{"id":899,"date":"2013-08-29T15:19:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T19:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2013-08-29T15:19:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T19:19:56","slug":"899","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=899","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"approaching<\/a><\/p>\n

It took eight months and tens of millions of dollars to patch up hurricane damage at Liberty Island just enough to allow the return of visitors.<\/p>\n

My Mom and I took a boat to see Lady Liberty Wednesday afternoon. For both of us, it was our first visit to the Lady\u2019s 14-acre home in Upper New York Bay. Significant work to the island\u2019s infrastructure continues (and is evident by the scores of noisy work crews) but the flow of tourists to the site resumed on 7-4-13.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never been, I\u2019d recommend it. Big boats at Battery Park leave one right after another and drop you off at the island. Tickets for the boat are $17 and the ride lasts about 20 minutes. Once on the grounds of Liberty Island, you\u2019re allowed to wander and linger as long as you want before making the return trip. It was overcast and rainy while we were there but the views of the city are exceptional – especially from the narrow viewing deck on the statute\u2019s pedestal. One\u2019s ferry ticket allows access to everything on the Island but the Lady\u2019s crown which is a separate, hard-to-obtain reservation.<\/p>\n

The other highlight of my Mom\u2019s near-annual trip to the big city was Tuesday night\u2019s show on Broadway. We saw \u201cA Trip to Bountiful,\u201d starring Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Williams and Tom Wopat. It was really good.<\/p>\n

Tyson recently won the best actress Tony for her effort in this production. According to the personable, theatre-loving balcony usher named Linda we spoke to during the play\u2019s intermission, Tyson has not yet missed a single performance since Bountiful opened in late April. That\u2019s pretty incredible when you consider Tyson is said to be 88-years-old and is on stage for the duration of the show. The curtain goes up and down on seven performances a week (twice on Saturday and dark on Monday).<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t know it at the time, but the night we were there was Gooding Jr.\u2019s last appearance in Bountiful before it shuts down on 10-9-13. Gooding is leaving for a movie role so we were fortunate to see him before he bolted. Despite all of the play\u2019s star power, it is a first-timer on Broadway who seemed to have really captured the imagination of the crowd. Adepero Oduye plays a bus rider who meets Tyson\u2019s character by chance. Their interaction on a bus ride through rural Texas develops the story better than any other sequence. It\u2019s because of Oduye\u2019s convincing effort at showing earnest concern for an older lady on an adventure that you get pulled into the play.<\/p>\n

When it\u2019s all over, Tyson gets a much-deserved rousing standing ovation but it\u2019s Oduye who seemed to get the biggest shrieks of support.<\/p>\n

Bountiful is staged at what\u2019s now called the Sondheim Theatre on 43rd Street. It has a listed capacity of 1055. There were maybe 250 empty seats the night we were there. Linda (our usher) told us that she\u2019s witnessed several prominent celebrities during Bountiful\u2019s run including Michelle Obama (with Sasha and Malia in tow), Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Cruise.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a><\/p>\n

Other highlights of my Mom\u2019s two-day visit to NYC:<\/p>\n

-Just before entering the 74th and Rosie subway station early Wednesday morning, we were greeted by former New York state governor Eliot Spitzer who is making a run for NYC Comptroller.<\/p>\n

-We attended mass at newly-renovated St. Brigid\u2019s church on Avenue B. Dating to 1848, Brigid\u2019s was nearly demolished under the direction of former NY archbishop and current Cardinal Edward Egan. Powerful community resistance and a wealthy anonymous donor saved the church and it was quite the sight to see. It is situated directly across the street from Tompkins Square Park.<\/p>\n

-We ate well. Pie at Four and Twenty Blackbirds (a slice of plum cherry and a slice of the blueberry\/nectarine crumble), dinner pasta and hearty house merlot at Bianca on Bleeker and the chicken biscuits at Pies and Thighs in Williamsburg. At one point during Tuesday\u2019s lunch at Pies and Thighs, the sound system played Alex Bleeker\u2019s \u201cGetting By.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visit concluded after watching the TV broadcast of the Venus loss to Zheng in a thriller. My Mom flew back to Chicago this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took eight months and tens of millions of dollars to patch up hurricane damage at Liberty Island just enough to allow the return of visitors. My Mom and I took a boat to see Lady Liberty Wednesday afternoon. For … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-899","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}