Summer In The City

I come back from New York and read that the blog people have "enabled automatic spam detection for comments," and I have no idea what that might mean so I shall plunge blindly on in my weary and unknowing senectitude.  I did, however, learn to put my boarding pass into my telephone, a giant step forward since previously I have always feared that when the moment came to show the electronic version to some official, the power would fail or in some other way the "system" would falter; electronic technology is not my strong forte. In another way I scored a triumph on this trip: I took taxis everywhere.  This was I admit a triumph of necessity rather than the final defeat of a life long aversion to taxis as being too expensive a means of locomotion.  There is a subset of those surviving from the days of the Great Depression who share this aberrant view of spending money.When in the past I have mentioned my extreme reluctance to hail a cab because of the expense friends and acquaintances will laughingly bring up eccentrics in their families with a similar aversion.  Well, it is gone, all gone.  My walking with a cane precluded long patches on foot, the crowded subways made entry there entirely perilous.  Cabs it was.  Of course, the thrill of adventure was dulled by my regretting the utter lack of exercise crisscrossing Manhattan in this manner imposed.  Ah, well, temperatures were in the high eighties and low nineties the entire time: stroke weather for elderly walkers.  I had made a list of museum shows I wanted to see, and pretty well covered this.  As a friend who lives in Manhattan remarked "The nice thing about New York is that there is always something to see or do."  And I thought how true, and as I began to regret not living there full time I heard my mother's stern admonition "Inner resources! Use your inner resources." when I as a child complained that I had nothing to do when we summered in Vermont. I must confess I am not bored in Sarasota, a proposition few New Yorkers can believe. My hostess who is entering her eighties and still takes the subway complains of being crushed down on the platforms, sometimes unable to board as the throngs thrust her aside exiting and entering.  We drove up the West Side Highway passing a score of giant towers and shuddered at all the people who will soon be pouring out of them to join their fellows on the crowded streets.  And my mind turned to recent attempts to cross through Times Square for an evening of theater.  I guess I should be thankful for the heat dome over the city which sent more people out to the Hamptons or kept folks indoors, and made the streets empty for me.