Things I see and an opinion - Still (catching up #15)

 As I struggle to catch up I scroll through photos I've taken over the past several years - I'll leave you to decide how many a several is and I see photos of things that caught my eye and in my mind needed to be recorded.

The pity of it is that none of these things are ugly enough to match the ugliness that comes out of the mouth of the former president whose plans if elected are to turn this country into a one-party state. He begins to sound more like a raving, rabid version of Mussolini or Hitler when he spews about the greatest danger in the USA is the left, which if you are a liberal or even a thinking person's conservative you know there is almost no left left in the USA, that he will crush his opposition, I think he used the word "vermin," and though he hasn't said it directly, make plans to stay in office until he dies. He would've done that 3 years ago if he could and the look on his face when he boarded his private jet bound for Palm Beach spoke volumes.

He is no longer sane and we need to get an order of protection against him. If the Republican Party nominates him for president as it seems bound to do, fighting hard to keep him from winning, and he can whine all he wants about stolen elections - it's the thief who thinks he's been ripped off because he got caught - that's his problem. Let's not make it America's.

Ah, but I rant a little tonight. Just because I get a little angry every time I see his ugly puss and fat carcass on the news doesn't mean I have to dump it on you.

So enjoy the photos and leave me to my opinions. If you disagree don't get angry. Opinions are something we can differ on and remain civil. 

Seriously? How far you going to get with that boot on your tire?

Resist!

I hope the litterer who left this caught their train.

Read the graffito - gender confusion? or jsut can't spell?

Somebody was trying to say something but I don't know what.

Don't eat anything off the sidewalk.

Why? Why not.

I hope the interview went well

Something vaguely phallic - or perhaps three balloons are just balloons.

What the heck?

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Spring 2023 - We lost Eisenberg's and gained S & P Café (still catching up #14)

I liked Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop on 5th Ave. in NYC, across from the Flatiron Building. It was an old school luncheonette, unpretentious, economical and more popular than it's good but not great food would lead one to expect.

It was March 2021 and Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop, a Madison Square mainstay since 1929 shut down. The luncheonette was bought by its fifth owner, Warren Chiu in 2018. He promised “to keep Eisenberg’s the way it has been,” but could not. Revenues were down and the pandemic was slaughtering businesses in NYC. The restaurant that had been "raising New York City's cholesterol since 1929" was gone. It was a sad day for people such as myself who regularly enjoyed meeting friends for lunch or an early supper at Eisenberg's. It wasn't the best sandwich in NYC but it was reliably good and the atmosphere, harkening back to a day when lunch counters were common and people ate shoulder to shoulder was worthwhile and worthy of preservation.

A year later, the proprietors of Brooklyn's Court Street Grocer's took over the location, cleaned it up, restoring it to its former glory and reopened as S&P Café, a clone of Eisenberg's with a name snatched from the past. Warren Chiu seems to own the rights to the name Eisenberg's and rather than yield it to a worthy successor, unapologetically kept the website, with "nyc.com" as part of its address and has opened a pop-up in San Francisco. Since they couldn't call it Eisenberg's they took the name of the eatery that was in the same location before the Eisenberger brothers opened their place. Yet outside, above the plate glass windows the old Eisenberg's sign remains.

The popularity of the new place is reassuring. The menu is almost the same as the old, with prices adjusted for changing times. The sandwiches seemed a bit better, the meat a little jucier, the rye bread terrific. The furniture and many of the employees are the same though the old cash register at the end of the counter's been replaced by a modern electronic tablet.

The first two photos were taken in 2018. The interior black and white shot shows the place just before closing on a weeknight, so it's no surprise it's quite.

The next three were taken as the interregnum was ending. The outside looks the same but there was a new sign being painted on the glass by the person in the next photo followed by a shot of what the interior looked like when it was being restored.

The last batch were taken during two visits. That woman sure is enjoying her potato pancake!

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9/24/2023 - Radomer Mutual Culture Center Yizkor Service at New Montefiore Cemetery (catching up #13)

Prefatory note:

This community of Jews, pictured here grew up with the stories their parents told them, or withheld depending on circumstances of the years in the Polish ghettos, the concentration and death camps and death marches, starved, beaten and forced to work as slaves by the Nazis and their collaborators, witnesses to the murders of their families and friends, now find ourselves threatened on many sides by people who chose to hate Jews because they are Jews, wishing to deny us the right to defend ourselves while providing moral and material support to a group of terrorists and murderers, Hamas.  

We are reminded that we must be vigilant and active in protecting ourselves and communities here and working to ensure the survival of Eretz Yisrael.

Note the date when these were taken and remember what happened less than two weeks later.

And now on to catching up.

The Radomer Mutual Culture Center (the Society) by our tradition holds a yizkor service at our ground at the New Montefiore Cemetery in Pinelawn, NY every year on the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This year if fell on the eve of Yom Kippur. The service is always moving since we remember our own family members who've passed away, most of whom are buried in our land, friends of our family, and most importantly, those who were murdered in the Shoah and have no marked grave and often, no surviving relatives to say kaddish for them. It being only a few hours before Kol Nidre the Yizkor service  added poignancy. 

Of course we also take pleasure in seeing old friends, many of who we only see at the semi-annual gathering. We are now mostly the second generation and beyond. Very few are living witnesses to the horrors and each year the number shrinks. This year it was more than 78 years since the end of World War II. 

Considering the threat of heavy rain and wind from an off-shore tropical storm, attendance was good. We were lucky again this year that the rains held off during our service.

And, as usual - with the exception of one year when I forgot my camera - I took some photos of the participants. I hope those who see them that were there have good memories stirred to the surface, and for those who could not come, will smile at familiar faces.

A digital copy of The Book of Radom: The Story of a Jewish Community Destroyed by the Nazis / Sefer Radom is available at the New York Public Library's web site (1961) -and a translation of the Yiddish section and transliteration of much of the English at Jewishgen.org - Book of Radom. For those who may be interested in the early history of the Society and other Jewish Radomer groups, a more or less official history through 1961 is included.

And now, some photos:

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06/25/2023 - NYC Queer Liberation March 5 - People and Photographers (catching up #12)

At last, the final Queer Liberation March posting for 2023. This post has two parts. The first is the last batch of people photos. Some are people in the crowd, some are people posing for me. Most of the second part are people either taking photos, as I was or getting ready to take a photo. One is taking a photo of me. I've been taking photos of people taking photos for a long time so this small batch is one more in a long series. 

Yesterday I got into a brief email exchange with a friend of mine in which the Many World Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Physics arose. The discussion didn't go into depth on the subject yet every time I think about some of the implications of the MWI. If one applies common sense to the subject, which is weird to begin with because common sense and quantum physics usually don't go well together, it might seem everything that can happen does, that the probabilities that are part of quantum mechanics are in a way besides the point. Since the measurement in an experiment seems determine a single result and that result is unique, the probability of its occurring in a particular way can be calculated. This doesn't answer the question of what about those other possible solutions? If a second measurement was made at the same moment, would the result be the same? Common sense says yes, quantum physics says not necssarily.

The MWI seems to state that there is 100% chance of every possible result occurring but they split the universe and occur in parallel. The probability to be measured is that of which universe you are in. Whew. As the first serious proposer of this theory, Hugh Everett III said, the result is not dependent on the observer. 

What does this have to do with my photos, my blog, or anything else in my life? Well, I'm 100% sure I am here, I am posting and the various photons that registered on the detector in my camera's chip did so. In some other universe, none of this is working at all.

In this universe I am finished writing. In some other, I can guess but because the nature of many worlds is such that I cannot be in contact with it, it's only a guess.

Enjoy.

People:

Photographers:

I love the interaction in the first two pictures here.

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