Loss and light

 This morning I got a sweet email from my sister recalling how we spent the first anniversary of 9/11 together at Wave Hill, a beautiful garden in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson. She wrote the email noting that she was writing the exact moment that the first of the World Trade Center buildings was struck.

I have found myself this year trying to pull away from my memories of that day. It has been a week of death. A friend from my community died. She was a joyful brilliant presence who had become like a sister to many people I hold dear. 

 Friday was the unveiling for my dearest friend Shawna.

It was a morning of large emotions expressed quietly. 

My father's Yahrzeit

began Friday evening.

Sunday my sons and I attended the memorial service for their beloved fifth grade teacher. My daughter had wanted to attend but she woke up with a bad cold. 

Kathie Khalifa taught each of my kids. She was the sort of teacher that each child deserves to have at least once in their school career. She had been an actress before she became a teacher. When Kathie read aloud to kids it was memorable. She loved music and that permeated her class as well. I remember talking to a group of one of my son's classmates on the first day of school while they were waiting anxiously to meet their new teacher. I told them that they all needed to buy bigger hats because their brains would grow so much while Kathie was their teacher. It is a gift to have a teacher who has the kids working hard with a spirit of joy. I gave birth to three people whose lives were made better because of Kathie and I know that there are hundreds more.

Anyway, all of tho deaths in my week have made it hard for me to focus on the break that 9/11 has caused in our souls.So forgive me for not addressing it directly this year. I just can't.

I have been working away on Sarah's light themed tallit.

I have begun embroidering the letters for the atara.

I normally save the work on the atara until the end.This piece is due soon. I have found that an excellent way to avoid getting stuck in a procrastination cycle is to start on any bit of the work at hand rather than sticking to my usual work patterns. It tricks my brain into working.

I also have begun painting the letters onto the tallit stripes.

 This text from Esther 8:16 

לַיְּהוּדִ֕ים הָֽיְתָ֥ה אוֹרָ֖ה וְשִׂמְחָ֑ה וְשָׂשֹׂ֖ן וִיקָֽר׃

The Jews enjoyed light and gladness, happiness and honor.

I hope that you can see the progression between the letters just painted onto the silk painted with scrolling vine background and then how much better the letters look outlined, 

even when there is a slight difference between the lettering color and the outline.

Below is another set of text-stripes. This time painted on a differently textured raw silk.

The text 

אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר

Shine a new light upon Zion

comes from the morning prayers..

I am now working on adding a bit of shining light on that stripe through the use of couched  threads and yarns.

I want the texts themselves to feel like a source of light.

There is much work left to do but this is coming along.

On the micro local news front....

The last not quite original but dating back to the late 19th or very early 20th century building on the corner of 96th street is being torn down.

One of the things that  I had loved about my neighborhood when I first moved here was how much of the neighborhood looked just as it did in the 1930s.

There had been a building boom from the 1880s until the 1920s. 

There was a bit of a feeble building burst during the early years of the Depression which fizzled out as the economy declined. But one could without much trouble film a movie set in the 1930s or 40s in the neighborhood without the use of CGI or fancy post production cropping.

Alas that is not true today. This sign that I believe reads "bakery" will soon be destroyed.