When I'm feelin' kinda low and nothing seems to be going my way, either at home or in the world, I know it's time to climb into my Prius and head toward City Market. Something about the place relaxes me the moment I walk under the huge, rounded metallic canopy over the entrance. The signage which is artistically hand-lettered in a now "City" distinctive style always says things in a courteous, welcoming way. The checkers seem like real people displaying a little more individuality than what you'd find in other stores whether in their fashion styles or the jewelry they wear. And most of them remember my name and enter it into the checkout register so I can receive my five percent senior discount. But, most of all, I know I'm going to find a fresh display of my most important food item: bread. These are the finest artisan breads produced anywhere and they are all made with natural starters (wild yeasts) and are allowed to rise more slowly to develop flavor. You can feel the loaves: their crusty outer shells and imagine the chewy, elastic insides. There are many different varieties but my favorite is the sesame wheat loaf from O'Bread. It has sesame seeds embedded in the crust and the bread stays moist and delicious for a full three days. When you cut into the loaf you see irregular holes where the bread has fermented, as opposed to the uniform blandness of a commercial loaf texture. Driving home with my bread I think of how my first slice will be one of two kreichiks (Yiddish for the heel of the bread) and how good it will taste with some cold butter. And maybe an espresso. In a way City is like a haven for me. I feel as though I'm in a safe zone when I'm there away from the travails of the world and my own shortcomings. Some people only shop for the best price, but I like the best experience even if it means paying a little extra.

The radiant city...

Everyone has a place in their imagination that fills them with awe and excitement as well as a nostalgia for "home." For me this place is New York City. To this day the car trip to the City quickens my pulse and renews the hope of fulfilling one's dreams. Even the trip down the Thruway with its high-tech rest rooms every thirty miles or so, the way you can feel the traffic start to pick up south of Poughkeepsie, and the long downhill to the sight of the broad Hudson at the Tappan Zee bridge is a pleasureful experience. Although I was born in the City (the Bronx) I only lived there for the first five years of my life, one year in Astoria, Queens, in 1949 and one and one half years in 1966-67 at the 92nd Street Y but I can always hear the roar of the subway train on the express tracks, my neck remembers the stiffness from looking up at the tall buildings and I can see the flags fluttering at Rockefeller Center behind the gigantic statue of Atlas holding up the world at the Fifth Avenue entrance. The City exudes the radiance of a culture bursting with energy. At least, this is the way I like to think of it in my imagination. So many things are gone now that I remember with affection: the Automat where you could get a sliced egg sandwich with a bit of lettuce and tomato for five nickels, the thick wooden turnstile in a subway station that you would snap free when your nickel went in the slot, the red trolley cars with the lower center doors on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx and the varnished caned seats inside, the movie palaces along Broadway - even double-decker buses along Fifth Avenue! The rest of America, out West, was something you could only dream about visiting one day or glimpse through a "Viewmaster." Every civilization in history has had a beginning, a greatest era and a decline. New York is just one of many great cities now and the people trodding the ramps at Grand Central are different but the memory and the hope still linger over the City like the haze from the East River on a steamy summer day. I was not fortunate enough to be able to live and work in the radiant City but I know but, in a way, that makes it all the more stimulating to me.

Good things from bad...

My day didn't get off to such a good start yesterday. My daughter called and was upset with a blog I had written that had some negative comments on her family. This made me feel very guilty about blogging but her point was well-taken. I felt so bad I had resolved to stop blogging, but she called layer in the day and we had one of the best heart-to-heart talks we've had in years. It made me feel so much better when she said that one of her friends had enjoyed a couple of my blogs. I felt worthy again and was resolved to continue blogging with a new energy and discretion. A cloud of hurt had been lined with silver after all.
By coincidence another event that at first I thought very bad happened yesterday. I fell while I was out for my morning exercise just as I was turning from the road into a driveway to get to the sidewalk. I went down fast but since that part of the driveway goes up from the road I didn't fall as far as I could have. I landed on my side, my arm tucked in and I felt something twist a little in my knee. It was the same knee that had been giving me trouble for the past few months. And lo, as I picked myself up and began walking the knee felt much better as though it had been twisted back to where it should be. Maybe the aphorism: "There is a silver lining to every cloud" is true after all.

Love for sale?...

Valentine's Day is coming and once again I'll come up short. I've never sent my wife a valentine because all the cards seem to expensive compared to their shallow or mawkish thoughts. The last time I sent a valentine was about 1951 and I paid a dollar to send one that had a big padded silk heart to a girl two years younger than me. Of course, I never heard from her and it must have been a big joke with her parents. But then, to me, the world was full of promise. I know my wife would like to get a valentine in the mail with a tender thought but it just wouldn't be me. Her friends tell her their husbands do all these sappy, superficial things like flowers or candy and that makes me mad. Marriage takes a lot of resolve and if you've been married for a long time, as I have, love has morphed into many other things that cannot be expressed so easily. Remember when you learned in high school English that Shakespeare left his wife his "second best bed?" I always thought that was a low blow...
Plus, my wife is a wonderful person!

You Pay for This?

Last night I got a phone call from my son and daughter-in-law who are travelling in Maui with their two children and nanny (who is also my daughter-in-law's mother.) They had just been to view a sunrise from the top of a volcanoe which meant they all had to get up at 4 a.m. and drive 40 miles to an altitude of 10K feet. Apparently it sucked and she had a "massive headache and nausea." After raging at my son for having pressured them all to go at this hour the next thing they did was go for a frightening drive on a sometimes one-lane road along the cliffs by the ocean. It was beautiful but also terrifying. At the end of the drive they saw a rock with a natural-made hole in it where the ocean pressure sent a spume 50 ft. high! Is it worth it? Well, if you believe in "no pain, no gain" it certainly is. It seems, in life, there has to be some element of danger or hardship to make an experience worth mentioning. For instance, blogging, for married bloggers. It would be safer just to e-mail and not be afraid of exposing yourself but that wouldn't be as enjoyable as the vague fear that you might get scalded in letting off steam. And so it goes with vacations: I remember a trip to Disney World in 1984 with my daughter and son. We were on one of the "adventures": I think it was Exxon's "Wonderful World of Energy" and we were sitting in a huge dark hall on a moving bench which took you through the era of the dinosaurs and eons of time. All of a sudden the power was lost, the lights came on and we all had to walk dejectedly out an emergency exit. No fear, no pain; just the blahs. So, yes, I guess you can't have beauty and fear without paying for it. Besides, it really gives you a priceless talking point.

The Costco Experience

I love/hate Costco. You have to buy a lot of everything you buy in order to get a bargain. But the quality is tops! And it's easy to return anything. It just seems more energized being in Costco versus a regular grocery store. But the people running the samples carts look so dispirited and bored - almost zombie-like. The electronics are all about to be replaced with new technology - so they're offered at reasonable prices. But the ambience doesn't begin to compare to a Sony or an Apple boutique. In fact, the ambience is decidedly chic blue-collar and egalitarian, but I notice many of the establishment elite (doctors, professors) shopping there too. It makes me feel as though I'm being sucked in to the mainstream default of everyday life when I consider myself "a cut above." I have to keep fighting the temptation to walk out clutching a 52" flat screen TV...but the food I buy looks perfect. But as I'm walking out to my Prius with a shopping basket full of glorious fruit and produce I have to think of those in Haiti eating mudcakes because they cannot afford anything else. Wouldn't it be ironic if they discovered there was some ingredient in the mudcakes that made them even more nutritious than what I had bought? Maybe they're even happier eating their mudcakes than I am biting into a ripe mango....

Ridin' the range...

I've always thought the purpose of life - once we're beyond the biological imperative to reproduce - is to discover as much about how life works as you can. If there's anything I've learned it's not to be prey to your emotions. This is much easier said than done for if we were to eliminate all emotion from our lives we would be zombies and who cannot help but sigh when listening to the Moonlight Sonata or feel a rush of exhilaration at a great Broadway musical like My Fair Lady or Fiddler. But there are other areas where we can defend against becoming victims of our impulses such as investing. We all know the "market" has to go up and down in order to be a market. And right now you hear a lot of grumbling about people losing money in their retirement portfolios. (They hardly ever say anything when the market is up) Yet, this is a good time for real investors unless you think that after the sun sets it won't come up again in the morning. Believe me, it'll come back stronger than ever. Can you believe it, or would you rather just go with your depression about not having granite countertops, central air or a minivan with a mobile kiddie theater? What's that? You have those things already? Yeah, I know, it's a tough world, but hang in there!

The sounds of expectation...

Because we still get old-fashioned mail delivery (right to our door) I listen as the mail carrier places our stuff in the mailbox. I can always tell by the sound (much louder and the top flap doesn't clank closed) when my new issue of the New Yorker is delivered. If my wife is home this creates a brief moment of panic because she won't wait until the carrier is at a safe distance down the street to collect the mail. I wait because I don't want him (or her) to think that I have nothing better to do with my day than wait for the mail. But since my wife has no such compunctions she barges right out, noisily pulls the mail out letting the top flap clank closed so the whole street knows, and comes slowly back up the stairs making me wait the extra few seconds of artery narrowing anticipation before coming over to me where I sit and saying, reluctantly, "Here's your New Yorker." (I think she gets a vicarious thrill by walking slowly and making me wait those extra few seconds.)
Sometimes, if she hasn't heard the delivery, she will notice the mail sticking out of the box and if the mail carrier has had sufficient time to withdraw down the street we will both race each other to get to the box first. It's her 123 lbs. to my 132 lbs. so it is not much of a jostling contest and one usually ends up holding the door for the other. If she reaches into the box first she usually just hands me the New Yorker with a disdainful "Here."
This all my seem trite to you but it is important to me to be the first to see the magazine - to take note of its cover art and peruse the table of contents to arouse my anticipation. I like to be first because this gives me an informational advantage over my wife and as we all know information is power! I also feel that I should be the first to possess it since I'm the one that so looks forward to it. My grandson, Ben, knows this and once, when we got fortune cookies for a dessert he said "I know what you want yours to say, Pa: that you"ll get a new New Yorker every day for a year!"

Library of hysterica...

I've just reviewed my daughter-in-law's entire blog works since the end of October '06 and i have to say that I agree with BL in judging them to be inappropriate for a 30 year-old mother of two with an advanced business degree. They cover the entire spectrum from farting to bra size to post-partum depression and I find them among the most candid, incredibly funny and entertaining admissions I have ever read. (Philip Roth eat your heart out) Her relationship with her Jewish husband is incisively explored with loving humor and touching detail. I only wish that something like this were a column in the local paper instead of the routinely insipid "Dear Abby" stuff. Bravo!

Other women in my life

One of the reasons I like to go to City Market, a downtown healthy/local food coop, is that it gives me a chance to have some contact with other people. Since I stay home most of the time and am not in school, don't go to work or frequent bars, my contact is limited. But at least when I go to get my sourdough bread or pasta I know I will have to make some eye contact and maybe exchange a word or so at the checkout. Most of the checkers there are young women and many have something unappealing about them: they are obese, they have hair in the wrong places, their clothes either cover too much or too little or they just seem too well educated for the job. The young men are also different - one wears lipstick and it actually looks quite good with his ear ring. Once in a while an attractive young female takes the job but they never seem to last long: I suppose they go on to more challenging positions quickly or, being adventurous, just move to a different state. They never engage me at the checkout - and that is understandable. But the others sre grateful if you exchange a thought with them. They might ask how I use the dehydrated refried bean mix that I sometimes buy (ans: in my pasta sauce) or they might drop a remark that it's the kind of day that they'd like to be at home reading or drinking tea. It's almost as if their looks (or lack thereof) has freed them from the vanity of thinking of sexual attraction all the time and enabled them to see what's going on around them. These other women are not significant interests my life, but, still, if I see them in another setting or just on the street I take note. And it's surprising how conversant some of them are and how their personality seems to brighten if someone takes an interest. They are way younger than I am but that doesn't seem to matter. This is one of the reasons I like going to City.