And there was no stopping Manhattan once we got there. The speed of it! So many people, so many cars, and so much energy on those wide and sometimes narrow streets. In my memory of those trips, it’s always fall, and everyone is wearing a trenchcoat, just like Suzy Parker on Madison Avenue in “The Best of Everything.” My father, gone now for many years, was, in some ways, fearful of the world and bewildered by his boy children, but he was fearless when it came to showing us Manhattan. Yorkville, the Upper West Side, the Guggenheim, the New York Public Library—these were places we could and did visit, and they stayed with us forever. The only obstacle, at times, was the prejudice of others, which we didn’t allow to limit us or our dreams. Our father fed us the richness of culture by making it part of our everyday lives. Even now, I get rigid with anger and boredom when any voice of “authority” refers to art as one of life’s exceptions, not one of its rules.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter