Sarah in nyc goes to Florida

My cousin’s daughter got married this weekend. My husband and I went to the wedding in Sarasota.
The Delta terminal at Kennedy Airport was filled with sparrows.

We flew into Tampa because it saved us a bundle on airfare. We spent a day wandering in Tampa. We loved the old part of downtown and it's many art deco buildings.

We completely fell in love with the art deco Tampa movie theatre.

What a gateway into the experience of movie going!

I loved the contrast of old and new brickwork. This square column is from the Tampa movie theater.

The nee-Federalist Hotel Floridian from the 1920’s reminded me of so many stately hotels from the same era in New York and Boston.

You just knew that this was a respectable hotel. I wish I could have seen the ballroom which I'm sure is behind the arched windows.

I was also smitten by the Kress store.

Even the manhole covers were beautiful in Tampa, even though it was relatively cold and rainy.

The administration building of the University of Tampa is the old Tampa Hotel. This Victorian era resort hotel is an out of control example of Victorian exoticism.

We then had a long drive through some of the industrial port area. It felt very familiar. I grew up just a few miles from the Fore River shipyard. That low industrial landscape close to shore feels just like home.

The next day we took the local highway, as opposed to the interstate down to Sarasota. We love local roads. It’s a good way to really get to see what an area is like.There are lots of local produce stands along the way, lots of places to buy Cubans. We assume this means pressed sandwiches rather than escapees from Castro's rule.

Living as we do in Manhattan where we see the sky in little slivers, the big sky of flat Florida was intoxicating. The weather was kind of turbulent. The sky was amazing.

My daughter shops at the Washington Heights branch of the Bravo supermarket. We have only seen small urban sized Bravo markets.

My husband keeps threatening to move us to a tin can in Florida. This was one of many, many trailer parks that we saw on the trip from Tampa to Sarasota along Rte. 41.

When in Sarasota we went to an outdoor art show with my cousin Jimmy, his wife ET and daughter Hope.

We found another great art deco Kress store.

Don’t you just love the palm tress and oranges?

My husband admiring the Kress store, and my cousins below.

I loved these boxes made out of fallen trees.

dressed for the wedding

At the wedding,. My cousin took this photo

Right after the wedding we drove to the airport and returned the car. We traveled home like students stealing cat naps in the airports and on the plane. It’s nice to be home.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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