by I’m taking the day off today to read. I’ve started Going Clear, but I also want to read the most recent Tufts Magazine (where I went undergrad). The whole issue is devoted to 1964 and looks quite interesting. But man oh man, Going Clear (about Scientology). Lawrence Wright is one of the best non-fiction writers/researchers alive, and this story! It’s so entertaining … wait. Why isn’t it being made into a movie??
A screen grab from a short movie I made of the fireworks last night. That does it. Mark my words, next year I’m going right to wherever the fireworks are. I want that moment, like when we first got a color tv and saw the opening to Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. I forget how old I was. 9? I just remember a feeling of: OHMYGOD, life is going to be so exciting!!
Hi Stacy,
like a bad penny, I turn up once in a while to say, “hey” to you and the cats. (It would take too long for me to tell you about the 130-pound American mastiff my wife and I rescued out in the country where the dog had escaped from a ranch. Unbelievable, but too long a story.)
So you watched some fireworks. Considering your post below I was a little surprised that you decided to watch.
Stacy, your blog is a running memoir that is a hymn to New York City.
New York City may be the greatest city in the world. And part of its greatness is that it’s right here in the USA. You have people from every state in the union and most other countries right in NYC. When 9/11 happened, people raced to New York from every state in the union to try to help out. Because believe it or not, New York City is our city too. We are Americans.
So I think you have to kind of realize that while there’s a bunch of stuff that really bums you out about the USA, a whole lot of the stuff you love and applaud and write about is all about being right here in the USA.
So Happy Independence Day, Stacy! And Happy Independence Day, New York City! And Happy Independence Day, United States of America!
I’m sure I told this story before, but I spent the first few weeks after 9/11 on the West Side Highway, which was closed off to all but rescue and recovery-related vehicles.
Now, I’ve lived my whole life in New York (I grew up on Long Island which is not NY to New Yorkers, but people outside NY don’t make that distinction). And all I saw my whole life was that the rest of the country hated New York. It seemed to us that the country was pretty united about this. We were awful, lawless, Godless, etc. When I was in college in Ohio and then President Ford announced he wasn’t going to bail out NYC. The entire school erupted in cheers.
I will never ever ever ever forget seeing car after car, truck after truck, coming up that highway from all over America, to help us. I remember see a truck from a Baptist Church in the south. I thought the Baptists hated us the most of all! And I realized, maybe they hate things about us, but not us per se, and they wanted to pitch in.
Thank you for your post! And for rescuing that monster-sized mastiff!