A New Beginning and A New Obsession

Ever since our Utah trip, I have been fascinated by all the faces you can find staring down at you from the rocks. Now I have decided that I will try to paint them. With no marathon to train for this coming winter, I am setting a different kind of goal for myself--to start and finish an art project that I will presumptiously call "People In The Rocks." I will be working from photographs I took of the faces I have seen during our trip.

The above photo has probably the most expressive face, and thus this is the first photo I have been working from.

The second one has a better composition, but the first one is more tragic, which inevitably means, there will be more variations.

Aside from this project, I have also decided to try a new (for me) art form, and in the process have become mildly obsessed with it. I am trying to learn to make prints using lino block printing technique. The concept is very easy--you cut out your design from a linolium block, roll some paint on it, and print it on paper. However, I am in day 6 of printing, and still having issues.

Here are prints from my first block. The design is based on the same photo above.

Confession

Confession: I have stopped brushing my hair after showering. My decision, far from arbitrary, is based on the following:

1. Every grandmother will tell you that brushing wet hair yanks out more hair, and I am obsessed with my head hair count. Currently it is at 129,343. I count daily, before going to bed.
2. Brushing my hair after showering at the gym either takes away precious 2 minutes out of my work day, or decreases the length of my shower by 2 minutes.
3. I look the same regardless of whether or not I have brushed my hair after a shower. In fact my mother often notes that I look as if I just got out of bed when it is evening, and I haven’t even napped for at least 12 hours.

You may worry that my head will soon provide a home for small furry or feathered animals. Don’t. My hair is not that long yet. I do still brush my hair every weekday morning on my way to the gym, in order to speed up tying my hair into a pony tail.

Another Year and Moyshe Haim

Mom and I learned a new family story today from her cousins in Israel. People in the family of my grandfather's oldest brother would say something like "Here comes Moyshe Haim" when someone came home in a bad mood. Moyshe Haim was my great grandmother's father, or my grandfather's grandfather. Sounds like he had quite a temper, but unfortunately I do not know anything more about him.

Four years ago my grandpa, Nick and I sneaked into my parents' house while they were in Europe celebrating their anniversary. Grandpa really wanted to help as Nick and I worked to decorate the house, but I wanted him just to relax. So he sat on the sofa and told me stories about his life. I knew that I should have been writing down his stories. Back then it seemed like we still had plenty of time together ahead of us, when in fact there was only a year left.

We received an email from our relatives in Israel today. My grandfather’s sister-in-law, tetya Nadya, passed away. The news made me cry. I closed the door to my office, swiveled away from my computer, and tried to take control over my emotions.

I hardly knew tetya Nadya. I met her only once, when I was in Israel several years ago. Perhaps there were other times, but I must have been too young to remember.

In a week, it will be 3 years since my grandfather died. Whenever Grandpa talked about tetya Nadya, his words always conveyed love and deepest respect. He used to call our family in Israel regularly, and was always excited when they called him.

Tetya Nadya was the last link, the last person I knew who knew my grandfather back when they were young. Mom sometimes called her our matriarch. She was the last of that generation on my mother’s side of the family.

Recipes: To Follow Or Not To Follow

I love trying out new recipes. Unfortunately, sometimes recipes call for ingredients not readily available in our little supermarket. To solve this problem I either substitute for or omit the problematic food, depending on the recipe. To Nick’s dismay, I often substitute ingredients even when I don’t have to. When something I made tastes funny to Nick, his first suspicion is always that I did not follow the recipe, and a lot of times he is correct.

I cannot blame him for being suspicious. Early on in our relationship, I baked him a birthday cake. It was a chocolate cake, and at some point I decided that it would taste a hundred times better if I added some cherries to the dough. While happily eating the cake, Nick did not mention the cherries. So I asked him if he noticed anything unusual about the cake. After some coercion, he admitted that he thought the cake had uncooked lumps of dough in it. These were the cherries. Nick also thought that the cake was not sweet. I had to admit that because cherries were sweet, I also decreased the amount of sugar I used for the cake.

After the cake and cherries incident, I still substitute ingredients all the time. As long as I avoid any drastic deviations, the results are usually quite palatable. A few months ago I found an interesting recipe for stuffed poblano peppers. I have never had poblano peppers before, so the prospect of cooking this exotic vegetable was exciting. Sadly the poblanos were just as much of a novelty item for me, as they were for our grocery store. So I made a substitution, and that evening Nick and I enjoyed a tasty meal of stuffed green peppers instead.

I did not give up, and a few days ago I decided to try another stuffed poblano peppers recipe. To my delight, this time the grocery store carried poblanos. Surprisingly the dinner turned out to be a complete disaster even though I did not make any substitutions. The recipe took a long time to prepare. When 2 hours later, the stuffed poblanos finally made it into the oven, I realized that the peppers were too spicy for Nick and me to enjoy them. More over, my hand felt as if it was on fire, because I seeded the poblano peppers with my bare hands greatly underestimating their potency.

The following day I vowed never to cook exotic food again. We comforted ourselves by eating pasta and meat sauce for a few days afterwards. Now I am back to searching for new recipes, and I have to admit that my decision to avoid the exotic will probably not last. Tonight we had broiled salmon with spinach risotto. Let’s see what next week brings.

Fisherman's Feast and Flying Angels

Two weeks ago Nick and I ventured out to the North End to attend the Fisherman’s Feast—one of several Italian festivals going on in Boston in the summer. The roots of this festival come from Sicily and its fishermen’s devotion to the Madonna del Soccorso. The descendents of the Sicilian fishermen have kept this festival alive in Boston for 98 years.

Crowds of people watched as the statue of the Madonna, surrounded by multiple marching bands, made her way around the narrow streets of the North End. The procession made regular stops, and ribbons with dollar bills attached to them flowed down to the Madonna from the near by businesses and houses.

Many people followed the Madonna around the neighborhood, but by eight o’clock a small crowd started assembling at an otherwise unremarkable street corner. We promptly joined this crowd of people, patiently waiting for the three flying angels to appear—the highlight of the festival, and from what we heard the sight “not to be missed.” When the statue of the Madonna drowning in ribbons of money finally arrived at this street corner, angels appeared over the crowd.

The first two “flying angels” we saw were fairly stationary. Two young girls dressed as angels appeared on balconies across the street from each other and spoke in Italian. I think they pronounced a prayer to the Madonna for the fishermen’s safe return from the sea. Then the third angel appeared, and this one was indeed flying. The third young girl dressed as an angel was yanked out of a third story window on a pulley. With ropes also tied to her legs to help her maintain her body position in the air, she was lowered towards the Madonna and continued the prayer.

Behind me two teenagers whispered excitedly debating if the girl was going to fly back up. Their mother bet them $5 each that that there would be “no more flying tonight.” Sure enough, a few minutes later the third angel was yanked up over the crowd and slowly pulled back into the same third story window while the teenagers behind me cheered.

When the angels disappeared, the people we thought were watching the festival from the rooftops above started throwing large amounts of shredded white paper onto the crowd. The paper quickly covered the street, hanging in clumps on the electric wiring, and obscuring small children. The festival was over, and shuffling white paper under our feet we headed home.