New York report
Thank you, Jesus. You have never seen someone move as fast as I did to get out of the island airport and into a cab home. Driving along Queen’s Quay beside the glittering lake, I had tears of relief in my eyes. Home. No matter how bad it gets here, it will never come close to how bad it is down there. So so grateful to Canada.
Where to start? The oversaturation of NYC. It was hugely worth it, the trip, very glad I went. And, as always, only more so than ever, very glad to leave.
I got up at 5 a.m. Friday for the painless journey down. Last time at Newark Airport, my reception was deeply unfriendly; this time, the guy looked at my passport, asked a few questions, smiled and said, Have a great weekend. Okay then. The train in to Penn Station, as was all the transit I took all weekend – numerous busses and subways too – was wonderful, efficient if battered, got me there cheaply with no problem. Walked to little Aura Hotel which is bare bones but in a great location right off Times Square.
Set off immediately, the bus up Madison Avenue to the Met to see the Siena exhibition. Magnificent, all those Madonnas – maybe a few too many Madonnas, but that’s what they were painting then. A favourite by Martini in 1342 – a surly teenaged Jesus being scolded by his parents. The woman behind me laughed and said, Where’s his phone?
I wandered through the Impressionist section, stunning, so many Cezannes, Manets, Monets, Pissaros, Van Goghs, and more. It’s a superb, expansive museum. There was a bit in the New Yorker about a retired couple who decided to spend a day a week visiting each gallery, one by one. They’ve just finished, seven years later.
The bus back downtown to nap before the party at the Century Club. Which was wonderful. Cousin Ted is a lawyer mostly for artists of various kinds and knows interesting people all over the world, and Henry is a sweet-natured polymath, so together they have an assortment of fascinating friends. There was schmoozing over cocktails, then a sumptuous dinner. I was sitting with Ted’s sister Susan and her daughter Rebecca and Rebecca’s husband Luke, a money manager whose company has been bought by CIBC, “my Canadian overlords,” he calls them. Susan used to be anxious and thin; now she has Alzheimer’s, is on anti-anxiety meds, and is chubby and serene. Her fulltime caregiver was there with her. Below, Rebecca, Ted, Luke, some beaming Canuck.
At the end, while New Yorkers were fussing about Ubers or trains, I walked a few blocks to the hotel. It was really cold all weekend but I had enough layers, including long-johns, to get through.
Saturday, more than a bit hungover I’m ashamed to say, up to Ted and Henry’s for lox and bagels with Henry’s family and a few friends, including a journalist who lives in Lisbon with whom I connected immediately, hope to meet her again. Straight down on the 6 train to lower Manhattan – twenty minutes to span much of the length of the island, amazing. I get way down there rarely and am always glad when I do – much more human scale, few skyscrapers, packed narrow streets. Mind you, the city is packed everywhere, with no sky; I kept thinking about my friends with anxiety, what hell it would be.
Lunch with Patti and her daughter Becky. Patti’s mother Lola, my father’s cousin exactly his age, was one of my favourite relatives whom I visited every time I came; she was an artist and jeweller – I never take off one of her rings – and lived independently in her studio apartment until just before her death at 98. Her life gave me a lesson: get old in a city. Not only hospitals nearby, but museums, concerts, theatre, films, company – she was busy till the end, getting around easily. Patti is an art restorer in New Haven; Becky, who’s in her forties like my kids, does the finances for small films. The restaurant Balthazar was a zoo, very crowded, but fun. Good to get to know them both. Becky and I resolved to go to the theatre together next time I come. Which probably will not be for another four years, with good reason.
The subway up to the Morgan Library to see the Kafka exhibit and read, again, my great-grandfather’s name in connection with Kafka’s. They showed Franz’s notebooks – he wrote in bound notebooks with barely an edit. A strange life but not as isolated and lonely as we believe, a few women loved him and a devoted sister too. He wrote a lot of postcards and was good at his job at the insurance company.
Down to an exhibit about Belle da Costa Greene, an amazing story. She was black but passed as white – Portuguese – and became the chief librarian and purchaser for J.P. Morgan’s collections. What a job – she got to buy rare works and beautiful things costing millions and was powerful and famous. The exhibit dealt with the injustice of “passing” – there were others like her who could never have achieved what they did had they looked more black.
One of her purchases – a manuscript by Honoré de Balzac. If you can imagine trying to decipher that!
That evening, English, a play about an English class in Iran. The characters pondered if they became someone different in another language, what was lost – homeland, tradition, roots – when emigrating. Though there was lots of humour, it was profound and moving. The playwright and all the actors are Iranian.
A small issue: I’d brought a little Clairefontaine notebook where I jotted all the info needed, addresses, timing, transit, hours open etc. Before the play I got it out in case I wanted to note something — and forgot it. This morning, I went back, located the maintenance woman who said she’d found it and thrown it away. What kind of person throws away a notebook filled with words?! We even went to the garbage bin, to see a pile of black garbage bags. Goodbye notebook. I asked ChatGPT to fill in information about few issues and luckily checked its answers, which were all wrong.
The bus to MOMA, another spectacular museum full of treasure. Somehow I ended up first with the French again, like at the Met, but branched out and found a great Alice Neel and much more. A giant spectacular Jackson Pollock. What courage, to do something so bold and new.
Two favourites: Louise Nevelson, and Alice Neel.
But by then I was desperate to get out of New York. The madness, the excess felt more overwhelming and heedless this time. I think just about everyone in my New York family is on Xanax or something similar. Read that Trump has ended American funds used to locate and dismantle landmines. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. Horrendous.
I got to the airport two hours early – found a secluded spot by a sunny window, put my feet up, read the Sunday NYTimes while eating a sandwich. The flight left early, due north with the setting sun on the left. My Kuwaiti cab driver home was hilarious – turns out he’s famous as Mr. Geography. We agreed about the state of the world and Trump. “He is the devil,” he said. “I have never hated anyone so much.” Me too.
Final issue, at home, checking my Visa bill, I discovered nice little Aura Hotel overcharged me by $130 USD. Have written to request explanation and a refund. Stay tuned.
But mostly – I reconnected with my roots. Like it or not, New York was my father’s world, his people, a place I visited almost every year through my childhood. My family are all kindred spirits, leftie Democrats heartsick at what’s happening. I invited them all to come live in Canada, said I’d put a big tent in my yard for displaced Americans. Because what has happened so far, in one week, beggars belief.
There’s a giant disgusting ad in Times Square for a new “good for you” drink called Unwell. Says it all.
The post New York report appeared first on Beth Kaplan.
