New York City!

Three beautiful days with my daughter and granddaughter! Arriving Friday afternoon, October 7, I headed up Fifth Avenue to see an exhibit at this museum before Lilli and Violet arrived that evening. New York at Its Core presented four defining characteristics of the city: Money, Diversity, Density, and Creativity. With enough money and enough people with all kinds of talent and energy, New York has been able to overcome stiff challenges–war, bankruptcy, terrorism–and has continued to flourish. A narrative history unfolds in this album of 73 photos I took at the exhibit. They relate how a settlement of only 2000 people in 1609 grew into the huge metropolis of more than 8 million it is today.

Saturday morning we toured the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side and learned about real people who had creativity, but little money. Willing to live close together and get along with people of different backgrounds, they contributed to New York’s constant productivity. With a well-informed guide, eleven of us toured a small apartment where a Jewish family had lived in the early 1950s, followed by a Puerto Rican family a few years later. I was surprised to see many familiar details– the same light fixture and puzzle map of the US I had in Texas, the same jar of Mentholatum and bottle of Halo shampoo, the same gas range and potholders. Just being there helped us to understand more about what it was like to be an immigrant in the City.

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From the Tenement Museum, we enjoyed walking through China Town, where we met friends from DC for lunch at the Golden Unicorn. Kim and Lilli attended graduate architecture school together; Rik works for Motley Fool. Leaving their two children with grandparents, they were in town for the New Yorker Festival.

Rik, Kim, Violet, Lilli

We saw new views of the city in Chinatown.

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Fortified by mu shu pork and Peking duck, we made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked all the way across with thousands of others, hearing many languages and thinking of John Augustus Roebling, the engineer who designed and built the bridge. The Bridge was the subject of Lilli’s “daily talk” in sixth grade. One of my book clubs will soon discuss The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Emerson Wood about Roebling’s son, Washington, and his wife, Emily, who completed the bridge after John Roebling died in 1869. I want our dear friends, the Friedrichs, whom we saw in Berlin, to know how much we Americans appreciate Germay sending us this gifted engineer from Mühlhausen.

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From Brooklyn, we took a subway across Manhattan to the Little Island in Hudson River Park to hear a free concert by a good singer and her band. We listened and relaxed, then explored, finding more new views of the city.

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In the evening we attended Weightless, a musical written and performed by the Kilbanes, Joe Simmons’ friend’s daughter and her husband, at the WP Theater. Combining Indie Rock with mythological sisters Procne and Philmela, they showed how important it is for women’s voices to be heard. The energetic music and choreography pulled us all into the show. The goddess Iris eventually transformed the characters into birds, so that they could soar without being weighed down with all their troubles. The powerful story kept me wide awake even after seven miles of walking that day. Questions about belief and goddesses kept me awake even longer that night. Alas, we just missed meeting Laurie, Joe’s good friend, who was there that night. I hope we’ll have another chance soon. Joe, please pass on our congratulations to the Kilbanes for a terrific show.

Sunday morning we took a ferry to Liberty Island in the Hudson River. What a wonderful gift from the people of France! I want our dear friends, the LePechon Family, whom we saw last summer, to know that we all appreciate this work of art, conceived by Édouard de Laboulaye and designed  by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. The Statue was a gift from the people of France to celebrate the end of our Civil War and the emancipation of formerly enslaved people.

A book by Dave Eggers we had seen at the Tenement Museum tipped us off to look closer. Sure enough, we found that Liberty’s right heel is raised. She is still on the move for Liberty and Justice for all.

During a long wait for the ferry back to the City, I met two interesting families.  A grandmother from Austin TX was also there with her daughter and granddaughter. The granddaughter was younger than Violet, but they knew of the schools my grandsons attend. When I heard German, I introduced myself to a couple, both professors at the University of Heidelberg, and their 18-month-old daughter. The man, a professor of computer science, spoke warmly of the University of Dresden, where my godson Jasper is a computer science student. It was their first time in the City and my umpteenth; we all agreed that we loved seeing the Statue of Liberty up close.

On the train back to our hotel, I met Rosanna from New Jersey, who told me about meeting her brothers and her son on Governor’s Island that afternoon. They all live not far from NYC and choose different places to meet every month or so. She made it sound so interesting that I put it on my list for next time.

Broadway on Sunday night:  SIX, a musical about the six wives of Henry VIII of England. Remember their fates? Died, Beheaded, Died; Died, Beheaded, Survived. We were late; we missed the first two wives. It was VERY LOUD. Like Weightless, it was about the importance of women’s voices, but not nearly as thoughtful. The audience, though, seemed to love it.

My friend Allene and her cousins, who were in NYC just before us, saw Tom Stoppard’s play, Leopoldstadt and said it was superb. Next time! See an excellent interview with Stoppard on the  10-17-22NewsHour, just after 46:12 minutes into this video.

Monday morning we had a leisurely breakfast at Westway Diner, which  posted a claim to be the birthplace of Seinfeld (another example of creativity). Then we walked and gawked around Times Square. There was another exhibit at the Ford Foundation across town that I really wanted to see, but it was time to return to Newark NJ to catch my flight back to Florida. Indisposable, an exhibit to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, was curated by Allene and Jim’s daughter, Jessica Cooley. It was originally scheduled for summer 2020, but delayed until now. Fortunately, a complete video is available.

It was a blessing to see New York with Lilli and Violet and feel the presence of many friends we hold dear. This image from the October 10 New York Times conveys a representative slice of New York: Money,  Diversity, Density, and Creativity–the core of this great city.

Comment from Beatrice Friedrich, Berlin, Germany 10-16-2022: Dear Martha, thank you for your lovely post and thinking of us during your trip to New York. This reminded us of our trip to New York City many years ago and one of my favorite photos of that trip that captures the energy and  excitement that the city and Brooklyn Bridge generate and radiate.

Jürgen Friedrich with daughter Florentine, about 1999

Comment from Guy LePechon, Sceaux, France, 10-16-22: Merci beaucoup pour cette vivante excursion New-Yorkaise.

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