Fall In Manhattan

I always thought that the Native Americans, had they actually sold the island of Manhattan for a bag of glass beads, as a somewhat misleading saga has it, would have made the better deal. Why inhabit a place with the most absurd climate throughout the year, including heat waves as late as September? And it is not as if the city and its inhabitants coped well with all that. I was raised in the mountains, where three feet of snow in a couple of hours hardly impress anybody. Here, three inches shut the city down. So do two hours of heavy rain. I remember spring last year, when there was a snow storm one day, and five days later it was so hot and humid that one could barely walk down the sidewalk even on the shadowy side of the street, gasping for air… I guess it does not help that the entire island is more or less sealed off with asphalt and concrete, and that people apparently would miss something if the engines of cars and buses didn’t run relentlessly all the time, even when the driver is just taking a nap in a parking lot…