Six Hours in New York City

Half a day in New York City might not sound like much, but you can do a lot in a short amount of time and space because there are so many great things to see, all within walking distance of each other. Here's a game plan:

Meet up with an old friend at the Plaza Hotel
Mumbi & Kitti*
Admire the new statuary
Giant "Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads" by Ai Weiwei
And the nearby street art (click for slides)
Take a walk through Central Park

Make your way north and west to the Museum of Natural History
Remember how much Holden Caulfield likes it here:
"I knew that whole museum routine like a book. . . .
I get very happy when I think about it. Even now. . . .
It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't,
and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world."
I loved that damn museum." (156)
Pick out a couple of rooms to visit (and have lunch there)


Head south through the park, boat watching and people watching

Photograph some important public structures
9 West 57th (between 57th & 58th Streets
New York City Center, 55th Street (between 6th & 7th Aves)
aka City Center of Music and Drama
aka New York City Center 55th Street Theater

Grab a taxi to the airport . . . and vow to stay longer next time . . .

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*The Story of Our Reconnection

Mumbi and I had a great time as college roommates, during the school year of 1975 - 76. Despite our age and geographic differences (I was a Freshman from Missouri; Mumbi was a Senior from Kenya), we became instant loyal and practically inseparable friends.

After receiving her B.A. and M.A. from NMSU, Mumbi returned to Kenya in 1977. That was the last time we were together in person, though we kept in touch by mail for the next 16 years. Coincidentally, though we didn't realize it at the time, in the Spring of 1993, Mumbi had returned to the States and settled in New Jersey at precisely the same time that I had re-located from the Midwest to Philadelphia.

When the dust settled after the upheaval of our simultaneous moves, we had somehow each lost track of the other's correct address. How ironic that at this point in our lives -- after writing back and forth to Africa during all those intervening years -- we should fall out of contact, when, in fact, we were now living a mere one hundred miles apart! A couple of hours on the train and we could have spent the day together at a moment's notice. Her two sons could have played together with my two sons!

Sadly, without the miracle of facebook & google, it was much harder to re-establish contact then than it is now. At last, in the Summer of 2009, with the help of the Alumni Locator Service, Mumbi and I were re-united! We were both dismayed to have fallen out of touch but then elated when you helped us reconnect! Not only were we back in contact after a 17 - year hiatus, but we were soon planning our first face - to - face get - together for the first time in 33 years! Whether or not it sounds like a hopeless cliche, honestly, it was as if no time at all had passed!

We hope that our story is inspirational to other alumni and their long-lost friends. We met up first, in Wichita, Kansas, in May 2010; and again in June 2011 in New York City -- two times in two years! (And, more recenlty, a third time, New York City in 2014.) See, it can happen! Many thanks from me and Mumbi to the Alumni Communications Office for making our reunion possible!

Photo Albums

Wichita, Kansas ~ 2010

New York City ~ 2011 & 2014

Words of Wisdom from Mumbi

Book Recommendation from Mumbi

A Cluttered Mind

"A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind."

When it comes to clutter,
Colin Thompson is my favorite!

A conversation with my friend Mumbi,
concerning some shared reading and research
on the topic of contemporary Kenyan poetry:
Mumbi: Your brain must be so compacted with so many ideas from all the reading that you have done. I think writing comes naturally to you because your brain needs relief before you fill it up again!

Kitti: Your description of my brain makes me laugh! But I also know you mean it as a compliment, and I greatly appreciate that!

Long ago in my teaching days, one of my students wrote something so funny that I have never forgotten. They were supposed to be coming up with metaphors, and one of them said: “A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind.” I immediately incorporated that phrase into my daily vocabulary!

Even now, whenever I’m working on a project, with papers spread all over the countertops, I’ll say to Gerry: “Sorry! It’s just my cluttered mind!” Or when I’m sorting out and putting stuff away, I’ll say: “I’m trying not to have a cluttered mind!” Haha! But true!

Mumbi: Thank you for understanding that I used “compact” in a positive sense. "Clutter" can be relative. You are brilliant and diligent. I couldn’t do all the reading that you do without bursting my head. Writers are born.

Thank you very much for giving a forum to the Kenyan women and spending your precious time. It is an honor to them. Your blog is a channel through which you publicize the actions of those who advocate for making the world an equal playing field for all. Kenya's leadership is totally off course, pursuing personal wealth with absolute apathy to an otherwise very hard-working, low-income majority.

Thank you for shining a light to some who probably think that no one notices what they do.

Kitti: Mumbi, you are too kind! Thank you for shining that very same light right back to me. And also for sending me these books, which are a wake-up call to appreciate the choices, benefits, and privileges that we enjoy, compared to the hardships currently endured by these writers and activists.

For graffiti art and
revolutionary poetry from Kenya,
see my recent post

To the Literary Battle Fronts
"Tell me, Nairobi, are you that place?"
"What will it take?"

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

Related Posts
To Create a Space for Women's Creativity
Maganjo

Maganjo

Maganjo -- meaning the “original land”
-- like this coffee from Velton's: Kenya Maganjo AA

Thanks to my friend Mumbi for sharing with me this charming image that she purchased locally in Wichita, Kansas. We can only assume that it is a picture of Ireland, though the print itself came without title or photo credit.

As Mumbi explains: "Maganjo means an old home, in Kikuyu, within which family members of a past generation would have lived. That's the meaning I get from the picture. It actually reminds me of a small farm that was owned by my grandparents when I was a child, but my family later moved away."

Since I have been recently immersed in Kenyan poetry, I wanted to include some poems from my reading that capture the nostalgic sense of home and homesickness evoked by Mumbi's wall art and her definition of maganjo:

She rocks!

Without her the stars are falling,
Without her the flowers are glooming
Without her the rocks just stare --

I stand before you today,
With a message to relay
About this special woman,
Who compares to no man.

It's about my mama
Sure more would say papa,
More he would contribute,
In this noble tribute.

In my life she is the rock,
The reason I say she rocks
Without her you see,
I wouldn't even be!

In her womb she bore me
Nine months -- never getting weary
She has seen me through the gloom and the bloom
Raising me up -- when I fall she raises me up!

So don't be amazed, neither dismayed,
When I say she is
Indeed my light, even when it's night
Reason I say she rocks!
That's my mama.

The drumbeats are so near,
The mist I must clear
And I fear --
I hate causing a tear,
But it's a step I must take dear
Please do bear?

~ by Margaret Muthee


The Expatriate

Unfriendly faces
Unfamiliar scents
Undefined territory
This is, foreign land

Mistreatment undeserved
Discrimination unjust
Acvusations unreal
It will always be foreign land

A land not her own
A people she knows not
Home is not safe but --
Foreign land is no place to stay

Choices made, desperate actions
To escape war, to this dreaded land
It must be hard to leave your own
It must be hard, this is -- foreign land.

~ by Grace Kamau

Both poems can be found here:

from the AMKA Literature Forum
and Space for Women's Creativity

AMKA (meaning "wake up" in Kiswahili)
is an NGO, based and registered in Kenya,
concerned with pushing and encouraging creativity,
and facilitating and nurturing women writers.

******************

More poems & more about this project:
To Create a Space for Women's Creativity
@Kitti's Book List

The Pact: Sailing Right Behind

Happy
Belated Saint Patrick's Day
& Early Vernal Equinox,
& Thanks to my friend Mumbi
for this beautiful Friendship Rock!

I've been listening to a lot of golden oldies on the
car radio this week, including these two favorites:

Bridge Over Troubled Water
When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes,
I'll dry them all
I'm on your side
Oh, when times get rough
And friends just can't be found

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part
Oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine

Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind

By Paul Simon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'll Be There
You and I must make the pact
We must bring salvation back
Where there is love, I'll be there

I'll reach out my hand to you
I'll have faith in all you do
Just call my name and I'll be there

I'll be there to comfort you
Build my world of dreams around you
I'm so glad that I found you

I'll be there with a love that's strong
I'll be your strength
I'll keep holdin' on

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter
Togetherness, girl, is all I'm after
Whenever you need me, I'll be there

I'll be there to protect you
With an unselfish love that respects you
Just call my name, I'll be there

I'll be there to comfort you
Build my world of dreams around you
I'm so glad that I found you

I'll be there with a love that's strong
I'll be your strength
I'll keep holdin' on

If you should ever find someone new
I know he better be good to you
'Cause if he doesn't
I'll be there

Don't you know baby
I'll be there, I'll be there
Just call my name, I'll be there
Just look over your shoulders honey, ooh!
I'll be there, I'll be there

Whenever you need me,
I'll be there, I'll be there
Don't you know baby
I'll be there, I'll be there
Just call my name, I'll be there

By Hal Davis, Berry Gordy,
Willie Hutch, Bob West
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Esther ~ Kitti ~ Mumbi ~

Vernal Hourglass

Hourglass: All Things New
by Jamin Still

My friend Mumbi always picks
the perfect present for the Vernal Equinox.
Thanks to Mumbi for this magical Hourglass!
{And so much more!}

Thanks ~ Nikki
Reminds me of the Solstice!

"first day of spring —
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn"

Haiku by Matsuo Bashō (1644 - 94)
Translated by Robert Hass (b 1941)

Valentines From Friends

As I've mentioned before on this blog -- and more recently on my Fortnightly Blog -- this idea that you have to be at least married before you can share a Valentine is totally alien to me. For my entire life, I've been exchanging Valentines with family and friends of all ages. Sure, sometimes to include romance, but not always. More inclusively, it should be about "the goodness of loving, the gladness of living," and everyone you love. What they say on Sesame Street about Christmas holds equally true for Valentine's Day: "If you believe in love, that will be more than enough."

For example, I 💘 the above Valentine dish cloth from my friends in Minnesota (not married to me; not married to each other).

And I 💖 this impromptu poem that my friend Mumbi texted back to me when she opened her Valentine today (a week late, but that's okay):

"As far as I'm concerned, 'late' is relative.
LOVE is not timed --
it is always within us and around us.
Time and distance don't affect its value.
I just think that LOVE is so important
and it is not celebrated enough.
When there's no LOVE, life loses meaning.

A good reminder that a broken heart can be mended
and experience and express LOVE anew!"

Scraps of Useless Information

A sunny backyard view ~ Great Crosby ~ suburb of Liverpool

Oh, to be in England . . .
In Grim & Gram's Back Garden

Beata: Here we have grey clouds and high winds.
Grandpa Ron's house - a world's difference!

Etta: Those buildings and clouds in the background
are so scenic and quaint they don't look real!

Jes: Is that for real? Bucolic and beautiful.
Enjoy the Motherland!

Kathleen: So pretty, bucolic.

Katie: Love the little green bench
and the red letter box.
Gorgeous . . . that perfect sky!

Katy: Like a Kincaid painting!
Too pretty to be real.

Lisa: That is absolutely beautiful!

Mumbi: A nice place to relax
and watch the flowers bloom.

Sandy SK: Thank you for sharing;
blustery, rainy, and cold here;
glad you have sunshine and time with the family.

And now, a word
from one of our favorite Brits:

“Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.”

by George Orwell (1903 – 1950)
from the essay Why I Write
Thanks Rebecca Solnit

". . . scraps of useless information . . . "
Could that, by any chance, be the quotidian?
♥
“The world is full of magic things,
patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
~ W.B. Yeats ~

Mother's Day Cards

Sorting through a stack of old Mother's Day cards, saved by my grandmother, I came across this one -- kind of unusual for our family, because we never referred to any of our grandmothers as "Nana." I bet my mom chose it anyway for the winsome little puppy, and then helped my little brother sign his name.

No date given, but probably 1965 or 1966.

Here's another one that stood out
from the other more delicate designs.
What a surprise to look inside and discover a rarely
seen aspect of my grandfather's sense of humor!


For more Mother's Day Cards
from my grandmother's collection
see my current post:

"Window With a Mother's Face"

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

***************

And on my book blog
one of my mother's childhood essays

P.S.
On the topic of greeting cards:
My friend Mumbi paid me the dearest compliment
last month when she wrote:
"Thank you for the Easter card.
The cards you send to me and others
are like a diary of your love to us."
This kind sentiment seems especially true, looking at
all of these heartfelt inscriptions from decades gone by.

My Friend Hair

Melisande
A Princess of Greatly Conflicted Hair
In the world of make believe, Melisande is a princess with extreme hair issues. Her hair is too long -- much too long and much too big. Poor girl: it was either that or endure the curse of baldness! Well, we all have our hair issues. In Traveling Mercies, contemporary writer and activist Anne Lamott describes her first - hand experience with extremely curly hair:

"Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you're secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction but to gauge, miserably the odds of rain? Can you imagine how discouraging it was for me to live in fear of weather, of drizzle or downpour? . . . Obviously, when you really want this [spiritual] companionship and confidence but you're worried about your bangs shrinking up like fern fronds, you've got a problem on your hands."

Lamott recounts the liberating scene in Shawshank Redemption when Andy stands in the pouring rain with his arms outstretched. She confesses, " . . . if I were the prisoner being baptized by the torrential rain, half my mind would be on how much my bangs were going to shrink up after they dried." Ultimately Lamott concludes that "it would be an act of both triumph and surrender to give up trying to have straighter hair."

Sure you want to have the right priorities and keep your mind on higher things, but you also have to live down the prejudiced notions: "good children have shiny combed hair, while bad children, poor children, loser kids, have bushy hair"; the unkind remarks: "did you you stick your finger in a light socket"; even racist insults in Anne's case, because, though fair in color, the texture of her "crazy hair crown," tends toward wiry and kinky -- making it perfect for the cool dreads that she now wears. I admire her soul - searching explanation of making the switch to this new style:

"First of all, I felt it was presumptuous to appropriate a black style for my own liberation. But mostly when I thought about having dreadlocks, I felt afraid and disloyal. Dreadlocks would be a way of saying I was no longer going to play by the rules of mainstream white beauty. It meant that I was not longer going to even try and blend. It was a way of saying that I know what kind of hair I have, I know what it looks like, and I am going to stop trying to pretend it's different than that. That I was going to celebrate instead" (all quotations are from Traveling Mercies, 6 - 13, 229 - 37).

Anne Lamott







Alice Walker








Interestingly, both Anne Lamott and Alice Walker cite over-investment in haircare as an impediment to spiritual liberation. In Walker's terrific essay, "Oppressed Hair," she explains why accepting your hair on its own terms is crucial to a larger sense of self-acceptance and personal growth. She personifies her hair in the most delightful way: "I discovered my hair's willfulness, so like my own! I saw that my friend hair, given its own life, had a sense of humor. I discovered I liked it. . . . I would call up my friends around the country to report on its antics."

She describes her realization, practically an epiphany "that in my physical self there remained one last barrier to my spiritual liberation, at least in the present phase: my hair. Not my friend hair itself, for I quickly understood that it was innocent. It was the way I related to it that was the problem. I was always thinking about it. So much so that if my spirit had been a balloon eager to soar away and merge with the infinite, my hair would be the rock that anchored it to Earth. I realized that there was no hope of continuing my spiritual development, no hope of future growth of my soul, no hope of really being able to stare at the Universe and forget myself entirely in the staring (one of the purest joys!) if I still remained chained to thoughts about my hair" (emphasis added).

Well, it requires thoughtfulness and fortitude to break those chains! However, if there's anyone who can put the issue into perspective, it's these two admirable women: wise Alice Walker who asks if we can ever achieve equality as long as woman aspire to look another way than what they are: light instead of dark, tan instead of pale, blonde instead of brunette, straight instead of curly; and honest Anne Lamott who points out that surrender is not all bad: "giving into all those things we can't control," letting go of "balance and decorum," befriending our hair.

This excerpt is from my essay"Ad Hairenum"

read more on The Fortnightly [Every 14th & 28th]
Kitti Carriker: A Literary Blog
of Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony
P.S.
My friend Cate recommends mnmlist.com
Blogger mnmlist (i.e., minimalist) asks
can you live without . . . your hair?
Subscribe for more . . . I mean, for less!

My Friend Mumbi ~ see letter below