Dairy Days

Monday, April 13, 2020
To help us through these dark days, the New York Times informs us of how many consecutive hours of binge watching we can have of real estate porn.*   https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/realestate/how-long-does-it-take-to-binge-watch-every-real-estate-tv-show.html

"House Hunters," a favorite, may occupy you for 33 days, 13 hours and 34 minutes uninterrupted.  Unfortunately, no division is given between the domestic and international versions.  Here at Palazzo di Gotthelf, there is little if any interest in the property market in or around Jacksonville, Florida, but we are suckers for Phnom Penh, Cambodia or Utrecht, Netherlands.  Even an exposé of the artificiality of some hunts hasn't deterred us.   https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/06/house-hunters-true-story-of-being-on-the-show.html
  

* When I used the term "real estate porn" I was thinking only of the thrills and chills one may get from viewing properties that you would not approach in real life, for reasons good or bad.  However, I then learned that there is a subset of actual pornography wherein agent and client meet and mate while inspecting residences for sale or rent.  Go know.

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I recently mentioned two books that interested me, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century by John Loughery & Blythe Randolph and The Dairy Restaurant by Ben Katchor.  Other than being partially set in the Holy Land, the works have nothing in common.  Yet, thanks to our Good Neighbor Lynn, I am holding both in my hand, on loan.

In a burst of vanity, I first turned to the index of the Dorothy Day book.  For a good part of my first year in graduate school, I researched the Catholic Worker Movement founded by Dorothy Day during the Depression.  It was the culmination of her migration from her Bohemian Greenwich Village days, cavorting and cohabiting with poets, playwrights and founding members of the American Communist Party, to her conversion and devotion to the theological and social, but not political, doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.  

I eventually turned over a shoe box full of note cards to William D. Miller, then history professor at Marquette University, who later wrote A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (1972) and Dorothy Day: A Biography (1982).  Sadly for my ego, my name failed to seep into any of the works, old or new.  I'll have to be satisfied with the reference in Ammon Hennacy's Book of Ammon (1965), an extended version of his Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist, wherein I appear as the "Jewish guy from New York."
. . .

While I spent one year more or less involved with the Catholic Worker Movement, I have been in and out of dairy restaurants for much of my life.  And, we're not talking about some grimy Zen vegan chamber of righteousness.  I mean lox and eggs, onion rolls, blintzes, challah, thick soups, sour cream, pierogies everything a Jew needs until he can get to Chinatown.  (Note that by some, pierogi is itself plural.)  Katchor's wonderful book, lacking an index, names 97 dairy restaurants operating, and eventually closing, on the Lower East Side during the 20th Century (pp. 320-367).  Today, only B&H Dairy Restaurant, 127 Second Avenue (pp. 480-484), which I have commended in the past, remains standing in all of Manhattan. 

Among the many delights of Katchor's book, profusely illustrated with his own drawings, are menus, including one from Rappaport's Dairy Restaurant, 91-93 Second Avenue, a personal favorite back then (pp. 336-342).  It advertised 500 seats, possibly the largest restaurant in New York at the time.  Rapport's menu is undated, however, so I'll refer to Steinberg's Dairy Restaurant, 2270 Broadway at 81st Street (pp. 386-393).  On May 9, 1935, among hundreds of items, Steinberg's offered borscht hot or old with boiled potato for $.25; cheese blintzes, $.30; mushroom omelette, $.50; "No. 1 - Special" sandwich, cream cheese, smoked salmon, sardine, tomatoes, $.35; coffee, $.10; Budweiser beer, $.20.  Where have we lost our way?

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Mitch McConnell and 27 other Republican senators expressed total agreement today with the president's claim that his "authority is total" and announced their immediate retirement from the U.S. Senate for lack of anything to do.  

Sorry, did I fall asleep?  

. . .

Headline: "The Trump administration and a group of major airlines have agreed on a $25 billion bailout"

Query: Will they use any of the money to make the seats larger?

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

The United States Treasury Department announced that the president's name will appear on every check issued in the pandemic relief effort.  In addition, I suggest that he be acknowledged on another item that many Americans eagerly await -- toilet paper.

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Last week, an advertisement reminded me of Don Elliott, my boss for a few years in the early '70s and then my friend for decades.  Today, an obituary connected me to the late '70s, an improbable connection at first glance.  "Willie Davis, the Hall of Fame defensive end who played on five Green Bay Packer championship teams and anchored one of pro football’s greatest defensive alignments, died on Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif.  He was 85."  

I was not a Green Bay Packer fan.  In fact, the Packers had some of their greatest victories back then over my New York Giants.  Willie Davis was a client of my little computer company, founded in 1976.  After retirement, among other ventures, he owned a beer distributorship and a radio station in South Central Los Angeles.  He had a small business computer that needed programming and, somehow, I latched onto him. 

He was a doll, smart, focused, gentle.  Except for his size and the stiff-legged manner in which he walked, a result of the punishment that his knees took in his playing days, he well reflected the MBA from the University of Chicago that he earned after quitting football. 

. . .

In case you haven't been to the Holy Land for awhile and don't anticipate an early return, I provide this bit of  audio memorabilia.   https://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/100000007085224/best-ny-accent-instagram-new-york-nico.html?smid=pl-share