Slice of Life, #21

Part I. The Afternoon

            I met with a group of New York Mets fans who have been gathering before the season starts for 30 years -- I joined five years in. Three of the original members are still in it, all trivia mavens and sabrmetricians (people fascinated by baseball stats, from the Society for American Baseball Research), and they have real lives as well. We meet to talk about the team, its recent past, and, hopefully, better season this year, and then play a round of baseball Jeopardy. This year's categories were "Rogers" (players whose first or last name was Roger or Rogers); Mickey, Willie, and the Duke; Mets Hall of Famers; the Roaring '20s; and Cy Old (pitchers who won the Cy Young award when they were old -- by baseball standards). I won last year's pool for how many games the Mets would win: 79.

            We met at a beer connoisseur's bar/restaurant called the Ginger Man in Connecticut, where we commandeered a section of couches and banquettes, making a cozy spot for conversation. Being the only woman in the group made me a little nervous the first few years, but the organizer of this group is very welcoming and all I had to do was show knowledge of the game and the previous seasons. (How I came by my baseball knowledge and fandom is a long story, possibly for posts starting in April, when baseball starts up again; Thomas Boswell once wrote a book titled Why Time Begins on Opening Day).

Part II. The Evening

            A friend valiantly stood in line for standby tickets for Hamilton, the hip-hop musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda at the Public Theater. She was successful, so we got to see the best play of the season. It’s a history lesson, and a hip-hop concert. It’s a love story, and a civics lesson. In hip-hop vernacular and rhythms, we see the American Revolution in action and the rivalries, political as well as personal, among Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, and Madison. A Cabinet meeting in Washington's administration is introduced to the audience as though Washington is an MC, inviting us to a performance. It is long, but it  packs in a tremendous amount of history in an immensely entertaining and informative way. I'm told that Dick and Lynne Cheney saw it recently, and I can hardly wait to see their reaction. The play is both patriotic and subversive, with almost all of the characters played by people of color.

            The shows at the Public are sold out through May 3 (but there are those standby seats if you are willing to stand in line). it moves to Broadway in July, and preview tickets are already on sale. They ought to offer discounts to high school classes; tickets are over $151 and $131. I think students would love it.

Slice of Life, #20

            When we first moved to our neighborhood years ago, there was a hole-in-the-wall eatery called Amir’s Falafel, run by a Lebanese family. Over the years it expanded into a little restaurant, but it was still mostly a take-out place. The falafel was terrific, and you could get a platter of falafel, hummus, and baba ghanhoush, with a small salad and of course pita.

            One of my favorite dishes was moujadarah: lentils on rice, topped with caramelized onions. The onions were the best part. Then new ownership came in, the moujadarah was gone, and even the fattoush salad acquired sour pickles, an unwelcome taste among the brightness of fresh tomato, cucumber, red onion, lettuce, and toasted pita chips.

           

            In one of my other lives I have been a journalism professor. One of my former students, Annia Ciezadlo, went to the Middle East to cover the Iraq war as a free-lance and ended up married to a Lebanese journalist. When they came back to the U.S., she wrote a book, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, complete with recipes. Heaven. The book has a recipe for Mjadara Hamra (transliterations can vary so widely), and I finally tried it tonight.

            Well, I adapted it quite a bit. What I really wanted to do was reproduce Amir’s dish, and Annia’s was somewhat different. First of all, Amir’s had rice, Annia’s had bulghur. Secondly, Amir’s onions were sliced, and Annia’s were finely diced. Finally, one of Annia’s instructions seemed dangerous to me: pour two cups of cold water on onions that have been cooking in one cup of oil? Just thinking about the splatters scares me.

            So I improvised. Cooked a cup of lentils in two and a half cups of water, with Annia’s spices (ground coriander, cumin, white pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves instead of allspice, cayenne instead of Aleppo pepper). Cooked a cup of rice. Sliced up two good-sized onions thin, heated maybe half a cup of olive oil and canola oil, and when it was hot, added the onions. Stirred frequently to keep some slices from getting too brown while others were still softening. Annia’s signal for when the onion is done was when they smell “bacony, almost burnt,” so I waited for that moment – and did not add any cold water. Mixed everything together, and had my Lebanese dinner. (I know, I should have taken a picture, but I haven't been Instragramed yet.)

P.S. It's the first day of spring and it snowed... what a bummer.

Slice of Life, #19

            Empty storefronts are never a good sign. On city streets, there will occasionally be one or two as  businesses close and new ones open up. A couple of years ago a card shop closed a block away, and in less than a year a healthy fast-food place, the Dig Inn Seasonal Market, opened, a definite plus.

            But lately vacant stores have surged in my neighborhood. Just around the corner, a children’s bookstore closed, but at least it was moving to another space five blocks away. However, in the same block a restaurant closed over a year ago, and a card and novelties store downsized, leaving a smaller empty space. Over a year ago, a bank branch burned on the far corner, and I haven’t noticed any reconstruction (the branch reopened across the street in space vacated by a copy shop). And next to the new branch is an opticians closed through retirement.

            When I delivered my compost to the local collection spot this morning, I saw three more stores also closed: a large fast-food café and two restaurants. There was a fire in one (a couple of weeks ago, apparently, but there are so many sirens on city streets it’s easy to ignore them), and damage from the fire affected the other one. But this is a college neighborhood, so that will make a big dent in the lives of many students, not to mention the people who used to work in those establishments.

            And I have mixed feelings about those empty stores: I want new businesses, but we don’t need another bank, drugstore, Starbucks, or phone shop. 

Slice of Life, #18

            Yesterday, through the wonders of the Internet, I watched about an hour of political commentary on Israeli TV, i24. I’d become interested in that country’s elections since Netanyahu used the U.S. Congress as a prop in his campaign, to divert Israeli voters from their economic problems and widening inequality.

            I don’t think often about being Jewish; I’m not religious, and while my parents tried to give me some Jewish culture, sending me to an after-school secular Yiddish shul, all I remember is what some of the letters look like. Periodically, I tried to understand the Middle East conflict, and sensed that settlements in land occupied after the 1967 war were not a good sign. In the 2000s I sometimes joined a Women in Black vigil in sympathy with the Jewish and Palestinian Women in Black and against the occupation.

            I’m not a Zionist either. My parents were leftists and not nationalist. The Jewish “homeland” my father told me about was Birobidzhan, an “autonomous region” the Soviets set aside for Jewish Communists in far eastern Siberia, bordering China. (Did the Russian Communists think they could solve their “Jewish problem” by getting all the Russian Jews to move as far away as possible?)

            Watching another country’s election is fascinating, especially when the system is so different from ours. The program on i24 had a woman host and four male pundits whose names didn’t register since I don’t really follow Israeli politics. Here’s what I learned from just that brief dip.

            1. Racism in Israel is complicated, not only Jews against Arabs but also Ashkenazi Jews (those from Europe) against Sephardim (those from the Middle East). Alas, it’s skin color again. Netanyahu blatantly appealed to the first kind when he said, on election day, that Arab Israelis were voting in hordes and his right wing was in danger. But some commentators thought Netanyahu’s opposition, Labor, with its Ashkenazi roots, had failed to be inclusive of Sephardim, and I find that very disquieting.

            2. Because Israel has a parliamentary system, there are multiple parties, 10 in fact. I was engrossed listening to the pundits add up the various possible combinations to form a coalition that the heads of the two parties with the most seats projected to win, but each far from a majority, would need. Would American politics be any less dysfunctional if there were separate parties for all the factions within our current Democrats and Republicans? Maybe, maybe not. 

Slice of Life, #17

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            Last night I went to the Big Words reading series. Founded by Stacey Kahn and Jess Martinez exactly three years ago, Big Words meets approximately once a month with readers writing to a theme chosen by the audience at the previous Big Words reading. Last night’s theme was All or Nothing.

            I was one of the readers (see Slice 11). When I started going to Big Words, it met in the back of CultureFix, a bar on the far Lower East Side, a long walk from any subway stops. Last summer it moved to Brooklyn, to a large upstairs event space at another bar, 61 Local, at 61 Bergen Street (this one has a kitchen, and a good one). I’d been to a couple of Big Words there and thought I knew the way. So I didn’t make a Google map. My mistake.

            Took the subway to the Barclay Center, but when I looked at the neighborhood map in the station, I couldn’t find Boerum Place, the street I usually walked down. But there was Bergen Street just a couple of blocks away, so that’s where I headed. But when I got to Bergen Street, the house numbers showed how far off I was. The first one I saw was 413. Oh, dear. And Brooklyn blocks are long. It took me 25 minutes to get to 61 Local -- but at least there was no wind, like Monday, it wasn’t very cold, and I could use the exercise. When my friend Stacie arrived, she explained that I should have gotten off at Borough Hall – oh, it was that B on the map that had thrown me off.

            My reading went well, there were many laughs, and I enjoyed my five minutes in the metaphorical spotlight (no mike either). Looking forward to the next Big Words, whose theme is Stories from Abroad.