The City & the Country no.56 – January 14 2015

Apologies, readers, if such there be. The college semester came to a close a few days after my last update, launching me into Christmas followed by an opportunity to attempt address the total mess (see photo) accumulated in the past few months (years?), some of this mess physical, as evidenced in the photo, and some – the time-consuming part – in the form of communications pending, by email or snailmail. I failed to send off one single Christmas card. Even allowing for the decay in card-sending in the digital age, zero is an impressive score. Ten years ago I sent 170. I’m slowly catching up with The Mess, and this update will include multiple entries, with photos going back to the pre-Christmas period – my blog ever in mind.
In the final days of the semester life went on as usual, with work on Dr. Cicero books, visits to my fellow-novelist pal John, the usual subway trips, and Woodstock get-togethers with my august poet friends and co-religionists, Cardinal Kelly, and our Patriarch. At the good Cardinal’s intercession, our Patriarch promoted me by increasing my see to include not only my region of Brooklyn, but my access to it, the New York Thruway, which the Cardinal dubbed The Harriman Corridor. (See photo.) I am now Bishop of Woodstock, Flatbush, and the Harriman Corridor.