So... apparently I didn't ever finish part two of my "part one" from last weekend's post. Unfortunately, I got hit with a project at work that I didn't know was going to turn into War and Peace, so that sucked my life for a week. Luckily I was so busy this week that I didn't do much, so I can fit a week's worth of stuff into one post without it being ridiculous.
When I last left my narrative, I was about to go to Connecticut. So yes, Connecticut. My boyfriend is from Connecticut, and was able to find a cheap rate on Spirit Airways to come out for Father's Day. So even though he had already been in Chicago for a week, he flew back out and met me in New York on that Friday. He actually met me at like 10:30p.m. in Brooklyn, because a friend of his was jazz singing in a cafe/bar/lounge in Park Slope.
Anyway, that Saturday morning we took the Greyhound bus from Times Square to Hartford. Also: I didn't know buses were such a thing. Maybe it is because I am from California, and other than Los Angeles, Santa Barbara or San Diego, there really aren't major "hubs" people will be traveling to within the same state. But Greyhound-- or long-distance bus travel in general-- is definitely not as much of a thing as it is here on the East Coast, apparently. Like, the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan is the size of a small airport. Like, I am pretty sure it might be bigger-- square footage as well as the number of vehicles serviced-- than the Harrisburg, PA or Boise, ID airports (yes, for a variety of reasons, I have actually flown in and out of those airports. On multiple occasions).
It was nice to meet up and hang out with my boyfriend's family. They are a lot like my dad's side of the family in that there are a lot of them, and whenever there is an event (and having the kids come home to visit qualifies as an event), they all get together in one place. The first day (Saturday) I was there, we basically hung out. Went to this burger joint that, for context for all you Chicago dwellers our there, is kind of like Epic Burger. Except they had better shakes. And then that evening we went to the aforementioned dinner/cookout with the boyfriend's family. On Sunday, I went with my boyfriend's mom and kid sister (she's nine-- which is kind of scary for me because when I first met her, she had just barely turned five) to watch the boyfriend sing in a showcase. When he was in high school, he was part of this program that gives scholarships to students, so that they can take very intensive lessons in singing. Over the 2-3 years of the program, the student's get something like $25K worth of lessons and training; the students have to try out to get in, and every "class" is only like 5 or 6 people. So it's kind of a big deal. And I guess (not surprisingly) at the "end" of the year (by school counting), the current students put on a showcase of songs. This year was their 10th anniversary, so as a special thing, they invited all the alumni back to sing in the final two numbers-- one on their own, one with the current students. It was really nice because, other than just generally being quality music, this was something I had heard a lot about from my boyfriend, and that I knew was and is an important part of his life. So it was nice that I actually got to share in it with him a little.
He also knows a lot of the people running the program (I guess not surprisingly, since the program is so small), so I actually (briefly) met some of those people as well. The craziest thing I saw at the reception, however, was this: One of the ladies in charge of the program had her mother there. The lady-- not the mother-- is probably in her late 70s. Apparently her mother is 99 years old (and, actually looked "spry"-- I would have placed her in her late 80s). For context (as I pointed out to my boyfriend at the time): when this woman was born, World War I hadn't happened yet. Can you imagine what this lady must have seen in her life? The kind of memories she must have? And how much of a mind-fuck it must be to live in this day and age, being so different from anything she would have known when she was a child/teen/young adult? How can one even deal with that? I am of two minds about living that old (if, of course, I still basically have my wits about me. Otherwise, forget it). On the one hand, I think it would be fascinating to have lived through the 20th century, to see the kind of change and world-events that she could have seen. To be a "memory-keeper" of sorts of the past. In other ways, I think it would be profoundly depressing. Other than her daughter and any possible grandkids, everyone she ever knew or loved I am sure have long passed on. Any husband, siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, friends, associates. And the world in which she would have been most active-- when she was young, through perhaps her 60s or 70s-- has also long passed on. She would have just come into the world as a young adult in the early 1930s. Think about that. In a way, it is quite poignant. But then, I always found movies about people who live forever, like Tuck Everlasting or Interview with a Vampire, bittersweet, more than scary or love-storyish or whatever was the main intention of the moviemakers. Because I always think about things like that-- what would be lost, what would be gained in living so long, and I find it kind of sad, in a way.
Anyway, I returned on Sunday evening. And didn't do much the whole week except work on this project. It was quite interesting, but sucked my life as I had to go through like 10lbs worth of trial records, in addition to about 75 cases (culled from an initial list of like 150). The brief section I wrote ended up being like 15 pages. But it is gratifying to know that the work I am doing is actually going to be meaningful-- in this case, helping to keep someone who should be in jail, stay in jail. A nice change from the "meaning" being grades/GPA, which I am finding to be increasingly not meaningful, and as such am having increasingly less patience with it.
On Tuesday the boyfriend swung back into New York for the evening, as his flight was at like 8:30am on Wednesday, out of LaGuardia, and understandably did not want to get up at like 3am to come into the city from Connecticut. We ended up meeting his friend again (the jazz singer) at this very chic bar/lounge on Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. I had dressed up because I knew that this place was going to be a classy joint. And it was. To the tune of $15 drinks and $7 tea. But it was an experience. The friend actually wasn't singing-- it was a friend of hers that had gotten the gig to sing at the place, and she had come out to support her. Since the boyfriend and I wanted to have some time to actually talk to his friend (the last two times-- at a house party and a gig in which she was singing-- were not really conducive to hanging out and chatting), we decided to go along. We were there for probably like two hours. And it was really one of those few moments that I felt "like an adult," as I am apparently now considered (I will be 24 in a couple months. No pretending like I could at 21 or 22-- this is real "twenties-something" territory. Which scares the hell out of me). I don't know; I feel like growing up-- particularly as part of the generation that grew up with Friends, Sex and the City, and the tail end of Seinfeld, we were all given these expectations about what being a young adult would be like: living in a cute apartment in some big city, getting together with regular friends after work at what my friend Kathryn has dubbed a "sitcom bar," just hanging out, and "being adults," with a variety of mostly minor social life dramas. But, for a variety of reasons-- particularly "reality"-- that is not what being a twenties-something is like. There is a lot more uncertainty about your life. Your drama isn't about your latest breakup or fling, so much as it is about, "holy shit what am I going to do with my life," or "I am doing something I don't like, but don't know how or where to change." Everyone I know who is is their early-mid twenties are experiencing one or both of those problems. For me, I still feel not really like an adult, even though I now go to a "job" (internship) every day, and have a (surprising) amount of responsibility in the work I do. I am still a student, I am still living for the most part off the graces of my parents and the federal government, so I don't feel very "grown up." So being at this trendy bar, in New York, listening to live music and drinking expensive drinks, I felt like I was finally experiencing what "being an adult" was always shown to mean. I felt like I was actually living the perception I had always had about what people do when they are "grown up."
Nothing really interesting happened the rest of the week. I worked on the project. I got a massage on Friday courtesy of Groupon, at a spa conveniently located a five-minute walk from the dining hall in which I eat dinner on week nights. It was quite relaxing, and much needed, and after the hour treatment, I could finally move things like my back and shoulders without hearing/feeling the joints pop. Unfortunately, the effects of this massage were short-lived. I had hauled with me the aforementioned 10lbs of trial materials in my briefcase bag, knowing I would have to work on this project over the weekend. Naturally, I got lost on the way back to my dorm (not really lost; just couldn't find the subway entrance. As a side note: Greenwich Village, wtf? Y u no make directional sense?). So after like 40 minutes of that, my shoulders were back to being pretty tense. Guess I will have to treat myself to another next month. :0)
Saturday I didn't do much, at all. I didn't even get up until 12:30pm (I think having pulled a lot of late nights the prior week to get shit done, really took a toll which my body was then trying to make up on the weekend). And then I spent most of the day *still* working on the brief. Since the internet at work sucks, I had spent most of the week just trying to read and note and create reference points in all the case law and trial material, so I didn't really even get to writing the thing until Friday. But, since it was the weekend, and since I am determined to not waste my time in NYC (I can sit in my room and do work at home, back in Chicago. If I am out here, I should do something). So, I did go out around 6:30pm to Chelsea Market, which is an interesting combination between like a food marketplace, and a food court. Chelsea, apparently, is a very trendy and high-class neighborhood of NYC (as I could tell from the stores, clubs, and apartment buildings I was passing by. Out of my price range for now, I am afraid), and Chelsea Market is probably one of the more upscale food markets/courts you will find. It's in an old factory of some sort that hsd been rehabbed and yuppified on the inside. I have to say, though, the food was good at the little restaurant I went to. Another, more minor moment, of feeling like a "real"young twenties-something. It definitely seemed like the kind of place a group of trendy young adult friends would go out to on the weekend for a more "casual" evening. I enjoyed.
On Sunday, I again didn't get going very early. I got myself up around noon, because I had a 1pm boat to catch from Battery Park, which would take me to Ellis Island. So I got another thing off my NYC bucket list, yay! Although my ticket would have allowed for it, I didn't get off at the Statute of Liberty Island. You can't climb up to the very top any more because of security, and I think even the base is closed for rehab. So all people were doing, was milling around the outside of the base, looking up and taking pictures. Frankly, I got a better view from a bit further back, on the boat, while we docked and waited for people to get off at the island/get on the boat.
Ellis Island was cool. You can tell that they put a lot of work into rehabbing the building-- it looks really good for being like 125 years old. Initially, I was going to try to make an appointment to look up family records-- you have to do that ahead of time-- since my mom's great-grandfather's family came over from Norway in the 1870s, and came through New York before heading out to Chicago (how things come full circle, no?). But, apparently Ellis Island wasn't a thing until 1892, so my family would have actually come through a port in lower Manhattan (now the site of Battery Park). And anyway, any records that may have existed, probably got burned up. Apparently, a couple years after the *first*, wooden Ellis Island building opened, the whole thing went up in flames, taking most of the immigration records going back to the 1850s with it. Alas. And on my dad's side-- hell, we have been in this country for freaking generations. We are about as old as the country itself. For example, one branch of the family tree apparently owned a plantation in Maryland, and a few years after Americans were like, "England? Eh, not so much," sold the land to the Federal Government to create what is now the Naval Academy at Annapolis. In conclusion: no, no we did not come through Ellis Island. Also, I feel like the fact that part of my family like sold/gave the government the land to create a military academy, should entitle me to some kind of tax break. One can dream...
Ellis Island is basically a museum inside the old port-of-call and inspection rooms. It chronicles the peopling of North America/ the United States from about the 1500s until the 1920s. It was actually quite interesting, and I always enjoy looking at old photos of people, and hearing/seeing first person accounts from the past. But then I am a history nerd. The one thing that miffed me about the earlier section (immigration from 1500 until 1892), was that the exhibit seemed like it was trying too hard to be "fair and balanced" in regards to specifically the plight of the Indians/Native Americans, to the point that it was borderline (dare I say it?) anti-American. I am not stupid or naive enough to think the founding of America was all sunshine and roses, but the adjectives/tones used in regards to actions taken by settlers/the U.S. government, versus that taken with regards to Indian raids and wars, were much more negative or condemning. I am for telling history like it is, and as fashionable as the "oh the horrible settlers/the poor indians" mindset is these days, I don't think taking "sides" is good history study. Both had a lot of good, and a lot of not-so-good, on each side. The history and motivations of settlement versus native rights is complex, and I personally think it is not an issue of one being more or less "right" or "good" than the other. If you are going to tell history, tell it straight. Tell the good and the bad for both, but don't try to up-play the evils of one, and downplay that of of the other, to score some kind of political points. At least as much as possible. Ok. Rant over.
The most interesting section of the museum-- at least for me-- was the stuff detailing immigration from 1892 until the mid-1920s; basically, immigration during the Ellis Island period. It was the coolest because it came at the time when immigration became a much more regulated and regular thing. So there were things like passports, and boat ledgers, and certificates of citizenship or naturalization. It was fascinating to see in the ledgers where people where coming from, but more so when you realize that you are looking at the very writing of real people, taking down the information of real immigrants to this country. I feel like history can get quite rarified and abstracted, so it is really affecting-- at least to me-- when things like this create reminders that behind the stories, and the even the photos, that there were real flesh-and-blood people involved. For the same reason, I thought the room full of old passports showing the pictures and information of people from all over the world, a hundred years ago, was quite amazing. And I learned quite a lot about what groups of people came over, when and why. Like, I always knew that the Irish and Italians were a big group, as well as the Chinese in California. But I had no idea that Sweden was another country from whence a lot of people came over. I mean, I knew the midwest was a mecca for Scandinavians, but I always thought it was kind of an even hodgepodge. Not so. Domination by the Swedes, for sure. Also, side note on the pictures they had of the conditions/tenements recent immigrants lived in, at least in NYC: dude, what a shithole.
So, that was basically my week/weekend. Today I went to work (a little later than usual, since I had been up until 2:30am in the morning finally finishing that brief project. And I felt *so* much more relaxed now that it is off my plate for while. I was handed a document review project for the day (basically, proofing/copy editing of a brief before it goes to a court). It was on one of the first issues I had researched extensively and written up at work, and what do you know, most of what I had written was included in the brief. To be formally submitted as an argument, on behalf of the U.S. Government, in federal court. So, I thought that was pretty cool. Makes me feel like a) if nothing else, I don't suck at this whole "law" thing and b) my writing might actually be halfway decent (which was nice, considering the piece-o-crap my final brief project in school was, and the subsequent (and deserved) shellacking it received from my professor). So, at least I am doing something right.
That's all for this evening. I was thinking of going into some politics/philosophy I had been mulling over the last week, when I wasn't working on the brief. Except that it is again late at night, and I had hoped to get to bed earlier this evening. Goddamn it.
Until next time. Hopefully now that things have calmed down and aren't as pressing, I can *actually* do this blog on a more regular basis. For those of you reading, thank you for your patience. Have a good night.
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