a welcome break

I've been feeling a little stressed recently: long hours at work, paired with nights of diss-brainstorming, paired with an inhospitable home had me feeling weary by the end of this week. So after work yesterday, after the students had all left, I took myself a few blocks up the street to the Morgan Library. It's my favorite museum in New York, and I had a splendid time!

First of all, the collection is amazing, both in its quality and its breadth. I wrote an earlier post about an exhibit at the Met that purported to showcase multiple perspectives on life in another culture, not just the elite experience. Well, J.P. Morgan's collection is emphatically not interested in representing the experience of everyday life. His collection is an argument for quality, luxury, and connoisseurship – both in the creation of the art object and its acquisition. There is a place for both approaches; I find the former approach more educational, and in some ways more interesting, while the latter approach affords more aesthetic pleasure.

And this was a man who knew aesthetic pleasure. Look at his library!

SURELY my dissertation would be done in NO TIME, if I could work every day in that space!

I was excited to check out a new exhibit on display, about Churchill's speeches.

At first I thought it was an odd idea: a museum exhibit devoted to words? Wouldn't it be a bit...boring? Of course, it turned out to be kind of brilliant. Not only did I get a sense for the power of words by looking at hand-edited drafts of Churchill's speeches and personal letters, but I also experienced those words aurally (through recordings from the radio) and visually (by seeing their arrangement on the page). Did you know that Churchill thought of his speeches as being in blank verse, not prose? But what I loved most was the implication that the written and spoken word can be as much of an art object as a medieval tapestry or Renaissance drawing. Isn't that inspiring? We all deal with words every day, from normal conversation to quick emails to reports for work. And yet so little of what we do is actually "literary." Of course, none of us will likely ever become the Michelangelo of the lab report, but maybe we should all aspire, at least occasionally, to rise to the level of art in our written and spoken expression.

But my cultural experience at the Morgan wasn't over: they had invited two recent graduates of the Mannes School of Music to perform clarinet/oboe duets in the lobby! It was lovely, and exactly the kind of refreshment I needed.

And this morning, I took the "long way" to work – by way of the High Line Park! If you haven't been there yet, you simply must go as soon as you can. It's a new addition to Manhattan's parks: the old narrow, elevated train line has been transformed into a walkable path, surrounded on each side by native grasses, plants, and shrubs. When you climb up the stairs to access the park, you feel as though you're leaving the dirt and grit and stress of the city behind, freeing you to enjoy its scenery from a new and elevated perspective. Every time I go, I am just astonished that a) someone had a great idea; b) money was found to support the great idea; c) the great idea was not destroyed in the actual implementation of it. Shocking, really.

Last summer, I walked the park nearly every weekend. This year, I've noticed some new and fun art displays along the way:

I restored my strength after the walk with a lunch consisting of the ice cream sandwich OF MY DREAMS, from the Jacques Torres Chocolate shop in the nearby Chelsea Market:

You know what else replenished my spirit? On the subway ride back to the office, I actually spied one of my current students. He had apparently purchased a new air conditioner and was taking it home;  propped open on the box was our giant Greek textbook, which he was poring over and ignoring everything and everyone else. I didn't dare interrupt!