Spent last night in NYC--Top Girls at the Biltmore Theater and navigating Times Square in the rain (reflections made it worthwhile). We go back and forth between feeling highly competent and sorely insecure, but overall things have gone extremely well.
The highlight today was meeting with Eric at the Palisades Parkway to better understand Sydney's youth in Englewood Cliffs. 
Eric took us on an amazing tour of the Palisades, starting with Sampson's Rock, described in my grandfather's account as occupying a remote spot on a neighbor's property and now oddly located in the middle of a neighborhood, actually in someone's yard (a window of the house revealed a flock of budgies). The rock likely orinated in Canada, thrown by glacial forces to current its location.
We really got a sense of the place my father enjoyed as a child: a 14 
acre spot of prime property on the top of the Palisades. The old homesite was likely located in the middle of what is now the Parkway, but we walked a trail that gave us a view of the property above the Hudson. The drop is dizzying, straight down to the water. We reflected on how the sounds of the 21st century alter our experience, and can only try to imagine what it was like when there were no cars and no planes and no trains. Eric walked us to several places where we could view the property. The most spectacular for me was a rock (really on the neighboring Dana's property) next to an old logging slide. This was accessed from the first overview, and allowed us to literally walk the Russell property. We had a beautiful view of the river below, the Bronx across the river, and the land where my father lived from his birth to age 16. Barges lined up on the Hudson and a buzzard circled the air above the river.
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