Mirabilis

We interrupt your regularly scheduled London recaps for this postlet. 

I
Walt Whitman I think would not be surprised to know that there's a cocktail named after him at the Dead Poet on the Upper West Side.  A variation on the Long Island iced tea, it's sweet and fruity and strong.  Whether or not he would enjoy the drink as I did, I don't know; but I cannot imagine that he would not be both delighted by and matter-of-fact about its existence.  Of course we still remember and celebrate him in this city.  How could we not?

It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.1

II
As we sat at an early service in St. Paul's Chapel, I wondered what George Washington would think of this.  Not about the fact that the vicar leading the service was a woman; not about her wireless mic and the speakers in the balconies or the electric lights; not about the fact that all but two of the box pews have been removed (one of those remaining being the one he sat in) and that the congregation now sat in chairs arranged in concentric circles; but what he would think to see us in 2015 still worshiping in the same church he did.  I wondered if he would be surprised that St. Paul's still stands all these years later, or if his reaction would be one of confidence in the building's endurance.  What must it feel like, to see a building from your time now dwarfed by the unfamiliar architecture of future years?  The chapel has survived for over two centuries; that it survived these past fourteen is all the more astonishing.

III
Noted cinematic masterpiece "Kate & Leopold" begins in the late 19th century, with a ceremony at the not-yet-complete Brooklyn Bridge attended by Hugh Jackman's character.  When he's transported to 2001, Leopold happens upon the finished bridge and is awed to see it still standing, so much so that to an unimpressed sanitation worker he declares, "That, my friend, is a miracle!"

IV
It is a city of miracles upon miracles, and not the least of them that the sky was blue on Sunday afternoon.

from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" ↩