Another great thunder and lightning storm tonight. The other two Californians, Martha's niece Mary Ann and her partner Laurie, also like to sit at the window and watch the lightning and listen to the thunder just as we do. It's such an uncommon occurrence in California.
We had a little party tonight at Martha's, with the four Californians, plus Martha's niece or maybe grandniece, I'm a bit fuzzy on the relationship, and of course Martha. We polished off a bottle and a half of wine.
John and I went to a very interesting exhibit at the Whitney today. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room. They were both artists (husband and wife) and came up with this idea of making musical instruments. They don't by any means look real, but they don't look unreal either. For instance, there's a clarinet that is about twice life size, made out of maybe canvas or linen. All the keys are hanging from the clarinet, as in dangling, but the sense of clarinet is very strong. There were also a sort of a French horn, a viol, something the size of a string bass that was called a viola, a metronome, a couple of clarinets, and a saxophone. The instruments looked like they weren't quite fully inflated in some cases, and the stringed instruments had the necks at strange angles, or actually disconnected. I would have taken any one of these sculptures. They essentially seemed to have been made out of cloth that was greatly stiffened by being painted, but didn't get stiff enough to entirely hold the shape of the instrument.
We looked at a couple of other exhibits, but they didn't attract me so much as those did. By the time we finished it was pouring down rain, so we had lunch at the museum and then went over to the Met to see if there was anything we wanted in the gift shop. And somehow, along with a little Madison Avenue window shopping this took up the whole day.
We did manage to stop at my favorite glass shop in NY, Avventura. Click on all four pages of vases to see the kind of stuff they have.
I thought I'd share a few little insights I've learned in NY.
Collecting cans is a real hassle. At least in this neighborhood, the only way you can recycle cans is to take them to the grocery store. They will pay you for a maximum of 240 cans, or $24. The cans have to be whole and not crushed. So these people are walking around with these huge bags of cans in their carts (old lady shopping carts, not grocery carts). I think I once figured out that there were 13 cans to a pound, but maybe not, maybe it's 25. If 13 is right, they're getting cheated out of the price of the aluminum, because we get $1.87 a pound in California.
Red lights and don't walk signs are mere suggestions. No one pays attention to them. Mothers with small children don't even try to teach them not go walk against the light. Part of this is because most of the traffic goes north and south, and not much goes east and west, but the lights are somewhat timed to suggest that there is much more east west traffic than there is. Also, because the east-west streets are so narrow, usually there can only be one lane of traffic actually moving on the street, and it's one-way, so it's pretty easy to see that there's no one coming.
Buses are so cold that my glasses fog up when I get off the bus.
The difference between New Yorkers and tourists, in the main, is that the New Yorkers (I'm talking about people who are casually dressed, not people who are working) are wearing sandals and the tourists are wearing athletic shoes.
Street vendors apparently move their carts several times a day to take advantage of foot traffic. Even the cop shop in Times Square gets a Neon sign.
And speaking of Times Square, my previous statement about the difference between New Yorkers and tourists doesn't apply so much here -- people wear really tacky stuff there.
The New Year's Eve ball is up year around.
Having a car with a siren doesn't really seem to get you through the traffic all that fast, even if it's a fire truck! We have never seen an accident in NY. With so much traffic, I'm wondering if the reason is that most of the drivers are actually professional drivers.
There are nowhere near so many tattooed people in NYC as in Sacramento.
A fabulous ceiling might be on the inside
of something rather prosaic. Unfortunately, I lost several pictures from my smart card today. I have no idea why, but all today's pictures disappeared.
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