New York, November 2014
Instead of responding to the frequent Bag Lady refrain, Micah attempts to take the situation in hand and provides calming step-by-step directions from Newark's airport to Penn Station. She skipped a step, a stop and train change, but amended directions and I got there safe and sound. She and her friend, Elizabeth, met me at Penn Station and, from then on, I was in her good hands.
In no particular order, here are a few of the things we did...
... went to two law school classes - primary impression: NYU law professors are intelligent,
articulate and their vocabularies are um, what's the word..., um, better, uh, way better than mine
...went to Washington Square Park which used to remind me of a Simon and Garfunkel song. Then, I learned that in the 17th century, the Dutch freed slaves (but not the slaves' children) on the condition that they live on the property surrounding their settlement. Compassion wasn't their motive. The freed slaves served as a human buffer between the settlers and those pesky Native Americans who wanted to reclaim the property, now known as Washington Square Park, that the Dutch had stolen from them. Plus, 20,000 18th century yellow fever victims are buried under the park. All that death really brought the place to life for me.
This is one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs, The Only Living Boy in NY. I love my memories of singing Simon and Garfunkel songs with David while he plays guitar.
Micah, Haley, and I went to Michael's, the store, and bought craft supplies.
I love these girls. Haley visited us last Christmas break. Her stay must not've been a disaster because she already has reservations to come again this year. She's one of my all-time favorites among Micah's friends, partly because she exhibits the beautiful quality of looking beyond the obvious in people and situations to understand who they are and why they are as they are. I love that in a person.
David, do you see the resemblance between Kevin and your new 2nd cousin?
We ate out and ordered in.
We went to the Met...
... where I saw the original of this famous David painting of Antoine Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne. Lavoisier is known as the Father of Chemistry. They married when she was 13 years old and he, 28, at the request of her father who wanted to spare her the other option of marrying a man three times her age. After they married, she was his lab assistant and helpmate. He was guillotined during the French Revolution. She remarried, but insisted on keeping his name to honor him. Jacques-Louis David, who painted this portrait, later voted for Lavoisier's death. Marie-Anne's father was guillotined the same day as her husband, so I presume David voted for his death, too.
I'd never seen this before.: The Public Viewing of David's "Coronation" at the Louvre
by Louis Leopold Boilly
Eh, it was okay, but not a David. This coming from someone whose artistic skill is limited to a square house with four square window, a rectangular door, a triangular roof and a chimney. My usual doodling of choice. Analyze that. Art references remind me of a line in the Denzel Washington movie, Man on Fire: "His art is death and he's about to paint his masterpiece." Another great line from that moive, "Revenge is a meal best served cold." Before you get the notion that I have a memory for movie plots or quotes, keep in mind that I saw Man on Fire this afternoon.
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