End of the year

It was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon in Central Park today and the crowds were out in number! Apart from the nice days when runners pretty much line the reservoir, I don't think I have ever seen so many people on the track. Most of them were foreign - here for New Year's Eve, no doubt. ( Don't know why I felt the need to capitalize that, but I did.) Among the languages I heard were Japanese, Spanish, French, Russian, German and several dialects of the mother tongue. Something else I noticed was the ubiquity of the puffy coat. Maybe it has even replaced the sneaker or running shoe as the world's most popular garment and I am not exactly sure why. Yes, they are warm and light in weight and though good ones are costly, you can also buy them very cheaply - but by and large, they are anything but flattering. In fact, though I took a bunch of pictures of people wearing various lengths and colors of the jacket, I couldn't bring myself to include them because, apart from the three cute little teens I snapped near the pump house, nobody looked good wearing one of them. I loved the dogs and the beautiful sky, but my prize today goes to the girl in pink. No ski jacket for her, no way!

a small city with soul and a pulse

Louisville surprises. When you approach it on the highway, the most vivid sight - and the one you would remember if you simply drove right by - is the KFC (Yum!) Center, a new and flashy sports arena that could be in any city anywhere in the USA. But you would be making a mistake if you let "the Yum" as they call it be your only image of the city because if you were to exit into the downtown, you would find an interesting mix: a Victorian center where despite the fact that the buildings have been beautifully preserved, their street level stores are mostly empty - vacated by businesses which now prosper in malls on the outskirts of the city; a metropolis pretty much devoid of public transportation but with very cool and edgy sidewalk sculptures that serve as bike racks for the increasing number of cyclists; acres of desolate and empty urban landscape surrounding pockets of beautiful mansions and small village-like areas where indie bookstores fly rainbow flags and shotgun houses have been turned into restaurants and boutiques; and there are even two city parks in Louisville designed by Olmstead. Because our daughter is living here at the moment, working at the extraordinary Actor's Theater of Louisville, she is something of an insider. So in scouting for a hotel that would accept both us and our doggie for the Christmas weekend, she found 21C - a chic, modern and, let's face it, luxurious hotel whose rooftop is lined year round with red penguin sculptures. The lobby of 21C is a fantastic modern art museum and the mens room is something of a design legend involving a waterfall and a one way mirror!

Perhaps the essence of Louisville showed itself best last night when we went to the Garage Bar for Christmas Eve dinner. Having walked all afternoon, we decided to take a taxi to the restaurant which is, as its name suggests, an old gas station out on one of the highways that cuts across the city. The driver chatted with us of course (this is Louisville, afterall) and we discovered that we all shared the same last name, though no relation that we could discover. Then dinner at the bar - local ingredients, microbrews, a variety of bourbons - and late in the evening we asked our adorable young waiter if he could call a cab for us, since we were a long and desolate walk from our hotel. There were no cabs late on Christmas Eve, so our waiter said "my car's out front - I'll drive you back" and off we all went through the silent streets of a most appealing city.

Red for Yuletide?

You have to go far from the madding crowds of Union Square to find an empty street in today's Manhattan. But it is possible if you're wearing comfortable shoes. You just walk south and east towards the Williamsburg Bridge. By night, this area - known in caps as LES - is hopping with hipsters because of the bars and restaurants that have taken up residence in the area that was once a immigrant Jewish neighborhood. But by day it is still blessedly deserted, a little edgy and pretty interesting. There is a magnificent old synagogue, now painted pink and used as an arts center, an indoor market where Hispanic grocers and butchers sell canned pigeon peas and pigs trotters alongside of several upstart artisanal cheesemakers and bread bakers. And watching over it all on top of a roof, a statue of a man - whether he is waving a welcome to the area or directing newcomers to move right on by and leave the Lower East Side in gritty, ungentrified peace, I don't know, but in my mind, it should be the latter.

the season to be jolly

You really don't need ornaments to decorate the trees at this time of year because nature - or "Mother Nature", as my mother always referred to it - does the trick for you. I was struck when I was walking through the park today at just how un-bare the trees are in December. Apart from dead leaves, which can in themselves be quite beautiful, there were interesting dried pods, pine cones, birds nests and even the odd pink blossom (deceived by global warming into thinking it was spring) all prettying up the naked branches. But for holiday purposes, the berries take the prize. Bright red, yellow and purple in abundance like so many tiny Christmas balls and then, of course, the two solitary holly berries - rightful royalty of the season - sitting proudly beside their emblematic leaves.