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July 8, 2007

Gone Teaching...

Back soon...

Posted by Jane on 5:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 4, 2007

Freedoms

It is difficult to meander freely in New York City except on holidays, when the streets are empty of traffic and the pavements are clear of mad cyclists, ferocious skaters, audacious gallopers, and twin- or triplet-wide prams. Yesterday evening, in the calm before the Fourth, I walked the dogs to the tip of the Battery; in that spacious pre-holiday quietude there was little risk of stepping on someone’s Manhattoes.
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Down at Battery Park I saw a large, emancipated field, happily left to wildflowers growing tall and free. I circumnavigated Castle Clinton (1811), and peered into the inner ward through each mysterious, deep, barred and splayed window all the way around. Meanwhile, the usual assortment of assiduous commuter and visitor boats came and went.
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I settled on the brink of the U.S.A. and gazed beyond the Narrows, out to sea. Distance telescoped the expanse into an intensely minuscule presence, like a Bewickian vignette. The Verrazano Bridge seemed a mere wisp. Tiny sails, cupping breezes, puffed out like little whelks. The occasional foghorn sounded in an unexpected key. In the near distance, an enormous green scow, loaded with containers and marked “Saudi Arabia,” pulled out from its berth, inexorable as a landslide. Soon followed the Pioneer, a gaff-rigged schooner for hire, which loomed from its slip close enough for me to see the stitching athwart its trapezoidal sheets.
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Above, the wheel-spoked sun had been beckoning a convoy of huge gray and white clouds that now were beginning to fluoresce. And, briefly, in the early-evening blue: a rainbow.
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There’s Governor’s Island, newly open to the public, accessible for free. There’s Liberty (nee Bedloes) Island, with the Statue of Liberty, and Liberty State Park. And Ellis Island, where my father’s father came a century or so ago with nothing, including English. When the officials asked his name, he shrugged. “Here you are a free man,” they improvised (so I’m told), and stamped his papers Freeman.

Posted by Jane on 5:07 PM | Comments (0)