I raced to the train just as it was about to leave.

The weight of my day was coming down on me.

No lunch break today...just more deadlines to be met & not enough time to meet them.

The doors of the train snapped shut & then I heard it'

"Praise Jesus"

"I'm Tommy & I'm hungry"

He went into a song & dance about not stealing anymore

About finding the path to righteousness & salvation.

"Got any spare change? Anything will do"

As he came toward me...someone handed him a dollar.

He got to me & I looked away for a sec.

Then he looked right at me & wouldn't look away.

I don't know if I looked kind...or like an easy mark

but because I did nothing for the 2 whole seconds that he looked at me

he felt he had the right to start yelling obscenities my way.

He called me a bitch & a heathen & then moved on to the woman standing next to me.

He called her worse names.

Yeah, that's the way to my generous side.

Now for sure I'd hand over my hard earned cash to this nut.

Brilliant.

Labels: Train Stories

So much activity at the WTC site.

See the square building (Deutsche Bank) in the middle?

It's going to cost more to take down (floor by floor)

than it cost to build.



The old next to the new.



My destination for the trip.



I love this store.

I mean look at the place...it just makes me smile.



The color, the freshness...ahhhh, makes me think of spring.

Labels: Food, NYC, Photos

...& I think the real star of the day

was Sasha Obama

who totally stole the show

in her pink coat & orange scarf.

Labels: Colors, Style

I couldn't stand to be inside at work for one more second last Friday afternoon.

But, damn, it was 7 degrees outside without the wind chill.

I bundled up in ohsostylish long underwear under my jeans & sweater(s)

Topped myself off with a hat, coat, scarf & gloves & was off.

The cold air & wind knocked me over & hit me in the face when I finally made it outside.

It felt good for the first few seconds, then I was numb.

I walked down to the ferry terminal where I knew the plane would be.



I saw the comforting sight of the Coast Guard going up the river.



There were gatherers like me wanting to get a glimpse of the plane in the water.



This was as close as I was able to get.



Odd to see an airplane wing sticking up out of the Hudson River.



Beyond the ferry terminal you can see the crane that they eventually used to remove the plane from the river setting up.



This isn't a great representation of the media that was here...but they were starting broadcast for the nightly news.



All the rescuers involved, the fire dept, police, ferry operators, divers, Coast Guard & people riding on the ferries who helped pull passengers out of the river & gave them their coats deserve thanks.


...kinda put my sucky day into perspective.

Labels: Cold, Currently, NYC, Photos

"The more I'm with an object -- whether it's a model or a piece of the country -- the more I begin to see what I've been blind to. You start to get what's beneath it. You see deeper within it."

The artist Andrew Wyeth died on Friday.

Wyeth said he painted "basic truths."

"Painting objects that mean a lot to me, that have an emotional feeling, and I have the deepest love for a hill or a tree as I have for a human being, sometimes more,".

My childhood art teacher gave me a huge compliment by saying my watercolors reminded her of his work.

It could have been my ability to sit for 5 Saturdays straight in the same spot in my yard

...painting the same tree...or corner of the yard.

I'd paint blades of grass & tiny veins in leaves.

I used muted colors like he did.

When I finally took a school trip to the

Whitney Museum to actually see his work it blew me away.

My art teacher was nuts...

But she did give me a tremendous love of Andrew Wyeth & for that I am grateful.

Here are some of my favorites:

Labels: Art, Colors

So, I have this necklace.

It means a lot to me.

I got it the last time I was in Ireland in a little town in the west called Roundstone.

It’s a pendent with a Celtic design & an amethyst.

As I was riding up in the elevator in my parking garage the other day I was sort of twisting it around under my coat & scarf because the clasp had fallen to the front when it should be in the back (you know what I mean).

It wasn’t twisting smoothly because of all the layers that were on top of it.

So what did I do?

I kept pulling it until it bruised my neck & eventually broke (because I'm like that).

The chain slid off down my top & the pendant dropped to the floor somewhere.

I looked for it in a panic.

I crawled on the floor & eventually found it just as the elevator doors were opening onto my floor.

The pendent was just about to fall down the space between the door & the elevator shaft.

I grabbed it & started to cry.

Damn it, I wasn’t scheduled for a breakdown today.

Labels: Currently

SNL did a funny skit involving (legally blind) NY governor David Patterson.

I thought it was silly fun.

Some people thought it was offensive to blind people.



I think it's an incredible achievement that Governor Patterson is running the state of NY (he was appointed after Elliot Spitzer had sex with a high priced prostitute from NJ, remember?)

& I think the antics of SNL shouldn't be seen as taking anything away from that.

So silly.

Labels: NYC, Opinions, Silliness, Television

Labels: Beach, Eire, Photos

If you want to see some of the most extravagant Christmas light displays, you should make the trip to the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Many of the Christmas light displays are done professionally, & they tend to evolve each year in an unspoken effort to outdo each other.



My mother grew up in this still very Italian section of Brooklyn.

I got to the the lights with her this year.



Many families collect money for charity when the crowds come to see the lights.



This house belongs to Alfred Polizzotto (1145 84th St.), who had a mechanical designer rig 29-foot-high toy soldiers to stand guard, waving their arms. Polizzotto also has 2,000-pound horses rearing and galloping, & a quartet of dancers almost 10 feet tall pirouetting in a massive ode to "The Nutcracker Suite." Polizzotto, a real estate lawyer & cancer survivor who got seriously involved in the Christmas madness to thank God for his illness' remission, estimates that the block draws 150,000 visitors a year (it's that much of a spectacle...I had to look it up).






I don't know why...but between all the Christmas lights & statues of Mary there seem to be lots of fountains...this one came complete with Koi fish & a closed circuit TV camera so that no one 'bothered' the fish.

This really has to be seen to believed.

Labels: Holidays, NYC, Photos