Family
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Earlier today, during my lunch hour, I joined my mom for a tour of the Merchant’s House, a house that is basically intact since it was built in 1832 and lived in since the 1870s. We went there since we wanted to visit old homes and museums, and this one fit the bill. It is also a museum I had never visited, despite living here for ten years.
The museum holds a daily tour at 2:00 PM, which my mom and I had arrived in time to join, led by a docent. But today, the regular docent was unable to come in to work due to the flooding from Irene so we had an incredibly knowledgable guide. She knew a lot, and unfortunately, since I was on my lunch hour, I had to leave well before the tour had ended (or even reached its third room). I left the tour for a few minutes and quickly went up and down the stairs into each room to shoot a bunch of pictures.
My mom got her fix of old homes where the now-dead once lived and walked, but she didn’t get to see any ghost.
My mom came to visit for a few days after not having come in over two years, and she seems to have come at a very interesting time as far as nature is concerned. On Tuesday, we had a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia that was felt all the way up in New York, although I didn’t feel a thing, and then this weekend, Hurricane Irene is moving up the east coast, expecting to reach New York late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
My mom was expecting to leave early Saturday morning, but when I was about to track her flight using the Flight Track iPhone application, I saw that all United flights out of JFK and LaGuardia airports were cancelled. This is going to create a huge backlog of passengers trying, and it might be several days before they clear that backlog, so I would expect my mom would be here for a few extra days, likely until Wednesday or Thursday. The irony is that I am supposed to fly out on Thursday.
Once it’s safe and assuming we have power and Internet, I’ll post some pictures of the “carnage.”
In the meantime, we will sit here with our flashlights, packs of batteries, bottles of water, loads of food, and a hand crank radio that doesn’t seem to have an internal battery, and we’ll wait.
With my mom visiting this week, I joined her on a tour of museums that I had never visited despite having lived in New York for ten years. We had tried to go to the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace Historic Site, but when we arrived, we found that the museum is closed “until further notice.” (I later learned that they are waiting to repair the fire escape.)
Since the Teddy Roosevelt birthplace was closed, we headed uptown to 163rd St and Amsterdam Ave to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, another museum I had never visited. The mansion was actually kind of small, due to the fact that it was a mere summer retreat for the Jumels, but my mom has an almost unhealthy curiosity of old places and the now-dead persons that have inhabited or walked through them. I took a few photos of these haunted spaces.
The mansion is one of the many “George Washington Slept Here” places that one finds up and down the Atlantic coast, and indeed we saw the room where the Commander-in-Chief had not only slept but also commanded troops. There was even a great contemporary mixed media art piece, by Felipe Galindo, that imagined George Washington as launching a revolution, not unlike how the Arab ones were launched earlier this year. (Or were they? Discuss.)
If you had never been here, it’s worth the trek uptown. There is not very much to do once you get there, but seeing the oldest surviving house in New York, it’s a good site off the beaten track.
Despite begin able to fly for almost free, my mom has been hesitant to travel all the way from Los Angeles to visit. It’s understandable. Between having to work, babysitting Alex, and resting on the days in between, flying cross-country does not seem all that appealing.
Last night, mom finally arrived, and I couldn’t drive fast enough to pick her up. Unfortunately, I have to work today so she’ll be on her own in the big city today until this afternoon. But it’s not like there’s not anything to do here, and the late August weather has arrived with crisp warm days and little humidity. Is there a better time of the year?
Now if I can only get my dad to visit, too!
While I have searched for my full name many times to see whether this website still is at the top of the search results, I had not searched just for my last name to see what I can find. Today, I did, and I learned that my name is actually a town in Spain, not far from the Portuguese border. I can’t believe that our family name is an actual place, but I find it more incredible that no one ever told us.
Wikipedia tells me a couple of more things that I didn’t know:
I emailed my dad and my brother to see if they knew anything. Also, I sent them both a longer history of our name. Let’s see what he either tells me.
I love you more than I will ever be able to describe.
Thanks for everything you’ve ever given me and have ever done for me.
I hope you’re having a good Mother’s Day, even if we aren’t going to see you today.
This year marks the tenth Thanksgiving that I’ve spent on the east coast and without my family. I usually see them at Christmastime, anyway, so the high airfares, travel headaches, and a transcontinental roundtrip flight in a short number of days makes the trip not worth the hassle. Not only that but in the days when I used to take classes, I used to have too much work to go all the way to Southern California only to come back in a few days.
So to commemorate this auspicious milestone, I thought I’d try to remember what I did in lieu of being with my family over the decade. In certain years, I didn’t have much of a choice, but other years, I probably could have gone out west but chose not to. Let’s review….
2001
A couple of months after the September 11 attacks, getting on an airplane didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Kent and Marie were hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner in Washington, DC, that year so I took a ride with Seth and his family on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That ride took eight hours, nearly twice as long as should it take, and I vowed never to travel on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving ever again.
2002
In a misguided attempt at being self-sufficient and neighborly, I held an” orphans” Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment. Three people showed up, and I ended up with leftovers for over a week. Afterward, there was an East Village bar crawl with my friend Chad and some girl he was dating at the time.
2003
My first year taking a comprehensive exam. The weeklong ritual for PhD students seemed like a pain in the ass, but it was actually a lot of fun. I never had such productive weeks in my graduate-student career, if thirty pages of writing in six days counts as extraordinary feat of productivity. I heard that the current crop of PhD students only have to do two of these, while we had three. When I heard this, I jokingly asked whether they got researchassistants, too. (They don’t, but seriously….)
2004
This was my second year taking a comprehensive exam, and I was equally productive. During these two years, I spent most of the week at the now-closed alt.coffee shop on Avenue A. My dinners would consist of cheap pizza and sandwiches, and usually by Thursday evening, I would be in good enough shape to make the $3.00 Guinness pints at Mona’s on Ave B. I didn’t have turkey in either 2003 or 2004, and I was fine with that.
2005
The first (and only annual) Peter Luger dinner with David, Peter, and Lisa. This was clearly a step up from pizza and sandwiches, and I didn’t spend it in total isolation. I could help but feel the satisfaction of eating steak while my colleagues were toiling away writing their comprehensive exams.
2006
Justin and I tried to recreate the Peter Luger experience, but we couldn’t get David or the rest of the Sabatinos to join, so it was a dinner for two. We went to Alberto’s afterward, where a buck of European graduate students were having Thanksgiving. (It was cute.) I seem to remember that we watched The Ali G Show for most of the night. (It really was 2006!)
2007 and 2008
I’m putting these two together because they’re essentially the same, and they kind of blur together in my mind. The weekend before, I went with Sarah to Kentucky for the Weitlauf’s “Fake Thanksgiving” celebration, which is the most brilliant idea ever! On the day itself, we started the day by having a Thanksgiving dinner at the Bianculli’s home in Port Washington. After eating way too much, we then went to an evening dinner at Will and Jill‘s on the upper west side for a second Thanksgiving dinner. In 2008, I varied the routine a bit by going on a “Turkey Trot”-type bike ride before eating so much food.
2009
Slept in on Thanksgiving morning and again went to Will and Jill‘s. Ate way too much Tofurkey, and it was my first Thanksgiving in three years where there was no turkey. Actually, only for about half of the decade did I have turkey on Thanksgiving. And I’m okay with that….
2010
To be determined…..
