Recently, a long year after it was hit by a brutal wave of coronavirus cases, followed by widespread closures of its museums, theatres, concert halls and other cultural centers, New York returned to its old high-spirited, brash self as the metropolis sans pareil in America.
Now with the coast clear, we get to rediscover why there’s something in the air of the city that never sleeps, as the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Bauvoir once put it, “that makes sleep useless”.
On a Metroliner, New York is but a short train ride from Washington, my hometown for the last 46 years. And when I got there last week, my destination was a granite building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that housed the New-York Historical Society, which for decades had presented well-researched exhibitions on a variety of topics and periods in American history.