An Act of Faith

AN ACT OF FAITH: POSITIVELY WESTCOTT STREET

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After waiting 38 minutes about two weeks ago to speak to someone at the IRS, on my third attempt I reached a Ms. Anderson, who actually seemed to listen to me and promised to send me the one page document I needed. I believed her and realized how much of our daily life is made up of such small acts of faith.

I was reminded of those thoughts when, on Sept. 15, I attended the Westcott Street Fair. After saying hello to my friend Roseanne Olszewski, at the Metamorphosis booth across from the Petit Library, I turned onto Westcott Street and saw it transformed.

There were tables squeezed together up and down the street as far as I could see, crowds sauntering in the middle of the road, food and drink in hand. I heard country fiddlers and rock musicians, saw jewelry creators, henna tattoos, neighborhood associations, clothing of many styles and origins, purple striped handbags from Ghana, ceramic bowls in celadon green and brown, political parties of various shades, churches, a freethinkers booth, and food, lots and lots of food.

I struck up a conversation with someone on line at Picasso’s table, who advised me on their pastries (it was his second trip),  bought a brioche with dark chocolate that was delicious, chatted with people hosting several of the booths, almost bought a holder for my cell phone  and enjoyed myself immensely.

And I thought about the mammoth effort involved in setting up the fair, including organizers, volunteers, vendors and visitors. And how much faith was involved … faith that the organizers knew what they were doing in organizing the day, that the volunteers would show up and do their work, that vendors would bring their wares and non-profits their information, that the food, music and all the rest would be worth showing up for and that people would come.

And all these acts of faith by so many people not just for one day, but year after year, is what builds a community.

SCARIER THAN THE NEWS

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By Nina Housman

Even more depressing than watching the news on TV is watching the ads that go with it.

Hawkers of hemorrhoid remedies, ED cures, adult diapers, affordable funeral homes, drugs to slow memory loss, false teeth cleaners and home nursing services march through my living room promoting their wares and a vision of present or future misery.  They promise all their remedies will help to make these things more bearable—or at least less expensive when it comes to the funeral home.

Hale and hearty as most of my ancestors have been, I'm less likely than most of my friends to need most of these services, but they still cast a sad shadow over my evening, as I think of friends less genetically blessed and the sad fate awaiting them … and maybe even me, to be totally honest.

It also makes me wonder who is watching, or who the networks think is watching, the nightly news.

Have the networks simply determined that those watching the news are people over a certain age consisting of those who are deaf, incontinent, lack memory, have no money and are planning their imminent departure from this vale of tears?  Although I'm no expert, with ads like these, I can't believe their target group is any younger than 50 (even 100 might be too young).

If I'm right, what an insult. Whatever the age range they're targeting, the networks' prejudices are certainly showing.  With an aunt who, at 90, quizzed me about the developmental stages my young son was going through, I know what dangerous garbage age stereotyping is.

Even scarier is what this scenario, if the age assumptions are true, says about the U.S. TV news audience as a whole.  Young people and those in early middle age aren't watching. And given the state of the newspaper industry, that would mean they’re probably not reading the news, either.

And that is scarier than both the ads and the news, because informed citizens are essential for a healthy democracy.  So I can only hope the networks and advertisers are wrong.

Thanksgiving in September

By Nina Housman

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, along with Passover, and it is definitely my favorite American one.  Because I’m Jewish, I don’t celebrate Christmas, although I love decorating Christian friends’ trees and going to their celebrations.  July 4th is very patriotic, and you can do a lot of grilling and march in a parade. But it doesn’t have that same homey feel about it as Thanksgiving.

One Thanksgiving dinner I was too young to remember has become famous in my family. When I was about 3 or 4, my grandmother, who was hosting the meal, slipped in the kitchen and broke her leg while the rest of us were sitting at the dining table.  Apparently, she insisted we stay and eat, even though an ambulance took her to the hospital. I think my mother went with her. But the rest of us, so the story goes, enjoyed the holiday and ate very well. (My grandmother was a phenomenal cook).

And then there were the two Thanksgivings I cooked for my parents and favorite aunt just before I left New York City for nine years.  I’ve never been prouder than I was on those two occasions.  It felt as if they marked my loving entry into the family as a full-fledged adult.

The next year, I was in France. I called my parents and I called Hinda (my aunt),  and I missed everybody.  So the year after that, on Thanksgiving I made a feast.  I cooked everything myself and invited my good friends and my roommates.  I had to explain Thanksgiving to most of them.  The hard part wasn’t explaining the story of Thanksgiving and its origins, it was explaining the emotion behind the event and what a special time it was to be with people you love.

One of my two closest American friends (both came) had a friend with no place to go, so of course I invited him.  It turned out he knew a couple of my French friends because their kids had gone to the same school.  What are the odds of that in a city of 2 million?  It just made the day feel more like Thanksgiving back home. I improvised a stuffing recipe using both chestnuts (French tradition) and bread (American tradition) because it looked like there wasn’t enough without the bread. I hoped it would work out, and thank goodness it did.  The turkey came out OK too, not too dry. I seem to remember basting it about every 2 minutes, but that must just be what it felt like.

A few years later, I married a Frenchman (in New York City, but that’s another story), and the next year, I decided we’d celebrate Thanksgiving at home in Paris.  Since turkeys are pretty big for two people and not so common there in November, I bought a goose the day before and got excited about preparing it and making my first Thanksgiving with my new husband.

Very early the next morning, the phone rang.  My father had died.  I flew home immediately.  Because of the time difference, I arrived in New York before dinner time that same day to be with my mother.  Stunned and heartbroken as we were, it was good to be together.

A few years later, I moved back to the United States, and there were many Thanksgivings with family and friends.

Now I’m in Central New York, and my son is in college in France. Sometimes I get back to New York City for Thanksgiving. I stay with one of my oldest friends and celebrate the holiday with her and her extended family, all of whom I’ve known for decades.

But even then, my son isn’t there.  And that makes me sad. So last year, I did something about it.  He was here in July, so I made Thanksgiving then. I bought turkey parts and made stuffing and side dishes, and we had pumpkin pie and, of course, cranberry sauce.  It was fun.  And we ate leftovers long enough to get sick of them, just the way you’re supposed to.

This year, he arrived in late August, since his school doesn’t start again until October. That’s why Thanksgiving is in September. So I’d better stop writing and start looking for cranberry sauce. I don’t know how much there is around this time of year.

I’ve got what?

I like rom coms, the older the better. Put me in front of The African Queen and I practically stop breathing. So it’s no surprise that I was watching the movie “You’ve Got Mail” the other day.

But what did surprise me with “You’ve Got Mail” was how old stuff seemed.  Not the story or the dialogue or even the clothes.  But the technology seemed ancient.  There was that old AOL dial-tone sound I’d forgotten all about.  People were talking about waiting (waiting???!!!) to be connected— And chat rooms! Who even remembers online chat rooms? And suddenly it struck me: in a few years we’ll be talking to a new generation of children who will need to be told not only that a record was something like a CD only bigger and that books used to be made of paper, but that, in the old days your phone, which you had to leave at home, didn’t connect you to the internet and wasn’t also a radio and a dozen other things.

Thomas Wolfe (the older one, not the New Journalism guy) wrote a novel with the title You Can’t Go Home Again.  When I was in my 20’s, I used to believe he was right about that because you outgrew home.  Now I still think he’s right, but for a different reason. I now believe you can’t go home again because it isn’t there anymore.  Home isn’t a place, it’s a place at a particular time with particular people. And over a certain period of time, 5, 10, 20 years, all of that is transformed. And it keeps happening faster.  Or at least that’s what it feels like for me.

Think about it. And try to imagine what someone who’s a child today will be saying about the “old days” to their own kids in 15 or 20 years. I think they’ll be saying something like this: “When I was a young girl life was a lot harder.  People even had to drive their cars themselves.  That’s right, believe it or not, cars weren’t driverless. No, you couldn’t nap and drive, not even for a few minutes. And that’s not all. To send a message we used email. It was so slow! What’s email? Well, I’ll try to explain.  We wrote them on a machine called a computer…”

Pine Trees

Pine Trees

The odor of pine pungent, comforting, distant sachets carry peace

Walking the Walk

If you are passionately committed to a goal, it really focuses your efforts.  My infant son so desperately wanted to walk that even when he crawled it looked like he was impatient to walk--and he managed to at 10 months.  But he didn't do it alone.  He had the very active and vocal support of those around him, especially his family.
Businesses and organizations also require support, both external and internal, to achieve their goals.
I've been doing some reading lately about different organizational models of how to make businesses and other organizations more effective and efficient.  Here too commitment and passion--in this case coming from the leadership-- really count, but so too do mobilizing all levels of the organization involved in achieving that goal.
Doing so effectively depends in large measure on the quality of the relationships within an organization.
Trust, individual accountability and respect are all key components and I believe they depend on the little, everyday things: knowing that the agenda presented to the group is for real and not a pretense: trusting that the communication requested by leadership to accomplish a mission will in fact be welcome, even if some of the content doesn't paint a rosy picture of the current situation; feeling that cross-departmental work groups really exist to provide feedback, not just to comply with some external consultant's recommendations.  Leadership, communication and training can all help ensure the kind of quality I'm talking about.  And while no organization can ever achieve perfection in this regard, this kind of functioning is itself an organizational goal worth striving for.  We can always do better, but that's a reason to try harder, not to give up.

Morning

Morning

Garbage trucks mark dawn.

Eyelids open in dismay.

I just want to sleep.

Lost And Found

I drove to meet a new friend at the Ithaca Beer Company tap room yesterday.
  It’s actually a restaurant with a patio.  Since I was afraid I might be late, I wound up getting there early, before the restaurant opened at 12.  Luckily, I  spotted an employee on the patio and convinced him to let me in .It was so nice and sunny out that I decided to sit out there myself.

I’m so glad I did. As soon as I set foot on it, I felt as if the whole world had vanished except for the patio itself and the flowers and  bushes around it. Somehow the flowers-   bright reds, violet, purple and pink (don't ask me for names, I don't have a clue), were combined in such a way that although they attracted me, they were visually soothing. There was something about the shapes, and the rocks and how everything was combined.SuddenIy, I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Everything fell away.  I hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long time, not since I’d gone rowing with my son a long while back.  It felt a  bit like being on vacation about two or three days on—at least when I’m having a good one.  The rest of the world goes away and everything is just the way it should be, except in this case, instead of my going away and leaving everything behind, everything inside my head went away and left me behind. And there I was, totally relaxed. For a moment I wanted to kick off my grown-up lady shoes and run through the grass.  But that’s where the fantasy ended.   Perhaps reminded by the servers setting up and one woman picking flowers and calling out to an unseen colleague, I couldn’t pretend I was in a park or my own private garden. So, I confined myself to walking around a bit and then sat happily  at a table.

Then my new friend arrived and we had a great conversation, a kind of voyage of discovery into each other’s lives and work. There were differences and convergences and shared passions. And we were amused that she, who had a GPS and lived nearby, was the one who got lost, while I, from a different town and without one, had been early.   We ate and drank and the food and the drink were good.  Then lunch was over and we went our separate ways.  I went out of the restaurant down the narrow road  to the big one, around the sign facing the other way saying the road I'd been on was closed (long story) and turned and turned again because there was a one way street.  Do I need to tell you what happened next? I got lost.

  A  word of advice -  if you see a sign advertising peaches on the right side of a road and you remember seeing a sign advertising peaches on the left side when you were coming the other way, that doesn’t mean it’s the same sign for the same peaches on the same road.  Also, Seneca Falls has some attractive spots on its main street.  I wish I’d seen them because I was visiting Seneca Falls, not because I was trying to get to Syracuse from Ithaca by what seemed like the Polar Route (Northern). And all that calm and relaxation?  I bet I don’t have to tell you that either. But at least I have the memory.