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Archive for October, 2005

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Yonah Schimmel’s Knishs

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005

Looking for a restaurant one afternoon on the Lower East Side, we happened by a tiny bakery with huge savory knishes displayed in the window…potato, kasha, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, mixed vegetable, sweet potato, mushroom…and sweet ones too. The glass window was plastered with reviews (apparently this place is famous in New York,) and as I was in the shop making my choices with difficulty, Bob was outside reading one of the reviews which happened to be written in the 60’s!

They ship overnight anywhere in the USA: www.yonahschimmel.com

“An Uncommon Friendship”

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005

After getting through Phil & Adri’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal that arrive on our stoop every day it is difficult to find time for other reading.

However, Amy’s mom gave me a book I couldn’t refuse. It is a double memoir of the retired general counsel of the Safeway Corporation, Bernat Rosner, whom Debbie worked with before his retirement in 1993, and his friend, Frederic Tubach who is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of California, Berkeley. Bernat Rosner, an Hungarian Jew, and his German friend, discovered after 10 years of friendship that the former was an Auschwitz survivor and the other was the son of a Nazi German Army officer. The memoir is told in his friend’s voice at Mr Rosner’s request.

How to bridge the gulf and remove the power of the past to separate them becomes the focus of their friendship and together they begin the project of remembering. The stories begin with their similar village childhoods before the holocaust and their very different paths to America where they become men with the freedom to construct their own futures.

Poignant, honest, sincere…and proof of what good will can accomplish in the cause of reconciliation.

“An Uncommon Friendship”
Bernat Rosner & Frederic C. Tubach
with Sally Patterson Tubach
University of California Press

Pierogis In Greenpoint

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
Around the corner from Josh's apartment in an almost all-Polish neighborhood Bob and I found an authentic Polish restaurant. Blackboards behind the cashier list items in Polish and English. When our food was ready we carefully delivered it ... [Continue reading this entry]

New York Style

Monday, October 24th, 2005
Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in...whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference ... [Continue reading this entry]

Strangers in the “hood”

Monday, October 24th, 2005
I've never been in a city that has such diverse but tight little neighborhoods. The first question asked by anyone you meet, after what do you do, is where do you live. Soon you know the tenant ... [Continue reading this entry]

Blue Ribbon Restaurant

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
A call from Amy: Would you like to run into Manhattan with me to pick up Josh after work tonight? Of course, I said! Bob had already eaten stir-fry at home and preferred to watch the world ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bouley Restaurant Tasting Menu

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
There are 13,000 restaurants in New York City and urbanites, with cramped apartments and schedules, often eat out...whether take-out, order in, pizza slices or, on special occasions, in one of the more elite culinary establishments. Eating out at one ... [Continue reading this entry]

Big Onion Tour

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Big Onion Tours, the word "onion" being a play on the Big Apple, offers tours of neighborhoods of NYC. We chose the "immigrant tour" which shows how different ethnic groups variously settled and replaced other groups around the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Central Park

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
In any given week in the summer you can choose from any four or five street fairs and on this day we chose the Columbus Street Fair on the Upper West Side of Central Park. Stall after stall for ... [Continue reading this entry]

Harlem

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Probably the biggest surprise yet in New York is discovering that Harlem is not the ghetto as depicted in years past. Sprucing up campaigns have left streets spotlessly clean...little old men with brooms like those ubiquitous to China and ... [Continue reading this entry]

Washington Heights

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
The "F" subway line, if you take it to the very end at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, lets you off in a Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights. Everyone on the streets and in the stores were Spanish-speaking giving ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hop On Hop Off Bus

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
A good way to get a good overview of New York and to get a good look at the architecture is to sit in the upper level of one of these buses and if you are lucky you will be ... [Continue reading this entry]

The New York Attitude

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
The New York attitude is a lot more complicated than simple rudeness. According to a local, it's a mixture of being tough, brave, on your toes, jaded, overworked and intensely focused. Who needs to be pulled into a ... [Continue reading this entry]

The New York Identity

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
This is a city of 8 million people-Bangkok's is 9 million-but unlike Bangkok, it's diversity is extreme. Therefore any generalization is sweeping. New York is a city for the young; the median age of residents is 34. ... [Continue reading this entry]

My New York Ancestors

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
In the beginning of this country, the New England colonies were being settled by the Puritans who endeavored to spread their intolerant "purist" religion across much of rest of the country. But from the time the Dutch West India Company ... [Continue reading this entry]

Our Brooklyn Neighborhood

Sunday, October 23rd, 2005
Video We are sub letting a pleasant newly refurbished two bedroom apartment on Pacific St in a multi-ethnic, gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood called Boerum Hill. Bob and I enjoy exploring New York opportunities and other sites via the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Three Minute Wedding

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
On a lovely Sunday, September 4, 2005, Bob and I followed Josh and Amy to a specialty jewelry store in our gentrified Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn to pick up their hand-crafted rings. Amy's mother, Debbie, works at a ... [Continue reading this entry]

Wedding Announcement

Monday, October 17th, 2005
A few days before we left Portland for New York City, our son Josh, who is currently a chef at the Tocqueville Restaurant near Union Square in Manhattan, asked us to keep the following weekend open...giving us no idea what ... [Continue reading this entry]

Back To The West

Monday, October 17th, 2005
In mid-July, a year after leaving the States to travel through Eastern Europe, taking the Trans Siberian Train through Russia, Mongolia and China and then to Thailand Vietnam and Laos, I arrived back in LA on China Air...then Portland on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Third Culture Kids

Monday, October 17th, 2005
Third Culture Kids are children of expatriate families who live for a significant proportion of their lives in a culture other than their own, where they travel to many countries other than their own passport country. This results in ... [Continue reading this entry]