A bit of this, and a dash of that

Yesterday, I had an appointment to tune up my hearing aids. The audiologist is on Columbus Avenue. I noticed as I walked south from 96th Street that there was a HUGE police presence. A neighbor who I met walking uptown (from her own audiologist appointment) mentioned that President Biden was due to travel down Columbus Avenue in just a few minutes.

The residents of our Zip code vote about 98% Democratic. A small but friendly crowd gathered at the police barricades. I didn't get the sense that anyone had particularly gone out of their way to be present, but if they were there, they may as well see the action and give a friendly wave.

I really needed my hearing aids to get tuned up. So I went upstairs to my appointment and when I was done the president still hadn't come by.

Sanitation Department trucks filled with sand were stationed to absorb the shock if any explosives or other untoward event took place.

I remembered my last near miss encounter with the presidential.

On a summer day when I was on afternoon session of kindergarten at the Furnace Brook School a large crowd of people gathered in the empty field across from The Adams Mansion. Lady Bird Johnson was visiting the national historic site just down the street from my house. The usually nearly empty field (my friends and I used to pretend that we were far in the country when we played there or hid under the big pine tree in the center) was jam packed with rows and rows of people trying to catch a glimpse of Lady Bird. I was probably ten rows back and a little kids so although I could tell that something was taking place up ahead I could see nothing except the backs of the crowd. I stayed until it was time to go to kindergarten.

When I got to school all of the students at Furnace Brook School were lined up along Furnace Brook Parkway. We were all given American flags to wave at Lady Bird as she drove past on her way out of Quincy. We all stood and waved our flags in the summer sunshine. We waited and waited but alas the first lady took a different route out of town.

Today, when I Googled Lady Bird Johnson visits Quincy I discovered why my mother hadn't joined me and the rest of the crowd on Presidents Lane awaiting the visit of the First Lady. That visit took place during the Six Day War. My mother was probably glued to the radio. Thanks to Google I can see that my odd memory of this almost encounter with Lady Bird actually took place.

I have been working away on restoring the mappah. I have been creating clouds.

It's getting there. I have used a mix of threads, merino wool yarn, silk thread, rayon embroidery thread, metallic thread and metallic cord to create the clouds.

The clouds are both decorative and structural. The hand stitching is attaching the blue wool to the mappah. each stitch is taken through the blue wool, the soiled white wool beneath and then finally the batting below that. I am careful to not poke the needle through the heavy Ultrasuede that backs the piece. I am working through this project one problem at a time.

Wednesday I spent the day with my dear friend

who had appointments all day at an East Side hospital.

By the time we were going home we discussed that it would be a good night for each of us to have a big stiff drink. My friend isn't currently permitted to drink and I was too tired---although I did feel that I needed a treat.

Yesterday i decided to treat myself to an ice cream. I went to the fancy shop a block away but I hated all of the flavors offered and I didn't feel like spending $7 for a small cup of something that I didn't love. Instead I made myself a microwave mug cake. It wasn't fabulous, but it was good enough

Microwave Mug Cake

1 Teaspoon cocoa

1T sugar

2T flour

a speck of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

about 1/3 teaspoon of baking powder

1 T oil

enough water so the mixture looked like cake batter

mix well and microwave for a minute and a half

The result is something between pudding and a cake. This isn't the best cake you have ever eaten, but it isn't the worst and is nice for when you need a bit of a treat.

Shabbat Shalom!

Barukh Dayan HaEmet - Blessed be the True Judge

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born, Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...

Two funerals and a birthday

I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today. Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things. When we were at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...

It All Feels Like Yesterday

Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...

sarah in nyc

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