A quick flight from Rochester to NYC.

Third stop of the NYC cemetery tour: Green-Wood

 

Founded in 1838 and now a National Historic Landmark, Green-Wood was one of the first rural cemeteries in America. By the early 1860s, it had earned an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the prestigious place to be buried, attracting 500,000 visitors a year, second only to Niagara Falls as the nation’s greatest tourist attraction. Crowds flocked there to enjoy family outings, carriage rides, and sculpture viewing in the finest of first generation American landscapes. Green-Wood’s popularity helped inspire the creation of public parks, including New York City’s Central and Prospect Parks.

Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents, including Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Civil War generals, baseball legends, politicians, artists, entertainers and inventors.

Stop two on the October cemetery tour is the Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in Brooklyn.

 

From The New York Cemetery project: 

A landscape dotted with rusted metal markers and wooden crosses, Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in Brooklyn is one of the city’s most unique and visually arresting graveyards.  Nestled at the end of Central Avenue in Bushwick and bounded by Evergreen Cemetery and the tracks of the NYC Subway’s L train, the 23-acre cemetery was established in 1851 as a new cemetery for Most Holy Trinity Church, the first German Catholic church in Williamsburg.  

When Most Holy Trinity Cemetery was created, the church resolved that no distinctions were permitted to be made between the rich and the poor, and the rule was established that no stone monuments could be erected. This “democratic equality of the grave” set the graveyard apart from others in the area and the markers created a remarkable visual spectacle.  An 1890 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described it:

The monuments that surmount [the graves] present a curious picture and one that has not a parallel in any other cemetery in the neighborhood of these two cities . . . the monuments are now all of wood, or, especially the later ones, of galvanized iron, dressed in imitation of gray granite.  Nearly all of them have crosses rising above them, but the peculiar feature of nearly every one of them is that it is decorated with highly gilded figures of the crucifix, the winged head of a cherub and lamb.  Some stones contain all of these three figures, some only one.  They sparkle everywhere among the thickly strewn white and gray monuments and give the peculiar aspect to the cemetery that distinguishes it decidedly from all others.

Stop one on my October cemeteries of New York tour is the Naval Cemetery Landscape in Brooklyn, hidden beneath the BQE.

The Brooklyn Naval Hospital Cemetery was active from 1831 to 1910 and was the burial site for more than 2,000 people, most of them officers and enlisted men of the US Navy and Marine Corps. Among those buried were two Congressional Medal of Honor winners, a Fijian Chief and individuals from more than 20 different countries. It is estimated that roughly 10% of all the servicemembers buried at the site were of African descent.

The cemetery has since been turned into a beautiful park, and meditation space.

The World is Sound is an exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art. 

Visitors explore how sound and our sense of hearing shapes our daily lives, our traditions, our history, and all of existence. Organized cyclically—from creation to death to rebirth—the exhibition explores different dimensions of sound and listening and its many functions in Tibetan Buddhism.

Featuring work by more than 20 artists, The World Is Sound juxtaposes new site-specific commissions and works by prominent contemporary sound artists with historical objects from the museum’s collection of Tibetan Buddhist art to encourage reflection on how we listen and to challenge entrenched ways of thinking.

The Rubin Museum of Art is an arts and cultural hub in New York City’s vibrant Chelsea neighborhood that inspires visitors to make connections between contemporary life and the art and ideas of the Himalayas and neighboring regions including India.

Photo by Nick Miller on Unsplash

Today's walk is across the Manhattan Bridge in New York City. 

The Manhattan Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the East River in New York City, connecting Lower Manhattan at Canal Street with Downtown Brooklyn at the Flatbush Avenue Extension. The main span is 1,470 ft (448 m) long, with the suspension cables being 3,224 ft (983 m) long. The bridge's total length is 6,855 ft (2,089 m). The bridge opened to traffic on December 31, 1909. Four subway tracks are located on the lower deck of the bridge. 

 

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

A walk through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge short trail. Jamaica Bay is one of the most significant bird sanctuaries in the Northeastern United States and one of the best places in New York City to observe migrating species.

Read more: 

NYC Audubon Society 

NY Harbor Parks

 

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

A walk through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge birdwatching loop. Jamaica Bay is one of the most significant bird sanctuaries in the Northeastern United States and one of the best places in New York City to observe migrating species.

Read more: 

NYC Audubon Society 

NY Harbor Parks

 

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

The C train is a 19 mile long subway line in New York City. It's been running since 1933. 

Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash

J'ouvert means "dawn" or "daybreak". It's a large street party held during Carnival throughout many Caribbean cultures. Traditionally, the celebration involves calypso/soca bands and their followers dancing through the streets. The festival usually starts well before dawn and peaks a few hours after sunrise. In 2017, in an attempt to curb violence, NYC moved the start time of J'Ouvert to 6am. This is a recording of the first hour of NYC's J'Ouvert. 

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash