Yesterday I finally took myself out of the running to become the last person in the greater metropolitan area to visit the High Line, the terrific elevated urban park built on the elevated rail bed that runs through Chelsea on Manhattan’s far west side. I will now add my puny voice to the great chorus singing the park’s praise–it’s terrific! Fun, stimulating, perspetive-shaking–I can’t wait to go back.

Almost as though we were living a double feature of A Day at the Races and Horsefeathers (minus the Marx Brothers and the mayhem), we followed an afternoon at Keeneland with some exciting SEC pigskin action at Commonwealth Stadium, where were saw the visiting Mississippi State Bulldogs take on the Kentucky Wildcats. Both teams cam in at 3-4, but there was no doubt that State was superior on both sides of the ball. Kentucky’s quarterback Morgan Newton seemed to have no arm at all, and the line wasn’t doing much of a job opening holes for Kentucky’s serviceable runner CoShik Williams. Kentucky’s chances perked up in the second period, when Newton suffered an ankle injury and was replaced by freshman QB Maxwell Smith. He did much better, completing 26 of 33 passes and for 177 yards, and leading the team on a couple of strong drives. The game, of course, was irrelevant; what was fun was being in the rah-rah atmosphere, and seeing the bright lights, the marching band, the cheerleaders with the flaming batons, the dance team, and some pretty spectacular flag work by the Mississippi State spirit squad. (Top: Field goal, Kentucky! Above: Marching Band! Fiery Batons! Left: When in Lexington, Molly and I do as the Wildcats do. Below: Bulldog flag-wavers sure can spell.)

Molly and I went to Lexington this weekend to visit Cara, who seems to be doing brilliantly well at the midpoint of her first semester of her freshman year at the University of Kentucky. She’s working hard, fitting in, getting good grades, making friends and getting involved. I’m very happy for her, and pretty damned impressed (though not surprised.)

On a beautiful, sunstruck autumn Saturday afternoon, she took us to the famous Keeneland racetrack, which is a beautiful facility and a great place to watch horse races. Cara’s equine studies are turning her into a pretty good handicapper: out of the five races that we bet on, she picked four winners, and had she not succumbed to a fateful last second change of mind, would have run the slate. Ah, the benefits of a higher education! (Top, the pre-race parade in the paddock. Above, the scenes outside the track. Below, the Handicapper; my railbirds.)

In a happy coincidence, a visit to my sister Rose last week took place on the same day that my cousin Marge and her husband Bob were having a dinner party, and they invited me to join the party. It was a lot of fun, with a lively conversation centering on czarnina and Bob’s squirrel training program, plus I had the agreeable distinction, for the first time in years, of being the youngest person in the room! From Left to right, my cousin Dot, Dave Powell (husband of my cousin Chris), Marge, me, Rose, and Chris.

Our house, about three hours after rainfall from Hurricane Irene ceased. Photo courtesy of Nadia Lindstrom.

On Wednesday, Ginny and I and Cara headed out for the University of Kentucky in Lexington, where Cara will soon begin her freshman year. Thinking to combine some tourism with one of the last acts of basic parenthood (everything after this gets placed in the supplemental category), we headed first for Cleveland, where we saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (left), which sits inside a dazzling I.M. Pei pyramid on the shores of Lake Erie, which, as just as the advance word promised, is indeed a Great Lake. We stayed in a Crowne Plaza Hotel with bad room service, and then hit the Hall on Thursday. It was pretty cool, although it wa bit disconcerting to see one’s youth in a musem. The effect that is produced is not the warmth of nostalgia, nor the intellectual stimulation that is produced by going to, say, the Met. It’s kind of cool, but kind of dull. The best moment was seeing a montage of British Invasion groups, and being reminded how very cool the Kinks and the Zombies and the Animals really were. It was amazing how well Eric Burden could shake his hair and his ass simultaneously, but of course one now sees that lhe indeed loked like the spastic madman his critics said he did.

After lunch it was south on a very straight and boring I-75 (highlight: a huge billboard in a cornfield says Hell Is Real), through Cincinnati, and then onto Lexington. On Friday we moved Cara moved into her room, a process hectic enough to inspire a couple of stories that will be top of the line private stock family stories. After she settled in, we went back and spent the night in a very nice Hyatt. The next day, we visited Ashland, the home of the Great Compromiser Henry Clay, and then attended a couple of information sessions with Cara before sharing a pretty bland meal at an Italian restaurant (this is why Tony Soprano was neve drawn to the witness protection program), before taking our leave, and driving back up to Columbus, where we spent the night in an excellent Westin, of whose quality we were not worthy. (Top right, a new Wildcat in her lair; bottom right, Clay’s pile; Top left, Cincinnati, Thursday, 4:55 PM; bottom left, Columbus, Sunday, 8:30 AM.)

On Sunday, we drove from Columbus to Canton, which turns out to be far from everything, to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (If you wonder why the Hall of Fame is in Canton, it’s because football had it’s roots in Canton specifically and Ohio generally. But football soon left Canton for the bright lights of the big cities, and it’s no mystery why.) I liked the museum–it had some pretty cool Baltimore Colts stuff, including the Marching Band’s drum and Tom Matte‘s famous play-inscribed arm bands–but a lot of it was kind of static. They really could do a lot more. The best part was the collection of amazing films. And then it was eight hours back through Pennsylvania, and home. Happy to be back, but already missing Cara.

Fifty years ago (fifty years ago tomorrow, to be precise), my mom and dad drove my brother and me from our home in Baltimore MD to Culpepper County, Virginia, about sixty miles away, for a centennial reenactment of the first Battle of Bull Run, which took place 150 years ago today. About 2000 reenactors restaged the first great battle of the war for about 70,000 spectators. It was an awfully hot day, about 100 degrees, and my dad declined to pay $4 each for grandstand seating, preferring to maneuver for a slice of shade. Northern newspapers criticized the event: “90 minutes of profuse feigned violence in scorching heat”, ludicrous restaging”, “a grisly pantomine” and a general chiding for staging such pageants while the scars of the war remained unhealed and great issues remained before the nation. True, true, very true. Nonetheless, we loved it!

My dad, Clem Malanowski, took these pictures. I believe his ambitions exceeded his equipment and his skill, but I like some of these shots quite a bit: the troop in the top photo, with the unfurled Stars and Bars and their gallant brigadier with his sword and the lovely crinolined ladies on the right (God, think of the sweat!); my brother Matt and me (wearing a Confederate cavalry hat with the left brim dashingly upturned, plus a canteen on a strap), posing with a Yankee reenactor; the spectators, who even from the back look all abuzz (the men’s straw hat industry has been clobbered by the universal appeal of the baseball cap); a rebel artilleryman, ramrodding something into the barrel of his Parrot gun; and the rather bulky statue of General Thomas Jackson, standing like a stone wall at the battle where he earned his name, in a cape that he doubtless did not wear during the battle 150 years ago today.

People may not realize, but many institutions and groups made special efforts to mark the centennial, not the least of which was Life magazine, which, with its visual eclat and dexterity, was still at its peak as an American institution. Life published a six part history of the war, the highlights of which were a series of fourteen full-page or double=page paintings of battles, which to my eight year-old mind, were some of the most stunning images I had ever seen. For the first Battle of Bull Run, the editors chose Stanley Meltzoff, an artist known primarily for his painting of fish and sport fishing. Meltzoff decided to depict the scene where a stampeded Union army ran into the gaggle of spectators who had come down to watch the splendid battle, resulting in clogged chaos on the Warrenton Turnpike. Meltzoff brilliantly assembled in one scene a group of individuals who in all likelihood did not run into one another, and created a thought-provoking, emotionally moving painting. From left, by the cannon: Alfred Waud, the noted Civil War artist, works at his sketch pad; a vivandiere mourns a dead soldier, while behind her another stands with a pistol, just to the right of William Howard Russell, the famous war correspondent of the London Times, looking through binoculars; at center, photographer Matthew Brady, in a white duster, who has lost his camera but found a sword, walks between two Zouaves; a drunken officer, reported to have been wearing two hats, is above a despondent young picnicker; at right, in the carrriage, Judge Daniel McCook, transporting the body of his son Charles, an 18 year-old private in an Ohio regiment. The 63 year-old judge had ridden with several congressmen to join the fight; by happenstance he met up Charles, who met his death later that day. here shown .

Marly Rose Carroll, whom we have literally known her entire life, was married last evening to D.J. Johnson, on the verdant grounds of the Crabtree Kittle House in Mount Kisco. The bride was beautiful, the groom was handsome, the setting was lovely, the weather was perfect, the food was delicious. Parents beamed, friends applauded, guests ate and danced and ate and danced, tears appeared, were outdone by cheers, and another boat, built by love, was launched upon the seas of life with a fair wind of good wishes filling its sails. Congratulations and good luck, Marly and DJ!

Girls with coconuts on a 90 degree day.