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There are certain people
You just keep coming back to
She is right in front of you
You begin to wonder
Could you find a better one
Compared to her, now she's in question
And all at once
The crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing
And the right thing are the same
Maybe you want her
Maybe you need her
Maybe you started to compare
To someone not there
All at once ~The Fray
A commemorative flight by an impressive number of Spitfires and Hurricanes - over twenty of them! - from Biggin Hill Airport in Kent, on the 75th Anniversary of what has come to be defined as "The Hardest Day" of the Battle of Britain, on 18 August 1940.
After take-off the planes divided into three groups, each flying over various landmark locations such as the locations of former RAF airfields which had played a key role in Britain's defences against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain and throughout the rest of WW2.
The hardest part was to take the shot avoiding backscatter from the krill, furthermore the squid is moving and is translucent that makes harder for a mirrorless camera to precisely focus. What about the lighting system I "invented"? It seems to me it works pretty well.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
~Ayn Rand
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau
You must understand that seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.
~Denis Waitley
Marble Canyon is the second hardest place to reach at the Death Valley National Park in California, behind the extremely hard to reach Racetrack Playa (a place we could not visit on this trip due to the access being shut down).
You reach Marble Canyon after an hour of bone-rattling drive on a dirt road totally conditioned by the Washboard effect. No rental car agency will allow this off-road access, which means in addition to your body, your automobile also takes a beating. So you need a dirt roadworthy SUV, preferably one that is so beat up that you no longer care.
The reward for your troubles is worth it – an amazing walk through a canyon that no photograph can do justice to. It does not have the panache of some of the swirling orange rocks at Zion National Park, but the blue walls and rocks of Marble Canyon are unique in their own way.
The best time to visit is in the afternoon, but not so late that you get caught there when it gets dark. Also, it is highly recommended that you travel in a group, with at least two, maybe three cars. That way, if there's any breakdown, you have people who can lend a hand.
For the most part, Marble Canyon is easy walking, but there are a couple of places that require steep climbing. You don't have to be super athletic to manage it, but a certain basic level of fitness is necessary. There are places you will likely need to use your tripod or hiking poles for support, and good hiking boots with superior traction are mandatory.
There is a myriad of things you can photograph here, ranging from the macro to the micro. As we walked through the canyon, I took a lot of photos of whatever caught my fancy. Even after culling my raw shots, I still ended up with some 50+ images.
I don't have a way to condense them down to a half dozen "best photos", so I'm just going to make it a virtual tour and publish them all. That way, anyone considering a visit should have a reasonably good feel for the place.
Don't feel compelled to comment, just enjoy the virtual tour!
D303 7R308718
Tune: Ruste Juxx - Hardest From the Underground
[Verse 1]
Good riddance, niggas ain't spitting
Horse fly style, ain't bull shitting
Me, on the other hand, brother man
Destroy mics, that's word to the motherland
Africa, I'm drastic bruh
Kill 'em, bury 'em, flip your casket sir
Fuck 5-0, enemies die slow
Stupid niggas done forgot, but the wise know
It's RJ repping that BK
From KA, swinging that AK
Shoutout to Brownsville, my Flatbush niggas
White widow, real Bubba Kush niggas
Fire flame lighting it up
Kicking hot shit, yeah, five mic-ing it up
Nigga, you ever got the shit pushed in?
Just listen to the styles that my pen pushed in
[Verse 2]
Can't stop, won't stop, banging that sound
Ruste Juxx, hardest from the underground
I do what I does, I does what I do
Get mine, so I don't give a fuck about you
If it ain't about money, it's irrelevant
I stay paid in the shade getting hella bent
Big face bills, fat pussy hoes
Cardboard condos, homemade bungalow
Me and Kyo is a two man wrecking team
No bum shit, bitch we getting cream
Cause homie this ain't the norm
A hundred fans faint every time that I perform
Fire flame lighting it up
Kicking hot shit, yeah, five mic-ing it up
Nigga, you ever got the shit pushed in?
Just listen to the styles that my pen pushed in
Sometimes the simplest of things in life are the hardest things to do. Like clicking send on an email...
Today I did that twice, but those emails represented something far greater, something that has been a long, long time in the making.
One email was addressed to my colleagues (about 120 people), the other addressed to people I deal with regularly through work (another 100+). They both explained my intention go fulltime as Siân in the near future!
Having plucked-up the courage to click 'send', I then sat there weeping as a constant flow of emails and texts piled-in with messages of support, admiration and love. It was just an amazing moment.
For those interested, I have set out below my message.
Another (BIG) step forward...
Siân x
I feel now is an appropriate time to share with you all a deeply personal issue that I have wrestled with for many years, and to advise you of some changes that will take place in the not-so-distant future.
Whilst I recognise that this may well come as a shock to many of you (or maybe not?), I wish to advise you all that I am transgender and that I intend on transitioning, living full time as a female.
The last few years in particular have been very difficult for me, and you will appreciate, I hope, that this isn’t a decision I’ve taken lightly.
Until recently, I didn’t believe that I would ever have the strength to discuss openly my gender dysphoria. But of late, I have come to realise that there is a way forward for me, however to achieve that, I need to be honest about my feelings.
Getting to this stage hasn’t been easy. Since my early teenage years, I felt a deep sense of shame about my dysphoria, fearing that my life would be over if anyone were ever to find out. However, after much soul searching, of late I have come to accept my feelings, and in doing so, develop a strong sense of personal pride.
I recognise that many of you may well be struggling to comprehend why I feel the way I do and why I’ve opted to go public. The truth is really quite simple... It is about me leading the life that I want to lead, not leading the life that others want me to lead.
It’s not about drawing attention to myself. Quite the opposite actually; I want to be able to walk down the street and go about my day-to-day life un-noticed.
It’s not a hobby. And it’s not about fulfilling sexual desires.
Instead, it’s about feeling good about myself. About feeling content.
And I would hope that you all recognise those basic needs to some degree.
Over the last three years, I have made some great strides forward, initially opening-up to my family and thereafter my friends.
My family – I’m sad to say – initially struggled to accept it, with my Dad first suggesting “Why don’t you just stop doing it?” If only it were that simple…
But we’re making progress, which is great, and credit to them for finally engaging in a very difficult situation.
My friends have been wonderfully supportive and have encouraged me on my journey. And I’ve also received much-welcome support recently from those colleagues in whom I have already confided.
I’m sorry to say that I haven’t received the same level of support from the NHS. Whilst my GP has been a fantastic ally, unfortunately the rest of the system has been found wanting. To illustrate, I was referred to a Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) in Summer 2017 – so, coming up on two years ago – and suspect I’ve still got at least another 18 months to wait until my first appointment!
Clearly this is hugely frustrating, but if nothing else, illustrates the scale of gender dysphoria within society.
Having received my referral, I foresaw the GIC process as providing much needed support and guidance in helping me conclude these important life decisions. However, given the timescales involved, I came to realise that I couldn’t wait and would instead need to make decisions unassisted, based ultimately on what felt right.
A little over a year ago, I opted to start a slow transition, not least growing my hair in order to achieve a more feminine appearance. I know that a number of you have queried what’s been going on with me over recent months, so now you know!
The most important consideration in all of this are my children. Whilst I have had an initial conversation with them, until such time as they are comfortable with the new situation, I will continue to present at work as [ ], so please (for now), continue to refer to me as [ ], using the pronouns he and his.
However, ultimately, it is my intention to present fulltime as a female, going by the name of Siân (pronounced ‘Sharn’) and using the pronouns she and her. At present, I am unable to be more specific with regards timings, but at least now you know my intentions.
Clearly there are a lot of logistics still to address, but with the help of the Board and HR, I would hope these are sorted in good order. We will, of course, keep you appraised as to the next steps and when I intend to present fulltime as Siân.
I have worked with some of you for more than 15 years and recognise that these changes – as and when they materialise – may cause some confusion initially, so please don’t feel bad if you accidentally call me [ ] or mis-gender me, and please don’t treat me any differently.
One important point I’m keen to leave you with is to stress that I am – and will remain – the same person, with the same morals and the same principles. I just look a little bit different; a bit like when Marathon bars became Snickers, as a close friend once described it.
I’ve chosen to share this with you as a trusted colleague and would appreciate your discretion in this matter. I would ask that you do not share this more broadly without my permission as my children’s mother and I are trying to support our children through this change in a gradual and considered way, and I therefore trust that you will respect our wishes.
If you’re unsure on anything I’ve explained herein – whatever it may be – please do come and speak to me; believe me, I’ve answered many embarrassing questions already, so you probably won’t be the first to ask!
In the meantime, you may find the following information resources of use:
www.livescience.com/54949-transgender-definition.html - what does ‘Transgender’ mean?
www.glaad.org/transgender/allies - tips for allies of transgender people
thinkgrowth.org/how-to-support-a-trans-colleague-641f0b34... - how to support a transgender colleague
transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/resources/Unde... - frequently asked questions about transgender people
In closing, I simply ask for your support and understanding in the coming months and years, thank you.
Kind regards
[ ]
(soon to be Siân)
The next four years living with Nicholas Galtry were easily the hardest years of my life. Unlike my parents, he didn't care about my well-being. All he cared about was how famous I was, and the money that came along with said fame. Since I was still so young, Galtry had access to every penny. Sure enough, he would blow it all, whether it was on gambling, booze, or girls. Anytime I tried standing up for myself, he would remind me of my place. I didn't have control of my powers yet, so the punches kept coming. I like to always think the best in every situation I'm in, but there was no bright side to this. The safest I felt was when I was Tork. A confident space warrior, that was liked by all. I only wish that same confidence translated to my life as Garfield Logan. It was all smiles, and jokes on set, hiding the cruelties that were going on behind closed doors. Honestly, I felt as though I had no value. This continued, until the fateful day, my thirteenth birthday. When Nicholas Galtry would finally be punished for his crimes, and I would meet the Doom Patrol for the first time. What I didn't realize then was how close of a family we would become.
I met Rita first. While the other three were talking amongst themselves about Galtry, she was making sure I was okay. Something about her was so comforting. It took me a while before I realized what it was. She reminded me so much of my mother. Maybe it was them both being actresses, who worked on Hello Megan, or just how caring they were. Either way, Rita was the second best mother I could've asked for. She pushed me to continue acting, even after Space Trek: 2022 was cancelled due to plagiarism. I stuck with it, because of her.
Next was Larry. The Eeyore of our merry band of misfits. Former Air Force pilot, Larry Trainor was flying high. While he was piloting a test plane, he was exposed to a field of radiation, which ended up giving him his powers. Larry saw his powers as more of a curse than a blessing, and his melancholy, self-destructive attitude, lead to him being called Negative Man. Don't look at me, I didn't give him the name. But yeah, pretty self-explanatory, I know. One of the happiest memories I remember about Larry happened on the night I arrived at the mansion. I heard this music, which was emanating from the kitchen. Walking inside, it was Larry, singing along with the radio, while cooking dinner. It was so strange, seeing this person, all wrapped up like the invisible man, singing, and dancing, while cooking. Which is why, his complete 180 change in attitude moments later, took me by complete surprise.
Then there's Cliff, who I see as an older brother of sorts. It wasn't always that way though, as he was completely against me joining the team. Couldn't resist the loveable goofball that I am forever however, and slowly but surely, I was able to chip away at his robotic exterior. Turns out even robot's can have a heart sometimes.
Finally, we have Steve Dayton, the father and leader of this merry band of misfits. He cared, but had a strange way of showing it. Training routines at odd hours of the night, and set rules that we had to follow. The mission always came first in his eyes. He didn't have time to be a real father, but I'd take him any day, over the monster that is Nicholas Galtry.
The next few years, living, and being a part of the Doom Patrol were easily the best years of my life. I finally felt like I had a purpose. We faced our fair share of supervillains, including Mister Nobody, and his Brotherhood of Dada, along with the Brotherhood of Evil before them. Both your stereotypical take over the world, and cause absolute chaos type of badguys. The cycle would go on, of us taking them down, putting them behind bars, only for them to be broken out of jail months later. One thing remained the same, in that we would always win. Until we didn't..
The event recalled 18 August 1940, when Bromley's Biggin Hill and other South East military bases came under attack from the German Luftwaffe.
It became known as the "hardest day" as both sides recorded their greatest loss of aircraft during the battle.
The hardest thing about this shot was being able to see the old photo on my mobile with light on the screen, so there was a certain amount of guesswork in the end.
The Becket referred to in the photo is Thomas A Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was famously assassinated by King Henry II, and who was a frequent visitor to Tarring village in Worthing.
Becket House is now the Parsonage restaurant.
The hardest part about shooting with Anastasia is trying to decide my favorite photos to post. She is absolutely gorgeous with a great personality. 2021 pretty much sucked in general; the best thing about it was I had a chance to shoot with Anastasia about 5 times. We did this shoot at the Scentsy campus in October 2021. Excellent shoot with one of my favorite models!!
It has been a week now since we were at R.A.F. Kenley to see a flypast ( well 3 in total ) of the Lancaster flanked by a Spitfire and a Hurricane of The BBMF ( Battle of Britain Memorial Flight ) . The flypast was a commemorative flight remembering "The Hardest Day " - August 18th 1940 .
A BBMF Flypast over R.A.F. Kenly on the 79th anniversary of The Hardest Day -
This is a Hurricane and a Lancaster of the BBMF ( Battle of Britain Memorial Flight ) , there is also a Spitfire in formation but for my shot I have concentrated on these two aircraft . I took just over 60 shots of the three passes over the airfield , however , as always panning shots ( birds or aircraft ) always seem a challenge to me and I only have this shot and a couple of others I am happy with .
Sunday 15th September is celebrated officially as the climax of the Battle of Britain, when London had become the Luftwaffe's main target.
However post-war studies of British and German records have shown that the hardest fought day of the Battle was Sunday 18th August. On this day the Luftwaffe tried its utmost to destroy our fighter airfields flying 850 sorties involving 2200 aircrew. The RAF resisted with equal vigour flying 927 sorties involving 600 aircrew.
Between lunchtime and teatime, three big Luftwaffe raids were attempted, the first and third by mixed groups of Dornier Do 17, Junkers Ju 88 and Heinkel He 111 bombers, escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109 and B 110 fighters, and a second by Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers, also escorted by Bf 109s. The targets were the airfields at Kenley, Biggin Hill, Gosport, Ford, Thorney Island, Hornchurch and North Weald, and the radar station at Poling. Although the last wave failed to reach its targets, which were obscured by cloud, the fighting was no less fierce along the route.
The RAF and Fleet Air Arm lost altogether 68 aircraft, 31 in air combat. 69 German aircraft were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
It was vital to re-arm and refuel the British fighters as quickly as possible as their pilots might be called on to fly several sorties each day.
No 504 Squadron had been mauled by the Luftwaffe in the Battle of France and when it returned to the United Kingdom it was sent to Wick in Scotland to rebuild its operational strength where this photograph was taken.
From the 5 September the unit was based at the RAF Museum London.
The Germans had high hopes for the twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf110 but it proved inferior to both the British Hurricane and the Spitfire. I Gruppe/ZG 26 lost six of their aircraft on this day 18th August 1940.
Southern England was littered with Luftwaffe wrecks. This Dornier Do 17 of 9/KG76 was shot down on 18 August by Hurricanes of 111 Squadron and it crashed at Leaves Green near Biggin Hill in Kent.
A Dornier 17Z of 9th Staffel/Kampfgeschwader 76 is manhandled back into its dispersal point at Cormeilles-en-Vexin.
Nine Dorniers from this unit had been involved in a low level attack on RAF Kenley on the 18th August and had suffered heavy casualties; four had been destroyed, two seriously damaged and the rest had suffered minor damage.
At the end of the day of the forty men who had set out eight had been killed, five taken prisoner, three returned wounded and seven were floating in the English Channel. The Luftwaffe was bleeding to death.
( info from The R.A.F. webpage )
So one last post of all three - that is six Merlins and did they sound Magnificent !!
The hardest part of photographing a sculpture is the problem of making an orginal piece of art. It is not easy and people don't always recognize your unique vision. Most people merely record.
Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, Kenley flypast 2017, to commemorate the Hardest Day. Andy Milliken (OC BBMF) flying a Griffon-engined MkXIX Spitfire. Unfortunately, just one plane could make it, as all the Merlin-engined aircraft are currently grounded.
Horse is one of the hardest build I ever done. Beside getting the pattern realistic, I wanna show more postures about the horse.
This year I want to revisit this project and make the horse pose-able. I rebuild the whole body so that the 4 legs are able to rotate to the angle that the horse should be. Besides, I wanna present the equestrienne “half lifting” riding the horse. The challenges are the whole build of the horse plus equestrienne are too heavy to present multiple postures that I have in my mind. Clear bars for supporting the horse are inevitable. I tried to use less but minimum have to be 6 in parallel. I tried to hide it in multiple places but put in the Centre is most steady for all the postures.
It’s fun for the whole experience.
Even the hardest steel cannot harm intruders that partly exist in higher – or in most cases: lower – plains of reality. For this reason, the Sisters of Ex Orcis have specialized in making arrows from the famous Dragon Glass. Piercing through every thinkable and unthinkable form of ethereal or demonic protection, these elite archers banish supernatural creatures when conventional measures fail.
I never liked the official TLG hoods, so I combined a Cape Madness cape and hood with a hairpiece.
The hardest livery to get colour into, and in full dull light. WCRC 37516 hauled 60009 plus POB from Ilford to Crewe past Chelmscote
The hardest thing in life is knowing which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn - David Russell
Another one from the Glebe last week. There was lot of clouds around the bridge. So I chucked in Little Stopper and managed to get 12.5 minute exposure. Hope you like the shot.
This is the hardest I've ever written, because I am not sure how to put this.
I'm feeling both very stupid, but at the same time very grateful.
But, anyhow..
I'm from Sweden as you may know, and my boy friend from UK, so getting information is very difficult.
And his friend told me last monday that he had passed away, but when he didn't.
He had a difficult surgery and has been unconscious since then.
And it's from where the confusion probably came among his friends and family.
But I want you to know that, having you as my friends really helped me through the time I thought he actually had passed.
And I'm forever grateful for that.
But still his life isn't saved yet, and I pray for him to improve.
I am deeply sorry for this confusion, hope you forgive me.
(going to delete the latest photo I sent with the news, 'cause of that it doesn't feel right to still have it on here when it actually isn't true, just my feelings were.)
This is BY FAR the hardest I have ever had to work for a good shot. The hike in there was something of nightmares, but also when I got there the spray (as you can see here) was like a pressure washer and the only way to get the good comp was to be up close to the falls. I was blessed/cursed with sunlight while I was there, too. Thankfully, it was only backlighting and didnt wash out the scene too much. I did get this fancy flare, however! It was a great trip, nonetheless. Hope you like it. Apparition Falls. Mt hood wilderness, Oregon.
Check out what this falls looks like in august:
Canon 40d- Tokina 11-16mm lens- Polarizer-
The hardest part about shooting with Anastasia is trying to decide my favorite photos to post. She is absolutely gorgeous with a great personality. 2021 pretty much sucked in general; the best thing about it was I had a chance to shoot with Anastasia about 5 times. We did this shoot at the Scentsy campus in October 2021. Excellent shoot with one of my favorite models!!
This has been one of the hardest photo's to know what to say as there is actually quite a lot that could be relevant and interesting hence why I have left it so late in the year to get typed.
After months of trying I finally managed a bus trip down to Dunbar, officially the most Eastern part of Scotland that a regular Lothian (East Coast) service goes and I'm not going to lie some incentive was that I was losing my free bus pass and made the most of a free trip. But when I got there was actually surprised about how big and how many walks there were there so spend most of the afternoon walking along the coastal paths.
Lothian have served Dunbar since the summer of 2016, more precisely the 14th August after first pulled out and supplied Dunbar with service 107 rebranded to the X7 to support its limited stop nature. Currently it runs every 30 minutes from the West End to Spott Road ASDA.
Speaking of which, the latter is where this photo is located after four to five hours of exploring I needed to head to the shops and was aware of their being an ASDA around the terminus however, I did not realise that it was actually about 25 minute walk along a busy road. So, having finished my shop getting lost in the supermarket more than I should have, I made my way to the bus stop.
The bus there, East Coast Buses 52, situated at the terminus sitting in perfect lighting conditions and with the bus not going anywhere it allowed for a rather smooth shot with a rather nice skyline and trees complementing the green and white exterior.
I remember my first couple of shots of 52 back in the days of its ridiculous fleet number, remember those extra 000s. Back on the launch at Archerfield walled garden a day that I remember fondly. But since then I have had very little contacted with 52, in fact this was my first rides on it (got it there and back) and a photo was definitely due.
So, here we see East Coast buses 52 about to start the journey back to Edinburgh on a late afternoon X7 in rather glorious October conditions.
The hardest part about shooting with Anastasia is trying to decide my favorite photos to post. She is absolutely gorgeous with a great personality. 2021 pretty much sucked in general; the best thing about it was I had a chance to shoot with Anastasia about 5 times. We did this shoot at the Scentsy campus in October 2021. Excellent shoot with one of my favorite models!!
You're all that I hoped I'd find
In every single way
And everything I could give
Is everything you couldn't take
Cause nothing feels like home, you're a thousand miles away
And the hardest part of living
Is just taking breaths to stay
Because I know I'm good for something
I just haven't found it yet
But I need it
I'm sure you all recognize this one, I had to upload it, I love it too much (:
Miserable At Best - Mayday Parade
I had the hardest time figuring out what to wear as a top to go with these tight shiny silver leggings and finally had to settle for my black nylon spandex semi sheer long sleeve leotard with a stretch belt to accent my waist and my open toe pumps with their 5½" heels to finish off the ensemble.
I just love how these hug all the curves of my hips and legs, don't you?
To see more pix of my legs in sexy dresses and other revealing tight fitting outfits click this link:
The hardest part about shooting with Anastasia is trying to decide my favorite photos to post. She is absolutely gorgeous with a great personality. 2021 pretty much sucked in general; the best thing about it was I had a chance to shoot with Anastasia about 5 times. We did this shoot at the Scentsy campus in October 2021. Excellent shoot with one of my favorite models!!
“The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue.”
― Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
The hardest bit of the walk now over, we take a breather and have a snack. Vicky looks a little windswept but we only have about another mile to go before we reach the car park at Dousland.
I could feel it go down
Bittersweet, I could taste in my mouth
Silver lining the cloud
Oh and I
I wish that I could work it out .
N i k o n F E + N i k k o r 2 0 / 2 . 8
K o d a k G o l d 2 0 0
The hardest thing to do as a selfie is rear shots especially as it is not my best pose. However this one turned out well and it amazes me how I tend to keep my camera perfectly straight even when I can't look into the viewfinder. It might sound silly but it must be an instinctive thing learnt over time. This new camera works wonderfully well out of doors in good light but struggles with indoor conditions so I'm taking advantage of the warm bright weather to go outside and fill my files wearing some of my favourites like my unbelievable 0.50p real leather dress: Yes I could get two for a Pound lol. It must have cost quite a bit new and as with a lot of my second hand clothes rather than feeling they are soiled instead I wonder who wore them before me they have a soul.
Hardest Day - 18th August 1940. Royal Air Force Fighter Command, in particular 12 Group fight to survive again the German Luftwaffe
... is having words in your heart that you cannot utter
This photo is dedicated to my boyfriend, a guy who've I've known for a while but have just recently been going out with, unknown to either of my parents. He is an amazing guy, and I'm pretty sure I love him. So here's to you ... Happy Valentine's Day!
(this was completely a joke - one that worked out a bit better than anticipated)
Iphone Digital
INSTAGRAM. @hollographic
8.8.19
This summer was the strangest and hardest I've had in awhile. I'm not sure where things are going to where they will be a year from now and it's very scary. I can't believe this project is over for this year.
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn”
by David Russell
The middle section of the formation collapsed in 1990, whereas prior to that, visitors could walk all the way up to the end. And so ....
"London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady ..." \(^0^)/
The hardest offering is the barely visible jewel
We lose it over and over in the agony of ignorance
We wash it helplessly with tears and blood
We drop it over and over only to lose and find it
We shape this gift with our teeth and bones
Scrape it with our own bare skin
We hold it against our breast in the darkest hours
We try to light it afire when warmth eludes us
In precious moments we marvel at its beauty
We bask in its radiance and infinite promise
But we still don’t know what we have
We dare not believe in the touchstone
That it exists only to liberate us from struggle
From the time we arrive on this earth
We accept that life is hard
We forget the perfection in which we come
Each of us holds a unique gift
We clutch it tightly within ourselves
Maybe we are afraid to lose it forever
When we return it wholeheartedly to the Universe
We may realize it is the connecting point
To all there ever was or will be
© Ganga Fondan, 2011
I have taken the Gastown scene with infrared and sepia tones.
I also tried it in black & white tones. This is long exposure of 9 seconds with R72 filter at ISO 100.
That was a gloomy and cloudy morning in Gastown.
Your comments and suggestions are much appreciated.
Happy Friday and great weekend to all my friends!
”The hardest thing in photography is to create a simple image.” – Anne Geddes
Sometimes the hardest thing in life is just to be happy..
I don't know why,
but for what seems like forever I've not been truly happy.
Happy in that way that you feel it in your heart, you feel it in your fingertips & in every breath you take.
I miss summer so much.
I miss true friends to talk to.
Friends that can make your day better even if it starts out bad.
But I guess Happiness is an inside job.
In the end it all comes up to me, and I feel so so lost.
I hate to cry.
however I just can't stop it.
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Thank you monica♥ for the testimonail
Plagues happen only to people. Animals can suffer from mass infections, of course, but they experience them as one more bad blow from an unpredictable and predatory natural environment. Only people put mental brackets around a phenomenon like the coronavirus pandemic and attempt to give it a name and some historical perspective, some sense of precedence and possibility. The coronavirus, indifferent to individuals, has no creed or moral purpose, but it becomes human when it hits us—neither microscopic nor historic, just the size we are as we experience its effects. As Albert Camus wrote in “The Plague,” the 1947 novel that’s becoming to this disruption what W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” was to the aftermath of 9/11, the microbe has no meaning; we seek to create one in the chaos it brings. The coronavirus has ravaged all of New York City, closing schools, emptying streets and turning stadiums into makeshift hospitals. And data made public by city health officials on Wednesday suggests it is hitting low-income neighborhoods the hardest. The spike glycoproteins give the coronavirus its name. The molecules protrude from the viral envelope like the spikes of a crown. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt are now analysing the structure of this protein. They hope to identify potential targets for antibodies and inhibitors – an important prerequisite for developing new vaccines and drugs against the SARS CoV-2 virus.The coronavirus needs the spike protein to infect a cell. The protein binds primarily to a receptor called ACE2 on the surface of human cells. The virus can then fuse with the cell membrane and release its genetic material into the cell. The spike protein is not only the sharpest weapon of the virus but also its Achilles’ heel; its exposed position makes it the preferred point of attack for the immune system. Antibodies can recognize the virus by its spike protein, bind to it, and thus mark it as a target for immune cells. However, the virus has another trick up its sleeve. A sugar coat hides the conserved parts of its spike proteins from the immune cells.The Max Planck researchers are therefore analysing the protective sugar shield and the membrane envelope of the virus in addition to the spike protein. They want to go beyond the existing static structures to calculate how the spike proteins move on the surface of the virus and how they change their shape – with a precision down to the size of an atom. During the first month of the outbreak in the city — the epicenter of America’s coronavirus crisis — many of the neighborhoods with the most confirmed virus cases were in areas with the lowest median incomes, the data shows. The biggest hot spots included communities in the South Bronx and western Queens. The data, collected by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, offers the first snapshot of an outbreak that infected more than 40,000 and killed more than 1,000 in the city in its first month. The increases in flu-related emergency room visits varied widely by neighborhood, with many of the surges occurring among residents of neighborhoods where the typical household income is less than the city median of about $60,000, the data shows.
In Corona, Queens, for example, the median household income is about $48,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That neighborhood is near the Elmhurst Hospital Center, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has cited as the hardest-hit hospital in the city. Doctors in the overwhelmed emergency room there have described the conditions as “apocalyptic.” The coronavirus has spread into virtually every corner of the city, and some wealthier neighborhoods have been overrun with cases, including some parts of Manhattan and Staten Island. But that may be because of the availability of testing in those areas. Nineteen of the 20 neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of positive tests have been in wealthy ZIP codes. The patterns are even more striking when analyzing the data on people who visited the city’s 53 emergency rooms with the “flulike symptoms” that are a hallmark of the coronavirus. Over all, nearly three times as many people with “flulike symptoms” like fever, cough or sore throat visited city emergency rooms this March when compared with the same month in previous years. In the last four years, there were on average 9,250 flu-related visits to emergency rooms in March; this March, the number tripled to about 30,000. These calculations will reveal the tiniest details of the protein structure. But they are extremely complex. “We need the massive computing power of the supercomputers of the Max Planck Society”, explains Gerhard Hummer, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. With their dynamic model of the spike protein, the researchers hope to identify binding domains to which antibodies can reliably bind. Hummer and his team also hope to discover binding sites for inhibitors. They plan to compare these with the binding properties of existing drugs with the help of computers and thus identify active ingredients that can block the spike protein. “Of course, repurposing drugs that are already on the market is much faster than finding new active ingredients and testing them in lengthy clinical trials”, says Hummer.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/nyregion/nyc-coron...
The final weekend of semi-ordinary life in New York arrived on Friday the 13th. In the week that followed, New York became a ghost town in a ghost nation on a ghost planet. The gravity and scale of what is happening can overwhelm the details of daily life, in which human beings seek a plateau of normalcy in abnormal times, just as they always have in blitzes and battles. Nobody has any confidence at all about whether we are seeing the first phases of a new normal, the brief calm before a worse storm, or a wise reaction that may allow, not so horribly long from now, for a renewal of common life. Here are some notes on things seen by one walker in the city, and some voices heard among New Yorkers bearing witness, on and off the streets.
It happened slowly and then suddenly. On Monday, March 9th, the spectre of a pandemic in New York was still off on the puzzling horizon. By Friday, it was the dominant fact of life. New Yorkers began to adopt a grim new dance of “social distancing.” On a sparsely peopled 5 train, heading down to Grand Central Terminal on Saturday morning, passengers warily tried to achieve an even, strategic spacing, like chess pieces during an endgame: the rook all the way down here, but threatening the king from the back row. Then, when the doors opened, they got off the train one by one, in single, hesitant file, unlearning in a minute New York habits ingrained over lifetimes, the elbowed rush for the door.In the relatively empty subway cars, one can focus on the human details of the riders. A. J. Liebling, in a piece published in these pages some sixty years ago, recounted the tale of a once famous New York murder, in which the headless torso of a man was found wrapped in oilcloth, floating in the East River. The hero of the tale, as Liebling chose to tell it, was a young reporter for the great New York World, who identified the body by type before anyone else did: he saw that the corpse’s fingertips were wrinkled in a way that characterized “rubbers”—masseurs—in Turkish baths. Only someone whose hands were wet that often would have those fingertips. On the subway, in the street, nearly everyone has rubbers’ hands now, with skin shrivelled from excessive washing.
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At the other end of the day, in Central Park late at night, the only people out were the ones walking their dogs. Dogs are still allowed to have proximity, if only to other dogs. They can’t be kept from it. The negotiations of proximity—the dogs demanding it, the owners trying to resist it without being actively rude—are newly arrived in the city. Walking home down the almost empty avenues, you could see the same silhouette, repeated: dogs straining toward dogs on long-stretched leashes, held by watchful owners keeping their distance, a nightly choreography of animal need and human caution.
At J.F.K., in Queens, during that strange weekend, people huddled and waited anxiously for the homecoming of family members who had been stranded abroad, with the understanding that homecoming now comes at a cost: arriving passengers have been asked to self-quarantine for two weeks. J.F.K. had been spared some of the nightmarish lines and confusion seen at Dulles, in Washington, and O’Hare, in Chicago, following Donald Trump’s abrupt decision the previous Wednesday (relayed in a garbled announcement) to suspend most travel from Europe. But no one is spared the emotional ambivalence of the moment: every feeling pulled out hard, like an attenuated nerve. Parents are keenly aware that, in bringing their children home to what is meant to be safety, they are bringing them to an increasingly unsafe place.“Barren” was the word that Lisa Cleveland, who lives in New Jersey, used for the normally bustling airport. She spent part of Saturday morning waiting for her teen-age children Zoë and Xander, who had been staying in the Netherlands. Their father is a Dutch citizen. “I’m still trying to understand the risks, but he’s been tracking this for more than two months,” Cleveland said. “He’s that guy.” Getting the kids back to the U.S. before further barriers went up wasn’t easy. “Xander and Zoë—she likes the double dot over her name, otherwise it becomes a Dutch word that rhymes with ‘cow’—were in Amsterdam. We struggled and struggled to find them tickets home. Someone told us that one of the airlines was going to go bankrupt.”
When she saw Zoë and Xander at last, Cleveland said, “it was just such an enormous relief. And more emotion than you can easily imagine. This is the first day I’ve been able to smile in weeks. But now they have to do a mandatory self-quarantine for two weeks.”
Zoë said, “Not that I’m not glad to be home, but I’ll miss school. The mood on the plane was weird—half the plane was wearing masks.” Because safety masks were sold out in Amsterdam, she and her brother decided to wear masks that their parents had bought them out of an abundance of caution. They were 3M respirators, the kind an industrial worker might wear in the presence of toxic aerosols. “I felt people were judging us,” Zoë said. “It’s a crazy mask. No one else on the plane had on such a serious mask.”
Crises take an X-ray of a city’s class structure. After 9/11, it was the Middle Eastern and South Asian taxi-drivers who suddenly became visible, lining their cabs with American flags for fear of being taken for jihadis. Now particular visibility falls on bicycle deliverymen, Mexicans and Indians, the emissaries of Seamless, who modestly shoulder the burden of feeding the middle class. On the East Side, outside a Thai restaurant at 7 p.m. on Saturday, a single deliveryman balanced five bags of food hanging from his handlebars. His livelihood hinges on his getting meals to people who are self-isolating, a luxury he doesn’t have. Although he was grateful for the work, he said, he was a little frightened about his own exposure. Asked how many more sacks he ferries during his shift these days, he shrugged and said at least ten times the usual load.Just as the medical system depends on the lowest paid of the health workers—the orderlies and custodians—the food system, now that restaurants have been limited to takeout and delivery, depends on a whole cadre of men pedalling bicycles. They are literally overburdened, and, that night, this one got off to an unsteady start, like a plane in wartime trying to take off with too large a load of refugees. He glanced up at a high-rise condominium being built on Madison Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street. Construction work continues right through the closures—no letup in the noise and activity, even on the weekend. The workmen, in their puffy vests and hard hats, were side by side, though they didn’t seem particularly worried, or constrained. The exigencies of Manhattan real estate and development are evidently undeterred by the crisis.What’s strange about this energetic construction of more luxury housing is that, in the existing apartment buildings nearby, on the impossibly wealthy blocks of Fifth Avenue, scarcely a light can be seen. Nobody’s home. Most of the truly wealthy have gone, by helicopter or private jet, to the Hamptons or to an island somewhere. There can be something vexing about the thought that those whose wealth relies on the intense, close-ordered entanglement of the city abandon it in its hour of need, or dread, but they do. Still, who would not decamp to a remote island if she had one? “Boccaccio-ing,” someone calls this business of fleeing the city, in honor of the Italian author, who wrote of fleeing Florence during the Black Death, and telling stories with his companions for ten days up in the hillside villas of Fiesole.
In West Harlem, Sam Rivera certainly can’t leave. At a residential facility run by the Fortune Society and known as the Castle, his job is to oversee the rooms and the souls of about eighty-five men and women, almost all released from prison not long ago, some as recently as this month. They come in and out of his office all day, seeking help and solace. “It’s crazy, but the system is still churning,” Rivera said. He is a huge man, with a beaming, steady smile. “They’re still discharging people from Rikers and elsewhere, even as we go through all this. So we have a steady inflow of people coming home, even while we’re trying to lock down the people we already have.”This is Rivera’s second plague. Incarcerated himself when H.I.V./aids hit New York’s state prisons, in the nineteen-eighties, he still remembers the shock of working in the isolated wards where those who fell ill with the disease were sequestered: “Everyone was so frightened that they pretty much put on a hazmat suit to go into those places. Except me.” His experience led him, once he was out of prison, to join the aids-care movement, where he met and worked with Anthony Fauci, the current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Now that Rivera is responsible for the residents of the Castle, he thinks hard about what to do. His memories of the aids epidemic are strong, and they give an oddly positive cast to his take on today’s crisis.
“We’ve stockpiled three weeks’ worth of food, and we’re sending staff to screen visitors at Rikers,” he said. (City jails have since suspended in-person visits.) “But it’s not a deadly virus for most people—it’s not as deadly as aids. I think we’ll get to the point where the next announcement will have to be, What are we doing for people who have to manage the elders and those with compromised immune systems? I’m coping two ways. I’m not overthinking it. I expect to get it one day. I’ll feel sick, and I’ll manage it, I’ll come through it, and my body will build immunities to it. And that will be a blessing.”
Despite his brio in the face of the virus, Rivera worries about the vulnerable residents in his charge. “We have a number of people in the Castle who are living with H.I.V., and we’re really monitoring where and how they are,” he said. “The problem is that they don’t like following up. Most of them have had bad experiences with the medical system, or sometimes no experience with it. But, if anyone has flu-like symptoms, then we are able to get a test, right now, at Columbia Presbyterian, which is great. All we can do is watch and move forward, day by day.”
Panic-buying has been in evidence all over town, if unevenly executed. Many chain supermarkets and food stores are stripped bare of groceries, in a way that calls to mind the days just after 9/11. Back then, people gathered “Armageddon baskets,” filled with expensive things—steak and Perrier. Now they assemble survival kits. Toilet paper and canned beans are treasured. (There is no chance, the grocers assure the city, of running out of either.) Still, there’s a pattern to the emptying of the supermarkets. Every potato, every carrot, every onion in a West Side Citarella is gone, as is every package of pasta and every jar of tomatoes in an uptown Whole Foods. Yet many of the less tony supermarkets, the nearby Key Foods and Gristedes, have remained well stocked and serene throughout the rush.
“You realize what this means?” a college student who grew up in New York said, about the depredations of upscale shoppers. “It means they believe that it’s every man for himself. They don’t really believe in community or that people will or can share. Their instinct, despite living in one of the more affluent spots in the world, is that they’re on their own.” The plague, as Camus insisted, exposes existing fractures in societies, in class structure and individual character; under stress, we see who we really are. The secession of the very rich, the isolation of the well-off, the degradation of social capital by inequality: these truths become sharply self-evident now.
The current crisis is, in some respects, the mirror image of the post-9/11 moment. That turned out to be a time of retrospective anxiety about a tragedy unforeseen. The anticipatory jitters weren’t entirely unfounded—anthrax killed a hospital worker in Manhattan—but they arose from something that had already happened and wouldn’t be repeated. By contrast, the covid-19 crisis involves worries about something we’ve been warned is on the way. The social remedy is the opposite of the sort of coming together that made the days and weeks after 9/11 endurable for so many, as they shared dinners and embraced friends. That basic human huddling is now forbidden, with the recommendations for “distancing” bearing down ever tighter: no more than five hundred people together, then two hundred and fifty, then fifty, then ten.
At the same time, the emphasis on social distancing and even isolation is part of an epidemiological study in statistical probability. If we delay the communication of the virus from patient to patient, the curve of new cases may flatten, so that fewer people at any time will need hospitalization, reducing the stress on the system and keeping health services available for all the other countless ailments that strike a city of eight million. In a way, the self-seclusions are exhibits not of personal panic but of public-minded prudence: we are trying to save the lives, above all, of the most vulnerable. But, of course, the plague-in-progress may progress despite it all.“Love in the Time of Cholera” is Gabriel García Márquez’s great novel of another plague time—with cholera, we’re told, referring to both the name of the terrible disease and the condition of being colérico, angry and impassioned. Love in the time of coronavirus was bound to happen—in crisis and despair is born desire—and it already has. Kids forced to leave college and return home to the city talked about long-sought last-minute assignations on the night before the general expulsion.
Sometimes desire in anxiety can be more delicate. In Grand Central Terminal, what some call “the tile telephone”—the whispering gallery in front of the Oyster Bar, under the beautiful basket weave of arches—has never been so clear. The noise of the station is usually so intense that the tiled ceiling turns mute. Now, for the first time in forever, the abatement in the roar and press of people allows couples’ murmured endearments, spoken into one corner, to race up through the solid Guastavino tile and carry all the way over to the diagonally facing corner.A pair of young friends encountered there that Friday weren’t out-of-towners; this was Kyle and Leah, and they’re New Yorkers through and through, who decided that this was the moment, finally, to really see Grand Central. The appetite for the joys of structured sightseeing is indomitable. Another young woman, Amaya—visiting from Durham, North Carolina, and crushed to find the city so inhospitable—stood in the corner, smiling and singing to a friend on the other side.But it was on Saturday, when the sky was blue and the temperature hovered in the fifties, that the irresistible urge to find pleasure brought out flocks of young people to various outdoor spaces. “I’ve noticed that a lot of people my age are headed to Prospect Park and are taking advantage of a beautiful day, a large space where they can mingle,” a thirty-one-year-old woman said, early on Saturday afternoon. “They sort of keep social distance, but also connect.” Many photographs, shared widely on social media, seemed to show the millennials lounging thoughtlessly close, prompting a Twitter uproar.
The uproar did seem to reflect a determination on the part of young people in New York to go on living like young people in New York. “Last night I went out to a restaurant,” the same woman said. “And the wait was half an hour. So we went to a different restaurant, and at that one, when the waitress was bringing out drinks, she got confused about where to go, since they had just changed their seating—I think to have more space between tables. ”Like life-hardened Sam Rivera, these younger New Yorkers have touching if perhaps worrying faith in their own invulnerability. “I don’t think people in my cohort are that terrified,” the woman went on. “Most people seem to believe that they will get the virus and they will survive having it. The vibe is pretty much one of acceptance, even a little bit of excitement. I hate to say this, but it’s become a distraction from the election. Also, a lot of my friends are cooking. Like ambitious stockpot recipes—soups and stews—and a lot of baking, too. Pies and cookies. I myself am currently deep-cleaning my apartment, knowing that I’ll be stuck in it.” Meanwhile, she said, “my family is from New York, and my father has been fearlessly going to the gym. I think there’s a bit of yolo fear to it—he wants to make the most of his life. But I have pleaded with him to stop.”
That same Saturday, Maggie McGlinchy, a bartender, worked all evening at Bernie’s Restaurant, on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. “It was full,” she said on Sunday. “But it doesn’t take much to fill the restaurant. The actual volume was low, and it seemed as though no one wanted to be seen to be fully enjoying themselves. I sold a lot of Martinis that night—mostly Martinis, or Old-Fashioneds or Manhattans. No wine or artisanal ale. Everyone was trending the spirits.
“At Bernie’s, I’m on a first-name basis with possibly a third of the customers—it’s definitely a home base. In the past two nights, a lot of my customers are people who wanted to come in and support us. Most of my tips were over twenty per cent. That’s the other thing about social distancing—so much of what it means to be comforted is to be . . . not distant. Stay positive, I’d say—we’re feeling well right now and let’s hope it stays positive and do you want another drink?” But by Sunday night all the bars and restaurants in the city had been ordered to stop table service in the next few days, an unimaginable act a week earlier, as strange as if the island of Manhattan had floated out to sea.
McGlinchy said that she is looking for a new job, but there are no new jobs for bartenders, because there are no bars.“What do I have going forward? I have a month’s rent and a warm e-mail from my former employer,” she said dryly on Tuesday morning. “I’ve had some regulars send me twenty bucks over Venmo. Last tips.”
The full weight of the shutdown will fall most heavily on the Maggies of the world, who have little or no financial cushion. (Later, Bernie’s set up a GoFundMe campaign for the staff.) Hundreds of thousands of people in the service and entertainment industries—from bartenders to the “swing” theatre actors who pride themselves on leaping into whatever role has been left open by an unwell lead—are out of work, for a time that has no known limit.There are, as well, the small, crushing disappointments that, though reasonably lost in the larger life-and-death clamor, are very real to the people they have happened to. The actress Ilana Levine had just opened in a new play, “The Perplexed,” by Richard Greenberg—a comeback of sorts for her—when all theatres, concert venues, and night clubs were closed. “You know, I had been on Broadway a lot when I was younger,” she said. “But then came L.A. and children. . . . And out of the blue I got this call to do this play of Richard’s, with the idea that, after all this time, I’d be back on the stage in New York, which I missed desperately. So all of these things I’d been dreaming of happened, and with it came so much fear and anxiety: ‘Can I make it work?’ ” She laughed at the idea of what fear and anxiety meant a few days earlier—having too much to memorize.
“The play is about family and struggle and old hurts and people having to be, in this sort of Sartre way, perpetually closed off in the space of one room with each other,” she continued. “So now the play and the reality are one, in ways I could never have imagined. Except I don’t get to do it in this world, with an audience.” The evocative set, designed by Santo Loquasto, of a New York town house, has not yet been struck from the Manhattan Theatre Club stage, she said. “So all of us keep thinking of that set, and how we want to get to it, be on it—the company, even without an audience, just to work together on it. Actors are not people who know how to isolate. We are suddenly physically frozen at this moment.”
The young musical-theatre actress Abena Mensah-Bonsu, cast in a significant role in a new show, “Nollywood Dreams,” had been commuting in from New Jersey, feeling all the ancient excitement of a big break. Now she sits at home and is eager to get back to the theatre. “Acting is the opposite of social distancing,” she said, echoing Levine. “Even if you’re introverted, as I am. So, when we sit in place, we long to be engaged with someone.” On Broadway, the theatres are empty, but the lights have still been on, as though the theatres were willing the shows to continue.
One irony of this pandemic is that, while it exposes the gaps in our social and medical safety nets, it also punishes people for behaving well. Communities with the healthiest intergenerational relationships seem to be at greater risk than those that sequester older people in nursing homes. Italy, one study shows, has been so hard hit by the coronavirus because there the young and the old have the beautiful habit of mingling together. Grandparents are accustomed to being with their grandchildren.In the days before the shutdown, the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights became a virus hot spot, perhaps because the Hasidic sects, too, have kept at bay the alienation of generations that is so much part of American life. “Do you want to know how things appear, or how they are?” Mica Soffer, the editor of a Jewish news Web site, said that Sunday. “It’s been extremely hectic. As far as the community itself, I guess we weren’t so much prepared. It’s in China, it’s in Europe—we didn’t realize how quickly it would get here. Our community is so connected. We live in an urban area—you’re always around people. It’s Brooklyn, after all! Late last week, I had a shiva call, a wedding, and an engagement party. Everyone has a million things they need to go to—families are large.”She went on, “Most families here have elderly parents and grandparents—it’s a big part of life. Purim was last weekend—you’re talking about people being exposed. We didn’t realize at first. We didn’t know. There was a lot of contact. Very much part of our day-to-day life—especially with the men going to shul three times a day, and Torah classes every single day. One of the things that’s so amazing is that everybody kicked into high gear to put up yeshivas online within two days.
“In Crown Heights, davening still goes on, it always has to be there, within the realm of whatever number the health department says. No more than ten people in Israel. A rabbi told me, ‘Faith is not the absence of reason.’ We don’t give up on the interventions. God blessed us with doctors, not as something apart from us but as something there to help us. My father told me this: God is in charge, and God watches over us. Every time I get really panicky, there’s that sense that God is taking care of us. I’m an anxious person and it’s not easy. But I have to access that. Rabbi Nachum said, ‘Gam zu l’tovah’—‘This, too, shall be for the good.’ ” On Tuesday, rabbis closed the Crown Heights synagogues. “Now,” Soffer said, “many people are praying outdoors, six feet away from each other.”
The self-exile of the very wealthy from the city that made them rich is hardly uniform. A feeling of social responsibility, of solidarity, is embodied by Elizabeth Smith, who is the head of the Central Park Conservancy. She and her husband, Rick Cotton, the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, became among the first public officials in New York known to have covid-19. Now all she wants is to get back to the Park.
“I’ve never been in the tabloids before,” Smith, who is in her late sixties, said from her Manhattan apartment, where she was convalescing, and in her second week of seclusion. “In my family, you’re in the paper when you’re born and again when you marry. And the fact of the matter is that the virus gets . . . very virulent. I wasn’t feeling well on Saturday—all the typical flu symptoms, like a fever, but a relatively mild case of the flu for me. I stayed in bed, had my moments of panic, but I was fortunate to be paired with Rick, who was positive but asymptomatic. And I was well enough to stay in touch with the Conservancy and find out how everyone was faring—the morale and the health of the staff—and the Park itself, too. It has the tremendous power of offering peace and respite to people. The amazing people are the city workers. They keep showing up. They show up at work and they do the right thing. There are lots of selfless people, lots of people who take public service seriously.”
Even if she hadn’t fallen ill, Smith said, she would have wanted to stay in the city. “We have a big responsibility to the public,” she said. “You know, when Frederick Law Olmsted made the Park, it was just with that in mind: most people don’t even have a chance of leaving New York. It’s for all those people who couldn’t leave the city, to get to the Adirondacks.” Smith is the chair of the Library of America, which published a collection of Olmsted’s essays, letters, and other reflections in 2015. “Believe it or not, I never quite got through Olmsted’s writings,” she admitted. “He was a genius and a beautiful writer.” She is now immersed in the volume: “I’m not in the Park but I can stay in the Park.”
Emptiness and absence contradict the very concept of the city. The point of a city is social proximity; to see people deliberately spaced out, like the walking but never intersecting figures in a Giacometti, is to see what cities aren’t. In a historical sense, cities are always organisms of a kind, like coral reefs, where a lot of people come together to barter spices and exchange ideas and find mates, and endure the recurrent damage of infectious disease.The question is whether the current upheavals could somehow alter New York forever. Some beloved places may stay closed. Some new practices may be perpetuated. The digital trends toward disaggregation of experience may get a boost, at a cost to everything we love about the city. There’s an eerie gap between the raucous and argumentative world of the Internet and the silence of the streets. Outside, new patterns of wider spacing and greater caution assert themselves: Is that masked man contagious and to be avoided by crossing the street? Did we forget to sanitize after touching the gate to the park? And, with them, the terrible self-monitoring of plague times: Do I feel normal? Is my temperature high? Feel my forehead.Until last week, no one ever thought that Camus’s “The Plague” was about the plague. It was the text through which generations of high schoolers were taught how not to read literally. It was always taken as a fable or an allegory, specifically of the German occupation of France. The people in Camus’s plague town of Oran did not in any way deserve to suffer from the disease, but the crisis revealed all the various human responses of cowardice, denial, and courage. The point was not that actual plagues tell us much, but that the pressure of extreme and unexpected events forces the flaws in our common character to the surface.
This plague has proved an equal-opportunity evil, striking theocratic states like Iran and authoritarian ones like China, and more open ones like our own and those in Europe. Some hard balance of authority and openness is obviously essential to going on at all, but this is not news. We have always known that having the confidence to act, and the clarity to see if the way we act is good, is vital to our continued existence. Our continued existence! It used to be a kind of metaphor, really meaning “the easy perpetuation of our familiar way of life.” No more.
By midweek, even the dance of wariness was muted: New Yorkers, largely sheltering in place, still allowed themselves to walk their dogs, but walked them alone on each street, with the next dog and owner at least a stoplight away. The dogs, puzzled not to have the greetings of others of their animal kind, sniffed doggedly in the dark, though now only at the scent of their solitary owners.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/the-coronavirus-cri...