Postcard-Preview 9.25.22
A Question of Balance: NYC in Shadow and Light
Happy Equinox and Libra-greetings from newShrink. In multiple ways this week’s explorations of balance in its various forms seem inevitable!
In focus here is the interplay of light and shadow aspects of a range of New York City sites visited over the weekend, all of previous and ongoing newShrink interest.
Thanks to some unscheduled “quality-time” Sunday at the LaGuardia gate, then on the tarmac, this is quite literally a picture-postcard-preview of the full article to come next Sunday. Several of these are requiring more reflection on the many ideas, feelings and embodied experiences they evoke.
That’s particularly true with the powerful one-two punch of the new Statue of Liberty museum (opened in 2019 just before Covid halted travel and tourism) and the astonishing immersion that is historic Ellis Island. The fact that these are visited by ferry quite packed alongside visitors both American and from around the world, with the realities of Ellis appearing just after the inspiring promises of Liberty, creates a profound embodied experience of imagined historic arrivals. And rewarding as these kinds of tours are both when we are young students and with our kids or grandkids, it is also remarkably moving to do with the luxury of single-minded adult attention.
The next trip on the wish-list here is at least a full day devoted to Ellis Island. Both of these museum/national monuments are well-researched, written and presented with attention to detail and nuance across complex issues. In my view they rank in quality with the excellent Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the good but less experiential one in Jerusalem and the heart-wrenching Holocaust Children’s Memorial, also in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, here’s that preview in pictures, ranging from the celestial and historic to music and comedy.
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On Balance: Fall Equinox and the Constellation Libra, The Scales
“The Original Torch”: Lady Liberty in Light and Shadow both Literal and Metaphoric
“The Peopling of America”: Ellis Island National Monument and Immigration Museum
(And back in Manhattan…)
“The Practice of Democracy, We Hold These Truths”: at the mile-long High Line Park, Repurposed Rail Yard
Some Sweet Soul-Comedy… and a Musical Family-Tie
As of mid-August, the jazz pianist and composer Oliver (below right) and I have a common wee nephew, baby Logan Edward!
A closing note for now…
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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