There’s nothing like summer in New York. It’s like Paris, where people leave the city in summertime and the streets are languid and slow. On one avenue, the streets are closed to cars, from Harlem to Lower Manhattan.
As I walk down these lazy sidewalks, sidewalks I’ve been down so many times before, I realize that I’ve become part of the biology of this city, something coursing through its blood, in its arteries. New York’s pulse is strong, but in the summer that beat slows down.
2. No kings
Just a few weeks earlier, the weather was cold and rainy. Yet that didn’t stop millions of Americans from coming out to protest the looming dictatorship of Donald Trump. And like the dictator he is, that same day Trump joined a military parade that was held in honor of his 79th birthday. This parade, though, was poorly attended.
3. Night ferry
Rather than going to the Hamptons in the summer, some New Yorkers prefer the more modest Fire Island. A long, thin barrier island that sits between the Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Fire Island can be reached by ferry. Other than construction and emergency vehicles, there are no cars on Fire Island. People have to leave their cars on the mainland and use bicycles or wagons to get around.
4. Tree
I was ambling through Central Park on my way to see the Feminist Ceramic exhibit, “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie,
5. Synchronicity
I was ambling through Central Park on my way to see the Feminist Ceramic exhibit, “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie,
6. Harlem pool
In Harlem, in the northernmost section of Central Park, there is a brand-new swimming pool. It’s more than 50 meters long and 25 meters wide. The Gottesman Pool can hold up to 1000 people at a time. This makes it one of the largest public swimming pools in all of New York City. It’s also probably the most beautiful. With all the lounge chairs and umbrellas, it makes you feel like you’re in a resort, not in the heart of NYC.
9. Turtle cove
Continuing my summertime attention to the unseen natural world, especially including its trees, I came upon this damaged, but still alive, root system. Then, as I was passing again one early evening at sunset, this figure seemed as if it were stepping into the bay for an evening swim! Perhaps it’s because of the annual summer monster-movie blockbusters. Or perhaps, with a president who cares only about money and seems determined to destroy so many things that are beautiful and intrinsically positive, I long to connect to imagination, nature, and deeper things.
8. Tree man walking into the water
Although this is a photo that “features” turtles in the lower right-hand corner of the frame, it’s the scene that I was drawn to. The patterns of light and shade, mixed with the brown bark, yellow and white flowers, and the mossy green, combined with a soundtrack of birds and cicadas, along with a slight sloshing of water against the shore . . .This is New York City in the summer. Lush, lusty, and filled with secret places!
