Shelter

Completed in 1895, the 23rd Regiment Armory is a Romanesque red brick armory. Armories were originally important places to train and store weapons for America’s locally-based military units before the Civil War. During industrialization, National Guard troops were used to quash labor protests. After World War I, bronze tributes to soldiers from that conflict were added. […]

We May Sink and Settle

Someone told me even numbers of bamboo stalks are unlucky, so I bought another pot with three stalks, bringing my total to 9. I had 3, that was good, then 6, disaster, now back to 9. “What does that have to do with?”my coworker asked. I was carrying my bamboo. “I don’t know,” I said. […]

Wind

Maybe you did not go to church because God lets crazy people shoot fifty strangers. I have not been going because God has ruined my life in other ways. I walked into a church, a church where no one knew me, so maybe I would feel different, and an usher told me not to […]

Get and Take

The woman was pleased that I was buying an umbrella. I had just splashed through Rockefeller Center, in three inches of rain, this made me laugh. Nothing was making me laugh at all, only actually wading in my sandals, running between the buildings there. “Once we sold almost every umbrella we had, to this whole […]