River muse

Good riddance!

By CASS COLLINS
Posted 1/5/22

Well, good riddance, 2021! You were supposed to be better than 2020. Look at you. You started off with an assault on democracy itself. Briefly redeemed yourself with a vaccine for our 21st-century …

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River muse

Good riddance!

Posted

Well, good riddance, 2021! You were supposed to be better than 2020. Look at you. You started off with an assault on democracy itself. Briefly redeemed yourself with a vaccine for our 21st-century plague, a vaccine which the morons refused to take, thereby compounding the virus with mutations. Now we are in shutdown again. And we are supposed to celebrate the New Year. Are you kidding me?

Alright, I got that out of my system. In a few years (days?) we won’t even remember 2021. It will have morphed into that glob of pandemic days that is our life now. A time spent reading all of the great novelists and memoirists and historians of our time who are dropping like, well, like flies. If I were a better writer I would have thought of an original metaphor, but soon there won’t be many other better writers than me, so that’s all you get. A well-worn metaphor. Reminds me of the Christmas presents I gave.

This year really took a toll on my Christmas spirit. Our plans to visit family in the city and stay at a nice hotel were dashed by the rampant spread of omicron (an anagram for moronic, by the way). Celebration with family far off took place via Zoom. Again. Even visiting the city, now that we are full-time Narrowsburgians, is not the same as living there was. I used to say “It’s a nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit there.”

Still, I like a good hotel stay almost anywhere. My grandfather warned us not to “trust a girl who knows the hotels in her own hometown.” I would alter that sentiment to include boys and men. But now that I don’t live there, I have become familiar with a few hotels. Nothing too fancy, of course.

As a visitor to the city, I find my years of living there still give me a little advantage. I know the best areas to park, but even those have meters that are hard to fool. The last time I found a metered parking space near Zabar’s on Broadway, it was malfunctioning. The cop who sidled up to me as I was pondering my situation told me to get the app. The app! At least he was sympathetic. “You won’t get a ticket if you’re gone in an hour,” he told me. That was enough time to get our take-out lunch of lox and bagels and a fresh supply of parmesan rinds to make white bean soup. Not many places still sell parmesan rinds, and none are better or more reasonably priced than Zabar’s. There, now you know one of my best-kept NYC secrets.

I used to know the best restaurants and bars, but there have been too many changes to stay current. Bar Bayeux is an exception. It’s our jazz bar in Brooklyn and it has become a well-regarded venue for live jazz in the city in the few years it has been open. COVID-19 almost did it in,  but 2021 saw it rise in popularity, thanks to some dedicated musicians who live-streamed sets from the closed bar until it opened again. We closed just before Christmas this year, trying to keep the spread of Omicron down.

I worry about discarding a whole year, now that they are in short supply. As others have said, I don’t worry about the planet so much as I worry about us. The planet will survive, even if as a ball of fire or an encrusted ball of ice. But we need a more temperate clime to thrive. To start we need to be more temperate with others. Sorry, morons.

new year, 2021, pandemic days, visiting, hometown, temperance

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