posted on October 28, 2001 12:40:45 AM new
I haven't seen you around for a few days.
I hope that you're not, but if you are leaving, I wanted to say goodbye.
Donny said something earlier about going to New York for a visit, so I suppose she's still there. Just didn't want her to think that she was forgotten.
posted on October 31, 2001 06:16:07 PM new
Hey Robin!
Donny had been talking about going to New York to visit relatives. I believe that she had a thread asking what it was like there now, so I guess that she must have left on that trip.
posted on October 31, 2001 06:25:29 PM new
Yes, she would have left before the big announcement; otherwise, I think surely she would have made an appearance. She didn't say how long she planned to stay, but maybe she will join us when she returns.
posted on November 2, 2001 12:16:15 AM new
Well heck. I leave for a few week, and the whole place practically falls apart. I always suspected I had this kind of power, and now I'm sure. Woo!
posted on November 2, 2001 12:55:48 AM new
What do I have to say for myself? That had I known I could have caused such havoc, I would never have waited this long. And also, wow. (that's about it, 'cause I'm still catching up.)
posted on November 2, 2001 11:44:32 AM new
"What? No qualm about a card, Donny? No objection? No post parte manifesto?"
Those? Bah! Not nearly overdone enough.
The Way We Were
Memories light the corner of my mind.
Misty water color memories
Of all those people's pets.
Scattered pictures of the jpgs we left behind,
Jpgs we gave to one another
Of all those people's pets.
Can it be that it was all so simple then,
Or has time rewritten every line?
If we had the chance to post them all again,
Tell me would we? could we?
Memories may be beautiful and yet,
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to edit
So it's the laughter
We will remember,
Whenever we remember
All those people's pets.
All those people's pets.
posted on November 2, 2001 12:36:20 PM new
It's Perfect!! No doubt the product of a great deal of thought, and even more deeply felt attachments. Barry will be proud.
posted on November 2, 2001 12:53:21 PM new
That's beautiful, donny. I'm touched
Did ExecutiveGirl leave??? I'll be simply devastated if we never see another pic of her baby in her Santa costume, or lying on her keyboard or a Mother/Daughter pic.....
posted on November 2, 2001 05:23:49 PM new"I'll be simply devastated if we never see another pic of her baby in her Santa costume"
Was that the little rodent that was called a dog? MichelleG chastised me for insulting it. It, not the member, but the rodent. Disgusting little thing.
posted on November 2, 2001 10:05:13 PM new
Hiya Dan.
Well, I hadn't actually been planning to go to NYC myself when I posted my question, I was asking for my sister, who had started to feel nostalgic since Sept 11th. My brother had been scheduled to go to NYC Sept 12th to take a deposition, and had rescheduled to the end of Oct. So I suggested that she go and meet up with him there; they could reminisce, he could take care of his business, they could visit with a few people, etc.
So I was checking out hotels for her on the internet, airfares, stuff like that, and along the way decided, what the heck, I'd go too. Among people who know me, the consensus seems to be (and I can't say they're wrong) that I don't have a sentimental bone in my body. And, growing up in NYC, seeing mobs of tourists disgorged from tour busses, I often used to think to myself "What dopes. If I was a tourist, I'd never come here, I'd go someplace nice." Still, after living in the wastelands of Georgia, the prospect of getting good bagels, a knish, nice restaurants for a week, along with cheap airfares and sharing a $100 a night room at a fairly nice place on the Upper East Side was too much to resist.
It was pretty good. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, neither of which I had ever been to before. I went to the Museum of Natural History, which I had been to countless times (it's the standard public school trip), but only got to see the dinosaurs and the stuffed animal dioramas, which is all I ever got to see on the school trips. Comparing notes with my sister, who's 20 years older than I am, I discovered that's all she ever got to see on her school trips too.
My brother dragged us down to the Lower East Side, to have lunch at Katz's Deli (where that scene in "When Harry Met Sally" was), and then down Orchard St. to get cheap stuff at the street market. My sister wanted to go to an old tenement there that they give tours of now. I grumbled about paying good money to go in a place that people were desperate to get out of, but it was interesting.
One day, we rented a car and drove around Queens, checking out some old places where our families had lived. Not too surprisingly, most places looked a lot spiffier than they had looked when we shanty Irish used to be in residence. My sister and brother found their grandmother's old apartment building, and remembered when they used to think that grandma lived in the country, because there was a tree on her street.
We headed over to Rockaway, at the beach, where my father's family had owned a big boarding house, renting rooms to summer people. I had spent my summers living there as a kid, and it was pretty seedy then, but now it's like a war zone. The big old house is moldering; whoever bought it after my last aunt died has turned it into an SRO (Welfare Hotel).
Over on 116th street, where the bus stop and subway station is, most everything is falling apart. The old arcade on the corner by the boardwalk was boarded up, maybe for the winter, but looked like it might be out of business.
Anachronistically, in the midst of all the ruin, is a bright new restaurant/bar, in neon green and pink, called "The Beach Club." We spent a couple of hours there, playing big-screen tv trivia. The local competition, a half dozen 20-something locals and a John Barrymore lookalike, was fierce, much tougher than Georgia. I managed to win 2 games. I drank, for me, many pints of Bass ale. Billie Holiday was playing on the jukebox. It was odd and depressing.
On our last day, my brother having left the day before, my sister and I headed down to the WTC site, on the Broadway side, near Maiden Lane, where Nycrocker had suggested going. There were a fair amount of people at every section of fence at the 3 blocks or so that we walked, reading the messages tacked up, taking pictures, the cops there were constantly having to tell people not to stand in the street but to get on the sidewalk. It's still burning, and that was acrid, but that's all I smelled. We saw a young woman going down the street in an army-type gas mask, and a couple of guys on the street laughed about that.
It was a moving experience. For me, not because of the wrecked building so much, but for all the messages, flowers, etc. on the fence, along with the small crowds of sad onlookers. That affected me. When my brother called later that day, and asked me how it had been, I told him that even I had teared up, and said that I thought that I must have gotten someone in my eye. That was met with a long, cold silence on my brother's end of the phone; I don't think he'll ever forgive me for that remark.
Then we headed over to Grand Central Station, just to see how it had been all cleaned up. It was amazing - you can actually see through the windows now.
In between it all, I did people watching, and was pretty disappointed. The people aren't nearly as interesting as I remembered. They pretty much all look the same - youngish, thinnish, dressed in black, talking on cell phones. The only ones who stand out are the small children. These dressed-in-black mothers and fathers seem to channel all their color and whimsy through them. With these fashionably drab parents are children in red-knit stockings, embroidered with 6 different colors of flowers, purple sweaters, blue skirts, yellow knit caps, and cute green rubber boots that look like alligators, with little knobby eyes.
So, all in all, it was pretty good. I didn't get to do everything I'd wanted to, I didn't get to the track or the Cloisters, but it was pretty good. I might even go back again sometime.
posted on November 3, 2001 10:30:52 AM new
If you enjoyed the trip as much as I enjoyed reading your narrative about it, then it was a great success. A close friend used to have an apartment on Barrow in the Village, so a few summers long ago when both we and the world seemed young and vibrant Jean and I greedily took advantage of her hospitality to explore the cultural and the wicked allurements of the City. But about ten years ago our friend, long snubbed by local fame and fortune, traded her love for the city for more intimate offers elsewhere and we haven't been back. For several years we weren't able to travel at all but when Jean retires and we are completely free of obligations we'll try to make up for lost time.
Maybe we could form an RT travel club (don't shudder, lol). Hell, I'd pay for your commentary alone.
posted on November 4, 2001 07:12:18 PM new
Thanks Dan, glad you enjoyed it. It's a bittersweet thing, to go back to a place you were young in, hope y'all get to go soon.
posted on November 4, 2001 07:27:24 PM new
Oh heck. Sure, but I only read the ones with titles like "Vagina, vagina, vagina," and "I am so Horny!!" Everything else, with subjects like "It's me Dan (Antiquary)," is obviously spam and I trash it. Lemme go see if I can dig it out
