Give my regards to Broadway

"Manhattan has been compelled to expand skyward because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow. This, more than any other thing, is responsible for its physical majesty." ~by E.B. White




Empire State Building
"I am an American boy, standing up to the world.
I sleep the city sleeps. We dream
the riveter's dream, held island-fast.
I wake to taxi alarms.
I am a 102-stop elevator ride to heaven. . .

. . . I am ten million bricks of unshakable faith.

I capture imagination at its peak.

I hugged King Kong, he hugged me back.

I look down on Broadway for a work of art,

the Fulton Fish Market for a slice of life,

United Nations Headquarters for a little peace. . .

. . . It's lonely up here without my twin brothers,
the World Trade Center Towers.
Wait here on my doorstep, Central Park,
while I look over Harlem.
I am an American boy, face to face with the world."
~by J. Patrick Lewis



In a Square of Times Square
"Evidence suggests a clock and its fast hand
is the most fitting tribute for continuity.
Times Square (light-lit night) . . .


. . . is the backdrop for our story, just as Eden
as an orchard is one narrative
beginning. In that one, the snake
as a tempter announces time's end. . .


. . . The Square sits in a city that is less a set
idea and more a disdain for sameness.
Times Square was always changing.
Of course truth was always one side . . .


. . . of certainty. She stops and looks up and sees
the scenic depiction of a drama-charged life
on the Times Square billboard above,
where an actress is asking a moment, . . .


. . . "What are you?" Asking and asking
to the sound of a whistle calling a cab."
~by Mary Jo Bang


" . . . while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village,
down Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues . . . "
~by Allen Ginsberg from Kaddish (I)



We had this calendar framed at the end of August 2001 to commemorate our son's last year at Columbia University. Two weeks later, the Towers were gone.

"The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. It used to be that the Statue of Liberty was the signpost that proclaimed New York and translated it for all the world. Today Liberty shares the role with Death."

~by E.B. White