sarah in nyc

The other day my husband and I saw something beautiful.  We were waiting for a bus in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. On the corner of 181st Street and Broadway there was a man who had built a castle for himself out of garbage next to an overflowing garbage can.  Then I noticed two men wearing red George Washington Bridge Business Improvement District (BID) shirts interacting with the man in the garbage encampment.  They spoke to him gently and one of the men shoveled the garbage mountain into a large trash bin on wheels. They bantered with him and checked to see which part of the garbage mountain could be bagged up and taken away. At one point one of the workers handed the man a folded bill. A few minutes later, the man selected two small bags from the mountain of garbage and walked away.  I was struck at how the BID workers exactly struck the balance between respecting the humanity of the garbage-castle-man and the right of the people in the n...

 And now---some images of Hanoch's tallit  which will give you a sense of what it will look like when it is done. It is wrinkled and thready and the edges are not yet finished. But at least you don't have to use too much of your imaginations to get a sense of where I am going. There is still one painted stripe left to add and probably a few more rows of ribbon. There are still miles of silk to cut onto bias strips and stitch together to cover the raw edges. I still have to make the atara and edge that and the pinot. It's closer to done than it is to not done.

  As of Sunday evening, the calligraphed and painted stripes all were properly edged. I am loving the mix of colors. I hope that Hanoch does as well. One of the painted stripes will not have text. I started adding the stitched and ribbon stripes to the tallit.  I am really pleased with the ribbons that I embroidered. And now...the end of than era. My former across the hall neighbors and our family were pretty close during the years they lived across the hall. Our collective children wandered back and forth across the hall between the two apartments. We all had many adventures and meals together. Michael and Andrea (our dear neighbors) had a car and shopped at Costco years before Costco opened a store across town. At one point Andrea bought a whole lot of boxes of Crystal Light in lemonade flavor.  Andrea became allergic to Crystal Light. So, twenty three years ago Andrea gave us more than 25 boxes of Crystal Light. We stashed those boxes all over the apartment. There were...

 Wednesday night was the beginning of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish national/religious day of mourning. We chant  Eicha/ The book of Lamentations . As various members of my community led the reading, many of us softly chanted along  The text particularly spoke to me this year. We are living through difficult times. I was struck this year by how deeply familiar the text is. Verses and verse fragments are part of our liturgy. So many of the verses expressing loss and grief are inscribed on gravestones. Snippets of the text are incorporated into Hebrew poetry both hundreds of years ago as well as in contemporary Hebrew/Israeli poetry and song.  And of course the longing for the return to Zion that is encoded into our religious DNA. It was a moving evening. And on a completely different topic... I am writing this post on a bus that left from the Port Authority Bus station. Hold on to your seats. The bathroom was spotless and smells clean. The Port Authority bathroom is no longe...

 My mother never took a pocketbook to synagogue on Shabbat or holidays. To her, a pocketbook meant that you were taking money or your car keys to synagogue. Both would have earned a sniff from my mother.  My mother always took along tissues in her pocket or in the cuff of her sweater because she had terrible allergies and a tissue was always needed. Decades ago my late friend Fred told me that he grew up in a family that was irreligious. Fred, as an adult felt drawn to greater observance. He once told me that he married his ex wife because he was so impressed  she knew that that it wasn't proper to take a pocketbook to services. He laughed ruefully because he discovered that this was ALL that she knew about Jewish observance. ( And no, the marriage didn't last). All of this is a long introduction to the fact that now I carry a pocketbook to services every week. I have a pretty severe sesame allergy. I have to take along my Epi-pen because after services every week there i...

Normally I associate the smell of a wood fire with delightful things. I have fond memories of walking home from the Quincy Center Station on cold wintery evenings when I was in High School and smelling the lovely  homey smell of fireplaces warming homes along my cold walk home. I also associate that wonderful scent of woodfires from the special bonfires at camp. Today though, we woke up to the scent of wood smoke but it wasn't something homey or celebratory but it was the sickly smoke that has been blanketing us from the forest fires in Ontario. The air feels heavy and sickly.  The light is a heavy ochre color.   It isn't quite as bad as the it was a few years ago when the sky was orange from the smoke and it felt like the end of  days. I hope that these fires are soon quenched. I have managed to get a few more miles of ribbon embroidered. I leave you with a shot of shadow from a friend's house.