Expat in New York

Two days ago, I sa the black and white film "Native New Yorker," a documentary shown at Expresion en Corto, the Short Film Festival held in my adopted home town of Guanajuato, Mexico. This rhythmic film showing a Native American walking New York City had a quiet, quirky take on a city I came to love. About 20 minutes long and hope you'll have a chance to see it sometime. It was part of the Best from Tribeca series.

Labels: 9/11, film, Manhattan, Native New Yorker, New York City

Today, a sunny, sparkling day, I went to the southern tip of the island and yes it's just the place to see the end of the island and  in the distance across the water, The Statue of Liberty. I had two destinations, the Museum of the American Indian to see the exhibit that was closed the first time I went and then on to a photography store not far away to buy a digital camera.

After fueling up with a good Chinese buffet meal, I went into the former U.S. Customs House that now houses the museum. Seeing the beautiful polished wood stairway railing (restored) spiral up six or seven storeys made the trip worthwhile even though the particular exhibit was closed again, this time "for renovation" in advance of anticipated crowds during the upcoming holiday week. But there was an exhibit of Inuit sculpture that fascinated me for showing an almost vanished way of life now that the Inuit have congregated in towns but most of all for the beautiful objects themselves. There was a walrus head made of bone; the artist having seen that the pores in the bone reproduced the texture of the animal's fur. There was a smaller sculpture of four women, one of them assisting another giving birth. But by just giving these examples, I am only barely conveying the artistic sensibility, craftsmanship, and dedication to conveying their culture of the many sculptors whose work (mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, but some more recent) was on display.

By the way, the Museum defines "Indians" as the indigenous people of North America (including Mexico) and the Caribbean, not just of the USA. Hurrah!

I'm finally being treated for my sore shoulder. The therapist is more willing to explain what's happening than in Guanajuato, probably not only because we speak the same language and is more individualized. However the cost, even with Medicare, is $30 compared with $3.50 at DIF.

I've had various communication problems so have had to depend on the 45 minutes daily of computer time at the library nearly around the corner. Then during the cold weather about 10 days ago the heating system failed there so now I have to go to a branch about a mile away. Once there, I usually have all too many tasks besides the blog.

What about the computer I ordered? UPS made my life difficult for a week. Now I do finally have the new  laptop but the wireless connection isn't working.

I just had what I think of as a "New American style" lunch, meaning the core was roast chicken, sweet potatoes, green beans and cole slaw but surrounded by a stuffed vine leaf and mixed peppers. All this and a cup of decaf hazelnut coffee for $6.47 at a buffet restaurant whose exact name and location I'll reveal on my next post. Mostly I've been eating Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish (Oh, the crema catalan) but finally got hungry for the old familiar food, especially the sweet potatoes.

The artist Theresa Ramey who lived in Guanajuato for three years until the end of 2003 is in the Bronx visiting her middle son. Today we met to eat Chinese soup laced with shrimp, beef and pork, then went down to Chelsea where we gallery hopped galleries with contemporary work, Theresa filling in just the right amount of explanation, and finally topped the day off by sharing a vegetarian platter of garbanzos, rice, veggies, salad and rotis (warm flatbread) from an Indian takeout near Jon's apartment.

Theresa's heart problems seem under control and she is doing new work, smaller than the canvasses she used to lug around from place to place, made of lots of little short strokes. It was wonderful for me to connect with an old friend in the City of Cities. As Theresa, had already told me about the free Fridays evenings at the Museum of Modern Art, by now I've been to MOMA twice.

Labels: buffets, ethnic restaurants, New York City

As I'm in the market for a new notebook computer and my first digital camera, I have been using my son, daughter-in-law, and one of their friends as consultants. I had already learned the hard way that offers at the Dell site come and go, including one that was perfect for me. The trio answered a lot of questions about technology, then after I investigated in more detail on the internet I went with Jon and Jay to Best Buys to look at the items in question.

I have struggled with adding accents when I type a Spanish name but at Best Buy I found out--after a persistent search for someone who could answer my question with something other than "you need to change the whole physical keyboard (WRONG)-- that accenting a word is now much easier in Windows XP than it was in Windows Millenium.

I'm excited about getting a digital camera so I can liven up my Chopper articles and my blogs, also keep in better touch with my family. Glad to be buying it in New York.

Thanks to my sister-in-law, I had a ticket for this concert, just what Guanajuato life has adapted me for. For the first half of the concert, I was near the back but was able to move up after intermission to the second row left. I heard some of the finest wind and string players around performing Debussy's last three sonatas and three contemporary sonatas written to complete the set he had in mind. Alice Tully Hall is about 60% of the size of our State Auditorium but sloped and shaped so it is perfect for listening to small ensembles.

New York is full of people who speak our English but are just as at home in Spanish. I keep meeting them. In the elevator of the building where I'm staying, the other person, a young man, looked as if he could have been Mexican. I asked if he spoke was bilingual. He answered in English, then on the way out volunteered, "I'm from Puerto Rico."

In line at a used book sale at one of the branch libraries, I heard Spanish used intermittently with English behind me. After five minutes I turned around and said something in Spanish. Got in a conversation with the couple in English. Turned out she has been in NYC for 22 years, her partner (Iranian) for "much longer." We talked about Mexico for a long time (the line was slow in moving). The man especially was very uptodate. I enjoyed being able to talk with people who knew something about the country! When we got onto the topic of migration, the man said the reason for the loss of jobs in the Midwest is not Mexicans but the competition from China. I brought up the number of imprisoned or dead journalists in Mexico. He said, Mexico isn't the worst in Latin America. I asked who was. He said Cuba.

The superintendent of the apartment building where I live speaks Spanish with his family but idiomatic unaccented English with the workmen he knows.

Yesterday I came back on the train from Princeton, was sitting across from a darkskinned young man who turned out to have come from Peru when he was twelve, the adopted son of missionary parents. He goes back every four or five years. When I said I'd heard Peruvians speak the purest Spanish in the Western hemisphere, he looked surprised, said he'd never met "anyone else" who knew that. His English was perfect, his courtesy Latin American in style.

I'm deciding New York is an island of polylingualism in our mostly monolingual country. I hear many people speaking languages I don't understand as I walk down the street.

Labels: bilingualism, New York City, NYC street talk, polylingualism, Spanish

I woke up this morning to a horrendous clanking in the hall. Mindless movers? I wasn't wearing anything but hastily put on a jacket, was moving to the door when three firemen burst in. What the ???? That clanking had been them hammering in my door. I could not have been less appreciative but later realized that if I had passed out from smoke would have been glad of the intrusion. Don't know yet where the fire originated,the apt just below or in the ground floor upscale restaurant open evenings.

Called my son to report what had happened and find out whether to call the building management to fix the lock as I had plans to be out of town for the weekend. As I am a "guest" in his rent-controlled apartment, he called the office himself. Very prompt action, just 21/2 hrs later, the locksmith has been and put in a new temporary lock higher on the door. In a few minutes, I'll be at Penn Station to catch the train.