Strand of Pearls

I have a strand of pearls that is too beautiful for the costume wholesale jewelry in the costume wholesale jewelry district of New York.  I don't know that this district actual exists in name, but in practice it does, as does the Flower District which actually does exist that I also discovered today on my search.

Many things are closed today in observance of Memorial Day.  But few of the places I wanted to go were.  Probably the temptation of consumers with time to spend was too much.  But it wasn't lost on me that most of the stores I stepped into were seeped in another culture, run by families or partners from other countries.  What does this day mean to them?

The strand of pearls that I carried to measure against the color and timbre of other accessories, were from pre-WWII Japan.  Authentic, carried home after service in that quadrant of the globe.  Someone to be remembered.

It's difficult to avoid irony in New York.  History and cultures are piled onto one another.  Perhaps there is a deeper meaning to it.  Or perhaps it is simply where we have been deposited after decades, centuries, millennia of humans being human.