Saturday, November 5, 2022
My mention of jaywalking last week stirred some interest. Gentleman Jerry supplied a report of pedestrian deaths. https://www.ghsa.
California, with the largest population, had the most deaths in 2021. However, Florida had the second highest per capita rate, trailing only New Mexico, probably because once Grandpa got out of his 1996 Oldsmobile he was pretty shaky on his feet. Nebraska was the safest state, followed by New Hampshire, where, apparently, most people chose to live free rather than die.
Professor Barry Seldes connected jaywalking to vehicular traffic and parking, the Yin and the Yang of urban life.
This article contains "a map of every single car parked in the roughly 30-square-block zone bounded by Canal, Lafayette and Chambers streets and West Broadway and Varick Street bearing a placard or other quasi-official emblem (mostly fake placards or agency vests, hats, safety helmets, fake badges, patches, business cards or hand-written notes)." They cover virtually every square inch of parking space, that is where a car can fit, whether legally allowed or not.
For a few years earlier in this century, as a staff member of New York State Supreme Court, working in the indicated area, I had a placard. However, I used it sparingly since commuting by subway was more convenient for me than driving. Additionally, I was not bold enough to use the placard in parts of the city removed from the courthouse vicinity. I wasn’t confident that a cop would recognize the pressing need for a Court Attorney to be parked in front of a Broadway theater.
. . .
On a beautiful night, we walked down to Dim Sum Palace, 28 West 56th Street, for dinner, one of half-dozen in this local chain. Actually, we aimed for Bengal Tiger Indian Food, 58 West 56th Street, but the hour wait for a table, with its no-reservations policy, sent us down the block.
We sat outside in a sidewalk shed, where service was surprisingly prompt. While it has a full menu, Dim Sum Palace tries to live up to its name with 48 dim sum items. We stuck to small plates, scallion pancake ($8.50), cold sesame noodles ($9.95), vegetable spring rolls ($6.95) and shredded duck dumplings ($7.25). The food was generally well prepared, but lacked distinction. The duck, my first choice, was ground, not shredded, losing its duckness in the process.
Sunday, November 6, 2022
The World Series, which ended last night, was the first since 1950 without a single U.S.-born Black player on either active roster.
. . .
I celebrated the New York City Marathon with the Goldfarb clan, who took pride in the races run by son Steve (4:39) and grandson David, Jr. (3:07). I couldn't be happier for the family, especially after they served lunch catered by the 2nd Avenue Deli.
Monday, November 7, 2022
I had the pleasure of having lunch with Sam Fuchs, who followed me into Stuyvesant High School about 55 years later. We ate at Yoon Haeundae Galbi, 8 West 36th Street, a very attractive Korean BBQ restaurant, which I previously visited on March 24, 2021.
Your meat, short rib, shaved sirloin, an $84 bundle, is cooked at the table. Eight little dishes accompany it, kim chi, marinades, cold mashed potatoes, marinated onions, seasoned salt, anchovies. The meat is prime, accounting for the price and the limited portions that made me long for The Palm. I had no complaints about the excellent Busan Neighborhood Pancake, more of an omelet with eggs, scallions, galbi (slivers of grilled beef short ribs) and shrimp ($21).
Sam was very interesting company. With an engineering degree from the University of Michigan, he spent three years in the Navy as communications officer on a destroyer, a world that I only know from "Mr. Roberts" and "The Caine Mutiny."
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
The United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The law says that when a child who is eligible for tribal membership winds up in state foster care, the child should, whenever possible, be adopted by a tribal family. A white couple trying to adopt a Navajo child argue that this is a racial distinction disallowed by the 14th Amendment. They are opposed by several tribes and the Department of the Interior, claiming that tribes are political constructs.
The case raises the question for me: Are Jews a race, a religion or a nation? While I don't entirely conflate Israel and Judaism, 20 minutes after landing at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport you have your answer. Besides people who look like the original cast of "Shtisel," you see people who attend synagogue no more often than Londoners or Parisians go to church, dashing the idea of religious identity. Forgetting for a moment the Ethiopians Jews, the Mediterranean Jews and the European Jews look and act very differently, denying a racial connection. While many Jews and non-Jews think that you can never stop being Jewish, we are a nation with several points of entry and exit.
. . .
Today is the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the systematic destruction of Jewish lives and property throughout Germany. It did not escape the attention of the German branch of the international KFC organization (formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken), which proclaimed: Gedentag an die Reichspogromnacht Gönn dir ruhig mehr zarten Cheese zum knusprigen Chicken. Jetzt bei KFCheese! ["It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken.”]
Thursday, November 10, 2022
We saw Ralph Fiennes portraying Robert Moses in “Straight Line Crazy,” oddly a very New York play that originated in London. While the cast has 13 people, it might as well have been a one-man play for Fiennes, who overshadows the others as Moses did his contemporaries.
Friday, November 11, 2022
When I was growing up, November 11th was called Armistice Day. Today, it is Veterans Day in the USA and Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and what remains of the British Commonwealth.
If you watch National Hockey League games, you will see the coaches of Canadian teams wearing bright red poppies on their lapels as a sign of the holiday. This traces back to a poem written by a Canadian lieutenant colonel after a bloody battle in WWI:
“In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row”. . .
Professor David Webber visited long enough to share lunch with Tom Terrific, the Naz and me at Delight Wong, 300 Grand Street, which you may choose to read as a proper noun or a short sentence. In either case, it is old school Chinatown, ducks and ribs hanging in the window, a big menu with many things that they "ran out" and an unspeakable bathroom.
The four of us adjusted well to the surroundings and ate heartily; ginger and scallion mei fun, chicken with garlic sauce (not very garlicky), beef with orange, shrimp with walnuts (A+), Singapore chow fun and mushroom fried rice. The only drawback was Delight's habit, shared by too many Chinese restaurants, of adding broccoli to the plate to make it appear more abundant. While I usually supply unit prices, I faced translation problems. The menu was in English, the bill in Chinese and the numbers in Arabic.
What we do with labels always fascinates me. I have used different labels at different times.Better stick to pencil.
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