Literary Legend E.B. White's "Here is New York" Speaks Eloquently to NYC's Past, Present & Future

E. B. White (b Amer 1899-1985) is one of America's most distinguished writers of the 20th C.  White's writing has earned every prestigious literary award.  These awards include a Pulitzer Prize, an Amer. Acad. of Arts & Letters Honor and the National Medal for Literature.  President John Kennedy bestowed White the Meal of Freedom in 1963.  White's writing is astutely observational & companionably, conversational.  Needless to say, I regard his brilliant writing with the utmost esteem.  "Here is New York" is an astute essay that paints New York's past; its people, places & pervading tones with an undulating patina. His clever candor in dissecting the metropolis' population into 3 groups is humorous & haughty.  I concur with White's assessment that the heart & pulse of the city comes from those who chose the city as their home with a passion to succeed in their aspirations,  and aim to make the city their home.  Those born here are seen as fortunate by the luck of their birth.  The   upper east siders alluded to as jaded & shrouded behind their inherited wealth.  The milieu of commuters are scorned for taking what the city provides them in income only to retreat to their strewn suburbia.  These commuters enter & exist the city without taking in all the allure & mystique  waiting around every corner in the multitudes of uniquely defined neighborhood.  Not everything is portrayed from behind rosy glasses.  In fact, the grunge, poverty and olfactory offenses are dutifully noted.  So too are glimpses of budding romances & ubiquitous parades that pummel the city relentlessly.  Nonetheless, there is an unmitigated, self-congratulatory pride for all who chose to reside in the most remarkable & indomitable city in the world.  White believes it essential for NYC to solidify.  "In New York smolders every race problem there is, but the noticeable thing is not the problem but the inviolate truce. The city has to be tolerant, otherwise it would explode in a radioactive cloud of hate and rancor and bigotry."  E.B. White's profound essay written in 1948 is disturbingly prophetic.  "The city at last perfectly illustrates both the universal dilemma and the general solution, this riddle in steel and stone is at once the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence, of racial brotherhood, the lofty target scraping the skies and meeting the destroying planes halfway, home of all people and all nations, capital of everything, housing the deliberations by which the planes are to be stayed and their errand forestalled."