Tonight we honor what was lost, but we also commemorate what we found. –Come from Away, April 2017 After watching in horror as the twin towers burned, after doing my best to reassure anxious students when I …
New York City
Growing up in 1960s Edmonton, Alberta, where single family dwellings were plentiful, and back yards were a part of most childhoods, it took a trip to New York City in the mid-1990s to remind me that not every kid had access to lawns, gardens, swingsets, and next-door-neighbor friends. My friend Angela introduced me to the …
The first time I visited my friend Angela at her home in New York City, I asked her what she liked best about living in the city that never sleeps. She didn’t hesitate. “Its acceptance of everyone,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, who you worship, who you love: New …
It’s my pleasure to introduce you to a new Magpie Learner guest blogger, Joshua Singh. I have been Joshua’s academic mentor since January. He enjoys playing hockey and soccer, the 11th Dr. Who and Spiderman. Recently we discovered that we were both heading to New York City this spring. Of course, Joshua saw a very …
Of bonnets and sonnets and Easter parades
It’s hard to remember now when crowded streets brought joy rather than anxiety.
Thanks goodness for photos and blog posts.
Seven years ago, my friend Angela and I headed out on a warm Easter Sunday afternoon to mingle with other Easter bonnet revelers on 5th Avenue, to see and be seen. Here’s my record of that experience, with wishes for the return of the Easter parade and a happy Easter to those of you who observe it.
New York City’s Easter Parade down 5th Avenue is more than a hundred years old. It has evolved from its late 19th century elegance to its current incarnation – a 10-block promenade where the cute and the zany, the heartwarming and the gawdy, the innovative and the traditional compete for the attention of onlookers, photographers, and other participants. It is five hours of smiling, good-natured fun that needs only a few lyrics from Irving Berlin to accompany it and no further commentary from me.
In your Easter bonnet
With all the frills upon it
You’ll be the grandest lady
In the Easter parade
I’ll be all in clover
‘Cause when they look you over
I’ll be the proudest fella
In the Easter parade
On the Avenue
Fifth Avenue
The photographers will snap us
And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure
Oh, I could write a sonnet
About your Easter bonnet
And of the girl I’m taking
To the Easter parade!
I climb onto the Middlebury College van for the third consecutive afternoon, grateful for a few hours in the town of Middlebury itself, away from the pretentious Vermont writing conference I’ve paid too much money to audit. And for the third day in a row, the same blonde woman with the open face and relaxed …
Wise Woman Travel 