Stonewall in the Park

Yesterday Greenwich Village was transformed into one large joyful parade, and it was a delight to see the sheer exhuberance and joie de vivre of thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers. Strange how an event that was once so sad could be transformed, forty years later, into an occasion for celebration.

Some eighty blocks to the north, we spent yesterday evening at a different sort of traditional New York celebration – watching Shakespeare in the Park – “Twelfth Night” in fact, with Audra Mcdonald as Olivia (amazingly good) and Anne Hathaway as Viola (even better). The moment when Audra plants a big joyful, lusty kiss on Anne’s lips seemed to be a happy shout out to my thousands of friends and neighbors celebrating down in the Village.

Although of course one must acknowledge that some things have changed in four hundred years. In Mr. Shakespeare’s time, it would have been two men kissing.

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