What’s green, has a hand size of about 5 meters across, and stands tirelessly on a pedestal? I guess the title of today’s entry already gave away the answer, eh? It’s been about 15 years since I last visited the Lady on Liberty Island, so on a recent very clear day in NYC, I made the pilgrimage with the rest of the tourists. Most of us came through this last stop on the subway…

got our ferry tickets at the Clinton Castle…

and queued up for our boat ride (after clearing security):

Once on the ferry, the first thing I looked for was this:

I’m a terrible swimmer (mostly only in pools with my head above water–chlorine in my contacts is horrible) but if there’s a boat around, I’m on it! Anyway, before we knew it, there she was…

Err…let me move my head out of the way (btw this is the only ODJ shot I got from that day and it’s of the Chanel wool hat from the 11A season)…

And here was the crowd waiting to jump on our ferry to go back to Manhattan:

It probably took no more than 45 minutes to mill around Liberty Island, including stopping by the ranger’s station and gift shop since the statute itself was closed for renovation.

Then we all got back on the ferry to cross over to Ellis Island, where you could visit the Immigration Museum that used to be one of the busiest inspection stations from 1892 to 1954. While Ellis Island is not my own immigrant story (my family came via the west coast), it documents a point in time in this country where futures were made, dreams were broken, and families separated. All of which was very similar to the Vietnamese experience post-1975.

So much history passed through these doors and I couldn’t help but hear the whispers and feel the anxieties that must have permeated these halls while people awaited their fates in this strange new land…

called New York City.

When I got back to Manhattan later that day, as I took more pictures of this vertical city, I thought about the immigrants who were denied entry. Did they try to come back? If they didn’t, did they ever reunite with the family members or friends who came to America? A million stories probably told and retold over family dinners. I hope there were many happy endings.