Carl Swanson asked me about my move to the city:
[CS:] I loved the guy who wrote in to your blog saying that you have to change your expectations when you live here—its not a customer-service experience like most suburbanized cities are. There’s something nearly theological about that idea—God’s will is the inchoate Manhattan you must just let happen.
[AS:] Manhattan has nothing to do with God. It is, in some ways, a spectacular rejection of Christian values—specifically in its worship of money, fame, and success—but mainly money. I really don’t want to submit to that. But what I am learning to submit to is letting the city teach me how to live in it, rather than trying to wrestle New York City into my rural-suburban mind-set.
The entire "New York Shitty/Not So Shitty" thread is here.
(Photo: Parts of the spire for the Freedom Tower make their way on a barge from Port Newark to lower Manhattan, where they will be unloaded and installed on top of the Freedom Tower starting on December 11, 2012. The barge is carrying nine pieces of steel that will eventually top off One World Trade Center at a symbolic 1,776 feet, becoming the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. By Chris Pedota-Pool/Getty Images)
The Dish 