Today I had an interesting lunch downtown with my brother, David Pollack, and PubSub CEO Gus Spathis, and afterwards walked with David, through sweltering heat and sweating throngs more evocative of Bombay than Broadway, to the Merrill Lynch headquarters at the World Financial Center, where he was to attend a meeting with the sultans of high finance.
After dropping David off in the cool marble atrium of this capitalist Olympus, I stepped back out into the shocking humidity, all set to stagger back home to Brooklyn, when I noticed an incongruous vision hard by the bank of the Hudson. It looked like a small sloping meadow, framed and transected by rustic stone walls, and covered with lush grass and wildflowers. I walked over to see what it was. It turned out to be the Irish Hunger Memorial, something that I had no idea even existed, though I had been working for two years just a few blocks away. Here’s what it looks like (yes, this is New York City!):
And, from a little farther back (there were no backhoes obstructing the view when I was there today):
Say what you will about New York, it is inexhaustible.