– After two years of living in New York (and just two months before leaving, presumably for good) I’ve discovered my favorite thing about this city: the Cloisters. It felt like the merger of all things Uptown. I got off the subway and immediately onto an elevator that transported me what must have amounted to eight or ten stories. I was at the top, in a wooded park, high above the tenements of Washington Heights. I could see Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and New Jersey. Higher up were the cloisters: Spain, France, and Italy. The Gothic and the Romanesque. It was a museum that didn’t feel like a museum. It felt like a church. Which, I suppose, in some sense it was. I went there on Friday after church and my dentist appointment (a new tooth!). It was a museum that was, itself, greater than any of the objects it contained. Hazy and quiet… maybe it felt more like a cemetery than a museum. Very still. Demanding to be absorbed, not studied.
On Saturday, I tried (and failed) to submit three of the Silurians to science fiction magazines. Later, my wife and I went to Peter’s birthday brunch. The sun came out and and it cleared up. We shut the party down, and walked down to a pizza place in the Fulton District with Matt, Katie, and Peter. We finally got home around midnight.
On Sunday, I went to church and then walked up to Matt’s. We walked to Red Hook for the Brooklyn Bourbon Festival and I got a fifth of Williamsburg. Our three free samples (each) probably totaled one shot, but the stuff was expensive. I don’t know the next time I’ll have a chance to sample $80 bourbon. I got home a little after three. My wife and I went to Tillie’s to study for awhile (her, Organic Chemistry, me, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger). I made some phone calls, and we watched Deadwood.
It was an all-around ordinary weekend, and the only one we’ve enjoyed (or will be able to enjoy) in awhile.
– ALMANAC SAYS –
A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.
– NEWS OF THE WEEK –
New York Times: G.M. Workers Begin Walkout Over Contract Impasse.
First UAW strike of GM since 1998; first national UAW strike of GM since 1970.
– QUESTION OF THE DAY –
What would you like to see on a stamp some day?