melodyssister

This post is bracketed by snow: The first serious snowfall of the season occurred almost immediately after we returned from the south. While ADC was enjoying Florida, the boys had a snow day after one day back at school. The day before yesterday (January 27), as I set off for Princeton, they had another one. My talk at Rutgers has been postponed to March, due to the storm - which in the event didn't affect places south of New York as much as was forecast. Still, it would have been difficult to get to Rutgers (even leaving in the afternoon, it took longer than usual to get to Princeton, as the commuter rail was far less frequent. I ended up taking a bus from Trenton, where I was the only passenger most of the time, and the only non-person of color all of the time.

Going back, on January 9 I spent the morning with my cousins SG and her sister JG, who was visiting from London. We visited Kreeger House, formerly the home of David and Carmen Kreeger, that was specifically designed to set off their collection of art, which ranges from the Impressionists onwards. There were some very lovely pieces there, and I was sorry that it was too cold too see the sculpture garden properly: the grounds were covered with snow, making many of the sculptures inaccessible. It was nice spending time with JG, who I hadn't seen since we lived in Cambridge, and she brought Smarties for the children, which they are taste-testing in comparison with M&Ms.

Last weekend was Martin Luther King Day, and the boys had a day off school for teacher training. With a four-day weekend, we decided to set off for New York. We stayed in a mid-town hotel, the Grand Union, that suited our needs perfectly. Unfortunately for us, it is about to be renovated and will probably be priced above our means when it reopens (We were told this by a lady we met in the lift, who has been staying their for decades whenever she visits New York. She also identified the neck warmers that were all wearing as having been home knitted, and complimented me on my work!). But in the meantime, it was very pleasant, and had really excellent croissants at breakfast.

We arrived in New York on Saturday afternoon, and almost immediately went off to the High Line park, before it got dark. We were expecting a place where you could see views of New York from above, and were severely underwhelmed by what we found. Ignoring the fact that it was freezing there, the view was completely blocked by a variety of high rise buildings going up. I think that even if we had gone at a warmer time of year, this is a place that New Yorkers appreciate, rather than visitors. After recovering with large bowls of hot chocolate, we took the subway to the Guggenheim, which has semi-free entry on Saturday evenings. We stood in a fast-moving line for a while, and had a restorative experience once we got inside. Only part of the museum was open, because they were between exhibitions, but there was just the right amount of art for us to look at. We saw an exhibition of early Kandinsky, another of the Justin Tannhauser collection (some really lovely Impressionists), and of a modern Indian painter, Gaitonde. Interestingly, even before looking at the labels, it was clear that this was Indian-influenced art. We then returned to the hotel and ate at a neighbourhood Korean restaurant, which specialized in dumplings. We had fried and boiled vegetarian dumplings as starters, and I liked them better than most Chinese dim sum I've had. In fact, after this trip, I have come to the conclusion that Chinese is my least-favourite Asian cuisine. It's simply the worst option for vegetarians, it seems to me.

On Sunday we experienced possibly the worst weather so far: freezing, driving rain. We went to Queens, to see the street in Rego Park where my parents-in-law grew up, and were thoroughly soaked. Even the best coat has a limit - and we also walked through slippery slush, which was quite scary since I felt that my boots were not really up to the job ... Had the weather been better, we might have considered knocking on the door and seeing if we could see the inside of the houses, but we felt that we could not drip over the furniture of complete strangers. We then continued to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we tried to meet up with another cousin, OC, and her family. Unfortunately, museums are not really a good place to meet up unless your children are exactly the same age. We did manage to talk a bit, when the children were all involved in activities, but most of the time we were going though the exhibitions at different speeds. S was in heaven, and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We spent over 5 hours in the museum, first at a special exhibition on Chuck Jones, who directed most of the Looney Tunes cartoons, and then at the permanent exhibition, which described the development of all aspects of movies and television, from actors, scripts and costumes, through special effects, make-up and merchandise, to different kinds of cameras and screens. The children experimented with stop-motion animation and played Pacman on an arcade machine. ADC and I particularly enjoyed two collages of famous scenes and famous words from the movies, trying to identify as many as possible. Just watching all the movies in those collages would be an education in classic film. We tentatively agreed to meet OC after supper (they left the museum much earlier than we did), and we even ate at an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side - not the one they recommended, though - but by the time we finished, we were too exhausted to be sociable, and went home without seeing them again. I hope we will be able to find another occasion, but if not, we are all going back to Israel in the summer, and apparently they are considering moving to somewhere in the Jerusalem hills.

On Monday the weather was much better, and we spent the day on the Lower East Side. We began by taking the Staten Island Ferry back and forth to see the Statue of Liberty. ADC and I had been to the Ellis Island Museum when ww visited New York in 1996, and we decided that the Tenement Museum would be more enjoyable for the children. We booked two tours - a walking tour, at 2 p.m., and a house tour, at 4:45. Before the tours, we met ADC's cousin (we have so much family here it's unbelievable) LS, who took us to a Chinese place for lunch (which was where I came to the conclusion above. It was't that the food was bad, it was just boring. There were about 3 vegetarian options in a list of lunch specials that ran to close to 30, one of which was plain steamed vegetables.) Anyway, it was very nice to see LS again, she seemed to be enjoying her life. The Tenement Museum tours were for me the highlight of our trip (thank you, Daddy, for suggesting it). The walking tour was led by a woman originally from the Netherlands, who had come to New York to study American history, and the group was multi-ethnic. We saw many different styles of buildings, three synagogues (one still working - the Romaniote Kehillat Kodesh Janina, one that is now Seventh-Day Adventist church, and one - the Erster Varsha - that is now a sculptor's studio. I wonder which alternative the founders of the congregations would have considered worse), a Chinese temple to the god of wealth and business, and walked through a few different parks, of which the largest was the Sarah D. Roosevelt park, named after FDR's mother, parts of which have been taken over by the community, in one case for a community garden like we have in Beit Hakerem, and in another case by Chinese men who bring their birds to socialise in a specific spot. The tour ended up at the Essex Street Market, but unfortunately for us, many of the food places were already closed. We had some time between the two tours,so we backtracked to a cupcake bakery I had spotted, and had amazingly good cupcakes and hot chocolate, before going to learn about life in garment production in the Lower East Side. The Tenement Museum offers a number of building tours, we took the Sweatshop Workers ("Pay a visit to the Levine family's garment workshop and the Rogarshevskys' Sabbath table at the turn of the 20th century, when the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place in the world. Explore how immigrants balanced work, family and religion at a time of great change.") This time, the guide and all the participants were clearly Jewish, and had ancestors who had lived in similar tenements. We saw a census from 1900, and all the names there were from ADC's family album. There was even a brother and sister called Fanny and Abraham, just like his grandmother and her brother. The census was fascinating in and of itself: the difference between children who had been born in the old country and had gone to work on arrival contrasted with the American-born siblings, who were in school or college; the men all spoke English and could read and write, while this was not true of all the women. We were there in the late afternoon, and the Levines' back room which served as a sweat shop was already quite gloomy. I was very impressed by the weight of the coal press - no wonder a man was employed to press the garments! I would have liked more time to wander around the other rooms, especially the Rogarshevsky family's other rooms, which we got to see only quite briefly. We did see, however, a special additional prayer that women would say while lighting candles, in which they hoped that their family would be able to earn a living while being able to observe Shabbat - as people moved from backroom sweatshops where the owner knew you and was most likely Jewish himself, to factories that had to abide by New York state blue laws forbidding work on sundays, it became more difficult to keep Shabbat, and for many people this was a serious problem. The last thing we did there was hear an oral history, taken from an elderly lady who had lived in the building, Josephine Baldizzi (her family's story is the subject of a different tour). She described how she would be called to light lamps on Saturdays, and how proud she was that she was able to help by doing that. All in all, it was very moving, and I'm glad the boys are old enough to have enjoyed it, too.

Our last day in New York was spent at the American Museum of Natural History. One of the perks of ADC's job is having friends at all the major natural history museums, and not only were we able to get in for free, we saw an IMAX show and a special exhibition for free, too, thanks to the curator of invertebrate zoology. We didn't have enough time at the Museum. We saw the dinosaur exhibition, which is very up to date, and which was a must because the Smithsonian's dinosaur hall is being refurbished, then hurried to the IMAX. I felt that we could have done without this, in retrospect, but S really wanted to see it: "Tiny Giants" was a heavily anthropomorphised story of the challenges facing chipmunks and grasshopper mice, which I found a bit too cutesy. After that we went to the special exhibition on natural disasters, Nature's Fury, which was really quite scary. I am very glad I don't live in the tornado corridor of the central USA. By the time we were done there, we had to start counting down to catching the train home and we went to see the dioramas of American nature. I think I saw a (stuffed) real road runner for the first time, and I was surprised at how different they were from the Beep-Beeps we had seen on Sunday. We nearly missed the train home, since for the first time we approached Penn Station from street level, rather from within the subway system, and we had difficulty finding the right entrance. Luckily, with a burst of speed we made it, and we even managed to sit together.

ADC stayed on in New York to give talks at the AMNH and at NYU, and by the weekend, we were all exhausted - besides, it was supposed to snow then, too. We spent a peaceful weekend, without leaving the house. On Saturday KM and his family came to visit from Baltimore. The plan was to eat cholent and then go to a museum, but by the time we finished lunch (this involved a 45 minute break while vanilla soufflé was prepared and baked), the four boys were resistant to going anywhere and they spent the afternoon playing board games in the basement, joined at one point by their fathers, while AM and I talked and played with baby CM.

On Sunday, the main thing we did was watch The Sound of Music, which was surprisingly long, and very enjoyable. S has been singing bits and pieces of "The hills are alive" and the Do-Re-Mi Song ever since. Both boys had fun pointing out the tropes while we were watching. I completed the back of GB's vest over this weekend, and I will finish it - seaming and neck/armhole bands - after I get back from Princeton. [In the meantime, the vest has been completed and sent to Tel Aviv.]

Princeton was really fun. Sabine Schmidtke picked me up from the bus stop and I slept over in her enormous house - where she lives alone most of the time, as her partner works for the World Bank and spends Monday to Friday in Washington. I had lunch with Patricia Crone!! I still can't get over it, it was so thrilling to actually meet someone whose books have blown my mind. When I was practically learning some of them by heart for my MA exam, I never thought that someday I would actually meet the author. She was delighted to hear that ADC and his father had read and enjoyed her book Pre-industrial societies. the talk itself went well, I thought. Heinrich von Staden, a classicist who specialises in Galen, came too, and I nearly had a panic attack. But he was very kind about my lack of Greek, and thought that I was doing interesting work, so that was great. He had to leave before the end of the session, and after he left, the others asked questions more focused on the Arabic texts I was using, and I came away withholds of ideas for going forward.

It took a long time to get home. The train from Trenton to Washington was half an hour late, and I think went more slowly than usual so that I arrived home a good hour later than I had expected. I got a lot of knitting done, though. Luckily I brought it along, as I finished my book while still at Trenton. No more travelling for me for the next month or so - I'll be glad for some weekends at home.

My promised letter about our trip to New York last weekend has been delayed by the Arctic weather we have been experiencing: I suddenly found it necessary to knit both boys decent neck warmers that could be pulled up to protect cheeks and noses. So both ends of these past ten days have to do with knitting: last Thursday I went to the local mall and bought 12 balls of yarn for 37 dollars and change. (This comes to about 13 shekels per ball. I think the least amount I've ever paid for yarn per ball in Israel was 15 shekels, at the hole in the wall shop in Mahane Yehuda.) Once I complete all the planned baby/child gifts, I want to make sweaters for myself, finally. Anyone who is interested in anything for themselves may also put in a request (except for this who can knit themselves). The patterns I've chosen to begin with are Miette and Excuses.

So, last Friday we set off by train to New York. We walked to the metro (we ordered a taxi using an app, but it failed to materialise), rode to Union Station, took the Amtrak train to Penn Station and then the Long Island Rail Road to Port Washington - a total of six and a half hours door to door. I must say that Amtrak has very comfortable trains: there was WIFI and electricity at every seat, and wider seats and much more legroom than on any flight I've been on in years. The train started in DC, so we were able to sit in two rows, with the boys in front.

ADC's cousin AS and her dog Ella met us in Port Washington, and we walked to her house. Ella was very enthusiastic in her greeting, and AS said that she had been quite anxious before we arrived, since Ella associates the direction of the train station with going to the vet. Presumably part of her enthusiasm was relief at not having gone to the vet! AS has a lovely house, also with a finished basement (where the boys slept), and two storeys, the kitchen-livingroom-study and the bedrooms/bathroom. At the top of the stairs leading to the basement, she has a pantry, with lots of open narrow shelves, where you can see at a glance exactly what canned goods you have. I liked that very much, especially as our current pantry is a fairly deep cupboard above the countertop, where I can't reach the top shelf.

After breakfast on Saturday, we set off for Manhattan. It took us longer than we expected - I at least had not realised quite how far out on Long Island AS lives, and since it was the weekend, the train stopped at every possible station. We reached Central Park just before noon, and walked across it to get to the Met. The station we got out at is actually the station for the American Museum of Natural History, and probably when we go in January we will visit there, maybe together with OM and and her family, since they are members. A and S were very excited to see Central Park, which they recognised from Hair, and Shaul at least was slightly disappointed to realise that there were no hippies on the central lawn. It was really a beautiful sunny day, and as long as you were walking, it was not too cold. We bought chestnuts from a halal food truck with an Egyptian owner, and ate them just before going into the Met, where we spent the rest of the day - until 8 p.m. - apart from tea/supper with DF, GF and MF.

The Met is overwhelming - and it took us a while before we actually got inside, what with checking our coats and ADC's backpack, and buying tickets. A was very definite about wanting to see the Arms and Armor display, and that's where we spent the first hour and a half or so. The armour is interesting of course, especially the Japanese sets of long and short swords (the Met has the biggest collection of Japanese armour outside Japan), and there was a very nice set of two suits of armour made for Henry VIII, one from his youth and one, much bigger, from the last years of his life, but ADC and I were ready to continue long before the boys were. We then continued to two special exhibitions: one on Cubism, where I particularly liked the still lives, and the other on the Iron Age Middle East and Mediterranean. We recognised several items from the Israel Museum in that one! S wrote a report for school on our first day in New York. This was instead of the spelling quiz that he missed on Friday after lunch, and he took the assignment very seriously, starting with bullet points and then expanding on it.

We then took a break and met DF and GF (not forgetting baby MF) at E.A.T., a deli/restaurant close to the Met. We started with hot chocolate, continued to sandwiches and salads (except for S, who of course had roast chicken), and ended with cake. DF and GF are very nice people, and I'm glad we made the connection (DF is my first cousin, the son of my mother's late sister, whom I haven't seen since his own bar mitzvah, about 20 years ago). His month-old son MF is a very cute baby, who was quiet most of the time, but naturally waited for GF's food to arrive before waking up and demanding to be fed and changed...

After supper we returned to the Met for another couple of hours, going to the Islamic art galleries, at my request, and the Vermeer and Rembrandt portraits at ADC's. The boys were a bit too tired to appreciate the Islamic art, but perked up when we reached the Dutch Old Masters. When you see them all together, you really understand how much better Vermeer and Rembrandt were than their contemporaries. Rembrandt's use of light, in particular, is so much more subtle.

On Sunday AS went out and bought a huge quantity of bagels for breakfast. We have not yet found a good bagel place nearby, although we did get a flyer recently and have not yet checked the place out. Anyway, we had a slow start after a very hectic Saturday. After breakfast AS took us on a sociological tour of Port Washington, whose route she had not properly thought out, so we didn't get to see everything she had planned as we had to catch a train back to the city. We didn't have that much time on Sunday, as we had a 4 o'clock train back to Washington, and we spent it on Seventh and Eighth Avenue, window-shopping until we had lunch at a place on Broadway called The Counter where you decide on your own burger (they have a checklist for every stage - burger type and size, bun, toppings, sides). It was an entirely touristic experience, and was great fun. After that we went to Midtown Comics, where each big spent over $100. S completely wiped out his savings, but is very happy with what he got, as is A, who still has quite a lot of money left!

After that, we stated the long journey home. The train from New York does not start there, and at first we were scattered all over the carriage, but enough people got off at Newark for ADC to find two pairs of seats. The journey took much longer, as there were stops outside a number of stations to wait for a free platform, and all in all, we arrived in DC an hour later than anticipated. We took a taxi home ...

The main event of the past week has of course been the cold weather. I tried to stay at home as much as possible, and bundled the boys up for school (as you all saw). The house has proved to be very well insulated, but as the air conditioning is on a thermostat, I can judge how cold it is outside by how often it comes on during the day. ADC's fleece-lined pants from Land's End arrived just int he nick of time, and his only complaint so far is that the red flannel is shedding a bit on his underpants. A came home on Tuesday and said that his neck warmer (the second or third thing I ever knitted) was too loose and too short. So I unravelled it, and reknitted the wool in a smaller circle and added some extra black wool. Now not only is his neck warmer adequate to the weather, it in the colours of his favourite soccer team.

This evening both boys had events at school. ADC went with A to the International Evening, where ethnic food was eaten (8th grade had to bring dessert; ADC made a lemon cake) and there was a talent show emphasising ethnic music. It sounded like they had much more fun than S and I did at "Camp Read S'More", where, as we understood it, everybody would get into sleeping bags and read. In reality, there was and hour and a half of activities connected to reading: fishing for books (S received a copy of Stuart Little, so he is pleased), creating "story stones" and making s'mores. The s'more ingredients had run out by the time S got there, so we just came home early (and read).

We flew out of Reagan National Airport on Tuesday lunchtime to Burlington, VT, on our way to get A and S naturalised as American citizens. After that , we will spend a day at Saranac LAke in the Adirondacks - our only real holiday in this hectic summer.

It turned out to be much easier to be naturalised than it is to register for school in Montgomery County (or, this is why you employ a lawyer). We spent Tuesday night at a rather grotty La Quinta, down the road from the naturalisation centre, which is in the middle of a field, but away from downtown St Albans (to the extent thatthere is a downtown St Albans ...). Wednesday morning was spent shopping - I desperately needed hiking boots, as I had discarded my 15-year-old Scarpas before leaving Israel. We also wanted to buy maple syrip in the "correct" state as per C family tradition. To S's delight, we came across a scond-hand bookshop, and he bought a Marvel Comics Encyclopedia for $25 (marked down from $40); ADC bought a very different slice of Americana, a collection of Herman Melville short stories and novellas. After lunch, we went to the naturalisation centre. I took my knitting with me, fully prepared to have to wait for ages - only to find that we were the only people in the waiting room. After a few minutes, ADC was called into the inner sanctum, and shortly after that, he returned and said that the certificates were being prepared! Truly, we were in and out within half an hour - this is probably why our lawyer sent us there. We had been under the impression that there were only a few places where one could be naturalised under the process that the children were using, but apparently it is possible in every state.

It was worth travelling to Vermont, though, for the next day's hike and art festival at Saranac Lake. We started the day eating breakfast at a diner opposite the hotel - really like being in a movie, with stacks of pancakes and waitresses who called you "hon". We then climbed up a local mountain, Mt. Joe. I had a slight panic attack almost at the top, adn was very glad that I had bought boots the day before. We were back at the hotel after lunch, and went canoeing on the adjacent lake (Flower Lake, not Saranac), until it looked as if a storm was about to blow up. We showered, changed and went into town for the Art Walk we had seen advertised the previous night. We saw artists at work painting views of the town, heard live music of varying quality, and went into a games shop, where ADC and the owner went into a long discussion of games and then of the Situation in the Middle East and then of biology - the owner turned out not only to be Jewish, but an ABD in biology. He gave ADC his card and asked him to let him know if he gave a talk anywhere in New York state.

We got back from Vermont on Friday - ADC drove for 2.5 hours to Burlington airport - in time for him to rush back to Rockinghorse Center to finalise the boys' school folders. Thankfully, our invitation for Friday night supper was with the extended P family, who welcomed us in their exuberent way. No one was fussed that we arrived late, and S and A were able to let off steam. And we were invited for Rosh Hashana, too. Very lucky that this came first and our supper with SG and her husband H was the next day. SG is my cousin, but I last saw her when I was about 3, and I had no idea whatto expect when I knocked on the door. But she is a career diplomat's wife, and they put us very much at ease. A of course got on very well with her father G, who is sports-mad like all South Africans, and the two othem, aged 90-something and 13 respectively, discussed soccer happily. S retired downstairs to the TV, while we talked to SG and H.