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I really like this photo that I snapped about a year ago. I don't know who the guy is, but the angel is the Bethesda angel standing on top of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. I like the way the guy's looking at her.

I was going to write a blog about how I live in the most amazing city in the world — New York City — with the most amazing park — Central Park — where I recently found a new favorite place on rocks at the edge of the lake. I was going to wax poetic about how, from this place, I can see a lot of my history: the neighborhood where I've lived for more than 30 years, the building I worked in as a miserable law secretary for 10, buildings where I did wretched temp work in the years before that, and how much better it is to work for S&H. But I couldn't take a picture of that place on the rocks or even get near it because as of a couple of days ago the Central Park Conservancy (which runs the park like a benign fascist) decided to seal a fence, blocking access.

The Central Park Conservancy is an agency I love to hate. It pumps millions of private dollars into this public land, does the most amazing renovations, and simultaneously makes decisions as if it were a private garden club. For instance, this spring, they directed the killing of the breathtaking Burberry bushes which have sent me into ecstasy for the last 25 years with their changing fall colors. The morning I saw their guillotined stumps, first I cried, then I asked why, and when I learned it was because somebody at the Conservancy thought they got in the way of sight lines, I raged.