More New York week

Again I'm playing catchup. I've been too tired to write in the evening and too busy in the morning. Today, I won't leave the apartment until 11:30.

Wednesday afternoon, I went out to Riverdale. Although I've driven through, returning from work on days when the highway was completely tied up, I never stopped. I went to visit Evy, a member of the stitching group I belonged to in New Jersey. She and two others were our Manhattan contingent. Evy is a musician and a collector of strange and interesting things. She calls her apartment a mini-museum.

 

   

We spent time talking, looking at all the stuff, listening to music. In the evening, Ellen and Pearl, two more members of the "stitch" came to see me. I miss our Sunday evening get-togethers, so thoroughly enjoyed this evening.

Thursday, before meeting Sybille at Grand Central, I went over to the main branch of the New York Public Library to see the Declaration of Independence. I was particularly interested this year after tutoring Abdul to get his citizenship. I'm sure I learned more than he did. Someone should start a program to have all of us "natural born citizens" help immigrants get citizenship. It might make us all smarter and more appreciative of our status.

With a little more time to wait I went to the Transit Museum in Grand Central where they had a wonderful exhibit about art in the subways. For fifty cents I bought a booklet showing pictures of the art in all of the stations. Maybe someday I'll try to see all of it.

Sybille and I had lunch at a lovely Moroccan restaurant then walked through Bryant Park and spent some time listening to the piano player. It's lovely and strange to have a piano in a park.

 

Friday the humidity finally left us and it was a beautiful, sunny day. I went to Chelsea to Printed Matter bookstore (not what I had hoped), then to ET Modern, a gallery opened recently by Edward Tufte, who has published wonderful books on presenting information in graphical form. He has now become a sculptor, and I'm still trying make some sense of what he is doing; sense, that is, in terms of being works of art. Oh, well.

I finally got up to the High Line, an old freight railroad line that has been beautifully converted to a public park. I only walked about four blocks of it; having already walked miles before I got there. But, I will return.

     

My afternoon ended with tea and a long visit with Jacqueline, my photographer friend from Kyoto. She's still photographing Japanese temples and gardens, and I'm still wishing I could go with her.

Comments

[Baileyz]

I am open mouthed, happy, joyful. You are taking us with you to these magic places. Yes, I have seen that park on others blogs, but you bring an immediacy to it I haven't seen. What a wonderful home your friend has. Not only is it red, but it has acres of fun things in it. I would just hate the dusting of it all.

Thank you thank you.....

[Alice]

Hello Ruth. There's a possibility Hubby and I will be in NYC in a couple of weeks to babysit our daughter's cat (!) LONG story while she & SO are traveling. I'm especially enjoying your photos because you show parts of the city we've never seen . . . it'll be interesting where we wind up spending our days if we do come. I just hope my feet and knees hold up as well as you seem to be doing. Does your friend charge for tours? :) Thanks for this one, it was fun.

[Karen]

So cool that you got to see/walk the High Line. I've wanted to do it since I first heard about the project. Thanks for sharing the photos.

There's an interesting-sounding exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History on the polar explorers. If you run out of things to do there (ha!), you might consider checking it out: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/race/