Manhattan Island’s newly reopened urban greenway “High Line Park,” perched on an abandoned “el” track stretching back into time, boldly reclaims renewal by rescuing ruins. * * * “It’s a piquino paradise in the sky: I love it!” raves Zoraida Robinson, a hard-working Puerto Rican immigrant with an eye for al fresco retreats. “Here we can get away from the city without leaving the city.” The aerial Eden Zoraida is praising is Manhattan Island’s recently revamped High… Read more

By Janet Hulstrand. I don’t know the technical details of the heightened alert in New York City over the last few days: my following of the news is (sometimes deliberately) spotty at best. But I hear that New York City was “on lockdown” last night. Probably the safest place in the country, 2 cops on every corner… read the post of a Facebook friend, an exaggeration in typical New York City style. I went to the city for a meeting yesterday. The friend who dropped me off at the bus… Read more

May 2010 – While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art during a recent trip to New York, I came across three narrative sculptures created by great French sculptors Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Auguste Rodin, and Antoine Bourdelle. Ugolino and His Sons / Ugolin et ses fils Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) Marble of 1865-1867 based on plaster model of 1860-1861 The story for this sculpture is derived from Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically a story from Inferno in which Dante encounters… Read more