Sunny February Day

58 degrees on February 27

New York–part 2

As I finally looked through our pictures, a couple that Doug did not include earlier this week stood out to me.  Somehow I thought the Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink would be much bigger as would that gold statue that is sometimes on TV. 

The Statue of Liberty is much bigger than I expected.  I had forgotten that it sat on a gigantic pedestel as well. 

It is also much more detailed than I expcted.  You can see folds in the robe, the date on the book and lots of other details. 

Ellis Island was very interesting. Above is the main hall where immigrants were processed.  Part of the building is set up to demonstrate the process immigrants (but only the “steerage” passengers – the first and second class passengers were processed on board their ship and immediately free to go) went through on their arrival. 

The rest of the museum had information about where people came from and went once they arrived.

Bremerhaven was a popular point of departure for Europeans.  This poster in German warned single women to be sure of their employer before they left for America or terrible things could happen. 

Even back then, everything was bigger in Texas. States did some serious advertising to get immigrants to settle in their country.  How times have changed…. 

We were surprised to see this picture of Croatian Hall in South St Paul at Ellis Island.  James Clark’s house is right across from the still-standing building. 

And where did all the Norwegians go…. Minnesota!!

A view of the Statue of Liberty from the Central Hall at Ellis Island.

On Sunday, we and half the population of Manhattan and what seemed like every visitor on the island decided to go to the American Museum of Natural History.  This was a large and sprawling museum. 

It was hard to decide if the taxidermied animals were cute or creepy… or both. 

We and everyone else enjoyed the impressive dinosaur displays. 

A Few of Our Fabulous Photos

We’ll probably write some more blog entries about more specifics but here are some snapshots from the weekend we are tentatively calling “It Is Not Supposed To Be This Cold Here”. We stayed at the midtown Sheraton, an 1800 room monster of a hotel. It was better than expected after reading some of the reviews online. We were on the 33rd floor which might be higher than we’ve ever slept in a building before.

Yes, this is a big bowl of Raamen at a restaurant that was described as having the best Raamen in New York City. It was good and the staff yelled IRASHAIMASE! at us when we entered just like they do in Japanese restaurants in Japan.

Times Square is not a cute urban square but instead the intersection of 7th Avenue and Broadway at an angle. the “square” is about 12 blocks long and lit up my more neon than would be considered tasteful outside of Shinjuku in Tokyo. Still, it was awesome. Here we are standing on a set of bleacher / risers intended for people to sit and look at the square they’ve heard about their entire lives and watched every New Year’s Eve on ABC. If you look closely, you can see The Ball in the dropped position above the 2016.

30 Rockefeller Center: the place where our national news at 530pm comes from, the origin of Al Roker’s corny jokes, the setting of my favorite Tina Fey sit com. We only regret that neither Jimmy Falon nor Seth Meyers were taping the Friday night we were there. Saturday Night Live happened on Saturday night but those tickets are only available in August and we were busy Saturday night anyway. We did not run into Lester Holt or Tom Brokaw on special assignment. I think we saw Susan Sarandon in Times Square. Sue thinks it was her, too.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral might be the largest Catholic Cathedral in America. They must have renovated recently because the entire place inside and out seemed brand new.

Our hotel was at the corner of 7th Avenue and 53rd Street about five blocks from Times Square and five blocks from Central Park. We had a view of many skyscrapers and a tiny sliver of the George Washington Bridge.

It was nice of them to finish building The Freedom Tower, aka One World Trade in time for us to visit. This was Sue’s first visit to New York City and my second (the first was in 1988). One World Trade is the tallest building in the western hemisphere. You don’t notice it being that tall when you are standing next to it but here at the Statue of Liberty it certainly looks tall. Now that we are each 45 (not 46, Mom) it is amazing to think that 9/11 happened one third of our life ago. It doesn’t seem like that long ago.

On Friday night we (and about 62,000 other tourists and locals) took advantage of the Free Fridays at the Museum of Modern Art where we saw Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night. (Normally, admission is $25). Despite it being so crowded, we are glad we went. We had to remind ourselves that we were in New York City. Because of the panoply of languages being spoken, it felt like we were surely in Paris, Berlin, or Milan. New York sure has the international tourist draw.

Happy Birthday, l Susan!

Sue is again as old as I am. I picked up some Dickey’s BBQ for her birthday last night.

Did I mention the cold? It was record cold and windy. We could not do the typical wander around and get lost in a neighborhood for fear of freezing to death. Seriously, it was cold. Sue liked how virtually no one tried to be fashionable. Everyone had on tons of mismatching layers and ugly hoods, boots, and scarves. The coldest moment was walking to dinner at a Thai restaurant on Saturday night. We wanted to take a cab but just like when it rains, when it’s cold, everyone wants a cab and the line out front of our hotel was too long.

This is me in the 66th Street – Lincoln Center subway station after the amazing performance of The King and I. Note the tile work – most of the subway stations had vintage tile work like this. If I lived in NY I would take pictures of all of the subway signs. On the same night and at the same time at Lincoln Center, the New York Phil was playing Mahler’s 6th Symphony, the Met Opera was performing Manon Lescat, and there was a very odd fashion show or something going on in the central courtyard. There were several hundred people dressed in flashy uniforms stomping around and really tall supermodels wearing fur leg warmers and big hats. I don’t know what it was and I can’t believe we didn’t take a picture.

 

Ravel and Nigel and Tailwheel (not in the picture)

We went to Ground Zero on Saturday morning in the cold and wind. The former footprints of the two World Trade Center towers are now deep reflecting pool fountains. All of the names of the 3000 or so people who died that day are on the railings of the pools. There were some headings like “chaplain” and “Fire House 113” etc. It is a nice memorial. I’m glad they didn’t build the new tower on top of this site. We did not visit the underground 9/11 museum. Another time.

The Freedom Tower has some vacancies still. . .some companies are probably balking at the memory of the site or maybe just the incredibly high rents.

Do you recognize this scene from the movies and TV? Grand Central Station.

 

Trinity Church is a few blocks form the World Trade Center site. We found Alexander Hamilton and his wife Eliza’s tombstones in the graveyard. The Hamilton biography that I am reading was sitting on the shelf in the gift shop.

 

Did you know the Statue of Liberty is on an island that is technically in New Jersey? She faces out toward the harbor opening where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge connects Brooklyn with Staten Island. Imagine arriving at Ellis Island as an immigrant and seeing lady liberty welcoming you. She’s been there since 1886.

Uncle TW

Uncle Tailwheel travels with his own basket and these guys have taken it over in the first 6 hours of his stay.

Winter Cat

Our winter cat, Tailwheel has arrived.

SuperSunday

Today was Youth Sunday at church.  A few months ago, I mentioned my arrangement of Earth and All Stars to our organist Kris.  She decided to have the Youth Orchestra play it today.  It was very fun to hear something I wrote played by lots of great kids we know. 

It was especially to see our Godson Ben playing trombone in the Youth Orchestra.  He was dressed very appropriately for a trombone player at a gig – shirt, tie, dress pants and Chuck Taylors.  Trombone players have the best sense of humor.  That’s 8th Grade Ben who is already considerably taller than me. 

The cats enjoy watching the snow and I think they are going to be busy.  We’re supposed to get some tonight to go along with the wicked wind we already have. Hopefully this won’t settle over NYC for the weekend. 

As I’m watching the Super Bowl, I’m thinking about our friends who arrived home from Tanzania this afternoon.  We also arrived home on Super Bowl Sunday and I can vividly remember the pure exhaustion we felt.  I can’t wait to hear their stories!

Snow!

The Snow Man

and the Supervisor.

We were dismissed an hour early today.  I think this is only the 2nd time in 17 years that it’s happened.  Thankfully neither of us has to go anywhere tonight. 

Reading for Rhymes, Imagining Immigrants, Getting the Gospel

OK, so I haven’t posted a blog entry in a while. I hope this one works because we’ve had some trouble getting the publisher thing to publish them. Here’s Ravel in classic cat, Volkswagen Beetle pose complete with front and rear fenders. He is not allowed on the table but in his defense, he was watching neighbor Colin’s dog frolic freely in the side yard.

I have been listening to and reading excessively about the new Broadway musical, Hamilton. This is not the first musical where I have listened to the entire soundtrack before ever seeing the show live. Hamilton opened on Broadway in August of 2015. I guarantee it will win several 2016 Tony awards.  It is sold out well into next summer so there was never a chance that Sue and I would see it in a few weeks when we’ll be in New York.  Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, book writer, and title character (in the photo) is a highly skilled rapper. The show is a ‘rap/hip-hop musical’ but to me it has a huge range of musical styles and quite frankly just sounds like good music regardless of the labels people try to put on it.  Apparently the cast is very ethnically diverse representing what America looks like today even though the costumes are from the 1780.

I am reading the biography of Hamilton that the musical is based on by Ron Chernow. So far I have learned what life was like for a person living in the Dutch West Indies in the 1750s. Alexander Hamilton’s parents were of French and Scottish origin and he was born on a tropical Dutch Island. He came to America to study at university but joined the Americans in fighting the British for American independence. Imagine that: a founding father of our country was an immigrant! Here’s a good line from one of the songs: “Immigrants. We get the job done.”

 

In the same way that I am reading a Hamilton biography looking for the words that inspired Miranda to compose Hamilton, I am reading our new Saint John’s Gospels Bible looking for the words that made their way into Stephan Schwarz’s Godspell.

Band concert tonight!