Amazing performance!

I just saw Mark Rylance in "Jerusalem" on Broadway and it was one of the most dynamic performances I have ever seen. How this guy finds the strength to play this powerful, complex and larger than life character once a night is beyond me - but to do it two times a day is just over the top. The play is well written and deals with recent English history - the playwright obviously feels something mythic has been lost.

If you get a chance - go see this play!

Early Spring View from Metropolitan Museum

Child steelwalking at Liberty Science Center "Skyscraper" exhibit

Wouldn't you have loved this as a kid?

Behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum

I recently began volunteering at the museum, which has given me the great privilege of hanging around when the public has not yet been admitted. So I get to see scenes like this - Alexander McQueen dresses being transported to the upcoming costume exhibit. Other advantages of volunteering - admission on closed Mondays with up to four friends and a chance to eat at the Trustees' Dining Room, with its drop dead gorgeous views of the park.

Gaga

Chester, our super, breathlessly reported the other day that he had seen an extraordinary sight in our lobby.

"A car with black windows pulled up, four huge men with funny little things in their ears got out, and a small woman in her underwear hurried into the voice studio."

I reassured him it was only our neighborhood girl who is now known at Lady GaGa coming by for her voice lessons,as she had one for the last ten years.

Rock on!

Coming full cycle

A new bicycle store has opened on West 72nd Street near Riverside Drive. It is most appropriate. During the "Bicycle Craze" of the late 19th century, Riverside Drive was a favorite thoroughfare and folks would pedal down West 72nd Street to get there - the street had a sort of primitive bike lane and was lined with planters and trees. A favorite destination - the Claremont House, a famed inn not far from where Grant's Tomb stands today.

Bicyclists on Riverside Drive in the 1890's. These folks must have felt truly liberated.

Amazing ice sculptures in Harbin, China

Fireworks at the annual ice sculpture festival in this very cold part of China.

For more, check out:
http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/01/harbin-international-ice-festival-2011/