New York City and Washington DC in holiday mode

‘”There’s nothing you can’t do, these streets will make you feel brand new.” Alica Keyes

“Brand new” because New York is a city always in flux and change. But there’s enough that stays the same, stirring up memories of people, places and experiences from the past, especially for those that have lived there.

On a cold sunny day, a day that has ilios me dontia, or sun with teeth, as the Greek saying goes, Central Park is the perfect place to take a walk.

Near 75th St. and 5th Avenue, the beloved Alice in Wonderland statue, which generations of children have loved climbing on, was unveiled in 1959, a gift of philanthropist and publisher George Delacorte. Alice and her kitten Dinah sit on top of a giant mushroom, surrounded by the Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, Dormouse and White Rabbit (and Sherri).

Further up at 81st St., in front of the Metropolitan museum a dog walker runs by. A particular New York city phenomenon, he might collect all the many dogs in one apartment building for their walk.

Inside the Met, up the grand stairs, the exhibit “Look Again: European paintings from 1300 to 1800,” works of art have been moved around a bit; instead of a strict chronological approach, some are grouped thematically to stress the influences of one artist on another. Picasso’s 1903 “Blind Man’s Meal” is hung in the room with the 17th century El Grecos, to stress the similarity of the long angular lines, mysterious lighting and religious overtones.

From the collection:

Mid-Manhattan: Bryant Park in back of the New York Public Library, changes in the seasons. In the winter it has the skating rink, tree and all sorts of little holiday markets. From spring through fall, the picture changes. You can pull off books and magazines from stacks and read them, as well as sit or lie down on the grassy lawn and listen to concerts. Now, back to winter, the park is full of ice skaters and gift buyers.

The day we found ourselves near Rockefeller Center unfortunately was rainy.

Nothing beats the holiday facade of Saks 5th Avenue.

Since we’re looking at trees, check out the view through the arch at Washington Square, New York University in Greenwich Village.

Midtown decorations

Since we’re in midtown, a visit to see the Grand Central Terminal is a must. It’s not just one of the busiest train stations in the world, but so much more than just trains. It’s full of shops and elegant and not so elegant restaurants, especially on the lower level. Opened to the public in 1913, the beaux arts building is as much of a landmark in Manhattan as the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

But Grand Central narrowly escaped a fate of too many historic buildings. In 1975 it was actually scheduled for demolition, as part of an office tower redevelopment project. Who led the fight to save the Terminal? Manhattan resident Jackie Kennedy Onassis, whose name is given to the entrance passageway at the Park Avenue and East 42nd Street entrance.

A blue ceiling depicts the zodiac in gold. Also check out the Tiffany glass clock and the whispering wall.

Along with the old iconic Grand Central Terminal is the new, like this structure known as the Vessel, that opened in 2019 in Hudson Yards. You can climb up to get superb views of the Hudson River. However, after three people jumped to their deaths, it was closed in 2021. Opening three years later with protective netting, it allows visitors to “stick out their phones but not their bodies” with security guards and besides the netting, an unusual rule: nobody can visit it alone. The photo is taken from a visit we made in 2019 before the protective netting.

Let’s stay over on the west side in iconic Times Square, which has undergone a myriad of changes over the years, Besides the famous neon lights, it usually has strange figures, like the Naked Cowboy, who looks like a waxed sculpture but he’s definitely real.

Like any large city, street sculpture livens up your walks around. It’s almost impossible not to take a photo of these huge bronze sculptures, known as Paparazzi Dogman and Paparazzi Rabbitgirl on 6th Avenue near Rockefeller Center. Like the Alice in Wonderland sculpture, we’re encouraged to touch them and climb on them.

If you take a walk along Park Avenue from 35th to 38th (near Grand Central), you can see Bruno Cavalaro’s series of nine monumental bronze sculptures. Known as “Voyage a New York,” they’re incomplete sculptures of men in transit, carrying suitcases or bags, on a journey, with parts of their bodies missing. Very startling and moving at the same time.

In the garment district in the west 30’s, artist Judith Weller commemorates Jewish garment workers, who formed the backbone of the garment industry in NY.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Street art is everywhere if you walk around with your eyes open. But a trip to MoMA, the museum of modern art, is a great place to catch new and fairly new fun pieces, like “Piano.”

I love the lighthearted and fluid movement of Matisse’s dancers. Where there’s a break in the hands, it’s almost as if you’re being invited to step in.

After a major surgery, Matisse turned to cutouts, where he cut and pasted large pieces of colorful paper. This work, “Nuit de Noel,’ in its stained glass form, was installed in Rockefeller Center in 1952.

I like these examples of German expressionism.

At the New York public library, we were lucky to find the exhibit “Becoming Bohemia: Greenwich Village from 1913 to 1923,” which roots this movement of counterculture writers and artists with the modern art movement and modernism in literature. “Inexpensive housing and the promise of a relaxed permissive atmosphere” encouraged artists and revolutionaries like John Reed and Louise Bryant (subject of the excellent 1981 movie “Reds” with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton.) One of the interesting displays is an announcement of a speech that anarchist Emma Goldman was to make at Carnegie Hall on birth control in 1916.

Morgan Library and Museum

Not too far from the library, at 36th St and Madison, is the beautiful Morgan Library and Museum. On Fridays after 5, the library opens with free admission (join the line around the block) with jazz music in the cafe, where you can visit the museum and library.

Museum of the Moving Image, Transit Museum

NYC has countless small museums. In Astoria Queens, still very much a Greek neighborhood, you can visit the Museum of the Moving Image, which used to be a film studio. The collection has over 130,000 artifacts from producing, promoting and presenting films, TV and digital media. On display here are Charlie Horse, Lamb Chop and Hush Puppy, the beloved puppets that ventriloquist Shari Lewis immortalized in her popular TV program in the 1960’s.

If you want to immerse yourself with subway lore and NYC transportation, then you’ll adore the Transit Museum in Brooklyn. You walk down steps as if you’re entering the subway, and indeed you are, a decommissioned subway from the 1930’s. At the museum, you get the story of how the over 100 year old NY subway system was built, the engineering feats, the tunnels. (Though they had their share of problems, it seems that finding ancient artifacts, like in Athens and the newly opened metro in Thessaloniki, was not a problem.) At this interactive museum, you can sit in vintage cars dating back to 1907, see the old turnstiles with the tokens… you wouldn’t imagine that you’d feel nostalgic about the subway, but the exhibit really makes you feel that way!

At various times visiting NY, I’ve noticed poems in the subway cars. Here’s a tribute to the subway by poet Billy Collins.

Christmas Lights in Dyker Heights

As it’s the Christmas holiday, some neighborhoods have gone all out with seasonal lighting. There’s an area in Brooklyn known as Dyker Heights where people come from all over to walk around, see the house lights, buy a hot chocolate… There are even bus tours and walking tours of the light displays, admittedly on the kitschy side and over the top, but that’s part of the fun.

Howard Beach, the neighborhood where Suzanna and fiancé Miltos live, is no slouch either when it comes to decorations.

II. In Washington DC

At the fabulous Smithsonian complex along the Mall, the National Gallery of Art has a special exhibit commemorating 150 years after the 1874 exhibit on impressionism in Paris. This first impressionism exhibit featured a group of nineteenth-century artists who had been rejected by the official Paris Salon. Unfortunately we’re not the only ones with the idea of visiting the exhibit! A line snaking around from the exhibit entrance extends back back back… (we’re told it’s a 95 minute wait…) We join an hour tour where our enthusiastic knowledgeable guide explains about influences on impressionism from French painting through the years, from 17th century rococo up to Gaugin and his self portrait.

At the Gallery East Wing with its spaciousness and giant Calder mobile, it turns out that it’s family day, the first Saturday of every month and the spacious main floor is filled with parents and kids drawing, painting, doing all kinds of art work. It’s great to see the space being offered, surely a way of making people love the museum.

We didn’t get into the 1874 Salon exhibit, but there’s a little treasure of a room at the East Wing on small french painting. More Matisse and his love of patterns.

The skaters don’t seem to mind the cold.

The squirrel reminded me of a trip years ago to Warsaw with a Greek group tour in a city park. The guide was talking but no one was listening because everyone was staring at the squirrels, a sight you don’t see in Greece!

The gallery isn’t far from the Capitol.

Here it is shrouded in mist in this photo from many years ago where a young Theo and Suzanna joyfully run in the newly fallen snow.

This visit we did something never before. On Christmas day we attended an organ concert at the Washington National Cathedral. This grand neo-Gothic cathedral built in 1906 on the highest part of Washington DC, is the second largest church building in the U.S.

Inside there was a lovely warmth, solemnity and communal listening feeling.

On another day, windy but mild, we walked around the Georgetown area, my old stomping grounds, near the university where I did my post graduate.

Then down the “Exorcist” steps (where scenes of the 1973 film The Exorcist were featured. (Before the film, they were known as the Hitchcock steps.) And then over to Key Bridge, where I used to walk across every day from my house to the university, It’s a fabulous walk, with a grand sweep of the river below, that takes you across to Virginia.

I thought I would try to find the street I lived on for a couple of years right across the bridge, over a small hill, around a corner, up some steps … but nothing looked familiar and we gave up. As Thomas Wolfe wrote, “you can’t go home again.”

Talk about places changing and becoming worse…downtown Bethesda, Maryland, D.C. suburb, is one of the best examples. Just unrestrained construction, ever higher and higher skyscrapers and noise. At least for 21 years there was Barnes & Noble, a great meeting place both outdoors and in until it closed 7 years ago. (There are still some good restaurants around, a movie theater and public library.)

My mom’s independent living/assisted living place is in North Bethesda, a bit away from the overbuilt downtown area.

I’m happy to be spending some time with her.

Carolers came one night dressed in days of yore, telling us their horses were tethered outside.

It was Hanukkah as well and after lighting the Menorah, there was wine and latkes, traditional potato pancakes, served with applesauce, as well as sweets.

The New Year’s Eve menu promised a feast.

My mom had a great time eating with us and being entertained.

Here’s the main course, and then the way the plates looked when we finished.

Dessert was a custard tart with fresh fruit.

Besides exercise classes and word games, my mom’s assisted living wing has a full program of entertainers, concerts, and sing alongs. Her attention span has shrunk though. Everyone is playing “too long.”

It was steadily getting colder and a storm treated us to 8 or 9 inches of snow (about 22 cm)

Immediately a notice went up in the elevator:

The snow was a treat, but I was worried that it would impact our bus the next day back to NY. Major roads were all cleared though and there was no problem at all. Back in NYC, there was just a dusting of snow, compared to DC, but incredibly cold with strong gusty winds. Very few people were walking on the streets.

Near Madison Park is the Flatiron Building, one of the oldest steel skyscrapers from the 1920’s, built especially to fit the shape of the sidewalk.

A Hanukkah menorah still stands forlornly in the snow.

Back in Howard Beach along the water, the boats are probably staying tied up. Waiting for springtime!

We’re in the “now” though of midwinter.

Despite the uncertain and less than promising look of the world, I wish you a happy and healthy 2025!

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.