21-27 August 07
Pleasant weather in 70’s and 80’s
Friends of Charlie and Barbara …
[CLICK ON PICTURES TO VIEW FULL SCREEN.]
Sometimes I (Humphrey) have to watch over Barbara, and Charlie has to fend for himself. This was the case recently when she went to New York City with Emma-Lou Spor, a long-time friend from Oklahoma, and Elizabeth to settle Elizabeth into Union Theological Seminary for her first semester in graduate school. Barbara and Emma-Lou stayed in New York for a week.
They really gave me a workout - all that walking and I have such short legs; I kept up though. Barbara and Emma-Lou went from one end of the city to the other, from Battery Park to the Harlem River (the northern boundary, it cuts across from the Hudson to the East River creating Manhattan as an island).
I did convince them to buy a subway pass and the two of them got quite good at using the subway while I could rest. We took the subway up and back from Elizabeth’s school at 122nd from Leo House, on 23rd, where we stayed. It took us about 20 minutes one way.
Here is Barbara with Elizabeth at LaGuardia waiting for their luggage. The trio had a few delays flying east from Oklahoma City, but not too bad. (Elizabeth drove from Los Angeles to Norman, Oklahoma (where she was born) in her trusty Toyota Corolla which had 240,000 miles on it when she sold it in Norman.) Elizabeth spent a week in Norman visiting with friends before the trio flew east to NYC.
From Leo House we took a taxi, crammed with eight suitcases, to Elizabeth’s new studio apartment at the Seminary. The first picture shows Elizabeth’s view of horror at her two hundred and eighty square foot apartment into which she had to fit the suit cases and twenty boxes previously shipped and more to arrive. But we all pitched in and in just a few hours Elizabeth was settled in and things looked brighter. I supervised.
The Quadrangle of Union is a quiet and beautiful space which is surprising given the loud ‘hustle and bustle” of the City. I enjoyed laying down and resting my tired paws, here taking a break with Emma-Lou midway in setting up Elizabeth’s hot, stuffy but cozy apartment. Elizabeth only learned later that she air conditioning!
This is an oblique Google Earth view of the Seminary block. On the west side is the famed Riverside Church which we toured. On the north is the Manhattan School of Music and the Jewish Theological Seminary. On the east is Corpus Christi Church that the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton of the 1960’s attended, and the parish from which a priest was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center. It’s a beautiful little church where Elizabeth is taking Catholic confirmation classes. South and east is Columbia University. East of Columbia is St John the Divine, a soaring, high Episcopal church.
On Sunday, we went to Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral (a beautiful and grand Gothic church) and then walked about 30 blocks (long blocks!) through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I tried to get them to take a carriage.
On the left is the Winter Garden building; it was gutted on 9/11 but it has been rebuilt. On the far side is a huge expanse of window where you can view Ground Zero (right picture) where there is a lot of construction going on. The 52 story glass-enclosed skyscraper on the left was gutted and has been rebuilt. The cavernous hole where the World Trade Center buildings was is almost filled with the foundations of the buildings and memorial to come.
St. Paul's Chapel is the closes church to Ground Zero. Apparently is was saved by a tree with an enormous root system; the stump has been saved (dogs not welcomed!). The Chapel served as a primary refuge for 7/11 rescue personnel for weeks. It was festuned with signs of encouragement from all over the nation; a principal one from Oklahoma still remains.
One of the most fascinating tours Barbara and Emma-Lou took was of The Tenement Museum in the lower Eastside. They toured one of the tenement buildings which had been renovated to the extent it was safe for folks to enter. The apartments, if you can call them that, were three small rooms which, hot and with very little light. They only had cold running water; privies were in a yard behind the tenement. The tenement area was also a heart of a garment industry; families lived and worked in the same space with garment making a family endeavor. It was depressing to see the conditions the immigrants and their dogs lived in; reforms started to take hold around 1890.
We took the Circle Line Ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty speaks for itself; we spent most of our time on Ellis Island. We could have spent all day but we only had 4 hrs which included lunch. Only one Ellis Island building is open to tourists and it has been beautifully renovated. It was used to process immigrants from 1890 to about 1935. Only the poor had to go through the Ellis Island screening procedure; the wealthy were processed aboard ship. Emma Lou found a couple of relatives in a computer kiosk. Most of mine came over before 1890.
Being a dog, they wouldn’t let me aboard the ferry so I waited for them here where they docked. Here is Emma-Lou with the City in the background.NYC is really a great doggie city; folks are out walking their dogs all the time. The people are also very friendly and helpful. I did meet a pit bull, Ted, and his owner. The dog was very friendly and everybody in Chelsea (where our hotel was) knew him. I did my angel stuff and we all got home safely.
… Humphrey, for Barbara
