A busy day
Mar. 9th, 2025 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fbhjrThere is a museum in New York City my wife made based on the library JP Morgan created more than a century ago. While i’m not a fan of his, I do like the stuff he collected, so sometimes we go down there.
They do have special exhibitions that we like and often go to them.
https://www.themorgan.org/
It’s about a 3 hour drive, possibly longer as driving into New York City often has delays. This time it said the shortest route was down through Queens and through the tunnel. My wife kept taking photos of me, but I kept saying "New York is over there…"
We went by the flying saucers from the first Men in Black movie.
Then, into Manhattan where there was an issue in the tunnel as is so often the case.
Morning on Saturdays you can often park on the street, which is MUCH cheaper than the garages.
We walked the block to the museum and got there about 15 minutes before it opened.
Standing in front of the museum you can see part of the Empire State Building. I’ll grant you, not much.
We were first in line, and by the 10:30 opening time the line was probably 30 or more people long.
We went right to the special exhibit we had gone to see, one on manuscripts on exploring the world from a few centuries ago:
https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/book-of-marvels
It was in a fairly small room off to the side of the main library. As we were the first folks in the door, we went right there and my wife and I were the only ones in there for at least 10 whole minutes. Trust me, in a New York City museum this is outstanding.
Of course I particularly liked the one featuring a Phoenix…
But, I’ve always loved maps and books. So, something combining them was very nice.
They had another special exhibit about manuscripts where the colorful bits had been cut out, mounted on their own and sold off individually. It says the Morgans didn’t like to buy them this way, but some were too good to pass up.
And, they are quite nice, even if single pages or just bits.
While not a special exhibition, the museum does have a large collection of ancient roller seals. Not sure why, but I’ve always been a big fan of these. Some 5000 years old and still usable. I like all kinds of seals, but these are my favorite and they have a lot of them.
They got some old cruciform inscriptions I’m fond of too in the same room.
I did go through the main part and look at some old favorites, but didn’t linger there as it was crowded and some folks were wearing perfumes or colognes to which I was very allergic.
Having seen what we wanted and still having some time left on our 2 hour parking limit, we went to the gift shop and bought a lot, before heading back out of the city just after noon.
We went a bit farther north than the straight line home and had lunch at a place we like in Danbury Connecticut and still got home before 4PM.
It’s a lot of driving for a short time in the city, but it is how we normally do it.
Even when I was a kid, for my 5th birthday my father brought me to NYC and we took a train down in the morning and a plane back to Boston in the evening for a short trip to the city.
And, that was more than half a century ago…
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Date: 2025-03-09 04:50 pm (UTC)There are vendors on Etsy who make reproductions. One of these days I'm going to end up buying one.
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Date: 2025-03-10 02:03 am (UTC)