Catsup

Does anyone actually think that should be pronounced "ketchup"? Anyway, I'm catching up (I'll skip the third grade joke about tomatoes) from a while ago, so this will be a picture-heavy post and I'll have to fill in some more of the gaps some other time.  If it gets a little long, just stand up, reach above your head then down to your toes, walk around the room, grab a high-energy snack.  I'll wait until your ready to keep going.

We'll start with that one time when I went to a NY Rangers game.  That's hockey in case you didn't know.  Because I didn't until semi-recently.  But my agency got free tickets, and somehow they ended up in my hands.  Yeah, I know, it's weird.

Madison Square Garden, or the hallway that leads to the hallways that contains the box seats.  I realize now that I probably should have looked up the picture that actually has Katie and me in our box seats.

It's actually a pretty nice sort of place, and even the normal seats look pretty decent.

And PS 22 sang the national anthem!  Which would have been cooler if everyone hadn't cheered over them!  If I know how to embed video I would, because I definitely filmed this in anticipation of it being my favorite part of the game (it was).

Apparently, knowing a little about football, basketball, and baseball means I can follow hockey.  I remember it not doing me a whole lot of good when I was trying to follow rugby a couple years ago.

Unfortunately, unlike when my roommate got tickets to see John Mayer, no refreshments magically materialized in our box.  I'm sure you're all sending me buckets of sympathy that I didn't get tons of free food and drink with my free entry.

New York really likes New York, so pictures of (easily recognizable parts of) the city pretty much constantly flashed across this thing when the players weren't on the ice.

Yay St Patrick's Day!  I only have pictures of the parade, but that's what NYC does.  I was across from a church that I thought was St. Patricks Cathedral until I realized that it doesn't look anything like that and I was about two blocks too far north.  I went to see if I could get a good picture near St. Patricks, but there were far more rowdy yout's around there, so I'm glad I missed.

While not necessarily the most exciting parade I've ever been to, I'm not one to turn down a drawn out string of bagpipers, marching bands, and various other combinations of moving instruments and kilts.  And there were lots of uniforms.

Who says the military isn't ready for gay people? They've already got the flag! ON THEIR DRUMS!

I have one picture where I just missed some politicians.  I'm pretending like it's this one.  Visualize Mayor Bloomberg (who wants to charge homeless people rent for staying in shelters! WHAT? Hello!  If they could pay rent they would!) and Chuck Schumer (Trivia: I'm currently represented by more Chucks than females. I feel like people with common names really need to stick together, so I'm glad to be so well represented by people who really know what I've been through and what's important to me).

Ok, flash forward again.  I went to DC to go to March for America.  In case you missed it, immigration in this country is a MESS and reform would be pretty sweet.  Like, actually letting people who want to come here come in a way that lets them contribute to our society while they can also make their own ends meet and send their kids college and stuff.  That'd be awesome.  But the rally was on a Sunday, and my agency was going there and back on...Sunday.  That's 10 hours of bus time sandwiching rallying.  Whew.  Luckily, my friend Sarah (who you might remember from the last march I went to in DC) graciously offered me her couch so I could spread that out over a couple days.  Unfortunately, she had her agency's annual fundraiser that night, so she kinda had to go. (You'll hear about mine soon enough.)  So I spent most of the day wandering around DC by myself, which was much more fabulous than it sounds.  Sarah (who is in Lutheran Volunteer Corp) lives in a pretty nice neighborhood, especially for a volunteer program, and near some pretty snazzy real estate, but some more interesting neighborhoods aren't too far away either, which is where I found this facade of sorts, which looks like a house, but is empty in the back.

I really liked it.

This car has 8 tea party bumper stickers on it, including something about putting the Constitution on a teleprompter so Obama will read it.  (At least it wasn't coming from a teleprompter.)

We decided on the way that the ladies of LVC looked like the stereotypical white middle class social activists.

We only stayed for the rally part, which was several hours of speeches from activists working with immigrant communities, members of Congress close to the immigration issue (even though they had another important vote to be working on), and even...

YouTube Obama!  Actually, that wasn't exciting at all, because he just repeated what he's probably said a million times.  But still!  Some of that hopey-changey stuff!

And back in New York, it's another Urban Adventure.  The newest program I help out with, fourteen kids from the agency get to go where ever someone New York Cares gave authority to decides for a day!  It actually ends up being fairly put together even though it's rather pieced together between the two organizations (where a B level person from each is actually present at the events) and for this event we went to the Sony Wonder Lab, which is just a bunch of rather high-tech sorts of toys for kids to play with.  (One of the NY Cares volunteers even said, "We can just skip all the educational stuff."  No worries, not much to skip, really.)  Afterwards, we went to Qdoba, which is pretty much Chipotle, which is pretty much to Taco Johns what Panera is to McDonalds.  But try explaining that to a bunch of kids from East Harlem.  Challenge!

For Good Friday, we did a very peace-and-justice Way of the Cross, meaning we walked basically from one side of the island to the other, more or less on 42nd St, stopping to remember traditional (based on Catholic tradition) events during Christ's journey to the grave while tying them to more or less parallel issues in modern society.

So, for example, we stopped in front of Pfizer World Headquarters to remember the first time Jesus "fell" (quotes because, seriously, no one knows how many times he fell.  seriously.) and how we must remember that we are currently falling under the burden of our poor health care system.  We had the Peter, Paul, and Mary-esque group in the former picture leading us in awesome hymns like Here I Am, Lord and Prayer of Peace (or whatever that "This is my prayer, thou God of all the nations..." hymn is called).  Of course there were messages and prayers for each station as well as chants for when we were walking in between.  I never really imagined witnessing against nuclear proliferation in front of the UN, or militarism and the death penalty in front of the Times Square Army recruiting station, or the distractions of society in front of Madame Toussands, but I had the day off.  With all the coverage of groups like Westboro Baptist church and other groups that seem to just give Christianity specifically and organized religion in general a bad name, I'm glad I could represent what faith means to me generally, and following Jesus specifically, in connecting the most important weekend of the church with a call to individual action as a positive influence on others, which is very much what I see as the core of the gospels.

Since Passover and Holy Week coincide this year, Brittany and I found it appropriate to visit the Jewish Museum on it's free day (Saturday, of course) only to learn that the special exhibit was on Curious George, my new favorite Jew (move over, Neil Diamond)!  "He's not Jewish, his author and illustrator are." That's Brittany, correcting me.  Or it would be if I were actually talking to you and she were actually next to me (which she is right now, so it's appropriate).  But anyway.  There was a whole room with sea creature shaped giant pillows on the floor and copious copies of Curious George books, including this Yiddish version (photographed next to the purse I bought in Bethlehem, Palestine...hm).  Anyway, fun exhibit that one of my tutees is visiting next week for school.

  The Upper East Side, all a-bloom.

And decorating Easter eggs with my roommates!  Mine are the top bluish one and the peachy (being kind with labels) one on the left.  They look cooler in person, but not exactly pretty.  That's probably supposed to be the goal with Easter eggs, but that's so boring!  Karoline, who's from Germany and laughed when I explained the German-American tradition of hiding a pickle at Christmas, had never tried her hand at it before, so that was exciting.

Then my parents came to visit...unfortunately I have no group shots on my camera.  This is from day 2, at the main branch of the NY Public Library.  I wish this ceiling were like the one in Harry Potter and changed to reflect the outside, but the outside sky happened to look not unlike this painting at that time, so I just pretended.  This is the main reading room, so just below where the picture cuts off are lots of people working really hard and reference books.

Day 3 included a trip to the Guggenheim, the first time for all parties involved (so, me and my parents).  Most of the museum is in this spiral ramp, with the exhibits being on the wall side and the walking being on the rail side.  Pretty nifty way to set up a museum.

Day 4 included a trip to Ellis Island and a trip past Liberty Island.  Getting tickets to actually go up the statue is insane, so we just admired her from a far, per usual.  Also, it's super hard to get a good picture when surrounded by people trying to get a good picture.  This one could benefit from a little snip snipping from the bottom, but it's kind of cool to see all the people looking at her, too.

 It looks like lots of planes have been here (that's what those tails are right?).  I feel like NYC has pretty strict rules about flying (like, maybe you're not allowed to?  Or maybe I just remember people talking about that in DC).  Anyway, this is technically in New Jersey (although Ellis Island is in NY, I'm pretty sure) so maybe fewer rules.

Looking at how few people cross this floor nowadays, imagining it swirling with new arrivals takes some imagination.  I didn't have any family go through, as far as we know, but a couple old favorites (Letters from Rifka and Orphan on Ellis Island) hinge on the chaos and harsh rules of the people funnel, so I kept flashing back to those stories.  We also did an immigration unit in 8th grade where we reenacted our own ancestors' immigration, but I was chosen to be a first class citizen so I got the easy way out.  Going through the whole tour, the biggest bit of information was just acknowledging that most people were in and our of Ellis Island in a few hours and the richer ones mostly skipped it entirely.  So crazy that a place could completely derail some people forever and barely be an inconvenience to others.

Each of these jelly beans represents one person who went through Ellis Island on a single day.

The view out the window.  Since I mostly work with relatively recent immigrants, I couldn't help but notice that the social workers and translators working to aid the immigrants overwhelmed by a new place, new language, and procedures designed more for the processor than processed seemed to be fighting the same battle that the people I work with fight as well.  So crazy that people can't just look back through time and not see that the discrimination those families faced as parallel to the discrimination still strong in our society.  I really don't see a difference between "Irish need not apply" and the current call for "English Only." And I really don't think that if the Irish could have gotten into the USA illegally during the famine they would have just stayed home, or that if Mexicans could get visas to come into the USA legally they would continue the dangerous path of illegal crossings.

 

The hotel had one of those boards that lists nearby houses of worship for those wishing not to miss a service just for being out of town.  Apparently Episcopalians just have to remember?  Although other "Episcopal" marked squares had more specific information.

Wow, that was a lot.  Hope you made it through!