Anna, ferry, and then drenched again

[redbird]

I met Anna and her partner Emiliano at 12:30, and we walked over to Grand Sichuan, which minnehaha B. had recommended to me. The prawns with citrus sauce were very nice; the tea-smoked duck was decent; and the roast pork bun was good and slightly non-standard (the filling was neither reddish nor sweetened). We were considering ordering rabbit, and when I told the waitress that we were still debating about that, she told us that there was no rabbit: they'd had to throw it out post-blackout.

Then we went down to South Ferry, because Emiliano wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. In the end, because time was limited, we got off the boat only at Ellis Island. (They're not letting anyone into the statue, still; the view from the ferry is excellent, and we doubted that the view from the island would be significantly better than the view from the dock.) Ellis Island was fun, but not a Deep And Meaningful Experience for any of us: as far as I know, none of my ancestors came through there, and of course Anna and Emiliano aren't American, so neither did theirs.

The ferry ride out was delightful, gulls hovering overhead and the sun illuminating the edges of a gorgeous cloud, leaving visible sunbeams shining out to all sides. The ride back was less so: the water was quite choppy, and it had started to rain. The sky opened up around the time we got back to Manhattan, and I spent $5 on a portable umbrella.

Even that wasn't enough to keep me dry at this end: the sky opened up, water was racing down the pillars that support the train tracks, and my left foot got soaked crossing the street, even after I crossed 10th Avenue in mid-block because there was no way to cross at the corner without wading. I left my sneakers outside our front door, cattitude made me tea, and one thing home means is clean dry clothes.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Did you order any of the fresh killed chicken? They claim to have chicken they kill on demand.

B

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't dream of arguing that something should be "deep and meaningful" for you if it isn't, but for goodness' sake, is history only "meaningful" if it involves one's blood ancestors?

I personally find all kinds of history affecting and meaningful even when I'm quite certain none of my ancestors or close relatives were part of it, and I suspect that, in reality, you do too.

[redbird]

Take it up with the people who designed the entry to that museum in terms of "trace your ancestors here" and "add your ancestors to the immigration honor roll".

The history of American immigration is meaningful, including to me. I didn't find the presentation of that history at the Ellis Island Museum particularly meaningful.

It didn't help any that there were entire walls of almost-unreadable text, because someone decided that to choose a font that looked handwritten rather than one that distinguished clearly between different letters. (As you know, Bob, it is possible to do both--they didn't.)

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Take what up? I'm reading what you wrote, not what was on the walls at the museum.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Very often, something that is "deep and meaningful" personally to someone involves rooting for the home team in some way, whether it be country, family, profession, religion, subculture, etc.

I am reminded of a cognitive science professor at the University of Rochester. He had a whole lot of annoying traits, but his most interesting one was to ask basic questions and seriously attempt to find answers. "Why do people read the newspaper?" was the one that turned up the rooting-for-the-home-team paradigm.

B

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

What I did was get off the ferry at Liberty Island, walk very briskly round it, stopping occasionally to read the signs with interesting information and to squint up at the statue, thinking the things you think like "My, it's big", and "Of course it has to be hollow - why didn't I think of that?" and so on.

I got back on to the same ferry (well, I ran, and they saw me running and waited nicely) and got to Ellis Island.

None of my ancestors come through Ellis Island (I looked up people-with-my-surname on the computer, and found fewer than 20 of them) but I found it an interesting museum to go round nevertheless - in particular, I appreciated what I thought of as the "bigotry wall" - with all the news clippings and songs and pictures and so on, clearly demonstrating that for decades, for well over a century, American immigrants who have been living in the US for even a generation longer than the newcomers, will say pretty much exactly the same things about the newcomers as the people a couple of generations up the line said about them.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

-sigh-

And meanwhile, some people who didn't come through Ellis Island, but whose families have been here for generations, are subjected to some rather nasty...

Eh. People. Maddening.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

womzilla and I were also at South Ferry yesterday. Several of nellorat's relatives were in town, and we went sightseeing down there whilst nellorat was tutoring. Pity we didn't run into you.