New Year's Stories

On New Year’s Eve I played a “Concert for Peace” at the massive Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Katie came along to listen and afterward we went to visit with our newly married friends Rachel and Sean. Rachel’s dad had rented a brownstone in Harlem for their family and a circle of their friends, one of whom was a piano teacher. We were roped into playing a horn and piano rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” after we watched the ball drop on TV.

Coincidentally, we visited Sean and Rachel at their Washington, DC home just a day later on Jan. 2 and enjoyed their wonderful hospitality for 3 more days. Since they had to work, we were on our own to see the sights during the day. Katie had never been to DC and I hadn’t been since I was about 15, so it was a journey of discovery, education, and wonderment…and really, really sore feet by the third day. It was a lot like the Disney World trip of a few years ago, which we dubbed a “Bootcamp for Fun” except this was a “Bootcamp for Education.” To get to DC, we took the “Chinatown Bus” (a very cheap roundtrip ticket) that goes, not surprisingly, from Chinatown NY to Chinatown DC. This was no luxury liner, but it wasn’t too bad, except for some confusion about where the pick-up spot in NYC was. We had actually anticipated a much more harrowing experience and considered ourselves lucky after only being screamed at in Chinese a few times. After NYC and our Europe trip last year, Katie and I are becoming transportation gurus, or “professional tourists” as Bird says. We became fairly adept at taking the Metro (subway) and some of the buses around DC.

We saw the Declaration of Independence (really faded now, sadly, almost to the point of invisibility. The ink, not the actual document. It would be very confusing to look into a glass case and see nothing, like abstract art but with a democratic tinge.) the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (in better shape) at the National Archives. We went to about a million Smithsonian museums, and the National Gallery of Art. Of course we also went up the Washington Monument, gazed lovingly upon the statues of Lincoln and Jefferson in their respective memorials, reflected on the sacrifices of many Americans at the Vietnam and WWII memorials, and took a tour of the Capitol. We also took a tour of the Library of Congress which was one of the most amazingly beautiful American buildings we have ever seen. In the evenings we spent some time with Rachel and Sean for dinner, which was a lot of fun and mostly uneventful, save for one unfortunate guacamole incident which lead to another Chinese tongue-lashing by our waitress. We also visited one night with our other friends from college, Clare and Ross (and their new baby Jackson). Right before leaving we had coffee with my friend Steve, a conductor in the DC area and fellow Mannes College of Music alum.

It was a whirlwind trip and we had to get back to NYC because we were both back at work by Saturday. Katie starts school again tomorrow, so I won’t see her for another 3 months. Boo. Even though I am back to work at Mannes, I don’t start at Hunter or Hofstra again till the end of the month, so at least I get a little time to work on my dissertation (I hope!). If you have the time, take a look at some of our pictures (click here)! And given our prior record, I guess you’ll have to wait about another month until the next blog update!