NYNY 2019: Choices.

We start out our second day in New York by taking the subway to the redeveloped Hudson Yards area and its controversial centerpiece, the Vessel.  It's a fascinating structure, reminiscent of alien spacecraft and M. C. Escher drawings* - 150 feet in height, and made up of 2,500 steps, 154 staircases, and 80 landings.  In spite of those daunting totals, the short staircases and frequent landings make the climb to the top an easy one, even for people like Karli who suffer from knee problems.  

After our visit to the Vessel, we take advantage of the sunny weather and wander down the High Line, Manhattan's converted rail line/elevated park, toward Chelsea Market.

When we leave the High Line and head down to street level to enter the market, we happen to pass by a book vendor who is just starting to put out his inventory - but it's still enough for me to pick up a couple of unique additions to my library.

The first book is America in Space, a slightly faded black and white NASA publication from 1964, complete with an inspirational introduction by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who couldn't have been president for very long when production began on this book.

It's a fascinating window into the state of the nation for the early days of space exploration, which starts by announcing that America's space program "took a great step forward" with L. Gordon Cooper's 1963 22-orbit mission in the Mercury Faith-7 capsule - perhaps the first time someone at NASA talks about giant steps (but not the last).

The publication comes from a point in time when the planned Apollo missions were in the earliest of planning stages, with work just beginning on the Saturn V rockets, and Neil Armstrong one of nine unproven astronaut trainees brought into the program two years earlier, in 1962. It's an odd little cultural artifact, and I have to wonder what its path has been to this sidewalk tabletop.

My second purchase is, in its way, an equally odd cultural piece: a 1989 Malibu Comics collection of Fu Manchu newspaper comic strips that were originally published in the 1930s.

The character of Fu Manchu, Chinese super villain and master criminal, was created by British author Sax Rohmer in 1913, and is a perfect example of the "Yellow Peril" fears of the late 1800s and early 20th century.  As Nayland Smith, hero of the stories, describes it to his Watson, Dr. Dexter Petrie: "Fu Manchu knows that I alone recognize him as the most evil and formidable personality in the world today, and understand how the yellow hordes of the East plot to destroy Western civilization."   The cartoons also feature the full array of derogatory cliches regarding China:  pidgin English, opium dens, exaggerated physical characteristics, and so on.

At the time of purchase, I was excited to see the collection, but in retrospect, I'm having second thoughts.  In their way, the comics are much a window into a historical state of mind as the NASA publication, but I'm not sure that outweighs the nature of the view through that window.  It may well be that this book will end up in recycling rather than a bookshelf when we get home.

- Sid

* It's also frequently been compared to a shawarma roast - it all depends on your references, I guess.