No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.
– Michael Bloomberg
I have a love-hate relationship with NYC. I lived there for years and still spend a good deal of time there now. Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker.
It’s a crazy, yet amazing place. Sometimes it is amazing in it’s sheer lunacy. It’s grand and impressive, yet the quality of life can seem fundamentally impoverished at times. It’s heroic. It’s tough and romantic. It’s never boring. The people are legendary. They got chutzpah and pluck out the wazoo. The city ain’t for wimps.
My daughter, fresh out of college, has lived there for the past two years. To survive and master living in Manhattan is often a tribute to one’s resilience.
Here are some of the challenges encountered (the ones I know about, that is):
Triple-digit heatwaves with humidity thicker than your average politician. Humidity should be classified a WMD.
An earthquake. WTF?
A tropical storm with near gale force winds while working a music festival. Made Woodstock look like Kiddie Craft Camp.
A hurricane. Sandy brought a week without power, cell phones, internet service, and heat. However, this also presented a rewarding opportunity to help others in the community.
A terrorist plot to blow up the NYC subway system. […]
After a long winter and a chilly, slow start to spring…
(you may have noticed) it’s finally May.
The spring fever many of us felt in April was merely the flu.
So it’s time to squeeze in a celebration of spring before Memorial Day whacks us like a Wasabi wiener and folks (certainly not me) are complaining about how hot it is.
(I sincerely hope you haven’t slipped and cut your knee on a New Year’s Day “fitness” hike, come down with the flu, succumbed to a stubborn vocal cord infection and laryngitis, had a collision with a parking garage pole, received a swollen lip from the car door, broken an expensive glass vase in a gift store, and agreed to go to the movie Zero Dark Thirty on your wedding anniversary.)
If so (or worse!)… I feel your pain.
Speaking of pain, here are some Robitussin-induced musings: […]
1. It’s about “coming of age angst” 2. Comic actress Aubrey Plaza (NBC’s “Parks & Recreation”) 3. It takes place in New York 4. Veteran actress Ellen Burstyn 5. Peter Gallagher (“Covert Affairs”)
