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...
A blog, mostly about my work making Jewish ritual objects, but with detours into garment making, living in New York City, cooking, and other aspects of domestic life. A note about comments: I love comments from readers, from spammers, not so much. I approve comments before posting them so comments are not cluttered with junk. It may take a few hours before your posts appear. Be patient. If you are a real person with a real comment it will be posted.