As I type on this Saturday morning, it is 61 degrees and a cool wind is blowing down from the North.  My dear wife, Carrie, has a sweatshirt on.  I am chilly in my shorts and t shirt.

We are in Hancock, Mass. within a place commonly known as The Berkshires.  This is the fifth consecutive summer we have visited this place.  When we like a place, we stick with it.  But there is always something new to be found here.  There are museums and points of interest within an hour drive of here that we keep saying we will make to “someday”.  Personally, I like the weather here.  It is cool and I don’t have as much trouble with my pipes.  I breathe better here.

Earlier in the week we took my sister to a concert at The Tanglewood Shed in Lenox to see Alison Krauss.  The Summer home of the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood is a special place.  Lynn flew up on Sunday to Albany.  She stayed three nights and we had great time.  I know she enjoyed it.

At the show, Lynn found someone in the place she knew from junior high school days.  Amazing.  Facebook came in handy this night.

A couple days ago Carrie and I went to New York City.  Talk about a place with endless stuff to see.  We did not make it to Times Square or Central Park.  We did make it to the 9/11 Memorial and had a guided tour.  We made it to Ellis Island and rode by the Statue of Liberty on the way.  We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge.

We woke up at 4:30 here in Hancock.  We drove to Poughkeepsie, NY and caught a Metro North Train to Grand Central Station at 7:30.  We got to New York at 9:15 for the day.  At 8:30 PM we took the train back to Poughkeepsie and checked into a hotel for the night at 10:30.  It was a long and fulfilling day.  The two other times we have done this, we drove back to Hancock and dodged deer all the way and got back here in the wee hours of the morning.  No more.  Don’t forget, we hit a deer coming back from a concert in Saratoga Spings a few years ago.  Anyway…we had a nice visit to NYC.

Grand Central Terminal is a very loud and busy place.  But the high ceiling makes it almost reverent.

When I was in the 11th grade I wore the same dark blue adidas t shirt every Monday of the school year.  It was my Monday shirt.  Carrie and I have made this trip to NYC three times in the last five years and I have worn the same shirt to NYC each time.  It is my NYC shirt.

The 9/11 Memorial was our first destination of the day in the city.

Words can’t do much here.  I remember teaching the day it happened.  I walked into the room of a colleague and he was watching TV and told me what had happened to the North Tower and we were both dazed.  Watching the TV, we saw the South tower hit by the second plane.

On the place where the towers stood, you can’t imagine how quiet a place in the largest city in America can get.  This is a large area and it is treated with the civility and the dignity and reverence it deserves.  So with that, we know there is still hope in the face of trial in this country.

The front and the back of Ladder 3.  So many folks were save by police and fire rescue workers who gave their lives for others.  It is an amazing story of heroism on a day no manual or class can prepare you for.

We left 9/11 to find…

I could not help but capture this photo and think about some of the difficulties some folks much less fortunate than I  are going through these days.

We stayed on the boat and got off at the next stop like so many did before in late 1800s up until around 1924.  We saw Lady Liberty and we saw a place that represented hope for so many…

Countless immigrants were inspected as they climbed these stairs to be processed in.  Officials looked for folks breathing hard as they climbed steps, limping as they climbed steps, disorientation as they climbed the steps, and it was not an easy process for those coming over to a place they dreamed of and, most of them, found the home they were looking for.

Talk about one step up and two steps back…look at this.

One could look around this place for days.

After leaving Ellis Island, it was back to Manhattan.  We walked up Broadway and took a right.  That led us to something I have always wanted to do…walk over the Brooklyn Bridge.

It was great.  The view of the skyline from the top of the bridge can’t be captured with a photo I can put here.  It is unreal.  One of those experiences that outdoes the expectation.  Carrie was right, she called it a walk with 2000 of our closest friends.  The diversity…the languages…the dress…the walking patterns…the bikes in their lane…the people…all having a good time and all enjoying a day in the sun on the first day of Summer in New York City 2018.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson