I am having my morning coffee with Magical Mystery Tour on the turntable. I’m relaxing a bit before heading off to work. My library is open the last two Sundays of every semester for students to study for finals. I am always moved by the hard work and studiossness students put in at crunch time.

I snapped the above photo yesterday from the front steps of the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace. One of the rangers and I stepped out to get lunch at noon and were talking on the way of how interesting it is to work/volunteer in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. It is such a fascinating area and once the center of New York City shopping and leisure life.

In my 15+ years of living in Gotham I never spent much time there. It is not an area that brings in tourists, what with Union Square 5-6 blocks to the south and Times Square 20 blocks north. Of course that is no excuse not to visit the TRB.

If one looks closely at the smaller building there is a painted advertisement for a furrier on the side. It is quiet faded because it has been eastward and getting the morning sunlight for decades now. The best preserved are exposed when a building is torn down uncovering an ad for some long forgotten product or company.