You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2005.”
The thought that we were doing something illegal had not crossed my mind. I was simply doing a little act of kindness for this man - let’s call him Joe - who was looking so forlorn on a hot July morning, standing beside the turnstyles. A bad Metrocard swipe had gotten him a "Just Used" message, and so I offered [...]
“It’s nice today,” says 15B as he enters the elevator, taking off his gloves and Dartmouth Alumni Association baseball hat. “Maybe a little chilly.” “Yeah, it’s nice,” I agree. I close the elevator door behind him. “Forty now, but they say forty five later on.” “Great.” We’ve reached his floor, but the retired cardiologist won’t get out until he’s [...]
Brookti came from Ethiopia 8 months ago when she was around two. Initially I'd tried to adopt domestically, but it turns out that adopting in the U.S. as a single mother, aside from being a 21st century version of some kind of slave trade, (i.e. black/interracial children are 'a third of the price' of Hispanic children), and assuming you're not [...]
I imagine that grass-roots recycling for reuse and income must happen in every big city, but I’d never been aware of it at the constant and hyper-efficient level I’ve seen here in New York. In the university town where I used to live, students would discard their unwanted couches, lamps, microwaves and short-lived artifacts of college life every semester. And [...]
It didn’t matter that I had been awarded scholarships to three universities – my parents needed money to send to their families in war-torn West Germany and Austria. The last day of high school coincided with the start of work in the mailroom at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, the next day. “You’re a smart kid. You can go to [...]
Dear Reader, With all that technology can do to separate the giver from the gift, I should not be surprised that I received the ultimate Christmas gesture—a call from a cell phone with no discernible person on the other end. Must be one of the magical moments of the season, I thought. But what did it mean? I had just [...]
** Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Without being included in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood? To that, we provide the simple answer that the purpose of the new Detroit-themed section of the website is not to draw attention to the ways in which the city has suffered in recent decades, which are well known. Anyone who has seen such films as Paul Verhoeven's [...]
