Yesterday the children and I spent a magical day in The Big Apple. We took the train to Grand Central, marveling anew at the vault of the heavens painted above the concourse. We took in a fabulous Blue Hill Troupe production of Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Sorcerer" at the whimsical Heckscher Theater. And we spend several enchanting hours in Central Park, in a section that is steeped in attractions for the young and young at heart.
We made a point of finding "Balto", the noble sled dog who brought the serum through and is known to them through a well loved animated video that features live shots of the statue in Central Park. Balto is well burnished from thousands of little climbers, and my kids were no exception.
The park was full of cherry blossoms and forsythia, tulips and narcissi. We discovered this great-booted Pilgrim father standing on a knoll crowned with cherry petals. There are all sorts of monuments to things that are geographically unrelated to Manhattan in Central Park, and this fellow seems to be modelled by a clean faced type that would fit in quite well among his modern descendents in the Social Register.
We also made our way to the Conservatory Water where they race the model sailboats. You can throw the helm over via radio control but as for the rest it is wind, skill, and a bit of luck to run the race and round the markers without running afoul of a competator or a nasty gust of contrary wind.
We discovered The Alice in Wonderland Statue and heard the carillion of the Delacorte Musical Clock by the Zoo. We had ice cream and climbed on the rocks. We got a backstage tour at the heckscher, where two weeks ago I helped the Troupe move in a huge number of 26' long flats from their workspace in lower manhattan to the upper West Side. We got to ride trains and subways and arrived home just a big after sundown. It was, in sum, a most marvelous day.
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