It was Alicia Ostriker’s idea! To perform Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Recuerdo” at the Staten Island ferry terminal where the poem’s events took place. Then we added performances of Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” at the Statue of Liberty tour dock. The only thing that went amiss was the weather, it rained all day. But our spirits were lifted by many encounters during the day. Most of the passengers glided by us with puzzled looks, but some engaged us, like the two students from a local college who wanted to ask us if we knew about “God, the Mother”…boy, did we! And the Staten Island ferry official who prevented us from handing out our poems (too intrusive for their ‘customers’) ended up helping us out by taking a photo of the part of the Millay poem we couldn’t get to because it was past the entry point. And we should point out that we hadn’t even known it was painted up there around the ceiling of the ferry terminal until after we were done reciting it! Only a few of us Cool Women joined the excitement: Lois, Sharon, Juditha and Gretna. Here are a few photos of the special day: