Photos I Couldn't Take

I'll admit it; I overplanned.  But when This American Life calls, what can I say?  I'm helpless in the face of their warm winning smiles and calm handshakes. So even though I have a book to write, and even though I'm moving on Monday (which I suspect will take all day, since I'm driving from Manhattan to Clinton Hill and back, then from Manhattan into Paramus, NJ--they have Ikea--and back), I also agreed to do a piece for TAL the details of which I'm not at liberty to divulge at present.  (For all I know, it may not even work and may ultimately not run.  If I get a kill fee, I'll do the honorable thing and tell you all what happened.)  Hence my brief absence.  Since tomorrow is moving day, I wouldn't count on an update then either.  But soon I'll settle down into an actual writerly routine, and then I'll be back to my usual blogging state: the cartoons; the poems; the odd observations, both religious and non.  It'll all be there.

Until that day, though, I have to share two moments that I wish I could have photographed, but since there were people involved, I despaired of getting permission:

*  A homeless person on 14th street today was holding a sign that said.  "I'm just like Obama.  I want change."

*  On Friday, down at Clinton and Rivington, an Asian couple was pushing their baby in a carriage, and the baby--I kid you not--was holding a brochure titled "Emergency Contraception."  I actually ran after them to ask them to stay still, but they didn't speak English and looked alarmed at my excited manner.  Damn the foul luck.  That would have been the greatest picture ever.