New York, New York

"Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today... I'm gonna be a part of it--New York, New York! These little town blues are melting away..." 

This one's easy. There are so many New York songs, ITunes has put together a playlist of them. The one above, recorded by both Frank Sinatra and Liza Minnelli, is my favorite. 

I spent my vacation in New York City. For the second time in a little over a year. And I loved it just as much as the first time last summer. 

Pam and I left Friday morning, early, for the GSP airport. We got underway on time, and arrived at the hotel around 5. Question: what do an English teacher and a librarian do upon lighting in Manhattan? We go visit the lions at the New York Public Library. First thing. Our visit this time was bracketed by visits to NYPL, and much happened between those visits. The first visit, the library was closed, but we sat in the plaza in front of the library, watched the crowds, and absorbed (and re-acclimated to) the energy of this wonderful city. The last visit was a tour of the building done by a volunteer, and while it was interesting, I had far more questions about the library's collections and operations than she was prepared to answer. (No, I didn't ask them.)

We revisited the President Hotel, where they put us in a tiny room with a double bed, a non-functioning desk lamp, and not enough towels. Pam had to use her teacher voice to get both fixed. The housekeepers never quite got the idea that there were two of us in the room, in spite of the two suitcases and two different toilet kits sitting around. After a day or two it also seemed quintessentially New York. Our view was of another building in the hotel. The upside was that it was incredibly quiet. And it had a great shower! 

The highlights: 

Seeing August: Osage County, this year's Tony award winning Best Play and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This was incredible. It's a very dark, reeking black comedy about a VERY dysfunctional family in Oklahoma. Some of my favorite lines: "I don't drink because my wife takes pills." "This MADHOUSE is my home!" "I'M RUNNING THINGS NOW!" The family gathers because Daddy has gone missing. Mama is popping various types of highly addictive pills like they're candy. The three daughters show up--the family hero, the lost child, and the happy child, with all of their family members (estranged husband and pothead child; a fiance; and a secret lover). 

For someone who grew up in an alcoholic family, this play was both painful and rehabilitating. There were characters and lines so real I cringed, and then I laughed. At the end, you see the dissolution of a woman who realizes what she has lost. It's very moving, and very well done. 

Museums. Last year we went to the Met. This year, it was MOMA and the American Museum of Natural History. Pam chose the AMNH, I chose MOMA. AMNH was pretty awesome in its own way. We spent a lot of time in the space and planetarium part, where I felt like I got entirely too much information; and the Oceania Hall. I liked that better--the room had the ambiance of being underwater, and there was much information about marine life and the need for conservation. I saw a coral reef up close. I'm glad I went but I don't care if I go there again. One real downer: the special exhibitions cost extra. Another downer (or could it be an upper?): Pam and I got the senior citizen's discount there: we told the girl we weren't old enough, and she said, "That's okay, I'm giving it to you because I like your accents." So, a Southern accent turns out to be good for SOMETHING in New York! 

MOMA was a different story. We were both interested in the paintings, and we saw a special exhibition on Dali. I will say--I have never seen as many Picassos in one place in my life. They were incredible, awesome, and it was such a blast to see paintings that I have only seen in books. I also really liked Kandinsky and Klee and Mondrian. Not so much the guys who painted canvases solid red. It just didn't move me. It bored me. I left feeling like there was more to see. I would gladly go there again. 

Food: We revisited two restaurants from last year: Becco (Pam's choice) and Pigalle (my choice). We spent lots of money in both places and ate and drank more than we should have. Other fun food things: eating a goat cheese and lettuce sandwich in Bryant Park, and eating potato pancakes in Maxie's Deli at midnight. We also found a better place for breakfast than the hotel bar: a deli/takeout place/supermarket called Food Emporium, where in 4 days we became regulars and the women working the coffee and bakery goods bar knew what we wanted. Pam and I want the Food Emporium to come to South Carolina. If it did, I would NEVER cook again. And I would be broke... 

Parks: We headed back to Central Park after the Natural History museum and rambled through the Ramble, a portion of the park with walking paths and protected wildlife (read: birds) areas. I got worried that we were not going to find our way out, but we did--to discover the lake and the Bow Bridge, one of the "great sights" of Central Park. Lots of people were rowing on the lake, and we just sat there and watched. The weather was beautiful, warm and breezy. The BEST thing about Central Park, aside from the beautiful views and walking/biking paths, is the fact that you can sit there for hours and not be even approached by mosquitoes. That in itself is enough to make me want to live in NYC. As beautiful as our green trees and vegetation are, the heat and the mosquitoes keep you inside.  

Park no. 2: Bryant Park, a grassy 1/2 block area behind the New York Public Library. There are tables and chairs there, part of the NYPL's Outdoor Reading Room. HBO also sponsors a Summer Film Festival there on Monday nights. This week, it was the old Jack Lemmon/Shirley McLaine movie The Apartment. Funny things that happened: in the beginning of the movie, Jack Lemmon's character runs through some actuarial statistics about New York City, dated 1954. The one that got boos and groans from the crowd: "And my rent is 85 dollars a month." There were lots of younger people there, students and just out of college working kids there, all dressed up in sundresses and business clothes, with food and wine. Another funny thing that happened: Pam and I pulled up chairs to the edge of the grass to sit. Then we saw a table with chairs and sat there instead. We left the chairs we pulled up behind us. We were asked by a young man if he could sit "with us." He turned out to be quite chatty; told us his life story, nearly. He was born in the Caribbean, and his family moved to New York. He stayed there when his family moved to Georgia. He worked in finance but wanted to be a filmmaker. He told a hilarious story about making a drive to Georgia in a decrepit car. The car finally died in South Carolina--yes, SC is just so notorious for killing cars! It was one of my "this is real New York" evenings. 

Sunday morning church, another "real New York" moment. In our wanderings around Times Square, we found an Episcopal church called St. Mary the Virgin. They had "solemn mass" at 11 on Sunday. Pam asked me what "solemn mass" was and I answered, "mass with bells and smells." It was a lovely service--bells, a wonderful cantor, and a LOT of incense--in a church built in 1868, with no air-conditioning. They had huge fans running, and it was not so bad. The rector, a youngish man named Robert, delivered a sermon that started out with a description of a painting he had seen in the Vatican, and included "It would be easier to carry a bomb into the Vatican than wear shorts there." All of this was to say that the Church could just be a pain in the butt sometimes. He was wonderfully welcoming and joyful. After the service, I shook his hand and got what I'd consider "what a priest says when trying to be friendly": Haven't we met??" I said no, and introduced myself. We were then invited for lemonade in the parish hall, where we had a great conversation with a Belgian woman who worked for an international bank and had lived in NYC for 30 years. She seemed like someone I would like to get to know. 

I think, summing it up, this New York trip was a "humanizing" one. Last year, we went as tourists--we didn't really talk much to anyone. This time, we met people, talked with people, got to hear from them, and they from us. Maybe they carried away a new perception of tourists or Southerners from meeting us. I know I carried away a perception of New Yorkers as not so different from me. And yes, I still want to go back. 

New Song

(To be sung to the tune of the 70s rock hit "Signs")

Names, names, everywhere there're names,

Found in the authority file,

Fogging my mind. 

'Call me this, DON'T CALL ME THAT!'

Give me a name! (or Follow the rules!) 

more verses to follow as I think of them... 

Names are weird. Today we dealt with a group of men, 4 of them, ALL named James Cuthbert Self. Why do people visit the father's name upon the son... and the grandson... and the great-grandson? Untangling all the threads can be frustrating and confusing. 

If you're a librarian and you have the occupational good fortune (forture? torture?) to have to individually define all these names, you CAN lose your mind. 

Doing Disneyland

I'm going to have to find a new name for this blog, I think. Well, no...I can relate this to music. 

When You Wish Upon a Star has never been one of my favorite songs. Too schmaltzy, too sentimental, and more magical than I could believe, even as a child. But--on a recent trip to Anaheim for the ALA conference, I began to reconsider...

I kept hearing that I should go to Disneyland while I was in Anaheim and I demurred. Oh, hell, no. Me, practical, not-comfortable-with-children me, go to Disneyland? "Oh, you'll like it. It's just a lot of fun." "How can you go to Anaheim and NOT go to Disneyland?" "WHY would you go to Anaheim if NOT to go to Disneyland?" Well, I was there to attend a conference. I wasn't sure I was looking forward to it. Three years ago it had been in Orlando, and that was a bust. But that's a digression best left alone. 

One day at work I got an IM. C, wanting to make plans for ALA. 

  C: I keep hearing I should go to Disneyland.

Me: Me too. I don't know. 

C: Well, the Scholarship Bash is there. We get to see the park and we donate money for scholarships.

Me: That's a pretty good cause. Well, are you in? 

C: Yeah. You?

Me: ok

So we agreed she'd check on tickets when she got to California. 

The night of the Bash: we meet, have beer and pub grub at her hotel, and head for the park. We'd decided to do Disneyland "Classic" instead of the Disneyland Adventure Park, just because of Tomorrowland. (We are both sci-fi fans.) 

It was dusky when we got there. The part of the park you see first is Main Street USA: an old fashioned small town, what we used to call "downtown" with all the appropriate businesses--bank, post office, apothecary, restaurant. There were lights coming on--all around the signs, the windows, white lights everywhere. "One of the most magical moments of the day at Disneyland," according to the short history film we saw, hosted by Steve Martin and aided (or hindered) by Donald Duck. Steve was right--it was beautiful. 

After the film we just started walking. C had it in mind to have a roast turkey leg for dinner. I wasn't going to argue with her--she is nearly twice my size (in height) and a former weightlifting champion. (We do make an interesting looking pair.) I had it in mind to ride Space Mountain but only before I had the turkey leg. When we saw the wait was 40 minutes at Space Mountain, we took off looking for turkey. On the way, I saw the rest of Tomorrowland, and this incredible sculpture masquerading as the fulcrum of a spaceship ride. The ride looked interesting, but the decoration was more fun to watch--planets and strange space structures rotating. 

We found turkey, right in front of the Enchanted Castle. The crowd was amassing for the fireworks show. Public service announcements kept coming on: "We are sorry but we must postpone the fireworks show because of high winds. We will continue to evaluate the situation." After about 20 minutes of this, the fireworks started. They were AMAZING. I just stood there, stunned by the color and the light and the music, with turkey grease running down my arm. The show ran through the entire Disney canon from Peter Pan (Tinker Bell and 'When You Wish Upon a Star') to the Pirates of the Caribbean, with Star Wars (white rockets crossing each other over the castle) in there somewhere towards the end. At the end they once again played "When You Wish Upon a Star" and I felt ... something. I'm not sure what. But the Disneyland fireworks show ruined me for any other fireworks show I believe I'll ever see. 

After the fireworks, we got pushed around in the crowd, and went looking for New Orleans Square. After wandering through Frontierland, we finally found it. It was charming too. We skipped Fantasyland and Critterland. But there was one problem: it was too damn dark in that park. I kept thinking, I wish I could see it in the daytime. Shortly after riding the Disneyland Express back to the park entrance, our evening visit was over. I was glad I went. I LOVED the fireworks, but walking around in the dark was a bit of a disappointment. 

Even though I enjoyed it, I kept thinking I just didn't get the allure of Disneyland and the reason why millions of people from all over the world visit it every year. It was lovely, and fun, and it's a major part of American popular culture (and commerce). But I didn't get the whole "magical, innocent joy" that Walt Disney talked about in the film I saw, until the night before I left Anaheim.

That night, I went searching for a restaurant with a real wine list. I had finished my meetings and was exhausted. I didn't want to eat another dinner at a Harbor Boulevard chain restaurant with loud music and lousy food and cheap California wine. I managed to find my way to Downtown Disney after the nice but ultimately uninformed concierge at the convention center told me I'd have to take a bus and walk a while, and that it was nowhere near my hotel. 

Downtown Disney is Disneyland for grownups. Shops, restaurants, generally cheesy but kind of witty architecture, beautiful landscaping. After a relatively SHORT walk to my hotel to drop off all of the convention crap, I went back for dinner. The first food I smelled was Italian, and my stomach dropped to my toes. The Napoli. Probably a chain, but it had linen tablecloths and looked relatively peaceful and open. A 20 minute wait. But, the hostess said, "if you're by yourself you can sit at the bar and have dinner." I said, "But...smoking?" "There's no smoking in any restaurant here," she said. My kind of bar! I had the crab risotto special and a very large glass of Chianti (wrong wine pairing, I know. So sue me--it was still good.). Plus a ricotta mousse and berries dessert that made me want to move to California permanently.  

After dinner I wandered out of the Napoli, totally satisfied but undecided about what to do next. I sat down on a stone bench nearby, facing a tulip shaped fountain. Two little girls were playing there. Somewhere between 6 and 8 years old, I guess. Their dads were sitting nearby watching. The girls were wearing shorts and matching hot pink t-shirts with hand prints all over the front (an art project, I guess.). They started running around and around the fountain, chasing each other, squealing and giggling, dipping their hands in the water, flinging it out at each other. Total abandon. Totally caught in the moment. Total hysteria from the dads. "PHOEBE! DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE WATER!" To her credit, Phoebe completely ignored him. 

After a moment, they wound down, the dads got up and they all went on. But watching those little girls, I got Disneyland. It was really about just being a happy kid, being in a pretty place that didn't look like home, and experiencing that sort of spontaneous joy that comes from doing something simple like racing around a stone tulip shaped fountain. And not caring that the water might be unsanitary. 

They were probably high on sugar. And I was probably high on the Chianti. But for what it was worth, that was my magical Disneyland moment. I still want to go back and see the park in the daylight. And ride Space Mountain.