Times ten (en route to New York)

I had set up a number of expectations with this blog. I recently undertook to learn something of the Native American languages relevant to each of the places we visited along the way. I had also thought to call this blog Walking with Americans. Well firstly, "Kuwiingu-neewul. Tha ktulamalsi kway kiishkwihk?" which in the Munsee Delaware that was once widely spoken in southern New York (and is obviously still known), translates, I understand, to: I'm glad to see you. How are you today?

We're now in New York. Now, parts of Arizona and New Mexico (and California) may remind me of Oz, but it never gets this green in Australia, no matter how far east we go.

Gun-metal greys, sheep-fleece yellows and admittedly penetrating blues; but that's the green extent of the character-forming spectrum in Oz.

As for 'walking with Americans', we sat with quite a cross-section during the three days and nights on the train from Los Angeles. We met a former naval captain who told us about his grandfather who served as a fighter pilot in China in the 30s, resisting the Japanese before anyone knew the US would enter the Second World War, and about an aunt who had gone over to China to serve; met a woman from Santa Fe who worked as a set dresser on films. I must have drunk too much coffee because I realised at one point that I was almost interviewing her: "Do you cringe when you see something on the shelves behind a character that couldn't have existed at the time of the film?"; "Do you ever work with the actors on the sorts of furnishings their character would have chosen for themselves?"; "Do you ever have situations where the actor, improvising, picks up a piece of crockery or furnishing that was meant to be left untouched, and it suddenly becomes the domain of the prop-master?". (She told us, for example, that she might have to point out to a director or production supervisor that you cannot have particular bottles on the shelves because "the train didn't get that far in 1885"  and the bottles had only just been patented.) On the leg from Chicago we met a Washington lawyer who had known Barack Obama at Law School, said he was very smart, and not only that: a good basketballer! This guy was interested when I told him about Governor-General Kerr (the Queen's delegate appointed on the recommendation of the prime minister) sacking the prime minister (Gough Whitlam) and his government in 1975 and exercising powers in our country that the Queen herself  no longer possesses either in Australia or the UK. He asked us what the latest issues were in Australia, and we couldn't tell him. I mean, we're glad we remembered to vote in the NSW state elections.

It was interesting, though, explaining to him why we'd come to the US at this time. Some Americans are bemused: the economy is so 'bad'. But, as I explained to him, the scope is still so much larger than in Australia; we have 30 million people in a space the size of the lower 48, they have 300 million. I mean, the kerbs at crosswalks are shod in iron, presumably to protect against the eroding effects of millions of feet. Even an America tightening its belt is a bigger pool than Oz.

Yesterday we went into town (Manhattan). For starters, I love even the least noticeable public art (this, from the subway):

But I was floored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A single masterpiece is one thing, but whole walls and rooms of them! And to be honest, I was stopped in my tracks before I'd entered a single gallery when I saw the names of the original benefactors: Joseph Pulitzer, Pierpont-Morgan, Juilliard, John Jacob Astor...the level of activity and contribution is continental in scope.