Back from New York

I made another trip to New York last week to see my mom and the rest of the family, including my daughter, who also flew in for a visit. It's hard to see Dot so weakened, but she hasn't lost her spirit or her sense of humor, and she remains my best audience when it comes to being interested in the minutia of my life.

It was a visit full of laughter and incident. The retirement place she's living held a "staff appreciation week" while I was there, with a New York City theme, which required said staff to dress in different costumes every day. One day the Phantom of the Opera greeted me when I came in.
That's actually Dawn, a friendly presence at the front desk, but her outfit that day gave me a bit of a turn.

One highlight of my visit was going out to my brother's place on Fire Island for a night.

There's something very sweet about the beach off season. The afternoon I arrived it was kind of gray, but still beautiful.

The next morning the sun came out and we even had a little swim in the ocean.

On another day I went to the Sarah Lucas exhibition at the New Museum with my sister. Not perhaps the most profound show I've ever seen, but highly entertaining. Lucas is really into smoking.

Shortly after my sister had just been regaling me with details about the new season of The Walking Dead, I came walking down Broadway and discovered a group of zombies threatening passersby in front of Lincoln Center. The passersby responded by whipping out their phones and taking pictures. Nevertheless, the young people who'd been hired to play the zombies were really putting their hearts into it.

In retrospect, this all seems a bit more thematic than I'd intended.