Chronicles Continued

Across the street from where the car was parked, was this unassuming building, that declared itself as a clothes cleaner.  I saw the sign in the window. and walked over to see it more clearly.  What a wonderful human endeavor.  Have NEVER seen this in the City.  Am going to approach my favorite cleaner and see if they and i can work out a deal.  They do the work, I’ll subsidize.  Maybe I can convince other friends to do the same. 

The snowing has come to an end.  The storm is apparently over.  Because it was a Saturday, the City coped well and the folk enjoyed the holiday from the usual and the freedom to walk in the middle of the non-existent traffic.

of the number of selfies being taken by couples in the middle of the street.  As all traffic except emergency vehicles have been banned from travel, the roads are silent and empty.  There are cabin fevered walkers who stop in their tracks and pose.  Few are walking on the sidewalks, as the streets are cleared hourly.  Also a number of young children have been exhorted to go outside as i see them climbing in and out of the drifts made by the garbage trucks turned snow plows.

..so I can stay inside.  These are descriptive!  Flooding amazes me and I always wanted to live by the water.  As I watch the accumulation, I think what if this were rain!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413454/Now-come-FLOODS-New-Jersey-warned-rising-tides-make-Jonas-worse-state-emergency-declared-New-York.html

Awoke to a winter landscape at 6 am because it was so silent outside.  No traffic, no voices.  The storm had arrived.  Then I noticed this:

The bird remained on the limb while the wind swirled the snow around it.  One hour it sat there.  It looks like a dove; I wonder where it came from and eventually where it went.l

Another moment when I wonder if it is all hype or is the weather report right on.  The City appears to be sanely going about it’s business.  Haven’t noticed any empty shelves in the local grocery or drug store and no one loaded down with shopping bags of supplies.  Perhaps where I ought to be checking is the Wine and Liquor store.  It might be there that the long lines, empty shelves and ladened bags are to be found.

Found myself doing the wash.  As I was laying out the sheets to dry, it caught my attention that here I was, once again, doing the laundry before the storm.  The underlying motivation is that clean sheets on a cold night are better if the electricity goes out.

What happens when you let a City person out…

 

Look like tiny wind-up toys.  The ones found in the trash in the basement from time to time, are double this size.  These apparently live in the ivy at the base of the tree by the curb, about 20 feet away from where they are here.

The requisite two weeks had passed and it was on my ‘to do list’: head to MTA Lost and Found to reclaim the lost umbrella.  [MTA calls it Lost Property on the sign outside the door.] Figured by this time, they should have a boatload of them. Arrive and the small room is crowded.  Every one of the ‘clients’ is acting more or less civil, to each other and the man behind the window.  Out of six, one man is given his lost item!   He recovered what would have been a movie-camera-sized-case in days gone by, choccy-block full of the most miscellaneous items I have seen a man carry.  I didn’t think to ask him how long it had taken for his bag to be found, as he was busy telling his side of the story that MTA wanted him to list everything in it.  That is why he was displaying the contents… “How do I list all this?” he was asking.  One lady was trying to pick up a found item belonging to her husband, she needed to bring not only his ID, she needed to go to a notary to have a permission slip by him authorizing her to pick up his goods.  She had a chewed-on postcard she had received in the mail and she worked for MTA.  A third lady was hoping to find her mobile phone.  We all thought or some said- ‘Good luck with that’.  An admitted non-believer in the system, I held little hope for any of them.  A man in a MTA uniform entered the room, from the outside and rang the buzzer to be admitted to the inter-sanctum.  I asked him if the place was packed with all kinds of stuff.  He smiled, what to me was a knowing smile and said “Yes, we have a lot of stuff”.  That gave me hope for my umbrella.  But then my turn came.  I handed in my computer print-out.  Mr. Behind-the-Window, left and returned.  No umbrella.  “You have got to have a number of these”, I said incredulously.  “Hot item”, he replied.