Eye Catchers in New York

We didn't plan it this way, but now that I think about it, our museum visits took us backwards in art history.

We started with post-modern contemporary at the Whitney, then early modern at the Guggenheim, then Impressionism, 18th C and Renaissance at the Frick, then ancient Himalayan at the Rubin (plus some post-war photography just to mess up my generalization).

With all that art crammed into the space of three days, I saw a lot of what seemed like similarities including that between the installation (above) at the Whitney and Max Ernst's "The Antipope" at the Guggenheim:

There was lots of art out of doors, too. 

Stencil graffiti really appeals to me.

So does spray can graffiti. 

We both thought this, by famous New York sidewalk artist Hani Shihada, was great.

But, graffiti on a grand scale is a bit of a con (no one could have done this without permission).

 The other thing I take lots of pictures of in New York is buildings.

Spotted from the High Line: being assembled, a building fit for the Jetsons.

I say "being assembled" because, three years ago when we were last in New York, we saw workmen lifting, like Lego pieces, the component parts of this now finished apartment building.

Also being put together, but more like with Meccano this time, part of the massive Hudson Yards development at the north end of the High Line.

In case you were wondering where Sauron ended up after they trashed Mordor, he found a nice flat above some retail shops across Gansevoort Street from the Whitney. 

Curving surfaces feature prominently in upscale New York properties.

I blame Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is the hotel - the High Line Hotel - we stayed in this time.

This is the hotel - The Maritime Hotel - that we may stay in next time.

This thing just rose like a warty growth out of otherwise low-rise Tribeca (note Bruce down there in the corner). 

The new tower dominated the sky line once we were below Tribeca.

Also being dominated - the St Elizabeth Ann Seton Shrine (built in 1965), huddled at the feet of modern skyscrapers.

Last look at the big tower before we got onto the Hudson River Park walkway.

And one last piece of graffiti - in tile - on a Port Authority building by the Hudson River.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Best New York Day Ever

We hike cities. That's what Bruce and I do for our holidays. Sure we visit museums and other attractions, but, mostly, we hike.

Happy bee on the Hudson River Park. The HRP was the one thing we saw this trip that we had never seen before . It is a wonderful public space with lots of lawns and gardens, play grounds, recreational facilities and dog parks. The dog parks were our favourite.

Today, the weather held, so we hiked from Chelsea to the south end of the city and back again.

Traffic on 8th Avenue - morning rush hour - a mind-boggling amount of traffic moving very slowly.

We started with the Rubin museum, normally a peaceful place, but this time of year every NYC museum (except for the Frick) swarms with school children. The animated chatter of high-pitched voices did not reach, thankfully, to the fifth floor, where we really enjoyed Henri Cartier-Bresson: India in Full-Frame. 

With a fortifying dose under our belts of Himalayan artwork and several reverential minutes in a buddhist temple shrine replica (until the children showed up), we headed south down 6th Ave, keeping the new World Trade Tower in our sites.

We came, after walking for about forty minutes and almost without warning, to the teeming, crammed, crowded, noisy, somewhat upsetting environs of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. 

A man accosted us - I think because he wanted to sell us a book - and started taking us through a picture book showing the attack and the aftermath. It was all a little too much. I did a cut and run, looking for the quieter streets of the financial district. 

We stopped at Jim Brady's tavern - Diamond Jim Brady - on Maiden Lane and enjoyed a really tasty meal for a reasonable price, though, as always, the portions were huge and everything was salty.

There are three chicken breasts under that slab of bread.

Blackened Thai Salmon salad with peanut sauce.

The original plan was that we would walk down to the south end of the city and take the subway back to Chelsea. But, while we were on our way back uptown, we found the Hudson River Park, running parallel to West Street (which, for pedestrians, is an oppressive in-city highway). The park was so compellingly pleasant we just let it carry us all the way to W 20th Street, where we joined a crowd of intrepid fellow pedestrians who crossed West Street, for safety, en masse (even with the light, I'm never confident of the social covenant with cars).

We noted on our way a very pleasant little cafe where you can sit by the Hudson surrounded by green space and enjoy a refreshing beverage. But, today, we were footsore and anxious to get back to the hotel before totally relaxing, which, as illustrated by Bruce, is what we are doing now.

That's a George Dickel whiskey; we're in the back patio of our hotel.

Best New York day, ever.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Reprieve

The tourist gods have smiled upon us. Although the forecast was for another day like yesterday, no rain fell in NYC today.

We started with breakfast in the Chelsea market.

The second half of the substantial, $8 "breakfast sandwich" at Friedman's Lunch in the Chelsea Market. That's light rye bread, scrambled eggs, applewood-smoked bacon, Monterey jack cheese and avocado. Tomorrow, we're going to order one and split it between the two of us.

Then we caught the (wrong) subway to 125th street, when we meant only to go as far as 96th street. So we walked 35 blocks south and east to the Guggenheim and were swept away by the incredibly fine collection.

For the museum's 80th anniversary, the show featured the main pieces of the formative collection - lots of Kandinsky, Picasso, Miro, Klee, Mondrian, Modigliani and Magritte.

And, for some reason, they needed to warn us about this:

Then we went to the Frick, another 20 blocks south, because we always go to the Frick. I can be very efficient there: I focus on the Vermeers, the Rembrandts, the Whistlers, the Ingres, the Holbeins, the Gainsborourghs, the Reynolds and the painting of St Francis in the living room. And I stay the heck away from the Fragonard room (ick).

Then we walked over to Columbus Circle, another 20 blocks south and west. We grabbed the subway to 23rd - no mistakes this time - and stopped for lunch about the same time of day when, yesterday, we returned defeated by the weather to our room.

Today it was fine enough to eat salty, heavy American food out of doors.

Tomorrow is our last full day in New York. We're going to pray that the weather holds, go to the Rubin at W 17th and 7th, and then wander down to the south end of the City.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Rainy Day

As promised, the weather was wet today.

In the early morning - 8 a.m. or so - the rain was so light you didn't really need an umbrella. 

By 11:30, the rain was falling hard enough that the High Line was almost deserted - in comparison to the day before at least.

Wet day, wet sculpture, no people (except me).

Dry day, dry sculpture (look! it's different!) and a veritable mob.

We went to the Whitney to check out its new building and its Biennial celebration.

It's a great museum, one that left me with the strong sense that all American art is folk art. You can disagree with me if you like. Just leave a comment below. But look at this first.

 After an hour and a half in the Whitney and an hour of walking in the increasingly heavy rain, we stopped at the Skylight Diner at 34th and 9th for some salty, heavy American food for lunch.

Bruce had the meatball sandwich with fries; I had the salmon burger with coleslaw. 

The plan was we would take shelter and eat and then it would stop raining. But the rain continued (and, as I write this in our hotel room, continues) to fall.

We wandered around a bit after lunch along 6th Ave but the weather got oppressive. Our feet were wet as could be. When they started letting the kids out of school at 3 o'clock, we were swept up in the collective yearning for home, dry feet and no water falling on our heads. 

So we're back in our room with its impressive collection of snack food and beverages.

On top of the mini bar:

In the mini bar.

And on the desk.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Swarming

The first thing I always have to get used to in New York is the crowds.

Black-Friday-grade density on the High Line circa 4:00 p.m., May 22, 2017.

Our flight and trip into the city were without incident, though we had to get our cabbie turned around when he went the wrong way coming out of the Lincoln tunnel. 

Our hotel is pretty cool. Thick with hipsters, lined up out the door for the coffee at the Intelligentsia bar (no, I'm not making this up). 

Our room is a typical New York hotel room in that it is very small (200 sq. ft.) and heavily appointed with things to eat and drink: a crammed minibar; a tray of snacks on the desk, and a fine selection of spirits on top of the console holding the minibar and the two small drawers (one with an iron in it) that are the only space available to put clothes.

We got here about ten to four in the afternoon. According to the weather report, this is the only nice day we'll have the whole time we are here, so we made a bee line for the High Line just one block from here. It was swarming with people, I would say about 80% of which were from out of town. 

But, it was a beautiful afternoon. We strolled to the south end, grabbed a very expensive bite to eat, climbed back on the High Line and walked to the north end, where it slopes down to W 34th Street. 

The original plan, once we'd gotten to the north end, was to turn around and walk south on the High Line to the 20th Street exit. But, I couldn't face the mob again. 

We walked back to the hotel along 10th Ave.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Travel Advisory

View from the High Line the last time we were in New York, July 2013

We're heading off to New York City. I'm typing this is the comfortable US departures lounge at the Billy Bishop Airport.

We will be staying at the High Line Hotel in Chelsea, a short walk away from the Whitney Museum, the Rubin Museum and the High Line itself, remarkably enough.

This is our first proper holiday since we were on the east coast a year ago, and the first since my surgery.

Yippee.

Stay tuned.

Karen

The Man No One Could Help

Seldom seen in this whole darn blog: a shot of us together. In just under 300 posts, 
Bruce and I show up in four. This one, this one, this one and this one.

Shortly after 1 p.m. on Tuesday this past week, I looked through the glass walls of my new office and saw, just outside my door, a member of my new team, his clothes spattered in blood, his face badly injured. He was surrounded by other members of my new team.

Deeply confused about how someone with a government desk job could end up this way, I went to go see what was going on.

The wounded man was already being hurried out the door to go to the hospital. He tossed over his shoulder the quick explanation that he had tripped and fallen while on his lunchtime run. Apparently his only option had been to break his fall with his face.

Seven stitches and two days later, I got the full story:

My team member, let's call him Hank, was running along the sidewalk near Christie Pits and Bloor when his right foot landed half on and half off the edge of a small flower bed. Hank lost his balance, tipped awkwardly, was still trying to figure out how to break his fall with his hands when his face hit the pavement.

He banged himself up pretty good. There was one person close by who helped him up and gave him a tissue to put over the gash on his face. The helpful stranger asked if there was anything else he could do for Hank, but Hank said no thanks.

Hank was four kilometres away from the office. He had nothing with him: no money, no ID, no health card.

He stopped at a cafe and asked if he could use the washroom to wash his face. They let him do that and gave him a wet cloth to cover the grandly bleeding cut on his cheekbone. They offered more help. Hank again said no. 

Hank walked east on Bloor Street, kind strangers stopping him frequently to see if they could help, all of which offers he rebuffed until he got to the corner of Bloor and Bathurst. 

There he was accosted by a middle-aged woman who demanded to know what had happened to him and insisted she help him.

She explained why. She had been having a bad day herself. She'd been riding her bike on Bloor Street when she got into a disagreement with a man in a car. The man stopped his car, got out, pulled the woman off of her bike, threw her bike under the wheels of his car and drove over it. Then he drove away.

There were many witnesses. Police were called. She'd just finished up talking with them when she came upon Hank.

She said, "you have to let me help you."

She took him to a cash machine and withdrew $60. She gave him the money and put him in a cab. She did not tell him her name so he can't pay her back.

*****************************

That "new team" I mentioned is the nice group of folks in the Strategic Policy Branch at the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. I'm the Director.

That's my new job. I started on the first of May. So stay tuned for more fun and adventure on the Yessir Yessir Highway, Strategic Policy Edition.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Victoria Day!

Karen

Mothers Day 2017

Lillian Edith Clark (nee Lohse)
1929 - 2005

Lois Marna Clarke (nee Mills)
1935 -2016

With the passing of Lois Marna Clarke on December 13th last year, Bruce and I are fresh out of moms for Mother's Day.

In celebration of the two fun-loving women we both called mom, enjoy this rerun from 2012 of a rerun from 2010:

The first year my family lived in Edmonton (about 1966-67), we took up residence in a duplex at the corner of 120th Avenue NW and 122nd Street.  

On Fridays during the summer of the year that we lived at that address, my older sister Cathy and I would walk about four blocks over to the Safeway on 118th Avenue, trailing a bundle buggy, and wait for mom to get off the bus from work. Then we'd help her with the grocery shopping and go home together.

On one particular Friday, I was in the Safeway, with the bundle buggy, waiting for mom and minding my own business the way only a daydream-prone ten-year-old can, when a woman I didn't know and had never seen before grabbed my arm. She was very angry - with me apparently - and accused me of stealing her bundle buggy.

A note on my experience with grown-ups when I was a kid: grown-ups came in four main categories: my parents; my friends' parents; teachers and strangers.  I further categorized strangers into two groups: those who knew my name (friends of my parents, for example) and those who did not. All grown-ups were skittish and unpredictable - I never knew what was going to set them off - but the most skittish and unpredictable were the "strangers who didn't know my name."

So, back at the Safeway on that long-ago Friday afternoon, I was in the clutches of a stranger who did not know my name, who was accusing me of a crime I barely understood (lady, I have a bundle buggy; why would I take yours?), my sister had disappeared and mom was nowhere to be seen.

I think I tried to explain to the angry woman that the buggy in my possession actually did belong to me and that, when my mother arrived, she would say so, too.

Persuaded only by the conclusions she had already drawn about me, the angry woman enlisted the assistance of the store manager, who took me into his office, sat me down and started to interrogate me about my desperate criminal scheme to steal the lady's bundle buggy. He was kind but also convinced that I had stolen the buggy I still had in my possession and nothing I said seemed to change his mind.

Before long I couldn't do anything but cry and, between sobs, protest my innocence.

Then mom and Cathy came into the manager's office and everything changed. The angry woman backed off completely. The kind store manager apologized to my mother and gave the angry lady a buggy from the store's display. He said, genuinely perplexed, "we'll never know what happened" to the angry lady's buggy.

Having related this story forty-five years later, I think I know what happened. The angry woman never had a buggy. Instead, she saw a defenceless little kid holding onto one and she hoped that prevailing social prejudices about thieving children would make her claim to the buggy more powerful than mine. 

But she made a mistake in thinking I was defenceless. The difference between my parents and all the other skittish, unpredictable grown-ups I encountered when I was a kid was that I knew that mom and dad were on my side. And I never doubted -- when I was all of ten years old, during those awful moments when that random stranger accused me of being a thief -- that my mom would come and stand up for me.  

Thanks for reading!

Happy Mother's Day!

Karen

Binging

As the rains fell ...

It all started with an after-dinner conversation among friends. A guest had read Blitzed, the impeccably researched account of how the German army in WWII was coked to the gills on methamphetamine and how Hitler was, for at least the last three years of his life, a stone cold junkie.

Disagreement arose when it came to the concentration camps. Could drug abuse account for all the atrocities or were the Nazis just bastards through and through?

We couldn't resolve that question that night. 

After reading Blitzed, I couldn't answer that question for myself, either. So I turned to KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolas Wachsmann.

Wachsmann's authoritative history persuaded me that while there was some substance abuse involved (alcohol as much as drugs), the camp SS guards and their commanders really were bastards through and through and strongly reminiscent of some of the types you see at Trump rallies.

I was still reading Wachmann's compellingly written account of unbearable cruelty and suffering, when, one night, I thought I'd check out Dear White People, currently playing on Netflix.

Three and a half hours later, I couldn't believe I had watched the whole thing: 10, 22-minute episodes.

The show is clever and appealing. Attractive performers and a light-hearted script sugar-coat some jarring questions about race in America. 

For example, I just about jumped out of my reclined position on the couch when, following a charged scene involving a white cop, a gun and a Black man, a character said that the Germans had dealt with their past - meaning the concentration camp atrocities - and America had to do the same thing with slavery. 

The joke was that people misunderstood him and thought he was suggesting that blacks be put in concentration camps. Of course that's not what he meant. 

But maybe the person writing the script did mean to draw attention to something along those lines.

Makes you think.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

P.S: you should read both the books mentioned in this blog, but if you have room in your schedule for only one, read Wachsmann.