During the winter of 1982, the New York City subways broke down frequently. I was living with my husband in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but I noticed that the problems affected the whole system, because I commuted all over the city for my job. I was conducting residencies in the public schools for an artists’ organization. I spent one day of the week at an elementary school in the Bronx and another at an elementary school in Brooklyn. Just after the first of the year, I began a program at a junior high school out in Massapequa, Long Island.

I got up early, especially when I went to Long Island. The apartment was dark. Nervous that I would oversleep, I usually awoke before the clock radio’s alarm and turned it off so as not to wake my husband. He was in graduate school. He stayed up late at night studying and slept in the mornings. After I got out of bed, I made coffee in the cold kitchen and drank it while I dressed by the hall light. I arran