funny things you see in New York

This morning, talking a walk on the Brooklyn Promenade, I noticed what appeared to be a small new island at the base of Manhattan. Looking more closely, I realized it was a little tugboat pulling a large barge, on which several full-sized trees were standing upright. I watched as the tree-barge made its way slowly up the East River, past the South Street Seaport, bound for parts unknown. And I thought of all the strange things that you can see every day in New York, so much so that the extraordinary threatens to become the merely routine. I hope that never happens to me, that I can always keep the sense of wonder that I arrived with.
Like that day we were strolling around in the 50's and came to a break in the buildings where there was a little seating area and a large artifical waterfall, one story high and a building wide, just sitting there without any explanation, at least not one I noticed. We sat down at two of the little white chairs next to the waterfall, close enough that the street noises vanished and the spray gently wafted over us, and rested from our sweaty walk, amazed.
And what about all the toddlers and little children wearing camouflage and other military-inspired fashion? I have seen too much of this to dismiss it as a fluke, and in many cases the children are barely past babyhood, not at the stage of choosing their own outfits, so I have to ask, what do the parents intend by dressing their children, both boys and girls, like little soldiers? I imagined at first perhaps the fathers were off in Iraq and this was the family's way of maintaining a sartorial link. Then I thought perhaps it was some sort of ironic antiwar statement: here, W., is your next generation of cannon fodder in the War on Terror. Now I just watch and wonder, no longer trying to make sense of it.
A handwritten sign -- a note, really -- attached to an iron gate that closed off a weedy lot used as a private parking lot. "I used to feed the stray cats here and then I moved away," it read. "Is anyone still feeding them?" A single word, in a different handwriting: "Yes."