On the Fourth: to liberty
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post from many years ago. It was written in the springtime during a visit to New York. Reading it now, it seems almost archaic in some ways – in particular, the crowds in New York walking around freely, an additional testament to liberty compared with the situation now, when people can’t congregate in the same manner and when New York City itself lies bleeding, this time from self-inflected wounds. Liberty is threatened in a more intense way than I can remember from previous times in my life, and that threat comes mostly from within rather than without.]
I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.
When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:
And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.
I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.
All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.
The garden is more advanced in time than gardens where I live, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.
In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.
As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in the Sixties, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on subsequent visits. So what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.
I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.
The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it frequently when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.
NOTE: I was going to add a photo of the Statue of Liberty here. But instead I was very taken with a video about how the statue was constructed. I’d never previously thought about the challenges involved and how they were surmounted, but I learned about them here. And the video also caused me to reflect, not for the first time, on how the forces arrayed against the US right now are good at destroying but not at building. Destroying is so much easier:
“Destroying is so much easier” – Neo
One of our occasional theological speculations (there is not to my knowledge any “doctrine” on it in Christian thought; someone else might know a reference) is that a primary attribute of God (by whatever name) is the ability to hold back entropy in the Universe, or even reverse it, as at the time of the Creation.
The Unmaker, on the other hand (and by whatever name), revels in accelerating any increase in disorder.
I made one visit to NYC in 2004, when the HS orchestra our youngest son played in received one of those “auditioned invitations”. Had a great time! My mother and two sisters went with me and we took in all the “sights” that we had always read about. Mostly we checked off Mom’s bucket list: Central Park, Ellis Island, Metropolitan Museum, and others I no longer recall; and, of course, the WTC craters.
“Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.” – walking past it, even more so.
Never had a moment’s trepidation strolling around by ourselves, even at night.
Giuliani’s reforms were still holding the fort at that time.
We only saw my kid the night he was on stage (rehearsals and school-monitored sightseeing were not something WE were interested in). He says he had a good time too!
Thanks for the memories — these updated retrospectives are a good exercise (as in music or dance) for evaluating history, personal and in general.
The movie “Dog Day Afternoon” opens with a series of random scenes of New York City while the opening credits roll. For just a brief heartrending moment you see the twin towers, then a truck rolls by obscuring them, not to be seen again in the movie. It is so poignant and a bit chilling since the movie was filmed over 25 years before the towers were attacked and destroyed.
That was an interesting video. Thanks for sharing. Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time searching the Internet, trying to learn how the Washington Monument was constructed. A video like this was what I was searching for, but I couldn’t find anything this concise and relevant to the subject of construction. I am fascinated by the nuts and bolts of how big things get done. I would love to see plans and records of how Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great coordinated the movements, feeding, sheltering of their troops.
I recently watched a National Geographic program, “Unlocking the Great Pyramid.” I highly recommend it. A french architect quit his job and devoted 10 years of his life attempting to reason out how the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed. He developed some clever theories that the program examines in detail.
A big difference between the current ‘Progressive’ protestors and the late-1960s protest movement is that much of the movement back then at least *talked* about wanting more freedom. There isn’t much of that in today’s movements; on the contrary, much of the movement is all about a demand for more constraints.
“Liberty is threatened in a more intense way than I can remember from previous times in my life, and that threat comes mostly from within rather than without.”
I’m afraid you are correct. See my 2016 post The Seven Threat Vectors Against Free Speech
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/53650.html
…which unfortunately needs a major update; it doesn’t talk about monopolization and censorship by social media.
I felt a pang of sadness when you wrote about leaving your hometown in the ’60s, never to live there again. It was the same with me and Chicago. For a little over 20 years I was almost a 2 dimensional stereotype of a Chicagoan*. That city was in me and I in it. I never imagined it would not always be so. Yet, like you, I left in my early 20s. I don’t regret the path my life took. In many ways I think I am a better, more rounded person for having lived in other parts of the U.S. and done so much work abroad, but a small part of me feels like a traitor to my hometown.
*In the ’70s there was a radio personality who did short movie reviews as “the regular guy.” Instead of a lot of pretense, and comparison of films to French cinema, etc., he would just talk about whether the movie was any good or not in typical, Chicago vernacular. The performer intentionally spoke in an exaggerated Chicago accent. It’s hard for one to “hear” one’s own accent, but I had many people tell me that I sounded exactly like that performer.
Lovely memories. Thanks for shaking them free, and gloriously updating them.
My future brother in law was a regular on the daytime soap “Love of Life.” He and my sister had a brownstone on Flatbush not far from the Brooklyn Museum. And I had come to visit them, and attend a conference at NYU. It seems like a lost age, now.
And now? My niece from Seattle lives in Brooklyn with her SWJ-immigration lawyer man-friend – really, a grifter, a little Robespierre wanna be. Such a waste.
The unfortunate reality is that I must educate my naive older sister, duped by too much time, neglect, and yes, physical distance into dumb indifference to it all. The duped valedictorian? Yes. Such a sad, sad pity, such a waste of time and monies. But it must be done. Now, more than ever.
Thank you for this luminous reminiscence. Yes, like others say, a good and worthwhile exercise in…archaeology of memory. A mind walk.
We have come a-cropper due to the machinations of the worst ruling class we’ve had in our history, and half the population seems content with that. Absolutely out of ideas.
T,
Within a year of giving her speech at our High School commencement our Valedictorian had dropped out of College, pregnant. C’est la vie.
Menton has some lovely pictures of NYC on his latest post…and a lot of good advice.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-4-theres-so-much-to-be-grateful-for
His commenters are almost as good as Neo’s — *waves home team flag*
David Foster on July 5, 2020 at 7:54 am said: (link)
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/53650.html
* * *
I want to lift a perceptive comment and bring it to the table here.
It is rather depressing, though, reading through David’s post and the comments, to realize that the Watchmen on the Walls have been shouting the same warnings for at least four years (and before that, and before that, and before that).