Saturday reflections

Flags on Park Avenue on a summer afternoon.

I love seeing people on the street again, but the midday sidewalks still aren't nearly as crowded as they were in the Before Times. And I wonder when--or if--they will be. My former employer is reportedly considering allowing work from home for most staff at least a few days a week. It had always been allowed on an ad hoc basis, if deliveries or repairs or a childcare emergency required it, but no one was allowed to have scheduled work from home days on a regular basis. It would impede collaboration, they said. It would mean a loss of collegiality.

But now I suspect they're noticing that having everyone work from home wasn't quite the disaster they'd expected. And that perhaps they could quit paying those exorbitant Midtown rents on a large chunk of their office space if they no longer have to accommodate every employee every single day.

Before the show

Waiting for the show to begin at Springsteen on Broadway. I really like the stage design here.

I snapped awake just before eight o'clock this morning, pleased to have gotten that extra hour of sleep that usually eludes me. I have my final paper of the year due tomorrow and I'm struggling with it, but I figured that sleeping a little later and having a few more active neurons as a result would more than make up for getting a later start.

Except--the light was all wrong. The sky was a milky pink and I had to turn on the light in the kitchen to make coffee. I checked the time again and saw that it was 6 am, not 8 am, and already getting hot. That's probably what woke me up, rather than an urge to get going on my case study.

Astronomy Tuesday

I know I did a nebula last week, but can't resist this image -- the Butterfly Nebula. I've posted many pictures of this before, but the processing makes it look different every time.

Image Credit and Copyright: Alan Pham

Sunday bird blogging

 

Not a perfect picture, but a perfect creature: a cardinal in Central Park.

Saturday reflections

I like the minimalism of this -- a street on the Upper East Side, reflected in a door handle on a car.

In another week, I'm done with school until the end of August, and will be halfway through the master's program. It's early for a victory lap, but I am a little amazed at myself for having come this far.

It hasn't been easy.

Urban poetry

 

I'm not sure what sort of holes or pipes these covers (on First Avenue) are protecting, but at least they are doing so colorfully.

I always like to see splashes of yellow in the city.

Astronomy Tuesday

The Orion Nebula never takes a bad picture, but this Hubble image is especially breathtaking. It looks like a dancer in a cloud of silk scarves.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; Processing: Francisco Javier Pobes Serrano

Street photography

I just liked the look of this trio standing on 42nd Street on a typical summer day in New York.

Sunday bird blogging

The bluejays were even more annoyed than usual this morning, shrieking in the back yard and yanking me out of a very important dream about working for a fashion designer and buying the wrong fabrics.

This one, in Central Park a few weeks ago, was at least silent.

Saturday reflections

 

Here are some bright baby blues to counteract the drizzly grays outside my window.

Not that I mind the clouds, since it's only 63 degrees this morning and that's a relief after a week in the tropics. It was a steamy 99 on Wednesday, and I had to beg my dental hygienist for water after walking a mere six blocks from the bus stop to the dentist's office.

Bruce and Patti

I did see the original production on Netflix, and enjoyed it, but it was so much more powerful in person. Of course, just being out of our homes, in a community event, with OTHER PEOPLE, is still almost shocking. There was a sense of gratitude and good fortune in the air that almost made me giddy.

You see that I still haven't figured out how to write about it. I'm so out of practice with this whole “going outside and doing things” experience. I'm having a hard time processing it.

More Springsteen

"In 71 years on the planet, I haven’t seen anything like this past year: The Bill of Rights and the Constitution have been so bludgeoned and disrespected that I’m frightened for us. But I still cling, maybe naively, to that beautiful quote by Dr. King that says, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Now, he neglected to mention that it does an awful lot of zigging and zagging along the way. And oh my God, have we zagged, but I’m still stubborn, and I’ve lived long enough to see that that arc doesn’t bend on its own. To reach its goal, it takes all of us leaning on it and pushing it in the right direction."