THE DISAPPEARING CITY

For once, I had some time to kill the other day, so I wound up at the Museum of Natural History, looking for the old Indian canoe in the south entrance hall. It’s just one of those things you expect will always be there if you grow up in the city. I remember peering over the side when I was small to see if any of the 17 plaster warriors inside were wearing P.F. Flyers as my brother claimed (they weren’t). When my own kids were small, I’d take them to see it on rainy days. And, of course, in Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger was savvy enough to use it as a symbol for a child’s anxious yearning Read more