at 11:30 am charlotte and i were at joffrey to meet chanda and take the train downtown with her to meet greg for lunch at his workplace. this is the view of new jersey and the hudson river from his cafeteria window.
it was taco tuesday and since we all love tacos, that's what we had. we had fun checking out the snack area (they have popcorn, m and m's, and pretzels, along with coffee and water) and the magazines. time inc. was recently taken over by meredith corporation (this is really a very sad state of affairs for the time people, unfortunately), so several magazines have been added to the magazine take home area: better homes and gardens, cooking light, martha stewart, rachael ray and family circle. i wouldn't have minded looking at a rachael ray magazine, but they weren't currently available.
after an hour, greg went back to work and chanda went to her physical therapy appointment. charlotte and i walked across the bridge to the new park just south of the 9/11 memorial. i had been reading about this park and was happy to finally be able to see it. the sphere, which is the only artwork to survive the september 11th attacks, was finally put in place near the memorial for people to see. it had been in battery park all this time.
it's a bit dented, but still intact, which everyone finds, justifiably, surprising. there's a wonderful new york times article about it here.
charlotte in front of the freedom tower . .
i was trying to get the entire tower in the photo with her . . she's the dark figure in the bottom right of the pic above.
we then walked to the national museum of the american indian at 1 bowling green in the old alexander hamilton customs house, built in 1902 - 7 to "house the duty collection operations" for the port of new york. after going through security with several grim and burly security guards, and passing through the beautiful roman dome, we slipped through a side door to start perusing the artifacts . . we kind of started at the end of the exhibit . . above is a central caribbean tripod vessel from ad 800 - 1500. we found the feet on these vessels very interesting and surmised that they must have been easy to place in a fire for cooking and heating.
a figure of a chiriqui woman carrying a child upon her back, probably with a roboso, similar to what i used for korrina, morgana, and chanda. i did purchase the girls' robosos from a woman who brought the material back from guatamala. this figure is from present day panama.
i do wonder why the figure was made. did they place them on their windowsills like i do with the many figures i own? is this naive of me to think? perhaps they were placed in tombs for the same reason i place them on windowsills? for company? do i place my figures on the sills just because they look pretty? or because i actually do imbue them with an actual life force that comforts me during the day? i suppose i don't give them the same strength to help me reach the next plane of existence, but there is a certain anthropomorphic sensibility . . and that's probably why i can't get rid of all those stuffed animals in a bag in the back room . . sometimes i despise stuffed animals as much as i despise balloons . .
enough of this . .
these jars were very interesting to me as they were painted with a centipede design. they're also from the chiriqui province in panama.
at this point i got very restless and wanted to investigate the entire exhibit to see how extensive it was . . we walked through many rooms to get to the beginning which emphasized the central and south american native nations. it's a wonderful exhibit . . however, we both ended up sitting on a bench in a corner and i fell asleep . . and i think charlotte did also. when we finally came to, we decided we needed a hot chocolate more than another round of artifact observations (the rooms were very warm and soporific!).
we walked from the tip of manhattan, all the way up broadway to l. a. burdick on prince street in soho and rewarded ourselves with one milk hot chocolate and one dark hot chocolate.
charlotte was inspired to pick out chocolates as a birthday gift for her sister back home.
it was a fun end to a busy day.
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