GO JULIE!

Proud Sister moment: Julie was on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire today (Tuesday, October 26). Don't worry if you missed it, though, because the second half of her appearance will be on tomorrow. I encourage you to check your local listings, tune in and see how she did! Woot!

The Millionaire saga, Day 5 (final day)

Saturday, September 18:

I wakened at 6 a.m. after glancing at the clock all night, every hour on the hour. Gleah. Such are the joys of fearing oversleeping, plus not trusting a hotel alarm clock... and in retrospect I was wise to do so, since it didn't go off when it was supposed to. However, Jenny had set an alarm on her phone (smart girl). Since I'd packed the night before, I had little else to do but throw all the leftover stuff into my bags, surrender my keycard to the hotel staff, hail a cab and get to LaGuardia.

Goodbye, Manhattan. Goodbye, Duane Reade. Goodbye, Hotel Newton. (Or, to most of its patrons, "Au revoir, Hôtel Newton.")

By the way, the cabbie I flagged down got me to LaGuardia in record time. GO NEW YORK CABBIES!

I had to wait for a boarding pass because the automated kiosk couldn't find my info, which made me nervous. Finally, after doing the TSA Shuffle, I arrived successfully at my gate. Picked up a chocolatine, a bottle of milk, a Godiva bar and a ballpoint pen (my little mishap with the pen earlier on the trip had taught me something), then ate my makeshift breakfast while waiting around for boarding.

There were two flights on this leg of the trip: one from LaGuardia to Denver, another from Denver to Seattle. I spent most of the first part of the LaGuardia-Denver flight catching flies (I'm so not a morning person) and the second in the bulkhead restroom (I'll get you for this, Carnegie Deli!). Soooo... fun.

Denver Airport was, um, Denveresque. To be honest, I was mostly just happy for a quality restroom break. When the flight attendant got on the PA and announced boarding for the flight "to the Emerald City," even though I've heard the city's nickname five hundred times, the first thing that popped into my head was "SURRENDER DOROTHY!"

This flight was extremely full, so I took a chance and gate-checked my carry-on, an exercise ordinarily fraught with danger. (This time was no exception; my shampoo and conditioner popped open from the pressure and turned my makeup bag into a mess of pilar laving goop. Live and learn.)

On the second flight back, I began to reflect on home and family. Time spent away -- whether in New York or England or Utah or wherever it happens to be -- is always an adventure, but it also tends to exhaust me. I've discovered this year that I don't do very well out of my element. With that said, I felt a lot more calm and grounded this time than I did on my previous two visits to New York. I'm getting a better sense of where things are in Manhattan, how to use public transportation, etc., and knowing how to proceed goes a long way toward curing anxiety issues stemming from unfamiliarity. If I'm smart, I will start spending more of my mornings out and about, exploring more of the local environs, in an effort to build up internal courage and quell anxiety.

Hello Seattle, I am a mountaineer... wait, never mind.

Captain Midnight picked me up at the airport. He brought Miss V, who had stayed in the car (apparently walking all the way to baggage claim is exhausting). Once we'd finally located my gate-checked bag, we went back to the car, picked up some lunch and headed home.

My own sweet bed. How I've missed you. And Captain Midnight. And the Puget Sound rain. Ahhhh.

The Millionaire saga, Day 4

Friday, September 17:

Tim's last day in New York. We got up fairly early, and Jenny went off shopping while Mom, Tim and I took a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

OK, technically Charles Clarence went too. Charles Clarence is Julie's little monkey who accompanied us on many of our travels today.

Since Mom was still worn out from the day before and in any case has trouble standing for long periods of time, we went down to the ground floor and picked up a wheelchair for her.

Tim basically went nuts at all the awesomeness in the Met.

He especially enjoyed the medieval armor exhibits, where he probably could have worked as a docent.

He had to be dragged out of the Met so we wouldn't be late for the second taping session at ABC.

This time, when we got in line, we met Julie's roommate Andy Parker. (Again, not pictured. Sadly, I'm not always that swift when it comes to camera use.) We went in, sat down, watched Julie do her thing... and I'd like to say more, but I shan't. Suffice to say that if you can get American television and you'd like to see how she did on Millionaire, you should watch the shows airing during the last week of October.

After it was all done, Julie rented a Zipcar because she needed to pick up some film for a movie she'll be making in the near future. We dropped off Tim at the Met so he could get a bit more time in there (he crossed the street in front of us with a huge grin on his face)...

and Julie proceeded to race across town and against time, trying to avoid the Lincoln Tunnel traffic and get her film. She was successful.

Meanwhile, Charles Clarence mugged for the cameras. Silly monkey.

I needed a break, so Julie dropped me off at the hotel and went to pick up Tim from the Met to take him to the airport. At the hotel I proceeded to freshen up and lay on the bed reading the Shakespeare biography until the fam returned. We sat around gabbing for a bit -- it's something our family does ever so well -- until we decided we were hungry and needed to have a quintessential touristy New York dining experience.

So we went to the Carnegie Deli.

Charles Clarence thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Did I mention he's a dipsomaniac? Alas, monkey man has problems.

The food was good enough, but overpriced. To make up for this, portion sizes were ludicrously huge.

Jenny was overwhelmed by her chopped liver sammitch of doom. Me, I had the meatloaf...

...and in retrospect, I really should have split an entree with my mom.

Charles Clarence isn't the only one who likes to mug for the cameras.

Also, while there I had to use the restroom, which turned out to be down this long flight of stairs, deep into the bowels of the earth. While I was down there I expected to see some kind of Mafia deal going down, or at least a couple of rats fighting with switchblades.

We then flagged down a Slavic taxi driver who proceeded to give us the white-knuckle thrill ride of the year. I was sitting in the front seat, and I would have asked him to slow down, but I was too busy watching my life go streaming before my eyes. We got back to the hotel in record time and all in one piece, so on balance it was all good.

We spent the rest of the evening chatting and gabbing (it's what we do, after all), and Julie headed back to her apartment. The rest of us prepped for bed, and I packed up for an early departure the next day.

The Millionaire saga, Day 3

Thursday, September 16:

We woke up around 7ish and started getting ready for Julie's big day.

Took a cab over to ABC Studios, chatting along the way with a very friendly cab driver, formerly from Turkey. He must not get a lot of talkative folks, because he thanked us profusely for chatting with him.

Since we had a little extra time, we decided to goof around across the street in Central Park.

The Central Park Mounted Policeman in his natural habitat.

Jennifer took quite a few foties.

Tim took quite a few phone calls.

Me, I was just trying to take in some architectural details.

The time came when we got in line, and lo, there was Julie's friend Levi! (unfortunately not pictured here.) Quick introductions all round. We were all asked to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement involving firstborn children, I think; that fine print is hard to read.

The ABC people on this side of the building were very courteous and polite, almost to the point of being obsequious (as opposed to the folk working on the other side of the building, about whom I shall have more to say presently). Around 11:15 or so we were all shepherded into the building, allowed a bathroom break (our only one for the day) and seated in the game studio. There was a stand-up comedian on site whose job, as far as I could tell, was adult babysitter -- he warmed up the crowd, working very slightly blue. I was kind of embarrassed for Mom's sake at some of his jokes -- not that she hadn't heard that kind of material before, but she doesn't like hearing it.

Anyway, there was a backlog of contestants from the previous day of taping, so it took a while to get around to Julie. She ended up being the last contestant of the taping session, and she had to be kept over to the next day. So they wrapped things up and we all departed.

As we were being herded out of the building, the ABC people on the other side were singularly stern and unfriendly. No smiles, no "thanks for coming," no questions -- everything about their demeanor said "Get out. Now." Mom is diabetic and just got over some terrible back troubles, and she was worn out from taping and badly needed a restroom break, but they wouldn't let her use the restroom or even sit down on the premises (at first). When they noticed Mom was hanging onto Tim for dear life as though she might faint at any second, they grudgingly let her sit on a bench, but told Tim he couldn't do so. Tim replied that he didn't need or want to sit down, but this harpy woman from ABC watched him anyway to make sure he didn't try. Mom ended up being really sick.

Julie pointed out later that there are a lot of crazy people in New York City who just want to meet a famous person and who will do all sorts of insane things to try to get into the ABC building, so the people who work there become particularly inured to sob stories of any kind. If they knew anything at all about my mom, who is about as down-to-earth and as non-starstruck as anyone gets, they might at least have recognized the irony in all this. Still, they could see Mom was in obvious distress and they did as little as possible to help her.

It struck me that the process of fame is very much like our treatment at ABC. When your star is rising, everyone treats you with gushy deference. But when it's falling, they shun you, and shrews like Perez Hilton mock you to your face. Not exactly a desirable state of affairs.

Anyway, a thunderstorm of apocalyptic proportions appeared to be brewing over Columbus Circle. We hightailed it over to Barnes & Noble and went up multiple flights of escalators before finally finding the ladies' room, where Mom could be sick in peace at least. Meanwhile, Storm of Doom 2010 was raging outside, with green-and-black skies and multiple thunderbolts.

Figuring that if it was the end of the world I might as well have some good reading material for it, I picked up a Shakespeare biography by Bill Bryson. (It's very good so far.)

When Mom was feeling a little better, we managed to flag down a cabbie and got back to the hotel where she could get properly washed up and changed. We thought she might want some rest, so the rest of us sibs (and Levi) walked a few blocks away to a sushi restaurant where we ate and talked for some time. Figuring Mom might be hungry enough to eat something substantial, we picked up some seafood teriyaki and brought it back to her.

Mom was glued to the TV, watching the storm coverage; I guess it did a lot of damage in the other boroughs and was being considered for hurricane status or something similar. The area where we were staying got some hard rain, but was otherwise unscathed. But on the TV we saw downed trees and power lines, and heard of at least one storm-related death. The best part of the news was hearing of some recent immigrants from Haiti living in Brooklyn, who were used to hurricanes and who went out and matter-of-factly cleared away downed trees with their machetes. Right on.

Since Mom was content to stay where she was...

...and since Tim wasn't going to have much time in New York...

...the rest of us sibs hit the subway and took him to Times Square at night.

Da glitz!

Da glamour!

Meh, whatev.

Tim really seemed to enjoy himself, which surprised me a bit as he sometimes has trouble with crowded places. Then again, it wasn't particularly crowded at night.

While in Times Square, we went into the Roxy Deli and ordered ludicrously huge slices of cheesecake (mine was the toffee Heath bar crunch, and I ate every bite because I am a pig. Nom nom nom). When we were as full of cheesecake as we could be, we went out again and wandered around looking at the sights.

Dangit, why can't I be as cute as my sisters? I ask you!

Maybe eating all that cheesecake has something to do with it.

Anyway, Jennifer went into H&M to do some late-night shopping. Then she and I went back to the hotel while Tim and Julie wandered around Greenwich Village in the dark, looking at little boutiques where Tim might possibly sell his wares. I think Tim's comment was that although he could never live in New York, he and Tara would have to come back to visit.

Eventually we all fell into bed.

The Millionaire saga, Day 2

Wednesday, September 15:

I woke up early (well, for me anyway) and padded around Julie's apartment in my caftan, gabbing away on various subjects. Eventually I kicked it into gear and got dressed for the day, and we took the subway to 96th Street, near our hotel. (This particular hotel, by the way, proved to be the hospitality destination of choice for French tourists everywhere. I think we may well have been the only English-speaking party staying there all that week.)

I checked in, we went up the somewhat creaky elevator, looked around the room, pronounced it nifty. Julie had some school stuff to do and errands to run, not to mention a mom and sister to pick up later, so she took her leave.

Having several hours to kill, I did what any self-respecting pirate king would do in such circumstances: headed for open water.

I took the subway down to Lower Manhattan/Battery Park with the intent of catching a ferry to Ellis Island.

You must understand, before I continue, that I have on two other occasions tried to make it to Ellis Island, and failed both times. I had in fact begun to think of this particular voyage as "my doomed trip to Ellis Island," because I never seemed to manage to get there.

This time, though, I got smart. When we reached Liberty Island (here pictured: the wretched refuse of its teeming shore, all trying to get on board), I was not lured off the ferry by the promise of stamped copper coins and overpriced hot dogs, but stayed put instead.

And here's what I got for my trouble.

Behold! Proof positive that I finally made it!

Why was I so fired up to get to Ellis Island, you may ask?

I'll tell you.

Because on May 28, 1915, Catharina Witteveen, a slight, brown-haired, brown-eyed Dutch lady, came off the steamer Rotterdam into this room. Hers was the very first information taken on the original ship's manifest, which perhaps suggests she was quite eager to be off the boat where she'd spent so many days in steerage. The immigration officer noted that she was 22 years old and single, had been born in Amsterdam, had $25 to her name, that she was going to Salt Lake City to stay with family members, that she was neither a polygamist nor an anarchist, was in good physical and mental health, and had paid for her own passage. She was my great-grandmother.

Some of this information I already knew, having gotten it from Grandma firsthand when I was young -- Grandma lived a long life and died a few months short of her 95th birthday -- but it's one thing to hear about these events, and another to stand in the place where they happened. And it is a remarkable place.

The tiled ceiling of the Registry Room. There are 28,282 cream-white tiles in the ceiling, placed there by the Guastavino Brothers, originally of Italy. There is perhaps no finer testament to their skill than this simple fact: when the room was renovated, only 17 of the ceiling tiles needed to be replaced.

There are two 48-star flags in the Registry Room, dating from the period when Ellis Island was in use.

Despite its historic status and its importance to many American families, whose relatives immigrated to the U.S. during the era when this was the primary processing facility for new immigrants, much of Ellis Island has fallen into disrepair. The buildings are in the process of being restored, outside and in.

This photo was taken from one of the upper floors of the Immigration Museum, looking across the island to the Medical Building, where scores of new immigrants with communicable diseases waited and received treatment until they were healthy enough to enter the U.S. The Medical Building has not yet been restored. If you look you can just see the Statue of Liberty on the left.

This turn-of-the-20th-century medical equipment was taken as-is from the Medical Building and is on display in the museum.

From all parts of Ellis Island you can see the mainland. It makes you wonder what it was like for immigrants who had to wait, sometimes for weeks, until they could come across. I imagine quite a few of them had trouble with being so close to and yet so far away from their goal. Here, a Registry Room view of Lower Manhattan (although obviously it didn't look anything like this when my grandma was here).

Not every emigrant who made it to Ellis Island was guaranteed to get to America. I saw this editorial cartoon from Puck (depicting the scourge of cholera as brought in by immigrants) as a color lithograph at Ellis Island, but it didn't photograph too well. The caption at the bottom reads, "The kind of 'assisted emigrant' we can not afford to admit." The comment seems callous to modern eyes until you realize that there were no antibiotics then, and the only weapons to fight cholera were carbolic acid, chloride of lime and thymol (as shown in the illustration).

The United States regularly turned away people who had spent their life savings to come here because they were considered undesirable in some way; obviously, in my great-grandmother's time, polygamists and anarchists were unwelcome, but so were people with poor eyesight and those with certain types of communicable diseases. My grandmother remembered a band of Russian Jews who had come across on the Rotterdam with her, who had literally sold everything they owned and who had walked across Europe to pay their passage on a ship to America. When they got to Ellis Island, it was determined that they were too ill (or too dirty, or who knows what else) to become Americans, and a red X was painted on their backs; they were then placed on a boat going back to Europe. Some were so despairing, having no home or family to go back to, that they threw themselves off the boat in an attempt to drown themselves in the harbor. Whenever my grandmother told this story, she would bristle with indignation at what had been done to them. "'Give me your tired, your poor,' but not your sick," she would say angrily.

When she saw certain would-be immigrants getting rejected, my great-grandmother was terrified she wouldn't be allowed into the United States. But she was fortunate enough to be accepted, to be reunited with her family, and to marry her sweetheart. And her descendants, including me, were therefore fortunate to be born in an amazing country.

Goodbye Ellis, hello Manhattan.

On the way back toward Battery Park we passed a boat full of happy tourists, all waving wildly at the ferry. So I took their picture because, hey, why not?

The ceiling of each ferryboat is used as storage for life preservers. Lots and lots of life preservers.

How many life preservers, you may ask?

That's how many.

As I was leaving Battery Park I came across an old, um, dentally-impaired woman begging right in the middle of the footpath, asking passersby to "help me get a hot dog." I suspected the kind of "hot dog" she was looking to buy was measured in grams and served in a plastic baggie, so I chose not to give her change. She then shouted angrily after me, "You're a big one, ain't ya? I bet you're about 500 pounds!" It took all my will not to turn around and say, "And you're an ancient toothless crack whore begging for money on the streets of New York City. Guess which I'd rather be?"

Mutta mutta.

Anyway, I went back to the hotel to find myself alone for a while. Julie was still out and about, my mom and sister weren't due into JFK for another hour or two, and I would have called Captain Midnight or Miss V, but I didn't have a cell phone and the hotel room rates were best described as extortionary.

According to this website, I am now a douchebag. Huh.

Eventually I got tired of staring at myself and went out for a walk around the neighborhood.

Here's the spire of the Holy Name of Jesus Church, right around the corner from our hotel.

And here's the Duane Reade where I picked up a whole bunch of toiletries and some bottled water.

Duane Reade is literally everywhere in New York. There are more Duane Reade stores in Manhattan than there are Starbucks Coffees in Seattle. You cannot swing a cat in New York without hitting a Duane Reade...

...as copious photographic evidence suggests.

When my mom and sisters finally showed up and started talking about all the things they needed, I kept responding, "You can probably pick that up at Duane Reade." It became the most popular running gag on this trip.

I needed to pick up my suitcase, which was still at Julie's apartment, so Julie, Jenny and I all hopped on the subway and rode uptown. Not only did we get my bags, but we also stopped by a street vendor on Julie's block and got a few skewers of "street meat."

This is the only documented evidence that I had street meat. Mmm, tasty... AND you get a handy self-defense weapon into the bargain! Such a deal.

Aren't my sisters just darling? Easily the cutest girls on the 1 train that day.

When we got back to the hotel, everyone took a cab to a Vietnamese restaurant and we ate with gusto. I had shrimp wonton soup and the most delicious Saigon beef ever. (Sorry, no pictures... we were all too busy devouring like locusts to take any photos.) Then after cabbing it back to the hotel, Julie went home to do her best at getting a good night's sleep for The Big Day to come.

Much later that evening, my brother Tim's flight arrived at JFK and he took a shuttle bus to the hotel. It was his first time in New York and he described the place, a little uneasily, as "too much city for me." By the time he got in, it was quite late -- close to 1 a.m. local time -- so he strapped on his CPAP (which made him sound a lot like Darth Vader with adenoids) and promptly hit the sack.

And, after copious scribbling in my travel journal, so did I.