We went to New York yesterday. It was amazing. I had expected it to be grimy and full of traffic but it wasn’t. It is an amazing city, and has more trees than I expected too.
First we went to Battery Park, where you can see the Statue of Liberty in the distance.
Then we went to the Smithsonian museum of Native American history which was very good. They had more or less arranged the artefacts by region so you could see the stylistic continuity or discontinuity. The museum was previously the Customs House so had paintings of ships — which reminded me of Southampton where I was born and grew up (because ships used to sail from Southampton to New York). My one criticism was that occasionally it was hard to know how some of the items were used. I also didn’t take any photos of South American gods, as they made it clear that they didn’t want to be photographed.
Then we went to the Stonewall Inn (site of the 1969 LGBT+ uprising against police harassment) and I was so moved that I cried. We had lunch there and went in the pub. There was quite a few LGBT+ people there doing the pilgrimage, and they have a museum next door. They had books where you could write a message of queer joy, or a letter to your younger self, so I wrote in the queer joy one and read some of the other messages.
Then we went to Central Park which was just as beautiful as I had imagined. The green lung of the city. And we found Bow Bridge which I had seen in lots of films. The other thing about New York is that it’s a city where you know a lot of the street names from songs and films. Bleecker Street, 59th, Lexington, and many more.
We went to a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner to meet Bob’s cousin. I had salmon and potatoes and vegetables, Mexican style. Delicious!
Dowsing for Divinity 