photos from a strange winter

We have had an unusually warm winter in NYC and mostly people are pretty happy about it despite the fact that it portends something really scary about the state of the globe. But last week, we actually had snow. Not much and not really very pretty, but snow just the same. On a walk across the park, I took a few pictures - two of them weird, one just nice. The weird ones are the one of the Alice in Wonderland sculpture near the boat basin. If you look close, there is a splash of orange on the left of the statue. . .that was a buddhist or maybe a moonie - wearing an orange schmatta and not much else. Her bare arms looked very cold, but she was somehow understanding of the cold, Alice and the city around her. Then, there was the bagpipe. I heard it before I saw it - a girl, her bagpipes and the heart-breaking sound of Amazing Grace in the deep midwinter.

The umbrella ladies - not so strange, just picturesque.

Tonight - a very mild evening - I came out of the subway at 72nd and Broadway and honestly, my first thought was "they put spotlights on a few of the buildings uptown" . But you know what? It was the sun, coming in from the west in a spectacular beam. Quite lovely. Almost poetic.