12. August

11. December

10. February

9. July

8. June

So, September. Somehow, we’ve made it. Seemed sort of touch-and-go there for a minute.

In lots of ways, September is one of the very best months we have. The fetid, humid wilt of August lifts into a cooler, cleaner late-summer balm. The sky is bluer and the clouds whiter and puffier than at any other time of year. Baseball games start to actually matter and corn is so sweet you don’t even have to cook it. Sure, there’s the inevitable reminder of aging and mortality that comes with tipping towards autumn, and when you were a kid, back-to-school time definitely sucked. (Except, not entirely. There was the excitement of novel [...]

Here's how August 2010 ends in New York. At the corner of Grand Street and Clinton, on the Lower East Side, with the temperature approaching 100 degrees, an old man in a light-blue polo shirt is being pushed in a wheelchair by his caretaker. "Not this way!" he shouts, as she noses him into the crosswalk on Grand. He points west, across Clinton. "I want to go there!" She continues, and calmly explains to him that they need to go in the direction they're going. Maybe they're going to the Rite-Aid on the corner, maybe the kosher butcher down the block. "No," he says, "the other way! Bring me the [...]