Thursday 13th June

Wow.. I did not realise how long it had been since I updated! Apologies folks I am normally just too tired or don't have enough time but we are having a chilled evening at the Pagli house tonight so I will try to write a little bit about what I have been doing for the past 5 days :)

Thursday was a long day with three museum trips- don't get me wrong I love a good museum but after a while you stop taking everything in because it's too overwhelming! The first museum was the Native American Indian museum around Wall St, it had some really cool tools and dresses from various Native American tribes. There was also a section on musicians throughout recent years who have Indian heritages which included Jimi Hendrix' rainbow coat on display and a section of comfy seats to sit and watch old footage of him playing.
The next museum, which should have been the last so we could send more time there, was the Jewish Heritage museum. It has an interesting layout with the origins of the culture leading up to the pre-holocaust years on the first floor, the holocaust on the second and post- holocaust on the third floor so it was like walking though the entire history of the Jewish culture in a couple hours. Of course everyone knows about the holocaust and how awful it was but seeing some of the pictures and artefacts and reading the statistics can still take your breath away. Darren mentioned a famous quote from a philosopher which went something like 'can there be poetry and beauty after the atrocities of Auschwitz?', I can understand what he meant because it's hard to imagine that humans who are capable of such horrendous and disgusting behaviour can then create anything beautiful. However, going up to the third floor of the museum and seeing the many ways in which the Jewish community came together after the holocaust to pull themselves through and rebuild their lives showed, in my eyes, that there can be beauty after Auschwitz.
The last museum of the day was the Brooklyn Museum which had a mixture of exhibits including different calendars throughout history, unfortunately we were mostly too tired and museumed out to take in a whole lot there!