Obama’s inauguration was broadcast on screens large and small throughout the five boroughs.  In the Financial District, productivity plummeted (and Internet connections slowed) around 11:30AM as workers put aside their work to watch the event on their computers or office television sets.  I made my way to the Jumbotron screen set up outside the New York Stock Exchange where the crowds were quickly building, arriving just in time to hear a sparkly bow-topped Aretha Franklin belt out “My Country, Tis of Thee” before Joe Biden’s swearing in by Justice John Paul Stevens.

Several hundred people filled Broad Street despite the freezing temperatures — though no comparison to the crowds that were shown at the Mall in DC. Crowd estimates there varied wildly from 1.5 million to 4 million — though most of the time, the figures are almost entirely made up anyway; the Associated Press stayed conservative with their report of “more than 1M“.  I believe it.

The musical selection lead-in was by John Williams with snippets of familiar melody lifted from the traditional Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” which Aaron Copland also famously borrowed for his “Appalachian Spring“. The tune broadcasts Inspiration, capital I, especially when rendered by Itzhak Perlman and Obama’s favorite cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  Even if the music was pre-recorded.

And then, the moment we were all there to witness: Barack Hussein Obama taking the Oath of Office:

The assembled crowd cheered riotously, among them several dozen schoolchildren in homemade Obama headgear, who had gathered with us on the steps of Federal Hall.

Our new president delivered a measured, somber speech on this jubilant day, one which garnered generally favorable reviews.  I did appreciate the nod to American songwriter Jerome Kern (at 1:03) — and yes, friends, this song was written in 1936, but it’s a standard, and it was performed by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, so therefore not so strange that I recognized the reference… geez!

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

Check out the full NYSE Inauguration simulcast Flickr set here.

We decided to pack in early after a head-scratching encounter with one local woman and her chicken coop, during which we received some serious misinformation about the normal egg laying schedule of hens. (6 eggs a day? We may be city folk, but we’re not that gullible.)

The eastern shore of Cayuga Lake hosts just two active wineries compared to over a dozen along the western edge. Although we were given (more) dubious information about how the Cayuga County-side farmers historically have been less willing to sell their land for use as vineyards, a more probable explanation for the discrepancy is the west-to-east moving jet stream which creates a warmer (and somewhat less vine-friendly) eastern lake coast.

We stopped in for a tasting at 72-acre Long Point Winery in Aurora — the second winery to open its doors on the eastern side of Cayuga Lake, in May 2000. (King Ferry Winery was the pioneer, in 1984.)

After picking up several bottles of the whites for which the Finger Lakes region is best known, we moved on, bidding adieu to Route 90. Continuing on the scenic route home, at Ithaca’s Six Mile Creek Vineyard, we sampled and bought more award winning Riesling. That afternoon, the tasting room overlooking the sloping vine-covered hills was also hosting half a dozen greyhounds and their owners, who were at the winery for the Grapehound Wine Tour — an annual Finger Lakes hound/wine tasting event, now in its third year.

From the wine trail to the ice cream trail…

Some places are worth a stop, just because you like the looks of them. Richford’s Dairy Treat caught our eye as we made the turn onto Route 79, with its hulking black smoker parked in the front lot, and huge signs advertising BBQ chicken and 24 flavors of soft serve ice cream — mixed to order.

My creamy espresso cone did not disappoint.

To kick off the summer’s River to River Festival, soprano Leah Partridge and tenor Norman Reinhardt performed an evening of operatic arias and duets in Battery Park City’s South Cove.

On my way to the outdoor music recital, I walked by the Irish Hunger Memorial — a striking 1/4 acre plot of land nestled anachronistically among the lower Manhattan skyscrapers, jutting out from the sidewalk at Vesey Street and North End Avenue. The memorial was designed collaboratively by artist Brian Tolle, in association with 1100 Architect and landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird. (Factsheet .pdf) Theirs was the winning entry in a 2000 design competition for the site, which was donated by the Battery Park City Authority.

The sloping field looks out over the Hudson from a twenty-five foot pedestal of fossilized Kilkenny limestone and glass, and is dedicated to raising awareness of An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger), a.k.a. the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 that left one million dead and another million and a half uprooted, sparking the first major wave of Irish emigration to the United States. (Hello, Sunnyside.)

Ground broke on the $4.7 million memorial on March 15, 2001; it was dedicated by Governor George Pataki and Governor and President Mary McAleese of the Republic of Ireland in a ceremony on July 16, 2002 — several months late due to the area’s limited access following September 11. The neighborhood is now so crowded with memorials (World War II, The Museum of Jewish Heritage, Ground Zero) that after the Irish Hunger Memorial dedication, columnist Jimmy Breslin dubbed it “Misery Mile” to contrast with Museum Mile uptown.

The exterior wall of the memorial and its interior passageway are lined with almost two miles of text, etched onto illuminated glass and Plexiglas panels: excerpts of bills, notes, letters, statements, songs and reports, recipes, quotations, proverbs and statistics, intended to provoke debate or inspire reflection. The memorial’s 1/4-acre lot represents the maximum-sized plot one could own to still be eligible for any form of government relief under the infamous Gregory Clause that was added to the Poor Law of 1847 — a British land policy which effectively cleared estates for landlords and exacerbated the famine by destroying a way of life for an entire class of small farm laborers in Ireland. Thousands died of starvation rather than relinquish what little they still had.

Wittwer-Laird’s landscape utilizes stones, soil, and some 62 varieties of grasses and wildflowers from fallow potato fields all brought in from the western coast of Ireland. Most strikingly, the memorial incorporates an actual ruined Famine-era stone cottage, donated by distant relatives of the artist, dismantled in County Mayo, and reassembled in downtown New York, minus its modern tin roof.

Ironically, the transplanted ancient materials actually withstood their first New York winter far better than the modern materials used to bind them. After being open for less than a year, the memorial had to be closed for several months in 2003 for emergency repairs.

Flickr preview: a Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island (Sunday, June 8, 2008)

The events are organized around the Society’s French Founding Father exhibit: “Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America” on view through August 10, 2008 to mark the 250th birthday of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier (better known as the Marquis de Lafayette). The exhibit focuses on Lafayette’s 13-month journey through all 24 states that then formed the United States, which began in 1824 at Castle Clinton in The Battery. (Similar commemorations were scheduled in France.)

Tonight’s cakes and hot chocolate were from Soutine on West 70th Street, one of my favorite bakeries in the neighborhood. (And while we’re on the subject, Levain Bakery on West 74th Street makes a mean cookie.) In addition to the sweets was a program in the Auditorium featuring internationally acclaimed soprano Juliana Janes-Yaffé, who performed songs by French and American (New York) composers. Yaffé, who is on the faculty of Mannes College at The New School for Music, sang a program of Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Gabriel Fauré, Francis Poulenc, Lee Hoiby and Richard Hundley (who was in attendance this evening). Tony Bellomy, pianist for Brooklyn’s Encompass New Opera Theatre, accompanied the singer and performed a solo of Claude Debussy’s lovely “Rêverie.”

Upstairs, the New-York Historical Society reading room:

After the musical program, there was little time to explore the other exhibits, though I did catch one final glimpse of “Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11,” which closed on April 13. The exhibit drew from “here is new york,” a tribute to the victims of 9/11 by professional and amateur photographers, which became an international exhibition and inspired a BBC documentary. The New-York Historical Society’s exhibit consisted of 1500 inkjet-printed photos — I recognized my home and office blocks in several — mounted simply with binder clips on wires strung throughout two stark white galleries. The photos, without credits, titles or dates, were culled from 790 contributors and formed an overwhelming mosaic of the shock, horror and daze of that dark time.

The New York Times broke out the full 12-inch banner headline: “Spitzer Resigns.” The Post, ever classy, added “And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

I felt deeply sad as I listened to Spitzer’s resignation on the radio in my office, though below on Wall Street, where the man had few friends, there were some cheers. New York magazine offered a rather comprehensive package analyzing the week’s events.

And of course, The Daily Show weighed in with their own snarky commentary on the resignation. Correspondent John Oliver on the Spitzer legacy: “A seven-diamond governor… He said he’d clean up the government, and by leaving, he’s done just that.”

When news of the scandal first broke on The New York Times website (via the Metro Desk) shortly after 2PM yesterday afternoon, the details were scant. (“Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring“? How maddeningly vague!) Like most New Yorkers, I was caught up in this story, not just because the coverage was relentless and unavoidable, but because the unfolding sordid tale was just so shocking and incomprehensible.

The headline writers at the New York City tabloids live for times like these, and over the course of the day there was much speculation (and off-color suggestions) over what would be emblazoned on the front pages around the city. For sure, The Post could be counted upon to rise — or sink — to the occasion; these were the people that brought us “Axis of Weasel” in January 2003, after all.

That night, David Letterman listed the “Top Ten Messages Left on Eliot Spitzer’s Answering Machine” (#7: “Hi, I’m calling from the ‘New York Post.‘ Would you rather be known as ‘Disgraced Governor Perv’ or ‘Humiliated Whore Fiend’?)

After the initial shock of Monday afternoon wore off, I was left with a feeling of deep disappointment that extended well beyond the personal failings of one man. HYB reminded me of a passage from Douglas Adams’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I last read over two decades ago:

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Our group of about a dozen met a pair of guides inside the Park at the Mariner’s Gate entrance at 85th Street. From there, we set off to tour the lands that once made up Seneca Village, Manhattan’s first known community of African American property owners. The village, founded in 1825, once occupied the land between what is now the Great Lawn to Central Park West and from 82nd to 89th Streets — an area of about five acres. Within a few years, the community developed into a stable settlement of over 250 working-class residents, with its own churches, school and cemetery. African Americans owned more than half the households in the village — an unusually high percentage of property ownership for any New York community. By the 1840s, Irish and German immigrants, and perhaps Native Americans, owned several land plots as well; in total, during its over three decades in existence, approximately 1,600 people owned property, lived and/or worked in Seneca Village.

Up the trail to Summit Rock — at 141.8 feet, the highest elevation in Central Park (but not the highest point in Manhattan.)

The guides explained the challenges of this particular park tour, as nothing of note remains of the original community, save for the trickling remnants of an abundant natural spring near 82nd Street which would have served as the village’s main source of fresh drinking water. Instead, we were given photocopies of historic maps, and shown artists’ renderings of the structures that would have existed in the mid-19th century. This view overlooks what would have been the heart of Seneca Village.

In 1855, the New York State Census reported approximately 264 residents in the semi-rural village, at a time when most of the city’s immigrant population was concentrated in slums below 14th Street. Two years later, after the state legislature authorized the use of eminent domain to publicly acquire private land for the purpose of creating Central Park, the entire village was razed without a trace. Landowners living within the boundaries of the proposed park were compensated financially for their property, though several filed claims in New York State Supreme Court, protesting the city’s valuations of their land. Little is known of the outcome of those lawsuits, or where the hundreds of residents may have relocated. What is known is that once scattered, the community of Seneca Village was not re-established.

This spot of red is a cardinal, hidden among the trees:

Winterdale Arch at 82d Street, a pedestrian underpass and bridle path. The 1994 restoration included the award-winning recreation of the original cast-iron fencing along the top of the arch:

The work includes moving the park’s fountain, shrinking the central plaza and raising it to street level grade — transforming the park into a garden-style pass-through mall, surrounded by a four-foot fence, which critics claim will make the park less hospitable to spontaneous gatherings.

I remember a time when the “spontaneous gatherings” were mostly drug dealers, pouncing upon and offering their wares to every junior high schooler who happened to cut through the park.

So instead, a one-day getaway to Saugerties, probably best known as the site of the 1994 Woodstock Festival revival. This quaint, historic town is located in Ulster County, in the heart of the Hudson River Valley. We were just 100 miles out of the city, but here, the streets were patched with winter snow. (Remember snow?)

In 1677, New York’s Governor Edmund Andros agreed to purchase the land which now comprises the town from the Esopus Indian tribe for the price of a blanket, a piece of cloth, a shirt, a loaf of bread, and some coarse fiber. The deal recalls a similar transaction half a century earlier, between the Director-General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, Peter Minuit, and the Lenape tribe, in which the island of Manhattan was exchanged for 60 guilders — those 24 famous dollars — worth of beads and trinkets.

This small, trapezoidal park was named for The New York Herald newspaper, which had its offices and plant one block north. Those headquarters were built by McKim, Mead & White in 1894; eventually, the building was demolished, and The Herald was sold to the owners of the New York Tribune. Not all Herald memorabilia was transferred to the new owners, however: the clock and bronze statuary – the 10-foot figure of Minerva and 7-foot bellringers Gog and Magog (a.k.a. “Stuff and Guff,” who knew?) — which had adorned the roof of the Herald building, were gifted to New York University. The school lent them in perpetuity to the city for the clock monument at Herald Square, designed by Aymar Embury II in 1940, where they have remained ever since, ringing in the hours on the James Gordon Bennett Monument’s bell.

The park underwent a $1 million restoration several years ago and reopened in 2000. Last September, a newly pristine Stuff and Guff emerged, burnished and restored under the auspices of the Municipal Art Society, the Parks Department, the Art Commission of the City of New York and the 34th Street Partnership.