It was our last weekend in New York City this fall before our return to Florida for the season. Coming up for air from the incredibly exciting U.S. Tennis Open, I anticipated quiet streets and empty restaurants with tennis journeymen having left town. But that is not the case this week. The United Nations is in session and traffic is backed up; police are everywhere with streets closed for dignitaries housed in various hotels in midtown. Those long black SUVs cruise the streets with police escorts. POTUS is in town, which doubles the congestion and traffic. Yet New York is weather glorious this week. Coming off a hurricane at camp with rain for the entire time I was hosting my high school buddies, I was relieved to be able to walk around raincoat free. In New York, the streets were empty of the homeless during U.N. week. I suspect they were relocated to nearby shelters and hotels to create the impression to visitors that our homeless problem is under control. Now the sidewalks were crowded with back-to-back pedestrians. The countless delegates to the United Nations were here to speak to human rights issues, the war in Ukraine, climate change and terrorism among other important matters. Patti and I made our way to a lecture on the scientific advances in treating Alzheimer’s disease, sponsored by the Melvin R. Goodes Prize for Excellence in drug discovery. That night we attended Lincoln Center for a New York Ballet performance given in celebration of their 75th anniversary. It was soothing after the hectic day. Tomorrow, we head to Minneapolis to support an ill friend of Patti’s from her alma mater, Northwestern University. All in all, a busy few days before we head south. I have a few stops to make before I leave for the airport: a visit to the Hunter College bookstore and the new art supply department in their basement and the Society Library at 79th Street where I will do some research on my forthcoming book about my father. The working title is “Leibish’s Journey to America.” The daily news about the growing number of illegal immigrants entering in through our southern border always makes me think of my father as a 12-year-old uneducated child in Ukraine, taken by horse cart to a rail depot with only his book of prayers in hand to occupy him and a rucksack filled with homemade bread, meats and cheese to carry him through a weeklong ride across Europe to Hamburg, where he stowed away on a ship. I see the photos in the New York Times of a Venezuelan father carrying his child through the treacherous Darien Gap in mud up to their necks. I think of Leibish’s journey, through foreign lands, with no one to hold him as he cried himself to sleep at night. All of these emotions come to mind as I visit New York in the fall of 2023. I savor the pleasant moments, especially with my hot mug of coffee and copy of the New York Times.
