Walking out of the building that houses NYU Stern, I noticed the world clock above the revolving doors displaying the current time at prominent locations around the world. Tokyo, LA, New York, London, Munich, and Mumbai. The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that it was 10:30 in Mumbai and midnight here in NYC. The second question that came to mind was, where the heck is Mumbai? Well, for those of you, like me, who have been under a rock for the last eight years, in 1997 the city of Bombay was official renamed to Mumbai by an act of the Parliament. I've also noticed in the past year or so that people are still fond of referring to a place called Czechoslovakia. It's two countries now, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The Gates opened yesterday in Central Park. Bright swaths of color cascaded across the denuded landscape, their flowing shapes contrasting with the ridged winter dryness. What a marvel of imagination to throw color on this charcoal draw February! How much time, money, and effort was expended to erect these thousands of portals for the public to pass through and ponder the importance of? This is perhaps all that was important about it, that it could be accomplished, that it was significant, if ephemeral. The next time I visit here I will remember these tangerine gates, like a memory or a premonition of spring, aloft on the wind, one moment transparently here, the next replaced by the gray sky.