The New York day was jammed – with heat, with tourists, with smells, and with action. Three museums, two plays, a movie, and a partridge…
Best of all though was walking the streets and letting New York happen.
Seeing “Skeleton Crew” by Dominique Morrisseau was brilliant enough in itself-so assuredly written and acted, characters thick with their (extra)ordinary struggles that transcend when put in Detroit in 2008. The genuine acknowledgement of the craft at its peak with sustained applause through two curtain calls. The wonder of discovering a gloriously talented playwright.
After, I had nowhere to be fast or slow. As I strolled out the door onto the sweltering street, I smiled at a woman sitting on her stoop (Atlantic is on a residential street in Chelsea), and she smiled.
A tiny women, all bent over, asked, “so how was it?”
“Excellent”…”so good,” a young man and I answered together.
“I’ll get my ticket,” she said tottering toward the theater.
The young man, so pretty and sweet and gay and put together, and I compared notes, admiring the playwright, whom he worked with when he first moved to the City. Turns out he’s 39, although he looked 23 at most, and an actor. Of course. We chatted amiably until parting for the next adventure.
I turned the corner, scanning for Blossom where I was planning to have a vegan burger with the onion ring and vegan bacon inside–crunchy and yummy by the way. I stopped in front of a movie theater playing “Love and Friendship.”
Nothing feels so good as the cinema on a really beastly day. Okay, I thought, I’ll just see what time it’s playing.
In 30 minutes. So I got a ticket, now involving selecting an exact seat.
“You have such beautiful diction,” commented the ticket sales woman.
“I narrate for the blind.”
“See there? I’m so smart. I just at knew it,” she said proudly, handing over my ticket as she peered over her cheaters with a smile.
I smiled right back, then went outside to find Blossom. The girl working as a greeter at the entrance to the theater looked with me across the street. “I don’t know it,” she mourned, throwing her hands up in resignation.
I went across the street anyway in search and found its tiny storefront camouflaged behind the only tree on the block.
After my burger, I found the same girl stationed by the door, and she seemed delighted I came back to report to her. We shared a moment about that tree.
The movie based on Jane Austen’s Lady Susan promised to be her most biting, with its true antiheroine. But alas it was unfinished, and the movie feels the same. Its sour cynicism is enormously amusing though.
After, even though the evening was still oppressively hot, I decided to walk the 20 blocks to the Broadway theater. Still in Chelsea, virtually everyone responded to my sparkly glasses and goofy grim with a smile right back. The tall, slim young man waiting for the 8th Ave bus, the bagel peddler, the barista selling iced, cold brew coffee.
My first sip exploded like a crunched, toasted coffee bean in my mouth, round, smooth, and strong. Was anything ever so delicious?
Of course, entering the Penn Station area, then Times Square, sobered me up fast, and I got back to people watching with my game face on. The two girls, all brown flesh and swagger, in their rainbow-colored, twisted balloon crowns. The three sailor boys in their Navy whites. Wait! One was a girl, her blonde hair braided and tucked under her cocked cap, and her thin, wire-rimmed glasses just cloaking her Times-Square-neon blue eyes. The long, sweaty lines of theater goers waiting for that first whoosh of theater-cold air and relief.
Summer in New York can be horrible, but its neighborhoods and people never are. The best part of any day.
Wonderful exhibits. I was captured by the shadows, creating new works of art.
Moholy-Nagy, Twisted Planes, plexiglass and steel, 1946 at the Guggenheim
Hellenistic Wrestlers at the Met
Zeus’ head and fist at the Met
Greek theatrical masks at the Met
We stopped at
We poked in a few stores, and there was kitsch galore. Lots of nesting dolls, although even I couldn’t resist this one, with its bottle of vodka hidden inside, for $7. Now what do I do with that vodka?
Tim Lowry, from that period of the unpleasantness with King George, showed us what any Southern gentleman wore in his day. The tricorn hat started out as a broad brimmed hat to protect from the sum. But as soldiers, the barrel of their guns would keep hitting the brim. A clever American innovated the pragmatic style of cocking the brim, and the tricorn was born.
It’s 1887, and Lizzie Wills has offered to take us through the house. Miss Lizzie is a maid in the 
Lizzie seemed much more interested in telling stories than complaining about her tiny room off the servants’ stairwell, the four flights she regularly had to run up and down, the 12 fireplaces she had to stoke, or the 7 bathrooms that needed cleaning.
te geometric patterns, which may reference Islamic influences.
We first met in the art history building where refreshments were in a room that resembled a little, red schoolhouse, only really the little, red-chair school room.
Special thanks to 
Gothic and witty? Not two words that usually go together. Unless you’re thinking of 
Nelly Dean by Alison Case is my least favorite of the three, perhaps because Wuthering Heights is my least favorite Bronte novel.
It sparkles with metallic thread in the embroidery and the golden material accentuates the Greek Revival fronds, so fashionable in all the decorative arts. Though a brighter palette, the same theme is used in this beaded bag that reads Hartford Conn 1833 and was inscribed with Almira H. White’s name. No German import for her!
Mrs. Gowdy was one of 60 deaths in the house between 1907 and 1917. Hmmm. Not all her victims were men. She convinced widows to leave their estates to her. Talk about buyer-beware!
ries then paid for her to return to the US, to study at Oberlin, a college that accepted blacks. Sara Margu was 14 years old. It was 1844. Although it wasn’t all peaches and cream, despite the liberal stance, she did learn and became the first black to graduate.
She has collaborated with the 
They break free of bonds. They remind us to breathe.
