Cheat Sheet

Denizens of the Wall Street know New York is headed for tough times. So it was heartening to find this post, by uber-blogger Jason Kottke, celebrating the city's toughness. Kotkke cites Here is New York, a slim volume by E.B. White. The chunk excerpted here "could well have been written yesterday instead of 1949," and indeed some of E.B. White's passages have a Nostradamus quality. "The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible," writes White. He continues: "I mention these merely to show that New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along…so that every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul." Print out and savor.