I took a shadow selfie with a medium-sized street tree on a recent September morning. It was a nice tree at the corner of Park Avenue and East 37th Street whose shadow branches seemed to embrace me.  Six weeks later it was gone, replaced by a metal plate. Street trees...

The thing about New York—and maybe cities everywhere—is the light. The natural kind, where one minute a building is cold and grey and the next it’s a shining beacon. This happens mostly at sundown, when the light is pink, then magenta, and a unique show gets under...

We climbed to our seats high in the Family Circle section of the Metropolitan Opera House and waited for the 9/11 tribute to begin. The house was packed, thanks to $25 tickets and the thrill of attending a live performance again after 18 months of Zoom or nothing, The...