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Rush-Hour Sorrow, Rush-Hour Sweet

August 13, 2014 in City Matters, Spirit Matters

Checking my phone tonight on a rush-hour train, I discovered an unwanted email from an ex with whom I still have an unhappily charged dynamic. I did what I always do with messages from him these days–I deleted it–but not before his brief email walloped me in the chest. Surrounded by people in the packed sardine can of the subway car, I couldn’t shake the shock of the unsolicited reminder of everything I (we) had lost, couldn’t exhale as deeply as I needed to without making a scene, couldn’t just curse the heavens. So I froze, silently imploring the tears in my eyes not to run down my cheeks, and felt lonely in a way I never feel when actually alone. A hand tapped my shoulder then, and I looked up to see a young woman in full Muslim garb and orange high-tops smiling gently at me. “It’s ok,” she mouthed, and my eyes widened at her vigilant kindness, as well as the palpable warmth of all the other commuters regarding me with concern. This, during a week marked by sorrows on every level, too.

But that’s just another day on the IRT, as they used to say. Really, it amazes me that visitors ever accuse this city of harshness. From the minute that I moved here, New York has been my truest, steadiest heart. I cannot count the times that its denizens have matter-of-factly shored my grief.

A National Holiday for Julia

August 12, 2014 in Age Matters, Feminist Matters, Food Matters, TV Matters

August 15 marks Julia Child’s 102nd birthday. That’s hardly a banner anniversary – remember the media celebration two years ago for her centennial? – but Julia Child deserves a red-carpet bonanza every year. Certainly her birthday should be recognized as a national holiday by the food world. If not for the late cookbook author and television host, its media empire wouldn’t exis, at least not in all its current glory.

For we have Julia to thank for all the Americans who eat something besides TV dinners every night. (The powers-that-be at Swanson may not feel so grateful.) Of course, we also have Julia to thank for the glut of food porn, er, television that comprises an industry unto itself. The entire Food Network should credit Julia as its real founder. Without her, there’d be no Emeril Lagasse, Jamie Oliver, Tom Colicchio, Barefoot Contessa, or Pioneer Woman in our public eye. There’d probably not even be an Anthony Bourdain or a “Hell’s Kitchen.” (There’d still be a Rachael Ray, though. With her aggressive cheer and predilection for shortcuts and catchphrases, Ray is one gelatin mold away from being the new Betty Crocker.) Continue Reading →

I Wonder, Woman

August 9, 2014 in City Matters, Feminist Matters, Sabboytical

I was waiting on line at Fairway when this couple ahead of me started fighting. They were in their 60s–both clad in sensible footwear and baggy tees emblazoned with lefty slogans. You know: doggedly grey hair, spectacles, humorless facial expressions. They were of a piece. If I had to guess–and guessing is my favorite part of people-watching–I’d say they lived on the two top floors of a Park Slope brownstone they’d bought in the early ’80s. I’d put money on the fact that they didn’t have kids. They’d have been too busy fighting the good fight for such frivolous pursuits.

Anyway, they were fighting now. Boy, were they fighting. The man was yelling so loudly at the woman that it penetrated my headphone cloud. I hadn’t heard a man yell like that since I’d left my father’s house, and my fists started to clench. The actual words were inconsequential–I asked if you got skim! You know I can’t drink 2 percent!–but the voltage spoke an entirely different story. The voltage would’ve made more sense if he were calling her a stupid cunt.

I knew the type: He was a bully. A self-righteous bully who, if confronted, would never cop to how much he hated women, including his wife. A bully who would instead point to the money he donated to Planned Parenthood, to the campaigning he did for the ERA, to the volumes of feminist political theory lining his office. He was a bully all the same. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy