A night of varied cultural pursuits

Last night we went to the opening of the Pen International writers festival- it was on at the Town Hall focused on Public Lives/ Private Lives and went for 90minutes with some of the writers who are presenting at the festival speaking reading from their work. I went with Jude last year too. Salman Rushdie is the chair and brains behind it all. The festival has a focus on human rights and so had mention of writers who couldn't be there due to their countries ban on allowing them out of the country or even prison. Annie Proulx, Michael Ondatje and Ian McEwan were the two writers I know most about, actually anything really. Most of others were from non English speaking countries and read in their language with projected translations as they read.
It was an easy walk to 43rd St after dinner and we were seated in the orchestra great seats where we could see and hear everything. The works read focused on aspects of life and overcoming odds within difficult cultural/political circumstances.
Ian McEwan was last and was most entertaining reading from his notes about gathering information for a fiction novel about global warming. This bodes well for this evening as we are going to see him at 6:30 and then will be late for the concert at Radio City with Dolly Parton. Sublime to the ridiculous- so to speak!
We walked back through the cool evening and I collected the delivery we had had. It was my painting- Moonrise on the mountain by Julia Gil from the Santa Fe Gallery.
This meant taking the freight elevator up and avoiding filling the lift and raising the ire of other elevator users. In the apartment Helen was in bed so she got up to help unwrap it- it took 3 of us about 20minutes of ripping tape and careful removal of bubble wrap.
Sue woke up enough to come and hold the painting in place and admire before falling back to bed.
It is beautiful and will look glorious up on the wall- one of the first things one sees as one walk into the apartment.