Michael D. Shear, Claire Fahy and Sarah Lyall
New York Times
NEW YORK — King Charles III of Britain fed chickens in Harlem. His wife, Queen Camilla, visited with Winnie-the-Pooh at the New York Public Library. In the morning, the royal couple laid a bouquet at the Sept. 11 memorial, and by evening, they were hobnobbing with the city’s cultural and artistic elite at Rockefeller Center.
After a day of politics and diplomacy in Washington, the king and queen spent Wednesday taking in different parts of what New York City has to offer.
It was the third day of a four-day visit to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
In Harlem, the king met with young people at an urban farm run by Harlem Grown, a nonprofit that provides youth development programming. Four schoolchildren greeted him at the chicken coops.
The king was asked if he wanted to feed the chickens.
“Yes, please,” he said enthusiastically, before dropping some greens into the coop.
The king has long been an avid environmentalist. He tends an organic garden at Highgrove House, a family home in southwestern England.
While the king was uptown, the queen spent the afternoon at the New York Public Library’s main branch in midtown Manhattan, where she promoted her literary charity, the Queen’s Reading Room, and visited a small, carefully preserved stuffed animal.
That would be Winnie-the-Pooh, a toy bought from Harrods department store in the 1920s and given by A.A. Milne, author of the “Pooh” books, to his 1-year-old son, Christopher Robin.
Along with the other stuffed animals that inspired the books — Kanga, Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger — Pooh resides in a climate-controlled case in the library. Kanga’s baby, Roo, was lost by Christopher Robin in the 1930s. But the queen came bearing a gift: a bespoke replica of Roo.
The queen then read to schoolchildren from one of the “Pooh” books.
The royal couple had begun their day in New York with a more somber event: a trip to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan, where they laid a bouquet at the memorial to commemorate the lives lost during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 67 of whom were British.
By Wednesday evening, the king had made his way to midtown for a reception at Rockefeller Center, where he talked with about 15 of the biggest names in American business.
The couple ended their day with a gala at Christie’s Auction House.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.spokesman.com ’
