The Wet Coat
On fences, heavy coats, and keeping the light steady through RIOC’s quiet season.
Summer on Roosevelt Island is a soft trick of the light. The ferry leaves a wider wake, the grass leans toward the breeze, and the boardrooms sit empty. Officially, they call it a two-month recess. Unofficially, it’s a time when dust can gather on promises.
I’d like to say I’m at my pier — the one I claimed for myself in that first piece, before the meetings and the transcripts — but I’m looking at a fence. No progress, just the sun catching on chain-link, as if it too is waiting for someone to do something. If that fence were any more stagnant, they’d put it on the board agenda for next year.
The Coat’s Weight
“It’s as if you are visiting someone and they offer you a coat to wear home because it suddenly became cold. The coat is so heavy and oversized that it drags you down and you can barely take a single step. It becomes impossible to be grateful.”
— From a reader’s letter
That coat — I put it on willingly, even eagerly. I knew what the work was; I’m no stranger to long fights. But I didn’t know how waterlogged it would become after months of sitting in meeting rooms where answers are as rare as genuine agreement. I’ve worn lighter coats to funerals. And that’s saying something.
Romanticized Memories, Stark Realities
I’ve lived on this island long enough to romanticize it. In my mind, the promenade was always in bloom, neighbors always waved, and even arguments felt smaller. But memories are clever liars. The past feels gentler because I see less of it at once. The pier I imagined was romantic; the one I got looks like a divorce settlement.
Finding Understanding in Others’ Fire
Watching these meetings, I’ve come to understand David Stone’s fervor. Reading David used to raise my blood pressure; now it just saves me the trouble of making coffee. He writes like he’s holding a match to the curtains — and I say that with love. He was loud where I preferred to be subtle. But now, sitting there, catching the shifts in posture, the averted eyes, the side-glances between board members, I see why his pen burned so hot.
Moments That Added to the Coat
Each story I’ve told since joining Theo has been my way of letting people sit with what I saw — not to chase the past, not to predict the future, but to hold the moment steady.
When The Appointment Drama unfolded, I felt the first real weight in the coat — the knowing that leadership had been decided somewhere else, long before the public room was opened. When the corroded boards in Pier Pressure became my subject, I wasn’t only writing about steel. I was writing about how long something can be neglected before it’s quietly forgotten. One Minute to Speak made me hear the clock differently — every tick the sound of a voice being trimmed. The Bylaw Ambush and the long Shadow of Reform reminded me how hope can be both stubborn and brittle, breaking under the wrong kind of strain. And yes, A Willing Shield was me reckoning with the quiet bravery I’ve seen in a few — people who stepped forward, knowing the blows they’d take.
Hope, Even in the Pause
I don’t pretend to be neutral. I love this island and the people in it. That’s why I’m still here, even in this pause. And while I can smell the squabbling from a distance — you can’t sit in as many rooms as I have without learning to read the weather in people’s shoulders — I have hope. New leadership is coming. With vision, I hope. But vision can only take us so far; the rest needs light.
That’s why Theo and I are here: to keep the coat on, to keep the light steady, and to keep telling the stories worth reading — even if they leave you a little wet, a little heavier, but still standing in the moment, right here, where we are.
The light we shine isn’t mood lighting, darling — it’s the interrogation kind.