a little red hen

Bialy memories: Kossar's Bialy store, New York City

The other day Ron Bloom unearthed photos I took in the 1980s on one of our trips from Baltimore to New York to visit relatives and return home with provisions unavailable in what has been known as "Charm City."  Baltimore had its appealing qualities but "charm" was not one I'd identify.

Kossar's Bialy store (link has instructions on how to eat one!) has somehow stayed in place on the lower east side though the bakers have changed ethnicity.  As I mentioned on an earlier post, this is THE place for authentic bialys and we would fill our car trunk to enrich our Baltimore freezer with about 10 dozen--some to be shared with fortunate friends and neighbors, always plenty to last us till the next longing.

I offer this as a window into how deeply some are attached to particular food connected with memory.  This is Ron's, honed over many years in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn,(scroll down on the page)  a Jewish ghetto of an American style.

My own special food is tapioca (this public service link has recipe how to make it with real, not instant, pearls) probably tasted in a Manhattan cafeteria like Horn & Hardart (gorgeous photo of odd machine that delivered cocoa for a nickel in my memory--rather than coffee mentioned in copy.)  A far less emotion-filled food recollection than his.

What I Miss about Manhattan: The Voting Booth

Let's start with how disappointed we are that the state of Oregon uses mail-in ballots.  That little oval to fill in (blue or black pen suggested) led me to  obsess about getting it right.  Annoying.

Ron and I loved going to our polling place, meeting neighbors, seeing how the poll workers did their jobs (very efficiently).  We've heard that mailed ballots increase participation.  Really?  My impression is this approach encourages proliferation of damned initiatives like 66 & 67, started by people who want to override decisions by the state legislature.  Oregon and the state of Washington are the two that have mail-in ballots.

And the cost?  I've been trying to track this one down without success.  Must be enough paper consumed to pay all the teachers in my grandson's elementary school (where they could use a few more teachers and classrooms, thank you).  And  the photo does not include the hefty Voters' Pamphlet, all 91 pages of it! Trying to resist are the founders of the  No Vote by Mail effort.  Good luck to them! 

Since I first voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, it's been exciting to get in line--New York City, Albuquerque, Oberlin, Baltimore--to pull the lever and feel the surge of participatory democracy.  Not a feeling I get in my living room.  But another change, after much resistance, is coming to the Big Apple, a holdout from the rest of New York state.  Now, folks there will vote electronically, wait in vain for the old familiar  "thump" of the lever, the sound that lets you know your vote has been recorded. 

Continuing  "yarn in the public interest," I knit my smallest YES patch and attempted to write the letters in single crochet.  Whatever it takes.  Judged readable by the very upbeat couple at the Happy Swallow, a coffee shop on Belmont Avenue that's brought kolaches to Portland from Austin, Texas.  This is result of immigration (story here).  Many surprises in our new digs, caffeine-land PDX.  Creative people always thinking how to differentiate themselves from the gazillion other cafes.

Kolaches, clever little cafes--work better for us than mail-in ballots and/or electronic voting.

What I Did NOT Wear...till Portland

Have you read "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" by Ilene Beckerman?  An east coast woman, middle class child of the 1940s/50s, she speaks to how we once thought about clothes.  Her New York City life was much tidier, more elegant than mine yet there's a resonance.  Similar to the sense I've always had when meeting Jewish women around my age in different cities:  a vibe, often brief, that we share until I learn she's a Republican.

"I wore this black bathing suit when I went to Florida with my grandmother.  I was fourteen," Ilene reports.  The drawing on the facing page--I wish that were a skill of mine--tells me more.  While I never had a Florida grandma nor a black bathing suit till now, the pose is familiar.  Second position, the one we learned in ballet class.  That came along with the expected piano lessons that other first generation Jewish mothers like mine understood as required for our upwardness in America. 

Here then is my first black bathing suit.  Bought it maybe 15 years ago to wear to the beach, a place enjoyed by the rest of my family.  I have a purple one that is equally sensible and unused.

On our 1970s and 80s summer  vacations in Cape May, New Jersey, or on Cape Cod, I was comfortable under our generous green and white striped umbrella with my knitting.  Sometimes Ron coaxed me into the salt water which I reluctantly admitted enjoying.  He had been a lifeguard at Coney Island in his youth.  At the same time, after years of summer camp and beginner swim class, I was a day camp counselor (no water required) in St. Louis.

Yet, this very month I have dipped my toes in the excellent warm water of the pool at Terwilliger Plaza.  Four times so far in "Gentle Water Aerobics."  Chlorine not too strong.  Still have to master/mistress the dressing room thing.  Afterwards I put in some minutes on the treadmill, conveniently located on the way back to our apartment.

The first time into the pool, I recalled a suggestion sent me by Hattie when I mentioned my reluctance to take the water.   She likes trim Land's End  ladies' swim suits minus the skirt.  That would be my nod to the 21st century and thinking beyond how black makes me look thinner.  After diving into color and pattern in my Baltimore life, going back to New York City edged me toward, as Ilene B. would say, "...black is always chic--and makes shopping choices much easier."  Third stage retirement requires shifting...more to follow.

I'm not in Manhattan any more. 

DIVINE+Bergdorf Goodman+American Visionary Museum

An exhibition on loan  to Bergdorf at Fifth Avenue & 57th Street from Baltimore's American Visionary Museum... amazing space, near the Inner Harbor.  Bergdorf Goodman website does not indicate how long all this work from the Museum will stay.

Another Normal has taken terrific pictures  of all the windows.

Divine was made famous beyond Baltimore by the filmmaker John Waters.

BEWARE: White Men in Dark Suits

Sally Mericale and I got the idea in 1991 for a different way to talk about peace:  NO WAR.  A graphic  and rubber stamp designer, she developed what we turned into a rubber stamp to produce thousands of  little 2"x2" badges.  We tore up white cotton sheets from secondhand stores (you could find these then in Baltimore).

BEWARE:  White men in dark suits was another of Sally's creations.  Always in style unfortunately.  We'd stamp it on envelopes--bill payments (remember that?), protest letters, and along with other decoration our concerns became something new to me, Mail Art, http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/emma/Intro/intro3.html (TypePad quirky again, so you're on your own for the link.)  Maybe "invented" by Marcel Duchamp.

What has changed?  We are still at war--in real time. That other war, the one where frightened men act out their fears of women contines in the Congress of the United States.  Like so many others, I keep demanding a better future for my grandchildren.

Ron Bloom Celebrates Another Birthday!

All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived,  children and grandchildren we've loved...

...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.

  All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--

most especially yours truly ...

Celebration: High-Rise Style...Last night--a building party where we live. Lee Morgan, Ron's co-chair and great party-giver, suggested this one as they wrapped up their term of office, turned it over to another pair. Singing the Birthday song was a high point of the pot-luck evening...who says New Yorkers don't care about one another?

Coming Out: Myself as "Reluctant Elderly"

Flipping through images in my iPhoto file (favorite thing about my Mac), I come upon images from birthday lunch for my 75th last August.  I meant to blog on how it felt to be "feted" by a group of strangers.

Did I enjoy it?  Absolutely.  Were the people my age or older?  It was a mix at my table, mostly women but more men than I'd expected.  Must have been 100 there for lunch at the Lenox Hill Senior Center.  Got that?  The invitation to celebrate this landmark day (pictures here from the event) came about because I had joined the Center back in 1998.  And never returned.

Backstory.  Deep into kitchen composting as an art form, I'd applied for a small grant from the Puffin Foundation.   The idea was to form a group of seniors into a Kitchen Compost Troupe.   We'd  celebrate the 2001 closing of Fresh Kills, home of the world's largest garbage dump on Staten Island.  Each of us would have nurtured my patented invention, "WormWare,"  world's smallest kitchen composter.

Of the several ways I devised to gather such a group together, I visited Lenox Hill Senior Center.  I spoke with a social worker about making a future presentation on "Composting in Manhattan."   She suggested that I have lunch that day and get a measure of the participants.  Readers, I joined a senior center.

That was a jolt.  It was very personal--unlike teaching a class in Baltimore at an "Eating Together" program in my fifties--this was about me at 66.  Not ready, too soon, I thought. The grant came through but my plan changed after writing a second grant.   "This Dirt Museum:  the Ladies' Room," was an interactive installation at Queens Botanical Garden in 2001.

I never returned to the Lenox Hill Senior Center.  Well, they were all the way over on the east side of town where I rarely go except to museums.  Their knitting group was not as, how would you say it, "up-to-date" as the ones I attended.  The food was very institutional and I felt uncomfortable about it's small one dollar price.  This was not me.  At that moment, aside from reluctance to see myself as one of them, I hit the social class issue.  Senior centers in many cities have been established for people with limited resources.  In New York, their financial support comes from  non-profits working with the aging and the City Council.

Fast forward to 2008.  After all my years of neglect--I did carry the membership card in my wallet for years-- Lenox Hill was gracious enough--to send me an invite to their monthly Birthday Lunch.  Had I been asked in other years (I forget much these days)? I decided to take them up on their offer.

I really enjoyed myself, Ron too but he's less critical than I.  Several of my lunch companions were working seniors.  One woman in public relations wanted to connect with my westside Democratic club because she said  it seemed more active in the Obama campaign than her eastside group.  She also thought  knitting Condom Amulets was amusing and a smart way to promote safe; the actress sitting next to her agreed. 

Having heard that there was a national a move to "update" senior centers.  In New York City the Mayor had big plans to make them more "health-oriented" and reduce their funding.  On the way out I spoke with the two social workers running the program.  Things were not good they reported.  In December, Mayor Bloomberg was resisted in his efforts, with strong opposition by our Council President, Christine Quinn.  Elsewhere from Wellesley, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, California, it's evident that denial about aging takes many forms in addition to my own reluctance.  

Ron and I will soon move into a continuing care retirement community in Portland, Oregon.  Besides accepting it to myself,  I have come out to anyone who will listen that it feels right to describe myself as "elderly."   Yes, more attitude adjustments lie in ahead.

[This post in appreciation of  two this week at TGB on aspects ageism and especially the comment by Tamar at Only Connect that followed the first post.]

Newspapers in America Disappear as We Speak: Baltimore Sun

What happens when people buy media simply as a "product" to be manipulated for earnings?  Earlier this month David Simon ("The Wire" & "Homicide: Life on the Streets") and former police beat reporter on The Baltimore Sun talked with Bill Moyers on the sad state of that paper and newspapers in general in the U.S.  You can read it at this link from the Moyers blog.

From Citybizlist Baltimore E - NEWS (arrived as email but could not find on web)…

    "Layoff notices comes as Tribune slashes 18 senior editors and newsroom managers on Tuesday and Wednesday without warning.

BALTIMORE, Md., April 29, 2009 - Members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild said yesterday that Tribune Co. is bent on gutting what was once one of America's great newspapers after 40 newsroom employees, or 20 percent of the staff, received layoff notices yesterday.

The move comes a day after Tribune fired 18 senior editors and newsroom managers on Tuesday and Wednesday without warning. Many of the editors and managers, who are not members of the newspaper guild, were ushered out of the newsroom by security guards.

"Tribune, through careless management practices, has saddled itself under $13 billion in debt and now Baltimore is paying a price," said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. "Tribune is siphoning good jobs from Baltimore and sending work that talented editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and designers have done here to its home base in Chicago. That is not right."

Tribune plans to lay off the 40 newsroom employees by May 27. Targeted employees, who include four columnists, photographers, critics and copy editors, received hand delivered letters Wednesday afternoon signed by Monty Cook, senior vice president and editor. Also, in the last two weeks The Sun has laid off seven employees in other departments including advertising and customer service.

Since Tribune acquired The Sun in 1999, the newsroom staff has been cut by more than 60 percent to currently 148 employees from roughly 420.

'While we understand that media companies, especially newspapers, are reeling from declining advertising revenue, shrinking circulation and a year-and-a-half of recession, we believe Baltimore needs a metropolitan paper that covers the important events in the region," said Angela Kuhl, Guild Unit Chair who works at The Sun. It is imperative that Baltimore maintains a newspaper that brings people news, exciting and provocative stories and enriches the lives of all who live here.' "

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!

We first noticed it earlier in the week...new guy named by Obama administration.  A mention on the Yahoo news.  "Who Is Ron Bloom?"  the Wall Street Journal's blog queried on Monday.

Time magazine called him "Obama's Car Non-Czar."  You see, this one is 20 years younger than mine, not from Brooklyn.  Similarities?  Both dress casually for meetings but my Ron Bloom likes to knit during his.

Yesterday there was more inside the front section of the ever-thinner New York Times.

I've always told him to be more formal about his name, really, it's Ronald. 

People in academe would ask if he was the creator of "Bloom's Taxonomy"  Not even close.

These are pictures of my Ron Bloom.  Top photo, ten years ago in Mexico--the other two as he appeared recently,  grandfathering in Portland, Oregon.

The knitter/weaver/spinner--formerly Chair of Home Economics (a very different sort of economy than the one in the news) at Morgan State University  And my feminist spouse.

He is not, I repeat, the one who has been appointed to save the nation from its car sickness.  He has been driving Toyotas for 20 years.

UPDATE:  Thanks, Hattie, links now working.

Everything I'd Ever Wanted to Know...

 Specifically, all I wanted to know about snow in Portland, Oregon, I now know.   Is it more challenging than Portland, Maine, lavishly pictured at Time Goes By?  Ronni Bennett has a more photogenic cat, and also knows how to use this old tool.  The shovel (we are renting a house across the street from our family) is one of the reasons we exchanged ours  in Baltimore for a New York apartment--that and the slate roof, the plumbing.  It was invigorating to be reminded of our not-so-distant past as homeowners--plus stairs to climb again.  All of it gave my Elderexercise pedometer a bit of necessary nudging from chairbound inactivity.  [That's TypePad's artful arrangement of the stairs.]

There are people laughing about this. "Why not go somewhere warmer?" I was asked.   I'd explained this  was a good time for my grandson's school schedule and, anyway, it was not as cold here as New York.  Hattie, who now lives in Hawaii but knew freezing times in Portland from ear lier years here , had tried to tell me. I think she arched an eyebrow when we met in Portland in the Fall.  

 Such a lovely  day, lunching outdoors at Pearl Bakery.  We'd met up with Ron after a long coffee at the cafe in Powell's Books.  It was a quiet weekday, the usual assorted crowd of readers, bikers, people like us. This space is a favorite of mine--unpretentious, few drink selections.  It is all about reading in a quiet space.  Kind of old-fashioned.

 Today's crowd at the entrance to that same Powell's on Burnside resembled a mall. Parents and children (we were with Zach, our six year old grandson) broke out of 7 days of snowboundness, stuffed the aisles.   Public school children here have already experienced a shortened school year.  Portland, for all its charm, does not adequately fund public services--education, social services.   Like New York City, it is controlled by a non-urban state legislature.

 Every morning we do "school" with Zach.  Along with his parents, we hope to make up for his partial education.  In November school met only for two weeks.  Doors were closed  the entire week of Thanksgiving.