a grey and cold friday

 

friday morning i walked downtown to whole foods tribeca to meet ella mills, the owner of deliciously ella granola bars, cereal and the delicious hazelnut balls morgan always brings me from london. i also used to subscribe to her app for recipe ideas which was a lot of fun and they were all very good. we also visited her cafe in '22 when we were in london for morgan's graduation. (i had the most delicious vegan chocolate chip tahini muffin when there.) 

she had a good turn out even though the weather was a bit dreary and everyone enjoyed talking with her. she's very personable and even said i should say hi to morgan for her (after i told her about all the deliciously ella treats morgan brings me). her husband and two children were with her and the little ones enjoyed handing out promotional canvas bags to the fans waiting in line. they're such a sweet family.

walking home through the misty grey day . . 

saying hello to these two friends . . 

mr. frog and mr. bee (a tom otterness sculpture, seen here in 2014) . . 

another beautiful star magnolia (beginning to lose its petals already) . . 

such a foggy day!

i stopped at duane park patisserie for a hot cross bun which i've been craving for weeks (i also brought three home with me).

thankfully, the callery pear trees are very cheery on these cold grey days.

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in the evening i met ellen for a special salon chamber concert with one of her former students who plays the cello (he was in morgana's age group). we heard pieces by shostakovich, prokofiev, dvorák, messiaen, piazzolla and kodály along with the stories as to how they were composed:

"shostakovich stands against stalin's terror, prokofiev paints the chaos of red october, dvorák echoes a nation's search for identity, messiaen transcends the walls of a prisoner of war camp, piazzolla reinvents the tango as argentina teeters on collapse and kodály keeps hungarian tradition alive despite overwhelming suppression. each piece is a testament to the indomitable force of human expression in the face of adversity - a symphony of resistance, survival, and hope." 

lunch and a sunday dance performance

greg and i had lunch at west 11th street cafe and then i met my neighbor for a walk downtown to see the dance performance (which i thought was yesterday).

i didn't film much of it as it was a small crowd and since i was sitting directly in front it felt distracting to be holding the camera up, so i just enjoyed the show. two dance companies performed: time lapse dance (above is their american elm) and sokolow theatre/dance ensemble celebrating frida kahlo (whose birthday was july 6th) by performing anna sokolow's frida and magritte magritte. it was especially nice as i was able to say hello to two friends there (homeschooling friend sam performed in magritte which was a pleasant surprise). the piece above was beautiful with the wind whipping the dancer's costume, the pigeons flying about, curious people strolling by, helicopters overhead and the beautiful music they used (which you can't hear because of the wind distorting the sound on the camera). it all added to the experience of being outside with the warm sun and the trees and the cool ocean air blowing off the river . .

toni and i walked back home past penny park and said hello to the tom otterness statues . . 

(here's penny park in 2008.)

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chanda back at home with pluto. she had stopped by after work for some leftover salads i had for her and for meds that greg had picked up for her from grove.

waiting for a heart

 greg and i took a trip uptown to see brian's dad today.

 he's been at columbria presbyterian hospital waiting for a heart . .

 the a train is usually a quick ride uptown . . 

 waiting in line to get our room passes . . 

 the last time we visited, we managed to follow someone else who was visiting a patient in the cardiac care unit. today we were on our own and almost took a wrong turn . . but didn't, and successfully found the room finally. brian's dad was sitting up and working on his computer. we talked about everything our children were doing and the conversation was punctuated with lots of beeps from the machines he is hooked up to. when he moves around a lot while sitting up. the wires and tubes must register that some things are off. a nurse needed to come in and press buttons and realign plugs and his blood pressure monitor. he didn't seem too bothered by it. it must happen often. going for a walk, he said, was even worse because everything needs to be disconnected and the plastic tubing always gets tangled.

 we said good-bye around 2 . . and passed this tom otterness pair when getting off the train at 14th street. i like the look on the young man on the right . . i think he was trying to figure out which stairs to go down.

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we had a late dinner when chanda got home around 7:45 from her dance rehearsal. she's part of a friend's company program (km/dm dance) that is performing september 8th and 9th at manhattan movement and arts center.

mr. frog on the way to ballet rehearsal

it's been a long day and i have more pics to post (including some beautiful ones from our walk along the river), but it'll have to wait. sleep has been in short supply and since jack is now asleep, i should be too. morgana has been putting her costume together for her solo, and rehearsing a duet with her friend deychen. chanda spent the entire day rehearsing for her ballet recital, and then dancing the first performance at 6:30 this evening (with a brief stint up to her acting class to rehearse a scene for their end of year performance next week). greg has been moving large IT structures in new jersey, and i think korrina is now babysitting.

at the met and a dinner guest

 after chanda's second met art class, she wanted to visit the "joan of arc" painting by jules bastien-lepage. my sister is the one who first "discovered" this painting. she would always bring me to see it. now the girls like visiting it.

like joan, bastien-lepage was also a native of lorraine. he first exhibited this painting at the 1880 salon in paris; a time when many other artists were also revisiting the story of joan.

 on the way home . . at the 14th street a, c, e subway station . . peeking through a tom otterness sculpture.

 so, today they took chanda through the africa and oceania galleries and they visited sculptures and masks featuring feathers. then they returned to the studio where they did get to work with feathers. chanda wasn't too excited about this piece . . but then i turned it around and there was a bluebird.

this was her favorite piece that she worked on today.

 she also finished her border . . 

and worked . . a little more . . on her lesson about the first seven kings of rome . . 

this evening i made dilly brown rice from cynthia lair's feeding the whole family, and breaded chicken breasts. morgana brought home a friend from her dance intensive for dinner.

 the friend was hayley, who is actually an old friend. she lives in florida and she and morgana were very surprised to run into each other at the intensive when it began. neither knew the other would be attending. hayley used to dance with the isadora duncan dance company . . when korrina, morgana and chanda were also dancing with the company for a special piece the artistic director, lori belilove, was doing at the alvin ailey theatre called red thread:

you can see korrina, morgana and chanda in the short birthday party scene at 2:01, called "sharing secrets", right before haley comes on to do "runaway." morgana, with her hair in two braids, is one of the girls running on at the beginning and korrina joins the circle wearing blue capris and an orange top. chanda is the tiniest in a pink dress . .(take note of "running ragged," two pieces before their's, which features their isadora duncan dance teacher, faith kimberling, that was always my favorite piece in the whole show).

 it began to rain so we took refuge in chelsea market where we picked out gelato cones . . 

walking hayley home . . 

 23rd street where hayley is staying and where it began to pour . . 

the rain chased away all the visitors to the high line, and walking home along the quiet pathway felt like the days when it first opened . .

walking to tribeca

today morgana, chanda and i took a walk to tribeca along greenwich street (korrina went to flushing to visit friends, and greg did a coop shift). we passed st. luke's garden where the lenten roses, hellebores, were in bloom.

and also the witch hazel . .

and the little snowdrop who lost some of her color giving it to the snow.

we've been seeing the lorax everywhere . .

these loraxes are always hungry.

this door can be found on hudson street. i liked the door knocker.

this is the window of the cooking store found on greenwich near spring. i've never gone in . . her books are collectibles . . the two top cookbooks on the right were written by vita sackville-west. i would be interested in looking at those! (joanne hendricks cookbooks, 488 greenwich street between spring and canal).

many of the small houses in tribeca date from the late 18th century. they're really lovely . .

and the few that have managed to survive are treasures that are wonderful reminders of how the city began. tribeca was the first residential neighborhood to grow beyond the city in colonial times. in the 1850's more commercial buildings were developed. goods would be unloaded off the docks along the hudson river and stored in nearby warehouses. these buildings make up part of duane park square where staple and duane streets meet (between greenwich and hudson streets). trinity church sold this parcel to the city in the late 1700's (for five dollars). houses were built along green park land, changing over to more commercial loft buildings as the river became part of a shipping lane. the tribeca area along the river was known as "the farm" in recognition for all the food that was unloaded for the city's consumption. we sketched buildings, or parts of . . . i attempted the grey building directly behind morgana. chanda and morgana each chose a window . . and then, of course, it was time to enter the building that was the real reason we came down to tribeca: duane park patisserie (formerly known to me, during the 1980's, as patisserie lanciani and located on west fourth street in the west village). the hot cross buns were the best! chanda read to us from corkboat. she originally found this book on the shelf in amagansett at jack's coffee shop. we put it on hold at the library when we returned. the author, john pollack, was a speechwriter for clinton when he began his attempt to build a cork boat with several friends.

they designed it after a viking ship, and i believe finally sailed it in portugal.

we passed ps 234, the independence school, on the way home. it was the first time we noticed that they had a tom otterness statue sitting outside their side door.

special friends?

at home we had marguerita pizzas for dinner.