Oh, ratz you say! Well, it has been quite a week. The last time I went on a vacation Schwarzenegger got elected governor of California and then this week while in NYC, the Darth Vader of the College of Cardinals gets elected Pope. I should stop going on vacation. Ha!
Anyway, I had a delightful time during my short three day visit taking in two performances at the Met (Die Walkuere and Faust) plus an interesting concert at Carnegie Hall entitled Shakespeare and Verdi. The Collegiate Choral, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and various soloists and actors and actresses presented scenes from Shakespeare's plays (Othello, Macbeth and Merry Wives of Windsor) while the musical portion presented the Verdi operatic rendition of the same scenes for Otello, Macbeth and Falstaff immediately following the straight dramatic snippts for each play. It was an unusual concept for a concert and was very entertaining.
Walked all over Manhattan but now I feel more like I have walked to the moon and back and this despite regular workouts at the gym. Anyway, this was certainly not my first visit to that city so I have seen just about everything of interest to me. The one thing new this time was a tour of the CNN studios in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle. I had been in CNN in Atlanta a number of years ago and wanted to compare and see what was new. The biggest difference and I still don't have an answer as to why, is the change from the "blue screen" to the "green screen" in the news rooms. Those colors must be used as those colors are not found in human pigment but our tour guide was unable to answer my question to why the change from blue to green. My own guess is that people like to wear blue shirts or suits so with the blue screen they could not do that and green, being less popular as a clothing color, was easier to work with. Hmm...maybe I should be the tour guide for that portion of the tour. Ha!
As I said, I did a lot of walking and rode the subways to get to distant end points in Queens, Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Traffic, as usual, is a mess. This is mostly the result of there being far too many cars in such a small space. Also, too many motorists cross the intersection with no hope of getting past the cross walk on the opposite side so as a result, when the light changes, they are still in the middle of the intersection, thus blocking traffic from the other direction. Even pedestrians crossing against the light are a significant cause for traffic delays. That city should not work but it does, if barely. Given the extensive rail network there is no real need to own a car anyway but I guess some people are married to their autos.
Now I have a ton of mail (regular and e) to sort through to get things back on a normal footing and back into my regular routine of eating, sleeping, shopping and going to the gym. Also, have my photos to download and sort through, some of which will appear over at my irving2004.net website within the coming week.
Anyway, I had a delightful time during my short three day visit taking in two performances at the Met (Die Walkuere and Faust) plus an interesting concert at Carnegie Hall entitled Shakespeare and Verdi. The Collegiate Choral, the Orchestra of St. Luke's and various soloists and actors and actresses presented scenes from Shakespeare's plays (Othello, Macbeth and Merry Wives of Windsor) while the musical portion presented the Verdi operatic rendition of the same scenes for Otello, Macbeth and Falstaff immediately following the straight dramatic snippts for each play. It was an unusual concept for a concert and was very entertaining.
Walked all over Manhattan but now I feel more like I have walked to the moon and back and this despite regular workouts at the gym. Anyway, this was certainly not my first visit to that city so I have seen just about everything of interest to me. The one thing new this time was a tour of the CNN studios in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle. I had been in CNN in Atlanta a number of years ago and wanted to compare and see what was new. The biggest difference and I still don't have an answer as to why, is the change from the "blue screen" to the "green screen" in the news rooms. Those colors must be used as those colors are not found in human pigment but our tour guide was unable to answer my question to why the change from blue to green. My own guess is that people like to wear blue shirts or suits so with the blue screen they could not do that and green, being less popular as a clothing color, was easier to work with. Hmm...maybe I should be the tour guide for that portion of the tour. Ha!
As I said, I did a lot of walking and rode the subways to get to distant end points in Queens, Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Traffic, as usual, is a mess. This is mostly the result of there being far too many cars in such a small space. Also, too many motorists cross the intersection with no hope of getting past the cross walk on the opposite side so as a result, when the light changes, they are still in the middle of the intersection, thus blocking traffic from the other direction. Even pedestrians crossing against the light are a significant cause for traffic delays. That city should not work but it does, if barely. Given the extensive rail network there is no real need to own a car anyway but I guess some people are married to their autos.
Now I have a ton of mail (regular and e) to sort through to get things back on a normal footing and back into my regular routine of eating, sleeping, shopping and going to the gym. Also, have my photos to download and sort through, some of which will appear over at my irving2004.net website within the coming week.
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