Doing my civic duty

Tuesday, my husband and I went to vote. Usually, this is not a big deal. Our usual voting place is in the public school two blocks away. Voting in a midterm election is quick to do. During Barak Obama's first election the line to vote went from the door of the school all the way east to Columbus Avenue and then doubled back west to Amsterdam Avenue. I just looked up the distances between the avenues here and it is 800 feet. So the line waiting to elect Barak Obama was about 2000 feet. This was before the age of Covid so people were snugged up pretty close together. I say lined up to elect Barak Obama because something over 99% of our election district voted for him. I will let you do the math about how many people that was waiting to vote.

New York has been encouraging early voting partially because the early voting stations are relatively Covid safe and also because there were some issues with mail-in ballots in the election that took place earlier this year. Early voting opened on Saturday. My husband and I decided to go after the weekend.

My husband stood on line on Monday but got discouraged. It was cold and rainy, so he came home. We decided to go together on Tuesday. Friends have reported standing on line for four hours waiting to vote. We assumed that the line would be shorter during the week.

Our early polling station was in the high school on 102nd street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue. We walked to the school looking for the end of the line. We arrived at the end of the line about ten before noon.

My husband and I wore matching masks, so people would know that we were together and wouldn't give us a hard time for not social distancing. As we looked for the end of the line we passed a woman wearing a mask made out of the same African fabric. She also wore a hat and a wrap all made out of the same fabric. We stopped for a moment to admire one another's masks and then kept looking for the end of the line.

We finally found the end of the line on 100th Street near Columbus Avenue. The line began to move north. The line turned west at 102nd street.

Here you can see both the line we were on and another line on the other side of the pergola.

We could see the back entrance of the school at 12:40. We could also see that the back entrance was being used for the elderly and the disabled.

I thought that perhaps at this point we would be directed into the school. I was wrong. we continued past the school to Amsterdam Avenue and then north to 104th Street. This was the map of our path.

Nearly an hour later we had arrived at 104th street. The battery on my camera died then.

Our neighbors on the line were lovely. We chatted as we waited on the line.

One of the residents in an apartment building across Amsterdam avenue posted this sign in their window.

At one point a woman with a large tote bag distributed trick or treat sized candy bars to everyone on the line. We were all grateful.

Eventually, we made the final turn onto 101st Street.

Our total time in line was three hours and fifty-five minutes. I kept thinking about how Donald Trump has been talking about New York being a ghost town. The many, many people waiting to vote since the polls have opened belie that. I also kept thinking about how he has called us an anarchist city. I can't imagine anarchist quietly waiting on line for four hours for the right to vote. New Yorkers are famous for being impatient. But we all stood politely and waited for our turns to vote. We all knew we were doing something important.

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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