As excuses for a long writing absence, I have several. My new laptop has a different Windows and until R.K. posted a comment I actually could not find my blog. As it's listed above, its not listed on Blogger...so it "doesnt exist" much like I do not exist on the Anash list, so I'm invisible or 'dead' for Chabad.
Second, it hasn't been a really smooth adjustment from NY to PA, I prefer PA after so many years in NY, but the move was interrupted by a sudden diagnosis for the need to have surgery. That required alot of doctor meetings, discarding doctors and finding new ones and I am picky on the subject. This is one area where if the shoe doesnt fit, move on to another pair. Especially for women, who for years had to listen, and still do it seems in PA, to doctors tell us what we feel in our bodies is actually in our minds.
As I write this, my tiny apartment is so cold, the house is an old victorian and my apt runs along the outside walls and there's no insulation whatsoever...my breath mists. The thermostat reads 59 degree inside and its 30 outside. I ran the central heating one month before I got the bill of $178 and no longer use the central heating. I bought a raddiant heater, but nothing can fight this kind of cold. Except I learned you have to dress in layers, 2 pair socks, sweaters, run the gas oven while I'm home and I have the radiant heater now set up for the cats who were so cold had stopped eating and just huddled. They're snapping at eacch other. I have to get a 2nd small heater for the other cat, these two are in such a fiddle right now they dont want to eat next to each other.
Since my daughter told me everyone is too busy with their own lives and dont expect them to come by or call too often, I've had to readjust my brain and life. It's as alone here as in NY. But people seem nicer here overall. Things are slower and often dumber. Every once in awhile I meet someone who'll excitedly ask, "You from NY???!" and then conversation always begins with How do you like PA?
'I was in NY and its nice to visit, but I couldnt live there' Yeah, at least half of NYers might say the same.
But as I wrote somewhere else recently the New York signposts of my own life and more prominently, my father's era, are completely gone now. I was on the UPWS about a decade ago, the only thing that remained were the pre-War buildings on West End Ave, Ansche Chesed etc. Walk down to Broadway and its all gone. My father used to take me erev Pesach to the fish monger whose name is lost now as well. But it was 3 steps down, like a basement store and everything was cut, filleted and ground to order. The fish monger was a huge man who loved to take a large fish and whack it on the wooden plank before him, maybe it stunned the fish so that the knife went in without resistance. But my father was always particular about this tradition, whitefish, pike, fresh ground with onions, send the heads and bones ina separate bag. The chinese restaurants Ling Nins, Harbin Inn, Murray's Fish Shop, William's Bar B Que, small dress shops like Ardsley where every season my mother sat as dresses where brought out for her to look at...gone. L'Oreal cosmetics where my mother's custom blend of foundation and powder where made to order as we waited is now a billion dollar prepackaged business. David's Shop that was filled with revolving glass cases of things for women like needlepoint compacts, men's tortoiseshell combs in slip cases, barrettes, handbags and the Riverside, Embassy, Rialto movie theatres. Right between the theatres was inset a Barton's Candy store where our neighbor Edith Bass hand boxed chocolates into their shiny black boxes covered with doodles of pink poodles, green buds, yellow ribbons. You could buy a piece or a box, or bridge mix that was filled with such an assortment of chocolate covered brazil nuts, toffee crunch covered in white chocolate, rum balls, plump raisins, pecans and walnuts all in either milk or dark chocolate that melted slowly as only real chocolate does.Viennese Crunch...2 words that say it all. Sometimes around the holidays Edith would bring us a large box of Bartons fancy chocolates.
I never went back to the Garment District but venturing to 34th street to Jack's .99 Store it seemed most of 34th and 7th Ave had changed with Jews departing and replaced with Indian importers, Iranian rug sellers, knitting shops, fabric emporiums and Chinese junk shops of every variety Wholesale Only Please!
Crown Heights is much the same...in one sense good that the community expanded with new buildings, but for me it didnt feel like a cozy home anymore. A new front was slapped onto 770 which is an architects nightmare of no design, almost mimicing the ugly extruded new front placed on the Brooklyn Museum by Diller Scofidio.
Anyway this is much too long for anyone to read...but that's as always. I've been accepted into a study for complicated grief, but that'll be another post.
Second, it hasn't been a really smooth adjustment from NY to PA, I prefer PA after so many years in NY, but the move was interrupted by a sudden diagnosis for the need to have surgery. That required alot of doctor meetings, discarding doctors and finding new ones and I am picky on the subject. This is one area where if the shoe doesnt fit, move on to another pair. Especially for women, who for years had to listen, and still do it seems in PA, to doctors tell us what we feel in our bodies is actually in our minds.
As I write this, my tiny apartment is so cold, the house is an old victorian and my apt runs along the outside walls and there's no insulation whatsoever...my breath mists. The thermostat reads 59 degree inside and its 30 outside. I ran the central heating one month before I got the bill of $178 and no longer use the central heating. I bought a raddiant heater, but nothing can fight this kind of cold. Except I learned you have to dress in layers, 2 pair socks, sweaters, run the gas oven while I'm home and I have the radiant heater now set up for the cats who were so cold had stopped eating and just huddled. They're snapping at eacch other. I have to get a 2nd small heater for the other cat, these two are in such a fiddle right now they dont want to eat next to each other.
Since my daughter told me everyone is too busy with their own lives and dont expect them to come by or call too often, I've had to readjust my brain and life. It's as alone here as in NY. But people seem nicer here overall. Things are slower and often dumber. Every once in awhile I meet someone who'll excitedly ask, "You from NY???!" and then conversation always begins with How do you like PA?
'I was in NY and its nice to visit, but I couldnt live there' Yeah, at least half of NYers might say the same.
But as I wrote somewhere else recently the New York signposts of my own life and more prominently, my father's era, are completely gone now. I was on the UPWS about a decade ago, the only thing that remained were the pre-War buildings on West End Ave, Ansche Chesed etc. Walk down to Broadway and its all gone. My father used to take me erev Pesach to the fish monger whose name is lost now as well. But it was 3 steps down, like a basement store and everything was cut, filleted and ground to order. The fish monger was a huge man who loved to take a large fish and whack it on the wooden plank before him, maybe it stunned the fish so that the knife went in without resistance. But my father was always particular about this tradition, whitefish, pike, fresh ground with onions, send the heads and bones ina separate bag. The chinese restaurants Ling Nins, Harbin Inn, Murray's Fish Shop, William's Bar B Que, small dress shops like Ardsley where every season my mother sat as dresses where brought out for her to look at...gone. L'Oreal cosmetics where my mother's custom blend of foundation and powder where made to order as we waited is now a billion dollar prepackaged business. David's Shop that was filled with revolving glass cases of things for women like needlepoint compacts, men's tortoiseshell combs in slip cases, barrettes, handbags and the Riverside, Embassy, Rialto movie theatres. Right between the theatres was inset a Barton's Candy store where our neighbor Edith Bass hand boxed chocolates into their shiny black boxes covered with doodles of pink poodles, green buds, yellow ribbons. You could buy a piece or a box, or bridge mix that was filled with such an assortment of chocolate covered brazil nuts, toffee crunch covered in white chocolate, rum balls, plump raisins, pecans and walnuts all in either milk or dark chocolate that melted slowly as only real chocolate does.Viennese Crunch...2 words that say it all. Sometimes around the holidays Edith would bring us a large box of Bartons fancy chocolates.
I never went back to the Garment District but venturing to 34th street to Jack's .99 Store it seemed most of 34th and 7th Ave had changed with Jews departing and replaced with Indian importers, Iranian rug sellers, knitting shops, fabric emporiums and Chinese junk shops of every variety Wholesale Only Please!
Crown Heights is much the same...in one sense good that the community expanded with new buildings, but for me it didnt feel like a cozy home anymore. A new front was slapped onto 770 which is an architects nightmare of no design, almost mimicing the ugly extruded new front placed on the Brooklyn Museum by Diller Scofidio.
Anyway this is much too long for anyone to read...but that's as always. I've been accepted into a study for complicated grief, but that'll be another post.
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