Month: September 2015

… it was kinda insane. It was horribly hot out yesterday, although maybe it was nice out on the river? These are people kayaking in the Hudson River. That’s New Jersey in the distance.

I’ve been in for the past few days working and I really do have to get out of the house and do something fun. Wish me luck! I will report back with pictures if I make it out.

I leave the cat carrier out always, so my cats are used to the sight of it. Bleecker even uses it as a cat bed. He also likes this spot because it’s close to one of Finney’s preferred spots.

My sister-in-law Robin just emailed a picture of me on the field at Fenway Park. I love this picture! I was so excited to be there, and conflicted about that due to the occasion. But as I said before, I think my cousin and his late wife wanted to give us this gift and they wanted us to enjoy it. Why else would they arrange it? Thank you for sending me this picture Robin!

I’ve been researching Josephine Shaw Lowell, who served on the New York State Board of Charities and was involved in charity and correction reform in the 19th century. But like everyone else I’ve been looking into, she comes off heartless at times, and that is an understatement. Other times, and especially later, it’s clear she wasn’t.

I’m told I should look at people in the context of their times, and I do. But some things are so wrong, and so horrible, that even in times when they are acceptable there were people who could still see it’s wrong. All throughout America’s slavery period for instance, there were those who were crying out WTF?? This is evil.

Josephine Shaw Lowell, she seems to be more in the middle. I can at least see what she was thinking when she was being harsh, and that will help me write about her. And her thinking evolved as time went on. Amazing, and sad, how rare that is.

This is the fountain in Bryant Park, behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, that’s dedicated to her. “Sincere Candid Courageous and Tender,” it reads, among other things. There were not a lot of things being dedicated to women in those days, and this one is so effusive. She must have been quite a woman.

This Fountain Commemorates
The Strong and Beautiful Character Of
Josephine Shaw Lowell
1843-1905
Wife For One Year of a Patriot Soldier
Widow at Twenty One
Servant of New York State and City
In Their Public Charities
Sincere Candid Courageous and Tender
Bringing Help and Hope to the Fainting
And Inspiring Others to Consecrated Labors

This is the fountain.

I visited the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, LI recently, a beloved museum from my childhood. The exhibits are actually not too interesting for a child. In fact, I even remembered them as dusty, old drawers full of rocks, and animal specimens pinned to the wall. But for some reason I was and continue to be drawn to the place, there is something romantic about it, something that makes me want to be there. (Oh God, I just had a “I have always been the caretaker” flash of feeling about it.)

They also have a planetarium and I could NEVER get enough of that. I think they had a meteorite that I’d stare and stare at. This has been in space.

The exhibits are better than I remembered them. I can see how a child thought they were boring, but now I see their 19th century beauty (see here), although they were actually built in the early 20th century. But because it’s me I was sad for all the creatures that had to die to make them.

It got worse upstairs. Someone killed that little baby in the lower right. Who could do that?? Who could look at that little thing and kill it?? It’s not clear to me if William K. Vanderbilt II was the hunter, or his son William K. Vanderbilt III. I wish the crocodile in the next shot had got him.