I did a “touristy thing” this past week in New York City. I had pre-purchased ferry tickets, it was a timed entry, and took my friend to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island, now known as Liberty Island. I went for book research. To be honest, I wanted to go. Who doesn’t want to brush shoulders with an icon? Once on the ferry dragging my carry-on luggage, I noticed my friend and I were one of the few white people on the ferry. These families from all different backgrounds were doing a “touristy” thing, too. Masked, of course. I thought to myself, why does doing something “touristy” have a bad connotation. Is it the crowds that white people avoid? I really do think it is outside the bounds of white culture do participate with “the people.” I love touristy things. I do them all the time. I think everyone else is missing out. The tourist places are usually important. They are important to who we are as Americans or wherever you are in the world, they are generally demarcated with brown signs. I recently found out that they are called “Tourist” signs and the brown color is international. They mark our National Parks, our historical places, rest stops, and picnic areas. 

I had wanted to get onto the island for years ever since I saw Lady Liberty for the first time in 2013. I remember seeing her in the distance trying to make out the iconic torch from Astoria, Queens. You can’t see much of her from Astoria, more like a spec of darkness among the Hudson. Though I was fascinated with her from the start, I knew she was special even at a distance. Deep down, I knew the Statue of Liberty was something I shared with my family lineage, even though my own queerness has created somewhat of slot canyon to my past, me sliding through time with unsaid family expectations making my pathway quite narrow. I do not have many deep relationships with my blood relatives, though I am from quite a large Catholic family. It seems being queer, you distance yourself from your lineage in a strange way (or they distance themselves) and then you add additional pain, myths, and classic white silence. You end up with surface level familial connections. I have realized that this is not that unique. Yet, through my most recent work on Ancestry.comI have been able to piece together some of the true stories of my past on my own. I knew my distant family and I had a connection through her, which is more than the connection I have with my living blood relatives. I think I have been desperate to know who saw her and went through Ellis Island. We share Lady Liberty together. And I now know that my third great grandfather Pierre Panchot came through Ellis Island, as he went on to marry his bride in Buffalo, NY en route to Saint Genevieve, Missouri. Or it might have been Martin Roach from Ireland who fought for the Union in Virginia in the Civil War. Or maybe it was my other third great grandfather Felix M Hogenmiller from Baden, Germany. I really like the name Felix. If I had ever had a cat, I think I would name it Felix. 

As I took the ferry towards Ellis Island, I was reminded that landscape can be a verb. As we were moving on the Hudson and Manhattan shrunk, the pencil skyscrapers piercing holes in the sky like pins popping balloons. It was the first time that Lady Liberty took over my entire field of vision. She was not a distant past anymore; she was my present. And it was in that moment, it finally struck me that she was much more than an icon, she was a sculpture, she was a process, and she was a landscape in herself. 

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the tenacious artist behind the sculpture was quite a visionary. Over the years of campaigning both in France and in the United States, the questions of gifting, democracy, and freedom were played out in the newspapers. Who is liberty for - they asked? We live in a current context when monuments (mainly confederate monuments) are being toppled for good reasons as symbols of racism, oppression and a specific kind of white freedom. This sculpture of the feminine represents an aspiration. A hope that we are supposedly all responsible for cultivating. She is much more confident and dominate than I ever thought. She is a leader. I felt compelled to follow, maybe for the first time. As I thought about my ancestors, mainly Monsieur Panchot from the borders of Northern France and Germany, most likely a farmer who left his land. What did he give up to come here? What did he gain by risking everything that he had? More than ever before, I felt my privilege to be an American citizen and it sunk in like an anchor. What are we doing with this privileged freedom? The lofty promise of freedom for all humans seems to be weighing at her cloak. Is she just an icon to be manufactured into souvenirs like Jesus on the crucifix at The Vatican? The gift shop was your typical overwhelming American kitsch. What do these symbols mean if we do not live the meaning? Regardless, with my “freedom” or not, Lady Liberty continues to lift her foot slightly off ground inching forward with caution and optimism, torch raised. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregorymeander.substack.com