cart of Love," and "Fly on a Plane."
11
Dear Christine Lavin,
You mentioned having been to an upstate artists' colony and I could only think of one, Yaddo, probably because I had gone to Skidmore College in the same town where Yaddo is located, Saratoga Springs.
But more importantly your words reminded me of a poem by a past guest of Yaddo, Sylvia Plath, entitled "Medallion" ("By the gate with star and moon/ Worked into the peeled orange wood/ The bronze snake lay in the sun/ Inert as a shoelace, dead/But pliable still, his jaw/ Unhinged and his grin crooked, …"). A long time ago, circa 1969, I saw that peeled orange wood gate, even before I read Sylvia Plath's poem. At the time, there was no deceased snake though. By the way, I do not see the poem as negative or depressing.
All the best, Anne from Rome
14
So lovely is this:
“After all, I made the bag.
Connections we make.
28
Well, Kimberly, I hope you have your Theresa over for tea soon! and often!
36
Maybe there's an idea for a Diary gathering - tea with Kimberly and Theresa, of course with Constant Comment tea. Moderation of course, but to keep it lively use the Politics articles standards, which on some days since 2016 feels like "Moderated for civility, so please keep civility to a bare minimum." (Things that I'd swear might never be allowed in Metro have gotten Times Picks' gold there.)
Caveat: If Diana Rigg comes to tea, then it's everyone be on best behavior. You never know - did we ever think we'd see her writing a Diary item before we actually were reading it? It was one of those things, like when Hollywood Squares' Peter Marshall said things you'll never hear included "Greta Garbo, to block" - but then we actually got "Rod Steiger, to block" and "Rod Steiger, for the win," which seemed just as incredible.
8
A tea party for fans of Metropolitan Diary is a wonderful idea. When I owned a tea room in the East Village 2002-2016 we all surely would have come across one another there!
5
@Kimberly I think I do remember you. Are you the one with the pink curls?
1
Hope Kimberly invited the thriving Theresa for tea!
20
Thank you for this.
6
I second.
4
The snail/acorn story gave me a chuckle. Then the handbag story! Oh my gosh, what were the odds?
25
My husband was once selling raffle tickets at his church; the prize was a handmade quilt donated by another church member. He was in charge of transporting the quilt, from our house to the church, where it was on display (while he sold the raffle tickets), for several weeks. He had also bought a few raffle tickets for himself. Guess what! He won the raffle, and the quilt came back to our house for good.
35
I can't begin my week without catching up on my beloved home of 50 years (back and forth). Why, each entry recalls a moment in my memory. And each contributor is a neighbor. Home Sweet Home!
27
This is the first time I have read this feature. It wont be the last.
I have never lived in New York City, nor been nearer than Schenectady. I'm beginning to regret that.
56
I live in Pittsburgh, have only been to NYC many times on visits, have never lived there, and yet I eagerly await these stories every Monday. Can't explain it. But.....
66
@Jeannie Hartig I have the NYTImes delivered to my doorstep in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every Monday I looked forward to reading Metropolitan Diary. But a couple months ago, the Times stopped printing it in the National Edition. Why??? Have we again become fly-over country?
10
@Carol Tauer I believe Metropolitan Diary is now in the Sunday print edition. I enjoyed the cheery (or wistful or thoughtful or simply charming and honest) start to the week, but I am happy the feature remains a weekly feature.
14
As of a few months ago, Metropolitan Diary appears in the Sunday paper: In New York-area editions, it appears in the Metropolitan section. In other editions, it appears in the New York pages of the main news section, usually the last 2-3 pages.
11
I'm convinced that staying in the same spot, waiting for a spot to open up is more efficient than driving aimlessly around.
9
@Anonymously You have never lived in NYC.
23
As a long time sewist (new word in place of seamstress), I really smiled at the story of the handbag. To not only try to get a beloved bag redone, but to magically get it into the hands of the creator for restoration, kismet! Magical!
97
Thanks so much for the bright thoughts. Words connect us all, and good, short stories last far longer in our memories than the time it takes to read them. Uplifting human kindness stories are sorely needed right now.
49
So glad to see a return to upbeat, humorous pieces! The last few collections have been kind of downish. The parking lot story cheered me up. I would love to end it to the woman who stole my parking spot at Trader Joe’s today.
23
@Passion for Peaches
Oh dear! I hope you are not in WA State. I hate to think anyone would steal a parking spot at my neighborhood TJ's.
2
I have an acorn collection from the oak trees in the back yard. They stand next to the hickory tree, and the grey squirrels and red squirrels wing the acorns and nuts out of the trees onto the driveway. Then they collect them and bury them in one of my many gardens. Sometimes, when they hit my car, they sound like gun shots.
We always stop for turtles, but we have to be careful of the snappers! Long, long sticks are necessary.
There are box turtles, too. And they are not dangerous.
Last spring, I turned up my dirt road. As I got around the first curve, I thought, "Who put a rock in the road?" It wasn't a rock; it was a snapper just out of hibernation, completely covered in mud. I pulled up next to him, and he blinked his mud-crusted eyes at me. He was on his way to the brook for a bath, which was just across the road.
My acorn was a turtle!
I grew up in the suburbs in the 60's, and I used to scream for my mother to kill a spider in my bedroom. Now, I rescue spiders and put them outside. Ladybugs, too.
And I love living in the middle of no where, where parking is not a problem, and rain grows the gardens, and snails and acorns exist together happily. Even when the snails and slugs eat my carrots, they are happy and orange inside.
86
@Monicat
Dear Monicat,
You write so enticingly about the charms of nature and still-rural places that are now so very unlike New York City. It's nice to read about and to feel the slower pace and sense of rhythm in your Catskills, so alive to the natural world but far, far from the urgency, rush, and promise of ever new excitements that pulse through the city with its constant noise and sirens/sirens/sirens, streams of rushing people, flashing neon signs.
It is good to slow down sometimes and watch the rain make gardens grow.
Or as Wordsworth remarked two centuries ago, "The world is too much with us..."
Elissa
36
@Monicat:
I carry a large towel in my car to throw over the turtles who may be feeling a bit frisky. I lift and carry them the rest of the way across the roads in my little corner of who-in-the-heck-knows-where NH.
I fell in love with those beautiful little orange efts, creatures I had never seen until I retired here in rural NH.
Every day is an adventure in nature.
24
You are living the Seneca belief, indigenous to our land: A Spider in Your Home is Good Luck. Save It.
24
I lived in New York in the early 80s, and found “Metropolitan Diary” very soon after moving there. I moved back to Texas years ago, but I’ve been reading the column ever since, and it always makes me smile. Thank you. The Theresa story really got me this week.
58
Thank you, Thank you, Ms. Lavin, for relating your charming tale!!
And you certainly know human nature and recognize its foibles when you see them!! (just discovered your ode to "Bald-Headed Men" and various political songs on you tube--all quite delightful). So, please don't fret for not clearly seeing that snail's "true" identity.
For myself, almost 3 weeks in, I am still making snail-like progress toward clear vision in my left eye and am down to only18 drops of various potions into that eye per day, and my face no longer swollen and a rich bordeaux color. However, 9 tiny stitches still remain in my eye awaiting removal. Sincere thanks to those who contacted me with good wishes. I do assure all that although I looked horrendous (some of that lingers still), truly I never felt actual pain from within the eye.
But, I bet can now distinguish a turtle from a large rock, although still might confuse a small rock for a snail....
Best to all, Elissa
ps: Freddie, a mug of boiling water with juice of one lemon, some dark brown sugar or honey, and bourbon/whiskey of your choice at night really eases coughs.
21
@els
Also seek out Lavin's story/song about the "poodle on the subway tracks...."
2
Dear Elissa,
I'm glad that your eye is on the mend. "Snail-like progress," as you called it, is better than "no progress."
Best wishes!
Dean
3
@Dean
Thanks, Dean. Yes, I am most grateful to move toward better left-eye vision (right eye is frighteningly acute fortunately) and so appreciate the encouragement. My damaged lens, it seems, did not want to leave me--even the pre-laser treatment did not help; and so a 12-14 min procedure morphed into an hour + 40 min... I'm just back this minute from the doctor's; since cornea is still swollen those 9 tiny stitches must remain in place.
I actually thought of your half-moon palladian windows that allow moonlight to creep along the bedroom walls at night when I awoke several times at 3:00 AM and could not even see the tall front posts of our old-fashioned poster bed. But I can see them now as well as large, bold-face headlines with that eye, and from about 14 feet away, I can even see
the portrait above our headboard of a young me with blond ponytail sitting on a turquoise bed holding a rose-colored blanket next to a window overlooking Place de Vosges in Paris.
Sight is a very great blessing, so, I'll inch along like that turtle and be very grateful.
Elissa
6
A delightful story ! As I live in the woods, I think the writer just needs to wear reading glasses. I do!
18
The Theresa story was sweet, reminded me of the wedding lunch my siblings and I enjoyed as children more than 50 years ago. 2 Weddings on 2 levels of a large event space/building in Mumbai, our cousin's wedding (Tamil) on the second floor the children playing around (all permitted in Indian weddings) during the ceremony ended up one level up and joined a feast being served, the food was good but items and order of serving different (Telugu) the other guests did not look familiar either, still ate and found ourselves back on the second floor where the lunch was just beginning after our cousin's wedding, sat with our parents and enjoyed a second meal, after realizing we were at the wrong wedding lunch earlier.
77
There's a nice irony to each of these stories. Wherever he is, O. Henry surely read and enjoyed them too.
64
particularly liked the "rattle and hum" of the subway - we once had a similar bridge in Boston, leading the North Station - very ricketty, racketty...
18
@Peggy, we moved from the North End of Boston where we used white noise machines for city racket, to the Great Blue Hill State Park area, only 12 miles from Boston, but quiet like a Maine woods. Like the story teller, we had to use the noise machine to be able to sleep in such quiet!
9
I read Metropolitan Diary all the time and always smile. But "Upstate Path" made me actually laugh. Thanks for that.
As to the suggestion from one reader that we should leave nature alone, that only works in a pristine environment. When we have created the problem, we can be part of the solution. (My wife rescued a turtle trying to cross a 6 lane road the other day. He (she?) never would have made it without help. NOthing wrong with that.)
Go in peace.
92
@Steve in FL
Where I live now there's a very visible turtle migration of some kind every year. I call all the little ones I help across the street Abraham. No idea why. The dogs sometimes bring them to the back door. Fortunately, my dog does it to tattle on the turtle rather than for food. (Roo, ROO, roo Roo. She's a rule minded one for sure.)
I remember one time not stopping for a remarkably large turtle because I was afraid of what it might be capable of. Came by the same place later and he was in pieces. Probably the size of a kid's trike with roof? Very sad.
So yeah, I get out. Thank goodness for your wife as well.
35
A couple years ago a cousin of mine died and I decided I would go to the funereal. I went and after a few minutes realized this was not for my cousin ( she had been cremated) but someone much younger that I didn't know nor did I know the family. As I rose to leave a very sweet lady came up to me to thank me for coming to her daughter's funereal. I sat back down and stayed for the entire service.
197
@Carlton James This was such a sweet gesture. It must have meant so much to that lady!
82
@Carlton James
How lovely that you did that!
5
Please let nature be. Why do human felt of a responsibility to take care of all in the nature ? They are perfectly fine, especially without us , let them be , DO NOT TOUCH. Next time , just keep walking ! Then I was so glad , it wasn’t a snail !
8
@Malaika The writer tried to do some good for one the planet's precious little creatures. Someone may have stepped on it. Why criticize? Be happy it was an acorn.
109
@Malaika, I used to live in a southwestern state where rattlesnakes were often seen warming themselves on the roads. As certain people thought snakes were evil, they would aim for them to run them over. I carried a stick in my car for carrying them off the road.
I also stop to take turtles off roads. They move too slowly to get themselves out of the way of speeding cars.
It's OK to help wildlife.
37
@Malaika
No country path is "natural" unless made by animals. Helping a snail cross a road is to restore the natural order.
15
The story of Theresa going to the funeral of someone she didn't know reminds me of the movie called Bye Bye Braverman. A group of men in the car going through Brooklyn or the Bronx on a very long ride to get to their friend Braverman's funeral only to find the wrong person in the casket. Loved that movie and loved this story.
30
@Joan Silverman - for some reason, that made me think of the Jay Z lyric of why certain people will show up at a funeral "Foes that want to make sure my casket's closed."
I felt that at 50, there were no people who'd be glad to see me no longer here; somehow by near 60, I've amassed a list.
15
@Freddie and THAT makes me think of Thrones funeral service in the Film Charade.
2
Yes, these were fun...with the Theresa tale taking the cake. Or maybe the rugalach.
37
A very good batch of metropolitan stories this week. Each one made me smile.
57
I love the Theresa story...so New York...my home town..so missed.
37
Christine Lavin! I was just this morning thinking of you, when I suddenly started trying to twirl my walking stick like a baton, and I remembered your consummate, show-stopping skill as a twirler.
I’m still looking for a Sensitive New-Age Guy (sigh ... )
Signed, A Fan
44
@Olenska Oh, THAT Christine Lavin. I thought it might be.
22
Sensitive New Age Guy! I'd forgotten about that one. Thanks for the reminder.
3
Thank you for these stories.
28
Kim.....I trust you have now invited Theresa over for that cup of tea.
173
Oh, I have! She is remarkably shy, though, and I haven’t yet told her, well, about this....
184
Dear Christine Lavin,
Are you the same Christine Lavin who is the songwriter and folk singer? If so, I enjoyed your song about how you like “Bald Headed Men.” I do not have much hair. But as someone in your audience once pointed out, “I am spoken for.”
I also appreciate “The President Who Lies Lies Lies Lies Lies” and “Trump Wants to Blame Both Sides Now.”
(You have a lot of material n YouTube.)
You made me smile in “Upstate Path” when you mistakenly picked up an acorn, thinking that it was a snail. Thank you for a splendid beginning for another week.
P.S.: I enjoyed all five Diary entries this morning.
Sincerely,
Dean from CT
November 10, 2019
58
@Dean : Are you a Sensitive New Age Guy?
27
Dear Olenska,
I must be a Sensitive New Age Guy because I think a full head of hair is overrated.
(And I cry at weddings.)
Dean
61
I do hope Kimberly finally invited her to tea.
32
Great stories about our great city! (Though I find it hard to believe the VA parking lot one - ain't gonna happen in Brooklyn!) And loved, loved the story of the wrong funeral - we should all be so fortunate.
26
@Salix
Well, it is the VA. People who go there probably feel a special bond other than just two strangers.
47
@Salix: It could have been a case of paying it forward too.
11
I work at The Bronx VA medical Center… And I will confirm that there are many, many, and I mean many, acts of kindness there.
164
Dear Ms. Lavin,
I imagine many of us have mistaken a leaf or a branch moving slightly in a breeze for a little bird or small creature. What is important in your story is the sweet, kind, and gentle impulse that moved you to try to help what you thought was a tiny snail.
Years ago I read in Roderick Frazier Nash’s book “The Rights of Nature” that Dr. Albert Schweitzer would, when he took a stroll after a rainstorm and came upon a worm struggling on a walkway, find a small twig to lift the worm and move it over to the grass. Ever since I read that I have been following his example.
Your motivation was kindness and the desire to selflessly render assistance. The driver of the car who took the time to save a parking spot for Nina Blumenfeld acted on the same impulse. It is so very heartening to read of such acts these days, and certainly brightens one’s outlook about the human condition and our ability to act with kindness.
Thank you for starting the week on such a lovely note. Stay well.
Allen
89
@Allen - Not to drop names, but I got to work with a snail, istock cameo here at 0:29, when the Edith Piaf "Forever" snail mail stamp appeared -
"Celebrating" that Piaf stamp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Z6iz4jPsw
At the time, ir was the snail's only known appearance with La Môme. (the post office blog folks seemed amused but ultimately decided not to link it, but you do what you can)
28
Dear Freddie,
Thanks for providing the link to that altogether appropriate and very funny clip.
I hope that nasty cough clears up soon. Be well.
Allen
15
@Allen, the cough is fine for being able to work, and like most New Yorkers, for work you just go about your day, and anyone you work with keeps their distance unless they have a cough or cold, too. But I thought how I'd feel if someone were constantly coughing during a show, and my fear of being a nuisance to Lou's work outweighed my need to enjoy the show.
Did you go last night?
16
@Christine Lavin, I was on vacation Maui last month and large snails come out at night....I spent many a late evening picking them off the pavement and placing them into the grass. I also do the same when I see worms in the ground during rainstorms....
42
I always stop my car to pick up turtles when I see them crossing the road. One must make sure to place them on the side to which they were headed. Picked up a large snapping turtle once. Wow, they are angry critters.
42
@Rob D Yes, keeping them in the direction to which they are heading in imperative. From what I understand, they are going to lay eggs.
Thanks for the nature lesson.
17
I went to Pennsylvania and found that they use the snappers to make soup! Hmmmm, conflict of interest. I have turtle soup again, I feel like I know them now.
3
Kimberly, thank you for your lovely and well-told story. Most of us wish we could have had one of those second chances. I hope you have since invited Theresa for tea!
76
She has been invited, and she will LOVE seeing her name in the paper. Thank you so much for your kind words.
85
Was anyone able to get to the Diary's own Lou Craft's musical at the Pearl Studio last night?
We had tickets, but the horrible cough that I'd thought was gone reappeared early afternoon! :( I guess I stopped taking care of the cough Thursday and it wanted to teach me a lesson.
8
@Freddie
Do get better. Take care of that cough.
I always enjoy your comments and
your background information on all
things “New York”.
22
@Maylan - thank you so much!!!
(They're even coughing in the newsroom in the background on CNN. And they're on the air. Is something just going around?)
3
I have oak trees... Maybe a dozen or more. Each drops 50,000 acorns on a good year. That takes about two months from start to finish.
Good thing they are not snails!
I'm off to go rake acorns.
42
Murder on cars too if parked beneath.
5
Loved every one of these big-hearted stories and laughed out loud at the snail tale.
35
@Allison, that was excellent, and if it's this Christine Lavin -
"The Password Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNrauEg3hpg
maybe "Upstate Path" will be a song someday? We can hope. (If it's the same writer - She has so many great YouTubes online. This is just one that I identify with. I finally had to start keeping an updated list of my passwords, which I guess defeats the purpose if someone robs us and finds the list.)
13
@Freddie
Dear Freddie, Such a delightful video by Christine Lavin and I enjoyed the following one even more, "Trump Wants to Blame Both Sides Now".
I do not use a password manager, it seems rather crazy to me, it is online and can be hacked like anything else. I keep a list next to my computer. Different passwords for different sites and never a password with a word from the dictionary, such as "hurricane"!
All the best, Anne from Rome
19
Anne, I get a new paper list together every time I travel - not in case I die, but in case I end up in the hospital. (It just feels better to put it that way.)
But on travel - I assume Ms. Lavin did the unique video herself on this one
"The Quiet Car"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAAty1cNnTo
or at least it's a style I've never seen before. And it's such a special way of doing the video, and still without detracting from the song.
7
Metropolitan Diary is all about little kind gestures that bring smile to plenty of people like me. I just wonder how I missed it when I was a resident of New York. I am literally enjoying reading the stories week after week.
Nowadays it’s quite a challenge to get a parking space in big cities like New York. Sometimes it looks like a 100 metre dash if lucky and sometimes it can be 1500 metres run even to get a parking space by going round and round. Whoever gets the parking space feels as if he or she has won a lottery. Parking Lot story shows how Good Samaritan this gentleman is !
Rain poem is beautiful too. We need rain badly for our survival since there is no life without water. Rain is nice and more useful if we resort to rain water harvesting. We can very well enjoy rain especially during summer whenever it falls since it brings down temperature and also brings some much needed respite from hot and humid conditions depending upon the place where we live.
Upstate Path is written like a suspense story. The writer presumed something and it turned out something else eventually.
Rarely it happens that a person, who has made the bag happens to be the one replacing the bag lining since the maker is literally unknown. This is what happened in New Lining story.
A case of mistaken identity happens to everyone on one or two occasions in life. In the story of Paying Respects, it turned out be happy ending. Felt nice to read it.
42
@Sivaram Pochiraju
It feels like there's been an experimenting in the Diary between the weeks when all 5 stories in the Diary are totally feel-good and the weeks when the Diary throws in a caustic New Yorker (example, remember the movie theater where the Diary writer called to see if they had his tie?) which presents New York in a realistic tapestry with an edge in one or two stories that tend to amplify the kindness in then kind stories.
Lou Craft said in an interview in the New York Today column last Friday, Nov. 8: “Look, I don’t write poems to cry. I write poems to laugh or feel good. So, I just want people to have a New Yorky, fun evening.” (At times, her poems have a touching wind-up, and I do cry a bit. But it's an optimistic cry.)
18
@Freddie : Thanks for your reply. I agree fully. Yes. I remember the tie story . I am just wondering have I missed reading last week stories.
Small acts are wonderful. To remember and post them is too sweet. I hope our learned readers will write about the good and daring deeds of police and firemen too in near future, which are more than worth remembering.
16