SOL Tuesday: Phone Tsuris

             (I never learned much Yiddish, but this is the only word, meaning aggravating trouble, that adequately captures my feelings.)

            Yesterday, I wanted to buy a new flannel nightgown, so I went online to L.L. Bean  and found that the pattern I wanted was sold out. Maybe they would be getting more soon? I decided to call.

            I got the recording, punched in the proper number, but the customer service person who answered the phone couldn’t hear me. Funny. I hung up and tried again. Another customer service person couldn’t hear me. I use earbuds with my cellphone, so I tried another pair, calling twice more, and still, no one could hear me.     

          Maybe the problem was my phone. I called a friend. She couldn’t hear me either, with the earbuds, but when I unplugged them, she could hear me fine, so it wasn’t the phone. (I seem to hear better with the sound plugged directly into my ear; don’t know if that is a function of my hearing or the fact that cellphones have no obvious earpiece.) Later in the day, I talked to my daughter on the phone, with earbuds, and no problems. Go figure.

          Today I tried to call L.L. Bean again. The first time, the phone hung up in the middle of the recording. The second time, the phone hung up after I reached a customer service person. Third time, finally, everything worked the way it is supposed to. I spoke to a customer service person — and learned that all the flannel nightgowns are sold out... until June. 

         Technology: can't live without it, and can't live with it.

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SOLTuesday: Ancient Bug Bites

A slice of life from the 1950s.

            I’m 11. It’s a drizzly summer day in West Haven, Connecticut. The neighborhood kids are wondering what we can do on such a dreary day. A pile of logs in the field between Joanie and Karen’s old house and new house gives someone an idea. “Let’s build a cabin.”

            Joanie picks up one end of a log and I pick up the other end. Immediately we are beset by a swarm of insects, biting insects, stinging insects. 

 

            “Run!” someone yells, and everyone else runs, while I’m trying to swat the stingers away, to scrape them off. There are too many, they just keep coming back for the attack. Finally, I run to the end of the field, and the dampness and air brushing my body as I run wipes the yellowjackets away. But stings are painful.

 

            “Put mud on them,” I’m advised. “It will pull out the stinger.” So I slather mud over my painful arms and legs.

            

            When I get home, my mother threatens to hose down my mud-caked body, but lets me take a shower instead. Four scar, one on each arm and leg, remain for decades. A dermatologist diagnoses the spots.

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The Bag in the Closet

            I keep things. Occasionally, they aren’t even my things. For many years, a small, duffel-like bag sat in the bottom of a closet in my apartment. The bag belonged to a college friend of my husband’s. Here’s how it got there.

            This college friend, let’s call him J.C., visited us in New York soon after we got married, back in the mid-’60s. He and my husband told stories, talked about people they both knew; we drank a lot—this was before pot was a part of our life. My husband had told me J.C. was a charismatic figure, always a crowd of girls around him, always organizing parties.

            I developed a crush on J.C. He was lean, dirty blond hair, blue eyes, just my type. (I should insert here that while I was newly married, we had only gotten married because my parents found out we were living together and made a fuss. We were relatively young, only 22, hadn’t dated much in high school or college, so we had both agreed that sexual fidelity wasn’t anything we particularly cared about. But neither of us had yet acted on this bohemian belief.) I flirted with J.C. while we sat in the living room, drinking and talking. Late into the night, my husband and I repaired to our bed alcove, while J.C. wrapped himself in his sleeping bag on the floor of the living room.

            One night in bed, my husband asked, “What do you think of J.C.?”

            “I have a real crush on him,” I admitted.

            My husband said, “He told me he thinks you’re really hot. He wanted to know whether it was okay if he slept with you.”

            “What did you say?”

            “I said, it was up to you.”

            I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. On the one hand, it was exciting that J.C. wanted me as much as I wanted him. On the other hand, I didn’t like the idea that he’d asked my husband for permission. I wasn’t a piece of property that J.C. could borrow for a night of fun.

            I waited to see what would happen. Would J.C. make a move on me? What would I do if he did? He spent another week sleeping on our floor, then returned to Kansas. He never made a move. I was a little disappointed.

            After he was gone, my husband asked if anything had happened between us. I said, no. He said he thought J.C. was more afraid of losing a place to stay for the night.

            Some years passed. My husband and I moved to a bigger apartment and had a baby. A few months after the baby arrived, J.C. was in New York again, this time on his way to Europe for a year. There was some woman he knew, they were going to meet up in Venice—or something like that. He talked more than he had before, ideas more than stories about people they knew, something about “extended life.” I was less attracted than I had been.

            This time he brought marijuana. We sat in the living room, smoking, he at one end of the couch, me with my babe in arms at the other. The dope infused a repulsion toward J.C. so powerful I had to leave the room.

            My husband joined me in the baby’s room some minutes later. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

            “He’s giving me a strong feeling of paranoia,” I said, and my words flowed into the air in balloonish letters, like cartoon dialogue. I admired them until they faded like the Cheshire Cat.

            “Do you want me to tell him to leave?”

            “No, I’ll just stay away from him.”

            J.C. left the next day, but returned a few weeks later. Something had gone wrong, the woman wasn’t there. He was on his way back to Kansas. Could he leave this bag with us? He’d pick it up some other time. My husband put it in the closet in the baby’s room.

            J.C. never came back for the bag. Every few years, he’d call my husband on the phone, each time talking more and more incessantly about his discoveries of life extension. After a while my husband heard that J.C. was haunting his congressman’s office, claiming either that others were stealing his ideas about life extension or the congressman himself had stolen the ideas. Then we stopped hearing from him.

            About 30 years after the bag was left with us, I opened it. There was nothing inside. It was an awkward size, neither small enough for a carry-on, nor big enough for more than a weekend. It had a stiff top, like an old-fashioned carpetbag. My husband was happy to get rid of it.

SOLTuesday: Are You Bored?

 Since the pandemic started and people have been staying at home, I’ve seen many articles about how to deal with the boredom. 

 

            I am not bored. I’m retired, but I do have about eight hours a week of free-lance work. The rest of the time, I have no problem dreaming up projects. For instance...

            Cleaning out the bottom of one of my closets four months ago, I found a bag full of knitted squares, 36 different squares, already pinned together in groups of six and labeled rows 1-6. I had, who knows how many years ago, laid them all out and decided how they could be put together into an afghan. Then put them in a bag and forgot about them.

           A couple of months ago, I decided it was time to finish this project. First, I stitched together each row, then put all the rows together. Finally, I saw it needs a border, so that is what I am working on now, 15 to 30 minutes a day, not quite every day. Once it’s done, I’ll decide what to do with it. 

 

 

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SOLTuesday: Forty Years Ago Today...

          ... I was copy chief at the Village Voice. It was Monday, the day we closed the paper editorially, but I would have to go to the plant the next day very early for production close. And I had a very bad cold. So I left work early (I normally worked a 12- or 14-hour day). Before I got into bed, my husband came home to report that he’d just heard that John Lennon had been shot. In my cold-fogged brain, all I could think was, “someone should call the Voice and let them know.” It didn’t quite penetrate that most likely they already knew.

            The music editor quickly wrote this remembrance, including even a brief analysis, based on his wife’s sad question, “Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn’t it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney?”

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SOLTuesday: Blast from the Past, 1962

           Fifty-eight years ago last month was the Cuban missile crisis. I was just 20, living in Washington, D.C., and had just started working for a couple of lawyers, while my roommate worked at the School for Advanced International Studies. We had no TV, so when we heard the president was going to address the nation, my roommate’s father picked us up so we could watch the speech.

            We already knew something was up. My roommate’s boss had written an article for the New Republic the month before about Cuba, and with all the rumors and following JFK’s speech, he was inundated with media calls. At the end of each day, as he left the office, he would say, “See you tomorrow, God willing.”

            Our apartment was a block away from Dupont Circle, which had been identified as an air-raid shelter; you know, in case of nuclear attack. My roommate and I spent several evenings discussing what we would do if we heard the air-raid sirens: run for Dupont Circle, or just start drinking all the alcohol we had.

            I often ate my lunch in a little park near my office off Pennsylvania Avenue. After JFK announced the blockade of  Cuba, for a few days, there were dark clouds in the sky to the south. Real clouds, not just my fear.

            A year later, I was living down the street in a communal house. One of the residents had just gotten out of the Army, mostly for talking too kindly about communism. He told us that during the missile crisis, another soldier had said, “We might be going down there.” To which he replied, “You might be, but I’m not. Viva la revolucion!” That was one of the facts the Army held against him.

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My Life in 50 Objects, 8: Enameled Cast Iron from Vermont

This oval Dutch oven (or cocotte) looks like Le Creuset, but it is literally from a Dutch company, DRU. This pot belonged to my Aunt Nita, and I took it from her kitchen after she died in 1997. I wonder whether she brought it from their seven-year sojourn in Paris in the 1950s, or one of her many trips back over the years. I don't remember any particular dish she made in this pot, just that it was lovely and substantial, and it fits my kitchen's color scheme.

            The internet tells me the company was founded in 1754 as a blast furnace making cast iron products, though it now concentrates on gas-fired heating and wood-burning ovens. Its enameled cast-iron cookware is now sold as “mid-century vintage” at websites like Olde Kitchen and etsy; it’s much cheaper than Le Creuset, but seems just as sturdy and long-lasting.

            I don’t use this pot often because its shape seems most suited to roasting a chicken, and its surface area isn’t as big as a round Dutch oven would be—I think. But I did use it last night to sauté four chicken thighs, then sautéed onions and mushrooms, and braised it all together—really delicious. And I have a deep round Le Creuset covered skillet, which is my kitchen workhorse. I think I should start using the DRU pot more often.

SOLTuesday: Local Damage from Storm Isaias today

The storm came through New York City fairly quickly, with only a few hours of wild wind and rain, and the damage was much worse along the coast, in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. But up here along Riverside Drive between 111th and 114th Streets, there are lots of branches broken off, and even some trees down.

And turning to the right, all these little branches

Here’s what I saw when I crossed Riverside Drive.

Near the mayhem above.

A much bigger tree was uprooted down in the park.

A skirt of branches

Leaf litter

And large branches block the promenade along Riverside Drive

Meanwhile, it's dusk, and the raccoons have come out to forage, while residents have started feeding them, which is probably not a good idea. Raccoons are wild animals. They are not domesticated pets.

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My Life in 50 Objects, 7: Lenin, with Accessories

Lenin’s bust is something else I took from Grandpa Sam’s apartment after he died. I never knew he had this, so never asked him when he got it and what he thought about Lenin. I wonder if it belonged to his second wife, Gussie Linn, who was much more of a Communist than he was. After they returned from their trip to the U.S.S.R. in 1972, he told us about flying to Riga to visit Gussie’s relatives. He mentioned that the flight was a bit over a couple of hours and the passengers were only given some candy. Gussie immediately protested that the flight wasn’t that long. Sam replied mildly, “I’m not criticizing the Soviet Union.”

            The hat and the boa had nothing to do with Sam. The hat was part of a gift for my 50th birthday party from Meredith Bernstein, a literary agent and college friend of Ricki Levitt, who was a student of my old friend Gerald when he was TA’ing at the University of Rochester in the 1960s. The boa? This was from some recent party, I think—events in the past 10-15 years are, oddly, less sharp in my memory. 

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My Life in 50 Objects, part 6

            This collage was put together by my grandpa Sam. Sam Leibowitz was my mother’s father, born in what was then Russia (and is now Ukraine), on an estate where his father was the overseer. (One reason so many Russian peasants were anti-Semitic was because so many Russian nobles hired Jews to be their overseers. Thus, the taxes and other payments due to estate owners were collected by Jewish men, who bore the brunt of hatred for what the peasants had to give up.) So the photos are my mother’s family.

            On the left, second from the top, are my parents, Joe and Leah. I think this is from around the time they got married, though they didn’t have a big ceremony. They had to wait until she graduated from William and Mary College, in 1940, because the school (a public institution) didn’t allow married women to be students.

            Going clockwise, the top left corner is another wedding, in 1949. I think the wedding coupkle, in the center back, are Jeannette and Adolph Blank. Sitting around the table, from front left, are the bride’s father, Morris (one of Sam’s younger brothers), Leah with Mark on her lap, Joe with me on his lap, the newlyweds, Sam, Carla (who must be standing on a chair), Grandma Liz, and the bride’s mother, Mary.

            Next photo must be Sam’s family. I’m guessing this was taken once they were all in the United States, coming in at least four different trips: first Sam’s oldest sister (1905), then Sam (1906), then his next older sister (1907), and then his mother with three (or four) of her youngest children (1910). On the other hand, the man on the left looks much older than Sam, so perhaps he is the husband of Sam’s oldest sister. I may be totally wrong about who these people are, but if I am, there’s no one to tell me. Here’s my guess: Seated on the right is Sam’s mother, Yechaved (but she has a different name in the 1910 census), and on the left perhaps his oldest sister, Rose. Between the two seated women is Sadie, who looks about 10 here. She died young, at 13; one story says it was on board the ship New Zealand, but since the 1910 census puts her in the U.S., I think this story isn’t true. Standing from right: Rose, Sam, Max or Morris or Sol, and if this is Rose’s husband, that’s Jack Breiman.

            In the upper right corner, this is clearly Sam, perhaps his mother, and Sadie.

            In the row below, from left, the photo that’s labeled 1929 cannot be right. The youngest girl looks like my mother’s cousin, Honey Lee, who was born in 1930. She might be two in this photo, which would make Anita, next to her, eight, and Leah, standing behind, 14. The next photo to the right is, I think, Leah when she was about two, and that may be her grandmother in the window. This looks like the country, but I have no idea where. And on the far right, from the right, Leah’s mother, Liz; an unhappy-looking seven-year-old Leah; Sam, holding baby Anita; and Liz’s parents, Nathan and Rebecca Ohrenstein. This would be around 1925.

            Below this photo is Anita, probably around 30, with a tiny child photo, and below her, Ben Morreale, her husband for 38 years. Many stories attached to them, which I will relate elsewhere.

            In the center is a photo of Nathan and Rebecca, and below them, Sam, standing, Liz with coffee cup, and Leah, between one and two? These two pictures are clearly studio shots, but if there was an occasion for them, I don’t know what it is.

            Immediately to the left, we’re getting into the modern era: me at about five; my brother, Mark, at three, and below Mark, sister Carla, at age one. I think these photos were taken by a photographer wandering through our Brooklyn neighborhood rather than in a studio. But look, Carla is holding a ball just as Leah is almost 30 years earlier. Do studio photographers still use that prop for tots?

            To the right of baby Carla are two pictures from 1960, in Gladwyne. On the left, Mark, me, and Carla are in front of the back of our new house, and on the right is after my high school graduation, with Grandpa Sam holding our enormous tiger cat, parents to my left, Mark in the back, and Carla with a hand on the cat.

            Below Ben is a studio shot of Sam’s mother and one of his sisters. To the left is toddler Leah, around two(?), with her three grandparents, and parents standing in the back. The wedding couple are, I think, the same couple as in the photo at the top, Jeannette and Adolph Blank. And to their left, another 1960 graduation photo, this time with Liz instead of Sam included.

            The bottom row of photos is less known to me. Who is the man in the lower-left picture? To his right is my mother’s cousin Honey Lee, in the beret, and the date in the photo below her is clearly wrong: Honey looks about 10, so this would be about 1940. Next to her is her grandmother, and behind her, her father, Morris Rappaport, and mother Esther, Liz’s younger sister. The next photo is another mystery, either one of Sam’s sisters or one of his brothers, and presumably their daughter. And could the date be as wrong as some of these others?

            The final three snapshots: Milly, married to Lou (Liz’s younger brother), and Esther, Honey's mother.

            This is one introduction to part of my family.

My Life in 50 Objects: Bulgarian perfumier

           This is a gift from Christina Kotchemidova, who I first met at the founding meeting of the Network of East-West Women in 1991. She came from Bulgaria, and for the longest time, whenever I thought of the Bulgarian members of NEWW, I could only remember the young Bulgarian woman in the film Casablanca, set in WWII, who with her husband are hoping to get transit out of Axis-occupied territory to the U.S. She tells Rick, the Humphrey Bogart character, “In Bulgaria, the devil has the people by the throat.”

          When I visited Christina in Sofia in 1994, that seemed partly to be true. A monument to a Communist hero was besmirched with graffiti, and the grand building was now a bazaar of stalls, with people selling anything they could, and children picking pockets. On the other hand, the main square was almost a showplace for tolerance, with an Orthodox church, a synagogue, and a mosque within yards of each other.

            Christina came to New York with her two children a year after NEWW was founded to attend NYU’s graduate journalism program. She had worked as a writer and translator in Bulgaria, and her 14-year-old daughter was gung-ho to come to the States. The daughter was severely disappointed with American girls, however. Eager to follow politics and our 1992 election, she couldn’t find anyone in the private girls school we helped get her into to share her interest, and in a few months, she only wanted to go back to Sofia, where young people were eager to discuss politics of all sorts.

            After getting her M.A., Christina returned to Bulgaria and began teaching for severak years. Then she came back to NYU, got a Ph.D., and then a job teaching at Spring Hill College, in Mobile, Alabama. She arrived there a week before Hurricane Katrina struck and had to evacuate to a friend’s in Atlanta. What an introduction to a new part of the country. She was amazed at how orderly drivers were when the power went out and traffic lights no longer worked. That would never have happened in Bulgaria, she said.

            She has since gotten tenure, both her children have attended American universities, gotten their Ph.D.s, and are either teaching or working for a multinational corporation. A story of successful immigrants.

SOLTuesday: My Life in 50 Objects, part 5

Both of these two things belonged to my grandfather Sam Leibowitz, and they seem to show opposite sides of his interest. I wish I had been able to ask him how these fit together.

            I wasn’t surprised by all the Soviet pins, though I don’t know whether he got all of them in his one trip to the Soviet Union in 1971 (when he left home to come to the U.S. in 1906 it was still Russia), or whether he got some of them earlier. Five identical pins say “Mir” (or Peace) on top, “Mai” (May?) on the bottom. Two pins celebrate the centennial of Lenin’s birth (1870-1970). A few are simply about Moscow, and then there is a pin for Latvia, and another for Riga, the Latvian capital. Sam went to the Soviet Union with his second wife, who came originally from Riga, and she still had relatives living there.

            I knew Sam had been a member of the CPUSA. In the late 1940s, he was forced to take early retirement from the Fur and Leather Workers Union because he wouldn’t sign the anti-Communist affidavit that the new Taft-Hartley Act required of union officers. But I never had any conversations with him about his politics. And he was not at all like anyone’s stereotypes of a Communist. 

            But this next object? I didn’t know about this until after he died, at 82. It’s a scroll, in Hebrew, and my mother told me it was the Book of Esther. This is the Old Testament story celebrated by the holiday of Purim. I’ve always liked this story since it has a female hero. But why did Sam have it? What did it mean for him? How did he acquire it? I know that religion meant little to him. One of his early union organizing tactics was to sit outside a workplace and eat a ham sandwich, very not kosher, to show the Jewish workers that God wouldn’t strike him dead, either for eating the ham sandwich or talking about the benefits of a union. Was this a gift from mother? and inheritance from his father? or from his in-laws?

            The never-ending and never-to-be-answered questions.

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