Saturday, October 21, 2023
"Ceasefire Now!" is an honorable request, meant to spare many innocents from being exposed to the cruelties of war. Am I wrong or did this plea only emerge along the Israel/Gaza frontier when the direction of the guns changed from east to west? Two weeks ago, the incursion into Israel and the attack on concertgoers and kibbutzniks in their homes was characterized as Resistance and no call was heard for cessation. It's the anticipated reaction of the Zionist colonizers that has evoked pleas for moderation and forbearance.
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I attended the 65th Reunion of the Stuyvesant High School Class of 1958. It was a modest affair with about two dozen participants. Several registrants failed to appear, including a few that I was particularly interested in seeing after years (decades?). We toured the building, now 30 years old, with facilities that we couldn't have even imagined in the 50-year old building that we occupied. Most of the conversation was about teachers and subway rides from the past.
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Once reunited with my young bride, we decided to go out to dinner for Indian food. Jaz Indian Cuisine, 813 Ninth Avenue, is a relatively new restaurant, a white, square room with about 16 tables. The menu is large, conventional. The prices are not what you see on your bill, where a 4% credit card surcharge is applied to already high prices.
On the other hand, the food was mostly good. I had Jaz Mixed Grill, 6 pieces of tandoori chicken, 2 lamb sausages and one chunk of grilled fish ($31.20). Madame’s dish was much better, Malai Kofta, vegetable balls in a creamy, sweet, tomato, ground nut sauce ($21.84). Rice was $7.28 and naan $6.24. The days of cheap Indian meals are gone, but then so are cheap anythings.
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Looking at home and community safety, financial safety and natural disasters, 182 American cities were ranked for safety.
https://wallethub.com/edu/
https://wallethub.com/edu/
Nashua, NH, Columbia, MD and South Burlington, VT topped the list, while St. Louis, Fort Lauderdale and San Bernardino were the least safe. Close to home, Yonkers was eighth safest.
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To my non-Jewish friends:
I admit that there are moments when the prickly sensitivities of some of my tribe members test my patience, too. And then a professor at the University of California Davis acts like an idiot or worse.
If it wasn’t enough to threaten “zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation,” the good professor punctuates her message with emojis of a knife, a hatchet and blood. So, we’ll go back to being hypersensitive, thank you.
Monday, October 23, 2023
To be fair to a good man, I must correct a misstatement about Konrad Schiemann’s father. Although a German naval officer in WWII, he never joined the Nazi Party, in spite of his own father’s example.
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Money talks, anywhere and everywhere, it seems. The New York Times studied student performance by economic status and found, in the immortal words of Sophie Tucker, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor and rich is better.”
An SAT score of 1300 or better, a very respectable score, is achieved by 2.4% of students in the bottom income quintile while 17% in the top quintile hit it. The disparity did not end there. 31% of students whose families were in the top 1% scored 1300 or better. It’s good to be the King.
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I find a parallel between opponents of racial equity, such as Chief Justice John Roberts, and Palestinian supporters, such as Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who just criticized Israel for "unprecedented and indiscriminate violence." Both groups seem to have recently awakened to injustice for the first time. While Roberts climbed the ladder of American judicial eminence for decades without taking note of racial disparities, Nguyen slept undisturbed through October 7th.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
I had a fabulous dish at lunch today at Mamak’s Corner, one of 15+ Singaporean-based vendors at Urban Hawker, 135 West 50th Street. It was Kway Teow Goreng, a large portion of flat rice noodles stir fried with a bevy of wonderful things, spicy, sweet, soft, crunchy, hot, cold and with a fried egg on top ($18).
The food court was jammed after 1 PM when I arrived, but many of the Gen Y and Z milling around (too informal for Gen X) were waiting for takeout, so I found a spot quickly. I must warn you however, Diet Coke was $4 at every stand and street vendors nearby are similarly infected.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
I was looking for a less exotic lunch locale today when I selected The Chick Inn, 415 Third Avenue. It’s a bright, airy space decorated like a farmhouse kitchen with raw wood beams and a white-painted brick wall.
The menu is all chicken, mostly fried, but the All Day Special, which I chose, was 1/2 rotisserie chicken and two side dishes, waffle fries and Spicy Vodka Rice (!), for $15. While the chicken was smallish, the accompanying starches added up to a full meal.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
“Ceasefire now!” is a call being heard worldwide. “Free the hostages!” is offered in counterpoint, although less universally. I don’t doubt that more people, agencies, governments are imploring Israel to do the right thing than those urging humanitarianism on Hamas. While no one seems to be admitting it, Israel is much more likely to be listening than Hamas. As crude and cruel as Israel’s conduct against Arabs has been on occasion, no one cites Hamas’s behavior towards even its fellow Arabs as a model of civility. Forget October 7th. While I would prefer to be able to label Israel’s conduct as fair and just, there is some merit in “not as bad.”
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Today was the second time in recent weeks that I went to Moon Kee, 2642 Broadway, for lunch. It is the new branch of a 40-year old Hong Kong establisihment. This time it was open for business, allowing Baruc S. and I to have a very good lunch. While the decor is a hodgepodge of contemporary touches, it adds up to a warm setting. The large room with high ceilings easily contains four booths and 12 four-tops with faux marble surfaces. Service was very attentive, although there were only a handful of other customers.
The large menu had conventional offerings, dim sum and regular dishes. We started with steamed scallop dumplings (3 pieces for $8) and scallion pancakes ($8). The dumplings were excellent; the pancakes quite different than any I've had, 1/2" thick, crispy exterior, soft interior, a special treat. Then, we shared a Roast Combo, a plate of tasty roast duck and roast pork ($20), and a large portion of chicken fried rice ($16).
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As to your frequent inquiries about my post-op recovery, I have to point out that after lunch, at 100th Street and Broadway, I walked home to 69th Street on my two hind legs.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Mike Johnson, newly-elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, said in an interview last night that it's "not the time to be talking about legislation" in response to the assassination of 18 people in Maine. https://www.msn.com/en-us/
That's a very familiar Republican line. Time is barely available for thoughts and prayers. In fact, given the pace of mass shootings in the United States, more than 560 so far this year, Republicans must be in a state of perpetual prayer, having no time to legislate.
