9/11 - Twenty-five Years Later

It would be hard to write something that hasn’t already been said or written about the tragedies on September 11^th.  Having lived in Manhattan for eighteen years, I’ve always considered myself a New Yorker, but my affinity with the city goes back to a time before the World Trade Center was built.  I was four, living in an apartment on Boulevard East in Weehawken, New Jersey.  Our living room windows overlooked the Hudson River and I thought the Empire State Building was our next-door neighbor.

Artwork by Philippe Lejeune

Later, during high school, when we moved  deeper into NJ, I traveled into the city by bus (on my own) two nights a week for Armenian dance rehearsals.  Now it is inconceivable to me that at 15, my parents allowed me to go in and out of Port Authority on 42^nd Street by myself and travel to Park Avenue midtown — returning home well after ten o’clock at night. 

But times were different then. 

I loved going into the city — I felt so grown up    in Manhattan.  So when I was away in Boston my first year in college (and miserably unhappy), I jumped at the opportunity to attend Finch,  a small women’s college smack in the midst of the Upper East Side.

Though this next college experience had its drawbacks and disappointments, the best part was being in Manhattan.  I lived in the city from 1971 until 1989 and for the most part, adored every minute of it.  New York City was the only place I knew where at four in the morning you could go dancing, get a haircut, buy flowers, or eat anything your heart desired.  Not only was there every kind of food from all over the world — but it was being made by natives of that country and available in every price range!  For someone young and single, life there was a whirlwind experience of non-stop sensations.  But many years later, as new parents of young babies, those same exhilarating sensations became a constant bombardment of noise, smells, and an ever-present crush of humanity that flooded one’s life and made everyday-living-with-infants a real struggle.  The long-lasting honeymoon was over — it was time to move away.

So move we did but it was hard to be so far away from everyone we knew, especially with two-year-old twins.  My husband started working for an airline so frequent trips back were possible. We wanted our kids to know New York the way we did.  With free airfare and so many of our family and friends still in New York (offering places to stay), each visit we explored more of our favorite haunts:

Papaya King uptown and Zookie’s downtown for the greatest hot dogs [Unlike our first “Dog House” experience in the South where the hot dogs were actually red on the inside all-the-way-through!]; down to Two World Trade Center to wait on that enormous line snaking its way atop the mezzanine to get our half-price tickets to a Broadway show; across Canal Street over to Chinatown to duck in and out of shops and eat dim sum and dumplings.  Of course, there were the usual visits to the Metropolitan, Natural History, and Modern Art museums, trips to Ellis Island and the top of the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center, the Thanksgiving Day parade and 57^th Street and Fifth Avenue at Christmas.  Though we no longer lived there (my son said apartment living was just too crowded for his taste) we felt connected still and our children had a sense of the place where they were born.

For my entire adult life, the Twin Towers anchored the skyline in Manhattan.  Larger than any structure one could imagine, incredulously they rose upward almost farther than one’s neck could crane.  Whether flying in, driving over from New Jersey, or staring out from Broad Channel, Queens across Jamaica Bay, there they were — planted firmly for all to see.

It was unthinkable that they could be toppled.  But on September 11^th, with many, many watching, they sank before our eyes and with them our sense of forever.  The brother-in-law late to work, stuck in the subway; the cousin in a hotel across the street; the friend ten blocks away — thank God, all safe and sound.  All in our circle accounted for and alive but so, so, many others lost forever. Reactions of disbelief, shock, sorrow, fear, and depression eked their way into the mainstream of American life. 

After the attacks, our neighborhood Association down south decided to have a luminary tribute to the 250 victims on planes. A white paper bag for each victim.  Each small bag had the name of someone’s son, mother, daughter, father or friend.  

Four of "my" names at the 9/11 Memorial

 

 As we lit each votive candle in their fragile paper holder edging our neighborhood park, I tried to say every name aloud:  Albert Dominguez, Patrick Quigley, Sonia Puopolo, Alfred Marchand, Garnet “Ace” Bailey, Betty Ong, Jesus Sanchez, Wolfgang Menzel.  My neighbor Katherine and I were conscious that we were moving bags and not body parts — it was                little to do, but our candles and tears honored each of them.

When it came time to remove the bags, we couldn’t throw them away.  I kept my eight. Then we went to the Farmer’s Market and handed them out to people who offered to light them on their porches and in their homes. 

As Americans, until that day we had a false sense that we were untouchable. We never expected that those committed to using violence to convey their message would visit terror on our doorstep, anymore than we could imagine those towers would fall. 

During the National prayer service just after 9/11, I heard this phrase from Corinthians,

“What cannot be seen is eternal.”

It’s been thirty-seven years since I’ve lived in Manhattan.   

For me, the silhouette of those buildings will always be present. 

 ----------------------------

Here in DC,  I visited the National Museum of American History to see an exhibit entitled September 11:  25 Years Later   Artifacts from the Collection and an accompanying film, 9/11 Stories in Fragments, with survivors weaving their tales about those artifacts.  Much like their artifacts,  they had survived but were deeply scarred.

From the National Museum of American History flyer

Twenty-five years later it stuns me that the world is a more dangerous place; that we've not learned the lesson that violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred. That only through connection and compassion and openness and acceptance can we survive and thrive in peace and beauty.  

We haven't learned that we are all "the other" to someone.        

What will it take for us to learn?

                                                                        ----------------------------

This piece first appeared in a local independent newspaper in 2002 and then in this blog in 2011 titled "Indelible."  

The Ukrainian Museum — From Dragoons to Donetsk

For many years The Ukrainian Museum  in Manhattan had been on my list to visit but one thing or another got in the way.  This trip there was an exhibit I really had to see Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s 

Art Deco as always been one of my favorite periods of design but I wasn’t prepared to be dazzled by the costume designs created for the stage by these Ukrainian masters who were cutting edge in the 1910s and 20s.  Drawing elaborate and stark costumes for the ballet, opera, and theatre I saw designs that could be in fashion (haute couture fashion that is) today.

Frustratingly no photos were allowed, so I am reduced to what I can share from a few images captured online or in the gift shop…but I hope you get a flavor for the whimsy, geometric boldness, fanciful flourish of these outstanding creations.  One set of drawings was actually a collage of the costumes with the fabrics….and I loved that virtually all of the designers drew their character's shoes with quaint upturned toes — think the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz!

Fortunately this exhibit has been extended til October 14, so if you’re in New York, hurry to see it. [Check their website for hours, only open Wednesday to Sunday.]

Also fortunately were the other exhibits as well as the really elegant building where the museum has been housed for the past ten years.  A simple sweeping staircase takes you to the rather traditional displays of what one thinks of when they think Ukrainian…pysankas (painted eggs) and lovely, ornately floral images of men and women in their woods and gardens.  I found myself wondering why their palette is predominantly reds, oranges, greens and yellows…very little blue and never purples that I can recall.

Below see detail of this painting...the delicacy of a dandelion puff...

In the basement one can see a small display of traditional wooden instruments used in the fields or in the home and then a  room filled with The Tales and Myths of Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern.These fascinating picturesque images  made me think how fun they might be hung in a child’s room, but on closer inspection (and after reading the placards) this artwork showed/had some menacing features — Russian soldiers, evil disguised as a large alligator, and pogroms in the distance.

Sadly, this exhibit was reinforced by the present-day atrocities menacing the Ukraine today.  A short video presentation tells the story of Donetsk, their ongoing revolution against Russian control along with a room full of artifacts from this present-day war — clearly heartbreaking to those of Ukrainian descent.

To relieve the heaviness of war-torn strife, step across the hall to the small but charming gift shop before leaving this hidden gem of a museum — you can buy your very own pysanka, unusual and attractive chunky necklaces, beautiful notecards by famed Ukrainian-American artist Jacques Hnizdovsky, and even original art (just one example below).  

I couldn’t leave without buying a small notebook with these stickers — a reminder of dragoon-like-Deco-designs.

To make this visit a complete experience, head for The Ukrainian Home Restaurant just blocks away for a taste of slightly sweet, homemade white challah bread and a plateful of lovely and delicious cheese and potato pierogies adorned with fried onions and luscious sour cream.  

Is your mouth watering?

My Love Affair with...Licorice!

Licorice — just the word makes my mouth water.

It started many. many years ago when I was a child in the candy store eyeing everything on the shelves and deciding where my dime or quarter would best be spent. It landed on Nibs — with its exotic wrappers and small cut tubes of black "licwish" inside.
  

                 

With thanks to  R. Jason Bennion  
who has a collection of packaging...

...he actually bought these on Ebay!

candyblog.com

These and Good & Plenty — oh how I loved those little pink and white candy-coated bullets of licorice!  There was this great sound they made sliding back and forth in the box at first crowded and then slowly fewer and fewer rattling around in the box until just a single, solitary pink pellet is left and then — NO MORE!

Yes, I'm not forgetting Twizzlers.  They were next on my licorice menu — first black, then red.  

Sometimes I'd bite off both ends and use the red like a straw in my soda.  Other times I'd leave the bag open so the sticks would get hard and I could suck on'em and they'd last even longer.  Then Twizzlers came out with brown, chocolate "twists" because actually if it's not black, it's not really licorice and they know that and call the strawberry and the chocolate twists.  Once they started with cherry and pull n' peel and citrus, well I gave up on Twizzlers and only buy them when there's no other licorice to be found.

But then (and I can't remember HOW) I came upon the mother lode of licorice in Manhattan's theatre district...

MYZEL'S  

Licorice of the WORLD

From their website:

We are the Myzel family: Myself, Kamila, and my mother Lucy, and we are traditional European chocolatiers. 

Our selections include:

• Chocolates, Cookies & Truffles: Chocolate nut bars, Almond butter crunch, Ultimate chocolate cookie, Truffles, and Figaro truffles
• Gift Baskets
• Licorice: Over 100 licorice flavors from Europe

We have one of the largest selections of black licorice, gourmet licorice, and European licorice in the United States. 

We bring licorice candy to licorice lovers who yearn for that good, old-fashioned licorice in the way it used to be. 

The unmistakable taste of real licorice comes through in our selection of what the world has to offer.

Visit our midtown Manhattan store today!

A tiny crowded shop filled to the brim with candy, chocolates, cookies, treats and LICORICE GALORE!  Jars and jars and jars of it...from Holland, Italy, Finland (my latest favorites) in every shape and color and taste sensation — sweet and salty and dark and medicinal — they have it all.

Photo by David Stanke

I took this photo from Myzel's website because they did such a great job of it...

Below some of my latest stash (courtesy of my husband) though I must say it's missing some of my very favorites...oh well, it just means I'll HAVE to go back there to replenish my supply.  

If you love licorice, you should go TOO!

An Auspicious Beginning

Guess somebody else had the same idea.

I got married late (33) after many failed mishaps with older men, married men, and numerous short-term flops — from bar encounters, blind dates and Club Med calamities.  At one point (when my Gramma asked me for the four thousandth time, “When you gonna get married hokeesie?”) I considered parading up and down Madison Avenue wearing a sandwich board sign with the message 

READY 

FOR 

  MARRIAGE   

No, I did not resort to that.  But it was the age of dating before cell phones, the Internet and texting.  At the time, the most advanced (and risqué) form of dating was placing a  personal ad in the back of

                                                                    Magazine

and though I remember writing and rewriting what I hoped would encapsulate me in 75 words or less, I know I never actually paid and placed an ad. Too chicken or too cheap.

So when I met my future partner — through a chance meeting with his sister on a plane to the middle of America (we were headed to St. Louis; for that story read here) — I was incredibly happy to have finally found someone I loved, laughed with, was a great fit sexually, and — to make it even better — who felt the same way about me.  

The early years were fun and challenging.  To begin with I had never lived with a guy and I wasn't planning to do so now.  To start our life together, we needed to find an apartment in Manhattan we could afford.  Given our work circumstances then, it was his job to scout out places, narrow down the options, and bring me to the ones fitting our requirements and budget — a real Everest of a challenge.  

The first option he scheduled an appointment for was a small one bedroom at 97^th and Fifth.  It was sweet and just a block from an entrance to Central Park, but at $1800 @ month — what was he thinking?? [This should have been my first indicator that finances weren't his forte.] 

The next was an apartment in the opposite direction, Chelsea on West 25^th, close to Ninth Avenue.  It had an Art Deco feel and a sunken living room but...it was dark inside, far from the subway, and $1500 @ month.  Yes, better, but still a no.

Then, a large loft-style place on East 14^th for $1200 @ month — he was getting better at this.  Open plan, light-filled, high-ceilinged BUT — you had to “buy” the kitchen the previous tenant had installed ($800 bucks!)and in the walls at floor-level there were these very large, dangerous looking grates for heat.  Horrifyingly I imagined our someday-child crawling in and being grilled alive on the spot.  This apartment?  No way.  

He was very discouraged.

Finally, an apartment he was convinced would meet ALL my expectations.  A four-story building with an apartment on each floor on a lovely tree-lined street (it was in fact the street he was already living on — East 89^th close to First Avenue).    I liked it.  It had charm.  It was quiet, it had light and the price was the best we’d encountered — just $1000 @ month!  Still — it was a fourth-floor walk-up.  I couldn't imagine hiking up and down those four flights of stairs with the groceries or the trash — let alone a stroller and a diaper bag and a baby one day.  I had to say no.

My soon-to-be husband was dejected at this rejection.  Frustrated from looking every day, convinced that nothing, nothing, NOTHING would please me, HE was ready to give up.  [Maybe this was his first indicator of what it would be like living with thinking-through-every-last-detail crazy me.] 

Things were at a stand-still and still, we had no apartment.  It was already April.  The wedding was in May.  The where-are-we-gonna-live clock was ticking.  I suggested that we walk building to building on the east side in the 20s and 30s in the neighborhood where I was living — bordering Gramercy Park.  I’d met a woman who managed a small brownstone on Lexington at 31^st and in my mind surely we could/would get an apartment in that building so we headed to the premises.   When we arrived on her stoop, the landlady sweetly said with a smile, “Nothing available” and shut the door in our dumbfounded faces.

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I had pinned all my hopes on that  apartment.  We had no choice but to continue on. Door by door, building by building, we kept walking.   Up and down numbered side streets we zigzagged our way through “No” after “No” after “No.”  We walked between Second Avenue, Third Avenue, and Lexington, block after block after block.  We were tired and cranky and discouraged.  After walking forty blocks in two and a half hours with no success, we were just about back to where we started.  We were standing a block from where I was living in an 800 square-foot studio that I owned (or more accurately the bank owned) with a doorman, no natural light, and much too much stuff to ever clear enough space for another human being without my feeling displaced and resentful.  If we had to resort to living in MY studio we sure-as-shootin' were gonna be starting off this marriage on the WRONG foot.

Feet aching and hungry, we rounded the corner at Lexington and 24^th, placing us on my block in front of the shop for all things equestrian, H Kauffman & Sons with its yellow wooden carousel horse parked outside the doors.  Across the street was a building I’d always wondered about…brick with these enormous leaded glass windows six feet high by eight feet wide!  At the top of the maybe ten floors was a two-story penthouse with windows even more spectacular. 

“Let’s go in,” I said as I crossed the street.

“Not another one,” he groaned, “Aren’t you tired of all this?”

“Yes, but just this last one.”

Inside the vestibule looking at the buzzers I pressed the one labeled SUPER.

A fairly decrepit old man shuffled to the door and stuck his head out. “Yes?” he queried.

“Hello, we’re looking for an apartment and I’ve always admired this building.  I live around the corner at 330 Third and I was wondering, are there any apartments available for rent?  We’re getting married and we need a one-bedroom.”

He stared at me intently with his unshaven whiskered face.  He opened the door for us.  “Come in.”

We were ushered into a door just off the vestibule into a messy office with old desks and office furniture, a haphazard accumulation of things that were probably left over and abandoned by others. The super slowly made his way to the back of the long room, went through a door and came back with a white-haired elderly woman. 

“I’m Mrs. Booke. I own the building. What do you want?”

I repeated what I’d said at the door but added that I owned a studio around the corner, that we were getting married in three months, and that we were very reliable.

“We don’t have anything," she snapped and said suspiciously, "Who sent you here?”

“No one.  No one sent us.  I pass this building every day.   I love the windows and I’ve always wanted to see what it was like inside.  We’ve been out all day looking for an apartment and not finding anything.  I just wanted to stop and ask.”

“We have nothing available.” she stated very firmly.

“We’re very good tenants and would take excellent care of an apartment," I said making my case.  " We both work and expect to stay in the city for a long time.  You’d be getting really trustworthy tenants.” 

“There are no vacancies.” Mrs. Booke declared, but, I kept on trying to convince her.

After five minutes my exasperated fiancé was whispering insistently in my ear, “There are NO apartments. I’m really hungry and tired.  Let’s GO!  She already said ten times that nothing’s available!” I heard the tone in his voice and I felt his frustration with me.  He didn’t understand why I was still talking when her answer was clear.  But my persistent nature allowed me to shut out his annoyance, ignore his breath on my neck, and keep making the case that we were a wonderful couple for anyone to have under their roof.

He was more than ready to give up.

I was just beginning to dig in.  

Then after more of my talk about the need for a fresh start and the wedding date and the impracticality of a couple in a studio, Mrs. Booke begrudgingly offered, “I may have something.” 

Twenty minutes after first walking in that door, a chink! 

I rushed on with a tumble of words. “Mrs. Booke you’ll NEVER be sorry with tenants like us, so I HOPE you’ll show us whatever you have, because we’d be VERY interested in seeing it,” I said anticipating a possible triumph.  The wizened, old super who had been listening to this whole exchange was quietly smiling, scratching his stubble.   My partner was utterly dumfounded.  

“My tenant in 2R is moving out and the girls upstairs on seven wanted it, but perhaps Frank can show it to you.”

Compared to everything we’d seen it was huge.  Living room/dining room 12’ wide by 30’ long with nine-and-a-half-foot ceilings!    A doorway (no door) into an incredibly small kitchen with a compact four-burner oven, next to a big stainless steel sink, jammed next to a tiny 4’ high frig complete with a minuscule top freezer.  Not a single inch of counter space. Some metal cabinets above that would require a stool for me to reach the upper shelves.  A narrow rectangular chicken-wired window covered in pigeon poo that looked out into an alley.  No view but at least some natural light.   Everything was in arm’s reach. You could stand in that kitchen and turn around but that was all you could do.  

This is an updated, renovated, today-version of the apt
we had back then with its HUGE casement windows.  
Our place never looked THAT good.

A 1950s pink and gray tile bathroom — dated yes, but perfectly serviceable.

A decent bedroom with decent closets.  Best of all the living room and the bedroom had these ENORMOUS inset casement windows 6’ high by 8’ wide.  True, being on the second floor there was no view to speak of, but the buildings behind us were only three stories high so we would get southern light during the day.

My heart was pounding.  Back in the office Mrs. Booke was fiddling with her papers.  I was trying to suck in the torrent of words about to pour from my mouth begging her to let us have the place.  I dreaded the question that had to be asked.

“It’s perfect, perfect, perfect.  We love it.   I hope you’ll be willing to let us come start our married life here.  Can you — can you tell me the rent?”  In my mind I was already thinking, given what we'd seen, we would go as high as $1100 if we had to, because we HAD TO get this apartment.  

“Well, I’ll have to check on it and let you know because the previous tenant was here for a long time (22 years it turned out) but I think it’s going to be — she took a breath (ours was bated, waiting for the financial shoe to drop) — it should be around $600.”

SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!   $587.42 cents to be exact, once all the paperwork was complete.  It was this great apartment, at an amazing rent, in the neighborhood I already knew and loved.  

In Manhattan?  This was a MIRACLE — and an incredibly auspicious beginning to our 29-year marriage.