fun

Lady Liberty #adventures #NYC

November 27, 2015 by admin

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! If you’re just joining me, Friday posts concern our extended NYC visit (five months).

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We’ve been coming to NYC regularly since 2006, but until now have not visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which is part of the Statue of Liberty National Park system. This time around, we weren’t going to miss it!

If you plan to go to NYC and want to see Lady Liberty, make your plans well in advance — especially if you want to go up into the crown (there’s more scheduling flexibility if you just want to go to the pedestal). We ordered our tickets about 60 days ahead of time.

You’ll need to provide photo I.D. and go through two airport-style security lines to get to see her.

As the ferry took us over to Liberty Island, I couldn’t help but think of my great-grandfather, who arrived in 1896 at the ripe old age of 20 and would have seen the Statue of Liberty while she was just a youngster, having herself arrived from France in 1886. What a sight, both for him and for me!

I recommend visiting the museum first, because if you go into the statue as we did, you’ll have to surrender your audioguide and get another one later.

You can reach the pedestal via wide, easy stairs, and the views of the city from there are incredible. We went up into the crown, but the path up there is a narrow, spiral staircase (one stair for going up, the other for going down). I had to stop on one of the landings because my claustrophobia kicked in.

Frankly, the crown isn’t that big of a deal. The windows looking out are tiny, and we spent all of about five minutes up there. Plus, if you go up in the summer, it’s stifling hot.

Turns out that product placement and merchandising aren’t recent innovations. Both were used to raise funds to build and transport the statue!

As we moved on to Ellis Island, I learned that it served as the main immigration portal for a relatively short time — 1892 to 1954. Most of my ancestors had spent generations in America, so the number of my ancestors who passed through Ellis Island is fairly small.

Also, the building my great-grandfather would have seen upon his arrival burned to the ground in 1897, so my view upon the ferry’s approach is very different from what his would have been.

For a small fee, you can research your family’s arrival to Ellis Island, but this information is also available online for free.

Though I was excited about seeing both the Statue and Ellis Island, I was ill-prepared for how emotional it would be for me. Millions came, many after long and arduous journeys on crowded ships with poor conditions. They came with little or no money, some with no knowledge of English, and they made a life here.

Nadine Galinsky Feldman is the author of The Foreign Language of Friends and the upcoming What She Knew, available March 2016. If you enjoy this blog, please consider purchasing a book or signing up for the newsletter to learn about upcoming promotions and giveaways.

Drunk on Tea #adventures #nyc

November 13, 2015 by admin

Our NYC adventures continue! Grab a cuppa and join me as we talk about tea.

There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea in late afternoon, after the day’s work is done. And, as we’re discovering, our East Village neighborhood is loaded with places to drink all kinds of tea, from organic herbals to bubble tea to the real deal, as we found at Tea Drunk, a local establishment.

Tea Drunk offers genuine teas, hand harvested from China. The menu is extensive and not cheap — fine tea ranks right up there with fine wine. With all the options available, we opted to do a tasting.

We selected the fall teas, which included a yellow, white, and oolong. The menu admonishes: no herbal teas here. Personally, I love herbals and drink them all the time, but I was eager to sample the genuine teas.

We were each presented with three tiny cups. Our server poured boiling water into each of the teas; the first steep is discarded. We then sampled each of the teas. Periodically he would come around and do yet another steeping. With each one, the flavor of the tea awakened more and more.

To steep the tea, he poured water in, let it sit for just a moment, and then strained it into little pitchers. I was surprised to find the teas full of flavor, even with the “instant” steeping.

I asked what makes tea black, white, green, or yellow. He explained that the leaves are the same, but they are processed differently. Green tea is heated immediately upon harvest, making it the freshest of the teas. White tea is not heated at all, while the oolong is heated but undertakes several shakings to wake up its enzymes.

By the end of the leisurely tasting we were relaxed yet happily buzzed from the caffeine (not great for sleep, but oh, well) and learned more about real tea. No doubt I will return to sample one tea at a time, to get to know them better!

The High Line #newyorkadventure #travel

October 30, 2015 by admin

This is the first in a series of posts I’ll be writing about our New York City adventures. Enjoy!

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We’re happily ensconced in the East Village of Manhattan, where we will spend the next five months. Tomkins Square Park is 50 yards west of our apartment, and community gardens abound. Tree-lined streets soften this part of the city, marrying nature with the crowded civilization that comprises New York.

We are taking daily walks, exploring parts of the city we haven’t before, despite visiting our daughter here for the past nine years.

On a perfect Sunday afternoon, we ventured out of the neighborhood and to the High Line. We’ve walked it before, but a new section has opened since our last visit, so we checked it out.

The tracks remain as plants grow among them.

The High Line was once a train line and now is an elevated park with a walking path. When the train tracks went into disuse, plants seeded themselves. While work has been done to tame the plantings, they include a number of hardy native species. On this visit, I enjoyed the asters in particular, which are blooming profusely. I grow asters in one of my blueberry beds in Washington State as a companion plant, and I find the purple flowers irresistible.

An outdoor restaurant graces the 14th Street entrance, and there’s also a place to get drinks while on your walk. The train tracks remain as part of the decor and fit in nicely with other art scattered throughout. Of course, nothing makes a New York City park more complete than the New Yorkers themselves, dressed in everything from blue jeans to full-length gowns. A group of monks (or at least they were dressed like monks) wandered the High Line to beg, and we saw more than one bride and groom having photos taken. If you want to “people watch,” head to the High Line!

Nadine Galinsky Feldman is the author of The Foreign Language of Friends, When a Grandchild Dies: What to Do, What to Say, How to Cope, and the upcoming What She Knew.

Off to the Movies! #porttownsendfilmfestival #movies

September 23, 2015 by admin

Every year in late September, we head down our hill and spend three solid days watching movies at the Port Townsend Film Festival. This year’s guests are Beau Bridges and Chris Cooper, so we’re excited! We’re also hosting (in our home) Jon Gann, the founder/director of the D.C. Shorts Film Festival, and Joanne Feinberg, former program director for the Ashland Independent Film Festival. The house will be filled with lots of creative energy!

From short films to documentaries to full-length features, we have a long list of films to enjoy. Our days will begin at about 9:00 a.m. and go until as late as 11:00 p.m. We grab food wherever we can in between films, and we’ll be attending a few parties, too! It’s an exhausting, fun, exciting festival, our favorite of the year!

Do you enjoy films? What’s your latest favorite movie?

Random 5 Friday – Winter Has Arrived?

November 22, 2013 by admin

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Random 5 Friday. For more great Random 5s, visit Nancy at A Rural Journal.

Here’s my five for the week!

Cold weather came to visit this week. Yesterday morning it was 28 degrees. Due to a stiff back last week, I couldn’t get the gardening work done that I wanted (still battening down the hatches for winter), so I get to work in the cold. Yippee.
I’ve been working with a local environmental group, and one of my jobs has been to update a website that gives people ideas for saving energy. If you are so inclined, take a look at JeffersonCAN (Climate Action Now). We have a blog, a Facebook page, and even a Twitter account, in an effort to get the word out about how people can lower their carbon footprint.
As you may recall, I’ve been tweaking my diet of late, limiting gluten and sugar. So far I haven’t lost any weight, and I’m still waking up at night. Boo. This week I’ve been able to get back to my normal exercise routine, so hopefully that will help. I am feeling more energy during the day, especially as the week progresses, so I’m showing signs of improvement.
I’m knitting gift items as quickly as I can. I found a simple Christmas stocking pattern that I can make in a single day, and I’ll put candy in them to give as children’s gifts. I’ll post pics once I’ve done the finish work.
The other night we saw All is Lost with Robert Redford. It’s an extraordinary performance, and I applaud him for taking such a creative risk at age 77. He is silent throughout most of the movie.

Random 5 Friday: Movie Week!

September 20, 2013 by admin

Thanks, as always, to Nancy over at A Rural Journal for hosting the Random 5! Please visit her site and the rich, quality blogs that connect with her.

Here’s my Random 5:

Today starts the Port Townsend Film Festival. Karen Allen is our special guest, and if we see all the movies on our schedule, we will see 13 films in the next three days! It’s going to be a rainy weekend, so it’s a great time to watch films.
As part of the Film Festival, we host visiting film folks. This year we are hosting a juror and a friend of hers, so we will have a full house. It’s a fun way to meet new people and broaden our horizons.
In non-film-related news, I pulled my tomatoes up this week. I saw the first sign of late blight, which can infect the plants very quickly, so I pulled all remaining tomatoes and now have them ripening in a variety of ways. So far, the winner in the best method of ripening: just putting them on the counter!
One of the movies we’ll be seeing is A Person Known to Me, a short film that includes a few seconds of footage in which my husband plays a drunken brawler. He now has a page on IMDB! The directors filmed in Port Townsend right after last year’s film festival, and we’re eager to see the finished product.
Earlier this year, a local yarn shop was booted from its location…they were renting without a lease, and the landlord decided he wanted to do something different with the property (he hasn’t yet). I had a small part in helping them relocate to a gorgeous new space where their business is now humming along. Since Karen Allen, our film festival guest, is also a fiber artist, they will have a fashion show of knitwear as part of the festival, and Ms. Allen will attend. The fine women (and men!) of The Bazaar Girls have truly landed on their feet and created something magical, and it will be fun to applaud their success this weekend. They work hard, have a great team, and deserve all the good that is coming to them! I feel like a proud mom.

Enjoy your weekend! I’ll be visiting blogs early next week, after the festival, so I can see what’s happening with y’all!