Searching for Our Roots

A friend of mine sent me back pictures from Hawaii some time ago, some of them of the incredibly overgrown and tangled above ground roots of some of the trees.

Generally speaking, Manhattan trees just grow right out of the ground around them, but for some reason on East 30th  Street between Lexington and Park Avenue South there are a number of trees with complicated roots which have worked their way above the ground.

There is probably a very simple explanation for this...something blocking the roots underground, most likely...

Also on these blocks are a lot of very old, simple brownstone sort of houses which now are worth a fortune for the kinds of yuppies who invest in the area...30 years ago people did not want the houses much at all ( crime was worse then, especially at night) and of course they were available for a smidgen of what they cost now.

There is also a lack of certain "amenities" like close-by supermarkets and drugstores to these blocks...it is much worse in parts of the Upper East Side though ( HOW do some people up there get their groceries? Do they have lots of items shipped in from outlets like Whole Foods? You can just guess that most of the food flowing into these fancy uptown places is organic, free range ( if not vegan), and probably includes soy milk ( which I now have heard is not really so great for you....although I am sure at some point someone like that Dr. Oz from the Oprah show was pushing soy milk just like he is behind all sorts of other trendy diet developments.)

Anyway, I took some pix of similar roots a while back but the lighting was not very good and I said then I would come back again and get some better photos...