Spring was terrible this year. Disgustingly hot days scattered through miserable cold and wet ones.<\/p>\n
It was typically miserable this last Monday (30 April) as I approached the Empire State Building walking down 5th. A cold drizzle turned into a cold rain, clearing the sidewalks of tourists only to expose the open air asylum that is the NYC homeless population.<\/p>\n
Before I could enter the CUNY Grad Center one of these patients barred my path. “Should I put this back?” he riddled me, while pointing to his head.<\/p>\n
As I studied his mask of mania I noticed it had been overtaken by worry. He was wearing a NYC monogram cap, obviously just lifted from one of the souvenir shops: the $2.99 tag was still attached, dangling by his ear. Fate had somehow granted the power of reflection to this cat-burglar and he wanted me to absolve him of the responsibility.<\/p>\n
I said “It is up to you what you do, you need to decide,” and left him bewildered as I continued on my way.<\/p>\n
Entering the Grad Center my mind was awash in different ethical responses I did not give. But the bigger question was: Why did I deny knowledge to someone who asked for it?<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is better for him to not know and just hope his momentary worry passes. That would be easier for me if I believed it.<\/p>\n
Really, I’d blind myself before I give out cheap ethical absolutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring was terrible this year. Disgustingly hot days scattered through miserable cold and wet ones. It was typically miserable this last Monday (30 April) as I approached the Empire State Building walking down 5th. A cold drizzle turned into a cold rain, clearing the sidewalks of tourists only to expose the open air asylum that is the NYC homeless population. Before I could enter the CUNY Grad Center one of these patients barred my path. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,323],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nyc","category-pps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6754"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7331,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions\/7331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}