Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

I love my neighborhood, the Far West Village. In our early days here a visitor said, “Wow, you live in the Boonies.” We moved into our home in 1981. It was only two blocks from where we had lived but Washington Street was a line of demarcation between the brownstones of the Greenwich Village Historic District and the factories and garages of our new block. It was remote and industrial but the building had an elevator and we were expecting our second child—who turned out to be Sam.    I’d had it with lugging toddler Jessie, the stroller, and the groceries to our third-floor walk-up.    In those days, Skippy peanut butter came in glass jars, and I was mortified that Jessie repeated what I said when I dropped an extra large jar and it smashed. Our new block stood between two elevated roadways. To get to our place you walked under the    viaduct line of the NY Central Railroad, dodging what the pigeons roosting there dropped on the street. It was now di...