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 Ready for the Storm A mandatory evacuation of our neighborhood sent me, my husband and our dog Shadow scrambling to the home of our friends Heather and George in Murray Hill. They extended an invitation that included said dog, despite their pint-sized NYC apartment and a jungle of plants brought in from the patio.
Irene’s wrath bypassed both Murray Hill and Battery Park City, so we fared better than many. Only slightly soggy, we found a restaurant open for lunch and another one open for dinner. Not much to choose from, so we were lucky to find Resto offshoot, Cannibal, open for lunch and Les Halles, open and waiting for dinner.
Our nights out with friends usually end after dinner, but on this rainy night, we continued the party at the apartment. Two more brave souls, Amy and Laurence, found a taxi to gouge them and bring them over.
The six of us had fun in a way we seldom do these days. And as a result, we ended up bonding closer.
What About the Animals?
I worried about the dogs and cats at Animal Haven as Irene threatened the city. Being evacuees, I was in no position to foster an animal. But Animal Haven managed to find foster homes for every last one of their animals.
Apparently, a lot of bonding was going on in those hunkered-down homes last weekend.
At my volunteer shift Friday, I find Animal Haven eerily quiet. Only two little guys are bedding down in the Intake Room and many corrals downstairs sit empty.
Many of the emergency fosters turned into adoptions and the dogs and cats never returned to the shelter. Once you’ve gone through a hurricane together, things change, I guess.
My heart-stealer Leo is among the adopted. I am happy that skinny boy found his home.
Despite the open berths, the Animal Haven staff are busy. They are prepping for the next wave of animals coming in—another reminder that there is never a shortage of animals that need rescue and need a home.
Please adopt.
 Canned! Mr Potato Head When everyone seems to have their hand out, how does a city food bank grab a New Yorker’s attention?
I can’t think of a better way of engaging people in charitable giving than the CANstruction® competition. In CANstruction®, teams of designers, architects or engineers create exhibits using canned food as their medium. After the competition, the structures are dismantled and the food is donated to local food banks. Cities all over the United States and the globe participate in CANstruction®.
I stumbled upon the New York exhibit last week (without knocking anything over). A couple dozen over-sized aluminum can sculptures were displayed throughout the World Financial Center. Most teams went with a “feed-the-hungry” theme with smart titles like Paint the Town Fed or Feaster Islander.
Stand too close and the pieces look like a grocery store aisle. But step back a few paces and oh yeah, that’s what it is. The placard beside each piece tells how many cans in the design and how many New Yorkers each will feed. The numbers are staggering, but so is the need.
Enjoy my photos below and also check out the CANstruction® photo gallery for images from other cities and earlier years.
 At some unidentifiable point, after I lived in New York City a long while, I started talking about leaving. I would say, if it weren’t so cold in Wisconsin in the winter, I would have already moved back to Milwaukee.
The sore point and source of my complaints always boils down to the stupidly high cost of living in Manhattan—from housing to groceries to taxes to well, everything.
But when I step outside my apartment in the summer and stroll by the North Cove and the World Financial Center plaza, I know I live in the best place in the world. I think how, if I woke up in a foreign city and found this view, this cove, this plaza outside my hotel window, I would be satisfied that I had landed a great vacation spot.
Nothing puts the unpleasantness of cost-of-living conversations behind me better than the Frank O’Hara quote embedded in the metal fencing alongside the cove:
“One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. —Frank O’Hara
There is another famous quote, by John Lennon I believe, in which he says, everyone always talks about leaving New York, but no one ever really does. That isn’t true; I know a lot of people who have left New York, some with eventual regret and some none at all.
But I fall into the category of people Lennon is talking about. I won’t leave New York City. Unless I can’t afford it anymore.
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 The Cherry Blossom Blink and you miss them.
Cherry blossoms bloom for only a week, but that week bestows upon me a glorious view from my apartment window in Battery Park City.
Americans associate cherry blossoms with Washington DC and the annual Cherry Blossom Festival at the Tidal Basin.
Most of the thousands of cherry blossoms the Japanese gave the United States in 1912 were planted in DC.You also can find cherry blossoms in several other areas of the United States, including San Diego, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. And some ended up here in New York, and a few outside my window.
But this 18th floor window isn’t the first to afford me a view of cherry blossoms. Growing up on an army base in Japan, I could see a single cherry blossom tree from my window. The small tree didn’t hide the chain-link fence and the gravel field beyond, a field of broken tanks, row after row of tanks waiting for repair. Continue reading Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) Bloom
 Down in Battery Park City, as in much of downtown Manhattan, the wind is on steroids. Strong, and stoked by tall buildings and narrow streets, the winter wind saves its best work for west of the big highway where the Hudson River adds its two bucks.
On any given day, the air feels at least ten degrees colder in Battery Park City, especially in seasons where you need every degree on the your side of the tote board.
The wind whistles through spaces in the windows of our 18th floor apartment; it pounds on our walls and makes us huddle close to the space heater and under a comforter on the couch.
This brutality is payment for the beautiful summers down here when Battery Park City is spared the sweltering stench of the rest of Manhattan, where the same tall buildings create oven walls to contain the heat.
The Hudson River relents, and the mad, mad space makes you close your eyes and spin around without knocking anyone over. Among the joys of summer: The Esplanade, Rockefeller Park, and the North Cove where the yachts are moored, the World Financial Center Plaza where PJ Clarke’s and South West have hundreds of outside tables, the fountains, and the places where you can just sit outside, undisturbed.
I count the days until March when I get my annual reminder that March is still a winter month. Okay, I’ll count til April then, which for some is the “cruelest month,” but not for me!
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