Good Morning from New York, where it is still threatening to rain, still a little cool, but who cares, it's the city and the pulse is dynamic, and leaping over puddles at street corners is an art you master early on if you live here.
I wake up thinking that you can actually enjoy New York if you moved away from it, so that you've forced a separation between it and you. It's no longer hellish to try to make it to appointments on time, because your appointments are not in this corked up place where "getting there" is definitely not part of the fun. So I'm relaxing my resistance to New York. I want to like it again, in the way that you like much in life when you are way older because you realize perfection is elusive and, as my granddaughter keeps telling me, everyone (and everything) has his or her genius.
Breakfast downstairs again. Am I the only one on the planet that loves eating breakfasts that have some formality to them? You will never catch me munching on a doughnut standing up in the kitchen and grabbing a coffee to go. I need to sit down and take in the world. To set the mood for the day. As they say in yoga-land, to set my intentions.
Today we are to recreate the key moment of our New York adventure of fifty years ago: call it The Ferry Ride. I'll come back to this in a bit. First, I walk over to the subway stop where we meet to ride over to the 9/11 Memorial.
(this sign stands just as you enter Times Square)
The twin towers of the World Trade Center were not completed until 1973 and so in 1972, when my Polish friends visited me in New York, we saw their silhouettes, but we did not visit them. Of course, they were destroyed in 2001. That span of time! So short, really. From 1973 until 2001. I wasn't in New York when they were taken down but of course, everyone of us on this side of the ocean lived and breathed that attack in a profound, life changing way. So we pause here. We must. We walk around both reflective pools. We touch the names unscripted on the stone. So many names...
And now we walk to the the ferry station. A photo was taken fifty years ago of this ferry crossing and of course, recreating that photo is an important element of this journey. There were five of us back in 1972, but only three are taking this ferry ride today. Still, we have someone take that photo, once of youthful zest, now of senior reflection. On the right, you'll see the photo taken then. One of my friends is holding it.
(Let's include the wives: after all, they traveled here for this as well...)
When I was here last time, I visited Ellis Island with Ed. That was moving and I suppose now, following the Trump years it would be really tough to walk through spaces that claimed to give immigrants are fair chance at entry. Back in the early decades of the twentieth century a great chunk of European immigrants traveled through Ellis Island several times. This was certainly true for my parents and grandparents (Like a Swallow describes their attempts to settle in America). Now of course, the place is a museum, nothing more, and we take care of the problems of immigrants by not agreeing on any solution at all. We just fight about it and the masses stay huddled, just not on Ellis Island. Will we someday put up a museum commemorating the next chapter of our country's immigration saga? Maybe at the southern border?
(In the words of Emma Lazarus -- Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... Words chiseled onto a plaque afixed to the pedestal in 1903, after Lazarus had long died. What did they mean? Do we use them to inflate our image of American exceptionalism? Are we still reflecting on such ideals? Were they ever ideals? If you want to set yourself thinking about these issues, you might want to read the Atlantic article about the poem here. It, like all of history, is complicated!)
(brooding sky but at least there's no rain... do you see the Statue of Liberty?))
From the ferry we take that epic walk uptown. You start at the southern tip of Manhattan and you walk as far as your legs can carry you. Wall Street, Chinatown...
(picking up some fruit on Canal Street)
Little Italy, of course. A perfect place to pause for a late lunch. It isn't outstanding food, but it's good enough...
Cannoli from a bakery that claims to be the "king of cannoli..."
SoHo, the Village, all of it.
We split up at Bleeker Street. I send them to Washington Square Park, while I walk a little further into the heart of the Village. I give them very detailed instruction on the subway connection back to their hotel. I hope they make it without issues.
Epic walk indeed. And we only cheated once and hopped on the subway for two stops in the financial district. I mean, all tall office buildings after a while look the same. We saved ourselves for the better stuff ahead.
So, given that we did the Ferry Ride, what else is left on our New York agenda? Well, there is one museum, but too, there are Polish relatives and friends. When someone comes from Poland all the way to New York, they look up people who were once close to them, even if substantial time has passed since that connection held strong. My friends went to grade school with a guy who moved to New Jersey. Too, there is a cousin and she has a husband and a daughter. Seeing these people, these essentially Polish people is on our schedule for tomorrow. But right now, I can only think about getting some rest. Delicious rest with maybe some of the cookies I picked up at the Italian bakery. Sounds good, doesn't it?
