As we flew into New York City last week, skimming across rooftops as we landed at LaGuardia, I couldn’t help but wonder why Manhattan hasn’t long ago sunk beneath the waves. I suppose many of the world’s coastal cities appear much the same, including Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore — islands that appear top heavy with humanity. It has been 15 years since I ventured forth to America’s throbbing financial heart. Then, the mood was still soured by September 11, 2001, and a failure to agree on a replacement for the Twin Towers, coupled with the recent bummer of the Great Recession. Arrogance was in short supply, despite the hopeful election of the nation’s first black president.

The city’s swagger has returned. If self-confidence were a drug, most of New York’s residents would be headed to rehab. A century ago, Winston Churchill stepped off the curb after looking the wrong way — forgetting Americans drove on the right side of the street — and was whacked by a car. Today, you have to beware electric mopeds zipping silently along newly painted bike lanes. At times it felt like half the workforce was delivering something to the other half — meals, packages, documents and liquor. Within a single day you could hear a dozen languages being spoken among this largely immigrant labor brigade — half of their dialects unrecognizable to me, as our former president is prone to claim. None, however, appeared to be snatching American jobs away.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

We arrived the afternoon of the vice-presidential debate scheduled at the CBS building a few blocks from our hotel. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz arrived in a slickly painted blue and white Harris-Walz bus, while Trump supporters circled the block in flag-bedecked, MAGA-adorned 4-wheelersblasting music and blaring their horns. Don Stanton, who recently chaired the Colorado Transportation Commission, emailed me a notice the bipartisan National Defense Leaders organization, (more than 200 Democrats and Republicans), which has endorsed Harris, was holding a watch party in Soho. The work/live loft on the top floor of a 200-year-old building had both a fencing alley and a massive boxing bag. Appropriate, I suppose, for a national defense discussion.

Expecting to meet several of the 4-star admirals and generals who signed the Harris letter, I was surprised to discover the gathering attracted mostly Generation Z defense experts — many in a position of exile from their careers. Doubtless, several lust for a return to national security assignments within the Beltway. Except for an initial question regarding whether we should expect Israelis to strike against the Iranian nuclear program, foreign affairs and national defense received short shrift during the debate. The biggest surprise was how often Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance expressed his agreement and approval of positions expressed by Gov. Walz together with appeals to restore voter trust in government. His frequent prevarications drew groans from the room, but it sounds like there might be some effort to develop a national childcare program whomever wins.

Traveling in Manhattan has become exceedingly expensive. Uber may have reduced fares in its first few years, but for short trips we found cabs are actually cheaper. Our real purpose in visiting New York was to catch the off-Broadway opening of “Distant Thunder,” a new American musical with Colorado roots. The choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who graduated from Arapahoe High School, and her son, Shaun, developed the show for a launch in Oklahoma City during the spring of 2020. That production was cancelled because of COVID and then received a brief run in 2022. Lynne may be best known for her Tony nominated work for “Swing” and the movie, “Footloose”, while Shaun has appeared on Broadway in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s, “In The Heights”, and headlined with the touring company of “Jersey Boys.” Miranda graciously attended the opening-night performance.

Shaun Taylor-Corbett is half Blackfeet Indian through his father and the Distant Thunder story is semi-autobiographical. He first visited his family’s Montana reservation when he was 15 and has since established strengthening bonds with his relatives there, several of whom also attended the opening. The fictional storyline features a successful Chicago attorney who returns to the reservation for the first time to negotiate a complicated land transfer and development deal. He meets his childhood sweetheart who now runs the reservation school located on the affected property. A little romance, a little conflict, some “fancy dancing” and father-son healing, accompanied by an arresting score and at least one potentially hit song, “Hold On”, may be enough to make the leap to a Broadway booking. That’s the hope.

Native American stories rarely make it onto the stage, but I can see this script reaching indigenous schools across the country. There are few musicals which provide a storyline that allows Indian kids to see their lives represented. I can imagine regional theaters in the American west, including our own Denver Center for the Performing Arts, taking a look at this musical as well. Years ago, “Quilters” was developed here, and it has become a staple production at schools across the country. We enjoyed a nightcap at the New York Harvard Club, an entire building with “Rooms where it happens.”

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.