Tower Bridge

During my trip to London this week, I got an up close and personal look at the iconic Tower Bridge on a foggy and rather moody night. Built over 120 years ago, it is an engineering marvel and I never get tired of seeing it, especially with the new lighting system installed for the 2012 Olympic Games. Across the water is the Tower of London, the famous prison (residents included Anne Boleyn and Guy Fawkes) and site of numerous executions by hanging, beheading, and being burned at the stake. On a less gruesome note, visitors to the bridge can experience spectacular panoramic views as well as take a look inside the Victorian engine rooms to see the steam engines that once powered the bridge lifts. The City of London is required to raise the bridge to “provide access to and egress from the Upper Pool of London for registered vessels with a mast or superstructure of 30 feet or more.” This service is free of charge and available with twenty-four hours notice any time, day or night, 365 days per year. Which is good to know. Just in case I find myself on the Thames with a thirty-foot superstructure. Which, come to think of it, might be a good way to spend Thanksgiving. But however you celebrate, enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and long weekend!

Full Steam Ahead

Artist Arlene Shechet has created a new site-specific installation at Madison Square Park featuring a series of new sculptures in porcelain, wood, steel, and cast iron installed around and within the emptied circular reflecting pool. Initially inspired by memories of a sunken living room in her grandparents’ apartment, Shechet wants visitors to step down into the reflecting pool to “linger and reflect.” In her sculptures for the installation, she uses forms that reflect her interest in historical decorative arts and references flora and fauna, including a lion’s head and paw, a bird’s colossal feather, and tree-like sculptures and branches. “My hope has been to reimagine the hardscape of the Park with delight and surprise,” Shechet says. “New Yorkers rely on the sidewalks, the pavement, and the street as the core of their urban lives. Full Steam Ahead becomes a lively and human amphitheater, softening the hardscape through sculptural intervention evocative of 18th-century garden landscapes.”

Last Week Tonight: Family Separation

John Oliver recently examined the Trump administration family separation policy on his show. While noting that “immigration has been dominating the news all week long, as a caravan of migrants from Central America continues to head north,” he focused on the family separation policy, which has “faded from the headlines.” Oliver looked at the incompetence and miscommunication between government agencies that resulted in children getting lost in the system as well as parents being removed from the US without their children. Demonstrating the devastating human cost of the family separation policy, he played footage from an investigation by The Atlantic showing a traumatized boy crying, angry at his mother because he thinks she doesn’t love him. “This separation was so long,” the mother said in the footage. “My son has changed so much. With so much trauma.” Oliver, concerned that family separation may happen again, concluded: “I would argue the biggest threat to our status as the greatest nation on earth is not a caravan a thousand miles south of us it’s whoever thinks doing this is an acceptable f—king response.”