sarah in nyc

 Sunday we did part one of Thanksgiving shopping with our dear friend Charley. We made the trek to Bingo (the frum answer to Costco) in Monsey. Their Brooklyn store is ten miles closer but the travel time to Monsey  is less and the trip is less irritating because of Brooklyn traffic. We are doing Thanksgiving with Charley. One constant on his Thanksgiving table is brisket. My job is to cook the brisket. Last year, the brisket came from a fancy local kosher butcher. I almost fainted when I saw the price on the meat. Charley joined us for Passover and had brisket I had sourced at Bingo. Despite it not being polite to share the cost of the food with your dinner guests I did share the cost of the brisket with our dear friend. He suggested that we make the trek to Bingo. There are many wonderful things to buy at Bingo. The produce is beautiful, really beautiful. I didn't take photos of the produce. I was distracted by OTHER things. I was distracted by the green marshmallows. I love...

I’m having some surgery tomorrow. ( Don’t worry, it isn’t major.) I realized that I needed a bit of ocean time to keep me on an even keel before tomorrow’s events. I suppose if I were the sort of girl who had a house in the Hamptons  I would have been there today. Since I don’t have a house in the Hamptons or Block Island I did the next best thing, or perhaps the even better thing, and  my husband and I took the ferry to Governor's Island.  We had gone last summer and it was beautiful. One of the most extraordinary things about the island for me, aside from how beautiful it is, is that once people step off the ferry they all instantly become mellow, calm and polite. Visually they all look like the polyglot that is New York but as if they traded souls with, say, Iowans.   Today was no different. One of the things that’s lovely about the Island is that they shift around the attractions from year to year.   This year one new thing was an administration bu...

Today my sons asked me to accompany then on a field trip. earlier in the week they had seen part of this exhibit. They thought I would love it. We decided to go today. My boys were right. The exhibit is housed on the main floor of the main building of the library. It isn’t often when you attend an exhibit where all of the visitors seem so completely happy. The visitors ranged from babies in strollers, to large groups of day campers to older matrons one usually sees in museums. Everyone was just having a blast. Aside from the usual vitrines and wall notes, various areas were set aside for reading actual books. Some books were on low shelves and we just plopped on the floor to read. Books for older kids were set up on a book shelf behind a bench. The bench was in constant use with kids and adults lost in a book. The display for The Secret Garden was made out of simulated boxwood with a secret shelf holding a copy of the book. The books that were out for reading were clearly read, but...