City Lights Summaries

From an Alabama Sousaphone, a Fanfare for the City

In this piece, Andrew is a Sousaphone player in an award winning Alabama High School’s Band. This band was selected to play in the Thanksgiving Macy’s Day parade. The children performed multiple fundraisers just to get to have the opportunity to be in New York City. While driving and having the experiences of Hotels and practicing in a Hotel parking lot they were off to Manhattan. Considering New York’s outrageous traffic the school charter buses were stuck in congestion on their way to lunch. The kids were experiencing the New York City embrace, some of them for the first time. The stars flooded their eyes after seeing the tall buildings and Manhattan Sky Line, while they exited the Lincoln Tunnel. I did like in this story the way it detailed and described the students accounts while trying to get to Manhattan and what it was like to first see Manhattan for kids like Andrew.
Over Asphalt Rivers, the Source of the Three-Dollar Umbrella The next story involves peddlers and their unique way of selling Umbrellas. The Peddlers screaming over all different parts of New York make a profit as it rains. They meet a man named Mr. Korn who supplies them with cheap merchandise of Imperial Umbrellas. The Peddler then sells the umbrellas to people for two dollars if it isn’t raining and three dollars if it is. They make a decent profit after only buying the umbrellas for Seventy-Five cents a pop. The umbrellas in Manhattan pop up and down to cover the New Yorkers from the down pour of rain. I liked in this story the way the peddlers were described. It was interesting to see the author describe there different sounds and sayings while trying to sell umbrellas.
Where Lost Are Found, So Was a Child This selection was actually my favorite. It tells the story of a baby found in a church vestibule. The baby or “Fredy Alfred” stayed calm and refused to cry. The baby was rushed to Brookdale Hospital where he was baptized by Fr. Rosales. After a court ruled the baby into Child Service’s custody; he was handed off to a foster family that wanted to adopt him. The cute part of this story is the babies’ history. “Fredy Alfred” was born on April fool’s Day and baptized during Holy Week. He was lucky to be found and now can possibly live a life of love and fulfillment.
At 1 Degree, a Metropolis Is Also Frozen in Time The particular thing that I liked in this story was the detail of how cold the streets were. In this story it is one degree in a great part of Metropolis. This fallen temperature is leaving people freezing and trying to finish their jobs quickly and efficiently just so they can get in from the cold. The examples given in the story are a garbage man and a Poland Spring delivery guy. They both are quickly shuffling to do what they need to do. While the time whines down it slowly approaches a