Back in the USA

Back in the USA during the first two weeks of September. My traveling plans this time around included visits with friends I haven’t seen in years. My first visit was with an old college friend, Cindy, whom I met many years ago in the modern dance class we took together. We became friends and ended up choreographing several dances for the end-of-year recitals that were open to the public. She and her husband have visited us in Oslo, but that’s a while ago now. We toured the JP Morgan library in Manhattan (she wanted to visit the library because she, like many tourists there the day we visited, had read the two recent books about Morgan's personal librarian, a woman named Belle da Costa Greene, who happened to be a black woman). After we visited the library, we walked to the High Line so that she could experience it, and then we went to see The Vessel, which is a unique and beautiful artistic structure located on the west side of Manhattan. We walked at least five miles that day in 93 degree F heat. It was good to get back to our hotel (the lovely Warwick Hotel) to relax and cool off. 

After I said goodbye to Cindy at Penn Station in Manhattan, I took an Amtrak train to Boston to visit my theology professor from Fordham University who just happens to be a (semi-retired from teaching but not from writing) Jesuit priest. He is in his early eighties, is living in the Boston suburbs at a retirement home, and is as intellectually active as ever. I stayed in a very pleasant guest room at the center (they have accommodations for guests), attended a 6:30 am mass in the center’s chapel together with many elderly priests (a very touching experience), and otherwise enjoyed some really rewarding conversations with my former teacher. I had so many questions for him, and surprisingly, he had some for me as well. I realized that there is more that unites us in this life than divides us. He chose a different path (no marriage and family) but an interesting one. As I get older, I am more curious about my faith, not less, and he answered some of my questions. It was good to see him after all these years. We have kept in touch by letters and emails for many years, but hadn’t seen each other until now, and I don’t know if I will see him again.

From Boston, I traveled onward by bus to Albany NY where my friend Maria lives. Jean drove up from Westchester, and we spent the weekend together, hanging out, talking, and eating well. We managed a trip to Herkimer to take a boat trip on the Erie Canal, something that I’ve always wanted to do, especially after I watched the NY Adventure Club’s virtual lecture about the history of the canal. I’ve written about that in previous posts (A New Yorker in Oslo: The Erie Canal: A Story of Building the Impossible--a New York Adventure Club webinar (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com) and A New Yorker in Oslo: The film--The Farmer Takes A Wife, from 1935 (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com). 

Jean and I returned to her house for a couple of days, which I always look forward to; her house is like my second home and she is like family to me. I met her two new grandchildren for the second time, which was very nice. She and I met up with a biology teacher from our high school who is in her early eighties and who has dyed her short close-cropped hair a muted shade of purple. I don’t remember her as being a funny woman, but she is. We met for lunch in NJ together with another friend, Stef, who also attended the same high school (Our Lady of Victory in Dobbs Ferry NY).

From there I drove onward to the Milford PA area to get together with my sister Renata and her husband Tim. We enjoyed some nice days together just relaxing, and then I drove back to the Westchester area to visit my friend Gisele for an afternoon. She is unfortunately quite ill and tires easily. But it was wonderful to see her.

This has been my traveling year; my hoped-for goal was to visit with friends whom I’ve not seen in a while, and I've managed to do that. In December, I will meet up with another friend, Haika, whom I haven’t seen since 2010. We're planning to meet in Dresden Germany in order to visit the Striezelmarkt Christmas market there. It’s apparently the oldest one in Europe (Dresdner Striezelmarkt (dresden.de). I'm looking forward to experiencing it with her, as she's wanted to visit this market for quite a long time. 

I'm enjoying my travels here and there and want to do more traveling in Europe as well as the USA. I’m always amazed by the vastness of the USA and how things really do function fairly well in spite of that vastness. Some people tell me they are now content to stay in one place and not travel. Perhaps I will say that in ten years or so, but not now. 

The unbelievable storm

I was up until 4 am Oslo time last night watching super storm Sandy make landfall on the eastern coast of the USA. It chose the area around Atlantic City as its entrance, and the video footage of the Atlantic Ocean pouring into this casino city was just unbelievable to watch. The Atlantic Ocean has never been the enemy before. Not until last night. Watching it flood these coastal towns was kind of like watching a mini tsunami—scary, unbelievable and fascinating at the same time. I can understand why people want to get close to the fury of a storm to film what it does to everything in its path, but you would have been completely foolhardy to have done so yesterday. I’ve been in Atlantic City, walked along its boardwalk, and enjoyed its shopping and luxurious hotels. Last night it did not look luxurious at all. It made me sad to see the destruction, as it did to see the flooding and destruction in Manhattan and Queens. This is not supposed to happen in these areas. But it did. The monster storm from hell made sure that we will not take anything for granted ever again, not where nature is concerned.

I grew up in Tarrytown, a lovely little town on the Hudson River, about a thirty-minute train ride north of Manhattan. In all the years I lived there, I cannot remember this type of storm occurring. Yes, there were intense storms, with resultant minor flooding here and there. I can remember the Saw Mill River and Bronx River Parkways being flooded and becoming impassable. Once I tried to drive through one of those parkway floods with my car, but had to back out of it as I could not steer my way through it. Luckily I managed to back out of it; not everyone was so fortunate. I was together with a friend of mine; we were commuting home from college that day. Water seeped into my car through the doors, and we had to bail out pails of water from the car afterward. It was a stupid decision on my part to attempt to drive through the rising water, and I learned an important lesson that day for the future about not taking unnecessary risks. But in Tarrytown (and other Hudson River towns) yesterday, there was unprecedented flooding. The Hudson River rose higher and higher due to the storm surge further south. Boats floated inland, having broken free of their moorings. In the town of Ossining, a few miles north of Tarrytown, a boat floated onto the railroad tracks, blocking passage in both directions. The pictures tell the story—proof that the unbelievable happened. I am including two links to online storm photos here. I am sad to see the destruction and flooding, and only hope that most people have come through the storm safely. http://www.businessinsider.com/at-least-16-dead-75-million-without-power--heres-what-hurricane-sandys-destruction-looks-like-photos-2012-10?0=bi

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8138916414/

New York moments

Each year I return to Oslo after my annual trip to New York with so many impressions and memories of what I have experienced and seen. I guess because I am now a tourist in my home state, that each New York moment has become dear to me, no matter how small, mostly because I am together with good friends or with family when I experience them. I capture a lot of those moments in photos, as I am wont to do whenever I travel. I have already written one post about wandering around SoHo and lower Manhattan with Gisele, stopping in at small bakeries and cafes, shopping at Tierra, and photographing graffiti. Other moments included dinner with Debby and Eric on Long Island, lunch with Bernadette in Manhattan, visiting my brother Ray and his family, and spending time with Edith--my elderly woman friend who used to work together with me in my first Manhattan job. Photographically speaking, a major moment was photographing a large spider web (and correspondingly large spider) outside the kitchen window of my friend Jean’s house. On one of the evenings I was there, we stood watching the web and the spider’s activity for quite a while. This spider has built a web a short distance away from a wasp’s nest; nature doesn’t ignore golden opportunities. This spider was definitely big enough to tackle a wasp in its web.

Spider and its web

Closer view of spider

I also attended the Peekskill Celebration at the Riverfront Green Park on Saturday August 4^th (http://www.peekskillcelebration.com/) together with Jean and Maria; there was some great live music—one of the R&B bands particularly stood out—New York Uproar (http://newyorkuproar.com/home/). Lots of great old songs from my growing-up years from the likes of Average White Band, Blood Sweat & Tears, Chicago, Ides of March, and many others. You can find the complete song list on the New York Uproar website. The height of this evening had to be the fantastic fireworks that went on for nearly half an hour, sponsored by Entergy (see my short film of some of the fireworks here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wXGNf02vs). I’m including the information from the website about this event:    

      

The Entergy Fireworks Extravaganza is the largest fireworks display north of the Macy's annual Fourth of July display and is one of the signature activities that make Celebration unique in the Hudson Valley. The pyrotechnic display is synced with music provided by WHUD 100.7 Radio. Whether from land or on water, the fireworks are an amazing sight to behold.

And then on Sunday evening, Jean, her sister Barbara, Maria and I ended up at the beautiful Boscobel Hudson River estate in Garrison (http://www.boscobel.org/) for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (http://hvshakespeare.org/), which has been an annual event for us for at least the past five years or so. This year Romeo and Juliet was on the menu—a modernized version of this tragedy—and it was very good. Much of the first act was played for laughs, which was unusual but not at all irritating. But I would guess that Shakespearean purists might find some bones to pick with this production. Nonetheless, it has a lot going for it, especially with the younger lead actors and actresses, who bring their youthful enthusiasm to their roles. It wasn’t hard to remember, when watching them, how absolutely overwhelming, giddy and confusing it was to really and truly fall deeply in love. You never forget those moments even though they get buried in the stuff of daily life, but watching this version of Shakespeare’s play really brought them back, a testament to the fine acting jobs.

View of the Hudson River from the Boscobel estate in Garrison

Tent where the Shakespeare plays take place

I always enjoy my time in New York visiting friends and family. Friends have commented on my packed schedule when I’m there, and the fact that I travel quite a bit around from one place to another, but it doesn’t feel rushed or stressful. I feel free, and that’s a great feeling. It’s summer, the sun is shining, the warm weather beckons, I’m on vacation, and life is easy. I found time to walk from Tarrytown to Irvington to meet my good friend Laura for lunch, and marveled at the beauty of these two adjoining river towns. I know I was privileged to grow up in Tarrytown, along the beautiful Hudson River. I talked about this with my friend Stef on my recent visit with her and her husband John. (Stef also grew up in Tarrytown but now lives in New Jersey, as I did for four years in the 1980s). It’s not something you understand as a child; mostly you just want to get away from small-town life when you are a young adult, and it wouldn’t have mattered how beautiful any aspect of that life really was then. You need to get out and see the world. I am speaking for myself, but I know of others who felt the same way as I did when they were younger. Stef picked me up at the New Brunswick train station in New Jersey, and drove me to where I used to live, an apartment complex in Somerset; it was interesting to see how much has changed since I moved from there. What was once open farmland that stretched for miles along Route 27, has been built up with shopping centers and housing complexes. I hardly recognized the area. However, my apartment complex looked the same, if a bit older and in need of a few renovations, but what I noticed most were the numbers of trees that had grown up around it. Lovely tall trees, providing shade in the summer’s heat. That’s the kind of progress I like, because it contributes to the creation of beauty. 

Somerset New Jersey apartment complex

New York city graffiti (street art in New York)

When I was in New York recently, I spent a day wandering around lower Manhattan with my good friend Gisele. I just had to take some photos of the interesting graffiti we saw. I'm always amazed at the talented graffiti artists out there, in whatever city I happen to be visiting. Hope you enjoy these photos. I'll post some others soon.

Planes, trains, not automobiles

Last week I was a New Yorker again, at least for a few days, on my annual trip back to the USA. I end up with so many impressions and reflections about modes of transportation—starting with flying. Ironic that just about the same time that flying has become fairly comfortable, that weather extremes are forcing long delays at airports, preventing us from getting on those planes and taking off on time. That was my experience this time; a four-hour delay leaving Oslo for Newark, and a one-hour delay on the return trip. In both cases, weather was the culprit—thunderstorms and tornadoes (in New York) the night before I was to fly to Newark, and thunderstorms on the return trip. The plane used for the Newark to Oslo trip was the same as the one for the Oslo-Newark trip, hence the delay. I could not help but wonder why SAS managed to get a plane out on time whereas United did not, but no one is giving me the answer, except to say something about the crew and the legal requirements for them to rest. It makes sense in any case, and United was quick to respond to potential customer dissatisfaction by offering us a number of ‘rewards’ for our patience—7000 extra bonus miles, substantial discounts on future trip purchases, and the like. I chose the extra bonus miles. Once I got on the plane, I had no complaints about the actual flights, either going or coming back. It is my impression that the future will only hold more of these types of extreme weather situations, so it’s just to get used to flight delays and to work on becoming more patient. Because really, there is nothing one can do about them anyway, and I don’t want airlines to risk flying through thunderstorms, lightning or hurricanes in order to maintain punctuality at the expense of safety. I ended up exploring the duty-free shops and bookstores in great detail as I had the time to do so. I ate a decent lunch (courtesy of United) and thought briefly about the film The Terminal with Tom Hanks—about an immigrant who ended up living in an airport terminal after he arrived in the USA. I never saw the film, but I remember some of the reviews when it came out some years ago. I wonder how business travelers manage; they must have to leave a day early in order to be sure that they make an important meeting if that meeting is overseas (Europe or America). That has got to elevate the cost of business travel—to pay for an employee’s extra night in a hotel when he or she arrives at his destination a day before in order to dodge potential flight delays. I don’t have those problems, thankfully, since my trips are not usually for business. I don’t mind flying for the most part; the planes are so modern now. Turbulence is not as bothersome as it used to be (at least what I’ve experienced so far and I hope it remains that way), and air quality on the plane has improved dramatically just within the past five years or so. That’s a big change on long flights—less dehydration and lightheadedness; the major problem still remains the leg room (lack of) in economy class. That has not improved; as far as I can determine, it’s gotten worse as airlines try to pack in more passengers per flight.

Once in New York City, it is easy to get around without a car, in fact it is preferable not to drive a car in Manhattan, even though it is not difficult to find your way around in this city borough. The major problem is traffic—lots of it, at all times during the day. The traffic is heart-attack inducing, and not for impatient or aggressive souls. There is no rhyme or reason to the amount of traffic, just that it exists. I remember my commuting days in the 1980s; sometimes it took an hour just to get across town if I drove in from New Jersey to my east-side uptown job. So I don’t drive now when I come back to the city. I take the subway—which has really gotten much better since the 1980s—clean stations, the presence of police on subway trains and platforms, passengers who behave well (no rowdiness as far as I can see) and a remarkably cheap price for a subway ticket. Two dollars and twenty-five cents for one ride; compared to Oslo prices, that’s a dream price. A one-way bus/subway ticket in Oslo will cost at least double that. And if I want to get to Westchester from Manhattan, which I often do, the best way to do that is to take the Metro-North Hudson line commuter trains. I used to take the Hudson line back and forth to Manhattan from Tarrytown, just like my father did for many years during his work lifetime, and as far as I can remember, this service has always been good to excellent. Trains are on time, ticket prices are not exorbitant, and you get to experience the scenic part of the trip when the tracks run parallel to the beautiful Hudson River. Of course I am partial to trains in general, so I am a bit biased. But I had the experience of taking a commuter train from Manhattan to New Jersey on this trip, and the service did not compare to that on Metro-North; it was ok at best. And of course coming into the beautiful end station on the Hudson line--Grand Central--is quite ok with me. Overall, getting around in the New York metropolitan area is not problematic, nor should it be, with good planning. It won’t break your budget either. 

A fascination with the night sky

I find myself looking skyward at night a lot this month; the reason is that this is a remarkable month for planet sightings according to the different astronomy websites I’ve come across. Check out the following website for good information about what’s happening in the sky above us during March http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury. It helps that March has been a month of some wonderfully sunny clear days and equally clear crisp nights, so that when I look up I can in fact see the planets, stars and the moon, not hidden by clouds or fog.

I’ve never been very good at identifying the different stellar constellations, except for the Big and Little Dippers, the common names for Ursa Major and Ursa Minor if I understand the information I’ve read correctly. As a child, I remember looking up at the ceiling of Grand Central Station in New York City and being pleasantly surprised by what I saw there—a zodiac mural painted on the green ceiling, which has recently been restored. For more information about it, check out the following site: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/nov/08/stars-shine-grand-central-terminal-again/. My parents tried to explain some of this to us, but my siblings and I were not of an age where we could really understand it. But it was fun to look at.

I’ve been trying to photograph the night sky a lot this month, without much success until tonight. I am posting the photo I was happiest with. You can see the crescent moon, and closest to it on the left is Jupiter; Venus shines brightly above the both of them. Enjoy!

Times Square at night

Times Square in New York City has really changed during the past twenty years or so. It used to be a seedy, dirty, and unattractive area of Manhattan, but no longer. I was there for a few days in April 2009 when I visited New York for my high school reunion and I stayed in Manhattan for a few nights. I was together with a good friend and we walked around Times Square one evening--a particularly clear and lovely night. I took a lot of photos (as always). The medley of sights, sounds, colors, and shapes appeals to the eye. If it is possible to say that advertising can be beautiful in its own way, then that is definitely the case for Times Square. I love the light shows that advertise everything from candy to electronics to beer. I am sure that advertising agencies have understood the power of color and lights to sell their products against the backdrop of the dark sky. In any case, it all makes for some really cool photos. And I can again say (like the famous commercial)--"I love New York--there is no place like it." Enjoy!