We're in New York City

There won't be any pictures in today's blog, sorry, unless I steal some off the net, because I didn't take any.

We left Albany at 10 a.m. on Amtrak, froze our butts off in seats that were assigned to someone else, for two and a half hours, and arrived in New York with John ready to take a nap and me ready to hit the streets. John got his way and I ended up looking up stuff on the internet, etc., etc.

Since we aren't going to Long Island, we met Laura and Sandy at the Rubin museum at six and spent a couple of hours with them. The Rubin museum is basically a collection of Buddhist, or maybe Tibetan art -- this exhibit was titled Remember that you will die. I almost bought the t-shirt, but I have finally grasped the concept that I seldom wear t-shirts that say things on them, though I buy many of them.

The exhibit was very interesting and we really enjoyed it. I had never seen much of this art so after awhile, I was having a difficult time making distinctions. One very interesting piece was a Tibetan theme but a Chinese 20th century interpretation -- so had a lot of European influence, I would say. It was done in what they called forbidden knots, which we call french knots in embroidery, but where we use it to make places that kind of stand up and separate themselves from the rest of the embroidery, they make essentially a carpet of these knots, and they do it with a very fine silk thread so that this "carpet" is about a millimeter thick. If you're interested, the website is www.rmanyc.org. They seem to have set up their website so you can't download any pictures.

There was a movie at 9:30 but we had finished looking at all the exhibits at 8:30 and John was looking a bit exhausted. He wanted to go home, so we left. On the way home, once he'd been sitting down on the subway for awhile, I convinced him that we could stop in and see perhaps the end of the Empire Viols concert with Martha McGoehy and Arthur Haas, IF when we got off the subway there was a crosstown bus right there. There was, so he reluctantly allowed me to drag him along. We only heard the last two pieces on the concert, but we got to go to the reception and chat with Arthur and Martha, so I was a relatively happy camper.

Everybody else has gone to bed, of course, and I'm still up, so I guess I'll tie this up. I did make a hair appointment today and am getting a haircut, which I hardly need, on Tuesday. I may play with Martha's recorder consort on Monday afternoon for their performance if one of the players doesn't show up.