Thursday April 21
- New York, New York
- Tessa to New Jersey via Ossining
Catching up by Tessa
Sorry, I’m a bit behind! Where was I?
So I stayed with dad at his friends the Abelas for two nights. They have four gorgeous kids, and try to live a Distributist healthy home-school lifestyle. Andrew had organised some launch-talks for Dad’s Tolkien book which has just been published in the US under the title ‘The Power of the Ring’. I went along to his talk on the Sunday evening at their parish hall (excellent Dad! *beams*), and then the next day I wondered around the American History Museum while Dad gave the next talk at the World Bank of all places. Then we met up in Starbucks, along with an old friend Joan Desmond (who reminds me strongly of your Mum Julia- any possibility they could be related?!). Then Dad gave his final talk at the Catholic Information Centre. In all three people reponded really well and the book sold like hot cakes :D!
On tuesday morning we got a taxi to the airport and flew to New York. We made our way to the Kopits, met James, then went for a walk in the sunshine in Central Park. The point where I interupted my entry last time was when all the people began arriving for supper- My other Godmother Peggy dropped by with her daughter Catherine and her son Nicholas who stayed to supper, and the Kopit’s son Ben was there too, and what with this hyper-intellegent gathering the conversation was fast-paced and facinating. Their other son, Alex made it towards the end of supper because he had to work late on his exciting film editing job (with Walter Murch and Sam Mendes no less!). It was very funny because Dad was his Au-Pair (or however you spell that!) when he was in his gap-year and Alex was a toddler, and they hadn’t seen each other since!
It was James and Leslie who told us who the new Pope when we arrived. I guess I won’t comment much about that here… *grins*
Then today Dad and James and I went to the VERY GOOD Nicholas Roerich Museum (a tiny museum near here dedicated to this facinating artist, and then walked down to the Natural History Museum. We didn’t really leave ourselves enough time for that, but I loved the mineral room with its pretty sparkly things :)! I managed to have both a bagel and a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, so I really feel I have arrived in America.
Got to go off to bed, it’s far too late! We are leaving for New Jersey tomorrow while James stays in NY. Love to all xxx