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Spheres of Influence

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I don’t want to brag, but I’ve got some pair of balls. Before you take offense, please know that I’m not bragging about my manhood, nor am I claiming to be some fearless risk taker. I’m talking about real balls—the round objects. In this case, these are exercise balls, which I’ve been using at my rehab facility to get my battered back back on track. The wonderful staff have shown me some exercises to ease my pain and encouraged me to do them at home. I’m impatient to get healthy, so I’m more than happy to comply. Every morning I go through a series of stretches to combat spinal stenosis. One of the things they have me doing is rolling an exercise ball back and forth with my legs to help stretch my lower back. In my zeal to heal, I ordered an exercise ball—or Swiss ball—of...
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Building Windmills

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When the winds of change blow, some people build walls; others build windmills. – Chinese proverb Peter’s windmill is gone. Well, the basic structure is still there, but the sails—the things that make it a windmill—are gone. Now it looks like a pawn with windows. The model windmill stands outside a house at 78th Street and Shore Road, and when my brother Peter was a kid, he loved that thing so much we all called it Peter’s Windmill. It stood unscathed for decades. I never noticed anything amiss until last week, when I was walking to my sister’s apartment building for a barbecue and saw that its limbs had been amputated. It was a shock. We lost Peter last year, and now one of his favorite landmarks was also gone. I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot this week. The next day, I visited my aunt, and while the express bus rolled up Sixth Avenue, I saw that 8th Street had been dubbed Jimi Hendrix Way in honor of the rock legend. And I was thinking about Peter again, sinc...
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Twenty Minutes into the Future

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I got a look into the future last week while standing in the present as I slipped into the past. Okay, let’s see if I can make some sense out of this. I’ve been going to physical therapy for the last two weeks for my aching back, which—praise the Lord—is finally showing some signs of improvement. The facility is a cozy little spot on 75th Street, about a 15‑minute walk from my house. The reception area is very small, and the first thing I saw when I walked in was a widescreen TV displaying the image of a young man wearing headphones. My doctor’s office has a TV in the waiting area that seems permanently stuck on NY1, so I thought nothing of the setup at the PT facility—until this fellow started speaking to me. It turns out I had come face‑to‑widescreen‑face with a growing healthcare trend called a Virtual Front Desk (VFD), or video‑enabled virtual receptionist kiosk. While remote telephone answering services have existed for decades, streaming a live, dedicated receptio...
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A Different Path

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Somewhere in my apartment there is a photograph from the 1960s of me and my brother Peter dressed as altar boys. This wasn’t a Halloween party or some kind of irreverent prank. Peter and I were both very briefly altar boys while we were on vacation one summer at St. Mary of the Mount in Mount Pocono. We were staying at a nearby resort called Merrill’s Breezewood Lodge, a place our family absolutely loved. Apologies if I’ve written about this before, but we had such great times there. The property consisted of three houses spread out through the woods, and we would stay at either The Vacationer—a lovely white two story building—or The Hideaway, which was well named, as the gray house sat up on a steep hill and was virtually hidden from the rest of the world. The place had a swimming pool down by the main house where my siblings would swim and I’d flop around in the shallow end. At night, we’d all gather with the other guests around the pool to shoot the breeze and lo...
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Losing Your Shirt

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I was standing on the Court Street subway platform with my sister on Friday when I caught this guy looking me over. We’d just had a lovely afternoon at Brooklyn Bridge Park and were heading to the R train to get back to Bay Ridge for dinner at a local Thai restaurant. But now I was getting the skunk eye from a total stranger. New York’s subway system has an… intriguing cast of characters riding the rails and stalking the platforms. In fact, these people are so interesting that I strongly prefer taking the express bus or the ferry—which is how we got to downtown Brooklyn in the first place. The guy was standing with a young woman and, as we got closer, his gaze intensified. Finally, he spoke up. “I like that shirt,” he said. Shirt? What’s he talking about? It’s just a shirt, guy. What’s the big deal? And then I remembered: oh, right, I was wearing my “Funcle” T‑shirt, which my sister had gotten me a few years ago. The word is a portmanteau of “fun” and “u...
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Pier Group

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I was walking through Shore Road Park on Friday night when I made three new friends. It was early evening, and I was on my way to the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge to attend the local 9/11 Memorial Service. Nearly 240 people from the neighborhood were killed in the attacks, and memorials can be found at local schools and on street signs. I decided to cut through Shore Road Park to enjoy a little greenery, and on the way in I ran into a young father and his adorable little boy. The kid was so outgoing and friendly; he gave me a big wave, and when I got close, we happily high‑fived. It was exactly the kind of moment I needed on this day. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, another equally adorable little guy approached me. It turned out they were twin brothers, both with lovely smiles and big, beautiful brown eyes. “What’s this fellow’s name?” I asked, pointing to my high‑fiving amigo. “Led Zeppelin,” their father replied. I was con...
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Gone To Graveyards

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I saw the faces, but I couldn’t hear the voices. Today was the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — a quarter of a century since the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I was standing across the street when the planes hit the World Trade Center, and it was a long, horrible trip home as the towers collapsed and spread toxic clouds throughout lower Manhattan. My mother was in the hospital for lung disease, which would end her life less than a year later, and my father marked his 80th birthday. Twenty-five years. I’ve returned to Ground Zero for some of the major anniversaries, but since I’ve started working remotely, the trips have been less frequent. When I can’t get there, listening to the reading of the victims’ names is an essential part of the commemoration for me. Today I had to be there. I hemmed and hawed about going all week, but I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t make the effort. I was reluctant to...
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