GONE C-STONING

Be back in 5 days...

the fight for equality on a New York bus

On the busses in New York, I saw something that surprised me: the very best seats on the bus have a sign on them that says "if a handicapped or elderly person gets on the bus, please give this seat to them". Perhaps someday true justice might prevail as a given in our society, but for now we have these signs. It is my hope, my dream (to borrow from MLK), that someday, when an elderly or handicapped person steps onto that crowded bus looking for one of those seats, that someone will have courage - the courage of a Rosa Parks - and say "No...no, I'm sitting here!" Then our society will start to know true equality across all dividing lines...

(*ahem*)

The difference a day makes

Today I am sitting in front of my computer, at home, on a day that is threatening to hit 90...
One day ago I was in the middle of a 13 hour drive home...
The day before that, I was having coffee at Cafe esperanto, walking around the heart of Greenwich Village, after listening to a recording of Maya Angelou tell us about the Big Bang in a Death Star looking contraption in the Natural Science Museum, this after going bookshopping in SoHo and Brooklyn Heights - the latter being where we ate lunch outside at a french restaurant and then walked down to the water walkway and sat looking out at the Statue of Liberty to our left and the Brooklyn Bridge (which we had walked across last year at this time) and Empire State Building beyond that to our right, New York's skyline across the water directly in front of us...
The day before that, I was spiraling my way down the Guggenheim, followed by a walk through China Town and Little Italy, ending up on Spring Street (the place Dar Williams sings about) for pizza at America's first pizzaria (so they claim)...
The day before that, I was at a Broadway play watching Kevin Spacey (along with the guy that plays "Myles" on Star Trek) put on a heartwrenching performance of the Eugene O'Neil play, "A Moon for the Misbegotton", followed by dinner at the Greenwich Village Bistro while watching a local jazz band, then walked many blocks in the blowing driving rain to get back to a bed...
The day before that, I was looking at original paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Hopper, etc... at the MET.
The day before that, I was giving my brother a hug after we arrived in the city, and later went used book shopping on St. Marks street and ate what proclaimed itself to be New York's finest cheesecake in the East Village...
The day before that I was in the middle of a 13 hour drive there...
The day before that I was sitting in front of my computer, at home, on a day that was threatening to hit 90...