the Monalisa smile 

No, it looks like the scene straight out of the Godfather. And Chinatown? Does it look like a scene straight out of Chinatown (the movie)?

Actually, on a Saturday, it reeks of fish and other unidentifiable food stuffs. But oh, is it colorful!

always the lanterns 

I like the name better than "Will-Kill" back in Madison 

Then you went down to the Lower East Side. Describe!
Well, first of all, these neighborhoods aren’t as distinct as you would imagine. The overlap is quite evident.

So which is it -- Jewish? Chinese? 

Lower East Side views 

Secondly, guess what the worst day would be to visit Orchard Street, the commercial hub of the old Jewish settlements?

Yom Kippur?
You got it! Brilliant! I was there! All those pickle shops? Closed!

Closed, but one can imagine the varieties  

still a place to shop 

a new pride in an old way of life 

have these changed significantly in the last 150 years? 

Okay, so you saw a neighborhood at peace. That can be rewarding as well.

In the doorway of a Synagogue 

What’s the Snooty district all about?
Don’t make me sound off about the rudeness of people that live and shop in and around Madison Avenue between 59th and 79th. Just don’t make me go there. Even though I had to go there. To make an exchange of a bag (not mine!) purchased from one of the snooty stores.

Oh, they weren’t cooperative?
They looked at it and they looked at me and they didn’t they say it, but they were thinking: "oh, she would try to repair a broken bag rather than throwing it away!" The second snooty exchange I had was of a political nature. You can imagine how that went. Ah well. I am about to embark on a Sunday in New York. That, btw, is a movie title as well.

(*for explanation of post title, see first post from September 22)

Thirty-ninth street pre-election diary*

Moving from the forties to the thirties (to be precise: 39th street, 39 days) is disconcerting: the streets change character, the election is getting closer. We are in a gray and grave area of town and a gray and grave period in time.

somber tones, somber times 

“An 1881 New York Times article refers to a tenement on this block as 'Hell's Kitchen': "Vice in its most repulsive form thrives here, despite efforts of the police to root out the horde of vagrants, petty thieves, and utterly depraved prostitutes who make the locality their headquarters." The name seems to have spread from the tenement to the entire neighborhood.”

One notable difference between the economic policies of the two presidential candidates is that Kerry is adamant in pushing for a 36% hike in federal minimum wage. I am reminded of 1938, when President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting, for the first time a minimum wage for labor.

Variously called the fashion district or the garment district, you see store after store with rolls of fabric, button displays, sewing equipment.

store after store of wholesale and retail fabric 

an old-timer in the neighborhood 

Why are we still concerned today, in 2004, about working conditions and wage violations in the garment industry? Has it something to do with the fact that the recent administration has cut the number of federal inspectors, so that there are now some 800 wage and hour inspectors working for the Department of Labor, policing some 6 million sites? The DOL estimates that 4,500 of NYC’s 7,000 garment factories are sweatshops.

Diversions and excursions:

Everyone needs a break occasionally. A night at the San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy does the trick. Hey, what’s the difference between this and the Taste of Madison? Take a look and draw your own conclusions:

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)

now that's Italian! 

supremely sweet 

you gotta love that Italian sausage! 

what part of town am I in? 

Italian sweets 

the best dessert! 

I heard it from the horse's mouth: I am NOT a New Yorker!

I went to Grace's Market this afternoon. It's a great place: you want to eat right then and there most everything on display. I was standing at a counter that had lox and olives. Many varieties of lox and olives. It was a bit chaotic -- no one paid attention to order, people were pushing to get their requests in -- a typical NY scene.

I stood next to an older guy who was intent on explaining to the seller which lox should be sliced in what way. I asked him about his preferences and before you know it, we were talking abou his impressions of salmon and my take on the economic climate in Poland.

His final words to me: "you're not a New Yorker, are you?" I said no, not at all and certainly not anymore. But I chastised him for blowing my cover: first day in the city and already branded an outsider! Upon finding out that I was from Madison, Wisconsin, he said -- "figures: I pegged you as living somewhere between Minneapolis and Madison."

Can you understand the annoying stereotype here? Not that Midwesterners are friendly, I can live with that, but that they are more friendly than Poles! I have been the way I am before moving to "between Minneapolis and Madison." But this was never even considered.

Ah well, in truth, he'd never been to Poland or to the Midwest. Figures. New Yorkers are so provincial.

Fortieth street pre-election diary*

East 40th Street 

Forty days before the election and things are getting ugly. Did I really read that Deputy Secretary Armitage chose Warsaw as the place to announce that he, too, thought that “terrorists prefer Kerry?” Of course, it’s not the line itself that is repugnant (indeed, one may hypothesize how it could even, in a perverse and not-too-complimentary to the current administration way, be true). Rather, it’s the electrifying fear that grips the listening public, as voters struggle to assess which leader will best protect the country during the next four years.

Will I find a distraction in the Manhattan grid of streets?

On 40th, you can still catch a glimpse of the Empire State Bldg. 

Walking along any city block, I stare at older buildings and wonder how many incarnations they have “lived” through. If you look on 40th street, not too far from fifth avenue, you’ll find the Daytop Village, which is the country’s oldest drug counseling service (founded in 1963). What was housed there prior to that? The building was the former home of the Republican Club. And, on the far west side of 40th, there stands the Metro Baptist Church. This used to be a Polish Catholic church, but it is now a progressive Baptist mission. Indeed, this is where Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter lived while working on their first Habitat for Humanity project. Poland, politics, presidents, poverty: the interconnectedness can be astonishing.

Next to the United Nations 

Is there nothing pleasing to the senses here on this narrow street that runs from the garment district on the west side to the smoke stacks on First Avenue? Money can, of course, buy the finest retreat into luxury. And here, on east 40th, I can take my Wisconsin-residing American Water Spaniel, Ollie, for a stay at the Ritzy Canine Carriage House. Inside, he can overnight either in Luxury quarters for a mere $65 per night (if he’d lose some weight, damn it, we could sneak him into the $60 per night category, but he’d have to shed 5 pounds and the dog refuses to take Atkins seriously, being utterly devoted to baguettes), or if I am feeling generous, I may let him stay at the Presidential Suite for $175 per night (there he’ll have custom bedding, toy chests, his own TV and VCR with a special selection from the video library).

A luxury escape -- for my dog. 

I would be slightly concerned that Ollie, not used to TV, may not fully appreciate the options made available to him. Not to worry, they reassure me. He can have his own private dog massage. The cost? $50 per hour. I have to wonder how they manage to work over a Chihuahua for a full hour – is there enough ‘dog’ there for the masseuse to tackle? But Ollie’s not a problem. He’s got a tendency to puff out on all that French bread. And, a massage might do wonders for his sometimes nervous disposition.

Though there is a lot to be nervous about these days. Approaching the east corner (oh! This was my “permanent home address” for one year out of my life, back in 1974), I am so close to the UN, so close, but not close enough to catch a glimpse. There are barricades. You cannot walk within 2 blocks of the UN on any side. The General Assembly is still in session. Bush is heading for Crawford, Kerry to Wisconsin, but the heads of state from other countries are still meeting to discuss the future. Perhaps they should hold off for 40 days?

*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of title

Go ahead, take my picture. I’m retiring tomorrow! I’ve had enough of this job. 

I am living a capitalist dream

Not only did I strike gold with the Polack's Profiles idea yesterday --it'll make me rich! (see post below), but I found in my mailbox an envelope from L'Etoile asking if I would accept a 100% salary increase and a bonus. Would I accept it? Would I accept it? I gave myself a few hours to consider and then I said yes -- unfortunately I said this during the same phone conversation where I told them I would be a no-show this week-end. I explained that the Chef de Cuisine and I had cut a deal: he'll cover for me at the Market as forager (that is my job) and I will cover for him in the kitchen as Chef de Cuisine any tme he wants me to! However, I do fear that the management at l'Etoile was a little taken aback when I said "Thanks! I'll take the raise and now I am going to save you some money because I wont be there this Saturday."

Of course, I cannot work at l'Etoile this week because I am at this moment flying to my second home for the year -- in New York City.

On the flight over, I was getting into the groove by reading New York Magazine and by dollar-bill-golly, I had another Capitalist Cacophony go off in my head. Amy Sohn's column described the miserable "friendship scene" in the city. It appears to be difficult, nay, impossible for new transplants to NYC to find friends. If you think you'll make friends just because you are social and nice -- forget it! And if you are the shy type -- pack your bags and go back to your friends back home, because you wont find any here. The only way, THE ONLY WAY anyone will consider you for a friend is if you pack a good "friendship resume" with something that marks you as a standout.

Where there is a need, there is a service that will cater to it and so if you are a New Yorker, you can indeed sign up for friendship-searching services. But those can be expensive. Socialcircles.com charges $1,275 just for the initiation fee. After that, it's $600 per match. If the friendship falters -- you do NOT get your money back. A user complains in the article that she is out the initiation fee and two $600 shots an has yet to find someone who'll munch popcorn and watch a DVD with her on a farily regular basis.

Worse off are people past their twenties: their friendship pool is quite limited as people in the more "advanced years" are either married and not particularly interested in meeting strangers, or searching to be coupled. No one in that demographic wants to waste time on being your friend.

A 35-year old newcomer to NY states:
I thought it would be easier to make friends here than in Chicago...I was completely wrong. Now I go back home and when people ask how it is, I say 'Love New York. Have no friends.' And I'm not even shy.

So here's my pitch: I move to New York and offer my services. I will be a friend to all the 'losers' who have failed to secure one. I'll be good for a bunch of emails per week to check up on things, a call here and there, and then a meet-up every so often, to do dim sum and maybe go to a movie. I'll listen to whiners, I'll tell stories from my varied past, I'll even do karaoke if the need arises. At, say, a $500 per friend per month fee and a six month commitment on my part, I'll be better than the going rate by a mile.

Now, if only I could think of a good name. Polack's Pals maybe?

Forty-first street pre-election diary*

A student at the U of Warsaw wrote this about politics and the Polish immigrant in the early decades of the XX century:

The early Polish immigrant … had little opportunity to participate actively in local politics. They were handicapped by their lack of knowledge of the English language and especially by their lack of American education. ...most of all, they were strangers to the American system of government and did knot know or understand American politics.

I feel for them. Now, 100 years later, I sometimes do not comprehend how or why politics proceed in the way that they do here as well.

Back then, Poles established a bridge of sorts – The Polish Democratic Club. The purpose? To help with the election of Democratic candidates. They were successful, too, from what I can tell. If you walk along the far west blocks of 41st street in New York, you’ll pass the building that was once the home of the West Side Polish Democratic Club.

Leafing through the stories in the news...

I read today’s papers and the attention is still on an analysis of whether Kerry has turned the corner. In 41 days we will know. In the meantime, is anyone else paying attention to the fact that we have a hefty 150,000 troops in Iraq while the next biggest force – from Britain – is even now being cut by a third from its paltry by comparison 7,000 (acc. to the London Observer, cited in the NYT)?

In what has to be a moment of perverse gladness, I was pleased to see that the second most e-mailed article from the NYTimes in the past 24 hour hours was the one about how the current administration is seeking cuts in housing aid to the urban poor (okay, the third most emailed article was about the new mozzarella bar in Rome; I almost emailed that one to a friend as well! Yes, we are clinging to our colorful diversions and distractions!). We need to be reading this! Housing projects… Walking toward the east side of 41st street, you hit Tudor City – a residential community that was built before the days of the United Nations [United Nations – that’s the number one emailed article from the Times – the one about how Bush yesterday issued a scolding to the UN, a scolding, at a time when the US desperately needs to be reaching out to the international community]. When Tudor City went up, there wasn’t a UN there, on the other side of the street, just slaughterhouses and glue factories. It was an area of such ugliness that most of the buildings in Tudor City don’t have windows facing east, to avoid the then horrid view. In the Times, Dowd again refers today to the Bush administration “castrating the flaccid UN.” I want to ask, is the next step a return to the slaughter-houses? It would be an interesting statement to make, from peace to slaughter. Or, have we made that statement already?

I’m off to New York this afternoon. Obviously the city is much on my mind – I see the grid of the blocks and I count down the days. Forty-one to go.

*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of title

Forty-second street pre-election diary, part 2

(see first post today, below, for explanation)

The President hates the campaign hoopla already!

A reading pal sent me the clip from the Wisconsin State Journal (here) describing the reaction to Kerry’s impending visit to Spring Green, where he will spend some time preparing for the forthcoming debate.

I just want to say to the President (okay, of the Village of Spring Green) that even if a Republican candidate were coming to my town with his entourage to prepare a speech, I would have the good grace to show courtesy and politeness and I would not go on record and say things like this:

Spring Green Village President Greg Prem was less enthusiastic about Kerry's visit. He said he's already overloaded by all the political commercials and campaign appearances hitting Wisconsin - and the election is still six weeks away.
"I guess to be perfectly honest with you," Prem said, "I'm kind of burnt out on the whole race."

After all, his visitor may be the next president of the US. No cabinet post for you, Mr. Prem!
Besides, it’s not that your town, Mr. Prem, is such a gem to lodge in for all those days. Taliesen, APT, the River – that’s fine and well, but my friend, who is not especially fussy, says this about the place where Kerry will be residing (having herself stayed there): “the "resort" they chose is that one on the golf course… It's okay but not especially great. The campaign people must have been reading too many glossy brochures.” And the food? She writes: “Where will they eat? The restaurant there is blah. That round barn restaurant is worse. There is always the A & W drive-in in Mazomanie.”

An eye-to-eye exchange

Minutes ago, I went walking in Owen Woods. I am going to be in NYC tomorrow and so I need to take in the smell of dry grass and forest before I face an onslaught of that ‘stale NYC air.’

Just at the edge of the prairie, I met up with a deer. She stood, not more than ten feet away, looking at me. I stood. She stood. I waited for her to run, she did not. Maybe she was captivated by my bright yellow “Museum of Soy Sauce Art” t-shirt. I said to her:

“Why don’t you vote on November 2nd? Don’t you realize that your habitat is being endangered? You have a high stake in this!”

I thought I heard her say:

“I cannot vote. You have to do that for me.” Of course, she’s just a deer.
Doe, a deer, a female deer. [So why the whiskers and beard-like hairs on her chin if it’s a female deer? Animals are strange.]

She stood a long time, unafraid. Eventually she turned and ran. So I ran too. Except not as fast. Obviously. I felt like I was a character that should adopt an Indian name, like “Tries to Run with Deer but Fails Miserably.” (A reader gave me an Indian name just last week; what was it?)
Close encounters with deer always make you feel like something profound has just happened. Or like you’re on the stage perhaps. Yeah, on the stage of 42nd Street (forty-one blocks away from the off-off-off Broadway Theater of the Absurd). The count-down continues.

People, take stock! We are becoming a nation of eating eccentrics!

I would bet that these days, for the 294,338,341 Americans (confirmed here), there are 294,338,341 ways to cook dinner right and an infinite number of ways of doing it wrong.

In the last 24 hours (I promise, no blog exaggeration here) I have had the following exchanges with readers and friends, through email, phone and otherwise:
Responses to my question – “can’t talk now, but do you want to have dinner sometime?”:

- oh yes, but keep it informal; formal dinner parties scare us away (you know who you are!);
- oh yes, but we don’t do more than 1 or so per week otherwise we get cranky (you know who you are!);
- oh yes, so long as it’s not in restaurants; haven’t you read Kitchen Confidential (you know who you are!)?
- oh yes, but not in any week where I have work deadlines, for chrissake… (and you especially know who you are!)

I have to add these to my lists of vegans, pescatarians, vegetarians, Atkinsians, lactose-intolerants, and all sorts of food-dislikes -- ohh, it's all swimming, swimming... I know I have stored this information somewhere… yes, I'm sure of it...

But where? Where did I put all these, collected over the years food fears and fancies?

Eureka! Capitalism is rubbing off and onto my once-socialist-Eastern European shoulders! I have discovered an entrepreneurial opportunity and niche! This is how it will work:

I will collect and store your food profile for a flat fee. You can update your own profile anytime. If you get invited to someone’s house I will send them YOUR profile, to warn your future host of your peculiarities and preferences. Or, if you yourself are having a dinner party, you can, for a fee of course, request profiles on potential candidates for the evening. That way, if you really want to cook fish and serve it on Aunt Cristabelle’s gold-plated china or left-over-from-Labor-Day-picnic-paper plates, you can check first if your potential guest will be repulsed before you invite her or him.

I will add this bit of nostalgia to my “It is different now” Monday post. Because I remember the days (these may have been back in Poland) when a dinner suggestion was a gift, a source of delight, and whatever the hosts did was fantabulous and the evening was never long enough, and if it glittered with silver –that was great, and if it was on folding chairs –who cares, and if it was take out –hell, so what?

I WANT THOSE DAYS BACK! In the absence of which, I’m setting up my newly created and hereby copyrighted (maybe not in the eyes of the law but in the eyes of blogdom) “Polack’s Profiles.” Catchy name, huh?

Forty-second street pre-election diary

[While friends and colleagues are engaging in a pre-election pundit-o-mania, replete with predictions, ballyhoos and attacks on the Enemy Candidate, I thought I’d retreat to the sidelines and comment on what’s it like to go through this process as a non-pundit. More than ever before, I believe this election to be a defining moment in history and I want to remember what it was like in the days immediately preceding it, in the same way that historians now analyze what it was like in Poland on the days before September 1, 1939. How was it then, when we still had Hope?
The way to identify my pre-election posts is to look at the title, of course. It will always have the name of the street which actually also happens to be the number of days remaining before the election.]

Today, I am on 42nd street. The day started off with great equanimity. A friend down the street has organized an election day party for Democrats only (hey, if you can arrest a person wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush rally, you can hold a Democrats-only party, right?) and he sent forth invitations early in the morning. That may have been the high point. Immediately after, I get this email from another friend who writes that the state bearing my initials (NC) “now appears certain to go for Bush.”

Thanks, pal, for the note of cheer.

Not to despair. I am on 42nd street. Didn’t this place get a face-lift not too long ago? Still, it’ll always bring to mind the days of seedy movie houses. Which reminds me of another upbeat moment (yes it does!) from this morning. I read another email from a friend who refers me to his most recent post (here), all about strange bedfellows. Notice in it a plea for sanity in the way we pick our leaders. Of course, it recalls for me of my own post before the primaries when (on February 3rd) I wrote the following:

How can you explain the slanderous reporting that blasts away at the warm and fuzzy traits of tall people?? The NYT today says this about Kerry: “He will still never be cuddly. He is too tall, too gaunt, too lantern-jawed, too serious for that. His Iowa caucuses victory speech was solemn and windy, and he sat watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night with a band of firefighters from Fargo, N.D., whose union has endorsed him, tapping his right thumb and forefinger nervously against his teeth without making much effort to converse or connect.”Is there an expectation that he should have been warm and cuddly with the firefighters?

Already I am thinking, those were the good old days when one bickered about Kerry and Edwards and Dean and Clark and Sharpton and Lieberman and… who was that other guy? Kucinich! Once so memorable, now so forgotten.

Such Nostalgia!
I’ll have to end with another nostalgic recollection from the Ocean blog, this one from January 23 when I wrote:

(from a list of important presidential traits identified by the voting public):
He must be someone most Americans would enjoy having over for dinner. [Time after time I have this conversation: “why don’t you like him?” I ask. “I don’t know, he’s just not someone I would feel comfortable with; I wouldn’t enjoy having dinner with him” goes the answer. Is this an outgrowth of viewing this country as a land of opportunity? For the record, Americans please take note: 99.999999999999% of you will NEVER HAVE DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 99.98 % will never even see him eat on national television.]

The day is bright, so bright, great weather. But it can turn nasty pretty quickly. After all, look at what seems to have happened in North Carolina.

Finally, I am special

Today I got my super exclusive rouge elite card stating that I have risen above bleu medium elite status and have now joined the ranks of the super exclusive elite members of Frequence Plus, Air France’s frequent flyer program. This is not surprising. I use Air France for everything outside of this country. If I go visit family in Poland – it’s on Air France. If I have to go to Japan for work purposes – it’s on Air France. I will take Air France to hell and back just to rise to the top of the elite heap of flyers. And today I made it.

This is what I receive in exchange for my loyalty (and I quote, in their order of priority):

You have access to an exclusive reservation service (don’t people use Expedia, travel agents, or, among the exclusive set – their secretaries?)

Air France ticket offices are waiting to serve you (only me? They turn away others? That doesn’t seem fair…)

Choose your seat before your day of departure (oh come on, even Polish Airlines let you do THAT!)

We give you priority for your vaccinations (now halt right here: is there a line? Does ANYONE wait until they get to the airport to get vaccinated?)

Oh sure, then there are pages and pages with what I really want to see: that the rich get richer! Yes! Now I get 50% more miles each time I fly economy, just by being elite and wealthy in miles already, and even more if I fly upwards of economy! And my luggage gets special plastic coating to protect the Gucci leather (?) from the bumps it would otherwise receive from lesser bags. And it will roll out first on belt, and there’ll be lounges all over the world where I will rub shoulders with other super super elite members, just like me.

Now if I can only afford another ticket so that I could reap all these super elite benefits (they only last a year; cheapskates!) and, of course, cash in on my priority shots.

At the bottom of the Ocean

In a few minutes, law students are meeting with several blogging members of the faculty to talk about the phenomenon of weblogs. I’ll be there, but I’ll probably lay low. Because I’m not sure I want to reveal the truth behind Ocean. Nor do I want to tell them that a certain blogger with deeply embedded European roots, residing in Madison, Wisconsin, regards keeping a blog as akin to dancing a complicated tango or taking a photograph of a Thanksgiving dinner: it’s not all as it appears to be.

Raised on Polish literature that developed the art of allegorical writing to the highest standards, I can’t help but take that devious layering right back with me into the blog. That Saturday post about freezing tomatoes? Maybe a person or two recognized that it wasn’t really about tomatoes. I was involved in a writing project over the week-end and I got perversely stalled – frozen, as it were. Hence the post.

The texts and subtexts of a blog – so deliciously evil in their veiled meaning. Song lyrics thrown out to ones who may remember their import many years past, allusions, references, all nicely tucked into a plain text of a story. For there has to be a story as well.

Is it always like that? Is it one big inside joke? Of course not. For me, the greatest challenge in writing this (and elsewhere for that matter) is to find and develop a reason for writing any particular entry. There may be anger, passion, hope, joy, remembrance – all have prompted a post at one point or another. But it has to be a really dry day before I succumb and write anything, just to get something posted.

So, this is what I wont reveal to the group this morning. I appreciate everyone’s sudden desire to post thoughts about the political process, interspersed with comments on daily life. But for me, blogging is all about story writing. I take it seriously. It is hard hard hard to put forth something twice a day (that is my goal) given that it is only a hobby, to be sandwiched into all the other things that need to be attended to. The product may appear at times crude, insufficiently edited (I fired my staff of editors and fact-checkers -- oddly, they wanted to be paid, refusing to work for the sheer glory of it), lacking in grace and wit and humor, but it is here that I practice the craft of writing and story telling. Between you and me – and not for the audience today – that is what Ocean is all about.

It’s different now..

I had begun clipping favorite lines to post from Cohen’s article yesterday in the Times about the “Good Old Days,” until I decided, in the end, that the tenor of the piece was not one I could endorse and so then I dropped the project. But today, driving in to work, my mind started spinning. Gosh, there were some innocent moments way back when! I have no desire to go back to those days for all the political and social reasons that are so obvious as not to require enumeration, but gosh! Do you remember when one could actually say gosh repeatedly and not seem weird (or “strange” because as Cohen says, one didn’t used to say “weird”)?

Much of what is now only nostalgia can be said to have been lost because we’ve wizened up a bit. And so I notice that any list of revered past icons and habits and expressions, contains a salute to ignorance. And how much of what we do now will one day be lost because we will understand that it is causing everyone, ourselves included, great harm?

Everyone should occasionally sit back and recall a thing or two that was wonderfully sweet and benign – for a period in time. I remember when I could pick up a doughnut and a cup of coffee on the way to class and use the term “clogged artery” only to describe traffic congestion… I say this as I eat some disgustingly healthy whole grain-bar, rushing to write this so that I could meet someone for a ‘healthy’ spin around the neighborhood. Yes, sweet innocent treats of the past – joining the Union of Socialist Youth in Poland during the 60s to save our future, thinking that “going all the way” meant holding hands with a boy, kicking a soccer ball around with kids of many ages and stages amidst cow dung on the meadow where cows grazed and later gave us milk for the supper table, with plenty of buttered bread to go around. Sweet days indeed.

The word's just in: they got the sound right!

This afternoon I spoke to friends who had attended the opening night performance at the Overture Center for the Arts. After reading rave reviews all morning, I was not surprised to hear them say that it was “beautiful” “spectacular” “etc” “etc.” And, they said “the sound is magnificent!”

I am glad about that. It would be terrible, terrible to invest so much in this project and not get the sound right, even though it was a gift and you can more readily forgive a gifted Center that turns out to be a clunker, in the same way you can forgive a calendar that you get as a gift for the New Year that has absolutely the worst possible motif running through it (say cats, and you hate cats, or a-joke-a-day and you fail to laugh a single time for the 365 times you turn a page).

Of course, I marvel at the ingenuity of it all: to know in advance of such a construction project that you will get the sound right. I was sitting with a group of people last week and we were marveling about things that are incomprehensible to us – like sending a fax or writing a WiFi message (choosing to ignore the fact that, of course, sending a fax is more imaginable than creating a baby that has your horrid jaw out of invisible-to-the-naked-eye genetic material) – but I think this, too deserves inclusion into the world of marvels.

Or, maybe it was tested as it was being built? Perhaps someone was hired to drop a needle every so often to see how it echoed as it fell to the concrete. Or, better yet, an opera singer came in during construction and belted out a few lines of an aria to see how it was going. Maybe the ceiling had to be tilted differently again and again until Nessun dorma! sounded exactly right – how do I know, I’m no sound expert.

And herein lies the sad truth: neither are most of the people who attend the performances at the Arts Center (unless after you pass into some strata of refinement you develop audio-sensory skills that the rest of us down there haven’t even aspired to). But I want to find out: how DO things sound in the great new hall? Does it bounce of the walls? Does it resound? Is there an echo? I am a music buff. I have attended orchestral performances since I was a pipsqueak. But I could never tell if Alice Tully Hall was an improvement over Carnegie Hall or not. It struck me as the same.

The odd thing is, it can’t matter to the younger-than-me generation of concert goers. They have their ear drums completely warped and distorted through years of attending rock concerts. And if sound mattered so much in the Orchestra Hall, why does it not matter at all at the conerts where it’s all about Volume rather than Quality? So perhaps this new Orchestra Hall is not only for those of refined pocket book, but also of refined age. I almost qualify there!

In any event, I am looking forward to listening for the new improved sound and I hope I can tell, at least as much as all these enthused non-musician patrons say they can tell. I do not really remember what it sounded like before, but famous guest artists kept coming anyway and I suspect the capacity crowds they drew couldn’t tell how horrid the sound was, marveling obtusely at the gifts and talents of the performing artists instead. How odd of us all to have done so. Now we know better. Or – at least we think we do (I’m sure I will too!!) and that’s good enough, isn’t it?

Frozen solid: nc - yes; the tomatoes - no.

Yesterday at the market I bought a box of stunningly gorgeous Harmony Valley Roma tomatoes. They are in a moment of perfection, just waiting to be par-boiled, skinned and zip-locked into the freezer for winter use. My freezer already boasts bags of Ruth’s blueberries, Blue Valley asparagus, Harmony Valley strawberries, plus organic white peach slices for the future moment when I just have to make a batch of Bellinis for a crowd of people.

Here is a twenty-four hour photo-blog progress report on the tomato project:

Waiting for inspiration. Hoping for some such moment to arrive today. So far: not yet evident on the horizon.