Gotham City Soul

For most of us the name Sleepy Hollow brings forth images from Washington Irving’s 1819 legend of the hapless schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, who is chased one night by a terrifying headless horseman and mysteriously disappears, never to be heard from again. But there is another picture of the Dutch enclave Irving lovingly paints, one of a bucolic place where life moves slowly and tradition holds sway: “I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud,” writes Irving early in the story, “for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New-York, that population, manners, and customs, remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved.” Situated on the east bank of the Hudson River about 25 miles north of New York City, today’s Sleepy Hollow has preserved, in the tradition of Irving’s embosomed hamlets, what...

We all know someone like this. It’s the person you don’t want to stop and talk to when you see him or her on the street, yet has done nothing morally or ethically wrong to justify your ignoring that individual. It could be anybody, from any background, and the reasons for not wanting to spend any time with that person are varied: They invade your space when you talk. They are loud. They are terminally depressing. They are always on a soapbox. They tell the same story over and over again. They are hard to understand. They bore you to tears. They try your patience. Yet they are not bad people, and you feel they deserve your attention if they ask for it. In my case, it was a man who is mentally disabled in some way, and since I’m not a psychiatrist I wouldn’t begin to know how. He talks slow and with a slur. He shuffles when he walks. His movements are stiff. But he’s a decent fellow, as far as I know. When I see him, which is not often, I stop to chat for a moment or two. Not because...