Traversing the actual lengths

One of the great pleasures of actually being in the United States, as opposed to studying it from afar, is unbinding the false sense of distances that your imagination has created from dozens or hundreds of movies or books. It's a revelation to learn that it is actually quite a long way from one end of Manhattan to the other or that Pennsylvania is actually quite close to New York. I love to see the lie of the land and feel the topography of battles. For instance, just outside Chinatown is this plaque:

It says that Washington assembled his troops at this spot for their victory march into New York in 1783. Into New York? It's a long way downtown now, and the environs look like this:

Back then, of course, it was on the outside of the 'city'.

Then there is the spread of the city. From the look of this, looking over Long Island Sound, who'd believe it was in The Bronx?

It's actually City Island, which was founded as a fishing village in 1625. In the parks around New York you can tell which languages have overlaid the streets from signs banning smoking in parks. In Inwood, the signs are in English, Spanish and Russian (Cyrillic). Here on City Island they are in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole ('Pa fimen nan pak la'). Just think: Dutch was once most prevalent around here, an interesting fact to remember only a week after 4 July. The sign above the Washington assembly-area plaque is in Hanzi. Would Washington have anticipated Chinese in this area in 1783? And who knows: in about 100 years, it'll probably be some sort of Hispano-English spoken in New York. Australians will feel less at home here then.

I spend some time thinking of the exact difference between here and there. I doubt you'd find a statue of Verdi in Australia and a local (not me) who could explain to Japanese tourists who Verdi was and why his statue's here (at W73rd Street). And you wouldn't see fireflies in the twilit grass around either him or the local.


Here are some other things to tell you you're in New York:

- guys really do hang out of their windows in singlets in the summer,
- people have full-blown fights on cellphones in the street - 'You set me up!'
- rap-dancers and preachers start up their performances in train carriages; they time their presentations to the space between express stops,
- you turn a corner and hear two cops discussing where you bleed out from the most,
- people are astonished when you tell them Sydneysiders complain about the cold when it gets to 60F, and
- people are astonished when you tell them government funds the arts to about 60%

Travelling through Pennsylvania on the weekend (to hear a recital of Ragtime in a Brethren church), I think I worked out why many Americans think the financial crisis is none of the government's business - because all the empy factories they see around their desolate city industry-scapes are private companies - Franklin's Rubber, Osborne's Electric, Johnsons' Ball-bearing and Runner Factory.

As I said, you get some surprising revelations as you travel around the country. And by the way, have you noticed that most people pronounce Pennsylvania as if it's Pencil-vania, not Penn-sylvania?

If you agreed, here is a bonus: a list of New Jersey Native American words:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njmorris/general_info/indian.htm#Glossary

I'm intrigued by the number of places that end in 'pany', as in Whippany. I think it means 'place of'.