Kid-Free in New York City: Day 3 is When We Go to the Library!

This whirlwind trip was, indeed, a whirlwind! Still reeling with excitement from Hadestown, the Rangers game, doughnuts, bagels, Van Gogh, karaoke-singing waitresses, and the view from the High Line, we got up early, checked out of the Republican stronghold, and set out for just a few more precious hours in New York City.

Even on a random Wednesday morning in February, all the other tourists in the city had the same idea, and so we all met up at Rockefeller Center:

Then all the tourists in New York City all headed over to FAO Schwartz together. My partner basically had to run a deprogramming campaign on me to convince me not to buy these SHOCKINGLY expensive and TINY stuffies for the kids, but I doubt it's going to stick since now I have the store's web address. Yes, this keychain-sized stuffed dragon IS LITERALLY THIRTY DOLLARS, but it's so freaking soft. This croissant purse is forty dollars, but it is a Croissant Purse. I don't even know what to tell you if you don't think that is worth dipping into your retirement savings for.

Ah, well. Stymied for the short-term, I let myself be dragged bodily from FAO Schwartz, and instead we, along with all the other tourists in New York City, headed for someplace that was actually free:

In its smartest move yet, the New York Public Library just went ahead and made an entire permanent exhibition out of its coolest stuff. As soon as we stepped inside, my partner and I essentially abandoned everything else on our to-do list for the morning (Sorry, Hamilton! I'll go check out your grave another time!) and stayed here until we absolutely had to leave for the airport. 

Beethoven's sheet music in his own handwriting

Manuscript page of The Secret Garden in Francis Hodgson Burnett's own handwriting

The real Winnie-the-Pooh and friends

Finally, some celebrities that I CAN meet and take selfies with!

I love their sweet little faces! I am devastated to tell you, though, that Roo was lost in an apple orchard...

Please pay special attention to my precious Eeyore. I took a lot of notice, when I was a kid, of how he wasn't afraid to show that he was sad, and how the creatures around him never seemed annoyed by that:

I love how well-loved they all look. I just wish that every now and then, maybe once a year or so, they'd get to come outside their box and play with some real kids again. 

Noah Webster's spelling book

He's why we spell things weird here in America!

manuscript copy of Ptolemy's Geographica

On this map of Greece there's a label for Hades, so apparently they knew where that was!

Hunt-Lenox globe

This globe's claim to fame is that it's one of only two from the Medieval OR Renaissance eras to include the label "Hic sunt dracones!" 

marketing materials for the Montgomery Bus Boycott

I'm so excited that I got to see this--this is the first time that I've ever seen real-life primary source materials from the Montgomery Bus Boycott in person! The handwritten ride-share flyer, in particular, is such a precious artifact.

typewritten poem "Malcolm X" by Gwendolyn Brooks

I've never seen this wealth of primary source material before. So many manuscript pages and works in progress! I'd be very interested to know if this was Gwendolyn Brooks' own typewriter, or if she had an assistant who did her typing. Either way, I'm fascinated by the noticeable wear on some of the letters--the "g", especially--showing their frequency of use.

Shakespeare First Folio

I used to work in a Special Collections library, so there were a few items here--the double elephant folio of Audobon's Birds of America, for instance, and this Shakespeare first folio--that I'm already acquainted with. But that just means that I could greet them with not the excitement of novelty, but the happiness of again spotting a well-loved old friend.

cuneiform

Here's another old friend--y'all KNOW how much I love cuneiform!

manuscript copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

This makes me wish that I HAD made time to bring my now-collegiate environmental scientist here the last time we were in New York City, because she would have freaked out with excitement to see this. But I did get immediately onto my public library's website and put a copy of Silent Spring on hold to read when I got back.

first edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

I didn't catch why, but the NYPL has an AMAZING Mary Shelley collection, including materials about/by her famous mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft

This painting, a copy of one that hung in baby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's family parlor, was commissioned by AARON BURR(!!!) for his daughter, Theodosia.

Gutenberg Bible

Another old friend! The Special Collections library where I once worked also had a life-sized model of a Gutenberg printing press that my kids could probably draw with their eyes closed, I've made them look at it so many times over the years.

handwritten manuscript of "Transformation," by Mary Shelley

I've never read this Mary Shelley work! I was so interested to see her handwriting and all of her in-text edits.

Frankenstein first edition

This was one of only 500! Not shown here but also on display: literal fragments of Percy Bysshe Shelley's skull(?!?).

the Green Book

Another primary source first for me! My teenager has been so interested in African-American history during her AP US History study this year that I wish she could have seen some of these materials in person, too.

SO MANY COOL THINGS!!!! In the end, only my horror of not showing up at the airport far too early for my flight got me out of that library. 

After dragging myself, weeping, out of the NYPL, my partner and I bought some bagels to take home (once again, we did not check our order before we left the store, and once again WE GOT SHORTED BY A BAGEL?!?!), rode the subway to the train and the train to the airport, got screamed at and patted down only a little at security, and then made our way back home to chickens, cats, dog, and one teenager who in our absence had kept up with her schoolwork and ballet, maintained the house and pets in excellent condition, and tbh did not seem super excited to have her quiet haven wrecked by our noisy excitement and cluttery luggage.

She was happy to see the New York bagels, though!

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Kid-Free in New York City: Day 2 is When Dreams Come True!

We woke up to SNOW!!!!!!!

It was the perfect magical winter morning in New York City. I think the schoolkids even had a snow day? Happily, all the museums and other assorted tourist destinations stayed open, so after a breakfast of cold pizza, my partner and I bundled into our typical February midwestern outdoor gear and headed out into the magic.

Here in the elevator is when I finally got tipped off enough to Google our hotel and figure out that we were sleeping in a Republican stronghold:

I'm trying to visualize what a Republican women's Galentine Dinner even looks like, but to be honest I don't really know what a regular Galentine Dinner looks like, either, sooo...

Republican stronghold or not, our hotel was SO conveniently located! Just a couple of blocks walking through the snow, and here we are at the MOMA:

I'm not really an art aficionado, shame on me, so I mostly wanted to look at the famous stuff:

I was SUPER excited to see my pal Frida, though!

And words cannot describe my excitement when I saw THIS crowd:

What are they looking at, you ask? Why, none other than my old nemesis, Mr. Starry Night!

This 2,000-piece Starry Night puzzle and I have been locked in battle since early December.

It's an absolutely terrible puzzle, a miserable experience all around, ridiculously hard AND with pieces so poorly cut that they will fit in places they aren't supposed to be, and I tell it all the time that Vincent Van Gogh would be ashamed of how unpleasant it's being to me.

Fortunately, its real-life counterpart is delightful:

Also, I think the real-life Starry Night is actually smaller than my puzzle at home? Weird. 

I wish I had a 2,000-piece puzzle of THIS Van Gogh painting! I'm obsessed with it. It randomly feels like an illustration of some kind of Lovecraftian abomination--I keep seeing that curly beard as squid tentacles, and I don't know why, but I love it. 

Fortunately, my partner has a proper appreciation of art, although I absolutely saw him get chided by a docent for standing too close to one of the paintings. He says he was looking at the artist's brushstrokes, and I believe him, because unlike me he does not have intrusive thoughts that encourage him to maybe just lick the painting a little bit.

But don't worry--I didn't even lick the Mondrian, even though it's such a pretty red!

Nobody could lick the Monet, because they had a barrier up. It's so big, though, that how would you even decide where to put your tongue?

Warhol is surprisingly unlickable, even though he's literally painting food. It think it's probably because most of these soups sound disgusting. 

Pollack, on the other hand, is VERY lickable:

My self-control really won out, because not only did I not lick the art, but I also did not buy a hundred books in the gift shop. Instead, I sneakily and guiltily took photos of the ones I want so I could request them from the library when I got home. That big biography is actually already on hold for me!

After I'd seen all the stereotypical must-sees, my partner dragged me off to experience the proper modern art:

The giant stacked cubes didn't do anything for me, but fine, I DID love the giant hanging stuffed animal sculptures. My old Grumpy Bear is definitely there in that blue sphere:

After most of the day at the art museum, we'd built up sufficient good culture credit so we could, with clear consciences, then go do what is possibly the cheeziest, corniest, hokiest thing you can possibly do in New York City:

If you don't go to Ellen's Stardust Diner to eat overpriced food, drink overpriced (but healthily strong!) cocktails, and watch the waitstaff sing Broadway karaoke, then are you even a New York City tourist?!?

WE are PROPER New York City tourists!!!

The kids would have HAAAAATED it. There's a non-zero chance the college kid would have cried, because she's done that when less embarrassing things have happened in restaurants. The teenager would have never willingly left the house with me ever again. I had an absolutely astounding amount of fun.

Since we're already being corny, might as well take another swing through Times Square!

Okay, actually THIS might be the corniest thing we did in New York City, but when we were there last, every time we walked through Times Square, I swear there was an actual line out the door and around the block consisting of tourists waiting to get into the M&M store. This time, there was no line and we had a little time to kill, so in we went to wander:

And yes, I WAS tempted by the Pride merch. They might even have gotten me if they'd said that they were donating any part of their proceeds to any LGBTQIA+ organizations, because that sweater with the rainbow neckline is randomly very cute?

Saved by corporate greed!

I finally could not stand the suspense anymore, and we walked over to stand in line underneath the most glorious marquee in New York City:

I was so excited that I was about to cycle right around into a panic attack, but thankfully the line started moving and before I could freak out further, somehow I'd found myself in the third row center of the Walter Kerr Theater, holding an honest-to-god playbill and looking at the honest-to-god Hadestown set:

I sent this photo to the kids with the caption "!!!!", and got a serious of supportive exclamation points and keyboard smashes back. Daughters are the greatest gift a person could have.

Y'all, I was so excited at where I was that I did not even notice that every single other person in the audience was also in a flurry of excitement not because it was also their first time at Hadestown and they'd been waiting something like five years for this but actually because apparently LIN-MANUEL FREAKING MIRANDA was sitting two rows directly behind me? And generously doing selfies and autographs with people? And I did not even notice, and if I had noticed, I don't think I would have even cared. If it was Andre DeShields, probably... Eva Noblezada, definitely. 

Anyway, our seats were SO GOOD! We were a little too close to see the elevator set piece (come to think of it, two rows directly behind me was probably the perfect seat...), but the loss was worth it to have the hanging lights swinging over my head. I could see every expression on everyone's faces, and when the main characters knelt at center stage, I was essentially eye level with them. 

I've been a fan of musical theatre since I was 13 or 14 ("Phantom of the Opera" was my gateway original cast recording, and then I found "Hair," and then there was the year that I listened to "Evita" on loop...), but this was my first actual live Broadway show. I've watched so many pirated recordings of Hadestown on YouTube that I was actually surprised at how different, better, and more powerful it was to see it live. I mean, I obviously knew that it was going to be better and more special, but I figured I'd seen it multiple times on screen already, so the better and special parts would just be the experience of being there, like seeing my favorite band playing live after having only listened to their music on Spotify for years. But it was SO different, and SO much more special. Live theatre is this Whole Other Thing that is built between you and the actors and musicians brand-new every single time, this whole other ephemeral thing that you experience just the once, every single time. I'm a little glad that I don't live close to New York City and so can't dilute my memory by watching Hadestown every week, like I would absolutely want to. Even if I didn't get tired of it and instead became the Hadestown version of a Disney Adult, it surely wouldn't stay as magical in my memory as it is now. 

Best. Christmas present. EVER.

After the show, I still completely failed to notice the apparently revived Lin-Manuel Miranda fervor as everyone else but me who hadn't already seen him suddenly saw him, and instead my partner and I busted out of the theater (well, I did take a small detour, because a few minutes later my partner looked at me and was all, "Where did you get that Hadestown souvenir cup?!?" I said, "Someone just left it on the aisle floor so I picked it up!" I drank wine out of it last night while watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and it made me very happy), took a hard right just like the YouTube videos I'd watched told me to, and ended up here, hanging out in front of the stage door:

Here's where I FINALLY heard all the Lin-Manuel Miranda scuttlebutt, as everyone else was gossiping about it and showing each other their cellphone selfies. I've never met a celebrity out in the wild--do they mind having people come up to them and ask for photos and autographs when they're someplace like the theater? Like, I know they get paid an absolute ton of money, but they're not being paid right then, so is it rude to make them work when they're not getting paid, or do we just count all the ton of money that they ARE being paid as part of their compensation for having to take photos with tourists on their downtime? I have no idea, but I AM 99% certain that if Lin-Manuel Miranda had happened to have been seated next to me, he would never have experienced someone awkwardly ignoring him as hard as I would have, on account of I have no capacity for interacting with any strange human, much less a famous one. Just... shudder. 

Anyway, here's me not giving a flip that I didn't see Lin-Manuel Miranda with my own eyes!

So, my first stage door experience wasn't a bust, because the vibe was very good, I got all the Lin-Manuel Miranda hot goss that I'd been oblivious to while it was happening, and Sojourner Brown graciously came out and signed my playbill and gazed upon me with all her talent and beauty:

None of the other actors came out, though, because while we were all standing outside, freezing and gossiping about Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man himself was inside, comfy and warm and schmoozing up all of our actors!

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Ah, well. Back to the Republican stronghold, then, for shawarma-- 

--and bed. 

Tomorrow, I meet Winnie-the-Pooh! Shall I ask for his autograph and a selfie?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!