New York (Again)

I have noticed that my visits to New York seem to have themes. My first trip was Free New York, another trip was Museums of New York, this trip was New York Parks, with a few Museums thrown in. I can't remember them all now, but I spent a lot of time wandering around or sitting in parks!

Thanks to a suggestion from Neal (feel free to make suggestions for places for me to visit, by the way. I'd like to see the places you have been and thought were wonderful, and/or go to the places you want to go, but haven't been yet), I set out on a trek to the Cloisters! The Cloisters are a satellite of the Metropolitan Museum of Art -- and worth the trip way, way up to the northern tip of Manhattan. I Took the A-train (whooo hooo!) and got off a stop too early and accidentally discovered a beautiful Park: Fort Tryon Park! It was donated by Rockefeller (I think) to the city and was the site of a fort built to keep the Brits (or was it the Americans?) at bay during the Revolutionary War! There is a beautiful view of New Jersey across the river -- gray-black bluffs of basalt rising from the river and topped with golden and green trees! "I bet it will be beautiful in a week!" I thought to my self. Yet another state where I missed the glorious fall color!

The Cloisters, for the uninitiated, is a museum designed to house buildings! It's very strange, actually, to wander from room to room, looking at the apes of one church in one room then pass through a door of another church into another room with a completely different apes and sculptures! Cool, but very odd. (furnished rooms sometimes have the same effect -- or the Throne Rooms at the Art Institute, but at a much smaller scale.) The Cloisters form a nice blending of my museum component and the park component, because of the the gardens within the three actual cloisters. I have heard they are a beautiful place to sit and enjoy the weather in the summer (it was a bit chilly the day I was there). They are planted with herbs and flowers used by Medieval Monks for medicines and such. My favorite part though, was the basement. It is full of reliquaries! I hope I don't offend any Catholics, but the idea of saving a bit of the body of a dead saint (the finger, or rib, or skull (with or without hair)) seems very strange! I find it fascinating as well -- it's the cool and creepy thing again. And the artwork, the reliquary, to house the relic, is often so beautiful. They are made with great detail and sensitivity. Faces, they are often in the form (or imagined form) of the dead saint, that are filled with anguish and hope blending together so tenderly. This is why I love Art.

Another theme, in both my life and in my art experiences in New York, is the face. Faces and hands. Those are the things that attract me in art. I was fortunate enough to see two exhibits focusing on faces. One at the Met -- the struggle between the naturalistic and the idealistic in art from the Renaissance (I think) -- and the "portraits" (both professional and private) of Annie Libovitz at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The Met is Amazing of course -- I once made my brother spend eight to ten hours wandering around the museum. I'd never been to the Brooklyn Museum. But I would agree that had it not been in the same city as the Met, it would be regarded as an amazing museum. I got kicked out after only two hours -- which was a very strange experience in itself. I walked past the guard and into a gallery. The guard says to me, "The museum is closing in two minutes." OK. I go in and have a brief look at something, when all of a sudden the guard calls out "the museum is closed!" and the lights go out. Click, click, click, bank after bank of lights get turned out and the I am left to find my way out of the gallery using only the emergency lighting! Behind the museum is a strange enclosure of fragments of sculptures, light posts and other random bit of things. It was like a cage for the broken toys. As if they were afraid the fragments would escape!

Other than the museums most of my time in NY was spent wandering the streets and visiting with Friends. Always the best of times!

To end this long and rambling entry, I'd like to leave you with a few random thoughts and images. As I walked down one street I was surprised to see the glint of a fishing line. On one end it was attached to a crumpled dollar bill. As I followed the line up, I saw a boy standing back from a second floor window with a fishing pole in his hand. He and I looked at each other and grinned. I also got to see one of Suzy's lectures. Again, I love Art History. I really enjoyed being reminded of some of my favorite spots in Rome. And it made me wonder how art/images (and architecture) are being used to control our thinking. She mentioned that the Romans exported specific building structures as a way of exerting control over the provinces -- It reminded me of McDonald's, the golden arches are the same, the food is the same, all over the world! The coffee (actually tea) shop where Ben and I hung out while he studied, seemed to characterize some of the differences I see between Chicago and New York. Chicago seems like the younger sibling. Still struggling a bit to fit it, fit into its skin. New York seems gritty and rough around the edges, but comfortable with itself that way. Chicago coffee shops are clean and the furniture sort of matches. In New York, it was old and battered and quirky.

Finally, I have seen tube mice in all three cities! Some people think mice in the subway are a pest (and I agree that rats are gross!) but the mice are good luck!

Washington D.C.

After a wonderful visit with my parents in Massachusetts, I headed down to D.C.

I took the Chinatown bus from New York to D.C. (very cheep -- $35 round trip) The Chinatown bus is, obviously, in Chinatown. But I'm not sure Chinatown is really part of New York. As I walked the streets from the subway, which is still fairly western, heading towards the bus, I moved farther and farther from the (relatively) familiar to the strange and exotic! The closer I got to the bus "station" the more the signs were only in Chinese; the more the people only spoke Chinese; the more strange roots and herbs and fish and things I couldn't even guess at sat in bins on the street. It didn't even smell the same! Waiting in line to board the bus, the man next to me said, "I feel like I am in Beijing." Me too. It made me question this whole "round the world" thing! It is a bit intimidating to be hungry and see nothing that looks like "food." On the other hand, Chinatown in D.C. is totally different! It is about a block long, and blends in well with the rest of the city, except for the huge, shiny arch across the street (flanked on one side by the subway and on the other by a CVS.) A bit of a let down actually after being in China just a few hours ago!

In D.C. I stayed with my friend Tammy. We had a great time wandering around the Renaissance Fair. I got to see "real" jousting -- with lances splintering from the force of impact and everything! The force was so great that one man was knocked off his horse and had to wait for his squires to help him up! I was rooting for the one woman knight. She came in 10 of 10, but at least she was there! We also got to see Hack and Slash, a comic sword fighting duo, who were very funny (Women love Puppies, says Hack (or was it Slash?) holding up an imaginary puppy. They will forgive anything if you have a puppy. If I have a puppy in one hand, and in the other hand I have a box of chocolates, and in the other hand I have a bunch of flowers, how many of you would choose the puppy? See, half of you go for the puppy even though I have three hands!) We also got to see a man juggling a running chain saw (very impressive, though not quite in keeping with the Renaissance theme)! My favorite, though, was the sword swallower, Johnny Fox. (That's a stage name of course, his real name is John Fox. -- OK, that might have been funnier in person.) His sense of humor was very dry. (You should see your faces! he said, after pulling a huge (at least two-foot long) sharp, wiggly sword out of his mouth!) That was one of the most impressive swords, that and the huge, industrial size, cooking spoon and an equally huge (again 2-foot long) screwdriver! He also stuck a 3-inch nail up his nose (!) and did the cups and balls trick, making apples appear under the cups! (If you ever see someone winning at cups and balls, he warned, they are working with the the person moving the cups!) I was enraptured -- it's like science: cool and disgusting at the same time!

I also got to see Bethany, which was great! She and I had a very pleasant time wandering around the Botanic Gardens. I learned that the flowers of a chocolate tree (OK, cacao tree, for those that want to be precise) come out of the bark of the trunk! There was a tree in the garden (about 1-foot DBH (diameter at breast height) -- so a mature tree) with flowers about a foot off the ground! very cool, but very strange! After the Botanic Gardens, we walked over to the Natural History Museum. Spectacular geology exhibit! I highly recommend it to those of you visiting the east. We got into conversations with other science nerds about the HUGE super volcano that sits under Yellowstone National Park and is due to erupt any time now (it erupts about every 600,000 years and its been about 600,000 years -- as an F.Y.I. last time it went, it dropped about a foot of ash on Montana!)

All in all, my visit to D.C. was great, but I seem to be mentioning the most disturbing parts, so, to round things out, I will end on the very first disturbing thing that happened -- the haunted bowl of soup. Tammy and I sat down to dinner one night and the waitress put a bowl of soup in front of Tammy and walked away. Just as Tammy was about to dig in, the bowl moved, sliding, on its own, about three inches across the table. We look at each other and then back at the bowl. Which moved again! Another three inches! At which point we both burst out laughing hysterically! I took the bowl and started eating it, and... you guessed it, it moved again!

Western Mass

The other day I took good old Amtrack from NYC to Amherst (a lovely ride surrounded by 20-year-olds returning to college) and I have spent the past several days here in western Mass with my father (Roger) and step-mother (Shirley). They live off in the country, and when I look out the window (as I did just a minute ago), we are surrounded by trees! I timed my trip to arrive in the height of the fall colors, but they aren't here! Well, to be fair, there are a several trees that are brilliant reds and yellows, and (my favorite) oranges, but most are either still greenish or brownish.

We went for a long beautiful hike yesterday (reminded me of the Windy City Hikers group I hike with) along an old rail like and over or past several fabulous stone bridges! The rail line was designed by the father of J.M. Whistler (and thus the husband of the woman in the painting). It was the longest (and the steepest (1.6%) I think) at the time. They didn't actually have the technology to get the trains over the mountains when the line was built! It was so impressive, in fact, that he (and his family) were summoned to Russia to design and build the Trans-Siberian Rail Road! (I will have to go and ride it (!) now I know it was designed by a local boy -- so to speak.) The bridges were spectacular! They were hugely tall (the tallest is 70 ft. above the water!) and built without mortar and still standing strong (and able to support trains of more than 200,000 tons!).

We've done some other fun stuff on my visit, too. We just got back from a jazz concert at Smith. Piano (one of my favorite instruments -- I liked it so much I begged my mother for a piano and lessons, which she gave me. But then I never practiced, so I'm not any good. It remains one of my favorites, though, despite this murky history) and clarinet. It was wonderful. The two men (Bob Sparkman and Jerry Noble) clearly like each other and love to play together. So much so that some of the songs went on longer than they anticipated. They wound up cuting some of the songs they intended to play out of the program, and still went long! I'm not any good at describing music -- one of you music people will have to teach me something about music one of these days -- so I recommend you check out one of their five albums (I mean CDs -- I'm dating myself) and hear it for yourself.

We also went for a walk up one of the local mountains (Mount Tom), but had to turn back for lack of light. And last night we went to a fund raising dinner for the Massachusetts-Cambodian Water Project. This is a very grass roots organization that has, over the past three or four years raised and sent about $15,000 to Cambodia to buy supplies that help three towns improve sanitation (i.e. dig pit toilets) and collect and store "clean" drinking water to make it though the dry season (via wells, water retention ponds and cisterns). They also buy books and pay for two English teachers in each town ($175/teacher/year -- makes my salary look astronomically huge!). It is a very impressive project -- all volunteer run. And I just have to say, both as a biologist and as a human being, that so many of the world's problems could be solved with decent sanitation! Everyone should have access to water that is at least free of human and animal waste! -- OK, I'm off my soap-box.

Finally, I can't end without mentioning the Contra Dance! WOW! I can't remember now who suggested it first, but Thank You! The dance in Greenfield, MA has (apparently) an international reputation (and I don't just mean Canada). And I've been told that people come from other states for the Friday and Saturday dances. To put the Chicago community to shame, they sometimes have five (five!) contra lines! On Friday, when I went, there were at least three lines for each dance. The dances seemed simpler than those called in Chicago, and there wasn't very much hot-dogging, but almost everyone I danced with was excellent! Nice firm, well balanced, smooth (though not fast or fancy) swings. Everyone was clearly having a great time and had great energy. And the Floor! smooth and soft. A dream! I highly recommend it to anyone traveling to the East.

One final note. I am not sure if I will be able to update this again before I go home to Chicago on the 28th. But I am looking forward to seeing everyone there as often as possible before I leave again on Nov. 1st! If not, I'll be back again (from Las Vegas!) on the 8th -- so save me a dance

New York and New Jersey

My first few days in New York City were beautiful! Sunny and warm! Perfect weather for starting on a trip around the world.

I spent a day or so hanging out with my friend Suzy in New Jersey. We went to the art museum at Rutgers on Friday and the she, Kevin and I watched Flashdance! Wow. Neither he, nor I had ever seen it. I think it is one of those movies where if you don't see it when you're 18 or younger, it just doesn't have the same impact. We noticed several things that would seem fine and romantic to a teenager, but made us all shiver a bit as adults (such at a 30-something boss, pursuing and dating his 18-year old employee!). Suzy and I visited the Princeton art museum the next day (lots of beautiful art, and great stories that I did not know, or had forgotten about the subjects or artists -- including the rather gruesome story of Artemisia and her brother/husban Mosolus) and then made a mad dash across the state of New Jersey so I could catch the train to New York City! (all because I did not buy a return ticket! -- I'll know better next time).

On Saturday night, my friend Srabani and I spent way more money than we should have on dinner and desert and got caught up on the three years she has been living in Napal! Incidentally, she lives just down the street from where my brother, Jon, lived when he was in NY! Very exciting for me to recognize his neighborhood!

Then on Sunday, I spent my first real day in the city -- joining the rest of New York for a lazy day in Central Park. What to say about Central Park? It is beautiful, of course. Metamorphic rocks, folded and deformed and flecked with Mica, poke out from the lush green lawns. Designed by Olmsfield (I think). Who (according to my brother, if I remember it correctly) imported the rocks for artistic effect! And they are very effective. And great places to sit or take a nap!

I witnessed lots of dancing in the park, though I did not participate in any of it. There were a bunch of folk dancers -- mostly in their 50's to 70's I'd guess -- dancing on a little bricked patio (that's not the right word, but I can't think of a better one). The highlight was when a small group of teens joined the dance. First a boy, about 16 or 17 joined in, acting, I'd guess, on a dare or at least the teasing prodding of one of the girls. The women in the circle were thrilled and smiled big smiles at him as he stumbled through the dance. I think his giant, untied shoes didn't help. One by one, the girls ran over to join, giggling and smiling at their own daring for doing something so uncool, as folk dancing. But they seemed to have fun! Everyone was grinning and laughing, the dancers were very patient and welcoming to the teens and the teens actually seemed to have fun dancing! Everyone applauded and bowed to each other at the end of the dance. And then, when a new dance started the teens left.

Later, in the south end of the park (an area I've never really seen until Sunday), there was a Huge (!) shell with tiny little people playing swing music, and dancers out on the plaza below the stage. It reminded me of Summer dance in Chicago, but with only a tiny fraction of the dancers. There might have been more people dancing, if there hadn't been a roller disco (or is it not a disco if they don't have a ball and play disco music?) not more than 50 feet away! The skaters were fantastic, bouncing and swaying and gliding in a way that I could never hope to achieve! I tried taking a picture but it was too dark and they move too quickly, but I stood and watched and envied their skill for a while (they were there the next day, too! some of the same people even!).

Then, home, through the very south end of the park where I found a sculpture of Rober Burns! I'm hoping that the picture I took of him will contribute a tiny bit to the festivities of Meg and Jonathan's Burns Supper! He looks very Romantic and Poetic. I can just see him composing the lines, "My love is like a red, red rose..." or something equally heartfelt.

Monday was much like Sunday. I wandered through Central Park again. It was such a beautiful day it was hard to be indoors. Though I did spend several hours in the American Museum of Natural History. Absolutely fantastic museum! The dioramas by Achley (?sp) are unbelievably life like (I think the Chicago Academy of Sciences reworked a few of his displays when they created the new Nature Museum). It's stunning to look at the detail of each scene -- birds seem to hop in and out of the grass around an antelope's feet as it reaches up to eat the leaves off a low branch. Down a hill an alligator and a rhino watch each other warily. I expected, at any moment for one of the animals to move. The geology stuff is amazing as well! A room full of gems 10 times the size of that at the Field Museum (though without the Tiffany glass). And the geologic processes and explorations described in such a way that I kept thinking, "Why didn't I bring my students here?!" I also really enjoyed the powers of 10 model -- though I thought it was much more effective going down than up! Their planetarium, a sphere the size of a medium sized room, was the basis for comparison of scale between things like a Red Blood Cell (the planetarium) and a virus (about the size of a base ball). Very powerful to see it in front of you that way.

Now to the rest of the city. Times square is unbelievable! There are so many lights even when the sky is pitch black, that my camera did not need a flash! And even the police station and subway have to have big bright flashing lights to be seen! I can't even begin to imagine the electric bill! It's very exciting in a Las Vegas/consumerist sort of way!

OK, this entry has gone on long enough. I'll leave you while you are (hopefully) still conscious and wanting more!

R