Back to the Apple

Tomorrow I drive back to New York City with my younger son and I have to say - honestly - that I'll be happy to return to the noise and faster pace. As I've said before, my biggest complaint about living/visiting in the suburbs is the necessity of getting in a car and driving somewhere to get anything! I love the "walkability" of New York and the accessibility of just about everything. Here, one couldn't walk anywhere if one wanted to. I see people walking at the mall near my parents' home and around the neighborhood in which they live . . . but they're never walking to get somewhere. As James Howard Kunstler pointed out in his seminal The Geography of Nowhere, only the poorest people walk in the land of sprawl, because they can afford neither a car nor public transportation.

I'll leave you with this photo of me at age 6, February 1970. Yes, I look pretty goofy, back in the days when little boys wore short pants with coat and tie in warm weather. When my wife looks at this picture she remarks that "it explains a lot" about my personality. How could my parents have let a photographer pose me like this?