Monday blues on Valentine’s Day

 

A reconstructed apartment in The Tenement Museum
Photo from the Tenement Museum

What an oxymoron! They just shouldn’t schedule Valentine’s Day on a Monday. In fact, I may become an activist for rescheduling all those Monday holidays. I know, what I don’t need is another cause when I have Texas politics (and national), banned books, dogs … let’s see, what else?

I didn’t so much have the blues today as the blahs, and or no reason. The day was sunny and almost warm, though the temperature drop between four and six this afternoon was dramatic. Sophie did get me up early—twice, so I missed my morning doze. But my work went well, and I got my thousand words written, though they were what I would call transitional words, trying to get the characters from one problem to another. Now I’ve left them at a dinner party—can’t wait to see what will come out of that dinner, and Henny is nervous about it. She’s serving her homemade pasta, which is definitely not one of her signature dishes.

Zenaida was here this morning, so the cottage is sparkling and clean. Other than her cheery presence, there wasn’t a highlight to the day. I tried to create one by watching a Zoom special on love in the tenements. I follow the Tenement Museum at 97 Orchard Steet in Manhattan’s Lower East Side (I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about it before, so if you find this repetitive, please bear with me). The building housed waves of immigrants from the 1860s through the 1930s—the Irish fleeing the potato famine Lutherans from Germany, Jewish people escaping the violence of eastern Europe, eventually Italians and Hispanics. The immigrants did not mingle—one wave followed another, so that for a time the building was almost exclusively Irish, then Jewish, etc. It’s like a mini-history of New York City. Rescued from demolition in the late 1980s, 97 Orchard Street is slowly being refurbished, and “model” apartments are stark reminders of the shabbiness of poverty and the lack of amenities.

Tonight’s program featured just a few couples in love and probed the question of how you find out about love in history. The part about a Jewish couple featured quite a bit about traditional matchmaker and the decline of their business early in the twentieth century.The pictures were fascinating, along with interesting chat comments. But I so want the museum to do some training of their presenters. Tonight there were two—a woman who was so animated as to be almost frenetic; she talked too fast so that she was hard to understand; her constant playing with her long hair was distracting. (Yes, I had my hearing aids in and my auxiliary speaker turned on—still not good.) She was partnered with a young man who was just the opposite—laid back, soft spoken, lacking her obvious spark. I don’t know which is better—or worse. A side note: each was identified by name and pronoun preference. She preferred she/her, and he identified as he/him. But I thought it interesting that they felt it important to include that information.

One of my colleagues on a writers’ listserv just recorded some demo work hoping to get voice-over assignments, and she shared the demos with the group today. I was impressed by the range and variety of her voice and by the fact that whether she was doing a voice for an animation segment or one for a corporate presentation, her speech was clear and understandable. I want her to run up to NYC and teach the Tenement Museum staff. I know they operate on a shoestring and the staff may even be volunteer, but I think if they upped the quality of the programming, they’d get more contributions.

My recommendation, if you’re interested in this history, is to read the book, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Families in One Tenement, by Jane Ziegelman. Or check out the website: the tenement museum - Search (bing.com)

Christian is fixing a new version of carnitas for Valentine’s Day, and I’m being reclusive—I guess the blahs have made me lazy. I declined an invitation to dine in the house—they can have a candlelit dinner. I’m waiting for a plate of food.

Tomorrow is a new day!

Christian's carnitas
Just delivered and delicious!

The Patterns of History

 

Orchard Street on the Lower East Side
maybe about turn of the 20th Century

Dinner on my own again tonight, and I was dithering between shakshuka and scrambled eggs with corn and goat cheese (more about all of that another night) when my computer reminded me that I had signed up for a webinar on tenement kitchens from 6:00 to 7:00 tonight.

Several years ago, I reviewed a book titled 97 Orchard Street, a fascinating history of one tenement building on New York’s Lower East Side. The book traced the history of various families who occupied the building, as the waves of immigrants poured into New York from various countries. First, in the mid-1800s, came the Irish, forced to flee the potato famine. Then, around the turn of the century, refugees from the pogroms and harsh conditions in Eastern European countries, and by 1940 immigrants from south of our border. Little did I realize at the time that 97 Orchard Street and a companion building at 103 were the center of a museum devoted to the study of immigration. Next time you’re in New York, the Tenement Museum at 103 Orchard is well worth a visit.

Tonight’s program was on tenement kitchens and looked at three successive families—the Moores from Ireland and the Rogshefkys from Russia, who both lived at 97 Orchard, and the a single Puerto Rican mother (Romanika?) who lived at 103 with her two sons (97 had by then been condemned). A knowledgeable curator walked us through each kitchen—the first two apartments probably some 325 square feet where conditions were so crowded, children slept in the kitchen. We saw the progression from coal to gas to electricity. Each segment featured a typical dish from the family’s culture—boxty, from Ireland, was a pancake-like dish prepared with grated potatoes, egg, and seasonings. Several viewers commented that it looked like Jewish latkes, and I did think it emphasized the similarity of cultures—many feature their own versions of the same food, with a different name.

The Jewish/Russian dish was cholent, a stew put on to simmer before sundown on Friday and eaten after services on Saturday (Shabbat or holy day) when orthodox Jews are forbidden to cook. Cholent is made mostly of whatever is on hand, and usually includes beans of some kind. In my years of being married to a Jewish man and coming to love the food, this is one dish I never was served or tried to cook.

The dish for the Puerto Rican woman was a rice pudding—sorry the name escapes me—made with coconut milk, and the process of making coconut milk was painstakingly described. You did not just go to the local grocery and buy a pint. The dish also had several seasonings, including what looked to me like a lot of cinnamon. Again, this demonstrates the link between cultures—several viewers chimed in to say that rice pudding was a staple of their Jewish backgrounds.

This program interested me partly because I’m interested in American history but more because increasingly my food interest is on American food, and I well realize that our culinary traditions involve a lot of the melting pot—we have absorbed and incorporated from the many immigrants who have been welcomed to our shores. No better illustration exists than the popularity of Mexican cuisine which may have first moved into Texas (and in many instances become Tex-Mex) but has also moved throughout the country.

It struck me as I watched that one of the lovely benefits of retirement is that I am free to dart down this rabbit hole and that. When I read the news in the morning, if a particular item interests me, I can take the time to search out more information on the internet. So it was tonight—I wanted to watch this, and I could easily take the time out from what I meant to accomplish tonight. My deadlines are my own.

Supper? I had a ham and cheese sandwich. I’ve got another dinner on my own this week and will have to decide between inventing shakshuka for one or those scrambled eggs. Hmmmm.