The Little Island Where I Was Born

14 miles long. Two and a half miles wide at most. Manhattan  where all the world comes and where I came into it. Taken during final approach into LaGuardia Airport.

We're going a ways up the Hudson today for something special.

At The Whitney

A pair of elderly women peer out over the Hudson River from the new Whitney Museum in lower Manhattan.

Our plane was late (had to be de-iced at LaGuardia) and it's way past bedtime as I post this back home. More about the visit over the next couple of days.                      

STL DPB On The Road: In The Hudson River Valley

.My sister and her family live in Ridgewoood, New Jersey, in the northeastern corner of the state. It's the same town my family moved to when we left New York City in 1966. Since my father's birthday was July 7, the family always got together here on the Fourth of July weekend to celebrate. He's been gone since 1996 but we still all show up at Sue's.

Mrs. C and I took a road trip yesterday from Ridgewood up the Hudson Valley. One stop was Bear Mountain. We went looking for views over the Hudson River. This'll do. There was a group of American painters in the mid 19th Century who celebrated this area, known, appropriately enough, as the Hudson River School. They didn't have have Photomatix but it may have been for the good.

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME DEPARTMENT: the front page article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch is about our city's disappearing Toynbee Tiles, featuring your humble blogger. Not familiar with Toynbee Tiles? Read the article here and check my posts on the topic here. But if this is the paper's lead article, what does that say about the state of print journalism?

Oh, and happy birthday, America. Here are some shots from Ridgewood's Fourth of July Parade this morning.