This was my walk home from work today:

Impromptu farmers market set up on 47th street and 2nd avenue.  With fruit, produce, and sandwich boards advertising an anti-Ahmadinejad rally.

Hasidic Jewish men at a protest showing their support for Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem who have clashed with police there over a parking lot in their neighborhood that is being kept open on the Sabbath.  (Google was more helpful on that than the NYPD cop I talked to.)  I’m going to be honest here because I doubt any of them read my blog: these dudes creep me out.  Long curly tendrils topped off by tall black hats, with long black coats completing the look.  Throw in the Rabbi yelling Yiddish through a microphone onstage and you have a very unsettling couple of blocks’ walk.  They were gathering there because apparently the Israeli consulate is located at 800 Second Avenue. This is new information to me.

Biscuits and Bath Doggy Gym.  Actually, I pause here on my way to AND from work.  I watch the puppies play, sleep, and bark.  This morning a Jack Russell had a pug cornered and was just barking his head off at him.  The pug sat there staring at the other dog, and I imagined he would roll his eyes any minute and turn to me, saying, “Can you believe this guy?  This is what too much coffee can do to a dog.”

And at lunch, I wandered over to Barnes and Noble on 54th and 3rd and discovered that they have a free public atrium there with tables and a guy playing piano!  So after hitting the B&N for free magazine reading and returning, I plopped down at a table, opened my book, unloaded my Subway Melt, and enjoyed my newfound lunch hour spot.  And then a white-haired granddaddy asked if he could share my table and he read his paper while I read my book.  He didn’t even look up when I left.  Love it.  In the South, I would have had to indulge him in a fifteen-minute conversation about 1980’s Montgomery politics.  And I don’t do fifteen-minute conversations with strangers.  Which is why they kicked me out of the South–that and the marriage thing (see: About Me).

Nowhere else can you turn a corner (or just walk in a straight line, for that matter) and daily find something you’ve never seen before.  As I type that, bagpipes are playing on the street below.  A couple of years ago I would have wondered why.  Now?  I try not to let them lull me to sleep.