It was a glorious summer day in New York City! We started our final day in the city by taking the subway to the Midtown Manhattan Flatiron District. We delighted in watching the dogs in Madison Square Park, and we spotted actress Lena Hall walking her dog with a coffee in hand. Nadia’s all-time favorite television show is Friends, and so we had to visit the Friends Experience. I haven’t seen Nadia so excited about something in a while! I purchased the full experience for her that included a coffee at Central Perk, and we took photos in recreations of several sets from the show. In speaking with the employees, most of the customers are tourists and women. The television show ran from 1994-2004 and is a global phenomenon, still making money in syndication and Friends Experience venues in Brisbane, Mumbai, Las Vegas, Mexico City, and New York.
Ocean wanted to picnic in Central Park, so we headed back uptown. It was an absolutely perfect day, with blue skies and pleasant temperatures. I am impressed with the number of people the park can hold and still feel like you are in a forested park. We called Oliver and Owen, and all three of the kids expressed the desire to someday live in New York.
We finished off the day by attending the Broadway play “Giant” starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. Dahl is a famous children’s author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Giant Peach, etc.). The play focuses on an afternoon meeting in the summer of 1983, of Dahl, his fiancée, and representatives from his publishing company in the summer of 1983. Dahl wrote a review of Australian author Tony Clifton’s book about the 1982 Lebanon war that had critical views of Israeli government and military and anti-Semetic views. The publishers were concerned that piece would hurt sales of his latest book, The Witches. They were trying to convince him to retract and soften his tone towards Jews in general.
We were captivated for the full two hours. The playwright Mark Rosenblatt builds Dahl’s point of views and arguments through the play. We went from maybe Dahl is pushing back against over zealous cancel culture to towards the end of the play, yeah, he doesn’t like Jews. There were several audible gasps from the audience as they reacted to Lithgow’s comments. I was happy that Ocean shared the experience with us of seeing some of the greatest professional actors in the business ply their trade only a few meters away on stage. I didn’t see many teenagers in the audience as it was mostly retired people. The play started a good conversation between us and it was refreshing to have views like this out in the open in a forum that encouraged thoughtful discussion. The topics are very relevant today as Israel continues to defend itself against Hezballah and Lebanon, provoking some of the same views 40 years ago.
Dahl is one of the top 40 best selling authors of all-time with estimated 300 million books sold. His books are still popular today, decades after his death in 1990. His estate did apologize for his anti-Semetism.
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