Wednesday, September 25, 2013

On the road west

Am heading for the Grand Canyon...never have been there before.  And am reading de Booton's book, The Art of Travel, along the way.  But my first stop has been the hot springs at the Orient Land Trust...a place about which I have blogged before.  Coming here always feels like home, a kind of spiritual home, like Ghost Ranch in New Mexico or the vast temple complexes in Tamil Nadu.    


Friday, September 13, 2013

Staying at the Pod

Pingpong, anyone? so the last few times in New York City, I've stayed at the Pod Hotel. Tiny room...but great design...and public places to hang out...which I guess is the point...who wants to stay in their room...it's time to get out and around...









in the library books are organized by color...broad stripes in black and white alongside one of the bars...there are three bars...generally full...and then there are the elevators which have glass walls...three shafts in a row....so you can see who is going up while you are going down and vice versa...



But often you're going up to the bar on the terrace of the 17th floor...overlooking the rest of the city...by day or by night....







A good place for a drink before turning in....

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Location:Manhattan

A walk

Got up early to head west on foot along 39th street...the morning sun not quite yet hitting directly on the streets...


passing the taxis heading for Grand Central Station to search for the morning's first fares... Further west coming to the Hudson, new apartment complexes catch the early rays...




As does the river itself and the ferries coming to their Manhattan port from Jersey City, Weehawken, Edgewater...Jersey towns providing part of the workforce that fills the city's streets...







Only five passengers, including myself, heading west...to the towns along the Palisades, the cliffs that range along the Hudson's shores.... When I was a kid growing up on those cliffs, the apartments along the boulevard were just beginning to be built...and those now further south in Jersey City were not even a gleam in someone's eye...and those in lower Manhattan had yet to be built and destroyed and built again.









Getting up and around the cliffs was always child's play...swinging on the ropes strung on the girders underneath "suicide bridge," for example, was part of that play....but now there are fresh stairs and, even, yes a light rail that connects to Bergenline Avenue.








Bergenline...one of my first jobs working as a bus boy at Tedesco's, a restaurant with "great mussels"...shopping for "good" clothes at Schlesinger's with my Mom...for a long time has moved to a Latin beat...you get a bit more English above 60th Street but generally it speaks Spanish with all of its flavors.




I walk from 51st Street where the elevators lift passengers from the light rail's deep tunnel to the sidewalk, wander past my elementary school on 74th street, its students filing under the portals that still proclaim "Girls" and "Boys." But the boys and girls line up together now.



But why the walk? Ahhh...meeting friends at a restaurant at 79th and Bergenline. Tapas de Espana. Friends from the same elementary school...class of 1958.


After lunch...walk back through North Hudson Park...along the boulevard that runs atop the Palisades...stopping off to see the Mom of a friend who still lives in her apartment...



Take that long stairway back to the ferry...crossing with the late afternoon sun against the high walls of the skyscrapers...



And then back along 39th street...now heading east...to the hotel...a late afternoon drink...that stretches into the evening.




I love hiking in the mountains of Colorado...but this, this was a great hike.

Location:manhattan--new jersey

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Family

Official portrait...the Werge-Whitehead family celebrates the fifth anniversary of the wedding of Ingrid and Geoff. After five years, there are four members of this combo...a doubling of the population.



Ingrid....





and Geoff...





and Freya...not feeling so well here after a round of vaccinations for two year olds....





and finally the new Ms. Addie....




This does not include the cats. Anyway, Happy Anniversary.

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Location:Cranston, Rhode Island

East Coast

So when I say I am going to the east coast, I mean just that...going to various points along the coast that stretches from (for me) southern Maryland to Boston...all points between.




At Ingrid and Geoff's house, we are just two blocks from the east coast...the point at which this continents slips beneath the waves of the Atlantic or, in this case, Long Island Sound. From the old Norse, "sund," meaning strait...via old English and, then, English.
But, yes, it is having to do with water....and the lives that people living on the coast lead. A humid life...given the moisture in the air...such a contrast to Colorado...but one that now participates in the sea as if it were just a form of recreation...












or of physical beauty...providing a backdrop for daily life...viewing the water from the windows of our houses...or viewing our houses from the vantage of the water...




Either way the east coast is this geologic line where the sea meets the land...once it was the life-blood, the highway, the font of commerce, the passage to this continent from other continents...still it defines a cultural and economic paradigm...all along the perimeter between walking on solid, if soggy at times, ground and swimming in, or under, the waters.

Location:Cranston, Rhode Island

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

20 minutes on the bike...

So I went out this morning on the bike after, finally, getting a new pair of riding shorts, and within 20 minutes came to the following sites.













And so I figure now that if you are looking for someplace to live and can choose, then choose a place that has a bunch of fun things to see or do within a 20 minute bike ride.


Location:Providence, RI

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Watson and the Shark

At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I rounded a corner to see the young Watson threatened by a shark in Havana harbor....how many years before "Jaws?"




Copley painted this in 1778 at the request of the adult Watson who, having lost a leg to the shark, survived and went on to become a prominent English businessman and politician.

So I was surprised at the National Gallery yesterday to round another corner and there was the 14 year old Watson (he was a cabin boy) again threatened by the self-same shark.





Copy right infringement? Painting moved by Amtrak at night between both museums? Something to do with Google?

No, looks like the National has the original (which is accompanied by a carved dedication at the bottom as a warning and for the edification of English youth). Copley made two copies...and one wound up in Boston.
A third is still in England.

All of which should be both a warning and for the edification of museum goers that way before the first xerox machine there were ways of making copies.

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Location:Washington, DC; Boston

God

I was struck by two versions of God. The first was by a Hispano-Flemish artist (from the 15th century when the Low Countries were under the rule of the Spanish kings). I was blown away by the intense details of this set of 12 paintings...off in a side room from the main corridor in the National Gallery. An tiny angel, for example, collecting the blood of Christ in a crucifixion scene.





One large painting was of the assumption of Mary, being lifted from this earthly dross into the starry heavens.



And in heaven there was God waiting...looking like the Pope with a three tiered crown. An old man looking on...making sure the journey goes well...fingers crossed in a blessing to this Queen of Heaven. Halos of divine power emanating from his head.





Later that day, I was at the Museum of American Art, in an old favorite room dedicated to the paintings of A.P. Ryder. Ryder...such a dark, strong, romantic painter of the late 19th, early 20th century...and in his painting of Jonah...so heavily layered with oil that I had not noticed it before...is God looking at the scene.





The same blessing of the fingers...holding the same sacred globe...but now much more part of the scene, the tossing waves, the black sky, the skirting clouds...and below the counterpart, lost in the waves, Jonah...





his counterpart in a sense. Pleading to be saved from the broiling sea. In this scene, God appears less as a ruler, a pope, an emperor, and more as a force, participating in the world, interacting with his human creation.

I was struck by the sweep of time and geography separating these painters yet, both the them in a way, struggling to represent a theological text with oil, brush, and color.




Location:Washington, District of Columbia

National Gallery




When I was a small boy, I was sent down to Washington DC (from home in New Jersey) to visit my Uncle Alan and my cousins. We went camping on the beach...I remember being eaten by mosquitos. But one morning, my uncle dropped me off in DC to do some exploring...he dropped me off in front of the National Gallery.

I walked up that grand staircase that leads to the central rotunda. Arriving at that immense dome with its fountain and statue of Mercury pointing upwards to the sky, I stopped in my tracks. Awestruck at the vast open space. The small naked figure pointing to the infinite. Overwhelmed by the setting.

In some ways that was my first real introduction to the power of art and architecture. Coming back to that space today, I climb up the stairs with a sense of anticipation that something transformative will occur. And it does in smaller ways. Still that first moment of breathless "wow"... it lingers as a reminder of the power of the artist, the architect, to transform our sense of the world...and our place in it.





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Crowds

The metro brings us all together...at least on one or another side of the underground tracks...




Not for those who don't like close contact with folks they don't know....




Amazing how as a species we can figure out the difference between who wants to get on and who wants to get off.





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Location:Washington, District of Columbia, the metro

Diabetes

So this road trip began as a response to our son, Jose, being in the emergency room in Nagua, Dominican Republic and then in Laurel, Maryland for wild-out-of-control diabetes.




Like the smile, but notice the panza (stomach, belly, etc.) while holding sons Dylan and Alejandro back in Nagua.

So Charlotte and I decamped from the Mountain Park campground where we were spending a weekend with friends and flew out to help stabilize his blood sugar.

Ahhh...the things you can learn about glucose. Like how many grams you should be consuming (45 per day for men...or less)? How much sugar is there in those small little Activa yogurt cups (17 grams)? What is the glycemic index for almonds (0....refined sugar is 100...most foods are inbetween)?

And being back on the east coast, well, a lot more heavy people live around here in PG county than in Colorado. So what gives?

Seems government policy of subsidizing corn (hey all those good Republican votes in the mid-west), the manufacture of high fructose corn syrup, and...well, you gotta get people to eat more if you are a food corporation and your primary responsibility is to your stock holders...

Anyway Jose is getting stabilized via insulin shots and diet and exercise...appears to be no permanent damage.

Point is...lots of different reasons for being on the road. And one of them is to help each other stay alive.

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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

The sea

We drove along the north coast to a little town, Cabrerra, which just had a new "malecon"...walkway by the sea...built. A new restaurant had been built...we did need to wait two hours for food to arrive...but in the meantime, the waves arrived to crash against the rock face of the cliffs facing the sea.




Waves would rush into a small blow hole and blow up spray into the hot, tropical air. Jose and Alejandro would wait for a big wave to roll in and then see how wet they would get. Very, it turns out. Almost like being engulfed in the sea...but still safe on dry land





Meanwhile Dylan was getting fed...even if no one else was.





After Cabrerra, we drove back to Nagua...a short visit with Nelcy's grandmother...too short by Dominican standards...we did not even stay for coffee...but, at least, we got a final "official" picture of our visit. Which, I guess, goes into that roll of official Thanksgiving and wedding photos.





Photos which say "We were there...all of us. We were there...together. We will not always be able to be all together. But we are at this moment."

Then to the plane, to Miami, and home.

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