GRACE IN A MOMENT

The trains are louder than I remember.
Deafening.
Cover your ears.
The stations are dirty.  I had forgotten.
And they smell of pee–so I am told, having
no sense of smell myself.

And then.  On the train.
A sudden burst of music
Unexpected.
Latin.
Not deafening but just right.
And I remember
My love for this place.

MADISON HOUSE

It’s gone. It was merged with Hamilton House in 1953 and moved to a new location, the old buildings of both settlement houses destroyed as part of urban renewal, their history now  forgotten. So when I went to the current location to see what I could find out about my father’s beloved Madison House, there was not much to be told.  Too long ago.  A history long-buried or entirely lost.

The little I know:  my father, born in 1913, 105 years old last month if he were still living, often talked of his youth at Madison House. I believe he learned about writing and painting and dance and theater there.  And I think there were dances and other social events at the various settlement houses, at one of which he met my mother.

The woman I spoke with at Hamilton-Madison House said that when founded, Madison House was for Jewish men and Hamilton House was for Irish and Italians–probably based on who was in their neighborhoods.  But my father never made it sound like Madison House was a settlement house exclusively for males. So, who knows?  She did say that Madison House had a camp–camp Madison, of which they were quite proud, and a camp song, which was silly, but of which they were quite proud. She also gave me information on an archive on settlement houses located in Minneapolis which might have records, although she felt they probably did not go back that far.  A starting place perhaps, for another time.

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

I walked from the Bowery to the World Trade Center site. Trinity Church was quite affecting–it is located quite close to the site and had fed and let firemen, etc., sleep in its pews while they were working.

The pools or fountains, as I might call them, placed in the imprints of the buildings are very affecting:  very deep, very square fountains with very deep, smaller squares in the center of them, with low, flat tabled walls around the rims, containing the names of those who died.

What is not affecting, and even rather repulsed me was the Oculus. Purportedly meant to look like a white dove of peace–I guess one could argue that from the front it does in an abstract way–from the sides and back, it looks aggressive–like missiles, or like it wants to stab the sky with multiple pointed objects.  Inside, the ceiling’s architecture looks like a bleached white modern version of the arch of a Gothic church. But what is housed inside is a shopping mall.

I might find this architecture, inside and out, anywhere else, interesting and perhaps parts of it beautiful in its way. But, there is a tremendous disconnect between its intention to make it look like a dove and its construction  And making the inside a shopping mall reminiscent of a church, in this context, makes it an homage to capitalism.