Elinor Nauen

If you can't be homesick on Christmas, when can you? Like many (most? all?) Jews, I love the holiday lights, the music (although I didn't go caroling this year), eggnog, parties, the smell of fir .... uncomplicated by family melodrama. Christmas: our most perfect holiday.

Had breakfast at Donostia, a brand-new Basque restaurant on Ave B between 9th & 10th, right across from the park, where a pet food store used to be with an ugly green awning. Dunno why they are open for breakfast but we were happy (funny how many breakfast-type diners are not open in the morning). I had a tortilla, which is sort of a potato omelet, filled with leeks. We learned a lot about the area his family is from: the isolation; the language that's not like any others, which leads experts to think it might be Europe's oldest: "It has no structural relationship with the Romance languages nor with the Germanic ones"; the many hidden Jews, forced to convert 500 years ago. He only didn't know about Basque poetry.

 Read More 

& counting

Johnny left at 5:30 to be at work at 6. At 7, his job called—where was he?

WHERE IS HE?

I called half an hour later: have you heard from him?

Oh, he's right here.

Put him on!
 Read More 

51° isn't really putting me in the white mood.

But random facts do, like knowing that Saturn's rings are up to 99% ice. And thinking about cold things like polar bears, penguins, & ice ribbons.

Precipitate is a 1528 word that means hurl headlong, probably related to precipice via Latin. Precipitation is 50 years older—the act of casting down. It took till the mid 1600s for precipitous to make its appearance.

We fling ourselves recklessly into the joy of snow.

I remember something I don't like about snow, and that is when businesses don't bother to clear it away; eventually—predictably!—the snow turns to slush turns to bumpy, slippy, dangerous ice. The worst offender near me is the Rite-Aid on my corner. They usually manage to clear in front of their store on First Avenue but neglect the long 5th Street sidewalk.

I've been trying to get them to be responsible about it for years. Sometimes they lie: It's not our responsibility (wrong); no one told us (no one told you you're not two-dimensional? no one told you if you're on a corner you have two sidewalks?)  Read More 

It's kind of hard to think abstractly when it's actually falling. So often in the city we don't get snow till January, so I'm optimistic that I'm going to be happy this whole season. It wasn't a lot today, & it's stopped for the time being, but who knows? I might be happy again this very afternoon. It doesn't take much.

I mean, I could move to Churchill, Manitoba, or to Buffalo or back to Sioux Falls. New York's got more than snow so I guess it's not the only thing I care about.

That picture's a little underwhelming, isn't it? How come it can snow all day & that's all there is?

 Read More 

Seeing that Joan Fontaine died (at 96) made me think of the lifetime estrangement between her & her sister Olivia de Havilland (who is still alive, at age 97). Are famous sisters more likely to be estranged than famous brothers or siblings of different sexes? Dear Abby & Ann Landers. A.S. Byatt & Margaret Drabble. Is it because these three pairs were all in the same profession?

Eric & Julia Roberts come up as a brother-sister pair, and Ray & Dave Davies.

Sibling rivalry is as old as the hills: Cain & Abel, the world's first siblings! Shakespeare, of course, nailed it: King Lear's daughters, Taming of the Shrew, all those kings in all those plays.

But there doesn't have to be an empire (or an Oscar) at stake: any woman who's not an only child can probably tell you that the sister bond is maybe the strongest & at times most maddening relationship you can have.

I dream all year of snow: I guess that makes it my hobby. Yesterday, it snowed all day in the city, very nicely, although it didn't really stick till the evening. (No pictures, cuz I don't do that on the sabbath.) I walked for miles, joy tamped only by the rude shitfacers of santacon, who like nothing more than walking 5 abreast & right through anyonegoing the other way (that would be me). I felt like throwing an uppercut or 2 but instead I watched the snow fall & got all gooey-serene again.  Read More 

Whosoever will be an enquirer into Nature let him resort to a conservatory of Snow or Ice. —Francis Bacon

I am an enquirer into Art! Can I get there through Snow just as much as a naturalist?

We'll see....

What the heck is this? It seems too elaborate for an art project but it pretty clearly isn't a residential or commercial building. I am going to try to find it closer up & maybe the answer will be revealed....

Update: I finally saw it facing east, & realized t's on top of the New Museum on the Bowery. It is art.  Read More 

"The ranks of the poor have risen, with almost half of New Yorkers living near or below the poverty line. Their traditional anchors—affordable housing and jobs that pay a living wage—have weakened as the city reorders itself around the whims of the wealthy.... One in five American children is now living in poverty, giving the United States the highest child poverty rate of any developed nation except for Romania." Read More 

A few writers I really like are of the same ilk, descendants of Trollope, I guess you could say.

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) is explicitly related: Her novels, which she turned out once a year for around 40 years, were set in Trollope's Barsetshire. Her books are light and gently satiric, but literary too: middlebrow. Her grandfather was the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, & she was a first cousin of Rudyard Kipling &  Read More 

So often, strolling around my nabe, I will suddenly see something I've never seen before or at least never noticed. This church is on 13th just west of B. It's hard to tell but on either side of the sign are tile crosses—the whole thing a little Mexican. Like the old shtiebls of the Lower East Side where the Orthodox once prayed, I imagine these storefront evangelical churches are losing ground to expensive condos & fancy bars.  Read More 

After my last car got stolen in 1998, I became sensible & didn't replace it. Being a pedestrian sucked & I felt infantilized, even though I was free of tickets, alternate-side parking, and the glass tax (how I referred to replacing windows that people broke in the hopes you'd left something valuable in your vehicle) .

Eventually, I began to see that my bicycle gave me equivalent mobility, just in a smaller area.

Now I'm back to wishing I had a car, not that we go anywhere, & the parking and traffic are worse than ever. It's supposed to snow this afternoon. I want this truck, in the snow, festooned with holiday lights. Instead, I'm going home for tea & to read a book. That's just as good, right?  Read More 

I have at least 2 acquaintances that I can't remember if their name is Steve or Dave.

Come to think of it, it's probably Dave, because I automatically rename most Steves I know, or the ones I like in any event: One Steve, who I've known since I was 19, is known as Willis (his last name, to be sure). There's a Cookie (he calls me Steve) & a Frankie. It's gotten so  Read More 

My old colleague Alyssa made these, and much other beautiful pottery.

If you're looking for holiday gifts, you can click on the photo caption to go to her site.

She also was a great help last summer by taking me shopping at IKEA in Brooklyn. Thanks to her, Johnny came home from rehab to nice pillows, a down comforter, good drinking glasses—a refurbished home, a home we are happy in. Read More 

When I met Johnny's mother, I told her I'd love to hear stories about him from when he was young.

"I don't remember any," she said.

"I'd love to see photos of him as a kid."

"I don't have any," she said.

That was pretty much our only conversation ever. Where could I go from there?

I've only seen a handful of pictures of him from before I knew him. I get a glimpse of the young Johnny when he's with his first wife—he dances and teases in a teenage way that harks to them meeting in the '50s as kids.

I know him now & that will have to be enough.  Read More 

Just about to start prepping for tomorrow's "procedure," & why does that sound worse than "colonoscopy"? It's not so bad—I've had yogurt, tea, pudding, & I'm about to swing by B&H for broth. Last time, 10 years ago, I only remember the IV v-al-ium/di/lau'did was so nice I only came to enough to demand "keep looking!"

Wednesday Update: Everything was fine in my colon, all 25 feet of it. ''
Update (Nov 3, 2018): For some reason, I keep getting spam comments to this post, every few weeks. Oh, I bet they are flagging the two drugs I praised, so I will rewrite them & see if that fools 'em into leaving this alone.
 Read More 

The first miracle was that it was so easy for the six of us to pick a date & time.

The second is nothing more & nothing less than the great enjoyment of being together.

Angelica's is a little less than miraculous these days, although a couple of us remember when it was the first & only vegetarian place in the neighborhood. The walnut-lentil paté is still good: "vegetarian chopped liver!" Alisa exclaimed.

The only thing missing was snow, but that's usually missing.  Read More 

At synagogue yesterday, I sat in the balcony. Two boys were playing cards & I said, Do you want to learn a game?

One said no, the other beamed Yes!

I taught him the GGoBB® (aka the Great Game of Bingelbumpf™). He loved it, and even contributed an appropriately elaborate new rule, to which  Read More 

3 by friends:
The Herbalist, Niamh Boyce, which is winning all sorts of prizes in Ireland
The Crooked Mirror: A memoir of Polish-Jewish reconciliation, Louise Steinman, which should win some attention here
Disease Proof: The remarkable truth about what makes us well, by Dr David Katz & my old colleague  Read More 

A friend objected when I called her kids "privileged" because they go to private school. There's more diversity at their school, she said, than at the local public school, and many students get financial aid. Perhaps I should have said "lucky" or "fortunate" or "blessed." Perhaps "privilege" implies that one's advantages come at the expense of others.

I myself feel extremely privileged, given that I have a low rent and my times is, for the most part, my own. That's not most people's definition of privilege, it seems: They value money over time. I live in a hovel, so in their eyes my claiming to be privileged is eccentric.

It's a little dicier when someone has  Read More 

My friend Steve, who lives in Spartanburg, SC, loves weather, snow in particular— something that's rare in the Piedmont area of the state where he lives; he's been known to drop everything & take off for the mountains in the hopes of getting snowed in. Steve spends a lot of time on arcane weather sites discussing weather patterns. He probably knows as much about meterology (not the study of meteors, oddly enough) as people with a degree in the subject.

Years ago, when he first got a phone after living in the woods  Read More 

A juicy Fuji apple
Back to class, painfree, ankle strong
Laundry done
Work done
Winter snow on the way
Winter
Found two warm gloves to bike in (the fingerless ones don't cut it)
Johnny
Two babies a'coming in the family
A favorite cousin coming to the city
Books books books
A loving cat
I could go on Read More 

For some reason, Johnny doesn't like to be awakened by me taking his picture.

Seeing them happy. Knowing they're protected: she can visit her wife in the hospital, if need be. They can inherit. Love. Getting to go to twice as many weddings. No longer feeling privileged; now that they have a right, my privilege has been normalized. Happy.

Me, I was in grade school. When I came back from lunch, some girls told the strict teacher who had playground duty, and I knew it had to be true: No one would tell Mrs. Wootten a lie.

My mother was running errands, heard on the car radio, & threw up her hands in shock—almost crashing into another car, whose driver gave her a dirty look. What I love is my mother as an anonymous player in someone else's story. If she's still alive, that woman is telling the story yet again today.  Read More 

I love being at home, now that I threw out half my belongings, bought a comforter, & turned on the string of holiday lights.

There's one cat too.

Many years ago I was telling my cousin that I lived in the best apartment in my building. And this was the best building on the block. And ours was the best block in the neighborhood. And the East Village was the best neighborhood in the city. And New York is the best city in the—holy cow! It dawned on me: I live in the best apartment in the world!

Well, El, he said in his soft Oklahoma drawl, I'm not sure everyone agrees with you about that.

Oh. Right.  Read More