When I first moved to New York City, I lived on 95th Street in Manhattan and rode down to 42nd Street for my graduate seminars. My first commute on the subways was blindingly quick: I took the 2 or 3 downtown express at 96th and Broadway and one stop later (at 72nd Street) I disembarkedContinue reading “The Subway: Let the Love-Hate Clichés Roll”
Category Archives: Travel
Walking the City: Random Walks Through Manhattan Streets
In Street Life: Becoming Part of the City, Joseph Mitchell wrote: What I really like to do is wander aimlessly in the city. I like the walk the streets by day and by night. It is more than a liking, a simple liking–it is an aberration. Every so often, for example, around nine in theContinue reading “Walking the City: Random Walks Through Manhattan Streets”
Walking, Head Down, on a Damp and Grey Day: How Virtuous It Is
On days like this, many residents of the US eastern seaboard are apt to question their decision to ever inhabit these spaces. The temperature is in the thirties (that’s just a couple of degrees above freezing point for all the folks living in Celsius-land); a steady, persistent drizzle is falling; and the most familiar colorContinue reading “Walking, Head Down, on a Damp and Grey Day: How Virtuous It Is”
Meek’s Cutoff and the Terror of the Beautiful
In the summer of 1998, during an epic road-trip out to the American West, I drove from Idaho into Oregon, heading for Eugene. I was still recovering from the surprise of having found out that the landscape of Idaho had been nothing quite like I expected it to be. (Idaho; potatoes, right? So, flat fields,Continue reading “Meek’s Cutoff and the Terror of the Beautiful”
Whitewater Rafting on the Cheat River: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
In May 1990, (more precisely, during the Memorial Day weekend) I went whitewater rafting on the Cheat River in West Virginia. A fellow graduate student talked me into joining a group expedition that went every Memorial Day; it was run by a husband and wife pair and was described in suspiciously glowing terms. I hadContinue reading “Whitewater Rafting on the Cheat River: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”
Ode to a Beloved Clunker
MPA 4634 and DIA 8499. Those strings of alphanumeric characters, as might be surmised, are licence plate identifiers. More precisely, they were the licence plates for the same car, a Fiat 1100D that was our family car for over twenty years. Over those years, I graduated from the back of the car to the front, toContinue reading “Ode to a Beloved Clunker”
The ‘American’ Overseas
A few days ago, from my vantage point at the University of Luxembourg, during a week of visiting a research group on Individual and Collective Reasoning, I posted the following status update on Facebook: As an American in Europe, I am getting shit for (on this trip): Budweiser (as always), the lack of a really goodContinue reading “The ‘American’ Overseas”
The Daily Shower As Nero-ish Luxury
Sometimes the most mundane of experiences can serve as a particularly acute reminder of how my life in the present differs from that lived in the past. And sometimes that experience can serve too, to put a simple daily act into global context. For some twenty-five years now, whether in the US (1987-2000; 2002-present) orContinue reading “The Daily Shower As Nero-ish Luxury”
Baltimore Dispatches – II: Ford vs. Chrysler, Or, Picking Your Favorite Professional Sports Team
Today’s activities in Baltimore feature as centerpiece, attendance at a backyard barbecue structured around a football game. It’s Sunday, it’s fall, football is on, the Baltimore Ravens are playing the Kansas City Chiefs. There will be beer, grilling, and frequent trips to the restroom. Sounds like the kind of thing you’d do in a sports-crazyContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches – II: Ford vs. Chrysler, Or, Picking Your Favorite Professional Sports Team”
Baltimore Dispatches: The Cask of Amontillado and the Terrors of Immurement
This Columbus Day weekend, I am ensconced in Baltimore, which has meant that, among other things, my thoughts turned to Edgar Allan Poe, the city’s most distinguished literary son, one of a select group of writers whose work I was first exposed to via comic books, and someone who, to put it mildly, gave meContinue reading “Baltimore Dispatches: The Cask of Amontillado and the Terrors of Immurement”
Samir Chopra 