No longer living near an international airport and seeing how many regional carriers were canceling flights, I decided it would be wise to get to New York City a couple of days ahead of a departure flight back to France for a family visit. We had timeshare points that would expire and lucked into booking a nice place at the last minute in Midtown. We had stayed there once pre-Pandemic and knew it was a comfortable place with a good view from the rooftop. We made it there without any delays and just relaxed in the “Big Apple.”
After checking in and avoiding the dreaded owner’s update, which always leads to a hard sell for more points, we headed to a wine and cheese party on the roof. There we met a couple (the gentleman was about my age, but looked younger and so did his wife) traveling up from Louisiana who were also trying to use their yearly allotment of points. The gentleman had a specific reason for going to New York. He was there to visit the final resting place of John James Audubon, the famous naturalist and painter of birds. As is typical, you meet friendly people with similar experiences with their timeshare purchases at these types of gatherings and we got to talking. I found out that he was a retired military guy who was mechanically inclined who was trained to work on aircraft. After retirement while visiting Oakley Plantation, near where he and his wife lived, and located on the property of Audubon State Historic Site; someone said he looked like Audubon. He said at the time he knew very little about the naturalist, but somehow it stuck with him and he wound up volunteering to play the part; dressing up in costume in the living history program offered on site.
Audubon is one of my heroes, and coincidentally the next day while walking with my wife on a hot and sunny day after we had done enough window shopping; we thought we could get out of the heat by going into the New York Public Library. The Library had a sign posted for Treasures: The Polonsky Exhibition. It was free and one of the treasures in the exhibition is in the photograph above. There were lots of other treasures and if you would like, you can click here to see a few images that particularly appealed to me, as well as a few other photos from NYC.