The Hudson

Today our plans were ruined by Ahmadinejad. Well sort of. Circle Line must have known as we headed up the Hudson past the Statue, Ground Zero toward the UN Building that we’d be turned back by the Coast Guard because of high security. We had decided to take the three hour harbor cruise around the island of Manhattan. I liked that. Getting the Big Picture. Well, Big-ger. Sometimes I’m handicapped by little parts. I like Big Pictures, that’s why when we see a Miramax movie, I always poke Denis and say, I like that when the skyline of Manhattan lights up.

I’ve never been close to the Statue and like a lot of things in real life she’s bigger and more beautiful. As we approached the United Nations we could see that all along the river the East highway had been shut down, and then a smallish boat with a gun mounted on its bow approached to turn us back. I said she didn’t look very threatening could we just go on, but John pointed out she had a lot of friends with bigger guns who could be there in seconds and who were. Capable of. To get in our three hours of paid tour the captain back-tracked and took us the other way up to the north end of Manhattan where, due to the Rockefellers having purchased all the land, you can get an idea of the green hills and palisades that used to exist that Henry Hudson fell in love with centuries ago. We also passed the Little Red Lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge and John told us that his grandmother used to live just up the hill and swam there as a young woman.

John just looked up Ahmadinejad’s speech and if you didn’t have a context for him and his words, you could agree with quite a bit of it.Very weird.