I did have a lovely Thanksgiving, thanks for asking.
My family converged and there was lots and lots of good food -- of the high-quality variety, no "sweet potatoes with toasted marshmallows on top" here. (I kid. I have great fondness for sweet potatoes with toasted marshmallows on top.)
There was a deep-fried turkey (which my older brother made), arancini (younger brother), mashed potatoes (yours truly), brussels sprouts Momofuku-style (Mom), cranberries (sister-in-law), salad (sister-in-law), stuffing (sister-in-law/older brother), cornbread (Trader Joe's), gravy, chocolate pecan pie (Mom), pumpkin pie (store).
I was a little overly proud of my mashed potatoes. Normally, when I make mashed potatoes for myself, I am too lazy to bother peeling them, and too timid to add a lot of butter or milk. But mashed potatoes being my only assignment here, I worked hard on them -- I made them Robuchon-style, and laid on the butter like nobody's business. Added some creme fraiche, too, per my mom's advice. Creamy deliciousness. I wish I had the time and motivation to spend on cooking like this every day.
Of course, my mashed potatoes paled in comparison with the fried turkey and the arancini and everything else on that table. I made a collage of all the food, just because. Some things -- namely the mashed potatoes and the turkey -- show up the twice, only because I took more than one picture of them and I needed nine to fill up the square. (Yes, this is how the artistic process works. Reminds me of when the novelist Ishmael Reed came to speak at one of my English classes in college and someone asked him what was the significance of his not using quotation marks for dialogue in Mumbo Jumbo. His answer: "I thought it looked cool at the time.")
(Not that I am equating myself to Ishmael Reed.)
(Oh, never mind.)
Not pictured: pear-gorgonzola tartlets, crudite with Green Goddess dressing, cornbread, chocolate pecan pie (soooo good), pumpkin pie
Correction: I saw the aftermath of a woman getting hit by a car. I was walking toward the intersection of Atlantic and Smith when I heard a loud "thunk." I turned to see a woman about 50 yards away from me, crumpled on the ground in the crosswalk, a cab stopped at an angle in front of her.
I am ashamed to say that my first reaction was not to run toward her and see if she was all right. Instead, my first reaction was to stand stock-still, stare at her and think, "Oh my God."
I would like to think that that's a normal reaction, that the brain needs time to process something so extraordinary, and that I am not, in fact, a coward with no morals. Then slowly, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw other people having the opposite instinct I did—running toward her, phones out, yelling, "Are you OK?" Something in my brain moved, and I thought, Oh, I'm supposed to be doing that, too.
I headed toward the intersection, and by that point the woman—who was wailing out in pain—was surrounded by a few people, at least one of whom was on her phone trying to get help. At that moment (I think perhaps coincidentally), an ambulance came screaming down the street and pulled over alongside us, the EMTs hopping out to bend over the fallen woman as the rest of us stood there stupidly.
To his credit, I suppose, the cab driver didn't cut and run but stayed put, standing next to his cab and looking at the woman with a penitent expression on his face. The woman standing next to me said that she had been right behind the woman as she crossed, and that she had had the light, not the cab, who had turned into her without paying attention. As a cop arrived, I asked the woman next to me if she'd talk to the police about what she saw, but she seemed uncertain. She still had one of her headphones in. I'm sure felt she had someplace to go.
Me, I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't done anything. I felt useless. I saw the EMTs finally strap the woman to a stretcher as she groped next to her for her phone, which had fallen on the floor. She put it in her pocket and I was glad, at least, to see that she could move her arm.
Every day, we pedestrians and drivers play a game of cat-and-mouse, worrying that something like this will happen to us. Most of the time, it does not. I remember the first time I ever visited New York, with my family; our cab driver hit another car—just a gentle tap in the rear bumper—and kept driving. Once, in Washington DC, I was exiting the train station when a cab inching forward hit me in the leg, then drove away. I turned to see an attendant looking at me. "Did you see that?" I asked. "I sure did," he said. He seemed to be on my side, but what could he do? (Once I got to the conference where I was going, I mentioned the incident to the women there, who shrugged and laughed. "Happens all the time!" they said.)
We aren't invulnerable. Far from it. There are lies and truths we tell ourselves every day just to get out of the house. If we didn't, I suppose we'd never leave our couches. As I looked at the woman, crying out in pain, now surrounded by medics and cops, I thought, I hope she's OK. I thought, I wish I could do something, but I can't. I thought, I hope someone calls her family for her. I thought, I'm glad it wasn't me.
This car was sitting outside the place where I had dinner last night. I have no idea ... what exactly happened here. Was this hurricane-related? Or not? What the heck is that white stuff? The car was at a crazy angle to the curb, with the driver's-side door open, as though either the owner or the thief had to take off in a hurry. The front fender was on the ground. It was like a crime scene, and the victim was the car.
As my friend Kevin and I stared into the rusted, stripped-out shell and walked on, a guy behind us laughed. "It's like Brooklyn in the '80s," he said.
I'm not sure I agree with the headline-writer that Obama "nails" Beyonce's signature dance move here: I don't see any hip-twisting or head-moving. Really, there's no dancing here at all. Disappointing, Mr. President! (But still, awfully cute.)
Yes, I get that "Petraeus" isn't that easy to spell -- all those vowels! -- but this guy's name is all over the news right now, so it wouldn't hurt to, you know, check that sort of thing. Maybe the writer was thinking of Harry Potter's patronus? Not that anyone would want, as their protective energy animal, a former CIA director who cheated on his wife and had to resign in disgrace. Just a guess.
Welcome to Day 2 of the "blog every day" era! Technically, today will be two posts in one day, since I didn't publish yesterday's until after midnight, which now makes me look either prolific or lazy. Take your pick.
I love brunch. I realize that most professional chefs hate it, because customers want the same type of thing all the time, and there isn't much creativity involved. I do not care. Give me some coffee, a Bloody Mary, bacon or sausage, and an egg with a runny yolk on top of something -- and I'm sorry, chefs, though I respect your high-level skills and talent, this is all I need to make me happy. Display some panache with these ingredients, and I'll get a little swoony-eyed on top of it. It's cheaper than going out to dinner, too. These are all things to inspire loyalty.
Had brunch today at Clover Club, which has divinely delicious maple bacon on its menu. I ordered the braised pork over cheddar grits, with a fried egg and crispy onions on top. The service was not terrific (my first water glass had lipstick on it -- yeesh), but who cares? Because BACON.
I'm going to try to do a better job of doing something in this blog, whether it's writing or posting a video or picture or quote, every day. Every day. Ha! You say. I counter your "ha!" with a ... well, you're probably right. But stranger things have happened.
Two things:
1. Gobama! I'm thrilled that Obama won the election, obviously. Perhaps even more than I was in 2008. I won't go into politics here except to say that a few months ago, I tried to explain to a friend's husband why I supported Obama. It was at a bustling party, there was lots of chatter about, and I didn't know this guy's personal politics; so what I came out with wasn't Obama's stance on abortion, or gay marriage, or civil liberties, or any of that.
What I said was, "I genuinely believe he's a good guy." And I know it sounds crazy and ill-informed, but I do believe it. He's not perfect and I don't agree with him on many of his positions, but at heart -- unless this is the biggest snow job in the history of the world -- I truly feel that he is a good person who wants to make this a better country.
He believes in community and helping others. He makes mistakes and he acknowledges them. He makes tough choices and it never feels as though he's taking them for granted. He tends toward diplomacy and compromise rather than stubbornness and shouting. He works hard and he tries hard. He's funny and he's warm and he loves his wife and kids. (And he drinks beer!) He's flawed and he's human, and he makes me believe that people can work together for the common good -- and though I haven't agreed with everything he's done or hasn't done so far, I am proud that he'll be my president for four more years. Hell, I'm proud of this country for electing him.
The election is over so I don't want to belabor what we just went through, but let's just say I didn't feel much of that about Mitt Romney. I do think he loves his family, and at the root of it he is probably a decent, even charitable guy. But I don't think any of us know who he is or what he stands for, what he would have done as president, or whose interests he would have had at heart. In fact, based on things he has said both in public and private, I'd have to assume the people whose interests he would have had at heart would not have included large swaths of the population, least of all me.
I had an argument with a friend about which was worse, a true believer (George W. Bush) or someone who will do or say anything to get elected (Romney); I picked the latter and she picked the former. I realized in that moment how fundamentally I dislike liars. Trust is a basic thing for me. I don't expect politicans to be totally honest -- I'm not that naive -- but bald-faced lying is a bridge too far for me. That combined with his seeming contempt for, and misunderstanding of, people whose backgrounds don't match his own put me over the edge, such that the thought of him as our president filled me with dread. I don't wish him ill, and I hope he has a pleasant, productive post-election life, but I'm immensely relieved that he didn't win.
Sorry, I said I wouldn't belabor it. Just had to get that out.
I love this video of Obama tearing up as he addresses his staff after the election. Whatever you think of his politics, this shows him being nothing more than a compassionate (and maybe exhausted) human being. Which was sort of my point in the first place.
2. I made it through Hurricane Sandy unscathed -- despite a night of howling winds, a few fallen trees and a few hours without cable or Internet, you'd barely know anything had happened in my neighborhood. (Well, there was that whole "no trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan" thing, which was super fun.) Given that many neighborhoods still don't have power, heat or water, I've tried to do my part, however tiny and insignificant it might be.
That first week, I backed up two bags full of supplies I'd bought to prepare for the hurricane: water, candles, flashlights (I don't know how I'd ended up with four flashlights, all of which I managed to dig up before the storm hit), batteries, toilet paper. I walked down to Red Hook, where many of those affected are lower-income people living in public housing, and some nice folks at the non-profit Red Hook Initiative took my bag while an assembly line of people made sandwiches and others organized the piles.
Yesterday, I saw a retweet on Twitter that someone was making a trip to Red Hook and wondered if anyone in my neighborhood had supplies they wanted to drop off. I'm not a huge fan of Twitter, but I've accumulated a fair number of followers thanks to my former job, and I've tried to check in occasionally just to keep up my "brand." Also, Twitter is great for events happening in real time, such as, say, a hurricane or a presidential election.
I'm not great at talking to strangers or venturing outside my comfort zone to do so, but I asked this woman where she'd be, and she told me she'd be at such-and-such corner in 15 minutes, so I hustled to put another bag together. This time I packed all those non-perishables: power bars, cereal bars, fruit cups, applesauce, crackers, tuna and sardines. It's not as useful as a hot meal or even money, but it's got to be something, right?
At the last minute I took another glance at one of the volunteer websites and was reminded that there was a need for blankets. I have extra blankets. I hesitated for a moment, then hauled out my stepstool to pull down the Mexican blanket I've had since college. Over the years I have sat on that thing, read under it, taken it on picnics, slept with it wrapped around me. A neighboring stranger at the Monday night movies in Bryant Park once spilled red wine on it. I looked at it and felt pangs of nostalgia for a time when I thought Mexican blankets were the coolest thing ever, partly because a guy I liked had one. But for the past year it's been sitting in a zipped bag on my closet shelf.
I put it in the grocery bag. I walked up to the designated corner and waited for a while until the woman tweeted exactly where she was. I crossed the street, handed her the bag, thanked her, told her about the blanket. She nodded and said she'd "let go" of a lot of things in this relief effort -- she'd given one of her favorite sweaters to someone who'd picked it out in particular. It reminded me of when I moved away from my last apartment in college, and put my roommates' and my garbage bags full of discarded clothes on the curb of People's Park, only to look back and see a homeless woman holding my beloved leather jacket up to the light.
It's just things. Someone else needs it right now more than I do. I have to wonder, though, whether the relief effort ended up not taking the blanket after all, since it was used. The woman who took it to Red Hook for me was kind enough not to reveal what happened to it, one way or the other; she tweeted to me later in the day that my goods had been distributed. I was grateful to her, this stranger, both for the acknowledgement and for making the trip. That's the thing about New York, I guess. We may seem cold and tough to everyone else, but we pull together when it counts.
If they didn't take my blanket, I hope it still ends up somewhere it can do some good. At least it had the chance to go out into the world, freed from the zipped-up useless existence it had been known all year. I hope it went on an adventure. I hope someone will love it as I did. I hope that tonight, somewhere, my blanket is keeping someone warm.