New York, New York Part 2
Our second venture to New York was a kind of ‘mopping up’ operation - our aim being to get to the places we’d run out of time for on the first visit. Thus we spent a day jumping trains trams and ferries to visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Ellis Island, our first stop, is the place where all third class immigrants to the US were processed between about 1907 and 1950. Now a museum it outlines an incredible history detailing the movement of millions of people desperate to escape poverty and persecution and the reactions, fears, debates that resulted in America (hmmm - sounds sort of familiar). Quick fact: between 1820 and 1920 over 34 million people emigrated to the US.
We suspect the Ellis Island experience has been cunningly designed to give visitors a taste of what it must have been like for the immigrants who came there: we were herded onto a ferry with squillions of hot, sweaty people and standing room only. At the island we were herded off into the huge arrival hall where we queued for everything - tickets, toilets, bad food. We were quite glad to leave really.
Lady Liberty was next. Quick fact: she is made of beaten copper riveted to a steel frame. It’s no longer possible to go inside her so we had to be content with circling her from the outside. She is a remarkable statue (and she is huge!) and it was quite touching to hear some of the recorded stories of immigrants telling of their emotion at their first sight of her as they arrived in New York and all it meant to them and their hopes for a better life.
The whole round trip from the New Jersey ferry terminal took about 5 hours and it was a very hot, humid day. Clearly the heat addled our brains because the next day, which was even more hot and humid, we decided to walk about 3 miles up Broadway, past Times Square (the lights, the colour!) and way on further uptown to the Natural History Museum.
You could easily spend a month inside the NHM - there is so much to see. We had a fabulous time in the Rose Space Centre and planetarium, the human evolution halls, the rocks and minerals halls and of course, the dinosaur halls.
Later we somehow found the energy to drag ourselves across Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we spent a couple of hours gazing at…art! We took in the impressionist collection for which the museum is famous and the collections of ancient art and artifacts - including the most beautiful, amazing collection of pottery from ancient Greece. Now as some people in my family can attest, I am rather keen on the ancient Greeks, particularly their art and pottery which were developed to express their highest aesthetic ideals. I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of this amazing collection (O Attic form, O happy breed of men…truth is beauty etc, etc) that I got quite teary and forgot to take any pics (for which I’m now kicking myself). Anyway, it inspired me to write this poem:
Ode to my brother Joe
(or
Doggerel on a Grecian Urn)
You are for Rome
I am for Greek
You’re clearly wrong
And your argument’s weak.
I am for Greek
You are for Rome
You must have fluff
Inside that dome!
(Next post: Gettysburg)