The past couple of days have continued to be wonderful and have been horrible and have brought not so minor stupidities as well.

The horrible,  the Glazers!  While not close friends by any measure we have known them well for most of our married lives. They were an integral part of our communal lives both on the greater community and the smaller more personal community.  God how they will be missed.

The almost trivial stupidity,  I crushed the screen of my laptop using the hydraulic extension of the passenger side living room slide for my weapon. The last time I tried this I merely broke some trim, I must have repaired it too well as it held and the laptop didn’t.  Cost to replace the screen is about the same as a new laptop. I have a new laptop on order and will pick it up at Dan’s in a week.  I spent a few pennies more and got a solid state hard drive (ssd) of good size.  It should be very fast.

We are now in the Marlton Elks where we will meet up with the Armstrongs for dinner. Marlton, you ask,  that’s in NJ about 30 minutes or less from Philadelphia. We plan to go in to see the Barnes Collecton in a bit.  The Armstrongs’s coach is next to ours and Kiki, their resident cat, is waiting for their return. They will pay a price for their absence I’m sure.

Back to our NYC experiences.  We took ferry and subway to Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to visit Donna Rosenthal,  a friend of Carol’s from childhood.  It was fun for a variety of reasons.  She lives in a building on W Plaza where my roommate Jon Kerner grew up.  I last visited that building in the Fall of 1963 on my way to Brown for my senior year (even then my travel routes were indirect). Donna treated us to lunch and then hired a car service to give us a tour of Brooklyn. The tour ended at the Brooklyn Museum where we saw some of the collection there being no special exhibition on.  Then we left Donna in the coffee shop while we took some time in the adjacent Botanical Garden. She dropped us at the entrance to the subway and we made our way back to the ferry past Whole Foods and thence to a light ‘dinner on board.  The heat continued unabated.  Carol did not object to running the  air conditioning.

Friday was one last day walking in the city.  From the ferry we took a subway up to Washington Square in hopes of seeing something of the area we remember from 50 years ago. There is very little left besides the street names and the Blue Note. We eventually found a coffee shop with good coffee,  but the atmosphere was altogether different. The area is now dominated by NYU. We continued walking to the lower entrance to the High Line where we met cousin Molly Ornati as planned.  We finally got to walk this unique Park  atop and old elevated rail line way over on the west side.  The landscaping and design makes you feel at If you have stepped into another world