This past Wednesday I went out with my sketch club to sketch at the local bowling alley.

Yesterday, I went into the city to sketch with the NYC Urban Sketchers.  We were sketching several alleged haunted houses.  The first one is a Colonial style home that was once a speakeasy. It is the home of the Gay Street Phantom.

Haunted house #2 was a fail because itnwas behind scaffolding so some of us sketched the historical home of Emma Lazarus.  You know, she wrote the poem on the plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 

With conquering limbs astride from land to land; 

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand 

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command 

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she 

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

So there is your history lesson for the day….

It was getting pretty chilly and by midday, most of us were getting cold.  We went to Washington Square for lunch.  I sketched the church on the left  because I was too cold to eat.

The page on the right was our final stop on the tour de Haunted houses.  This Haunted Fire House in NYC is where a fireman hung himself because he caught his wife cheating on him.  Firemen used to see him his ghost, oh wait, excuse me, he was an “apparition American.” Anderson Cooper lives here now. Which probably explains the white hair.  John says that Anderson Cooper is probably the ghost.