NYC Wrap

Christopher Wool - Guggenheim

Street Art from the Highline

Bikes - from the Highline

Scaffolding, 30th Street

Temple of Dendur - Metropolitan Museum of Art

B & J Fabrics, Garment District

Balustrade detail, Central Park

Frozen Central Park

I'm posting this from my Amtrak train as we pass through Connecticut on our way back to Boston.  New York is already feeling a little like a dream.  To totally confound us, today is 19 degrees (Celsius). This after a week of freezing and below freezing temperatures, witness the frozen pond in Central Park above. Miraculously we managed to squeeze nearly everything in: a very modest bit of fabric shopping;  some rushed but productive Christmas shopping at FAO Shwartz; the Highline (which had reopened, and the crowds were thronging on the first day of 'The Holidays' and in the mild weather). We had to imagine how it would look all leafy green.  We even made it to the Saturday evening session at the Guggenheim for Christopher Wool and Robert Motherwell retrospectives.

We had a rushed few hours at The Met. They say to leave 'em wanting more, don't they? So much to see.

Craig and I went to The Breeders at Webster Hall on Friday night, the last night of their Love Splash tour. Kim and Kelly Deal are looking (& sounding ) pretty damn good for fifty odd. Kim was wearing a black jumper (sweater) and comfortable pants, as was I, so I felt totally at home. I spotted at least two people older than me in the crowd. Everyone else could have been twelve except for the facial hair and full sleeve tatts.  Craig had a shave and a haircut at a groovy looking barbershop nearby. I joked that his barber would probably be a Columbia student, but as it turned out he was a Boston University graduate in New York doing his PhD. 

So that was New York. I'm looking forward to a few quiet days in Boston, though of course there is Christmas ahead which is not traditionally a quiet time. Although the streets have been full of decorations, the shops full of Christmas songs (not really many traditional carols to be heard though, which I miss), and everyone wishing us a happy holiday, it doesn't feel like Christmas. I guess for me, the end of the school year, all the work and social functions, our annual gingerbread decorating party, those long days when you savour the coolness at dawn and dusk, the endless baking and sewing - that is what Christmas is. People used to Northern Hemisphere Christmas often say it doesn't feel like Christmas when it's summer. I thought that, somehow, Christmas would feel more Christmassy in the winter. But it turns out that it's not the weather that makes Christmas at all.