The Diary of Anne Ku

10 July 2000 Monday

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

E.B. White"s Here Is New York. He wrote:

There are roughly three New Yorks.

There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable.

Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night.

Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

Of these three cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destinations, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts,and its incomparable achievement. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give its solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

The above is only a paragraph which I translated into Chinese and published in the "How-to Section" column of the Taipei Student's English Digest, a monthly for college students. Each month (during 1957-1964) I was responsible for this column, the content of which was all selected from essays by noted writers. I received 20 NT for what I did each month, and later the rewards rose. In 1964 it increased to 200 NT. You could see the inflation in those years. Today, when talking about New York, people will mention Elwyn Brooks White's long essay carried by Holiday magazine in 1948. He also wrote for New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. All my column content was later published in book form (three books). I still have that long essay on New York. Maybe someday you could read it.    DAD

yesterday

tomorrow

20 August 2000

I had jotted down my thoughts of the day during my travels. Now that I've FINALLY unpacked and cleaned up my room, I found these notes. So I will now "back-fill" my on-line diary.

This entry is from my father - who was reading my account of New York.