I know you Americans are feeling a bit down at the moment, so here is something that will give you something to feel good about. I have always liked Simon Schama, here he explains about when he first fell in love with USA, and why he still loves it. Its long, but worth it.
Strolling in Manhattan with Kay, the doomed dream girl who fired my love of America
The historian Simon Schama reveals how a teenage fantasy developed into a real and lasting romance
Why should the blues make you feel so happy? This is what I remember asking myself as the student ship MS Aurelia sailed under the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, on its way from New York back to Britain. Maybe it was an American thing, this peculiar mix of loss and desire; the need to get away and the certainty you’d be back. Maybe I, a first-time summer visitor to the United States, was already an American thing?
A few weeks earlier, on a sultry August night, I’d sat in a piano bar in one of the funkier streets in Washington DC, listening to a fat, black bluesman do Muddy Waters and Leadbelly: Mannish Boy, Hoochie Coochie Man. For such a big man his voice was high and sweet, and as he moaned and chuckled and did the little soul gasp, you felt as if all the troubles of the world poured away, along with the sweat beading on his cheeks and dripping onto the keyboard.
In the red-lit shadows, I took pulls at my Lucky Strike, put my mouth to the open-necked beer bottle and fancied that with each drag I was closer to becoming the Hoochie Coochie Man myself.It was September 1964. I was 19. The Beatles had conquered America and America had conquered me. It was not a starry-eyed infatuation and has never been since. New York had been more garish and prematurely decrepit than I’d imagined; bundles of rags laid out on the Vanderbilt Avenue sidewalk would twitch and growl and stick out a grimy hand. The diner coffee was thin **** and the Coney Island hot dogs the worst things I’d ever tried to eat.
American ugliness was not hard to find. I had been yelled at and roughly ushered to the right, white, front end of the Greyhound bus in Virginia. President Lyndon Johnson, for all his embrace of the civil rights movement, had bared his knuckles at the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party for its presumptuous attempt to unseat the racist delegation of that state at the party convention in Atlantic City. And I’d got into shouting matches with buzz-cut students in Georgetown about the ominous powers Congress had given the president to escalate the conflict in Vietnam.
But to say I had found America jolie-laide is to sell the jolie short. There had been moments in my first American summer when I’d been so gripped by a sense of belonging that I thought I’d never go back to my university in the Fens; back to the tweed and the bad eggs of a Cambridge college breakfast.
My great-uncle Joe had made me conceal my meagre assets in my socks (dollar bills in the left; Barclaycard in the right) – a ruse he thought would defeat the uptown muggers whom he imagined prowling the subway cars. In Harlem I’d wandered into an “Abyssinian church and let the warm tide of gospel sound wash over me. I’d gone downtown to the Village to hear beat poetry with my cousin, who seemed to be taking an advanced degree in Joan Baez impersonation.
One Sunday morning, early, I’d emerged from the subway to hear a lone tenor sax player. Through the columns of steam rising from the underground gratings, his notes rose supreme over the honking of the yellow cabs. I crossed the street to thank him with a dollar and was nearly crushed by an oncoming Madison Avenue bus. The driver stuck his head out, red-faced, and yelled about “dumbf*** kids. I didn’t care. When I set the dollar in the jazzman’s sidewalk beret he took one hand from the sax and shook my happy, sophomoric paw. I strutted off down the avenue like a brother.
So I was heavy-hearted when the Aurelia weighed anchor and pointed its prow east across the Atlantic, already homesick for somewhere that wasn’t home. Impervious, the ship sailed on,straight into a gale. The winds and waves got so uppity that walking round the decks was banned; anything that could move was lashed down, including us; so for long hours we were obliged to sit on the floor of the space optimistically designated the “ballroom.
A solid block of jittery Kumbaya-niks, we slid from side to side with the roll of the vessel, the odd splinter from the neglected parquet piercing the derrière. When a rogue wave hit the hull side-on, making the plates shiver, a little gasp would go round the room. To mask the anxiety, the mostly American students on their way to a “junior year abroad asked brightly and loudly about getting to the Cavern in Liverpool or Carnaby Street.
But there was one American girl who looked on all this ingenuous eagerness with a wry smile on her face, as if a generation older and wiser. Alison and I became pals. She was tall, blonde and slim and had a line in gentle wisecracks that was as dry as the martini I had yet to sink. Against the elements, she wore a trench coat of exactly the model in which Audrey Hepburn was drenched in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. How could I not take to her? She reminded me a lot of Kay.
Who was a fiction. When I was 13 I’d conjured Kay from thin air while taking solitary walks on Hampstead Heath, where I memorised Cole Porter, crooned to the sparrows and fancied myself a hell of a cocktail-lounge lothario. Kay – her name was chosen in honour of the kind of girl you foundin the pages of Fitzgerald or Updike – was far away from the Carols and Ruths of my real world. She was my muse, my companion in mischief, a blonder Dorothy Parker I didn’t have, and she was designed along the lines of the younger Eva Marie Saint – an über-goy.
She was also – I need hardly add – afflicted with a terrible but mysterious wasting disease, and I knew I was destined to comfort her in her last moments. “Oh Kay, I would sigh in sorrow, attempting aphysical endearment (though I was a bit vague on the details, having only the likes of Doris Day or Shirley MacLaine for guidance). “Okay! she would respond with exciting impatience.
Mostly, in my pubescent mind, we would stroll the swanky avenues of Manhattan, her arm through mine, or exchange stares over tables in dimly lit restaurants while we picked at our meatloaf (a dish I thought made for romance, and just try telling me it isn’t).“Oh Kay, I would sigh again. “Oh for God’s sake, she would respond, becoming ever more thrilling as the wasting took its toll. Sometimes we would be the last couple on the postage-stamp dancefloor, barely moving as Sam or Hank or Frank played Blue Moon.
This fantasy would take me across the heath and down through Golders Hill Park and back to the semi, where the grim prospect of Mr Wellbourn’s Latin homework awaited. Amo, amas, bloody amat.This was my first America: a scrapbook of fantasies taken from movies and reading. And I would attempt a downbeat version of Benny Goodman’s Moonglow and even China Boy on my Boosey & Hawkes clarinet in the bedroom.
“You should have bought him the flute, Arthur, my mother would complain, as she attacked the fried fish.
But there were real Americans in my family, as there were for many London Jews: the “mishpocha, orthe family who’d had the gumption to make the trip from Tilbury to Liverpool and onwards to the golden sanctuary over the ocean. My maternal grandfather, Mark Steinberg, the butcher, was the only one of his brothers who’d had enough of wandering and settled for Stepney, east London. Ever after, he was thought of among the American Steinbergs as a melancholy defeatist – for what else could explain his decision?
The other brothers and their children made go-getting businesses and homes, their children moving out from Brooklyn to Dayton, Ohio, and St Louis, Missouri, and even farther afield. Every so often some of them would visit; and to my sister and me they were glossy with glamour – the aunts fragrant with fancy perfume, the men tall and good-natured.
Photos of handsome cousin Eliot in his GI uniform were set on the dining-room sideboard; handsome cousin Charlie came in a limo and whisked me off to the Ritz for tea. In return the 11-year-old Simon marched him around Westminster Abbey tombs till he begged for mercy.
This America, then, was the lodestar: strong, good looking and inexhaustibly rich.
So it was a shock to find, in that first eight-week trip of 1964, the gutted ruin of that romance. It wasn’t just that the president who had beguiled the world into loving the United States had been murdered, but the cities were burning and racist monsters were bludgeoning civil rights workers to death or water-cannoning demonstrators. And yet this too made my pulse race and want to be right in the thick of it: when the Aurelia steamed out of New York harbour a piece of me stayed behind.
Of course, over the years, I went back a lot, and not just to New York. When a university asked me to give a lecture or seminar, I got myself to Charleston, South Carolina; Athens, Georgia; or Charlottesville, Virginia.
So began a more enduringAmerican romance: that of intellectual freedom. A term at Harvard in the late 1970s introduced me to the exciting and undonnish possibility that one might, at an American university, actually teach one’s enthusiasms rather than the immemorial prescription of the Oxbridge schools or tripos. So I did, and the delight was impossible to shake off. A term turned into 13 years.
In Boston I came down with a permanent case of baseball. My wife (a California cattle rancher’s daughter and geneticist) and I lived in a condo beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House, and then out in Lexington, where the British-American empire had begun its ignominious collapse. Picket fences and clapboard not being our style, we settled for a modernist confection of glass and breeze block, a beautiful place for two children to come home to, and for a welsh springer to roam the woods for nonexistent pheasant.
At Harvard I perched in the Centre for European Studies, a merry, freeform commune of historians and political scientists lodged in a two-storey timber-frame house. Around one corner was the cook Julia Child; around the other, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith – appetite and Keynesian economics being the two poles of our order.
Excitable Italian Marxists chain-smoked their way through liberation sociology; Germans would visit and pronounce on the fate of the late industrial economy. Up the street a supermarket stockedfrozen rattlesnake and lion, though in the kitchen we poached salmon trout for our Christmas party and danced till we dropped.
Just as my own intellectual curiosity was opening up, America’s was closing down. The first election I watched first-hand was the Reagan landslide of 1980. In came conservative triumphalism and the decades of hard, cocky glitter. In Boston and New York I hunkered down in the opposition culture. Now all that’s over, the Reagan smirk frozen like the disbelieving faces of men watching the Wall Street ticker trash their fortunes.
It’s back to the future now; back to the wild ride between desperate hope and sickening dismay that we felt in the 1970s when gunship America fell from the sky, cities disintegrated and the identity of the country was up for grabs.
But not mine. I’m an Anglo-American, someone not cursed with divided allegiance but blessed with a double portion. Columbia University is my intellectual home; New York my beat; yet I’ll never trade in my British passport for the US version.
And when the time comes I want the defunct Schama (all of what’s left of him, not a bag of ash) tipped over a London bridge and pointed towards the estuary where I first saw the great river meet the sea.
Maybe, though, I ought to have my heart cut in two, so that one half, at least, can stick around in Manhattan, where, on a Sunday morning some place, there’s a man on the sidewalk getting some deep soul out of a moody sax.
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
"We are never so happy, never so unhappy, as we imagine"
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Are you Irish going a bit soft in your old age gally? Very poetic, i like it 
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
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wildhorses
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Thanks galbally. This is a real nice post.
I have heard this from people who live in our country for awhile....that America becomes a home away from home.
And I can relate to how he experienced the sax music. We have street musicians in San Francisco too. Sometimes a lone sax player or guitar player blends into the environment....but sometimes it almost seems that all the people and streetcars are moving in unison to the music.
The other thing that I can relate to is the description of city "life". How poverty and plenty exist within inches of each other. How microcosms of life exist so very close to each other....and yet do not touch each other.
I have heard this from people who live in our country for awhile....that America becomes a home away from home.
And I can relate to how he experienced the sax music. We have street musicians in San Francisco too. Sometimes a lone sax player or guitar player blends into the environment....but sometimes it almost seems that all the people and streetcars are moving in unison to the music.
The other thing that I can relate to is the description of city "life". How poverty and plenty exist within inches of each other. How microcosms of life exist so very close to each other....and yet do not touch each other.
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
wildhorses;1027683 wrote: Thanks galbally. This is a real nice post.
I have heard this from people who live in our country for awhile....that America becomes a home away from home.
And I can relate to how he experienced the sax music. We have street musicians in San Francisco too. Sometimes a lone sax player or guitar player blends into the environment....but sometimes it almost seems that all the people and streetcars are moving in unison to the music.
The other thing that I can relate to is the description of city "life". How poverty and plenty exist within inches of each other. How microcosms of life exist so very close to each other....and yet do not touch each other.
Have you ever been to Britain??? We got some lovely quaint little Islands..Hayling Island, The Isle of Wight, The Scilly Isles, The Isle of Man and a lovely little Island in the English Sea called Ireland.
Have you ever been to London?? We have street musicians but we call them buskers. Some are so good. You' love it in London and especially my home town, Brighton on the South Coast.
I have heard this from people who live in our country for awhile....that America becomes a home away from home.
And I can relate to how he experienced the sax music. We have street musicians in San Francisco too. Sometimes a lone sax player or guitar player blends into the environment....but sometimes it almost seems that all the people and streetcars are moving in unison to the music.
The other thing that I can relate to is the description of city "life". How poverty and plenty exist within inches of each other. How microcosms of life exist so very close to each other....and yet do not touch each other.
Have you ever been to Britain??? We got some lovely quaint little Islands..Hayling Island, The Isle of Wight, The Scilly Isles, The Isle of Man and a lovely little Island in the English Sea called Ireland.
Have you ever been to London?? We have street musicians but we call them buskers. Some are so good. You' love it in London and especially my home town, Brighton on the South Coast.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
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wildhorses
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
oscar;1027865 wrote: Have you ever been to Britain??? We got some lovely quaint little Islands..Hayling Island, The Isle of Wight, The Scilly Isles, The Isle of Man and a lovely little Island in the English Sea called Ireland.
Have you ever been to London?? We have street musicians but we call them buskers. Some are so good. You' love it in London and especially my home town, Brighton on the South Coast.
I have never been to Britain. I have never had the time to travel. But soon I will retire and I will then have time. Quaint little islands sound very tempting to me. And I would love to see London someday. I would also like to visit Ireland as my ancestors were Irish. I hope to someday have the chance to get over to your neck of the woods. I really like street musicians....their music highlights the "rhythm" of the city.
Have you ever been to London?? We have street musicians but we call them buskers. Some are so good. You' love it in London and especially my home town, Brighton on the South Coast.
I have never been to Britain. I have never had the time to travel. But soon I will retire and I will then have time. Quaint little islands sound very tempting to me. And I would love to see London someday. I would also like to visit Ireland as my ancestors were Irish. I hope to someday have the chance to get over to your neck of the woods. I really like street musicians....their music highlights the "rhythm" of the city.
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
wildhorses;1027872 wrote: I have never been to Britain. I have never had the time to travel. But soon I will retire and I will then have time. Quaint little islands sound very tempting to me. And I would love to see London someday. I would also like to visit Ireland as my ancestors were Irish. I hope to someday have the chance to get over to your neck of the woods. I really like street musicians....their music highlights the "rhythm" of the city.
I've been to New York on Business, and went to Ground Zero two yrs ago, that was eerie.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
I've been to New York on Business, and went to Ground Zero two yrs ago, that was eerie.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
oscar;1027878 wrote: I've been to New York on Business, and went to Ground Zero two yrs ago, that was eerie.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
I heard you Oscar, just remember, Ireland belongs to us, and don't you forget it. We also of course lay claim to Scotland, the nice looking bit of Wales, Cumbria, and the West Country, you can keep the rest of it. Ha ha! :-6
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
I heard you Oscar, just remember, Ireland belongs to us, and don't you forget it. We also of course lay claim to Scotland, the nice looking bit of Wales, Cumbria, and the West Country, you can keep the rest of it. Ha ha! :-6
"We are never so happy, never so unhappy, as we imagine"
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Galbally;1027905 wrote: I heard you Oscar, just remember, Ireland belongs to us, and don't you forget it. We also of course lay claim to Scotland, the nice looking bit of Wales, Cumbria, and the West Country, you can keep the rest of it. Ha ha! :-6
Damn Dr gallbladder. I thought it'd still be dark in Ireland and i could slip that one in to wildhorses quickly before you noticed.
You can have Scotland because it's full of Scottish people and Uncle Gordon has just declared their independence anyway.
You can't have the West Country because that's where i reside at present in my castle. You'll have to get past me first and i'm tall. :p:p
Damn Dr gallbladder. I thought it'd still be dark in Ireland and i could slip that one in to wildhorses quickly before you noticed.
You can have Scotland because it's full of Scottish people and Uncle Gordon has just declared their independence anyway.
You can't have the West Country because that's where i reside at present in my castle. You'll have to get past me first and i'm tall. :p:p
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
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wildhorses
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
oscar;1027878 wrote: I've been to New York on Business, and went to Ground Zero two yrs ago, that was eerie.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
I love old buildings. I like to imagine all the people who have lived there since it was built. How life must have been when it was first built. Of course here in San Francisco we don't have old buildings like you have there. Well we have newer old buildings....but not really old buildings. I would love to see historic old buildings in London....that would be so great. The old colonial buildings in the South USA are very majestic.
LOL....whoever the next president is....he can't possibly be as dumb as the one we have now.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
I love old buildings. I like to imagine all the people who have lived there since it was built. How life must have been when it was first built. Of course here in San Francisco we don't have old buildings like you have there. Well we have newer old buildings....but not really old buildings. I would love to see historic old buildings in London....that would be so great. The old colonial buildings in the South USA are very majestic.
LOL....whoever the next president is....he can't possibly be as dumb as the one we have now.
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
JAB;1028283 wrote: I've been to all the places you've mentioned here Oscar and a varied selection you've chosen. Each place is so very different from the next and you'll truly see the melting pot that is our good ole USA.
I've had the opportunity to visit London, Bath and Cardiff Wales. Would love to go back again someday.
I live 20 mins drive from Bath ... God, i love the shops. I'm an hour and half drive from cardiff and i commute to London alot.
I don't know what it is, i just want to run through a cotton field with no pants on but Mr Oscar is sure it's a felony out there so i have to be careful :wah:
I found the New yorkers absolutely lovely people, not like you read in the press.
I'd love to go to San fran but i hear there's a thing there with fog, is that right?
I've had the opportunity to visit London, Bath and Cardiff Wales. Would love to go back again someday.
I live 20 mins drive from Bath ... God, i love the shops. I'm an hour and half drive from cardiff and i commute to London alot.
I don't know what it is, i just want to run through a cotton field with no pants on but Mr Oscar is sure it's a felony out there so i have to be careful :wah:
I found the New yorkers absolutely lovely people, not like you read in the press.
I'd love to go to San fran but i hear there's a thing there with fog, is that right?
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
JAB;1028787 wrote: It's only a felony of you get caught! :p
I love San Fran because it's on the water, it's got rolling hills, excellent seafood and yes, the fog. I've been there 3 times tho and it never stopped me from doing anything I was of a mind to do.
Those hills in San fran would kill me if i had to walk anywhere. I'd love to go on one of those tram cars though, great fun.
Anything on the water is bliss to me. I love quey side fish bars with fresh shell fish.
I also want to go to New Orleans before i die...all that jazz and blue's music...heaven
Also i want to go on a paddle steamer uo the Mississippi... Awesome :-6:-6
I love San Fran because it's on the water, it's got rolling hills, excellent seafood and yes, the fog. I've been there 3 times tho and it never stopped me from doing anything I was of a mind to do.
Those hills in San fran would kill me if i had to walk anywhere. I'd love to go on one of those tram cars though, great fun.
Anything on the water is bliss to me. I love quey side fish bars with fresh shell fish.
I also want to go to New Orleans before i die...all that jazz and blue's music...heaven
Also i want to go on a paddle steamer uo the Mississippi... Awesome :-6:-6
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
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wildhorses
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
oscar;1028785 wrote: I live 20 mins drive from Bath ... God, i love the shops. I'm an hour and half drive from cardiff and i commute to London alot.
I don't know what it is, i just want to run through a cotton field with no pants on but Mr Oscar is sure it's a felony out there so i have to be careful :wah:
I found the New yorkers absolutely lovely people, not like you read in the press.
I'd love to go to San fran but i hear there's a thing there with fog, is that right?
Oh...plenty of fog. Usually in the morning and evening. It's our natural air conditioner. During the summer if the day is hot...it is so nice when the cool crisp fog rolls in. If the fog does not come in then it is humid and very uncomfortable.
I don't know what it is, i just want to run through a cotton field with no pants on but Mr Oscar is sure it's a felony out there so i have to be careful :wah:
I found the New yorkers absolutely lovely people, not like you read in the press.
I'd love to go to San fran but i hear there's a thing there with fog, is that right?
Oh...plenty of fog. Usually in the morning and evening. It's our natural air conditioner. During the summer if the day is hot...it is so nice when the cool crisp fog rolls in. If the fog does not come in then it is humid and very uncomfortable.
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Oh I am definitely going to take a year in the States when I finish my doctorate, its such a large and wonderfully varied place, (while still having a single language and culture) that I think you would need a decent amount of time over there to really experience it. Obviously I'd like to see places like New York, and San Franciso etc. I have rellies in Missouri and also in Upstate New York. I think I would like to spend some time in the SouthWest as we don't have any environment similar here in Europe (Southern Spain would be the closest), and I'd generally just like to perhaps do some research over there, hire a car and drive around the place, very appealing. :-6
"We are never so happy, never so unhappy, as we imagine"
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
Le Rochefoucauld.
"A smack in the face settles all arguments, then you can move on kid."
My dad 1986.
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Galbally;1028856 wrote: Oh I am definitely going to take a year in the States when I finish my doctorate, its such a large and wonderfully varied place, (while still having a single language and culture) that I think you would need a decent amount of time over there to really experience it. Obviously I'd like to see places like New York, and San Franciso etc. I have rellies in Missouri and also in Upstate New York. I think I would like to spend some time in the SouthWest as we don't have any environment similar here in Europe (Southern Spain would be the closest), and I'd generally just like to perhaps do some research over there, hire a car and drive around the place, very appealing. :-6
cool! :-6
now if we can just convince Spot and GMC to visit too....:sneaky:
cool! :-6
now if we can just convince Spot and GMC to visit too....:sneaky:
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A British Historian's Ode to the USA
Galbally;1028856 wrote: Oh I am definitely going to take a year in the States when I finish my doctorate, its such a large and wonderfully varied place, (while still having a single language and culture) that I think you would need a decent amount of time over there to really experience it. Obviously I'd like to see places like New York, and San Franciso etc. I have rellies in Missouri and also in Upstate New York. I think I would like to spend some time in the SouthWest as we don't have any environment similar here in Europe (Southern Spain would be the closest), and I'd generally just like to perhaps do some research over there, hire a car and drive around the place, very appealing. :-6
Can i come with you gally boy?? I promise not to wind you up :sneaky::sneaky:
Can i come with you gally boy?? I promise not to wind you up :sneaky::sneaky:
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. R.L. Binyon
A British Historian's Ode to the USA
oscar;1027878 wrote: I've been to New York on Business, and went to Ground Zero two yrs ago, that was eerie.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
Ohio is usually split fairly evenly but has voted Republican the last two elections...
But in any case you're always welcome to stay here at my cabin resort on Lake St. Mary...It's a nice little lake and at one time was the largest man(Hand dug for I believe something like $0.30 a day and a "jigger" of whiskey) made lake in the world...
But if you have an obsession with Georgia one thing you absolutely cannot do when in Georgia is not try the food...Some of the best food I've ever had...Beef roasts just melt in your mouth...
In any case, I hope you have a great time when next you come back.
The one place i really want to go to and hope to have the funds next year, is Georgia USA. I fell in love with the backdrop of the film 'Color Purple' and then got some books on Georgia from the library. Savannah is appealing to me, all those colonial buildings, Wonderful stuff.
I'd love to go to Alaska as well. It's the place hubby wants to go for salmon fishing.
My parents friends from the war, they're family are in Ohio so we hope to go there again but not if you vote another Dumb President in again :wah::wah:
London is very historic. Ireland is beautiful, very beautiful and un-spoilt but don't tell that Irish twerp galbally i said that, he won't let me forget it.
Ohio is usually split fairly evenly but has voted Republican the last two elections...
But in any case you're always welcome to stay here at my cabin resort on Lake St. Mary...It's a nice little lake and at one time was the largest man(Hand dug for I believe something like $0.30 a day and a "jigger" of whiskey) made lake in the world...
But if you have an obsession with Georgia one thing you absolutely cannot do when in Georgia is not try the food...Some of the best food I've ever had...Beef roasts just melt in your mouth...
In any case, I hope you have a great time when next you come back.