A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
Decorating the tree at the Speicher’s holiday party! A lovely party, as always. I left before the singing because I have become an insanely early-to-bed-early-to-rise person. But the Speichers have the best friends. This is not the most flattering photograph but I only took two and the other one is even worse. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
I dislocated a toe the other day, just as I was leaving for my yearly walk down 5th Avenue, photographing holiday windows. The rest of the afternoon was spent in a sort of ER.
However my foot felt a lot better today, so I took the E train up to 53rd and took a short walk from 59th to 48th, then back to the subway and home. I don’t love how my windows pictures came out, but I’m happy with some other shots I took.
This was my first. The subway doors opened and I saw the first of many people in a Santa hat.
This is one holiday window shot. I don’t love it, but I loved the window (from Bergdorf Goodman, they always have great windows I think).
In case you can’t read all of this sign it says, “Free Candy Canes for Atheists! Because Logic And Common Sense Need To Be Rewarded.”
This one says, “If Trump Gets Dementia How Will We Know”. He’s across the street from Racist President Tower.
Directly in front of President Who Hates the Poor Tower you are met by guys like these two. They’ve always been very nice and polite when I walk by.
Back home, and my last shot. Santa’s helpers refilling their MetroCards.
I found these extraordinarily beautiful photographs of some of the remaining 19th century buildings on Roosevelt Island and I wondered who took them. Turns out it was a man named Jack Boucher, who died in 2012. Once again I feel like I just missed meeting a great person. I could have met him, he was alive for my entire life. If only I’d discovered these photographs earlier. (There are close to 20,000 of them on the Library of Congress website.)
From his obituary: “My whole philosophy is, I regard the building I’m doing as the most important one in my life,” he once told the Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., “even if it’s a single-seat log outhouse.”
It’s always amazing to me how you could take a bunch of photographers and send them to the exact same site, and even have them shoot from the same angle, and all the pictures might be perfectly fine, even gorgeous, but one person will somehow manage to come back with something transcendent. That’s Jack Boucher.
This is his picture of The Chapel of the Good Shepherd, which he took in 1970. The Chapel was built in 1888 for the inmates of the Almshouse and it makes a brief, and what I hope is poignant appearance in my book about Blackwell’s Island (now called Roosevelt Island)
I was just about to leave to take my customary holiday walk down 5th Avenue to take pictures of all the decorations when I stubbed my toe on a chair. It hurt like hell, but I expected the pain to subside in a minute. When it started getting worse and worse and worse I took a closer look. It was bad. Almost scary to look at.
I googled “dislocated toe,” called ahead to the sorta ER that is now across the street from the former St. Vincent’s hospital to see if they took my insurance, and then headed over, crying the whole way. It was just my little toe, but this tiny tiny tiny injury hurt just this short of being more than I could bear. It was insane how much it hurt. I couldn’t stop crying.
Then they had to do that thing you see in the movies and on tv, where they yank the bone back into place. It didn’t work the first time so they had to try again. I knew what was coming, and they had to find a very strong young man to hold me down for the second try.
It will hurt less and less as time goes on, I was told, and would take over a month to heal. I was also told it was safe to walk on it, it would just hurt to do so. Maybe in a couple of days, when it hurts a little less, I’ll try again to get some pictures.
When you have three cats there’s always an ongoing battle for space on your lap. I’ve captured Bleecker deciding Bodhi has had quite enough time on my lap and it’s his turn now.
