Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Ashley Motley is currently working as an emergency substitute teacher in Manhattan.
Right before the election, I took a trip to New York City. Since then, especially as we all swing into holiday mode, I can’t shake the feeling of missing the city. It’s as though she were a newfound friend, one I had a three-hour conversation with over pizza and late-night wine. I miss her, and I am thankful for our time together.
I traveled there in a supporting role for one of my closest friends — a talented photographer based in Overland Park who travels for her work.
In September, we all went on the defensive when New York City mayor Eric Adams riled Kansans by stating we don’t have a brand — this even inspired one of my favorite columns from my editor. Then, in the last and ugliest month of the election cycle, I watched attack ads connect a candidate to her New York City roots.
Never having been to the city, I wanted to travel there with an open mind and understand what exactly inspires such a strong response from folks. People seem to either love it or hate it.
The wedding reception was held at the New-York Historical Society. Because of this, we visited the building a day before so that we could see the light and the space. I learned it serves as a museum and was founded in 1804, making it both the city’s oldest museum and a keeper of early American history. The society’s purpose is to catalogue the history of the city for New Yorkers and visitors alike.
While there, we watched a short film about the early days of the city and how it fostered changed throughout our country’s history. As we entered the small theater, a group of students herded by two teachers filled the back rows.
I whispered to the lead teacher, “Middle or high school?”
He whispered back, “Middle.”
I replied, “Ah, I teach middle too.”
He laughed and said, “So you understand what I’m going through then.”
The truth is, yes and no. I know what it’s like to show up for middle schoolers every day now. But I can’t imagine navigating them through the Upper West Side in one of the largest cities in the world. This is when my appreciation for New Yorkers started to grow.
There were many pieces in the historical society’s building that hang in my memory. Among them is a display with a photo of Sandra Lindsay, director of nursing for critical care at Northwell Health’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center. She volunteered to receive the first COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. Her vaccine card and the tiny used vials in the case will remind visitors of the time the city foreshadowed what would come for the rest of the country.
I know what it’s like to show up for middle schoolers every day now. But I can’t imagine navigating them through the Upper West Side in one of the largest cities in the world. This is when my appreciation for New Yorkers started to grow.
Another exhibit displayed civil rights comic books designed to teach children and adults about Black history, nonviolent protest and voting power. One book, titled “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story,” from 1957, most captured my students’ attention when I showed them photos of my trip after returning.
These pieces were a part of The Gilder Lehrman Collection, which contains more than 60,000 rare documents from leaders such as George Washington and Frederick Douglass to “ordinary” Americans, including slaves, soldiers and immigrants. It’s meant to promote the study and love of American history by showcasing original documents that teach us how to value our past and the future.
Later that afternoon, I walked a block to the American Museum of Natural History. There, tucked in the heart of a museum in the heart of New York City, was a display about meteorites discovered in farmland near Brenham, Kansas.
Fragments from these meteorites were part of the display, as well as a lesson about how homesteader Eliza Kimberly collected a large pile of them while she worked to persuade a scientist to come look at them with a letter-writing campaign. This work from a true, persistent Kansan was on display for the city and all of her visitors.
Later in the day, as my friend prepared her equipment and communicated with the mothers of bride and groom, she shared told them we had discovered a delicious French bakery in Midtown. She would bring them each pain au chocolat as they got ready.
“We can tell you are a heartlander,” they told her.
They were later impressed that two women visiting the city for work carried photography equipment through the subway – not a task for the faint of heart. This reinforced their views about women from the Plains.
On the last day of our trip, we visited the 9/11 Memorial.
This felt important, to pay respect to the city and remember all we lost as a country that day and in the war that followed. Water falls in two separate cavernous square holes amid a crush of silence. The sadness in the air here is heavy – so tangible I could feel it draped over my shoulders.
Visitors silently stand reading names, tracing the letters with their fingertips. Kansans lost friends and family in those buildings and the buildings that collapsed nearby. My friend quietly recounted her own dad’s experience of visiting the site where he lost friends. His visit happened in the days when street vendors were bottling ashes.
You can experience the full tension of commingled beauty and pain in New York City. The dappled sunlight in Central Park mixed with learning about how the park displaced the residents of Seneca Village. The opera music streaming out of a 7-Eleven amid men standing with paper bags full of liquor. A beautiful walk down Fifth Avenue on the way to the Met while walking by a homeless burn victim. Fashion and individual expression in a subway car juxtaposed with the man on the platform shooting up in the middle of the day.
Every moment of human existence is somehow amplified in New York City. And while great pain is on display, the fortitude of our country is threaded into the comings and goings every day there. The reflection of experiences of Americans across every state, including Kansans, is present.
If you ask me, I love New York City. And I love seeing the effect that Kansans can have as they take their place in this global city – in the presence of history on display in a museum, in the work ethic and empathy shown to others that reflects our values, in our ability to mourn an attack that rippled out of the city and across our country.
As much as I loved the city, I smiled when I got a text from my husband before my flight telling me to “Come on home to God’s country.”
For yes, I had missed seeing the stars and breathing our fresh air. Kansas will always be my home, and yet I will always feel the tug of needing to travel in order to understand and appreciate our place in the world.
Reader, as you recover from partisanship and conflict experienced during the election, consider travel. Choose someplace that gives you the thrill of being nervous and excited all at once. Step outside of your world and into another. Find joy this season in the wonder of discovery — and the thrill of returning home.
Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
