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So Much Bad News!

/ wrinklesmeanwisdom / 1 Comment
I’m feeling numb.

I don’t know about you but the past few months seem to me to have been full of even more bad news than usual. I was, and am, devastated by the stories and photographs coming out of Ukraine and this senseless war brought on by an autocrat. Add to that, there have been some extremely disturbing stories of New Yorkers who’ve been shot or knifed for no reason at all. And now we have the horrific news of the racist shooting at the supermarket in Buffalo and the unbelievable shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. It’s interesting that Covid has been pushed out of the front part of my brain now, where it occupied a center seat for the past 2 years. I suppose that’s one benefit from all this otherwise gutting news.

I think often of how my parents must have felt watching the world spin out of control during the Great Depression and, later, Hitler’s advance through Europe. I suppose they did not have the relentless 24-hour news cycle and all the devices which keep us in constant touch with the headlines.

I have a group of friends who recently shared how they cope with all this. The answers were interesting. One person said she only listens to one newscast a day, the evening news at 11:00 pm. Another said she takes very long walks. A third said she cries. At this time, none of those remedies are ones I’ll adopt. But I don’t have any others. So my fate is simply to be very upset and wonder how this gets better.

Yikes! That Water’s FREEZING!

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Coldwatercartoon

So it’s February now in NYC.  And the thermometer recently was in the teens with a wind chill in the minus single digits.  You go into a restaurant for a cup of coffee to warm up and visit the bathroom first.  You’re still pretty frozen when you get to the sink to wash your hands.  You turn on both the hot and cold water faucets but only ice cold water comes out.

The restaurant isn’t a dive but like many owners of commercial properties in the city, I  guess economies in operating their space comes with cutbacks to hot water in the taps.  I don’t mind it in the summer months, but in the dead of winter, that cold water to wash your ice cold hands is pretty nasty.

I encountered the very same situation this morning in a ladies room on the third floor of Bloomingdales on 59th and Lex.  Today, the temperatures are in the 20’s and my hands had already warmed up from taking 2 escalators up from the entrance, so the situation was a bit more tolerable, albeit still mighty unpleasant.

 

Change is Good!

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newroutescartoonbrighter

Like most of us, I fall into routines. I get up at roughly the same time every day.  My breakfasts of fruit, cereal and coffee don’t differ that dramatically from one day to the next.  But I’m trying a new strategy to try different routes to get to places I might routinely need to get to in Manhattan–especially on foot.

What this new approach does is to provide opportunities for constantly changing sights, sounds and experiences.  It’s especially nice when these new routes have older buildings that evidence the city’s history.  They’re certainly shorter.  Most of them are going to be brick or stone, to have survived fires.  Some of them might even have an old sign embedded in the masonry.

My new walking plan not only makes it much more fascinating to walk around but gives me a chance to reflect on New York City’s incredibly interesting history.  Plus I’ve found some great new places to stop to have a coffee and a muffin on the way.

My next goal: Changing breakfasts!