Archive for December 19th, 2017
insinuated lapse
It’s National Hard Candy Day, in these United States.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We recently had some company staying over, at HQ here in Astoria. Amongst our lodgers was a 12 year old fellow who lives in the (extremely) exurbs of Denver out in Colorado, which is a somewhat “sheltered” place as far as the tangible realities of life go. As we were moving along, he pointed out an older woman on Broadway who was collecting cans and bottles for recycling and cash redemption, and asked me if she was homeless. The kid had apparently never seen a homeless person before, which is a whole other story, and I had to explain to him about the industry of the “canners.”
Somehow I ended up in a lefty speech about personal initiative and the streets being paved with gold from an immigrants point of view, lauding the canners for their pluck and chiding native born New Yorkers for literally throwing money out in the garbage. The kid wasn’t impressed and went back to playing with his phone. He just wanted to say he saw a bum when he was in the City, I think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My dog Zuzu is quite used to these little invectives and flights of politique fancy. Whomever to and whenever I’m trying to make some long winded and esoteric point, Zuzu just sort of hunkers down and waits. She knows it’s going to be awhile, especially when my response to someone starts with “No, that’s not how things work… it’s complicated…”
Don’t get me started, really.
Funnily enough, I’ve recently had several of the people in my “social media” world label me as a “liberal.” Most of the real lefties I know think of me as a “stealth Conservative,” whereas I argue that none of these labels actually mean anything anymore. Might as well call me a Whig.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are, of course, things encountered in NYC that just defy description, and if you didn’t take a picture of them – nobody would believe you. Zuzu the dog won’t commit to anything more than a quick sniffing of such anomalous items, and the kid from Colorado barely seemed to register most of what was going on around him.
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