I sat next to Ana, from New Jersey, on the Lufthansa
flight from Newark. I told her I’d just made my first visit to New York. “Oh, New York is so overrated!” she
declared.
Ana was on her way to tour Turkey with her fellow fabric
arts students. I asked how this
visit would inform her studies. “Well, I’m a rising sophomore” she said, “we’re
developing fabric technology --- GPS transmitters in shoes and jackets for
people with Alzheimers.”
I quietly wondered who would remind those people to put on
their shoes and jackets.
“And we’re going to look at wool, see it growing on the
sheep and being made into cloth.”
At this point I considered telling her that I came from
New Zealand, where we were familiar with the first part of that process, but it
was already apparent that she had absolutely no curiosity about me or where I
came from.
In that respect, she differed from many we met in New
York, who were of course unsurprised to meet people from elsewhere, but very courteous
and conversational.
We were privileged: this morning we sat on a lush lawn on
Morningside Heights, won in battle from the British 240 years ago, and were
treated to commencement speeches from the faculty of Columbia University and
from Tara Sonenshine, newly-appointed
Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs in Hillary Clinton’s team.
We were there for Rupert’s son Tim’s graduation. We sat
in a crowd of ferociously proud parents. The graduands’ hopeful futures were
echoed in the blue sky, the blue Columbia academic gowns and the bright
sunbeams warming us. Ms Sonenshine
used this metaphor to inspire thoughts of saving the world, one inspiration at
a time, one conversation at a time.
A headline in the New York Times today: “Whites account
for under half of births in U.S. -
Majority of minorities”. This
would accord with all the Spanish, Italian, Creole and other tongues we heard
all around us, in every part of New York.
We shopped, we watched the Yankees at their Stadium, we visited
museums, met an old friend for coffee, went to amateur night at the Apollo in
Harlem, and got to know our short
term host Kate, a Ukrainian Kiwi New Yorker whose campus apartment we sublet
for a few nights.
Food of course was as always a priority: standout meals
were Mexican ‘mole’ quesadilla at 2:30 am on the night we arrived, the 9 pork
ribs Rupe had at “Dinosaurs” next to the Cotton Club on the Hudson River shore,
and the New York cheesecake at the diner where Obama had $1.99 breakfasts
during his Columbia years, later renamed ‘Monks’ by Jerry Seinfield
We caught buses, trains, taxis and the Staten Island
Ferry, with Manhattan sparkling behind our Coastguard escort: and we decided that we had seen only part
of all the many wonders of this city.
New York, overrated? No, Ana, I don’t think so.
