Seeing Stars
Dear Diary:
It was 1985, and my husband and I were living on the Upper East Side. We planned a rare date night out and found a friend to babysit our 1-year-old daughter.
We set out for a nearby theater where “Cocoon,” with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn among the stars, was playing. I was a fan of the couple, having seen them onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis when I was growing up in Iowa.
Unfortunately, when we got to the theater, we found that the next showing was sold out.
Determined not to waste the evening, we walked a few blocks to another theater, where “Prizzi’s Honor,” with Kathleen Turner, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston, was about to start.
As we waited to buy tickets, I noticed an older couple standing a few feet ahead of us in line. I nudged my husband
“Look,” I whispered. “That couple: That’s Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn!”
— Jean Young
Puzzling
Dear Diary:
I was happily doing a crossword puzzle on the subway when my pen ran out of ink. I shook it, but no luck, so I put it and the puzzle in my purse and pulled out a magazine.
A few seconds later, a pen appeared in front of me, held by the man sitting beside me. I thanked him profusely and took my puzzle back out, but his pen didn’t work either. I gave it back to him and returned to the magazine.
A few second later, the same man offered me another pen. This one worked. I thanked him again and returned to working the puzzle.
Many stops later, I finished and began to return the pen.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got a bag full.”
“No,” I said. “Save this for the next person like me.”
He agreed and took it back.
— Jane Comfort
Coffee Shop
Dear Diary:
I was having a lunch meeting with a colleague at a coffee shop on First Avenue. We were discussing the art market and galleries when a man in the next booth turned around.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. I work at a financial company but am trying to start an art education and aesthetics company. Can I ask you a few questions?”
We listened. His ideas were interesting, and my colleague took his card.
Then, as we were finishing lunch, out of the corner of my eye I saw an older woman approaching us from another nearby booth.
“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m 90, but I’m confused about when it’s correct English to use ‘me’ or ‘I’ in a sentence.”
My colleague and I chuckled and gave her some examples of when to use “I” and when to use “me.” She thanked us and returned to her table.
My colleague and her family had been thinking of moving out of New York. After these encounters, she said: “This is why I could never leave New York.”
— Elizabeth Levine
For the Birds
Dear Diary:
It was a bright clear morning in Manhattan. I was visiting from Arkansas, helping my college daughter settle into a summer program. While she was in class, I explored the city.
Wandering through Bryant Park, I spied a crowd of people with their phones out and all pointed in one direction. Some of them were cradling large cameras with long lenses.
I hurried over, eager for a celebrity sighting. The phones and lenses were angled downward at a cluster of bushes near the carousel.
The crowd spoke in hushed tones. I was confused.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to a particularly intense young man with a huge camera. His face was aglow.
“It’s amazing!” he said. “The mourning warbler. We don’t usually see him here!”
He lowered his camera, eager to show me shots of the small, brightly colored songbird. He explained its migratory pattern, its unique features and our stellar luck at being able to witness him.
I nodded gratefully, tickled at his joyous rapture over this avian miracle. He returned to his focus, kneeling for more shots.
A woman joined us.
“What is all this business?” she asked, her Australian accent evident.
“It’s the mourning warbler!” I said, having caught the enthusiasm. “It’s amazing!”
— Shelley Russell
At the Theater
Dear Diary:
I went with good friends to a performance of the Nancy Harris play “The Beacon” at the Irish Repertory Theater on 22nd Street. It is a powerful play about a dysfunctional family hiding secrets, and it hit home hard for me.
“Did you like the play?” one of my friends asked me innocently after the performance.
Still reeling, I said I would rather not discuss it and that I had found the play difficult to take.
A friendly woman standing nearby spoke up.
“I’m a psychologist,” she said with a smile, “in case you’d like to schedule a session.”
— Howard Husock
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