Show by BEATRICE WHITNEY STRAIGHT guest conductor tor for L L stevenson I 1 love new york tor for its beauty chate I 1 hate it for or its brutality unlike many new yorkers I 1 dont think of it as a grand and elci exciting ting place to live to me it is a place to come to on a boat through the dawn when skyscrapers loom through the early mist then it Is a cit city y of promise but it is not a place e to linger long it Is a city to taste and be off to leave across a bridge stopping to look back at the resplendent magnitude ol of its skyline listening to catch its rhythmic sub dued roar new york at a distance is wonderful especially at dawn or dusk the shadowy outlines of its buildings dotted by lights that blink oft off and on its rivers with their ferryboats ferry boats and pleasure ships and wharfs and sound and smoke its bridges the most beautiful to in the world swinging so eagerly and so gracefully onto the island approached by a lacework of park ways although born here I 1 do not like most native new yorkers have a composite picture of the city that merges the impressions of various ages I 1 left here when I 1 was 11 and I 1 have a picture of the city in which my childhood was spent later I 1 came back for a year and I 1 have a picture of the city to in which I 1 was a busy and serious young student away again and now back to live outside of the city and I 1 have pictures of a new york to which I 1 dash on hurried visits and tor for rushed appointments usually they are in connection with the theater studio at ridgefield conn where I 1 live and work as assistant director as a teacher of talented young drama students as an actress the most thrilling and to me the most important expert ence of my life this new york offers no leisure hours ours to wander as one pleases new york can become threatens threaten to become a horror until one stumbles upon some wonderful person some funny little shop of a specialist in wigs or costumes or shoes or some of the many things needed tor for stage productions may be a secondhand shop full of marvelous ve ous things hard to tear ones self away from an auction sale a quaint shop in chinatown or on the bowery except on sundays sunday then its a different new york new york on a sunday or a holiday is a city of great dignity of peace calm and beauty one can walk instead of run one can choose what one will do and do it slowly one can enjoy the th moments instead of longing tor for the end in the winter though new york is at its best the lights are brilliant to in the cold the keen air is tresh fresh and clean plays music movement yes the winter is its time 0 0 and the early spring in central park the tulip trees the many nurses and the children the dogs and their tunny funny masters so incongruous foreign old men with their tiny toy boats on the round pond in the park their pride in the beautifully fashioned little ships that collide or pass so gracefully in the light the drive along the hudson river on the edge of the island looking over to the busy jersey shore and the towering palisades is as fantastically lovely as the views from the bridges new york toda today differs from the picture that lingers from my childhood a city that held the magic of flying spears and disappearing ladies at the opera red and yellow whirligigs that whistled in the wind the man who sold the colored balloons the circus roller skating and fighting with my brother i nor is it the new york ot of my student t days I 1 loved gloved the evening stillness of the park I 1 loved the trolleys their slowness peoples laces faces the crooked little streets of 0 greenwich village restaurants a different country each night sitting and talking and relaxing after meals the elevated looking into peoples homes imagining the hundreds of lives bein being lived behind those walls new forkl its beauty makes me almost forget the brutality that tinges my love with hate bell beh syndicate service |