Manuela Hoelterhoff

The Metropolitan Opera opened its season on Monday with Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.”

We’ve been eating out on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem (with everyone else it seems).

A yearlong odyssey into the world of cancer a while ago made me reluctant to devote much time to reading about the illnesses of others.

Time to ponder the fall season I realized as I fed apples to my pigs Hamlette, Venus and Mimi.

“Most people don’t want to jump off cliffs,” said Deborah Borda during a conversation last week.

Pransky stayed home in Vermont with her sitters, possibly listening to Bach while her two humans came to lunch at Bloomberg.

Danzig! How did I forget to include the town of the drumming dwarf in our recent roundup devoted to novels that take us to different cities and times so we can stay safely and cheaply at home?

Ever northward we drift, leaving behind comfortable hangouts on the Upper West Side -- once defined as south of 96th street, but increasingly fluid.

Travel back in time for dinner at Krakow’s castle with Hans Frank, the mass-murdering, Chopin- adoring governor general of most of Poland. Think the thoughts of the emperor and poet Hadrian (“Animula vagula blandula”). Visit Montparnasse, Berlin, London, the Republic of Gilead. These classic novels take you there:

Here’s a cheery fact: Between acts of war and more diabetes, the number of human amputees is expected to grow about 40 percent by 2020.

An intriguing new recording of “Norma” by Cecilia Bartoli unexpectedly sent me careening down memory lane, bumping into ghosts.

There’s no shortage of good restaurants on the Upper West Side. Really.