The Perils of Overreliance on the Times

I'm just wondering. Is it possible to enjoy New York as fully as it should be enjoyed without reading the New York Times regularly? How could one ever know what is going on, especially with respect to cultural events, in this amazing, crazy, mixed-up city without having the Times as a guide? On the other hand, you probably can become too reliant on the Times and begin to view the city only through the lens the Times so generously provides, thus abdicating your responsibility to develop your own individual, unique perspective on the city's many wonders.

I am mildly convinced that both of these concerns have merit. I just can't do New York without the Times. For one thing, there is so much theatre, art, film, music, and other similar stuff in the city that I just don't see how I can get by without using the Times, at the very least, as a winnower of what's possible. But of course for me it goes much deeper than this. I do use the Times to decide what play to see, what art exhibit to take in, what movies to consider and which ones to reject out of hand.

Which brings me to the second point. Am I merely a mindless follower of the Times's suggestions and recommendations? Do I not have a mind of my own in deciding what to see and savor? The answer is almost certainly that I am pretty much as slavishly attached to the Times's opinion makers as it appears. What the Times affirms, I affirm. When the Times says I should go and see something, I dutifully obey. 

Now, of course, there are hundreds of events I never witness because of lack of money and time. But I am sure if I could, I would follow through on virtually every one of the Times's recommendations. Is this a good thing? Well, on the one hand, I have come to trust many of the paper's critics and commentators for their good taste and am probably better off accepting their suggestions than just deciding on what to see on my own. On the other hand, can I really let the Times do the work for me of deciding what is worthwhile and what is not? If I were really trying to be a savvy New Yorker who knows the city and enjoys it thoroughly, I should become much more independent. But there are two things, well, maybe three things stopping me. Time, of course, is one. Lack of competence to judge is another. And, well, I guess the third is this sense that I am not supposed to decide for myself, that I should be deferring to the world's leading experts, most of whom, one way or another, end up writing for the paper. 

Lack of time to keep up with what is going on in the city is probably the best reason to rely on the Times. But the other two don't seem terribly convincing, do they. Not because I have expertise to judge well what is worthy and what is not, but because I am the one judging for my own amusement and edification. I should know best, right, what is going to be the best use of my time, what is going to be an event or a show worthy of my consideration that I will enjoy and leave me more or less satisfied and eager for more.

On the one hand, I can't imagine not reading the Times as an important guide for what is going on in the city. On the other hand, I have relied too heavily on the Times for what is good and worthwhile. As I move on, I need to work at paying attention to what is going on in the City without constant reference to the daily newspaper. The web, of course, helps a lot with this, and I do learn about events all the time that go unreported in the paper, including things at the Library, the New York Historical Society, and at the 92nd Street Y. But I want to do better to stretch my wings, to stay abreast of stuff that is inexpensive or even free but also really interesting. This may require me to engage in more purposeful flaneuring, dropping in on different places, picking up tips about what is coming next, even engaging people in conversation about what's potentially hot. But, hey, as a dedicated New Yorker who wants to make the most of the city, this is the sort of challenge I should meet with a wry, inscrutable smile and a hearty, uninhibited laugh.

Saying Yes to New York City

As I contemplate "moving on" from my work at Wagner and becoming a writer in New York City who seeks also to write of New York City, I have come to see the city as a manufacturer of positive spins, as a place that wrests from you an interminable stream of affirmations, assurances, appreciations, and yeses. It is the city of can-do, a town of towering ambition, a site of spectacular achievement and magnificent failure. It is nothing more and nothing less than the sine qua non of urban existence. As such, it is a locale that demands our best and most inspiring imaginings and deserves our most challenging and thoughtful critical reflections. And yet, New York makes me want to vote aye before I have heard all the pros and cons. It pushes me to want to pitch in despite not fully understanding the cause in question. It inspires me to shout "I love you," even when the object of that love is little more than an acquaintance.  It is a city that cannot be resisted, a metropolis that cannot be encompassed, a grand urban complex that can never be explained. 

It feels wonderful to be a writer in New York. Published or not, successful or not, talented or not, the writer in New York is immersed in a tiny world of such richness and multiplicity that only a wry, perfectly inscrutable smile can do it justice. 

New York's Marvelous Variety

Suppose you owned a century-old document that had been entrusted to you, but over time had become badly worn and was in need of restoration before it could be framed. How far do you think you would have to go to find someone competent to carry out this task?

Until I realized that my grandfather's naturalization certificate had deteriorated rather significantly and that I, in fact, wanted to be able to frame and display this paper as a tribute to my grandfather and father who had entrusted me with it, I never even considered whether there were people in the world who possessed the skills to restore a worn-out document.  What startled me, as a New Yorker, is that there is at least one person (and probably many others) living only two blocks away from my own apartment who makes her living as a restorer of archival materials and public documents.

And so as a lover of New York and all its marvelous variety, I wondered with a kind of joyous awe where else in the world would you have to travel only two blocks to find a person, living modestly in a rent-stabilized, ramshackle pre-war apartment building, who not only possesses the skills and the broad experience to restore documents, but who also cares deeply for antiquated things and so insists that the job be done just right.

Still another sign that sometimes there doesn't seem to be any limit to the unanticipated marvels that are available to the residents of New York City.

Skyscraper Security

Today I was reminded once again how challenging it can be to get in and out of Manhattan office buildings. If you haven't had an occasion to visit an office in a fancy Manhattan building, don't think you can just walk in, locate the elevator and ascend to your designated floor. Our appointment was with a lawyer at 6th Avenue and 53rd Street to get our "estate" in order, but before we could get up to him we had to run the gauntlet of 21st century New York City security. First, we displayed our driver's licenses, then we provided the exact, full name of the professional we would be meeting with, third, we dutifully turned over our passports, next we offered proof of our annual income after taxes for 2012, and finally they respectfully requested that we officially pledge our fealty to the United States of America by signing their special loyalty oath.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite that hard, but it felt like it was as we waited patiently to be "cleared." Once we were given the go-ahead to proceed, we even had to take a special pass with us in case we were stopped by overzealous security officers wondering what we were doing wandering the hallways of the 28th floor, the very floor where our lawyer happened to reside.

All of this reminds me of something I did as an irresponsible young adult many, many years ago the first time I lived in New York, long before everyone was so careful about security. I was in midtown and intrigued by the idea of visiting the offices of ABC television news just to see what was going on up there. That's about how much thought I had put into it, but I remember there was no one preventing me from going ahead with this plan to take the elevator to the floor where the news was aired each night. I went to the bathroom and wandered around for awhile, but for a few minutes I went completely unnoticed. When security did finally ask me what I was up to, I simply replied honestly that I was curious to see what the offices of ABC News looked like. I am sure that if I had put some thought into my answer I could have received a better reaction, but my vagueness definitely aroused concern. They nicely but expediently escorted me out of the building. I never did anything like that again.

Still, it rankles me just a little that today so much effort is put into decisions about who can enter and exit a luxury office building in Manhattan, and so little into how we treat people who are left abandoned on the streets and expected, despite the complete absence of even the most minimal of resources, to fend for themselves.

Passing the time when it's really, really cold

What do New Yorkers do when the temperature is so low and the winds are so boisterous as to make the simple act of stepping outside a threat to one's well-being? Today was like that in New York and most New Yorkers stayed indoors. I should know because when the wind-chill index rose to 10 below this afternoon, I strolled down Broadway and wandered through Lincoln Center to see what was going on. For the 20 minutes or so I was outside I encountered few people willing to brave the cold.

So what were they up to? You can bet that a lot of them looked out the window constantly to check out the strength of the winds that had helped to create these dangerous conditions and to see if their neighbors had mustered the courage to venture out. Listening to the radio and watching the TV were also likely pastimes, mainly, you know, to keep an eye on how bad the weather had gotten and to enjoy an endless round of self-congratulations for exercising the good sense to stay put.

Reading must have been another common pursuit, with the main topic of literary interest being severe weather, cold snaps, and dramatic dips in temperature. After all, while most New Yorkers awoke to a downright balmy morning in the mid-50s, most pulled the cover over their heads that evening with the temperature hovering just a little bit above zero. Who wouldn't want to read about that spring day over 90 years ago when the Warren G. Harding Administration had yet to acquire its reputation as the most corrupt in history and when the temperature in New York City took an even more drastic nosedive than yesterday's.

Certainly, some people whiled away their time cooking up wonderful recipes, but you can bet they focused their efforts on the preparation of dishes that not only tasted good, but that took some of the chill off of this most frigid of days. Hot soups, warm stews, and spicy chiles were surely in demand as the day dragged on and as it dawned on all of us that it just wasn't going to get any warmer. You couldn't go wrong by staying home to feast on whatever goodies helped to stave off the cold.

I, for one, chose to spend a little time in the public library today to counteract the cold and keep my boredom at bay. It's really such an interesting place in which to wait out the bad weather. There are all those books for one thing, and even more, there are all those fascinating people who congregate at the library, sometimes to read, but more often to sleep, to hang out, to chat, to get online, or just to pass the time. They are a diverse and interesting lot, much more diverting than watching a movie.  But when you people watch you never quite know how the story is going to move forward or to end. And there are so many stories to keep track of! Pick someone and see what happens. Sure, a lot of these stories may end abruptly as the person you have chosen to watch suddenly heads for the exit, but turn around and start tracking a new one. There simply is no end to them

Which fortunately is not something you can say about the weather. It may feel as if the terrible conditions will go on forever, but they never do. But in the case of the stories there is no end to them and that, like the end of cold spell, is a blessing to be thankful for.

Driving the West Side Highway

New Yorkers either hate to drive or love to drive, I can never remember which. But almost all of them abhor the traffic jams on the West Side Highway, which runs along the Hudson River in Manhattan from Battery Park to well above Washington Heights. Every now and then we have to drive on the West Side Highway, as we did today, and every time I do I can feel my heart beat faster and my throat clench in anticipation of the horrors of this most impossible of thoroughfares.

Today, we rented a U-Haul to move most of the rest of our stuff from our co-op on Staten Island to our co-op in Manhattan. It was 2:00 pm in the afternoon, but I still expected the worst. Stalled cars, emergency vehicles pushing us to the side of the road, 18-wheelers hopelessly stuck in low gears, and New York drivers instinctively jumping ahead of us at every opportunity. In general, though, the worst part of driving up the West Side of Manhattan is simple: too many cars and too little space.

But today a miracle happened. We made it without delay, in the record time of about 20 minutes from the Battery Park Tunnel to 69th and Amsterdam. What a delight! What a rare and unexpected treat! Instead of averaging 9 MPH, which is typical for Manhattan, we actually traveled up the West Side proceeding at a very normal 30 MPH. I never thought it would happen to us, but it has. And I will be forever deeply grateful for the strange confluence of circumstances that made this impossible journey possible.

Fighting the Ordinary Blues

(Karen and Steve are walking toward Central Park on a wintry day in which the sidewalks and streets are just a bit slippery. Karen tucks her right arm inside Steve's crooked left wing with satisfaction.)

Karen: Now I won't fall, because I can count on you to keep me steady walking along beside me in those dull but reliable boots of yours.

Steve: Is that really a comment on my boots or are you suggesting that I, as a person, am a bit dull as well?

K: You dull? On the contrary, mon frere. There is nothing about you that is dull with the obvious exception of your boots. Even the boots have a kind of charm that complements your other charming qualities.

S: My other charming but mildly dull qualities?

K: Oh, my. You are the self-conscious one aren't you. Don't you believe me when I say there is nothing dull about you?

S: It's hard, because everything about me feels dull. You know, not sharp, not incisive, not cutting edge, just, well, so darn ordinary.

K: Mmm. First of all, for me, dull and ordinary aren't synonyms. I could revel in your ordinariness and still not find you dull at all. Ordinary is egalite, liberte, fraternite. Ordinary is every man. Ordinary is democracy. Ordinary is the one God loves.

S: Doesn't he love the dull as well?

K: Of course, but don't distract me from my main point. You are ordinary, but in this really marvelous and appealing way. The way you wear that brimmed and ear-flapped hat of yours is ordinary, but it's also entirely and uniquely you. Nothing dull about it, but gloriously ordinary, yes.

S: Gloriously ordinary? Nice phrase. Almost oxymoronic, don't you think?

K: Hardly almost. Intentionally and brilliantly oxymoronic. There is nothing almost about it. Please don't bring me down with your almosts. I am fully, irresistibly, and insistently present. Nothing almost about me. Kiss me, you fool!

(He does and it is a long, loving embrace.)

K: Nothing dull OR ordinary about that kiss. That's the sort of kiss that makes watches stop and wolves howl. That's a kiss for the ages. Which startles me into a wonderful thought. The next time you're feeling dull or ordinary, just invade my personal space, and steal a big, amazing, long-lasting kiss. Best antidote for the ordinary blues I know.

Bob Moses on my mind

Robert P. Moses is much on my mind these days. He was a fearless and unrelenting civil rights organizer in rural Mississippi in the early 1960s when this was extremely hazardous duty, and he subsequently served as the lead organizer of Freedom Summer which brought hundreds of northern college students to Mississippi in the Summer of 1964 to help register disenfranchised Blacks. Many years later, he became famous again as the creator of the Algebra Project, a nation-wide program to teach math to students of color so that they might pursue careers in engineering, technical and a variety of scientific fields. He has, in fact, called access to algebra and higher mathematics the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

He is much on my mind, because he is emblematic of the quiet, humble, bottom-up leadership I have been studying over the last few years. And he is coming to Wagner College in February! Where he will be our second Black History Month Scholar in Residence.

Interestingly, Bob Moses grew up in New York City, as a resident of the Harlem River Projects at 151st Street and Harlem River Drive, where he attended public school and periodically worshipped at St. Marks Church on 138th Street before being admitted to one of New York's most selective public secondary schools - Stuyvesant High.

He was not a particularly outstanding student at Stuyvesant, but he did well enough to earn a scholarship to Hamilton College in Upstate New York where he studied analytic philosophy and developed a taste for mathematics. He graduated from Hamilton in 1956 and then completed an M.A. in philosophy at Harvard in 1957. Although he wanted to go on to pursue his Ph.D., this dream was interrupted when his mother tragically succumbed to cancer and his father also took ill. He left Harvard and accepted a position teaching math at the Horace Mann school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx to care for his Dad.

In the spring of 1960, the student sit-in movement was spreading rapidly, and as Moses himself has said, these demonstrations "hit me powerfully, both in the soul and the brain." What especially appealed to him was the courageous leadership shown by thousands of young people who were willing, despite considerable danger, to challenge white supremacy head-on. He signed up initially with Dr. King's organization - the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - and for a few weeks spent most of his time stuffing envelopes in SCLC's Harlem office. But when one of Dr. King's top advisors, Bayard Rustin, learned about Moses's background, he was sent to Atlanta where he spent long afternoons talking philosophy with Jane Stembridge and got to know the legendary leader Ella Baker, then the outgoing Executive Director of SCLC and "Founding Mother" of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Sensing that SCLC did not have much of a program, he conferred with Ella Baker about working with SNCC, and on her advice went to see a local NAACP organizer named Amzie Moore who had been combatting discrimination and prejudice in rural Mississippi for decades. Moore introduced Moses to the ins and outs of racial politics in Mississippi and eventually recommended him to another local organizer, C.C. Bryant in McComb, Mississippi, who got Moses started in his campaign to register Black voters.

Moses was in Mississippi in June 1963 when the KKK shot NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers in the back while he was standing in his own driveway, and Moses was right there again when the discarded bodies of three civil rights workers were found just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi in early August of the same year. These were only the most celebrated deaths. The toll of casualties, infamous and forgotten, was much higher. Through it all, Bob Moses maintained his composure and his courage, despite many close calls, and pushed on to organize 1964's Freedom Summer, which in many ways was the beginning of the end for the cruelest forms of white supremacy in Mississippi.

In the wake of these successes, Moses worked with Fannie Lou Hamer to create the Mississippi Free Democratic Party and attempted to have those representing the MFDP supplant the regulars of the Democratic party at the 1964 convention. This maneuver met with failure and its lack of success contributed to Moses's increasing disillusionment. Not long afterwards, he would leave for Africa for a time, and then later left the United States to escape the military draft during the Vietnam War. He not return to the U.S. again until 1977 when Jimmy Carter issued a general amnesty.

In 1982, Moses received a large MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" and used it to create the Algebra Project, which he oversees to this day. It represents the second stage in his civil rights work and is, by far, his most sustained and focused effort to promote equal opportunity for all Americans.

Today was very cold in New York. Wind chills well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and as a consequence, reduced bus service, especially on Staten Island. We had to wait over 20 minutes for a bus in the wind and cold as we headed once again for the ferry and Manhattan. Karen's feet were so chilled by this long delay, she couldn't confirm that her toes were still connected to her feet for a good ten minutes afterwards. This experience induced her finally to shop online for proper boots that will not only keep her feet warm, but will also be steady enough to allow her to navigate the snow drifts and the urban slush that make walking in the city after a big storm such a challenge

New York is funny when it comes to harsh winter weather. We can easily go a whole winter without much snow or cold, making you think that good winter boots and layered clothing are unnecessary. But a mild winter is often followed by a pretty brutal one, and that seems to be holding true again this year. As we recall, last year's winter was pretty easy. This one is proving to be both cold and snowy, a tough combination for a city as congested as New York. Yet, in some ways New York is the best city in which to experience snowy conditions, as the subway can be counted on to get you to your destination with almost no hassle. Again, this turned out to be true during our travels today. Plus, what a blessing to wait for a subway in the relatively warm conditions of a subterranean platform. Staten Island's lack of a decent public transportation system, including its own but still far too limited subway line, definitely adds to its unattractiveness as a permanent place to live. 

We leave Staten Island, especially the North Shore, with some regret that we did not get to know it better or come to appreciate more fully its many wonderful strengths as a community of diverse cultures. But Manhattan beckons, regardless of the weather conditions. We are very glad once again to call it our one and only home.

Embracing Manhattan

For the past year and a half, we have been living a divided existence, the workweek on Staten Island, the weekend in Manhattan. This about to end, as we are in the process of moving back to Manhattan full-time. This decision is, in part, a result of my choosing to retire, or, as we like to say, "move on." It is also in keeping with our shared sense that we are better suited for Manhattan than Staten Island. In Manhattan we feel at home. On Staten Island, we are forever visitors. But what, you might ask, makes Manhattan such an ideal location for our permanent home? There are any number of things we could say about this, that, undoubtedly, would include Manhattan's proximity to the most remarkable set of cultural institutions in the world. We are not only thinking here of the museums, the music venues, the unparalleled variety of theatrical options, and some of America's finest repertory movie houses. But also the remarkable library system from which virtually any book is available, if you're willing to wait, and the fact that we live within two blocks of two of the world's most impressive and commodious public spaces - Central Park and Riverside Park.

Yet our affinity for Manhattan has more to do with its special energy, its historic eagerness to welcome and absorb a dizzying diversity of lifestyles and cultures that most obviously embraces a multiplicity of fashions, races, colors, creeds, classes, and sexual orientations, but extends as well to such a rich variety of interests, hobbies, forms of amusement, and passions that every day seems to offer something new.

To walk out onto the street and to witness this unending stream of humanity is a joy. It may present difficulties at rush hour or at other times when you're in an hurry, but for the most part it is a bottomless source of fascination and delight. Manhattan's unique combination of density and variety, of affording you the opportunity to do almost anything you can imagine, makes it our ideal home.

Rejecting Humiliation

With this post, I return after a three year absence to the Third New York, my first blog, to kick off the New Year. This piece is only peripherally related to New York, but a guy has to start somewhere. 

In the New Yorker this week, Adam Gopnik writes the lead Talk of the Town piece about two alternate futures for the United States and the world, one leading to disaster, the other an uneventful but deeply satisfying voyage to peace and well being. Comparing the fate of two great and identical ocean liners from 1912, the Titanic and the Olympic, one destroyed on its maiden voyage, the other entirely successful, Gopnik wonders which ship we are traveling on today, conceding unhappily that there is not only no way to know for sure;  there is little that can be done to ensure passage on one over the other. 

Yet he does offer one ray of hope, one thin sliver on which to build a more humane future. It is simply to reject honor and fear of humiliation as the motivation for our actions. As he says, trying to retrieve lessons from the burgeoning literature on the causes of World War I, "the relentless emphasis on shame and face, on position and credibility, on the dread of being perceived as weak" echoes through the decades and has led again and again to the deepening of conflicts without clear purpose or a basis in common sense.

I, for one, find this advice, however tentative and uncertain, to be a good message for 2014. It will be extremely difficult to practice it, but it will be made easier by a citizenry that insists on decision making that is free of hubris and quests for domination.

We probably can't make much progress on this goal, however, without committing to a society whose internal, everyday institutions are free of humiliation as well, the kind that Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit talks about in his 1996 book "The Decent Society." What Professor Margalit has in mind is captured early on in this work when he says that "a society is decent if its institutions do not act in ways that give the people under their authority sound reasons to consider themselves humiliated," or, as he says elsewhere, giving them sound reasons to believe that their self-respect has been injured.

In at least one example employed by Margalit, even someone whose rights are honored, may be suffering from humiliation if he lacks the conviction that he is entitled to those rights, that there is a rational basis for demanding them or actively working for their full and uncompromised application. Here Margalit is referring to any person whose self-respect has been so relentlessly and systematically undermined that he develops a sense of internalized inferiority in which he feels he is not deserving of key rights. He calls this example "Uncle Tom," but it would refer to anyone who has been persuaded that he is less worthy than others, for entirely irrelevant reasons such as race, gender or even social class.

At the heart of Margalit's claims is the idea that a person who is shown respect, who is free of humiliation, sees himself as enjoying an open future, who has the capacity to change his life at any time for the better "through action or a reevaluation of the past." Or to put it another way, that the institutions governing this person's life operate in such a way as to give each person the freest and least oppressive path toward an open and unrestricted future. 

Note here that when these institutional conditions are in effect the need for people to dominate others, to demonstrate that they are better than others, more worthy than others, etc., is greatly diminished for they are enjoying the sort of recognition, respect, and dignity that makes such demonstrations unnecessary, even redundant.

Which is why I invoked Margalit to begin with. We cannot hope for a society or a world in which nations eschew honor and credit in favor of compromise and common sense unless the people who inhabit those countries also have experiences which show them full respect and are largely free of humiliating circumstances. 

It occurs to me, as it might anyone, that schools are a particularly hopeful site in which to begin such a change in social practices, and, appropriately enough, that the new call to curb bullying is largely an attempt to denounce and proscribe behaviors that humiliate children. But, of course, campaigns against bullying are only a small part of this larger effort to create a decent society. All of us must consciously and diligently work to eliminate humiliating behaviors from our lives, and to develop much greater sensitivity toward those actions which tend to diminish people, robbing them of the dignity and self-respect that are so central to a decent society.

Social Security

I am amazed and appalled that conservatives continue to get mileage out of the idea that we need to change the way Social Security is funded, either by partially privatizing it or by extending the retirement age and minimizing benefits. Social Security is one of the triumphs of the modern, industrial state. As Paul Krugman points out today in the New York Times, it funds itself quite efficiently and is in no danger, either immediately or in the foreseeable future, of running out of money.

So why the hysteria? Krugman says it's all about ideology, that conservatives simply can't countenance the idea that this government program works so well and will consequently have to continue to be funded at a fairly high rate in perpetuity. Somehow, I can't believe this is the whole story. There is a missing piece, something else that the right can't stand that isn't being talked about.

Let me suggest that what they are really afraid of is the thing that probably should, in fact, be done to ensure Social Security's long-term stability, but which they have been very successful at keeping out of the conversation altogether. It is simply this. Tax everyone at a 6.2% rate, regardless of income. Right now, Social Security taxes only come out of the first $106,800 of income. After that, for those making more than $106,800, there is no tax at all. Which means, of course, that this is one of the most regressive of taxes in which those most able to pay actually give a surprisingly small percentage of their income. Someone, for instance, bringing in $500,000 a year, is paying a net percentage of just a little over 1%. Even someone making, say, $200,000, is paying only about 3% of income. This is ridiculous, in any case, but especially when so much hot air is being expended about the Social Security crisis when it would be so easy to make this change, with little or no discomfort for those making more than $106,800.

So why isn't this discussed or seriously considered? I can think of only one reason. Greed. The rich control the conversation about taxes and about funding government programs. They have kept the rest of us poor schmoes in the dark. We should be outraged about this. There should be marches in the street. But because of the hegemony that the privileged hold over the poor and middle classes, hardly a word is breathed about this. It is a reminder to me that the rich had better watch out. A revolution is coming and unless more is done to support the needs of the less well off, there will eventually be a backlash like nothing this country has ever seen.

In the meantime, think of the good that can be done to ensure that Social Security is paid out to all those who both need it and deserve it. That's virtually everyone. A simple and relatively painless change in the way this program is funded would absolutely ensure its long-term solvency. We just have to muster the will to make it happen.

James Fowler Endargo

He ended his own life at age 52 while suffering from crippling despair. But in the years between his all-American upbringing in Appleton, Wisconsin in the post-World War II era and his descent into a deep and incurable depression in the early-1990s, James Fowler Endargo lived fully and creatively, producing one of the most influential bodies of poetical work in the 20th century.

Poets rarely achieve great fame, but Endargo's particular circumstances - his complete mastery of the short lyrical form, his movie-star looks, his four marriages to beautiful and powerful women, and his knack for self-promotion - resulted in talk show appearances and wide advertising exposure that turned him into a household name and launched him as one of the most recognizable faces of the 1960s. Endargo was a great writer, but even more so he was a winning personality whom the general public found irresistible. His simple, often stark poems appealed to a surprisingly broad swath of the reading public and his face, plastered on buses and billboards everywhere, promoting everything from cigarettes to trench coats, never lost its allure. For many people in the 1960s, he was THE face of poetry and his brief, even abrupt lines spoke for a generation. His hyphenated phrases, declaring war the inseparable companion of peace, hate the necessary concomitant of love, deceit the partner of truth, echoed and reinforced the growing cynicism and hopelessness of his time. No one seemed to understand more clearly than Endargo that the great reforming spirit of the mid-1960s could not be sustained and that it must lead to an angry and selfish backlash. In this sense, he foretold the disorienting tragedies of My Lai, Watergate, and the Iran hostage crisis, and even as he captured the growing despair of this era in his own poetry fell victim to it as well, never fully recovering from a devastating drug habit and a disabling depression that shattered him when he was still only in his early 40s. But even as his creative imagination went dry, his dark, craggy, handsome face continued to bring him wealth, and his poetry readings, often treated like rock concerts, offered him the attention he always craved. Only when things had turned for the worst and he was no longer able to appear in public did his fans finally lose interest in their comely troubadour.

Following a kind of idyllic upbringing in Appleton, Wisconsin from 1939 to 1957, Endargo attended nearby Lawrence University for two years. He studied literature with legendary professor Yando Cling during this period, who in that short time introduced him to most of the important poetry produced in America, beginning with Whitman and Dickinson and continuing to Lowell and Bishop. Even then, Endargo began experimenting with the short lyric poem that became his trademark, writing a few of the poems that would be collected in his first volume of poetry called "A Blue Landmark," published in 1960. In 1959, Endargo moved to New York City and began to write reviews for Commonweal and Dissent. Declaring himself a socialist and then an anarchist, he participated in a series of civil rights demonstrations and appeared on television for the first time as a spokesperson for the beat-inspired group Americans for Holistic Liberation (AHL). His glib, charming manner and physical attractiveness drew interest and support and for many years to come he could be seen on public media promoting a wide range of causes. These early appearances led to an encounter with the fashion model Brook Tamarkin, soon thereafter his first marriage, and not long after that a bitter and very public break-up.

In 1965, when he was 26 years old, Endargo published his second volume of poetry to much acclaim, landing him on the cover of Time. This book entitled "Birding" was a strange and exotic mixture of nature poetry, presumably influenced by his Midwest experiences as a youth and the urban verse that made him famous. "Homing Pigeon" became the best known poem from this collection, with the final lines "rootless, homeless, free" perhaps the most famous he ever wrote, and still often emblazoned on T-shirts and greeting cards.

Endargo's next and most famous collection of poetry published in 1971 was "The Darkness Within." This, too, was showered with critical praise and led to his receiving his only Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Endargo's work, which was both accessible and topical, directly criticized US involvement in Vietnam, while at the same time attacking many of the youth protest movements of the time as a manifestation of spoiled privilege. Now at the peak of his fame, his marriage to the Hollywood starlet Sheila Blaine, widely covered in the popular press, quickly dissolved into another bitterly contested divorce, leading to a terrible bout with depression from which Endargo never fully recovered. (To be Continued)

Why I like Modern Art

The new Matisse exhibit at MoMA, the one called "Radical Invention, 1913-1917," has me thinking once again about why I find modern and contemporary art so satisfying and invigorating. In a way, all art is energizing, as the act of viewing artistic work demands that we focus our attention on the elements that make art so arresting. Those elements include line, color, and shape, but also such things as the arabesque design, which along with line, Matisse believed gave a special vitality to art. These are the things that catch our eye, that wake us up in a sense and that bring to vivid consciousness our craving for aesthetic satisfaction.

But Matisse, more than most artists, brings these feelings to a new height of excitement and creative delight. For me, anyway, this is in part because he was such a master of the line. Karen and I are the proud owners of a Matisse line drawing of a female face that seems incredibly simple, and yet because of Matisse's mastery conveys a sense of humanity that is striking. Hardly a masterpiece, this modest drawing is nevertheless a reminder that Matisse could accomplish a great deal with just a few strong lines. My absolutely favorite example of this ability is the painting that Matisse finished in 1905 that was a portrait of his wife but is often called "The Green Line" because it is marked by a strange green line that cuts across the middle of her face. This line, which seems bizarre and yet works as part of this portrait, divides his subject's face into two sections, one dark, one light; one calm and the other just a bit ominous.

This same painting also demonstrates Matisse's remarkable and famous use of color. At the time he finished this painting, he was regarded as the leader of the Fauve movement, which was marked by a brilliant and unnatural use of color. In the Green line, the very use of the color green to separate the two parts of his wife's face is startling, but I also think the background colors - the purples, the reds, the sea greens - are both beautiful and an outstanding example of how background color can be used to present a subject more arrestingly. This is only a small example, however, as Matisse's amazing color sense can be experienced repeatedly in so many of his greatest works.

The painting, though, that is part of this special exhibit currently at MoMA and that haunts me relentlessly is "The Piano Lesson," completed in 1916. Others have commented on it extensively and I can't begin to add to what they have said, but this picture of Matisse's son Pierre sitting unhappily at the piano, under the apparent tutelage of a stern teacher and with the late afternoon sun fading rapidly, offers a study in light, mood, color, and line that stops me in my tracks every time I see it. The most shocking thing about it is the way in which Matisse has arranged the room in which Pierre sits at the piano and the manner in which the sun casts shadows, especially on Pierre's face, so that his right eye and much of the right side of his face seems to disappear. That shadowy triangle that effaces Pierre's eye and cheek matches neatly the window opening that receives the lowering sun and the outside greenery and which emphasizes and introduces a series of angled lines echoed by the piano, the metronome and the window's thrown-open shutter. Despite Matisse's great mastery of color, this work is dominated by gray, which establishes the depressing mood of the painting (consider Emily Dickinson's lines "There's a certain Slant of Light,/Winter Afternoons/That oppresses like the Heft/Of Cathedral Tunes -) and that causes the green of the window and the pink of the piano to stand out that much more. While never a cubist, Matisse brilliantly combines his love of line and color with a cubist sensibility that shakes us out of our complacency and makes us want to look and look again with wonder and surprise.

I think exhibits like the one on Matisse at MoMA give us an opportunity to look in penetrating and absorbing ways. Really, they offer us practice at putting our own lives on hold for just a little while and to devote ourselves without thoughts of anything else to the mystery and the magic of the most masterful of human-made creations.

The Virtues and Limits of Smallness

We have been hearing a great deal about smallness lately. The need for smallness in government, the call to reduce the size of banks and other businesses, the advantages of smaller, more intimate schools, the advisability of keeping our meal portions modest, the value of maintaining smaller, more adaptive organizational teams, and perennially, the need for smallness when it comes to practicing democracy as a way of life. I am a big fan of smallness, particularly when it comes to schools and democracy (more about that later), and I am hardly alone in becoming increasingly impatient with this notion, still widely promoted, that we need banks and investment firms that are too big to fail. Smallness as one of the bases for changing how our society works seems to be everywhere, but it is hardly a new idea. As I have said, I am attracted to smallness, but at the same time, I am aware, even painfully so, of its limitations. As with other recent posts, then, I want to use this space to explore why smallness is such a galvanizing idea, especially now, and why it should also be approached and advocated for with caution.

If you consult a dictionary on smallness, you might be surprised by the variety of both denotations and connotations associated with it. It denotes, of course, less than average size, but also lack of importance or significance, limited influence or scope, and even narrowness in outlook or purpose. It also implies modesty or humility and simplicity and even agility or flexibility, as in a craft that can be easily driven or directed. A small boat, for instance, can easily be turned around, whereas a large one may require a very elaborate and complicated maneuver. Smallness also suggests a decentralized situation in which a relatively few number of people are able to interact with one another, often in a face-to-face manner. Bigness, by contrast, is impersonal and often alienating for people. One of the big problems with large organizations is that when something goes wrong, it is difficult to determine who is responsible. It often can't be discerned who gave the order that led to disaster. In small organizations, on the other hand, there appears to be greater accountability, more oversight, and greater satisfaction in being able to put a name and a position to an action taken. People seem to know where they stand with small enterprises. Very large ones are disorienting and not particularly efficient.

One of the historical figures who has been mentioned a lot lately who was a great foe of bigness in both business and government was the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. As Jeffrey Rosen notes in a recent book review, Brandeis, unlike other liberals, opposed bigness, not just in business, but in government as well. He saw bigness as a "curse," and he recognized discerningly that bigness in both business and government often leads to a kind of interlocking directorate between the two, something like what Eisenhower later called "the military-industrial complex," that is not only a waste of resources, but more harmfully, a promoter of "greed, recklessness, and oligarchy." Such bigness, Brandeis contended, leads to imprudence, fraud and self-centered practices that are simply not in the public interest.

Rosen also mentions that Brandeis was committed to judicial restraint and states' rights, but never says anything about how this philosophy might have played out during the Civil Rights Movement where judicial activism and big government were absolutely essential. Here we see one particularly outstanding example of the need for bigness to resist the forces of racism or of regional prejudices. Bigness is often a problem, but it is not always so, and it does seem, for instance, that once again a very large bureaucracy and an activist government are critical if we are to have the kind of environmental reforms needed to address global warming.

Another interesting case of the virtues and limitations of smallness relates to educational reform. A lot of good has been done, for instance, in New York City breaking up very large schools into much smaller ones, or creating small, self-governing units within existing educational behemoths that sometimes enroll as many as 5000 students. These smaller schools report, on the whole, better attendance, higher achievement, and a much stronger connection to parents and to the surrounding community. Of course, smallness does not accomplish these things by itself, but it is a facilitating influence, and many of these changes would be nearly impossible without these reductions in size. At the same time, the Obama administration has been almost universally praised for its efforts to provide federal incentives for educational reform within the states. Many people believe that without these measures and without the accompanying efforts to create national educational standards, change would not happen. This seems to be another case where bigness is necessary to deal with a system that for too long has been mismanaged.

I also want to put in a good word for smallness when it comes to any kind of direct democracy, where each person in a group has an equal claim to voicing her or his view and to having an opportunity to influence the final decision or outcome. By direct democracy here I don't mean a system of government so much as a way of life found in families, schools, interest groups, religious congregations, or community organizations. In such settings, democracy is practiced by people who believe in mutual persuasion as a way to reach decisions. They also believe that dialogue and well thought out arguments, combined with close, respectful listening, and a commitment to understanding other points of view are all essential. People who believe in small-scale democracy strive to hear as much as speak, to understand as much as be understood, to learn from a variety of perspectives at least as much as propose a solution. This process of reciprocal enlightenment is often as important as the product of wise, judicious decisions.

Yet, even as I revere such small-scale democracies, I also know that at the national level there are many times when discussion must come to an end and that it even becomes counter-productive to prolong it, when decisions must be made, often without taking into account every point of view. Such processes must be handled with care, but as I mentioned in an earlier post crisis demands action, and our decision makers at the national level have too often taken too long to achieve resolution about jobs, the environment, and energy that have become self-evident to many of our most rational and well informed citizens. Bigness and activism once again have a highly valued role. Perhaps, by the way, health care reform is our most recent example of the need for a very ambitious, thoroughgoing, and activist set of changes at the federal level. There simply is no way to pull it off without affirming that bigness has its virtues, too.

The Eyes Have It

Lately, while riding on the Staten Island Ferry, I have gotten into the habit of using my cell phone camera to snap close-up pictures of one of my eyes. In fact, one of these pictures currently serves as my phone's screen saver. Why have I started doing this? Well, for one thing, this camera takes surprisingly clear and crisp pictures. Even extreme close-ups come out well. But, of course, this comment neatly evades the more pressing issue of what in the world would possess me to occupy my time in such a bizarre way. I'm not sure I know, but I thought I would use this post to try to figure that out.

Like many people, I enjoy experimenting with the camera that comes with my cell phone. I'm always looking for unusual and arresting images. One day I turned this camera on myself and was absolutely appalled by the result. It was one of those pictures taken from just below my jawline, almost looking up into my nose. But the really disgusting aspects were the creases in my chin that appeared so prominently as I bowed my head to look into the camera, and the flat, almost blank expression that appeared on my face. It looked like me sadly enough, but it was a version of myself that skewed toward extreme unattractiveness.

Somehow, this terrible outcome led me to more attempts, including a series of close-ups of my face. There was something about my eyes in those initial close-ups that surprised me, prompting me to pull the camera even closer to myself, so that a number of the pictures that resulted were dominated by one of my eyes, either looking up, to the side, or straight into the camera. Despite what I assume is a low quality camera, these eye pictures were sharp and very blue (my eyes are blue) and rather haunting, quite different really from pictures one usually sees.

By isolating my eyes in this way, I seemed to be peering more deeply into myself, or at least viewing a side of myself that doesn't come across as clearly as when my entire face is in the frame. What I saw was altogether too serious, too intense, too penetrating, and, in a way, too frightened. All of this especially came across as I viewed and reviewed an extended series of these pictures. It was almost as if my eye was a window to my soul and what I was seeing was disconcerting, a person on the edge, unsettled, uncertain, but also alert to new possibilities, and eager to experiment. But it was the tentativeness of that eye, that not-quite-sure-what's-going-to-happen-next aspect that threw me a bit, even as I was intrigued by it.

Eyes are fascinating in this way. I have long been a fan of self-portraits of all kinds and of those painted by Rembrandt, in particular. Rembrandt began painting himself when he was a young man and a prospering artist and continued to do so periodically for the rest of his life, even as his mastery of his art reached new heights while his economic fortunes took a nose dive. These works, more than 40 in all (and this omits the many etchings and sketches), are among the most powerful and haunting in the history of art, not least because of his skill in capturing his own aging eyes. His eyes as a young man are confident, self-assured, even a bit arrogant. As an old man, they are undeniably sad, but also knowing, fully lived-in eyes that reflect both the weariness of a long, often difficult life and the wisdom that comes from successfully withstanding adversity. They are the eyes of a fully realized human being who despite great success and accomplishment, tends to accentuate the disappointments and the regrets, and who portrays himself, anyway, as more exhausted than exhilarated, more worn down than looking up or ahead. Yet, somehow, these portraits, as a whole, are also a study in persistence and of a person who, though battered, remains true to himself and to his art.

What do Rembrandt's self-portraits have to do with my own efforts to capture my eyes with my cell phone? Not sure really. For one thing, my photographs are an amateurish capturing of my eyes as they really are, whereas Rembrandt brings an authentic artistic genius to his perspective on himself. His self-portraits are not merely a documentary record of his face, but a brilliant re-imagining of who he is and what he is becoming. But I think there is something about taking time to look ourselves literally in the eye to help us get a better view at who we are and what we are feeling that has some value. We often talk about self-reflection and developing a balanced sense of self-awareness, but we rarely, if ever, suggest that we look ourselves in the eye to gauge our state of mind, to take stock of who we are. I'm not sure I feel so strongly about this that I would recommend it to others, and admit it may lead to self-absorption and narcissism, but I would still say give it a try. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a glimpse, however modest, into your very own true self.

What David Brooks Didn't Say

This has been a good week for New York Times columnist David Brooks. For his July 6th op-ed, he skillfully casts doubt on the confident claims of the "Demand Siders" who insist that now is the time to spend more public money, not less. A fiscal conservative, Brooks argues convincingly this is a largely untested assertion. Also, this week he is profiled in New York Magazine as one of America's most brilliant pundits and for maintaining his popularity among both liberals and conservatives. Of course, he is hated by many in both groups, but it is surprising, as well, how much bipartisan support he continues to enjoy.

So it is with some hesitancy and trepidation that I take issue with Mr. Brooks' remarks, particularly given the dark forecast inserted into the New York Magazine piece that the U.S. is in danger of becoming Greece. In his column, Mr. Brooks concludes that while we must be fiscally cautious, it is foolish to save money, for instance, by curtailing unemployment insurance or depriving the states of much needed revenue to maintain basic services. I was glad to read that, but I don't think he goes far enough. Of course, if we're going to become Greece (and after all he has access to all these highly knowledgeable informants), then forget it, all bets are off. But, assuming reasonably enough that we are not going the way of the Hellenes, at least not any time soon, I want to make a couple of largely non-economic arguments for doing more than just extending unemployment insurance or helping the states balance their budgets with "race to the top" type competitions.

We desperately need an ambitious and comprehensive public jobs program. Bob Herbert has been talking about this for months, but I am appalled that his lone cries have been ignored. First, unemployment does terrible damage to people, to families, to communities, to individual and collective self-esteem. When the market economy is this troubled and shows so little sign of recovering any time soon, government must step in to make up the difference. God knows, there are sound economic reasons for doing this, but I think restoring the well being of people thrown out of work is the most important reason for doing something right away. It is the right thing to do and it will not only help the unemployed directly, it is very likely, too, to improve the overall economic picture as a whole.

But, here is the part that really bugs me. We could put millions back to work while also repairing our crumbling national infrastructure! All those bridges and roads and schools that are falling apart could be repaired and rebuilt by an army of government-employed workers. What a great way to use stimulus money! This is the capital formation we need. Like the WPA in the 1930s, such programs have a long-term and untold impact on the overall strength of the economy. We could put people back to work and help our long-term chances for ensuring economic growth.

So why aren't we doing this? I honestly believe that in addition to the usual political reasons, it stems from a lack of imagination. It is the inability to envision how much of a difference such a dramatic jobs program could make. But it does demand a leap of faith, the kind FDR became famous for. A massive jobs program is risky. It could fuel inflation and it could even make things worse long term. But the good that would be done in the short run for innocent people damaged by this terrible economy and the likelihood that in the long run great good would be accomplished, makes this our best bet for now. I urge President Obama and the Congress to take note. An ambitious jobs program targeting the faltering infrastructure will yield some immediate good, no matter what else happens. But the longer we wait to take action, the greater the damage done to everyday people. As in the darkest days of the New Deal, the same mantra applies: "We need action and we need it right now." Or, as Rahm Emanuel said during the presidential campaign, "you never want to let a national crisis go to waste." If action isn't taken soon, we will be doing just that.

Final Daily Post

This blog has now come full circle. Begun on July 4, 2009 as a site for one New York settler to share his passion for the City, today it concludes as a daily reflection on life in New York City. For those few of you interested, however, this is the not the end of this blog, only the end of a daily recounting of my New York life. Thethirdnewyork will continue with posts that occur on a roughly weekly basis, usually appearing on Sunday or Monday morning.

It has been an incredibly worthwhile experience to write these posts every day. It has given me a place to express myself, to pour out my thoughts, in the end, about a multitude of subjects, but always with New York City at least in the background, and more often than not, at center stage. The fact that his blog has covered such a wide range of subjects is fitting as New York remains, above all, the place that is most like that great Long Island and Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman: it contains multitudes. It is, as I have said quite a few times before, inexhaustible.

For this last post, I had thought of writing about Central Park or about the theater, two things that make New York so special for me, but, as important as these things are to so many New Yorkers, that didn't seem quite encompassing enough. They are key dimensions of New York but not New York itself. No, this final appreciation has to focus on New York's inexhaustibility, on the fact that it remains the world's single, greatest microcosm. There is more diversity here in almost every realm of human experience than any other place in the world. Ultimately, it is New York's sheer variety, its unbelievable mix of rich and poor, disciplined and casual, creative and conventional, sports-obsessed and sports-averse, art-oriented and art-clueless, the performative and the observational, the ever-busy and the stubbornly inactive, that makes New York such an exciting, bizarre, and endlessly interesting place.

Perhaps it is best summed up by what an elderly lady said to me the other day as we stood at a street corner, me with my trusty bicycle beside me, she with her walker that doubles as a shopping cart in front of her. We were chatting about the beauty of the morning and she noted something about a play she had dearly loved but couldn't recall the title of. I tried to help but my prompts only confused her more. Finally, she resigned herself to not remembering, but then brightened and added, "but this is New York after all. It will be back. It has to be and I will see it and enjoy it all over again."

Well, yes, of course, I thought. New York is the city of second, third, and even fourth acts, both literally and figuratively. If it has happened here, it will happen again, you can count on that. And if it has been part of human experience, however wonderful or terrible, it has probably happened here before and will again. That is New York's blessing and its curse, its source of wonder and the fact that it is shunned by so many non-New Yorkers. For me, though, all of this just makes it that much more remarkable. To the extent that any life is an education, there is no greater school than New York. I am proud and delighted to be its willing and appreciative student.

New York's Museums

I don't know for how many people this is the case, but in a very real sense, our schedules here in New York City are shaped by museums - their openings, their closings, their special events, their members' viewings, their relatively easy accessibility. We are members of MoMA, the MET, the Guggenheim, the New York Historical Society (N-Y), the Museum of the City of New York, and the Paley Center for Media. The only one of these that never sends us a special invitation to attend their openings or special events is the MET - famously stuffy and aloof. We love it anyway, though, and go there as often as any place because there is always so much going on. MoMA, our beloved MoMA, is the other extreme. They constantly send us invitations to special viewings, to receptions celebrating openings, to so many parties and jazzy gatherings that we can't keep up and often have to turn them down. For instance, we are invited next week to a reception at MoMA for members only that welcomes the wonderful new Matisse exhibit that centers on a time of great creativity for him - his period of "radical invention" as it is referred to - from 1913-1917. Somehow, especially given Karen's love for Matisse, we had to drop everything to make sure we could be there for this unique evening.

The Guggenheim, too, has provided us with rich sources of stimulation and amusement. Their "Works and Process" Series, often noted in this blog, with its sly pairing of seemingly disparate arts and sciences, and its reliably delicious concluding receptions, has never failed to provoke and satisfy us. Its really quite outlandish exhibits, too, have kept us laughing and amazed and coming back for more.

N-Y, a favorite of ours, continues its terrific lecture series of fascinating historical and contemporary topics. Its surprising celebration of musical comedy, that has wreaked havoc with our schedules since they present these events at 6:30 on weekday evenings, has continued to give us much pleasure, even if we occasionally do have to slip into our seats just before (or after) the curtain.

The Museum of the City of New York recently installed its own fascinating exhibit on the John Lindsay Years, Mayor of New York from 1965-1973, and also held a can't miss musical revue on the Broadway hits from that period. We vow to return to see much more of the excellent Lindsay exhibit, though it does mean hiking up to 5th Avenue and 103rd Street, the one museum that sometimes seems just a bit out of reach for us.

Finally, Paley is hot and cold when it comes to special events. For a while, we seemed to be going to one a week, whether celebrating Leonard Bernstein's birthday and his Young People's Concerts or premiering the film "Julie and Julia" paired with clips from the actual Julia's famed TV show or feting an aging Harry Belafonte. But lately, the pickings have been slim. Of course, Paley's great virtue is its video library and the fact that you can view any program in its large archives any time you want.

So there you have it - life by museum. It's tough to keep up with everything, but we do our best. We regard it as one of our most sacred New York responsibilities.

Everybody Walks

Everyone walks in New York City. I mean even if you drive, you walk at least some of the time, because the distance between your parking space and your destination tends to be fairly far. But in general New Yorkers are by necessity big walkers. Most of them can't just go out back to let their dogs relieve themselves. They have to find a park or a relatively deserted area for this, and in some cases you have to go quite a ways to get there. Subways are convenient, but they are often many blocks from your eventual destination, thus necessitating more walking. Of course, it is also true that because it is so difficult and expensive to own a car in the city, far fewer people rely on automobiles. This requires them to walk to work or to walk to the subway or even to walk to a corner when they can catch a taxi. There is always some walking involved. And I think for most New Yorkers, especially those in Manhattan, great pleasure is derived from walking, from seeing the city from a pedestrian's vantage point, from the slow but observant pace of those who meander and stroll. As a result, walking becomes part of the way of life in the city. People get used to it, enjoy it, and even seek out opportunities to do it. Which, in part, accounts for how congested Central Park is on weekends. People enjoy getting out and the easiest and most pleasant way to do so is on foot. This habit also results in a much lower rate of obesity and I daresay a higher quality of life. It took us a long time as a society to figure it out, but we now know that one of the best, most desirable ways to live is in a dense, compact environment where many things are within walking distance. For the elderly, for the young, and for pretty much everybody in between, when you can access most of the services you need on foot, each day brings a special sort of satisfaction that is missing for people who are shut up in cars most of the time.