The long-awaited Spring Break post
I don't know who's be awaiting it long. Me! I have!
First things first, though. I scheduled my thesis defense. Because of difficulties involving the vacation schedules of my committee members, I'll be defending my thesis on the first night of the Fairhope conference IN the HOTEL room. A little unconventional, sure, but still a valid thesis defense. Rick said to Joanna on the phone as they hatched this plan, "If Jessica passes, she'll really have something to celebrate [at the bar where we traditionally go the first night of the conference]. If she fails, we'll be right by the bay, so she can go drown herself!"
So that's in one week from Thursday. So I'm turning in bound copies of my thesis to the members of my committee Friday. So I'm tweaking the last three stories, setting them in one document, wrangling the margins, writing acknowledgements and a bio, and taking a disk to Kinko’s to have printed, copied, and bound--tomorrow and Thursday. Easy enough!
On to My Spring Break. I'll give you a sweet little LJ cut for the sake of your sorrowful friends page.
By the way, before we get going here, a much shorter yet more in-depth study of some points of my visit may be read here in Jason's journal. But if you want long-winded yet shallow, keep a-readin' here! I have pictures.
I flew into the airport in Baltimore in the early afternoon of the Monday of Holy Week. Jason (Apeliotes, for those who keep up, but for my own sake he'll be called Jason from here on out) picked me up, and we went to his school to have lunch with a_s_manilius at this excellent bagel place--I'm so in love with bagels right now. It was nice to meet "Manilius," whose journal I've subscribed to for some time now and who appears to play a significant role in Jason's academic and social life.
But lunch was brief. We went to Jason's apartment to gather his things, and then we hit the road for New York. Jason's lovely friend Kate and her family had extended to us an invitation to stay with them in their home on Long Island, and Kate had supplied us with directions. In spite of those, we ended up lost and in Pennsylvania when in reality all we wanted was to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. We called Kate and tried to explain where we were, and in my travel-induced fatigue and loopiness, I called out the names of everything I could see in printed English. "A Chevrolet dealer!" I cried. "The Comm Berry Burr!"
"The Comm Berry Burr!" Jason repeated. Kate was puzzled.
In fact, we were approaching a sign that said "Comm Barry Br," and the "Br" stood for "bridge." But you know how when you get loopy like that, it seems like you're drunk? Yeah.
We finally made it to Kate's parents' house at a million o'clock and planned for our day in the city. In the morning, we had breakfast and then caught the train into the city.
The first New York thing we saw was...
The Empire State Building. Unfortunately, we never got to go in. A line of tourists wrapped halfway around the block on our first attempt, and the wait was anticipated at at least two hours. Forget that! That's crazy town!
I think it was at this point that I saw another tall building:
That's the Chrysler Building. I took its picture primarily because, check it out, it really does shine! Just like that line in "It's a Hard Knock Life" from Annie when cheeky little Molly, in her impression of Miss Hannigan, says to another orphan, "You'll stay up 'til this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building!" As a kid, I always wondered in what way the top of any building shined, and I told myself that the building must be very tall and therefore exposed to a lot of sunlight, that it must be shining in that way. But for real, the Chrysler Building is, like, wrapped in tinfoil and very shiny. I text messaged Blair to this effect.
Rebuffed in our efforts to view the city from the top of the Empire State Building, we caught a cab to Battery Park to look at the Statue of Liberty. Our cabbie told us why he thinks it's so hard to get into the Empire State Building these days: because tourists used to split up when they wanted to see the city from way up, and half would go to the Empire State Building, and the other half would go to the World Trade Center. Kate said that was the reason she had speculated, too.
We got to Battery Park and turned our noses up at expensive, long ferry trips out to the Statue of Liberty. We could see it fine from the shore. Here, Jason and Kate peer out at it...
We got a better view when Lady Liberty came ashore and began posing for pictures with tourists. She's so goofy. You wouldn't expect that from her serious expression, but check out how she's using Kate for an armrest and gripping the top of my head with her silly green hand.
Next, we walked to Trinity Episcopal Church, which was very old and very pretty. It also had a notable tile on the front step. Jason will show you:
It says, "On this spot stood her majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her gracious visit, 9 July 1976. His Royal Highness the Prince Philip stood nearby." Prince Philip did not have his own tile.
Trinity is close to the site of the World Trade Center, and that's where we went next. I was surprised that after 3 1/2 years, buildings nearby were still under repair, I believe from the impact of the towers' falling. The site doesn't look like much; just a big hole. The cross-shaped beam joint we all saw on magazine covers stands there, and a fence surrounds the whole area. There is a display of pictures and text about the history of the towers. There are also signs asking people not to sell anything there and not to buy anything from sellers to discourage them from setting up shop there. I didn't see any sellers, but I saw two tour groups, one of which was led by a guy who spoke it a loud, theatrical voice about September 11, using dramatic phrases like, "Little did the President know," and waving around a cane with flourish.
I thought I would "feel" more standing there, but it was hard to since there wasn't much to look at. Where I did feel something was across the street at St. Paul's Chapel, which is an extension of Trinity. St. Paul's is apparently where a lot of volunteers--thousands of them--took solace in the days and weeks after September 11, and now the chapel is itself a type of memorial to the whole thing. There are photo and text and video displays explaining about the cots that the volunteers slept on and the food and counsel and massages that various businesses and charities donated for them. There are artifacts and photographs and gifts. There's a wall of origami cranes sent by people in Japan, and some of them are from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
All of that was very moving.
After spending a lot of time there, we emerged from the heaviness to meet Kate's sister for lunch. She took us to a place called Buffa's Diner. There I learned that I am a very demanding restaurant patron. Though I don't mean to be, I come across as bitchy when I say things like, "I need some ranch dressing." Oops.
Then we tried again to see the Empire State Building. This time, there was no line outside, and the line inside didn't start until almost the ticket counter. But it's a tall building, and the line was still an hour and a half. Psh.
Instead, we went to the New York Public Library. This fancy lady worked at the information desk...
I forget who pointed her out; Jason or Kate. We loved her hair. I wanted a picture so bad, but I couldn't see running up and asking for one. So Jason and Kate pretended to pose together at the landing where her desk was, and I pretended to photograph them but instead moved my camera to the side and zoomed in on our informed friend.
Then Jason did want me to take a picture of him coming down some stairs, and I did, but he didn't like the picture because I used flash. He has this thing about flash. Here's my thing about flash: you have to use it if you're taking pictures indoors. My camera works indoors if I disable flash, but the pictures often come out blurry, and I can't always tell by viewing them in the viewfinder. As a result, I have a lot of blurry pictures of Jason from the week.
We went outside to try again to get a good shot of Jason descending steps.
Then we went to Grand Central Station for chai. Check out these awesome plastic chairs that totally psych you out into thinking they're cushioned. Also check out the dude in the chair next to us. He's asleep. Or dead.
We continued walking and peeked into St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. Then we reached St. Patrick's Cathedral.
There was a Mass in progress, and the sanctuary and first several pews were filled with cardinals! Also, the pillars were mounted with televisions so everyone could have a good view. A nice juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern!
The guy on the right? Is busily putting out votive candles and dumping them into a box. Seriously; he's extinguishing your prayers. And it's not even like these are candles that are going to burn forever and cause new petitioners uncomfortable wait to light their own candles; these votives were only a third the size of any other I've ever seen, and they cost a whole dollar! What a total rip-off!
By then, it was getting dark and close to time for our dinner reservation at Swing 46, a place I found that has live swing music and dance lessons. So we made our way on foot to Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and the restaurant.
I was so proud of Jason! He took the lesson and picked up the moves quite well. Here, he shows his dancing prowess with Kate, who by the way made excellent arm candy for the instructor all through the lesson.
I got to dance with said instructor, and it was very nice. He's a good lead.
Finally, having worn ourselves completely out, we got on the subway and went home to Kate's.
The next morning, breakfast bright and early again. And while the weather the previous day had been crisp but beautiful, the weather the second day was ugly and cold. We decided to drive into the city this time so that we could part with Kate at the end of our touring and she could take the train back while we hit the road to go back to DC. This presented a problem finding parking. We wanted to go to a museum (I don't remember which one now), but we couldn't find a space, so we decided to skip that and move on to other sights we wanted to see.
When we finally found a space by the river, it was raining, and then it was sleeting. I didn't realize just how damn cold it was or that we'd be hoofing it for quite a ways, and I left my hat and scarf in the car. My ears quickly became icy.
Jason and Kate were also uncomfortable, and there was talk of needed to pee, so we hastily took shelter in some big building that looked like a museum. Surely it would be warm there. Surely there would be bathrooms. But where were we?
We smiled at the guards as we entered and approached a large hole in the floor with a guardrail. This is what we saw:
"Ulysses S. Gr--wha!?" We were totally in Grant's Tomb, as though in the middle of some silly joke!
It was a small but interesting memorial, yet it had not the thing we needed most: a bathroom. So we braced ourselves for the cold and pushed back out into it, finding facilities at the nearby Riverside Church. We warmed up in the gift shop for a bit--the church was closed--and then walked through the campus of Columbia University. We snuck into the chapel there and even ventured up the stairs to the balcony. I wasn't feeling much like taking pictures through a lot of this because that would have involved moving my hands out of my pockets.
Then we went to St. John the Divine, which is an Episcopal church. It's very big and very old and very beautiful. It's so big that at some points, you look up and can't see the ceiling because it's too dark. Craziness!
By this time, it was snowing. Kate insisted that it wasn't snowing, though; "That's not snow," she said. "It's not sticking!"
We went to a scrumptious Indian restaurant for lunch. It was right across the street, the Bengal Cafe. I'm just getting to know Indian food, and it's very interesting. Lots of flavors I'm not used to, and textures. But lots of tastiness.
Then we went to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, also next door.
Then we rushed to the area around our beloved Empire State Building so I could buy some tacky souvenirs while Jason and Kate rounded the block. I had seen signs for those legendary "I Heart NY" shirts at the rock-bottom price of 6 for $10 or $3 each. What a bargain! But when I hopped out of the car and darted into a shop, it was sold out of shirts except for the display models, which they refused to sell me. So I went to a shop on the next block, running madly, to price the same shirts, and the shop keeper told me they were $14.95.
"Oh, well," I said. "I won't be buying any of those today. I'll just pick up some postcards."
He wanted to haggle, though. I think he offered to sell it for $10.
I said, "No, I'm not paying that when the guy next door is selling them for $3 each."
The shopkeeper watched another customer leave and accused me of causing him to lose business. Sorry, dude, but your prices are way too high, and you were badgering me!
I said I wouldn't want to pay any more than $5 each, and I meant it, but I was also in a hurry, so when he offered to sell me two shirts for $14.95, I said okay. Gah.
They're nice shirts, I guess. One for me and one for Lee.
I ran back out and found Jason and Kate, and we dropped Kate off and had to wait a thousand years to get through the tunnel. By the time we got back on the New Jersey Turnpike, the sleet really had turned into snow that stuck to the ground and to cars, and it lasted probably half the way back.
Okay, deep breath.
Onto Part II: DC
The next day was Thursday, or Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday. What the hell did we do during the day that day? I forget. I think part of it involved picking up Jason's car and returning the rental that his parents paid for that took us to New York. Oh, yeah! I went to the Holocaust Museum. I saw an exhibit called "Deadly Medicine" about eugenics and the bizarre racist science of the Nazis. Very interesting.
Holy Thursday is the day that commemorates the Last Supper, and traditionally, they get some guys up there during the Mass, and the priest washes their feet, just like Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Then when Mass is over, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. There's a tradition Jason and I followed in Pensacola of visiting seven churches where the Sacrament is exposed, so we attempted to do that this year.
We went to Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was broadcast live on EWTN! I considered calling one of my friends and telling them to tune in and watch me, but New Orleans doesn't get EWTN that time of day, and Blair was probably not home from work yet. So the Mass was nice, and we counted the Basilica as the first of our seven.
Our next church was St. Aloysius Gonzaga, but they weren't finished with their Mass yet, and so their Sacrament was not exposed. Plus, the Mass was going on downstairs, and it was kind of a gross guitar Mass--not our thing. So we stole upstairs to the main church, which was beautiful, but we were soon ushered out by a nervous-sounding priest who might have thought we were scoundrels. Perhaps because we were in, I think, as Jason insisted, "the ghetto."
May I say that if that's DC's version of a ghetto, then I feel there's little to fear? At least where topics of upkeep and such are concerned? DC's ghetto has nothing on New Orleans--all of New Orleans, not just its "ghettos." Plus, I'd like the say here that every road between DC and NY is as smooth as a silken baby's butt. Those folks have some nice roads. Nicer than ours, at least.
We decided to let St. Aloysius count.
Our next stop was St. Joseph on the Hill, which was actually open and with the sacrament exposed. Lovely.
Next stop: St. Peter's, where the congregation were still enjoying a seder meal in the basement hall, and a very drunk Irish man tried to help us get into the church. He was impressed that we were visiting seven churches, just like he did in Ireland as a boy. He was, alas, unable to help us breach the locked doors.
We decided it still counted. I decided he was Jesus.
Next, the Dominican House of Studies. May I say that DC is filled with cute religious brothers and sisters in awesome full habits? The Dominicans' habits are the coolest, too, because they wear capes in the cold.
As we left this place, we had one of those one-second-off-and-we-would-have-missed-it coincidences: we ran into Bishop Martin Holley, who was Fr. Holley in Pensacola when he baptized Jason. He also impressed me during the 2000 election when I came to him with questions about the Church's stance on voting. We talked for just a moment, but it was nice to see him. He moved to DC when he was named Auxiliary Bishop. Sweet.
Next, St. Anthony of Padua (not sure that's the right link). Then the Franciscan Monastery. Kittee, pay attention: this is the one with a 1950's-era fiberglass replica of the Holy Land, which unfortunately I didn't get to see. But the church is just lovely, too, and we went there the next day as well (as I'll explain momentarily).
That made our seven churches! Then we went to a restaurant called Tamarindo where I had the best burrito of my whole life.
The next day was Good Friday. We went to AC Moore and Michael's and looked at yarn, and I bought a Boye Needlemaster with a coupon I had good for that day only.
We went to the Mass of the Passion at the Dominican House of Studies. We broke the fast at a nice little diner. Then we went to the Franciscan Monastery for a "burial service."
That was unlike anything I've ever seen before. For one thing, the place was utterly packed. The service was made up of these guys walking around the church, carrying representation of the implements of the crucifixion: a spear, a crown of thorns, and some nails, and an effigy of the dead Christ.
I realize this sounds weird and perhaps creepy, but it was really very moving. And they had a fantastic choir; in fact, I heard not one note of bad music the whole time I was there (except the one... which I will not name again).
Before the service, I excused myself to find the ladies' room, and in line waiting for stalls were all these nuns. They were fascinating to me. They were all very young, and they twittered to each other, laughing that so many from their order were in line for the bathroom. I kept staring at them. I couldn't help it! They were wearing full habits, and I think nuns are so interesting, and we don't have a lot of nuns here, at least not in Metairie.
The sign in the stall cracked me up: something about not flushing items "except necessary items" down the toilet. It was vague, as though whoever printed the sign was embarrassed to type things like "tampon" and "sanitary pad," yet it was so vague that I wasn't sure what I was allowed to flush. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue I was facing then.
When I came out and washed my hands, one of the nuns talked to me! She asked where I was from and commented, cheerfully, that I had been staring at them: "My mother said, 'that girl is staring at us.'" Tee! She walked back to my seat with me and told me her name and was very friendly. I think Jason was impressed that a nun was talking to me. Then a minute after she left me in my pew with him, she came back with her name and their order's website written down on a piece of paper which she gave me. I don't have it in front of me, or I'd post the link.
Jason said that she probably thought I was single and was trying to recruit me.
After the service, I wanted to take a picture of her, but again, that seemed freakish. But she saw Jason taking a picture of me and offered to photograph Jason and me together. Then Jason said, "Could we take a picture of you?" When he said she looked a little taken aback, he added, "With your sisters?" She agreed, even though she still seemed perhaps a little weirded out. Sigh. I hate when I weird people out.
Anyway, here they are: the one who talked to me is on the left. Isn't it cute how they're wearing polar fleece jackets over their habits?
Saturday! The Easter Vigil. I went to the mall to scope out H&M during the day and was disappointed that their spring line was so drab. I think it's just that I hate spring fashions. I don't think spring colors really compliment me, either. Bah.
We went to DC to do the whole monument thing. They're all in basically the same place, so it's easy to visit all of them in just a couple of hours. I'll give you some of the highlights.
Lee told me I ought to go to the Lincoln Memorial and sit in Lincoln's lap. Here, I show him how sadly impossible that would be:
Here is Jason at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial. A very nice memorial. Jason is wearing a scarf I knitted!
Lots of photo opportunities here, but one that a lot of people took was a little disturbing. A group would approach this area, meant to depict poor, unemployed people in the line, and one guy would stand in the front of the line and another in the back, and the two would grin at the camera. Or some parents would pose little Junior with his book bag at the front of the line and snap a photo.
It just seemed weird to me. Not quite in keeping with the spirit of the memorial. When I tried to explain this to Lee, though, he pointed to this picture of me with Eleanor Roosevelt and said that wasn't any different.
Oh well.
Here's Jason, scrutinizing what look like cherry blossoms straining to come to being. That weekend was supposed to be the first of the Cherry Blossom Festival, but no Cherry Blossoms had bloomed.
We saw this guy on the Metro. I really thought I'd see more "characters" in New York, but they were all in DC. I was going to covertly take this guy's picture across the tracks, but he saw me, and when I asked if I could photograph him, he seemed happy to let me. Me and my covert photography efforts.
We went to the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Matthew's, where John F. Kennedy's funeral was. Beautiful church, beautiful service. Cardinal McCarrick said Mass, and he gave a nice homily. I liked him even better when Jason told me that he was one of the church leaders who said it was uncool to excommunicate people based on who they voted for in the election. Excellent. Make him the Pope!
Here's St. Matthew's:
Jason asked me later on which church I liked the best. I think that I actually liked this one the best as far as art and architecture go, but I liked the burial service at the Franciscan monastery the best of all the Masses and services we went to.
After Mass, we went to a place called Remington's, "Washington, DC's premiere Gay Country Western Bar" (!). It was so, so cool, though I have to say that while I definitely saw the "gay," I did not see the "country western" as I am accustomed to it. Not a Toby Keith song was played, not a note of Shania Twain. There was line dancing, and there were cowboy boots and hats, and there was two-stepping. And I suppose there were country songs, but it just didn't quite have that... twang I've come to expect in country western. Which, really, is fine. The place was mad awesome anyway.
It was karaoke night. And guess who came with us? Jason's room mate's parents! Jeremy and his girlfriend, Cole, were entertaining them for the weekend, and they came along with us for the ride. Once the patrons and workers of the bar got wind of the fact that these two folks were parents, they seemed amused and even a little wistful. It was very interesting.
Jeremy...
Cole.
I sang "Fancy" and "Delilah," and I managed to earn a small pocket of fans, which is always fun. Oh, and I got to meet byzantinespy and his "The Spaniard," and that was nice.
Sunday, we went to Mass at.... eek, I can't remember the name of it! St. Agnes? It, too, was lovely, and then we went to Jason's for a lovely lunch of Indian food, and then he took me to the airport.
If you can't tell, I'm growing fatigued. I didn't anticipate it taking me so long to write this; if you've come this far in reading, you are a real trooper.
I don't want to close without a little analysis, though, to cap off the telling. I had a really great time on my trip. I enjoyed spending time with Jason and meeting his friends, and I relished being all Catholic up in there the whole time. It firmed up my desire to go back to Catholicism again. Now, of course, more complications arise: Lee seems confused and disappointed at my renewed desire to embrace Catholicism because he really likes Holy Comforter a lot and says he's only just realizing that we could conceivably share religion in some way if that were the church where we went. But for the space of Holy Week, I was a Catholic, and it was quite edifying.
And now vacation is over, and I'm back to my real life. Thesis, comps, mother, future.
And now I'm going to bed.
First things first, though. I scheduled my thesis defense. Because of difficulties involving the vacation schedules of my committee members, I'll be defending my thesis on the first night of the Fairhope conference IN the HOTEL room. A little unconventional, sure, but still a valid thesis defense. Rick said to Joanna on the phone as they hatched this plan, "If Jessica passes, she'll really have something to celebrate [at the bar where we traditionally go the first night of the conference]. If she fails, we'll be right by the bay, so she can go drown herself!"
So that's in one week from Thursday. So I'm turning in bound copies of my thesis to the members of my committee Friday. So I'm tweaking the last three stories, setting them in one document, wrangling the margins, writing acknowledgements and a bio, and taking a disk to Kinko’s to have printed, copied, and bound--tomorrow and Thursday. Easy enough!
On to My Spring Break. I'll give you a sweet little LJ cut for the sake of your sorrowful friends page.
By the way, before we get going here, a much shorter yet more in-depth study of some points of my visit may be read here in Jason's journal. But if you want long-winded yet shallow, keep a-readin' here! I have pictures.
I flew into the airport in Baltimore in the early afternoon of the Monday of Holy Week. Jason (Apeliotes, for those who keep up, but for my own sake he'll be called Jason from here on out) picked me up, and we went to his school to have lunch with a_s_manilius at this excellent bagel place--I'm so in love with bagels right now. It was nice to meet "Manilius," whose journal I've subscribed to for some time now and who appears to play a significant role in Jason's academic and social life.
But lunch was brief. We went to Jason's apartment to gather his things, and then we hit the road for New York. Jason's lovely friend Kate and her family had extended to us an invitation to stay with them in their home on Long Island, and Kate had supplied us with directions. In spite of those, we ended up lost and in Pennsylvania when in reality all we wanted was to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. We called Kate and tried to explain where we were, and in my travel-induced fatigue and loopiness, I called out the names of everything I could see in printed English. "A Chevrolet dealer!" I cried. "The Comm Berry Burr!"
"The Comm Berry Burr!" Jason repeated. Kate was puzzled.
In fact, we were approaching a sign that said "Comm Barry Br," and the "Br" stood for "bridge." But you know how when you get loopy like that, it seems like you're drunk? Yeah.
We finally made it to Kate's parents' house at a million o'clock and planned for our day in the city. In the morning, we had breakfast and then caught the train into the city.
The first New York thing we saw was...
The Empire State Building. Unfortunately, we never got to go in. A line of tourists wrapped halfway around the block on our first attempt, and the wait was anticipated at at least two hours. Forget that! That's crazy town!
I think it was at this point that I saw another tall building:
That's the Chrysler Building. I took its picture primarily because, check it out, it really does shine! Just like that line in "It's a Hard Knock Life" from Annie when cheeky little Molly, in her impression of Miss Hannigan, says to another orphan, "You'll stay up 'til this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building!" As a kid, I always wondered in what way the top of any building shined, and I told myself that the building must be very tall and therefore exposed to a lot of sunlight, that it must be shining in that way. But for real, the Chrysler Building is, like, wrapped in tinfoil and very shiny. I text messaged Blair to this effect.
Rebuffed in our efforts to view the city from the top of the Empire State Building, we caught a cab to Battery Park to look at the Statue of Liberty. Our cabbie told us why he thinks it's so hard to get into the Empire State Building these days: because tourists used to split up when they wanted to see the city from way up, and half would go to the Empire State Building, and the other half would go to the World Trade Center. Kate said that was the reason she had speculated, too.
We got to Battery Park and turned our noses up at expensive, long ferry trips out to the Statue of Liberty. We could see it fine from the shore. Here, Jason and Kate peer out at it...
We got a better view when Lady Liberty came ashore and began posing for pictures with tourists. She's so goofy. You wouldn't expect that from her serious expression, but check out how she's using Kate for an armrest and gripping the top of my head with her silly green hand.
Next, we walked to Trinity Episcopal Church, which was very old and very pretty. It also had a notable tile on the front step. Jason will show you:
It says, "On this spot stood her majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her gracious visit, 9 July 1976. His Royal Highness the Prince Philip stood nearby." Prince Philip did not have his own tile.
Trinity is close to the site of the World Trade Center, and that's where we went next. I was surprised that after 3 1/2 years, buildings nearby were still under repair, I believe from the impact of the towers' falling. The site doesn't look like much; just a big hole. The cross-shaped beam joint we all saw on magazine covers stands there, and a fence surrounds the whole area. There is a display of pictures and text about the history of the towers. There are also signs asking people not to sell anything there and not to buy anything from sellers to discourage them from setting up shop there. I didn't see any sellers, but I saw two tour groups, one of which was led by a guy who spoke it a loud, theatrical voice about September 11, using dramatic phrases like, "Little did the President know," and waving around a cane with flourish.
I thought I would "feel" more standing there, but it was hard to since there wasn't much to look at. Where I did feel something was across the street at St. Paul's Chapel, which is an extension of Trinity. St. Paul's is apparently where a lot of volunteers--thousands of them--took solace in the days and weeks after September 11, and now the chapel is itself a type of memorial to the whole thing. There are photo and text and video displays explaining about the cots that the volunteers slept on and the food and counsel and massages that various businesses and charities donated for them. There are artifacts and photographs and gifts. There's a wall of origami cranes sent by people in Japan, and some of them are from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
All of that was very moving.
After spending a lot of time there, we emerged from the heaviness to meet Kate's sister for lunch. She took us to a place called Buffa's Diner. There I learned that I am a very demanding restaurant patron. Though I don't mean to be, I come across as bitchy when I say things like, "I need some ranch dressing." Oops.
Then we tried again to see the Empire State Building. This time, there was no line outside, and the line inside didn't start until almost the ticket counter. But it's a tall building, and the line was still an hour and a half. Psh.
Instead, we went to the New York Public Library. This fancy lady worked at the information desk...
I forget who pointed her out; Jason or Kate. We loved her hair. I wanted a picture so bad, but I couldn't see running up and asking for one. So Jason and Kate pretended to pose together at the landing where her desk was, and I pretended to photograph them but instead moved my camera to the side and zoomed in on our informed friend.
Then Jason did want me to take a picture of him coming down some stairs, and I did, but he didn't like the picture because I used flash. He has this thing about flash. Here's my thing about flash: you have to use it if you're taking pictures indoors. My camera works indoors if I disable flash, but the pictures often come out blurry, and I can't always tell by viewing them in the viewfinder. As a result, I have a lot of blurry pictures of Jason from the week.
We went outside to try again to get a good shot of Jason descending steps.
Then we went to Grand Central Station for chai. Check out these awesome plastic chairs that totally psych you out into thinking they're cushioned. Also check out the dude in the chair next to us. He's asleep. Or dead.
We continued walking and peeked into St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. Then we reached St. Patrick's Cathedral.
There was a Mass in progress, and the sanctuary and first several pews were filled with cardinals! Also, the pillars were mounted with televisions so everyone could have a good view. A nice juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern!
The guy on the right? Is busily putting out votive candles and dumping them into a box. Seriously; he's extinguishing your prayers. And it's not even like these are candles that are going to burn forever and cause new petitioners uncomfortable wait to light their own candles; these votives were only a third the size of any other I've ever seen, and they cost a whole dollar! What a total rip-off!
By then, it was getting dark and close to time for our dinner reservation at Swing 46, a place I found that has live swing music and dance lessons. So we made our way on foot to Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and the restaurant.
I was so proud of Jason! He took the lesson and picked up the moves quite well. Here, he shows his dancing prowess with Kate, who by the way made excellent arm candy for the instructor all through the lesson.
I got to dance with said instructor, and it was very nice. He's a good lead.
Finally, having worn ourselves completely out, we got on the subway and went home to Kate's.
The next morning, breakfast bright and early again. And while the weather the previous day had been crisp but beautiful, the weather the second day was ugly and cold. We decided to drive into the city this time so that we could part with Kate at the end of our touring and she could take the train back while we hit the road to go back to DC. This presented a problem finding parking. We wanted to go to a museum (I don't remember which one now), but we couldn't find a space, so we decided to skip that and move on to other sights we wanted to see.
When we finally found a space by the river, it was raining, and then it was sleeting. I didn't realize just how damn cold it was or that we'd be hoofing it for quite a ways, and I left my hat and scarf in the car. My ears quickly became icy.
Jason and Kate were also uncomfortable, and there was talk of needed to pee, so we hastily took shelter in some big building that looked like a museum. Surely it would be warm there. Surely there would be bathrooms. But where were we?
We smiled at the guards as we entered and approached a large hole in the floor with a guardrail. This is what we saw:
"Ulysses S. Gr--wha!?" We were totally in Grant's Tomb, as though in the middle of some silly joke!
It was a small but interesting memorial, yet it had not the thing we needed most: a bathroom. So we braced ourselves for the cold and pushed back out into it, finding facilities at the nearby Riverside Church. We warmed up in the gift shop for a bit--the church was closed--and then walked through the campus of Columbia University. We snuck into the chapel there and even ventured up the stairs to the balcony. I wasn't feeling much like taking pictures through a lot of this because that would have involved moving my hands out of my pockets.
Then we went to St. John the Divine, which is an Episcopal church. It's very big and very old and very beautiful. It's so big that at some points, you look up and can't see the ceiling because it's too dark. Craziness!
By this time, it was snowing. Kate insisted that it wasn't snowing, though; "That's not snow," she said. "It's not sticking!"
We went to a scrumptious Indian restaurant for lunch. It was right across the street, the Bengal Cafe. I'm just getting to know Indian food, and it's very interesting. Lots of flavors I'm not used to, and textures. But lots of tastiness.
Then we went to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, also next door.
Then we rushed to the area around our beloved Empire State Building so I could buy some tacky souvenirs while Jason and Kate rounded the block. I had seen signs for those legendary "I Heart NY" shirts at the rock-bottom price of 6 for $10 or $3 each. What a bargain! But when I hopped out of the car and darted into a shop, it was sold out of shirts except for the display models, which they refused to sell me. So I went to a shop on the next block, running madly, to price the same shirts, and the shop keeper told me they were $14.95.
"Oh, well," I said. "I won't be buying any of those today. I'll just pick up some postcards."
He wanted to haggle, though. I think he offered to sell it for $10.
I said, "No, I'm not paying that when the guy next door is selling them for $3 each."
The shopkeeper watched another customer leave and accused me of causing him to lose business. Sorry, dude, but your prices are way too high, and you were badgering me!
I said I wouldn't want to pay any more than $5 each, and I meant it, but I was also in a hurry, so when he offered to sell me two shirts for $14.95, I said okay. Gah.
They're nice shirts, I guess. One for me and one for Lee.
I ran back out and found Jason and Kate, and we dropped Kate off and had to wait a thousand years to get through the tunnel. By the time we got back on the New Jersey Turnpike, the sleet really had turned into snow that stuck to the ground and to cars, and it lasted probably half the way back.
Okay, deep breath.
Onto Part II: DC
The next day was Thursday, or Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday. What the hell did we do during the day that day? I forget. I think part of it involved picking up Jason's car and returning the rental that his parents paid for that took us to New York. Oh, yeah! I went to the Holocaust Museum. I saw an exhibit called "Deadly Medicine" about eugenics and the bizarre racist science of the Nazis. Very interesting.
Holy Thursday is the day that commemorates the Last Supper, and traditionally, they get some guys up there during the Mass, and the priest washes their feet, just like Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Then when Mass is over, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. There's a tradition Jason and I followed in Pensacola of visiting seven churches where the Sacrament is exposed, so we attempted to do that this year.
We went to Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was broadcast live on EWTN! I considered calling one of my friends and telling them to tune in and watch me, but New Orleans doesn't get EWTN that time of day, and Blair was probably not home from work yet. So the Mass was nice, and we counted the Basilica as the first of our seven.
Our next church was St. Aloysius Gonzaga, but they weren't finished with their Mass yet, and so their Sacrament was not exposed. Plus, the Mass was going on downstairs, and it was kind of a gross guitar Mass--not our thing. So we stole upstairs to the main church, which was beautiful, but we were soon ushered out by a nervous-sounding priest who might have thought we were scoundrels. Perhaps because we were in, I think, as Jason insisted, "the ghetto."
May I say that if that's DC's version of a ghetto, then I feel there's little to fear? At least where topics of upkeep and such are concerned? DC's ghetto has nothing on New Orleans--all of New Orleans, not just its "ghettos." Plus, I'd like the say here that every road between DC and NY is as smooth as a silken baby's butt. Those folks have some nice roads. Nicer than ours, at least.
We decided to let St. Aloysius count.
Our next stop was St. Joseph on the Hill, which was actually open and with the sacrament exposed. Lovely.
Next stop: St. Peter's, where the congregation were still enjoying a seder meal in the basement hall, and a very drunk Irish man tried to help us get into the church. He was impressed that we were visiting seven churches, just like he did in Ireland as a boy. He was, alas, unable to help us breach the locked doors.
We decided it still counted. I decided he was Jesus.
Next, the Dominican House of Studies. May I say that DC is filled with cute religious brothers and sisters in awesome full habits? The Dominicans' habits are the coolest, too, because they wear capes in the cold.
As we left this place, we had one of those one-second-off-and-we-would-have-missed-it coincidences: we ran into Bishop Martin Holley, who was Fr. Holley in Pensacola when he baptized Jason. He also impressed me during the 2000 election when I came to him with questions about the Church's stance on voting. We talked for just a moment, but it was nice to see him. He moved to DC when he was named Auxiliary Bishop. Sweet.
Next, St. Anthony of Padua (not sure that's the right link). Then the Franciscan Monastery. Kittee, pay attention: this is the one with a 1950's-era fiberglass replica of the Holy Land, which unfortunately I didn't get to see. But the church is just lovely, too, and we went there the next day as well (as I'll explain momentarily).
That made our seven churches! Then we went to a restaurant called Tamarindo where I had the best burrito of my whole life.
The next day was Good Friday. We went to AC Moore and Michael's and looked at yarn, and I bought a Boye Needlemaster with a coupon I had good for that day only.
We went to the Mass of the Passion at the Dominican House of Studies. We broke the fast at a nice little diner. Then we went to the Franciscan Monastery for a "burial service."
That was unlike anything I've ever seen before. For one thing, the place was utterly packed. The service was made up of these guys walking around the church, carrying representation of the implements of the crucifixion: a spear, a crown of thorns, and some nails, and an effigy of the dead Christ.
I realize this sounds weird and perhaps creepy, but it was really very moving. And they had a fantastic choir; in fact, I heard not one note of bad music the whole time I was there (except the one... which I will not name again).
Before the service, I excused myself to find the ladies' room, and in line waiting for stalls were all these nuns. They were fascinating to me. They were all very young, and they twittered to each other, laughing that so many from their order were in line for the bathroom. I kept staring at them. I couldn't help it! They were wearing full habits, and I think nuns are so interesting, and we don't have a lot of nuns here, at least not in Metairie.
The sign in the stall cracked me up: something about not flushing items "except necessary items" down the toilet. It was vague, as though whoever printed the sign was embarrassed to type things like "tampon" and "sanitary pad," yet it was so vague that I wasn't sure what I was allowed to flush. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue I was facing then.
When I came out and washed my hands, one of the nuns talked to me! She asked where I was from and commented, cheerfully, that I had been staring at them: "My mother said, 'that girl is staring at us.'" Tee! She walked back to my seat with me and told me her name and was very friendly. I think Jason was impressed that a nun was talking to me. Then a minute after she left me in my pew with him, she came back with her name and their order's website written down on a piece of paper which she gave me. I don't have it in front of me, or I'd post the link.
Jason said that she probably thought I was single and was trying to recruit me.
After the service, I wanted to take a picture of her, but again, that seemed freakish. But she saw Jason taking a picture of me and offered to photograph Jason and me together. Then Jason said, "Could we take a picture of you?" When he said she looked a little taken aback, he added, "With your sisters?" She agreed, even though she still seemed perhaps a little weirded out. Sigh. I hate when I weird people out.
Anyway, here they are: the one who talked to me is on the left. Isn't it cute how they're wearing polar fleece jackets over their habits?
Saturday! The Easter Vigil. I went to the mall to scope out H&M during the day and was disappointed that their spring line was so drab. I think it's just that I hate spring fashions. I don't think spring colors really compliment me, either. Bah.
We went to DC to do the whole monument thing. They're all in basically the same place, so it's easy to visit all of them in just a couple of hours. I'll give you some of the highlights.
Lee told me I ought to go to the Lincoln Memorial and sit in Lincoln's lap. Here, I show him how sadly impossible that would be:
Here is Jason at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial. A very nice memorial. Jason is wearing a scarf I knitted!
Lots of photo opportunities here, but one that a lot of people took was a little disturbing. A group would approach this area, meant to depict poor, unemployed people in the line, and one guy would stand in the front of the line and another in the back, and the two would grin at the camera. Or some parents would pose little Junior with his book bag at the front of the line and snap a photo.
It just seemed weird to me. Not quite in keeping with the spirit of the memorial. When I tried to explain this to Lee, though, he pointed to this picture of me with Eleanor Roosevelt and said that wasn't any different.
Oh well.
Here's Jason, scrutinizing what look like cherry blossoms straining to come to being. That weekend was supposed to be the first of the Cherry Blossom Festival, but no Cherry Blossoms had bloomed.
We saw this guy on the Metro. I really thought I'd see more "characters" in New York, but they were all in DC. I was going to covertly take this guy's picture across the tracks, but he saw me, and when I asked if I could photograph him, he seemed happy to let me. Me and my covert photography efforts.
We went to the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Matthew's, where John F. Kennedy's funeral was. Beautiful church, beautiful service. Cardinal McCarrick said Mass, and he gave a nice homily. I liked him even better when Jason told me that he was one of the church leaders who said it was uncool to excommunicate people based on who they voted for in the election. Excellent. Make him the Pope!
Here's St. Matthew's:
Jason asked me later on which church I liked the best. I think that I actually liked this one the best as far as art and architecture go, but I liked the burial service at the Franciscan monastery the best of all the Masses and services we went to.
After Mass, we went to a place called Remington's, "Washington, DC's premiere Gay Country Western Bar" (!). It was so, so cool, though I have to say that while I definitely saw the "gay," I did not see the "country western" as I am accustomed to it. Not a Toby Keith song was played, not a note of Shania Twain. There was line dancing, and there were cowboy boots and hats, and there was two-stepping. And I suppose there were country songs, but it just didn't quite have that... twang I've come to expect in country western. Which, really, is fine. The place was mad awesome anyway.
It was karaoke night. And guess who came with us? Jason's room mate's parents! Jeremy and his girlfriend, Cole, were entertaining them for the weekend, and they came along with us for the ride. Once the patrons and workers of the bar got wind of the fact that these two folks were parents, they seemed amused and even a little wistful. It was very interesting.
Jeremy...
Cole.
I sang "Fancy" and "Delilah," and I managed to earn a small pocket of fans, which is always fun. Oh, and I got to meet byzantinespy and his "The Spaniard," and that was nice.
Sunday, we went to Mass at.... eek, I can't remember the name of it! St. Agnes? It, too, was lovely, and then we went to Jason's for a lovely lunch of Indian food, and then he took me to the airport.
If you can't tell, I'm growing fatigued. I didn't anticipate it taking me so long to write this; if you've come this far in reading, you are a real trooper.
I don't want to close without a little analysis, though, to cap off the telling. I had a really great time on my trip. I enjoyed spending time with Jason and meeting his friends, and I relished being all Catholic up in there the whole time. It firmed up my desire to go back to Catholicism again. Now, of course, more complications arise: Lee seems confused and disappointed at my renewed desire to embrace Catholicism because he really likes Holy Comforter a lot and says he's only just realizing that we could conceivably share religion in some way if that were the church where we went. But for the space of Holy Week, I was a Catholic, and it was quite edifying.
And now vacation is over, and I'm back to my real life. Thesis, comps, mother, future.
And now I'm going to bed.