Pretties from the balloon adventure. Photos by me.

Indiana horizon at sunrise:

Balloon interior:

Burner in action:

Balloon shadow just after landing:

Partially deflated balloon in cow pasture:

My sister, who comments here as Bumble, and I were taken up in a hot-air balloon yesterday morning. It was absolutely as fantastic as you always thought it would be. Silent, still, views like the ones off the Sears Tower but without the heat, noise, grime, smells, and concrete. There are photos below the fold, but if you want to skip the narration and go straight to the in-flight pictures, they are here.

I was nervous before we went; not about flying or the height, but since I became a mom, reasonable fears of accidental death have blown up into an occasional, irrational near-certainty that because I’m so careless and rude to my child as to actually take an adventure that has a small chance of possibly going horribly wrong, it will actually happen that way. I tried to wrestle this down with the assurance that our pilot, Dave Bobel, has been flying balloons for more than thirty years and is certainly not about to crash himself just to validate my midnight fears. You won’t catch me going skydiving, though. Details and photos after the jump. (more…)

We both take pictures of the doors.

Of course he can tell you lots more cooler stuff about them than I can. All I can offer is that both of these doors used to belong to John Adams.

Flags at Fort Sumter. Plus park ranger:

Plus moon:

Plus honor (the flag that was flying when Beauregard opened fire on the fort, which Major Anderson later had hauled down and carried away when his men were permitted to march out):

Just plus–from left to right, an earlier version of the American flag, the first Confederate flag, the South Carolina flag, the current American flag, the second Confederate flag, and an earlier American flag:

There’s nothing like going someplace, taking a batch of pictures, then seeing pictures of several of the same subjects turn up on the blog of a pro photographer. Makes me think I’m somewhat on the right track in improving my shots. Charleston, South Carolina:

More Boston photoblogging: The steeple of the famous church, looking up from the ground:

The same steeple as viewed from a hill up the street:

The flag in the rigging of the U.S.S. Constitution:

I realized I haven’t posted any Boston photos. Here are some of the Day of John Adams.

The house in which John Adams was born, bordered on the left by the house he and Abigail later lived in and in which John Quincy Adams was born:

Over at Peacefield, the larger estate where John and Abigail lived much later and where many of their descendents lived as well, the beautiful library Charles Francis Adams built to house his father’s (John Quincy’s) books:

The grounds of Peacefield:

And some butterflies thereon:

A little vacation photoblogging. A casemate with cannon at Fort Sumter:

The same cannon (I think) from inside the fort:

And an empty casemate looking out to the ocean:

Day two was the day of the subway system. I dived down into the station two blocks from my hotel, snaked my MetroCard out of the machine, and proceeded to slide it through the slot to the left of my turnstile rather than the right. When I realized my error and slid it through the correct slot, the computer naturally thought I was trying to game it (at $7.00 for an all-day pass, it doesn’t account for individual rides but for more than one use of the same card within 18 minutes) and refused me entry. I pleaded my case to the attendant, who let me through the gate. Down the island, first stop Trinity Church as aforementioned, then onto the ferry for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t get off at Liberty Island; only took some pictures from the boat. Exhibits at Ellis Island were quite moving. My feelings on the current immigration hoo-ha can be summed up in a few sentences: I am in favor of allowing in almost any sound, sane, upstanding, law-abiding person who wants a) to become a U.S. citizen or b) to be educated at one of our universities. But the fact that our immigration policies in the past have stilted this ideal is no excuse for circumventing them. Secure the border first. Decide what to do about illegals afterward. Make the whole process more streamlined for future applicants. And screen the immigration status of all those who are arrested for any reason and deport immediately all such who are here illegally. But Ellis was a grand sight and quite moving in its depiction of those who came here seeking both to stay and make a better life.

After a brief stop at the Fraunces Tavern Museum, also as aforementioned, where you can see the Long Room where Washington said goodbye to his officers, I visited St. Paul’s Chapel. Impressive, but its native architectural beauty is marred by the ugly pink and powder blue interior decorating scheme.

St. Paul’s served as a rally point and aid-and-comfort zone during the atrocity of 9/11, located as it is adjacent to Ground Zero, my next focus. Ladder/Engine Company No. 10, also adjacent to the WTC, which took multiple hits in personnel and building that day:

My favorite sight at Ground Zero is the new WTC 7, rising serenely over the rather tortured landscape of whatever construction is evidently taking place, though not very quickly, on the site of the Twin Towers:

Finally, my last church of the day: over the threshold into St. Patrick’s Cathedral:

While I was inside this awe-inspiring structure, the sun came out:

The day ended with a trip up the Empire State Building at about 11 p.m., after I’d found my Italian restaurant from the previous night and, if you can believe it, was let through the gate again by a subway attendant after scurrying into the station, swiping my card, and realizing I’d left my cell phone back at the hotel. Back to the hotel, back to the station, where again the computer thought I was trying to cheat the subway out of $7. The attendant wasn’t as forgiving as the morning one, but he let me through eventually, thinking: Rube.

Trinity Church, in whose graveyard lie buried Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton:

The Met. My guidebook advised me to “pick one or two galleries and just see a few other things on your way to and from them so you don’t get burned out.” It’s good advice though disheartening if you ever want to see the whole or even most of the museum. I saw the Temple of Dendur:

and the American Wing, where I liked Winslow Homer somewhat less than I expected to and totally fell in love with one Elijah Boardman, as painted by Ralph Earl. The other American painters were uneven for me–no one painter got my unqualified recommendation, but I liked several of the individual works very much. I was amused by the information card for Washington Crossing the Delaware, though the blurb in the link is different from the one on the wall at the Met–did you know that painting was a success because it appealed to the strong feeling of nationalism in the country at the time? Silly me, I thought that sectionalism was by far the stronger force in the country in 1851, the time of the painting, and that its success might be due to the fact that nobody didn’t like George Washington, North or South.

My favorite painting may have been, ironically for the American Wing, of Queen Victoria, by Thomas Sully. Again the blurb in the link doesn’t match what’s on the wall, and the wall blurb was interesting. Paraphrased: “Sully chose the moment of her physical and literal ascension [in the finished painting, she was climbing the stairs to the throne] to show her humanity and femininity”–she looks beautiful and delicate, but strong.

What I really liked in the American Wing was the furniture, especially a little Greek Revival chair called a “klismos chair.” Greek Revival furniture was quite the thing during the Revolution and for a while afterward, and I enjoyed seeing the chairs again when I visited the Fraunces Tavern Museum the next day:

More tomorrow …

Walking through Manhattan on a sunny day:

That’s 77th St. east of Broadway, on the way to Central Park, where apparently you can fish, which would please my mother no end:

What pleases me is being able to get so many places you want to go in Manhattan by walking. I didn’t step in a cab or a subway the first day, although later in the afternoon I got living proof that normal people are able and allowed to drive in Manhattan when I rode with PetiteDov and her oh-so-preppy boyfriend from the Met to an Italian restaurant, the Trattoria, which is such a common name that you must have a location, but the exact location of which I’ve forgotten after misremembering the street corner when I wanted to go back to it on my last night. (Yeah, I was all wound up before I went about where I would eat dinner on the various nights, but in the end I spent my time on the sights and went back to the same convenient finds for food.) I found it, on the east side of Columbus and 80-something St. Good food, rather nonchalant service. Right, the walking–I walked through Central Park shortwise:

and after perusing the various sidewalk vendors, bought The Bean a little elephant carved out of soapstone, I think. The sculptor had many different animals in various sizes–I commented on the work it must take to carve the tiny ones, no bigger than half an inch wide. He was pleased–”People don’t usually get that the little ones are the hardest”–and remarked of my elephant choice that all his elephants have their trunks aloft because it’s a symbol of “removing barriers to forward progress.” On we go, then. The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I just love this place, despite having been there only twice in my life now (thrice if you count the fact that I went twice on this day in question) and despite being enough of a rube not to notice that the surprising $20 entrance fee is a suggested donation. Ah well. It’s worth it. It has a mystique from my childhood regardless of the fact that I never saw it in my childhood: Didn’t you ever read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Claudia, tired of being taken for granted at home, saves her allowance, packs her clothes into her violin case, recruits her brother Jamie, who supplements his income by cheating at cards, and they run away to live in the Metropolitan for a good many days, living on Automat food and bathing in the museum fountain, before they’re lured out by the mystery of Angel, a statue that might have been carved by Michaelangelo but nobody knows for sure. Oh, boloney, Claude. Why do you always pick on my gra[mmar]… / Boloney, boloney! That’s it, Jamie! She bought Angel in Bologna, Italy …

Great book. Great museum. More tomorrow.

So, New York. The trip was great. I got in a wild hurry to buy tickets that seemed like a good buy at Expedia, so I completed the transaction without considering the stupidity of flying straight south (to San Francisco) before moving even a mile east, as well as the time problems connected with arriving at JFK at 8 p.m. and then trying to drop stuff off at my hotel before hitting the blogger party. Also, you haven’t had fun until you’ve been in your layover airport and gotten the news that people were arrested for plotting to blow up the airport you’re headed for. Ineptly, as it turns out, thank God. Anyway I didn’t have to worry about the 8 p.m. arrival, because thanks to ATC at SFO, which seems to shut down under fog, which of course never occurs in San Francisco, I missed my connection and landed at JFK at 10:30 instead. Fortunately the bloggers are a night-owl bunch, for the most part.

In New York, I stayed at the Hotel Belleclaire, where they say Mark Twain once stayed and Max Gorky was once thrown out for staying with a woman other than his wife (”This is a family hotel!”). I can recommend it, unless it’s raining. It’s an old building with window A/C units, which isn’t a problem in itself, but when it rains it sounds like somebody’s letting off jumping jacks on top of them. My mom, bemused at my weakness: “The rain kept you awake?” Me: “Mother, I said it sounded like firecrackers.” Otherwise the hotel was clean, quiet, and a nice walk from Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum:

The Manhattan Diner, just across Broadway from the Belleclaire, where I ate all my breakfasts:

I love to eat alone because that’s when I read. My book, Vol. I of the three-volume bio of Churchill that, appallingly, William Manchester left incomplete at his death, accompanied me to the diner, then went back to the room during the days while I wandered the town. Being in a strange city by myself brings out the people watcher in me, although only marginally–gotta read, after all. But the second day it was pouring the firecracker rain, so the Manchester got a protective covering of plastic shopping bag for the jog across Broadway. I was amused to imagine what other potential people watchers in the diner were thinking of me: Then she pulled a simply enormous book out of a plastic grocery bag!

Manchester and I passed the breakfast hours agreeably, then it was off to sight-see. More tomorrow.