at the ballet and a recital

this is the coat check at lincoln center. i was waiting along with twenty other people to be ushered into the first ring for a rehearsal of a midsummer night's dream with the new york city ballet. my friend is a member and wasn't able to attend so she offered me her ticket. it was fun watching the dancers mark their places on the stage and run particular sections of their pieces repeatedly. the artistic director and ballet masters and mistresses stood along the edge of the stage watching and commenting and the stage hands adjusted the set pieces. the conductor was there but not the full orchestra. a rehearsal pianist played all the music. 

i met greg afterwards at the flame diner as we had a friend's daughter's recital to attend (after getting a bite to eat) at the school for strings. he's looking very happy as the verdict was just announced. it was the talk of the street as i walked downtown to meet him . . everyone was feeling a little bit chipper and there were many conversations about what it might mean and how the punishment might work out.

getting all the latest tweets . . 

at the recital . . a few of the songs that were sung were:

wer hat dies liedlein erdacht (gustav mahler), five melodies populaires grecques (maurice ravel), bei mir bist du shein (sholom secunda) and the light in the piazza (adam guettel).

walking home afterwards we passed a mounted police officer. we had just been talking the other week about how we rarely saw them these days. you can read an interesting article about the full new york city police department mounted unit here on the noelle floyd website.

the sky was beautiful this evening.

lunch out with friends

today was a day for noticing pretty flowers sprouting from window boxes. 

cafe himalaya, where i was supposed to meet reina and sacha, was closed today.

we found a nearby thai place instead . . 

and got caught up with our personal news and with what our children are doing . . (news about college, middle school, baseball and musical theatre . . )

flowers everywhere today, even if they're not all real, they're pretty . . 

someone planted hyacinths . . 

blue sky . . . warm sunshine . . i think spring is on its way.

celebrating the brooklyn bridge, fleet week, london again and a recital

 

my local radio station host had documentarian ken burns on this morning to celebrate 140 years of the brooklyn bridge. it was wonderful to listen to and i'm a big fan of ken burns' films (and also of brian lehrer's radio program). if you click here you can listen to the program. you can also watch the short video ken burns made commemorating the bridge with ny times architecture critic michael kimmelman here. while walking across the bridge, they discuss its history and its construction. the same page has several other short videos that are all very interesting and informative.

 

 

 

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i read a good article on the local newspaper the broadsheet this morning about the ships arriving for fleet week. they began entering the harbor at 7:30 am with the fdny fireboats leading the way. greg had a wonderful view from his work building:

steaming past the statue of liberty . . 

i think this is the uss wasp, which the article talks about (the largest at fleet week this year, an amphibious assault vessel similar in size to the intrepid). i'm interested in visiting the hms scott, a british ocean survey vessel, and the usns newport, a non-combatant expeditionary fast transport vessel (!).  i understand they're offering free tours at specific times.

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meanwhile . . ! our friends (my cousin ron and his partner) are having a grand time with morgan in london! morgan was tour guide today around their neighborhood in soho and then all went to the wolsely for tea . .

their smiles make me so happy . . 

tea at the wolsely! (they had a full tea with finger sandwiches, scones and pastries!)

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while greg and i met in the evening at the school for strings at our friend's voice recital (my friend reina) (i walked and greg took the train) . . 

anika with her accompanist marina. she sang so beautifully and we were all incredibly moved. the program included songs by henry purcell (sweeter than roses), mozart (deh! vieni non tardar), franz schubert (du bist di ruh), johannes brahms (vergebliches ständchen), giaochino rossini (una volta c'era un re), rodgers and hammerstein ii (ten minutes ago), stephen sondheim (on the steps of the palace, green finch and linnet bird), j. bock and s. harnick (vanilla ice cream), leonard bernststein and s. sondheim (maria).

waiting for the bus on what turned out to be a rainy ride home.

lunch and tea with friends and the full moon

my herbs aren't really flourishing as their containers are a bit small . . pretty plant pots are nice to look at but don't always make the best homes. the mint on the right is probably doing the best. the rosemary in the middle seems to have stabilized and the thyme on the left is slowly dying; sadly. the two aloe plants on the left are fine . . and the larger one has another baby, i think. it must be a great, great, great, great grandchild from the one i bought many years ago in florida when visiting greg's family with the girls when they were little. i remember clearly that it was at a local health food store whose plants were arranged artistically around it's outside patio.

chanda stopped by after a counter culture workshop. her work uses counter culture coffee and they allow baristas from local cafes to learn more techniques at their training centers. i actually didn't ask her what she worked on today . . i guess we were busy talking of other things. (what techniques could there be? different lattes and cappuccinos?)

we each made our own sandwiches.

i met sacha and reina in the late afternoon at maman cafe . . but after they closed we shifted to the amorino gelato cafe where we sat and finished our coffee drinks (i had an iced peach mango green tea!).

the talk centered around college tours (oberlin a week ago and boston in two weeks for reina's son) and travels (sacha was just in switzerland) and higher realms - our human potential for spiritual knowledge.

reina walked with me cross town to the taco place where i picked up dinner for greg and i this evening . . unfortunately, their guacamole tonight was very poor. they usually water it down but tonight it was more watered down than usual and it looked like they had used a bad avocado. we're not feeling so inclined to patronize them any time soon again.

here's a photo of tonight's full moon (acutally i think it might not be completely full until 1:36 am tomorrow). i just read that it was a perigee moon (when it's path is closest to earth) on august 10th . . so yesterday's photo was the supermoon. earthsky writes that this bright moon falls in the middle of the perseid meteor shower . . so it'll be difficult to see those beautiful shooting stars. i saw a shooting star during the perseid shower in 2016 when out on the cape. it was very exciting and i wrote about it here.

(earthsky gives some tips here on how to still view the perseids with a full moon.)

a walk on the high line

 chanda and i met up with reina, anika and nikolas on the high line . . 

 it was a special meeting as samuel from austria was visiting.

 

  samuel is the son of manu, whom morgana is staying with in austria.

it was really nice meeting him today. they were on their way to a museum afterwards. i think samuel will be with them for a few weeks.