Wednesday - A Visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford - By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800

We drove up to Hartford, CT  to see the exhibit "By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500-1800 before it moves to Detroit in 2022.

Excellent exhibit, worth going to see if you can catch it before it closes on 1/9/2022. The Wadsworth is also always worth a visit.

These photos are not about the exhibit.

One comment: the Christmas decorations, a traditional style, looked rather out of place, perhaps even  ironic in a gallery filled with 20th Century art.

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Saturday - Third and final Yizkor at New Montefiore Cemetery posting

Mourning is both a personal and communal activity. Nobody but the mourner feels the particular loss they are grieving, but many feel or have felt something similar, and can both sympathize and empathize. I cannot get inside the head of someone who has lost a parent recently, but having lost my parents and remembering how I felt, even if the sharp pains of that moment are blunted by the passage of time I can sympathize and offer honest words of condolence. If I can bring those old feelings back and let the grief wash over me for a moment, in silence I can empathize.

When the children and their children and grandchildren of the Radomers gather at the cemetery, we let some of the pain come back but ease it with the companionship of our fellows who are all in the same place. It's not the words of the prayers that make us better, it's saying them together that allows us to put aside differences and share our humanity. 

Beginning in March 2020, many of those whose close relations and friends passed away often had to mourn with their community kept at a distance. Video chats and conferences don't compete with the warmth of a person sitting next to you, perhaps in silence.

The Jewish mourning ritual is a step by step process that begins with the burial. If it is a parent that is being mourned, the stages will take a year to complete, though most of the last 11 months the mourner has returned to their normal routine.

For a person who is Ashkenazi, toward the end of that year or later, the stone on the grave is unveiled in a brief, usually meaningful ceremony. There is a tradition among the Radomers to hold the unveiling at the Yizkor if it is near the anniversary of the person's death.

It was good to get back together. Now we all have to practice good community/public health measures to show that community and communal responsibility is a way to express personal liberty.

Here's the final group of photos I've selected. I take too many and it takes time to select and edit a posting. I am glad I can do it.

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Friday - Second Yizkor at New Montefiore post

Every year now, before the service, I stop at the cemetery office to pay a courtesy call on their grounds manager, Tommy Whelan. We chat for 15 or 20 minutes and catch up on each other's year as well as dealing with any issues that can't be taken care of with a phone call. This year, he told me about how hard it was for him and his crew, as well as everyone working at the cemetery during the first months of the pandemic.

He said that normally that get a handful of funerals every day or during a week, but that every morning when the cemetery gates were opened there'd be a line of hearses waiting, sometimes more than 30 burials in a day, and that number was that low because the cemetery only accepts Jewish deceased. Nearby Pinelawn, a nonsectarian cemetery was getting 2 1/2 times as many. One morning, a panel truck was waiting and inside were stacked a half dozen or more coffins. The funeral director didn't have enough hearses. Coffins were arriving in all sorts of vehicles because people were dying in droves. It must've been horrible.

So as difficult as it was for me and the other members of the Radomer Society's cemetery committee, I think he had it worse.

Here is a few more photos. One more post will follow.

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Thursday - A Yizkor to remember the Shoah and the remnants of a community

It is the tradition of the survivors from the city of Radom in Poland, their children, grandchildren and now, great-grandchildren, to gather on the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at their communal burial grounds at New Montefiore Cemetery in Pinelawn, NY to solemnly recall those who were lost, those who survived and have now passed on and to keep the memories alive. Last year, for the first time since the tradition began, no service was held because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. This year, we were vaccinated and comfortable gathering again.

Most of the First Generation has passed away. It's more than 76 years since the end of WWII and the liberation of the camps. This year only one survivor of the Shoah was there with us, but nearly 100 children of survivors and their children and grandchildren made the trip to New Montefiore to stand together remembering our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and friends among whose graves and memorials we stood. 

During the first months we suffered many losses from the virus and we feared the end of the line for the generation of survivors. So little was known and so many errors were made but the number of deaths tapered off, though we did lose 18 members from the beginning in 2020 until we met. It was a difficult time. To memorialize them with a gift of life, the Radomer Mutual Culture Center is donating and ambulance to the Mogen David Adom.

This will be the first of three postings of photos I took. 

As you already know, click to expand.

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Thursday - Thoughts on a road trip with my kid

 My youngest child is 30 years old. Don't worry about how old I am. Some days I feel like I'm older than dirt and others, younger than springtime, or whatever. But Hudson and I haven't spent a lot of time together, meaning several days, since they were in college. That made this trip special all by itself.

Spending seven+ hours in the car together, just the two of us in that bubble turned out to be rather pleasant. The drive up was pretty much uneventful except for a few rain showers along the way, and the route took me along a road I'd never traveled before, through a few towns in Wyoming County and eastern Erie County that were new to me.

Hudson was interested in the route, especially after we got off I-390 and headed west from Mount Morris. Wyoming County is rolling farm country, with corn fields, orchards and dairy pastures. The ridges were often crowned with wind turbines, as electricity generation has become a substantial financial support to the farms. They are neither ugly nor beautiful and add a certain SF atmosphere to the bucolic scene.

Hudson is very political and they paid attention to the American flags, the occasional Trump sign and notable anti-SAFE Act signs - which is an indicator of a 2nd Amendment absolutist since the act does nothing to prevent most people from buying, owning and using their weapons legally.

I do wonder why people vote against their own interests in the name of "personal liberty," or because they are driven by resentment or imagined grievances. Yet people like Trump, and of course the loser ex-President himself, stoke those grievances and resentments with lies and inflammatory rhetoric. These people - the leaders and politicians - are drunk with their power to sway the minority and do nothing positive for anyone.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the derelict Buffalo Central Terminal. It once was an Art Deco landmark, now it's in serious need of major repair. From what I understand, its structure has been stabilized - the roof repaired, access to the interior controlled to prevent further vandalism, but it's still sad to see what it is. The woman in the photo painting over some graffiti told me the thing they need most now is money. 

Permalink: https://kayester.blogspot.com/2021/09/thursday-thoughts-on-road-trip-with-my.html

Tuesday - Back from Buffalo

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I've been busy but I'm catching up. I've got plenty of photos to post but I'll only do a few at a time.

I took a short roadtrip to Buffalo NY with Hudson, one of my adult children. We left from Chappaqua on Thursday morning and got back Sunday evening.

My car is a 2004 Saab 9-3 Turbo. Despite its age, it has only 100 thousand miles driven, so it’s young for its years. The only real issue is with the audio system and that is a story I don’t want to get into now.

Of course, I took a lot of photos, of course I chatted with people, and we drove around quite a bit, just looking. Buffalo has changed and is changing, possibly for the the better. The last time I was there the East Side, especially the ghetto, looked terrible. There were abandoned homes, wrecked cars, trash filled lawns and such everywhere. Since then, the abandoned homes have been razed, the wrecks towed and where there were ruined houses there are now mowed lawns.

Some of the empty and desolate industrial lots where the ruins of factories and warehouses could be seen behind razor wire topped cyclone fences across a field of high weeds, have been removed. Now there is an empty field or new construction – not necessarily attractive but less of an eyesore than before. The former air of despair and abandonment is no more.

Hudson noted that the city seemed more provincial than the Brooklyn, where they live - actually they said less cosmopolitan - but I pointed out that Brooklyn has nearly 10 times as many people, and that for a smallish city, Buffalo does okay.

One thing Buffalo has is interesting local foods. Buffalo chicken wings are nationally known. Less known are the roast beef on kummelweck sandwiches, and Texas red hots. On Saturday afternoon, we drove to Tonawanda to eat at Ted's Red Hots on Sheridan Drive. It's not far from where my late friend, John Farrell lived.

Texas red hots are the Buffalo/Erie County version of hot dogs. They are good enough that former residents visiting from out of town, such as myself and the family pictured, will make a side trip to eat some. The place is popular: witness the line of people getting their orders.

The staff is friendly and so are the customers. After all, how can you be miserable when you are about to eat a terrific locally produced hot dog with fixings?

The woman in the Buffalo State sweatshirt is a teacher of special needs kids in the Buffalo school system. She seems like a very special person herself. Her sister was just a little shy about my taking her photo.

                                        

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