Liam trying a different view from under his houndstooth
New York State of Mind
Some folks like to get away
Take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a Flight to Miami Beach
or to Hollywood
But I'm taking a Greyhound
On the Hudson River Line
I'm in a New York state of mind
.......Billy Joel
This LiamLicks is not one story, but a few little ones. And they deal with POVs, points of view (yes, a Food Network term)
1-Governors Island
Most of us have heard of Governors Island. In my mind it harbored an idea of a place like all those islands around NY that are military, or too small for humans, or home to prisoners, typhoid Mary, or monuments.
This island is a 4 minute free ferry ride from Manhattan, a half mile from the southern tip of Manhattan island and separated from Brooklyn by the Buttermilk Channel. Here is a map so you can see where we are. the red marking is on Governors Island.
http://www.govisland.com/html/home/home.shtml
North is Manhattan and right is Brooklyn. Viewing Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
from this island sort of gave me a feeling of real aloneness, of solitude 
of being a voyeur on another world, of feeling lost. Is this how the losties (TV show Lost) felt on Hydra Island? is this how the Survivor contestants feel on Exile Island?Or to really metaphor it to a huge extent -is this how the astronauts feel about earth as they look down from space? Earth is small, they are big.
Same here on Governors Island. We on GI feel huge looking out at the miniature Statue of Liberty and the toy size Staten Island ferry. The buildings on the tip of Manhattan resemble plastic monopoly pieces. An illusion, the mind knows, yet we feel so big, it is dizzying.
And Brooklyn is so close when you are on GI.
Brooklyn is never close, but it is within touching distance from GI or so it seems. I think if I walk across this cruise ship and come out the other side I will enter Red Hook, Brooklyn for sure
And here on GI can we sit peacefully and gaze upon NYC and absorb none of the frenzy. From our point of view there is only the serenity. We are not part of the happenings downtown. We are observers until we ferry back and plunge into the swarms of people and traffic and noise. But not yet. Now peace.
GI has its own beach! Really, look, see the palm trees and sand
and the Smothers Brothers were born on Governors Island 
if you have never heard of them, they were considered quite subversive in the late '60's for comments and stances that now seem mild. Read it herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_Island
2-Ferry back to the Battery
The plan on the way back is that I will learn how to write poetry. Yes, you heard me. My friend, a retired teacher, writes poetry and has volunteered to teach me. This plan is set to happen on our return trip to lower Manhattan. I know I said it was a 4 minute ride, but with loading and settling and turning the boat around and all that we knew we had about fifteen minutes. My friend has a hard copy LiamLicks, last week's edition http://liamlicks.blogspot.com/2010/09/strangers-in-light.html and we are to use this, to pare it down from prose to a poem.
We get our seats. I am in my best student mode and my friend in her teaching posture. Teacher friend searches for the LL printout.
Where is LiamLicks? Bags checked, seats, pockets- I check my camera for the photos I have taken to see if it has been captured in any of the shots. No, but the pix give us the answer. The hard copy was out during the trip to GI. We all know what has happened, It was put down on the bench when a fellow passenger snapped our photo. It must have been left on the bench when we disembarked. Oh no! my lesson lost. I will not be a poet today!
Then a different point of view emerges- Someone might have picked up LiamLicks, I might have a new reader, if it is a family, I might have several readers, if the entire group passed it around I might have hundreds. The printout has the blog site on it, surely that is going to happen. My blog followers will balloon into the hundreds, Anderson Cooper watch out!
So what did we do? accessed LL from my blackberry, did a mini lesson at the Spice Market bar,
while I dreamed of all my new readers.
3- Starbucks in Penn Station
before our trek on the #1 to the downtown to the ferry, I petitioned my companions for a addiction stop at Starbux for my latte. In this Starbux they ask your name (we Leos love that, but I say it all the time) and then you are announced and boldly go and retrieve your drink. I have told y'all (practicing for seeing the Neelys on Sunday, next week's blog) that I have changed my name-I have been Kara, Grace, Liz, and Carol. I am Carol today on the way to Governors Island. In next pic, see latte in my left paw and the spot where hard copy LiamLicks was left next to me
I was gifted with another POV-this one about my name- at my home Starbucks in New Hyde Park. My barista asked my name, not for the cup but just so he could address me- regulars earn that respect. I told him. "I am Carol" I asked, "you?"
"I am Josh." I said, "Great name, a young person's name." I added, "Carol is an older person's name. There are no young Carols."
Josh looked at me with a mischievous look and said "It was a young girl's name once." I laughed and thought what a charmer.
Yes, another point of view. I like it. Young Carol. Yay for all the old Carols who were once young.
So POVS- points of view, another way of viewing from different places, through another's eyes, from a "lost" experience.
This day, on this ride, I found some different points of view.
and all it took was
a latte on a ferry
a lost Licks
a newly discovered island
a stunning October day
dear friends
Is that a poem?
Dogs not allowed on Governors Island, only pigs
Liam waits
Woof, Woof
