Top of the Rock

Danny and Joe at the Russian Tea Room just before going to Carnagie Hall to hear Jessye Norman.
This is our last morning in New York, and one of the things I wanted to do was go to the Top of the Rock, so here we are. This is the observation deck of Rockerfellar Center -- 70 floors up from the ground. You can see just a smidge of Central Park at the right of this picture. We could see the whole park (which is really huge) from up there as well as all the rest of Manhattan.



Here's Joe from the other side of the building. The building with the angled top is the CitiCorp Center. Wouldn't want to be on the top of that!
Here's the altar area of some cathedral -- I don't remember which one.




The New York Botanical Gardens. These are just a few of the tulips in bloom.

A view of the conservatory at the NYBG. It's one of the largest in the country -- this is just a glimpse.

New York City in May

New York has been exhausting and cold, but fun so far. "Wicked" on Wednesday night was just an incredible spectacle of sets, songs, and great voices. The story doesn't really follow the book very closely, but that's OK since the book was pretty weird anyway.

This is printed just above the exit doors.

This is Trudy Sherwood, one of the members of our troup, standing inside the rim of a 9' Steinway inside the drying room. It was about 95 degrees in there, and the rims stay there for about 6 months.

This is an illegal picture from inside the factory. We weren't supposed to take any photos in the factory except in specific places (like inside the drying room above), but I did it surreptiously as we walked around. These are lids for 7' Steinways.

Last night was Jessye Norman and Mark Markum at Carnegie Hall.

The tulips are in full bloom in Central Park. Also, cherry trees, dogwoods, pears, and others that I can't identify. Even this great picture that Joe took doesn't show how big the beds are and how many different colors there were.

More later.

Going to Nassau

Well, it's really happening. I'm going to Nassau in just over two weeks, and I'll be there for two weeks.

For those of you who don't already know, I've been engaged to rebuild a Steinway piano for the Bahamas National Children's Chorus to use in their programs.

More later.

Blackberry winter

This is just to prove that it's blackberry Winter around here. This bush is just off of our back deck.

Here are some of the actual blackberries. There aren't enough to even try to eat, but you can see that one of them is ready. I ate twoof them when taking the pictures. Very wild and seedy, but still real blackberries.

We need to get out in the yard today to do some work, and part of it may be pulling up this bush. I'll probably save it, though, until the berries all ripen.

More New York City

Here are some more shots from New York City.

I wasn't sure just what this was supposed to be, but it was certainly interesting. A sort of traveling sculpture of men in the 30's building Rockafeller Center.

The famous Citicorp Building. I didn't manage to get a picture of the top of it, but this is the one with the huge slanted roof that you may have seen before. It's about 60 stories high, and right after they built it, snow would collect on the slanted part and then come sliding off it to crash 60 stories below. I wouldn't want to have been there when it happened!

Here's a link to a good picture of it.
http://www.pjhealy.com/oldweb/nyc/citicorp.htm

One of the many cathedrals in the city. I can't remember which one this is.

A shot from the show "Wicked" about the Wicked Witch of the West. It was quite a spectacle.

I had to go into the F A O Swartz toy store since I sort of stumbled upon it. This is a giant keyboard that kids love to jump around on. The keys light up and produce a tone, so you can actually play a scale.

I guess one of the things that F A O Swartz is known for is stuffed animals.
And more stuffed animals. They had just about every kind of dog in big bins like this, and some cats, too.

Don't you just want to crawl in there with them?

And some really big animals, too. notice the giraffe. This lion and his mate are full size.
The main reason I took this picture was to try to get a shot of the full sized mastodon in the background. It's the brown hump behind the cow and horse. It goes all the way to the floor -- about 14 feet.

A strange sort of bicycle.
One of the buildings I went into down near Wall Street. This is the US Customs House. It's just a museum now, but this muraled ceiling was one of the most fastinating things there and it is beautifully painted.
A gravestone from Trinity Church on Wall Street where the bells are. The earliest one I could find was 1731. I think this one is 1774 or so.

A shot from another show. This is "A Prairie Home Companion". I had a great seat in the balcony. This is Garrison Keillor doing his Lake Woebegone monologue.
The inside of Trinity Church. (Sorry these are sort of out of order. It's hard to keep them straight.)
Another picture from the bell room. You can see the huge clock hand outside the window, and the street in front is Wall Street.

This is from the back side of Trinity Church. They have a pedestrian bridge that connects the church to this building, and the church parish hall and offices are in here. I think the church probably owns the building and leases the space to businesses. They do a lot of that, and they're said to have a billion dollars in the bank.

That's all for now.

New york City

OK. Here's something different.

This is the way I posted photos on my trip to Europe a year ago and everyone interested seemed to be able to get it.

This is Herald Square and one entrance to Macy's. Did you know that he was the one who started pricing things just a few cents under a dollar? ($15.99 instead of $16)

Times Square -- one of the busiest places in the world.

Snow under the overhead train.

A few of the bell ringers at Trinity Church on Wall St. This set of 12 tower bells is the largest in the country, and its $1,000,000,000 cost was given by a single donor.

Notice the window behind them...

This is it from the outside. The bell room is behind the clock face. The actual bells are in the next story up behind the two tall windows.

After they finished ringing I enticed the "bell Captain" to take me up into the actual bells. This is one of them. You can see part of the wheel that's attached to the bell on the right side of the picture. The ropes that they pull go around the wheel, and the whole bell rotates to be rung in a very specific pattern with the other bells.

These are just a few of the steps you have to climb to get up to the ringing room.

This cruel, very steep flight is the last thing before getting to the ringing room. By the time you get there you're really breathing HARD to try to catch some air.

This is one room in Steinway Hall where they sell Steinway pianos. The pictures (which covered EVERY WALL) are all of famous pianists who play Steinway pianos.

A bronze cast of Arthur Rubenstein's hands from a display case in Steinway Hall. Actually kind of creepy.

The Empire State Building.

From the Broadway Show "Curtains" that I saw on Thursday night. I was in the front row. Those of you who've ever watched "Frazier" will rocognize Niles.

Pictures within the Steinway factory itself would have been the most interesting, but they're not allowed.

While there, other than being in class all day, I went to see:

A Prairie Home Companion

Spamalot

Wicked

Curtains

Beauty and the Beast

and did a LOT of walking and subway riding. I didn't make it to the top of any tall buildings which I love to do, but I certainly saw a lot of them. I have pictures of them, but they just don't show up well enough to be worth publishing here.

Here's my parting shot from the airplane as I was leaving NYC. Probably doesn't mean much unless you've been there or looked at it on a map. After I took this I realized that I was still in the time on the flight where electronic devices are not allowed. Nobody fussed at me and we didn't crash!

I didn't get to do several things that were on my list, so I guess I'll have to go back.

I'm home

My flight landed this evening at about 5:45, so I'm home now, have had a great hot shower -- the first good one in 2 weeks -- have petted and loved on my great dog, and am going to bed. My watch is still on Paris time, and right now it's reading 4:30 am, which is exactly what time I got up this morning. I had a few naps on the plane,, but you know those aren't very satisfying.

Last Paris day

This is the plaque beside the front door of the American Church which tells us that it was the first American Church founded on foreign soil. I bought a DVD about the church and its history that was just released yesterday while I was there, but I haven't had a chance to see it yet. I read somewhere that the church was actually meeting during Napoleon's time and he allowed the congregants space in one of the palaces. The church building was erected around 1837.

I was very warmly received there, and everyone seemed to really enjoy my playing as part of the service. After the service and a nice lunch in the neighborhood, I gave a class to about 10 people on handbell techniques. It was intimidating having Fred Gramman and Bonnie Wooley in the class since they both have been involved in bells far longer than I have, but I was able to show them a few tricks that soloists use that they weren't sure about. It also never hurts to review and compare techniques. Anyway, I felt like the class was successful, and we had a lot of fun together, and I was honored to have been asked to do it. Thank you Bonnie and Fred for being such gracious hosts and for the opportunity to work with each of you.




After the class, Bonnie and her friend Corrine drove me around Paris for a while to see stuff. They said this was some kind of old government building and dead people are buried in there. That was good enough for me.









This is in the Louvre again. We didn't go back -- I just found this picture. I was fascinated by these massive paintings and couldn't help but wonder how long it took to produce them, how much paint did it take, what do they weigh, how would you hang a thing like that, and other questions. If you laid these things down it's larger than any two rooms in our house. There were two more of them on the other side of the room, and the little sign in French called them "large format" paintings. Well I guess so!

Still Sunday morning

I stood in the middle of the Champs Elysees to take this. It's early Sunday morning so not much traffic just now. Recognize the landmark ahead? We saw it briefly one night earlier this week, but it was blowing heavy rain and freezing cold so we didn't spend much time there or get to go up on top which is supposed to be a sight to behold. Bonnie was nice enough to take me on a short sightseeing tour this afternoon, and one of the main things I wanted to do was to take an auto tour around the Arch d Triomphe but I didn't even suggest it because we were all so tired from the late concert last night and early morning today. Next time.


This is the American Church in Paris where I played this morning. It's beautiful, it's old, it's the first American organization established outside American soil, and it was GREAT to be there. I played three pieces and I was so very honored that Fred Gramman played the piano for me. Those of you in the music world probably know what an honor that was.
Not a word of French was spoken during the service, and I knew every part of the service as if it had been one in Pensacola. I was so very relieved that I could speak to anyone there in my native tongue. If you look closely in the very bottom right hand corner you can see the top of the Eiffel Tower.

I had a short amout of time to walk around before it was time for me to show up at the church, so I walked down to the Eiffel Tower since it was just a few blocks away. What an incredible thing!