That afternoon at the Red Hook Terminal, Orff, in a long black jacket and sneakers with fluorescent yellow laces, was inspecting a mollusk setting tank belonging to the Billion Oyster Project, a nonprofit that aims to reintroduce the bivalve, in vast quantities, to the waterways of New York City—oysters being a critical part of her coastal-infrastructure plans. Correctly deployed, oysters can form dense reefs that slow the movement of water and mitigate the impact of storm surges. The Red Hook terminal is situated where the East River feeds into the Upper Bay, which was once a prime habitat for oysters; they could grow to weigh more than a pound apiece and fill an entire dinner plate. But, in the past century and a half, extensive river excavation, industrial pollution, and overharvesting have destroyed nearly every oyster colony in the New York Harbor region.
The Billion Oyster Project has retrofitted four beige nine-thousand-gallon shipping containers into oyster tanks. They look a little like back-yard aboveground swimming pools, complete with blue plastic interiors, and are connected to the harbor through PVC hoses and powerful water pumps. On Governors Island, several hundred yards away, project staffers and volunteers build wire cages, or gabions, filled with cleaned oyster shells. Then, in a cavernous warehouse at the Red Hook Terminal, the gabions are loaded into the salt-water-filled tanks. Next, oyster larvae are released into each tank, starting a process called “setting.” After about a week, the shell-anchored larvae, or “spat,” are transported to the restoration site and placed underwater, where they will spend their adult lives.
Good news: the embarrassment rarely lasts long. What’s left when it fades is just a useful term.
The first time in someone else’s home is the hardest. The scents are always different. I never know where to step. And of course the bathroom’s hardly ever in the same place, but if this virus has shown us nothing else it’s that people can get used to anything. The first few months, I didn’t know to ask for head counts. Or masks. Or any of the other things I check in on now. Didn’t even prod about test results, and of course we were months away from a vaccine — I just assumed that my customers weren’t sick because they always made sure I wasn’t either. And these were the money Zip Codes: River Oaks, West U, Montrose.
Stupidity.
Among the many remarkable things about Stephen King is that he has yet to run out of ideas. Or put another way: He’s very good at finding new ways to explore themes that have interested him his entire career.
When Hill first goes blind, he has to listen to books one at a time on a heavy, clunky tape player. By the end of his memoir, he can put every book he owns — and all his music, too — into a device the size of a deck of cards. His world got bigger as it got smaller. And as he says goodbye, despite all his flaws, you root for him to hold on to the little bit of joy he’s found — the colors in his life, for once, sharp and bright.
I want to ask Jia
Tolentino to ask
me to ask her