A Hippie and a Witch

 

With Annika and Leah, c. 1998

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Oh, Food Pantry Clients!

In case you think I'm such a nice person, working at the Food Pantry and all:  No, I'm not.  Sometimes clients make me cranky.

Most of the time I cover this with a smile, plus a lot of nodding and agreeing and quite a bit of wrinkled-brow sympathy.  But sometimes they drive me crazy.

Oh, clients, please:

1. Don't be querulous!  I know your life is hard, or you wouldn't be in line for food, but everyone in front of you has a hard life, and so does everyone behind you. 

2.  Keep in mind that we hardly ever have pet food.  Please don't ask.  For some reason, this irritates me, even though I know intellectually that your pet is important to you, a comfort.  Okay, I'm talking myself out of this irritation.

3.  Please do ask about baby food and formula.  We sometimes have this, and we love babies.

4.   Don't say you are "blessed."  It's confuses me.  Standing in line at a food pantry does not seem like a blessing.   (Also, it makes me feel ungrateful, which is probably true.)

5.   Don't ask if there's any meat today.  There hasn't been any in weeks, bordering on months.  It's not our fault.  It's the USDA's.

6.   Bring your children with you.  They are charming and distracting and a change of pace.

7.   Come when you need to, but tell the truth about how many people are in your family and where you live.  If you live outside of Berkeley or Albany, figure out the Pantry nearest your house.  We will help you with this.

Okay, that's it.  Most clients are easy and grateful.  I love the ones who are spunky, with a sense of humor, too, and there are plenty of them.

Freshly washed trays waiting to be taken back to Starbuck's for more donations

Who Cooked This Stuff?

The other night, I woke up feeling like hell, with a bad sinus headache.  It wasn't going to get any better lying in bed so I got up, made myself some toast and hot water, sat in the kitchen,  and read a cookbook that my mother-in-law gave me years ago.

The book was published in the mid-seventies by the auxiliary of the San Diego County Medical Society.  All the contributors are women, and all are Mrs. Husband's Name with the wife's first name in parentheses (Mary), like it's an afterthought.  This was my mother's generation.



Don't tell anyone

As I flipped through the pages, I kept thinking that these ladies must have been in a hurry all the time, because they deal majorly in cans of cream of mushroom soup, packages of something called "French's Chili-O, the odd tablespoon of Sherry to jazz it all up.  Also, "Accent" and "Beau Monde."  I don't think I ever made many recipes out of the "Main Dish" section, although there are some stained pages.

In "Sweets," there are cakes made with Jello, packaged cake mixes, and boxes of instant pudding; sometimes all three.  If there aren't packages to toss in, then there are weird ingredients.  "Mayonnaise Date Nut Cake," for example.  "Gravy Train Cake," has no gravy, thank God,  but  features a can of cherry pie filling, butter, a box of Jiffy white or yellow cake mix, and sugar; that's the entire recipe. 

 Then there's "Coca Cola Cake," which includes Coke and marshmallows.

I think I tried a few recipes in that cookbook, but not one my mother-in-law favored, "Easy-Party Casserole Chicken," which features Kraft's Creamy French Dressing, a can of whole-berry cranberries, and a package of French Onion Soup."  You mix it up, pour it over "10 pieces of tender chicken" and bake the hell out of it (1-1/2 hours at 325 degrees). There's your dinner party.

Sometimes Jerry and I talk about our mothers and how in the 1940's and '50's they produced a cooked-from-scratch dinner every.single.night.  I remember my mother's friend excusing themselves at 3:30 in the afternoon to "go start dinner."  No wonder they looked for recipes that were fast and easy!  No one knew those cans and packages were full of salt and scary chemicals.

By the sixties and seventies, lots of mothers were cooking with cans and packages, and they were delighted to brag about it, to pass on the recipes as something delicious and quick.  These days, in Berkeley, anyway, you'd have to sneak around with your processed food ingredients. You'd never, ever brag about it.

My mother-in-law, Jerry's stepmother, meant well giving this book to me.  It was as though I were joining a beleaguered sisterhood of women who didn't like to cook but were expected to produce something, alone in the kitchen, every single night.  It's enough to give me another headache.

Wave Hill: Such color! Such textures! Such design!

This place is an oasis.  Especially if you're staying in New York City and you want a break from the pace.  It's only 25 minutes from Grand Central Station on the Metro-North Hudson Line.  There's a free shuttle that runs uphill from the Riverdale Station to the estate. 

 

 

 

The big house (above) was built in 1843.  After passing through various owners, it was donated to New York City in 1960.  There are 28 acres, much of it gardens, trails, a smaller house  that serves as an art gallery.  Also a visitors center, greenhouses, and formal gardens.

Here's what we saw:

A loggia on the Hudson River

  




Massed coleuses

Beautiful colors and textures: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I've owned several of these plants, but they never look like this:

 

 

Or this:

 

 

 

 

We walked the Abrons Woodland Trail trail and found a gazebo:

 

A view of the Hudson River through the trees:

 

A burst of sudden, lush color:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gates, fences, and Adirondack-style chairs:

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

The Glyndor Gallery, also on the estate grounds:

 

 

 



 

Beautifully restored interior, with permanent collection and temporary exhibits:

 

 

 

Fish Lamp, Frank Gehry, 1985, Formica, wire, wood, glass, light

 

Inspiration for a quilt? (minus the toe of my shoe): 

 

 

Shutting Down Food

One weekend during the federal shutdown, Jerry and I went to Pt. Reyes National Seashore and found ourselves locked out of parking lots.  A piss-off, but I resisted writing, "Blame the Republicans" on the signs. 

A bump in the road for middle-class people who want to take a walk.  But how about this:

Poor people who don't have enough to eat moved closer to the precipice during the shutdown.  I wonder if most people are aware of this?  I would be if I didn't do my once-a-week volunteer gig at the Berkeley Food Pantry.

First,  the USDA halted shipments to Food Banks all over the country three weeks ago.  That includes the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which provides food to the Berkeley Food Pantry.  USDA food fills one of the two bags we give out to people.

Pantry shelves get low

During the first half of October, the Pantry gave out food that had been delivered in September,  so fine.  But if the shutdown had gone on another week, the Pantry probably wouldn't have gotten the October delivery from the Food Bank.  Clients would have gotten half the food they've come to count on.  Even now, it's likely the make-up shipments will be delayed.

Or how about this?  Another client, a brand-new mother, was told that the Women Infants Children (WIC) benefit would end in November if the shutdown continued. This USDA program provides supplemental basic food for needy women and their young children.   This is a woman so impoverished that she couldn't get a breast pump for a week after giving birth and her baby wasn't getting enough milk.  We provided formula that someone had donated.  That's a pretty shaky lifeline.

Or this?  FEMA provides half the Pantry's funding, and that money was hung up by the shutdown.  This, plus skyrocketing client numbers, have seriously imperiled the annual Thanksgiving bag giveaway.

We have clients so hungry when they arrive at the Pantry that they ask for food they can eat immediately.  Starbuck's donates sandwiches, and I have seen people gobble those down in the parking lot on the way to the bus stop.

I've talked to conservatives about this, and they seem disbelieving.  They feel that people exploit services like the Pantry, and there are probably some who do.  But most do not.  A newborn does not. People so hungry they beg for a sandwich do not.

And all these people teetered on the edge during the shutdown.

Washington could not be more out of touch. 


 The new mother was able to get a breast pump through WIC eventually.

I'm just finishing another quilt to be auctioned here to benefit the Pantry.  It's be a lap or baby quilt--a holiday gift for someone, perhaps?

NYC Photos

I'm finally getting around to posting the photos for "Two Old Bags Take on Manhattan."  I know you've been waiting breathlessly for these, but honestly, ever since I got home I AM A SLAVE TO MY HOUSE!  One thing after another.  What helps:  Thinking of it as an investment, instead of a house.  It's either that or slap it silly.

So!  Here's a taste of the trip Claudia M. and I took in September:

...despite a huge construction project in front of it, funded by David Koch,



 

 

...we found the front door

The Roof Garden at the Met:  A commissioned work by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi on the walking surface

Close-up:   Qureshi floods a site with acrylic paint and then works it into "thickets of ornamental leaves...that evoke the luxuriant walled gardens of the Mughals" in the tradition of miniaturists who worked for the Mughal Court (1526-1857).  Three years ago he began using red acrylic in response to brutal bombings I Lahore so that his works become "a dialogue with life, with new beginnings and fresh hope..".

 

 

 

In the gift shop of a huge show on the worldwide textile trade between 1500-1800.  Every conceivable sort of textile is included, and the cross-pollination of textile techniques and traditions is fascinating.  No photos allowed of the exhibit, alas.

 

On the Lower East Side:

 

I resisted.

 

 

 

I did not.  A display of the scrumptious macaroons at "bisousciao" on Stanton Street



 

Street art

 

 

 

 

Ditto

 

 

...and more.  A Sign?  Bulletin board?  Collage?  All three?

 

 

 

The Lower Eastside Tenement Museum, 97 Orchard Street, where we took a tour.  Discovered in 1988 in the state it had been left in the early 1930s, each floor depicts the lives of immigrants who lived there.

 

 

 

Would you believe?  A Berkeley alum owns this restaurant near the Tenement Museum.  Good food!

 

 

 

 

Times Square at dusk.

 

 

A window in Times Square

 

 

 

Loved it.

  

 

 

 

Wave Hill, 25 minutes by train from NYC, a gorgeous property on the Hudson River.  More on this (have way more pictures)

 

 

At Wave Hill

 

 

 

Wave Hill House, built in 1843

 

 

Wave Hill artistry with color and textures

 

 

 

 

In the Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill: Blue Torso, Simone Lee, 2012.  Porcelain, cobalt, epoxy, terracotta, graphite

 

 

 

 

Close up of  Blue Torso

 

 

A former Broadway dancer/actress we met on the train from Wave Hill back to NYC.  We should see more shows,  she told us and suggested some.  She was knitting a "potato chip" pattern scarf for her daughter.

 

 

 

9/11 Memorial.  The curved, reflective building in the background is the new museum, not yet open

 

 

 

 

The 1776-foot 1 World Trade now under construction, the first and tallest of several buildings planned.

 

 

At the Statue of Liberty:  The torch flame removed and replaced in 1984. 

 

 

A chummy, if solemn, fellow subway passenger, who squrimed between us to get a seat

 

 

 

 

View from Robert restaurant in the Museum of Art and Design, looking at the spokes of Columbus Circle: Broadway (left) and Columbus (right)

 

 

 

 

The red fingernails are of a piece with the show

 

 

Leah and me in her new apartment in the West Village.  I'm holding the fabric my cousin Sue gave to her to bring to me when they met up six weeks ago at Victoria Station in London.

 

 

 

Display in a West Village shop

 

 

 

Along the High Line, a park/walkway built on an elevated freight line on the lower West Side

 

 

A Red Velvet ice cream sandwich from a High Line vendor.

 

 

Chaises can be rolled along the old railroad track

 

 

 

A visit to Zabar's to buy lunch for the plane ride home

 

 

TOBs:  Our second trip to NYC and only 38 years later...