Today wraps up my 76th birthday celebration; Maria is taking me on the Hudson Park canal boat, a 90-minute ride down the famous canals built long ago to help ship goods back and forth from New York and Canada. I just finished Shark Heart, A Love Story, by Emily Habeck.

I was up most of the night; it is a beautiful book, one of the best I’ve ever read.

I will rest my head and then pick up where I left off on the latest Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto, a novel about Harlem. Also an excellent book; I’ll finish it by tomorrow.

I can’t say enough about the Habeck novel, her first. I’ll be feeling it and thinking about it for a long time.

Maria has been loving and sweet about my birthday, and I’m okay being 76, but I don’t want to dwell on it. Life goes on. And on.