My Twitter friend @emoticomma (Barbara Greene) sent out what she called a "shameless plug" for these wonderful collections http://thepoetryofsnaps.tumblr.com/ Now, I may be a little prejudiced, having grown up in the New York Metro area and spent many happy days in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn from childhood on. Mom took me shopping at Macy's and Gimbel's; my dad took me to work with him on lower Broadway and later near the Brooklyn Army Terminal; my grandmother, aunt and cousin all lived in Queens; my best friend lived in Brooklyn Heights for a bit. My first visit to Coney Island was when I was about 6, on a summer day that gave way to a torrential thunderstorm. And so on.

Even with all that familiarity (or maybe because of it), I was stunned at the beauty of the pictures posted at http://thepoetryofsnaps.tumblr.com/ If you've only visited NYC as a tourist, you may not have seen a bittersweet Coney Island winter scene. I was immediately reminded of a vinyl album I was given years ago--Marsha Malamet's touching "Coney Island Winter." (http://bit.ly/hzaBAk) The majesty of the memorials, the intriguing ingenuity of street art, the pulse of it. Barbara Greene has captured something beyond snapshots of New York.

I do not know Boston nearly as well as I do New York, but I also appreciate the fine work of Michael Krigsman (@mkrigsman on Twitter). You can find his Boston photos here http://bit.ly/emfT9L (flickr), but don't stop there. His camera goes with him on his travels, and we benefit from both the photos and his writing (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures ).

I'm lucky to have met Michael in person, and I'm hoping to meet Barbara someday soon. I hope you get to meet them through their wonderful impressions of life in 21st century America. Follow them on Twitter, too. Maybe you'll catch one of Barbara's "virtual tours" or one of Michael's Boston scenes in their tweet stream. In any case, you will not be disappointed.