Broadway is so Ozmopolitan

June 7, 2007

Where do you begin to talk about a trip to New York City? There's the visit to Ground Zero and St. Paul's Church (sad), Ellis Island where I found my grandparents' names on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, shopping in the secret channels of Chinatown, The TODAY Show and talking to Ann Curry after giving her Mardi Gras beads, seeing Wicked and Chicago, eating at the oldest pizza restaurant, outdoors, etc., walking, subways, taxis, mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral (you can listen on satellite now), oddities like a rice pudding restaurant and the great M & M store.

On the bus tour, I learned that Soho stands for South Of HOuston, not pronounced like Houston, and that one of the hospitals was the first to use hypodermic needles, start an ambulance and have a maternity ward--never thought about that before.

The new touristy thing is to have your photo made with a hot FDNY guy. It felt pretty safe although we had the scare about the JFK Airport fuel lines being tampered with in the news. SWAT teams were out one night at a hotel and I saw random checks of trunks in parking garages.

One day was spent attending the BookExpo America (the publishing industry's annual national convention), where I shipped home 43 free books, the majority autographed. Favorite moment: one of the authors, Doug Crandell, who said, "You were on my plane yesterday." I couldn't believe he remembered me and I thought it was a line. In fact, he was on the Atlanta plane because he described exactly where I sat and how "cute" I was. :) He is my new favorite author. In line behind me while shipping the books home was a guy who grew up in Bossier City. Small world. And while walking in Times Square, who do I see right beside me, but Kathy Patrick of the Pulpwood Queens/Jefferson, Texas, who I had just met at the Municipal Auditorium. We spoke briefly.

Back to Ellis Island, if they could figure out how to manage immigration in 1910, why can't they reform it now? Politicians tried to help them to get their vote and children in school were used as "go-betweens" to learn the language. If they didn't settle in Little Italy or Chinatown, they traveled by train. Most were farmers in 1910. Some idiot from Boston sitting next to me on the plane back said he heard that Shreveport was "all farmers" and the armpit of the South. Boy, did I set him straight.

P.S. Learned a new word: transverses in Central Park.