sarah in nyc

 This morning at 8:46 we were packing up the cabin we have been renting this summer. Unlike that other September 11, of the hard bright blue sky like a big beautiful bowl over our world,  today the sky was complicated. As we drove back towards the city, parts of the sky were bright blue and other corners of the sky were black with rain clouds. We didn't listen to the names of the dead being read today. We approached the George Washington Bridge. There was the big flag adorning the bridge. I thought about all of the Port Authority workers who had died doing their jobs that day. As we drove along the West Side Highway I remembered how my sister was stuck in traffic that day as the disaster was taking place. I remembered my friend who was driving further downtown that day, late for his meeting on the top floor of the World Trade Center. At first he was in a panic because he was so late for the meeting. And then he saw the place where he was supposed to be,  and the people he...

  This was a truly successful work vacation---that is shifting my attention to a different piece on my to do list.  I finished the tallit last night. When i posted last time I was most of the way through the embroidering of the letters on the atara. My next task was removing the flannel onto which I had calligraphed the text In the past I have used cotton batiste or an old cotton sheet as the, (as it is called in the sewing universe) waste fabric that is then carefully pulled away after the embroidery is completed. Instead, I used the Grateful Dead flannel because it was at hand. The softness of the flannel fivers as opposed to the crisper batiste made removal a bit more difficult. There is always a period of time when the piece looks like a complete disaster. As I worked I thought about the many myths and folk tales where doing a long and boring task is a major plot point. I kept my self on task by listening to podcasts and a thumb drive of old recordings of Jean Shepard from...

 My husband has a friend whose grandmother lived in Brooklyn. During the summers rather than going on an actual vacation she would sleep in a different bedroom for a couple of months. I have taken a similar work vacation. I am taking a break from the Schechter Mappah and going back to work on Alan's tallit.   I had calligraphed eight verses of Psalm 146, twice for two of the stripe panels earlier in the summer. It was time to tackle the other two renditions of Psalm 146. The white acrylic paint has a weirdly dry texture.  Eventually all four text stripe panels were completed. My goal in this tallit is to make it look like a standard issue tallit from a distance. I began stitching straight lines of black straight stitches starting from the outer edges of the tallit. Each row of stitching is a presser foot apart from the one next to it. I then added a black ribbon with a zig zag stitch. Here is the reverse of the  tallit. Unlike a garment, both the right side and ...

 Garrison Keillor told a wonderful joke on one of his annual joke shows abut a elderly man who came to the doctor with a broken leg. The doctor asked how the leg got broken and the man began, "Well fifty years ago I was a traveling salesman. A giant blizzard hit while I was on the road and I was finally able to find a farmhouse and the old farmer took me in. He had his daughter fed me supper and I was given an attic room to sleep in. A few moments after I got into bed the farmer's beautiful daughter knocked on the door, smiled and asked if I needed anything. I said that I was fine. She knocked on the door a few moments later and again I said that I had everything that I needed. I was fixing my roof earlier today and I finally understood what she meant and I fell off the roof." Shawna's mother in law hosted the meal of consolation after Shawna's burial. Before I get into the crux of the story there are some things that you need to know. The first is that Halifax ha...

 These past few weeks have been terribly difficult. Yes, I have deadlines looming  but that hasn't really been why things have been so difficult. I wasn't at liberty at write openly before, but nothing is stopping me now. I know that I'm not in elementary school anymore when one keeps a careful tally of who is your first best friend and who is your third best friend.  But  six months ago when I learned that my friend Shawna was very ill, I broke down sobbing. My husband commented that he thought that she might be my best friend.  Shawna and I met when we were nine or ten. Her older brother was having a bar mitzvah and my father was invited back to Halifax to officiate. The rest of the family was invited along. I met Shawna  and her younger sister Amy at an elegant tea held in a beautiful home. We were  girls  the same age and we hung out together through all of the festivities. Both of us remembered the menus from the events of that weekend decade...