MOMA to see Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty...

But on the way there was this:

 It is a walkway between two blocks in the 50's and I have always loved the soaring space with the street out there...

And once there I saw this....

More about Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty is here. You can see the hand of the artist and his fingerprints in some of the prints, it is an amazing show.

Hello out there...

I know it has been a while, but there are not excuses in blogging... at least in my version of blogging!  I have done a bit of wandering around New York.. there was a good show at the Met.  And this lovely viewer provided such a nice pose..

I have "finished" my fourth journal, and it has left me with no prepared books to move on to and so I have sort of stalled up.  I have been reading, some of it interesting and some of it not so much.  I'll do a bit of a report of that soon.  I also have the completed pages of the 4th book to show, so there is that also coming up.

Today is it just an "I'm back" note to start the month of November off.

Also November is the month that I solicit pictures from the Spanish Water Dog Club and make a calendar for the next year.  Last year's calendar looked like this . You can click on the see pages link and get a view of each month's page if you want.  I take pictures from club members, so they are a very mixed bag of quality, but it is fun to do.  The Club gets all the profits, it is just a labor of love on my part.  And I own November's stars.

I'll try not to disappear for quite this long again.  As for the stylish viewer above, she was joined later by a not so stylish  companion:

Isn't that just New York City in a nutshell?

I must be the apocalypse... there is no other answer...

At 10 AM it was snowing like a blizzard blowing and flying.
By 3 PM it was sleeting and icing and still coming down hard
By 4 PM it was raining
By 8 PM it was snowing again big time
At 9:30 PM it thundered and there were 3 huge flashes of lightning.. while it was snowing
and it snowed for a long time.

Apocalypse is the only answer.

Everything is frozen.  If you had a car parked in our neighborhood it looks like this:

 If you left for a while after you dug out your car, and tried to come back someone else had taken your dug out spot so you are left with this option.  That pile of snow that car is on top of is at least 4 feet tall.  The driver just backed up onto it.

 And if you left your bike, it looked like this:

And it is supposed to drop 4 more inches on us tonight.  This is going to be fun, again. 

I went downtown to Molyvos for brunch with great out of town friends and we had a lovely meal and a great long conversation, but I took no food pictures at all.  SO you will just have to imagine grilled baby octopus, and moussaka to die for.  Yum.

This is what it looks like out my window.  This view is one you have seen before and probably will again as this winter is the gift that keeps on giving... REALLY!!  how much snow is there and why is it all falling in my city?   It is pretty, though, as long as you don't have to go out 3 times a day with 2 dogs who want to rocket about in it.... I'll have a better attitude about it tomorrow I hope..

It's getting a little deep up here.....

 This is how my gorgeous view looked the night of the SuperBowl.  You can't really tell, but the string of pearls between the two piers is half green, half orange for the Seahawks and the Broncos.  New Jersey side got the Broncos, New York got the Seahawks.  Last night, although the SuperBowl is in the rear view mirror around here, the Piers were not lit up but the pearls were still colored.  I am a purist about the bridge and hate it when they color the pearls, so I am wishing it goes back to white soon.

Some of you may have heard we had a little snow this year.  Seriously people, enough is enough. Normally in a whole winter we get about 24 inches.  So far this year we are at 35 and counting with more to come this weekend it seems.  There is a special treat for us with this last iteration of messiness.  First it snowed.... A LOT of snow.  Then it rained and iced and then it froze.  This stuff is up to 2 feet deep and it is frozen SOLID.  It isn't going away til May!  Really, the dogs walk on it, ice skate on it and it just sits there.  I have never seen it quite like this and it is 21 degrees out there, so no melting is going to take place.

Across the river it is beautiful and the river is full of floating icebergs too, though they are pretty flat.  I keep hoping for one that is really huge but not any so far. 

And in the daytime, my bridge is its usual gorgeous self, although whoever approved the building of that tower right next to it should be removed from office.  There are almost no angles I can shoot from now that don't include that piece of whatever.  Since it is not inhabited you can't see it at night but it is going to be REALLY ugly when it is lit up at night.  I hope they have rules about it being lit up when the bridge is lit up but I am sure they don't, it is, after all, in New Jersey... enough said. 

Summer in the city - or where I have been when not here....

 

Even Pigeons like street chalk

Those shoes HAVE to hurt in 15 minutes... but I guess her pride will keep her from mentioning it.

noted

some red some black, not sure there is a pattern here but I love the idea

oh 

I love it that in addition to a sort of kennel he has a RUG to sit on.

Do all owners eventually look like their dogs or only NY couples because we walk so much?

reasonable shoes and she looks cool

No matter where you live there are evenings under the sky

I went to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

I knew what I was going to see, but while I was looking for the show I was hunting for I saw a lot of this amazing building that is being repaired from a lot of wind and water damage it has suffered recently.


This was what I was looking for.  It is a show thru July 29th of sculptures in fiberglass and plaster called "Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)" by Jane Alexander.  It is disquieting, and strangely beautiful.

 

 

 

 

There are many more pictures and a lot of good information at the link above.


After looking at the sculptures, it was interesting to look at the other visitors to the cathedral differently than I might have if I had not seen them....

Temple of Dendur at the Met

Went to see the Matisse before it closed and wandered through here.  This and the Scholar's Garden are always my faves

Thanks to John D. Rockefeller....

I have told the story so often about John D Rockefeller, Jr. assuring that the view from the Cloisters area would always be of the Palisades only, not of buildings.  According to the Times today, that may not always be so.  I have benefited from Rockefeller's foresight, when I look across the river, as I do every day, I see the Palisades and the George Washington Bridge.  The view is one I treasure. To be able to see the Hudson River water flowing both ways (it is a tidal estuary still up this far so it reflects the tides) and the snow on the rockface across the river and even the green of summer over there, although winter is much, to me, more beautiful, is something I treasure. 


 

 

 

 

Gutted New York Store on 57th Street

I love the textures and the white on white overall..

The reflections from the street are also interesting to me, they seem to float....

New York Prayer Flags

I was reading the other day about Prayer Flags. In Tibetan they are called lung ta meaning Wind Horse. They are left until they have disintegrated from the elements and are one of 5 colors (red, blue, green, yellow and white). It started me thinking about the things that catch in New York trees and how, in their way, they resemble Prayer Flags as they disintegrate and blow away. I had one outside my window for a while, but it shredded pretty quickly, and was gone in a month or so.  So now when I spot one, you are going to get to see them here.

According to Wikipedia, the Lung Ta are placed in high places so that the prayers for good that they carry will be dispersed over a wide area and be good for all beings.  They are not prayers TO someone but rather prayers FOR wellbeing..  I love the thought.

A Train subway shoes

Street scene in Washington Heights

The night before New Year's Eve

Walking to the subway from MOMA where we saw the DeKooning show, I drifted through Columbus Circle because I wanted to shoot the elephant sculptures at night. When I looked at Columbus in the center and there was a couple dancing.  She had lights on/in her tutu and toe shoes, he had a black tux.  No cameras anywhere but mine and no one even watching til her tutu lit up.  Then there was an audience of maybe 8 while they danced all the way around the statue.

at the end she was approached by a small fan and they both seemed to enjoy it.

I say it all the time, only in New York and this is why I ALWAYS have a camera.