And so it goes in NYC

Our apartment looks out upon lovely Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It is a great place to live and raise children with all sorts of facilities, ranging from play grounds and basketball and low seasonal cost tennis courts to simply lovely vistas for strolling or walking a dog.

However, we share the park with homeless people who generally return to it to sleep -- often in the Amtrak tunnel running under it -- after we have departed with nightfall when one is cautioned not to stray where one can have a violent encounter -- these are not perpetrated by our homeless who are generally frail people, but the occasional predator who may seek monies from the unwary stranger who does not know our protocols as to where to be when.

Sadly, we are reminded of the homeless sleeping in the tunnel -- which is open to the winter blasts from the Hudson River, by the mournful sounding of the trains warning those who might be sleeping too near the tracks to pull back.

Such are the extremes of life in NYC where an apartment such as ours now brings in $1 million or more to overlook either all that greenery or the sweeping views of the river while the homeless scout our trash for deposit bottles to eke out a bare living -- or to support in some cases a drug habit picked up while doing military service in far places.

And so it goes in NYC.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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