humanity

  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. I’d just settled on the bench, purse and my bag of leftover food from work on my lap, one per leg. Done with work, time to wait for the F train and go home. “Meredith?” I looked up to see a familiar face, soft round features

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. It’s a battle I’ve been losing. Sure, I ran 1.4 miles today in 10:38. Sure, I followed it up with sprints and crunches and pushups. Sure, I got my heart rate up and didn’t feel awful. But I am not where I was three months

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. Time is currency. And this week, mine was spent — in research and at work. With it went my energy, so rather than sitting at my desk for three-plus hours, badgering myself to write something worth reading, I present the following: a conglomeration of thoughts,

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. The Ironclad Building on Main Street in Cooperstown looks well-kept from the outside: two clean, windowed storefronts on the ground level, second- and third-floor windows surrounded by if not fresh, at least not peeling paint. You would never guess, from looking at the outside, that

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. Can we scrap the rest of this week and just look at today? Because today, I feel alive. Not that the rest of this week was worthless — it wasn’t. I worked, read the Bible (1 Samuel 1-13), interviewed an FDNY historian, found out I’m

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. You can’t know who you are until you leave everything you’ve ever known. Not because being in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar people brings you to some basic, almost neanderthal form of yourself. Not because everything new and strange helps you realize the person

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. I rose early this morning, beating the sun by a hair. Crawling out of bed, I shut off my alarm, turned on my desk lamp, and paused, sighed. 6 a.m. Day has broken.  A quick trip to the bathroom, splashing water on my face, and

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. I wanted to give him my peanut butter sandwich. Him. The man standing directly in front of me on the 6 train, dirt under his fingernails, clothes faded and filthy. I wanted to give him my peanut butter sandwich, made with the last scrapings from

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  • Read last week’s post here or view all other New York City posts. How do you find stories in a city of eight million? Where the default safety feature is zero eye contact, and you’re more likely to hear a person talking to himself or yelling at someone to “back off” than you are to overhear a

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  • Being a nonfiction writer has been my reason for not writing. “I don’t have any assignments,” she says, her voice raising from her throat to her nose. That excuse doesn’t cut it. If I am a writer, it’s because writing is an essential part of my being, it makes me who I am. If I

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