Author: ruhlwrite

When Chubby Icaza opens the door, the sweet scent of baking bread spills out into the street where Tom Cat, which is sheathed in translucent turquoise windows that look like the deep blue sea, is king of the block. The nose doesn’t expect such a thrill so close to the car-clogged 59th Street Bridge. After 23 years, Chubby is used to the mouth-watering aroma. But each time he breathes it in, he breathes a sigh of relief. If it were not for Tom Cat, he wouldn’t be here. Chubby has been…

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With a pair of playful purrers padding at her sensible sandals, Sister Tesa heads to her office. The walls are papered with hundreds of snapshots of children, none of them her own yet all of them hers. As solemnly as a Sunday-morning sermonizer, she recites their names. This is no mere exercise in rote-memorization even though some of their smiles have been frozen in place for nearly three decades. Sister Tesa is the founder and executive director of Hour Children. “If I’m worried about…

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Attilio Poli is standing tall in the asphalt drive of his back yard. He’s gazing at his fig trees and grapevines, but there’s a faraway look in his eyes that takes him all the way to Venice. He hasn’t stepped foot in the city of his birth for nearly a half century. At 93, he thinks about what might have been. Attilio’s a very young 93. “I cannot get my country or my people out of my mind,” he says. “My brothers and sisters are all dead. I’m the only…

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I’d like to tell you that I saw it shining in the light of the moon. That would be more romantic. But it was in the glare of the pre-dawn streetlight that it caught my eye. I was walking my dog on Crescent Street at 5:30 a.m. on trash day, and it was out at the curb with the cans. The boxed gown was at the curb on trash day. I never would have seen it if the lid of the crude cardboard box that enclosed it like a casket hadn’t been lying on the side. At first, I wasn’t sure what…

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It’s been a long time since Yulia Lopshitz has talked about any of this, and it makes her think she’s been to see a shrink. She’s a pianist, and thus far, she’s gotten through every day of her life simply by playing the scales. Her mind on autopilot, she hits the notes by rote, so nothing hurts. She was little more than 5 when she first felt the ebonies and ivories. This was an easy thing to do because her family possessed a piano. It was crammed into the one-room apartment…

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