Sunday 17 October 2010

East Coast trip Part 3: New York





A birthday candle in my  dessert at Fish Restaurant in Greenwich Village
In what is now a familiar ritual, Yaacov dropped me off at Penn station in Baltimore in plenty of time to get the Amtrak train to New York.  I have now figured out where the elevator is so I don't have to schlep my suitcase down the stairs to the platform.  There was a strange-looking carcase on the tracks: the consensus of my fellow travellers was that it had been a deer which had probably travelled some distance on the underside of a train and got partly roasted before being deposited here! Not sure about the quality as I snapped it with my iPhone. Usually if you click on an image in the blog it will enlarge it.


Strange deer carcase on the tracks at Baltimore Penn Station

Leiba  Marsh with baby Dina
When I got in to Jay and Ellen's, I called Lissy and arranged to go down there the next day to make honey cakes for them, for the in-laws and a small one for Jay and Ellen. Ben, whose palate is rather discriminating, said the cake was not up to the usual standard, and we singled out the cause as the canola oil, which might have been a bit older than desirable.  At home I never buy huge containers of oil, flour, etc. despite the unit price seeming much lower: we don't use them up fast enough to maintain quality, and it's false economy if you end up chucking it out! But the cakes all got eaten - they were not bad, just not as good as usual.  Next day, I took the train to Lissy's parents' house for the pre-Yom Kippur meal, and accompanied the family to their Temple in New Jersey on Kol Nidrei and Yom Kippur. We broke the fast at Lissy's uncle and aunt's house - Isaac and Melanie are wonderful hosts and I feel so included there, it is really lovely.  We stayed over as the day after Yom Kippur was a Sunday this year, so there was no need to race back to Manhattan for work the next day.
My Nephew Moshe with oldest daughter Chaya
We had arranged to visit my nephew and his family in Lakewood, and borrowed Bernard's car for the drive.  It was much quicker than getting a bus from the Port Authority Terminal in NYC like we did last year.  Leiba turned on a splendid lunch for us, and we enjoyed a bit of time with the kids including the newest baby, Dina, who you can see smiling away as she dances about with Lissy on the video below.






 http://picasaweb.google.com.au/bjoymarsh/2010_09_1927LakewoodWhitePlainsNYC#5526657845540762178

Leiba with middle daughter Shifra
The older girls took me outside to show where they had planed some dried beans from the package they use for cholent - they assured me they would grow into peas, as the neighbours' had. I tried explaining about peas and beans being different plants but I got the distinct impression they had no idea what I was talking about - I guess I need to brush up my communication skills! Still, any gardening is a good thing - right? I had trouble getting Yisroel to keep still for a photo, and the video with him and his friends playing is very chaotic so I haven't posted it here.

I spent a bit of time in New York looking at 2-bedroom apartments to rent on the Upper West Side with Lissy and occasionally with Ben.  The lease on their current 1-bedroom expires November 1, and they need the extra room for the baby, and want to be near an express subway stop on the Broadway line for Ben’s shortest possible commute to the Financial District.  We saw some dumps for not much less money than some pretty nice places, mostly older buildings but some new developments.  Only in New York could two-bedroom apartments starting from $4500 a month be considered middle income rental housing!  I am well aware that house prices in Melbourne are far higher than in much of the USA, but at least you get a bit more space, indoor and outdoor, for your money. But Manhattan is a very desirable place to live and there isn’t much space, so I guess it is all about supply and demand. As I write this post, they have signed a lease, so I know where we will be staying when we return to NYC in December.
The house-hunting occupied quite a bit of time, but I did get to one museum I hadn’t seen before, the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side. It reminded me a bit of the Barnes collection that we saw in Philadelphia about 3 years ago – housed in a purpose-built mansion, selected and arranged by an individual according to his own taste – but without the didactic purpose so apparent in the Barnes. Also the Barnes collection is much larger and the art works mainly date more from the Impressionist period through cubism and early modernism, leavened with some African work from many periods whose influences Barnes detected on the European works in the collection.  But the quality of the works in the Frick is outstanding – Gainsborough, Reynolds, Sargent, Constable, Cellini, a Renoir, Hals, Goya, El Greco, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck. For the art lovers amongst you I would highly recommend both if you are ever on the East Coast of the USA, and here are some links for you to explore the collections:
I met our friend Ruth at the Frick – she had been in NYC for a few days at the UN General Assembly presenting on Australia’s position on bio-diversity, and engaging in negotiations around the topic as part of DFAT’s delegation , accompanying the newly-appointed Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.  After an hour or so for a very quick look at the house and the collection, with no time to listen to the audio tour that is included in the admission price, we wandered around the East Side a bit, looking for a place to eat lunch.  We eventually came across somewhere suitable, where we had to wait for a while but finally shared two really excellent salads, excellent bread,  and some wine. The Upper East Side is out of my comfort zone. We had been wandering up Madison Avenue, but after walking Ruth to Park Avenue for a taxi to the airport I continued further east and realised we had just been on the wrong street for cheap and cheerful eats – Lexington Avenue would have suited our quest much better.  Still, we did see many designer clothing, jewellery and accessories stores as we walked!

I also took the train up to Emily and Bob’s place for a couple of days, including the second day of Sukkot when we went to Shule and to my surprise I was honoured with an Aliyah. I guess there were not so many people there and they were welcoming a stranger to be a part of things.  Having grown up as a woman attending Orthodox Shules I am still not blasé about participating fully in Conservative Synagogue services, and I get quite an emotional response to being considered a fully functioning member of the kehila.  It was a very nice experience, topped off by lunch in the Sukkah with some of Bob and Emily's friends from the congregation: bagels, all kinds of herring, lox, salads, fruit, even hot coffee, and I could not resist a brownie.  Unfortunately I had a pinched nerve in my neck, probably from carrying a back pack slung over one shoulder on the crowded subway train and waiting in the station for the Metro North train to Pleasantville, where I had met Bob and Emily  the evening before to go to a show at the Burns theatre (it was a documentary about the history of the animation unit at Disney, called Waking Sleeping Beauty. ) This is on a different train line than the Hudson line I take to their town, which is a gorgeous leafy ride alongside the river - I missed the views!

Emily got me an appointment with a neighbour who is a chiropractor. He diagnosed the source of the pain and treated it with ultrasound and an activator (I had a chiropractor in Mexico years ago who used this little instrument well, but since then I have only been treated with it a couple of times and haven’t felt the practitioner was using it all that well.)  Net effect was to partially relieve the pain right then, but over the next 24 hours I improved vastly. It probably also helped that I rested quite a bit, reclining in Emily’s special chair and reading a couple of novels from the Number 1 Lady’s Detective Agency series, and took some anti-inflammatories.

We got to share a few meals in Emily's screened porch, the newest addition to the house and a lovely indoor/ outdoor place to sit, mosquito-free, and enjoy the garden at this time of year. It was just about finished last year when I visited, but since then there are a lot of potted plants and various other creature comforts, and a pretty spectacular barbecue just outside where Emily grilled marinated chicken and lots of great vegetables, including portabella mushrooms. eggplant, zucchini and red peppers, all my favourites.  Yum!

Ben and Lissy at Jeremy and Tara's
My first cousin Jeremy, wife Tara and their twins Jacob and Jonathan now live in White Plains, only about half an hour from Emily's.We stopped off at  the station to pick up Ben and Lissy and Emily dropped us all off and barely had time to say hello before racing off to meet Bob watch her French nephew, now boarding at a school in the area,  play in a soccer game. Jeremy's sister Angela was visiting from London, so we all enjoyed catching up. We enjoyed lunch in the Succah, where it was extremely hot, and went for a walk nearby (where we took a few photos on the edge of the golf course) before taking the train back to Grand Central. 


I also took the train up to Emily and Bob’s place for a couple of days, including the second day of Sukkot when we went to Shule and to my surprise I was honoured with an Aliyah. I guess there were not so many people there and they were welcoming a stranger to be a part of things.  Having grown up as a woman attending Orthodox Shules I am still not blasé about participating fully in Conservative Synagogue services, and I get quite an emotional response to being considered a fully functioning member of the kehila.  It was a very nice experience, topped off by lunch in the Sukkah with some of Bob and Emily's friends from the congregation: bagels, all kinds of herring, lox, salads, fruit, even hot coffee, and I could not resist a brownie.  Unfortunately I had a pinched nerve in my neck, probably from carrying a back pack slung over one shoulder on the crowded subway train and waiting in the station for the Metro North train to Pleasantville, where I had met Bob and Emily  the evening before to go to a show at the Burns theatre (it was a documentary about the history of the animation unit at Disney, called Waking Sleeping Beauty. ) This is on a different train line than the Hudson line I take to their town, which is a gorgeous leafy ride alongside the river - I missed the views!

Emily got me an appointment with a neighbour who is a chiropractor. He diagnosed the source of the pain and treated it with ultrasound and an activator (I had a chiropractor in Mexico years ago who used this little instrument well, but since then I have only been treated with it a couple of times and haven’t felt the practitioner was using it all that well.)  Net effect was to partially relieve the pain right then, but over the next 24 hours I improved vastly. It probably also helped that I rested quite a bit, reclining in Emily’s special chair and reading a couple of novels from the Number 1 Lady’s Detective Agency series, and took some anti-inflammatories.

We got to share a few meals in Emily's screened porch, the newest addition to the house and a lovely indoor/ outdoor place to sit, mosquito-free, and enjoy the garden at this time of year. It was just about finished last year when I visited, but since then there are a lot of potted plants and various other creature comforts, and a pretty spectacular barbecue just outside where Emily grilled marinated chicken and lots of great vegetables, including portabella mushrooms. eggplant, zucchini and red peppers, all my favourites.  Yum!





Scallops with spinach




Lobster Salad




Joan, Jay, Ellen, Emily, me, Lissy, Ben
In between all the running around, I managed to spend a bit of time catching up with Jay and Ellen. I got a pass to use the Manhattan JCC, which is just around the corner from their house, for several days. They have a reciprocal agreement with the Berkeley JCC, where I am a member.  So I got in a swim every couple of days in the 25 metre pool, but couldn't quite coordinate with Ellen to attend her yoga class ona Wednesday.  It was my birthday towards the end of the trip, so I had an indulgent swim and a massage at the JCC, before Ben and Lissy took me out to dinner at a restaurant in the Village called Fish.  At the last minute Jay and Ellen joined us along with a couple of other friends and it turned into a little party for me. Very delightful - see a couple of the dishes we had above.  We shared some desserts, one of which was billed as a Chocolate Merengue Cake.  The better spellers amongst us wondered if it was going to get up and dance.



I dropped in to Goldman Sachs to visit Ben at the office around 5.30 the day before I left New York .   I don’t know about dark Satanic mills, but the hundreds of knowledge workers on his floor at their workstations with 4 to 6 screens each and just a bit of bench space did bring to mind a knowledge or maybe money factory.  I saw the cafeteria with its variety of seating and views over the harbour, Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, the Financial District Marina, and some of the meeting spaces.  I met and chatted with many of his team mates in the group, many nationalities, races, even a couple of women! They seems a friendly bunch, quick, smart and very well-read, but I can’t explain why there were bottles of hot sauce on many desks (Ben also had Vegemite and a chunk of honey cake, easier to explain). 

No comments: