More images of NYC. Got a photo of a woman with a no-nonsense pony tail like a dry water-color brush, reminding me of the students at San Jose State.

At the Met you’re allowed to take photos as long as you don’t use flash, and with the fast digital cams, you can get some nice things, like this detail of a van Gogh. I love what he does with his brush strokes. I always think of the “crazy-eight” motions that a dog makes with his muzzle when he's holding onto a piece of meat or a toy, shaking it in figure-eight patterns, then think of Van Gogh holding a brush in his mouth and doing crazy-eights to get his special texture.

Our last night there, John Oakes held a party on an old fire boat that’s berthed near Chelsea Piers. We sailed all around the lower tip of Manhattan. My pal and fellow writer Paul DiFilippo was aboard. Paul was in the canonical cyberpunk anthology Miror Shades and developed the “ribofunk” style of biology-based SF that I used for Frek and the Elixir. Speaking of Frek, after meeting with my editors, I think my next novel will be a sequel, starring, again, Frek and Renata.

The Staten Island ferry went past, illuminated, like the great ship glimpsed in Amarcord. “E la nave va.”

I miss my granddaughter already! Here’s a picture from when she was maybe four days old, starting to really look around and fasten on things with her eyes. Babies develop so rapidly that every day is different. Imagine if you kept that up for your whole life!