This is a ridiculously huge country. There's a lot she could see on future visits:

Snow.

I ended up pretty surprised with myself when I fell in love with so much of Los Angeles. I may be from S. California (San Diego) but I really expected to tolerate living in LA at best, and this city really has become my adopted home in a way I never would have expected.

I don't really know what NY in the sixties was like. I know the NY I grew up in. It's impossible for me to walk down a street in NY, except maybe some parts of midtown, without seeing the history. The summer I worked at my dad's office, one of my favorite places to sit and eat lunch was a bench in City Hall Park from which I could see both a church where George Washington once worshipped and the WTC. If I turned very slightly, I could see the Chrysler Building. (Chrysler? Is that how that's spelled? Something doesn't look right.)

I love how I can wander around the city and see all the layers of history. Just around Washington Square Park, I can point out trees and streets and buildings and clearings that reflect the whole history of the city. I love finding the weird little random remnants of older periods within the modern city. I love sitting on the exposed granite in Central Park and realizing that this stone, which seems so wild and unplanned and timeless, is the same stone that allows the hundred-story skyscrapers to stand. I love wandering down Broadway, starting up in Morningside Heights and getting down to the bottom of Manhattan (OK, it's a kind of long "wander," and I've only actually done the whole thing once, and then slept for a really long time) and seeing just how different all the neighborhoods are. Basically, I just love New York.

It's come to my attention that I have been a dick in taking some undeserved accolades and also in not sending out the anonymous accounting by now.

I have to send you all individual emails with the accounting and your ID number, and I've been inexcusably lazy in doing so. Thus far, I've only sent it to a small handful of people, and will get through it ASAP.

Also, 58 Buffistas contributed to this gift (I feel like it was a personal gift to me! Though I know that's not the way it really is. Having Nilly spend time with me was a gift, I feel). Several more Buffistas took time off from work to host Nilly and others, and to organize dinners and parties, and I'm sure they also felt like it was a gift and not a sacrifice.

What I mean to say is, of course anyone could have taken the donations and laid a bit of groundwork. I'm certainly not special in this regard, and apologize if I've hurt anyone's feelings by appearing to take far too much credit.

And I'm with Deb on smaller and more eclectic cities.

The Titan arums in the UW-Madison greenhouse. We gots 3 or 4 of the stinky buggers. Kettle Moraine State Park for its glacial geography. Devil's Lake and Wisconsin Dells (ride the ducks!) And, it's a 5 hour drive to Minneapolis. Her next visit should be all in the center. Start at the headwaters of the Mississippi and follow it all the way down. Galena, IL (home town of U.S. Grant), Hannibal, MO (home of Samuel Clemons) and on down. Maybe stop in some bigger cities like St. Louis and Memphis, ending in NOLA.

Heh. I still want to know what happens if the Cubs play the Sox in the series. Does the sun implode, or something?

Yes, yes it will. Unless, of course, the Supreme Court steps in and declares that the Texas Rangers won the Series.

This is a ridiculously huge country.

It really is. Recently, (in my meatspace life) the topic of Americans not traveling abroad much (or as much as say, Germans) came up. I wondered later, if the size of our country has something to do with it. I can go to 48 other "countries" (the states) plus two foreign countries (Canada & Mexico) without ever taking a plane or boat ride.

Bev! Save your FF miles and come to Florence with me.

I had the claustgrophobia attack trying to walk westward in Manhattan's midtown, aged about 14. I got caught in a human traffic jam; everyone else on that side of the street was walking east, it was lunchtime, and I literally got cemented between people who would not move. I was being buffeted, touched without thought by a thousand faceless strangers, and I suddenly flipped the hell out and began screaming and lashing out: let go of me you motherfuckers let GO stop TOUCHING ME. Everyone parted, just slightly enough to let me through, and I ran into a doorway and stood there shaking. The thing was, no one met my eyes, no one said a word, no one looked surprised. I never came close to that level of pure violent panic again, I'm not particularly claustrophobic and never have been, but that really was my camel's-back moment. I knew I needed out: the city's personality and mine were not cohering.

Until this last trip back in May, when I stayed with Jess, every trip back to NY had been nightmares of tension and bad luck. This time, I took the deep breath getting off the train, and I was fine. I had a very enjoyable trip back, I was able to do the city the justice I couldn't do it before.

I still couldn't live in it - it brings too many parts of me that I dislike too close to the surface. But for the first time since 1970, I could say yep, I'm having a really good time, this is fine, I can look ahead and do this again and actively enjoy the idea.

How much of that was due to the people I was staying with and seeing, I don't know. But I'm betting rather a lot.

Her next visit should be all in the center. Start at the headwaters of the Mississippi and follow it all the way down. Galena, IL (home town of U.S. Grant), Hannibal, MO (home of Samuel Clemons) and on down. Maybe stop in some bigger cities like St. Louis and Memphis, ending in NOLA.

And Ann Arbor! Where she can see...um...uh...lots of bookstores. And ninjas and gold.

Allyson, I know that post was in English, but I honestly couldn't parse it. What? I haven't seen you taking any credit at all, genuinely not enough. And I don't want an accounting. I probably wouldn't glance at it. I sent a few bucks, Nilly came here, I did the Snoopy dance, that's all she wrote.

edit: Hil, yep. You don't know what it was like in the sixties, and I don't know what it was like in the eighties or nineties or whatever. It's just different strokes, and hell, that makes the world bounce around nicely.