New York City Trip

Hello,
I hope you are enjoying spring. I am now home from a three day trip to NMYC with my daughter. First stop was the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. It was inspiring, haunting and informative. Some parts were beautiful and others brought me to tears. They have done a great job with the whole thing including information about the other two sights. The two exterior pools representing the buildings were beautiful as well.

From there we walked to our hotel in Chinatown and checked in so we could drop off our back packs as we had packed light. Then off to the National Tenement Museum. There we took one of the five different tours they offer about the early livers of immigrants in this country. Ours was about a 15 year old girl’s immigration from the Irish Potato Famine and her life here. The tour was in an actual old Tennent building- three rooms 250 square feet, fifth floor without running water. That was only in the well on the ground as well as the out houses for all the building. That space was shared by as many as ten people. It was fascinating and when the guild told us there were 62 layers of wallpaper on the walls- I was amazed.

We did a lot more locations on Thur. Started out at Castle Clinton- the first fort that was built in NYC during the revolutionary war.

Next stop was at the Museum of the American Indian. Again good history lessons and beautiful examples of tribal clothing, pottery, basketry and living implements.

There was also a wonderful exhibit of modern native American art glass makers.

We moved from there to the National Monument of the Negro Cemetery. This sculpture is made from a study of three skulls that were exhumed and then reburied. We got another history lesson. We then walked back to Chinatown and visited an old Jewish Synagogue- that is now a museum. The same area had one been populated mostly by Jews when they first migrated to the US. It too was full of history and beautifully done.

After dinner we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. Lots of people were there and lots of vendors selling tee shirts and other travel trinkets.

Friday we donned our backpacks and walked to the subway where we rode up to 153 street. We got off there and walked to the Hudson River. First stop was Hamilton’s Grange, another Natural Monument. We watched a great movie about his life. We did not tour the house as it did not open for tours until noon. Wendy is on a quest to visit all the National Parks and Monuments- there are 433.

So we then walked along Riverside Dr south 20 blocks to Grant’s Tomb. The visitors center there had a great film and was full of info too. I’ve filled in lots of gaps in my knowledge on this trip! We walked from there back to another subway stop and rode down to 42 street and did Time Square. It’s a real visual overload and very crowded event in the afternoon.

Went to the Port Authority and caught the bus to come home. We walked over 19 miles over the course of our three days and I’m still a little tired.
I am slipping back into my home life feeling glad and thankful for it.

Progress Report: Confused This work is 43″ X 52 “. I enjoyed working with the metallics on this project.

Crow Calls I started this at the retreat and only got back to it this week. It is 20″w X 16″ t. I tried a new mounting technique were it is taped to the stretched canvas. I feel a bit like it is cheating, but I will reserve juidgement until I see how it holds up over time.

Lap 12 I seem to be really rolling along with these lap works of late.

Lap 13 For this lap quilt I used only leftover strips from old lap projects. I have lots more and will do this again as they are fast projects.

Lap 14 For this work I used some of the hand printed fabrics form my dye class at QBL three years ago.

Lap 15 Here is the next lap project. I used some old wipe up fabrics from print projects for this one. I now have seven completed so I will be making a trip to a nursing home soon to deliver these.