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.
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| Spider and its web |
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| Closer view of spider |
I also attended the Peekskill Celebration at the Riverfront
Green Park on Saturday August 4th (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.
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| View of the Hudson River from the Boscobel estate in Garrison |
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| 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.
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| Somerset New Jersey apartment complex |
