a little red hen

July 4, 2009: A Day Ends in Red Hook, Brooklyn

RED HOOK, Brooklyn                                      

 

 

July 3, 21009, QUEENS: Farm Museum & Main Street, Flushing

  

Queens Farm Museum  

 

Flushing Queens

July 4, 2,009: Eighth Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn

SUNSET PARK                            

The Last Time I Saw Portland...

Unexpectedly, it was snowing here in January.  Now Portland, Oregon's  weather is sunny, the envy of our friends in New York drenched with rain over the past week.  The two cities seem to have exchanged climates.

It's been too busy since we arrived to think about blogging.  But today I read the last two posts at TimeGoesBy.  Reading her responses to the prevalence of Blackberries on her visit to Manhattan was timely.  My daughter's Blackberry was next to me at the breakfast table.  Left there as she took the baby up for a nap.  I never get over how tiny the keys are.

But I have seen it's utility.  Last week a call from a broker while we were on the playground with Zoe.  Nice to have a cellphone.  Needing to make arrangements for her to show someone our apartment, we were impressed by how she could receive call and email on her little device.  "Now I get it," told my daughter.

Of course it's all so speeded up--faxes for contract exchanges were added to the mix.  I guess these innovations are more appealing when they facilitate something important to me.  But no Black or Blue or Redberries in my future--too much to keep track of along with my knittng.

Today's TGB, a tidy listing to terms around the healthcare debacle plus concise explanations of what is at stake, sparked an "Aha" moment.  Here is why we will not get a single payer plan or even a very useful "public" option.  It would mean that all Americans would be joined in a way that would threaten what is so important in our political system today:  how to keep groups of us at odds with one another.

Think of it.  Medicare for all, for example, reduces the conflict between  older and younger people.  Our energy might be directed toward making a better national health system rather than setting up old people's entitlements versus those of children. 

What would keep the Repubs and Dems going?  They'd have to be thoughtful--finally answer why only Congressmen and Congresswomen were entitled to the best healthcare benefits.  And that might lead to, oh you remember the term, Democracy.

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?

WEAR A WHITE ARMBAND...PROTEST DOMESTIC TERRORISM

"Abortion doctor shot dead at his Kansas church"  

The party of  Death--a/k/a "the right to life" has struck again in Kansas.

The National Organization for Women asks us to  wear a white armband tomorrow, Monday, June 1, 2009, to protest domestic violence.  

Gun violence and violence against women and children continue to be intimately connected in America.

Make your voice heard as we move closer to the looming dystopia we have been warned about in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

 

Laundry Room Exposed: How We Do It in Morningside Heights

Noticing the abandoned books Claude snapped as she walked along the Seine, I was reminded of my found copy of "Les Anglais" by Andre Maurois.  The book was sitting on the bookshelf in our basement laundry room. A 1935 edition (original 1927), it had been discarded by a local university, still had the library pocket at the back.  A useful prop to illustrate our washing space and its sensibilities, shaped by the past fifty years in the life of Morningside Gardens.

Couple of years ago, the co-op changed vendors, updated many of the machines.  Due to much unhappiness that the Extractor had  not been equally honored, a new one was found.  (The look of this one seems only slightly updated from the previous one and I could find none similar in a Google search).

Ron and I have had to come to a meeting of the minds on extracting as a useable pursuit.  Yes, it cuts down the time in the dryer but it shortens the life of sheets.  We use if for towels, jeans.

One downside of the change was the removal of the functional and ugly bookcase.  Again, much complaint brought a smaller unit  on one wall.  Not a chance anymore to contemplate my neighbors' tastes via the range of magazines/books/catalogs.  We were delighted to have a second oversize dryer (right) added to the amenities.

Lydia at Writerquake will probably wonder why I've missed the chance to  include here some of the well-preserved sepia photos in the book--sheep grazing and a Communist rally in Hyde Park (separate pages).  I was surprised by two in particular--women undergraduates at Oxford and another of  women carrying signs "National Unemployed Women March To London" (with the phrase "calme et la dignite" in the caption).   Perhaps I'll scan some of them before I return the book to the laundry room shelf.

Maurois was well-acquainted with the English through working with them in World War One and spending time in England.  Not able to read French, I miss what scholars describe as his bemusement and curiosity about Les Anglais.  Some of how the French regard the English comes through in a contemporary way in today's NY Times article "The British Are Leaving."

Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Nominee for Our Times

It's been far too long since I'd checked in on Pandagon,  seriously feminist, in-your-face blog.  Amanda Marcotte's headline sums up what many of us fear about the swirl of stupidity that has only just begun from the Senate Repub old white guys --

This appears like it’s going to be much worse than even the worst cynic would have predicted

She is on the mark about the opposition to Sonia Sotomayor,  President Obama's well-qualified nominee for the Supreme Court.

One commenter imagines  the following  list of qualities that any god-fearing right-winger would require to find a woman nominee acceptable : 

"So, just to get this straight - the heirarchy of wiminfolk for the conservatives goes like this
-(white) virgin
-(white) married with clown car womb (as long as they’re in a church)
-(white) married with 2-3 kids
-(white) unmarried with kids
-(white) divorced with kids
-(white) divorced no kids
-(white) never been married no kids has sex anyway

....Wait, should virgins be at the top? Or in the middle? Argh. It’s hard - such shifting sands."

Go there and read.   We need to have a little lightness as we prepare ourselves for the stupidity marathon a/k/a Supreme Court selection in the Senate.

UPDATE:  Some of today's newpaper front pages in New York City.  

 

And our own Nick Bloom was contacted to join Brian Lehrer on WNYC the local NPR affiliate to talk about public housing in the City (link to the webcast).  Along with a current resident of the Bronx housing project where Sonia Sotomayor grew up, the three had a good discussion on the value of this 1930s innovation. 

Memorial Day for Pacifists

 We have missed another opportunity.  It is not the first time.  Year after year we shift uncomfortably in our  seats when the day arrives to celebrate wars past.  We do not have an answer other than our usual one.

The street below my window is quiet at 9 a.m.  It's easy to hear the crows on my roof.  I might celebrate the longed-for quiet.  I am grateful.

Gratitude is not sufficient.  Celebrating the lost lives of those who fought America's wars continues.  Even as we know that lives were ended for those simply supporting this country's repeated missteps, our busybodyness elsewhere. 

Pacifists could use Memorial Day in America to reflect on how we believe that warfare only brings loss and sadness to women and children and men and landscapes.  And punishes those who have correctly oppossed this thinly-disguised screen to build capital.

Pacifists, those of us tired of exceptions for "good wars," what about this  everyday strategy to end war--a program beyond the tee-shirt?

NYC Subway...music versus clatter