Happy New Year!

On this eve of The Twelfth Day of Christmas and two days before The Epiphany, I wish Miriam Illionis (Miriam I ) — and all the folks on the staff at HT — as well as the HT community of contributors; a blessed, a healthy, and a prosperous new year!
And as I do so, if I may be so bold, I'm asking how you spent your New Year's Eve?
Do you celebrate it with any tradition?
One of the things that I do is to go to Central Park (which is near to where I live in NYC), just before midnight to see a display of fireworks that are shown in honor of a given new year, as well as in honor of a midnight run (half loop) in Central Park.
Although the park is never overly crowded with spectators for the event, this "fanfare" is a tradition for a number of folks in my "hood," which apparently includes a man who lives on the street where I live, and who puts up a star in his window every Christmas.
The star, as it appears in his window, can be seen in the first image accompanying this entry (which was taken by yours truly this past New Year's Eve on my way home from seeing this year's fireworks). He leaves the star up through the new year, removing it after The Feast of the Epiphany.
In any event, my neighbor and editor (who can be seen in the second picture with today's entry) lives a few buildings west of me, and hence, her vantage point of the star (image tree) is on a diagonal but window to window.
However, her vantage point includes more than the star itself, for her apartment faces the street — as does his — and she looks directly into his window just as Jimmy Stewart did in the movie, "Rear Window." But in that case Jimmy Stewart's character looked out his rear window into the rear window of the character played by Raymond Burr.*
But I digress!
For a number of years, on the eve of a given year, my editor has had quite an entertaining experience, "courtesy" of the man who puts up The Star of Wonder.
This is because, according to her, he throws a party on New Year's Eve, a party where the guests take off all their clothes for a number of hours, before putting them back on, and heading outside — close to midnight — in the direction of Central Park, presumably to see the fireworks.
My apartment is on the back of the building where I live so I have not been privy to the comings and goings of the man who owns The Star of Wonder, but the neighbor, in the building where I live (who faces the street) has, and she too, knows of the man's nude New Year's Eve ritual.
Instead of facing the street and The Star of Wonder, I face a high rise building where someone put up an American flag across the windows when the apartment's owner died in the September 11th Terrorist Attacks.**
And the folks who live in that building don't get much entertainment from me other although I think that they appreciate the antics of my visiting birds which they can easily see.
But getting back to this past New Year's Eve, it is the first time that I watched the fireworks while facing CPW (fourth image) instead of going into the park, for it was too cold to go into the park.
CPW is a main "drag" of sorts and it was business as usual: cars, taxis and city buses moving up and down the street, non-plussd by the fireworks that were being displayed. (I have a few photo-ops in place-holders five through seven.)
And this brings me to the conclusion of today's post but not before two of my visiting characters (images eight and nine) join me as I once again a blessed, a healthy, and a prosperous new year!
* "Rear Window" INFO @ http://www.thelastleafgardener.com/search/label/Rear%20Window
** September 11th Attacks any Neighbor @ http://www.thelastleafgardener.com/2011/09/september-eleventh-ten-years-later.html
TLLLG's Editor at Work
This image was featured in "Star of Wonder: Who is counter-cultural? When IS Epiphany?" @ http://www.thelastleafgardener.com/2011/01/star-of-wonder-who-is-counter-cultural_02.html#more
TheLastLeafGardener
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