Bittersweet

It's finally up! For my whole life, this poster was on a wall in my parents' home, first in Wembley and then at Kent House. My father always had a thing about owls, and we kind of thought that he was one (for those of you that knew him - wise, blind in the daylight, slightly ruffled feathers). There were many owl-connected gifts and purchases through the years. This has always been my favourite. Now it is on a wall in my own home. We received it several months ago, but I kept putting off the moment of hanging. My parents are gone. Their home of 49 years is gone. And giving the owl a new place to roost is a confirmation of how final those facts are. But we are very lucky and happy to have our home, and delighted (as you can see from my goofy grin in the selfie) to welcome this owl to our wall.

DrawingTogetherGM 13: A Conversation Between Your Selves

Our drawing prompt this week was to develop a conversation with a part of our self that perhaps is not heard as much as she should be. First of all we were asked to fold the page in half, and then on the left, in one minute, draw a figure representing ourselves, but not necessarily a traditionally accurate drawing. It could represent that self in any way we wanted. Then, on the other side of the page, in a different colour, possibly using a non-dominant hand to draw, a figure representing the unheard or unseen self, also done in a minute. Finally, one of the characters had to ask the other one a question.

I seem to be a bit wound up, rather tense. Everything is coiled. And it's been quite hard to take pictures during lockdown. For the past couple of years at this time I have been in parks and gardens shooting bees and flowers. Not now. 

The final instruction was to do 3 panels, each in 3 minutes, of a conversation between the characters:

I thought of an ending, but not sure how to get there. Maybe if I knew, I could fix the world, eh?

Thanks to all those at Drawing Together/Graphic Medicine for creating the group and taking time out of their lives to lead us through the warm-ups and prompts. Hope we get together again soon.

So Long Danielle Carter, & Thanks For All The Goals

News in football today is reporting that Danielle Carter has come to the end of her Arsenal Women's contract, and will be leaving the club. I first started watching women's football after the England Lionesses had a great World Cup in 2015. The Arsenal Women's team was the nearest to where I lived, and had several international players, so I went up to Borehamwood to have a look. I loved it - it cost a fiver, you could wander around the ground depending on where you wanted to sit or stand, the standard of play was excellent, and they let me take pictures! 

Dan Carter was just beginning to make her name, scoring a worldie (at 1.47 in the link) to win the 2016 Cup Final against the team from Stamford Bridge (well, Kingsmeadow in fact) and breaking into the England Lionesses team as well. However, in 2018 & 2019 she suffered two ACL injuries, and whilst she was recovering, Vivianne Miedema took over as the star striker for the team.

It is the brutal nature of the economics of football, especially when post-pandemic plans call for cuts in all kinds of organisations, that just as Danielle Carter is coming back to full fitness, her contract is ending, and the club has decided not to renew it. I'm so sad for her. I hope that she will find a new team soon, and will get back to scoring goals when it is safe to play football again. Meanwhile, thank you for 11 years of contributing to the Arsenal Women's community.

All photos © AJ Friedlander

Update: Danielle Carter's response as posted on Twitter today

La Regina delle Ciliegie (The Queen of Cherries)

Our friend Wilde, who knows about growing fruit & veg, and likes to preserve them, told us of a wonderful place near Spilamberto where we could get some great cherries at a good price. I don't remember whose suggestion it was that I have a go at making some jam, but the next thing I knew we were all in the Pandina and racing the stormy skies to get to this farm. I saw a view from a bridge as we crossed, and asked if we could go back so I could take a picture (FYI it's the Panaro river).

The cherries in my box are Moretta cherries, a local variety. We bought seconds, specifically for making jam, and paid a very reasonable price. They also had Duroni cherries, at less than half the price you'd pay for a carton in the city, so we bought enough to feast all week!

I shall try to keep these chronicles of a cherry cooker as brief as possible. The first task was to take out all the cherry stones. This takes a very long time, particularly if the only tool you have is a small knife. Luckily for me, after a few hours, L had the brilliant idea of converting the olive-pitter I'd given her many Chanukahs ago that sits pristine in the kitchen drawer to a cherry-pitter. I was watching the Italian Cup Final, and the excitement of using this little tool far outshone the football on the tv. Warning:  Moretta cherry juice is dark, and difficult to remove, even with a pumice stone.

Nu, cherries without stones now needed to be cooked. I looked for recipes online, and found several. I chose the one that suggested the best way to eat the finished product was on a piece of challah. Cherries went into the biggest pot we have, with 1/3 the amount of sugar recommended by the recipe, and half a cup of lemon juice. The recipe said cook for 20 minutes. 1 hour 45 minutes later I thought the cherries were as jammy as they would ever get and called my personal taster over for her expert opinion.

L survived the tasting, and claimed to enjoy it, so it was time to put the jam in the jars. This was maybe the hardest part as everything was so hot and sticky. At the end, there were 4 actual jars of a jam-like substance. I boiled two of them for a while to try and make them last until autumn, and when everything cooled down, I put labels on the jars (to help remember which ones were for now and which could be put away for a while).

Not quite the end of the story, my friends. Since all those cherries only made 4 little jars, we thought we'd go back and get some more! So yesterday, without Wilde (sorry) we went back to the cherry farm. Once we found the entrance (we were really sorry Wilde wasn't with us at that point), we drove up to the barn. Turns out that the cherry season is basically over. No more Morette, no more Duroni ... there were a few Amarene left on the table and that was it. So we bought 4 kg of Amarene cherries!

I'm not sure how many episodes of "Sherlock" I watched whilst getting rid of the cherry stones. I'm ashamed to say that whilst stirring the cherries when they were cooking, I found 17 stones. I do hope that was most of them. I was a little distracted because the Or 'Ammim weekly "Cup of Tea with Rav AJ" started before I'd finished cooking, and I was stirring with one hand and discussing Brit Milah on Zoom with the other. FYI, the same amount of sugar and lemon juice was added, and roughly the same amount of time was used for cooking. These cherries were a bit more pulverised by the cooking, and the result was runnier than the first batch. Definitely preserves rather than jam. But the official taster gave a seal of approval, and the jars are now cooling in the kitchen.

What's next? We were hoping for apricots, but a frost in March killed most of the flowers, so not this year. We are thinking about plums. Meanwhile, Wilde just sent us a message that the first cucumbers have been picked from the allotment. I think it may be time for some pickling!

#DrawingTogetherGM 12: Concerning a Ritual During the Lockdown

Yesterday evening, our warm-up exercise was to draw a page full of smiling faces. We were encouraged to draw different eyes, ears, hair, mouths and noses. It was harder than I thought in 15 minutes to come up with new faces ... I began with the ones I knew ... Pomme, myself, a cat ... and then I had a go at finding some other people ...

thinking about some of the rituals that we have had during lockdown, we were then invited to choose one and draw it.

I chose our evening ritual of watching the RAI1 TV programme Soliti Ignoti (literally, the "usual unknowns". It doesn't translate well. The contestant has 8 professions from which to choose, and 8 people to which they may be applied. If they guess correctly, they win money. At the moment, famous guests are playing for coronavirus charities). At the end of the show, there is a "Mysterious Relative" who appears centre stage. S/he is related to one of the professionals, and the contestant has to guess which one it is. All the money is bet on this final guess.

We have watched this show most evenings throughout lockdown, and get very involved in the final game. So I drew the Mysterious Relative. When we watch, we look at all the faces, and try to figure out if they look like each other, or if they have an "aria di famiglia". It's quite difficult, and we rarely get it right. So that was some context. Here is what I drew:

What do I seek? Perhaps it is just another expression of the desire to connect during a time when we've all been so solitary. On the other hand, we got a lot better at the game after listening to some advice given by a contestant who said that they would choose based on whether people looked like they would be happy to hug each other. Not on ears or eyes or noses. That makes more sense, and when we guess from that point of view, we seem to be a bit more successful!

This drawing group is about to shift from a weekly meeting to a monthly one. I'm sad to hear that, as I have really started to see it as part of my week, and feel that the group is starting to gel. At the same time, it is a wonderful gift from those who run it, and they do kind of deserve to get back to their own lives. It's not stopping, just spreading out a little. So, non vedo l'ora until the next one!

It's Not Father's Day Here.

It is Father's Day (Fathering Sunday?) in the UK and the USA today. Thank goodness, since it means that the endless "personalised" ads for great gifts for a great dad will now cease. He was a great dad in many ways, and I have missed him for 16 years now. In a few weeks we will mark the 16th yahrzeit, and I can talk about him then. Perhaps. Meanwhile, I'm delighted to hear that Father's Day in Italy was in March, so nothing to fear there. 

Nu, here is one of my favourite photos of young Albert (you may have seen it before!). It is from 1937, so he was around 12 years old. I think he is waiting for his letter from Hogwarts.

Evelyn's 80th Birthday

On Monday, it would have been Evelyn's 80th birthday. She told us several times that she absolutely did NOT wish to have a party or celebration of any kind. As with her 70th, she was hoping to slip away for a few days on some kind of lovely little trip (10 years ago she took me and Noam to a fantastic spa in North Wales, and we went to Portmeirion to see the Prisoner set as well).

I wanted to do something to mark the day, and so I'd like to invite you to do something fun on Monday, or soon, in honour of your friendship. Raise a glass of wine in a toast, or eat some Chinese food, or listen to a bit of Mahler/Bruckner; enjoy some asparagus, go to an exhibition, or bake a cranberry cheesecake. If none of those float your boat (she always did struggle to find people to accompany her to the Red Sun!), then please do something that gives you joy.

Meanwhile, I put together a slideshow  - 80 (ish) photos for Evelyn's 80th - some pictures from each decade of her life. There's no soundtrack, mainly because I wasn't sure if everyone could cope with "Pirate Jenny" from the Threepenny Opera. The link is here.

Hurrah for Marcus Rashford

It has been a week full of memorable news. We said goodbye to Dame Vera Lynn. She was 103, but somehow we thought she might be one of those who would always be with us. The US Supreme Court ruled in favour of allowing the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) programme to remain in place, so that immigrants who arrived as children may continue living and working in the USA, for now at least. An inexpensive drug - Dexamethosone - has been discovered to reduce deaths from Covid-19 by a third in the most severely ill patients. And a young footballer's campaign to support hungry children persuaded the UK government to make a U-turn in their current policy.

If you can get beyond the paywall, Marcus Rashford's open letter in the Times this week is here. He writes:

"I know what it feels like to be hungry. I'm well aware that at times my friends only invited me to eat at their houses for their parents' reassurance that I was eating that evening. That was my community, the community that made the Marcus Rashford you see before you today asking for your help:  an England international footballer. As I passed through Manchester city centre on the bus as a child and witnessed homelessness on every street corner, I swore that if one day I got in a position to help those people most in need then that is what I would do.

I recognise that I have a valuable platform that allows my voice to be heard and I'm asking you to listen to the stories of these vulnerable families. People are hurting and we continue to ignore their cries for help."

What impresses me so much is that Mr. Rashford is part of a group that has been highlighted during the lockdown for its lack of social responsibility, i.e., professional footballers. The media has reported those who have flouted the government's restrictions in order to party and get their hair cut. However, his behaviour this week, and as we now discover, throughout his career, knocks all the stereotypes on their heads, and presents us with the most admirable role model (I know he isn't the only one, q.v., Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane). This BBC article shows how he has always been willing to lend a hand:

"As a child at school Rashford had helped fill gift boxes to give to those in need. He remembered this. At Xmas 2018 he personally delivered items including thermal underwear, gloves, toothbrushes and toothpaste to homeless people in Manchester. Twelve months on he partnered with Selfridges for a similar campaign."

As a result of Marcus Rashford's campaign, the UK Government decided to continue the programme for meal vouchers during the summer for all children eligible for free school meals during term-time. Upon hearing this news, Rashford told the BBC:

"I don't want this to be the end of it because there are more steps that need to be taken. People are struggling all year round, so we need to learn more about the situation they are in and how we can help them best."

He is going back to work now, as the English Premier League starts up again, but I hope we will continue to be inspired by his teaching, as he wrote last Monday:

"It can be funny where your career takes you sometimes. If someone had said ten years ago that I would one day be writing for The Times I would have laughed, and yet here I am on Monday evening opening this with a question that has been playing on my mind all day:  have I done enough?"

I must keep asking myself, have I done enough? Have we done enough?

UPDATE:  In the most recent issue of the Guardian, David Squires devotes a whole cartoon to the continuing advocacy of Marcus Rashford. Have a look here.

#DrawingTogetherGM 11: A Lesson, Skill or Observation Learned During Lockdown

Today's drawing prompt for the wonderful DrawingTogether group of Graphic Medicine asked us to think for a few minutes about something we may have learned or noticed in the last few months, and to distill it down to one sentence. We then had to think of a comic to illustrate that sentence, make a rough design and draw it. I thought about how raw everyone's nerves are these days, and how I need to make an extra effort both not to take offence and to be kind. 

Next, I remembered something we discussed in our Parsha group yesterday, about how breathing air gives life to the physical body, and what then does our soul or spirit breathe? Today, kindness seemed like a decent answer to that question. Meanwhile, behind everything these days is the phrase "I can't breathe", that now represents so much in the current struggle for justice and equality.

Nu, I drew someone without a nose, who begins by over-reacting, gets a bit depressed, but in the end is restored by a random act of kindness. Piano piano, step by step.

Remembering Grenfell

Today marks the third anniversary of the fatal fire at Grenfell Tower in West London. You'd think that changes would have been made, and that the survivors would have had full support in the aftermath of such a disaster. Think again.

The BBC website shared a story about Grenfell Athletic, a football club that is working to heal the wounds. If you don't remember what happened, here is a link. Be warned that some of the images of the burning tower are very vivid. Here is the Wiki description.

Nearly 250 buildings still have the same kind of cladding that carried the deadly fire through the tower that night. There seems to be little urgency on the part of the authorities to move forward. Meanwhile, today our thoughts are with the 72 victims who lost their lives, all who knew and loved them, and the survivors.

#Justice4Grenfell

Dorrit Friedlander's 95th Birthday

11th June marks what would have been the 95th birthday of my beloved Auntie Dorrit z"l. Her memory continues to be a blessing through her loving friends,  a few household items that bring her to mind daily, and the stories we recall. Here is a wild one, recorded in 2012 in Appleton after a meeting in Cody's office:



Much loved and much missed.

#DrawingTogetherGM 10: The Politics of Illness

Here is what I drew for this week's Graphic Medicine Drawing Together session. The prompt we were given this time was "Care as an urgent practical task". It was not an easy prompt, but we only had 15 minutes to draw so I went with what came immediately to mind.

When it was my turn to share what I'd drawn with the group, I asked them first to look without my saying anything. I wanted them to have an unguided response. Then I mentioned that this was a representation of me and my mother last year near the end of her illness. From my point of view, we were desperately trying to get her to eat, and (one time only) I tried to do a deal with her pain meds. I remember having a sudden flashback to feeding my baby sister many years earlier. She would sit in her high-chair in the exact same spot in the kitchen where my mother was sitting in that moment, and it felt to me like a similar situation, i.e., trying to get her to eat. It was just that instead of "one for you, one for me", or "here comes the airplane in for a landing!" it was "I will swap you a pill for a mouthful of soup."

It took me a while to understand that as her ability to be independent was being drained by the lymphoma, my mother sought any way she could to take some control of her life. And the one thing she had left was food. So when we said please, she said no. I get it now, but it was tough at the time. The fact that she was fighting was actually positive. And it is easier to see from here that while I truly wanted to alleviate her suffering, I  must admit that part of me did not want to feel it either. 

It's not something I ever really thought about before my mother got sick. I've rarely questioned the concept that medicine is something to help you get better. A simple perspective, I know. In a world where things are now rather more complicated. And so, looking at the drawing that I did, seeing what came first to my mind, now I ask:  where is the boundary between numbing the pain so that the patient's suffering is alleviated, and numbing the patient so others are not overwhelmed by their inability to cure the ailment? And who gets to choose, and why?

Missing Baseball

Piglet's-eye view from a subway train heading for 161st Street
Photo:  Ariel J Friedlander

I am a baseball fan. 

Although, unlike my late mother, I cannot recite the infield fly rule, I have a basic grasp of the laws of the game. I have an allegiance to a team as well. It is the New York Yankees. Before you all start hating on me, I'd like to point out that I come by this allegiance legitimately. The Yankees are the team nearest to my place of birth. Nearer than the Mets. Apparently our family did support the Mets when they first started, but my mother said they were so bad that you kind of had to. We do have a tradition of rooting for the underdog, and I am utterly unused to following a team that actually wins trophies, but fate, and my father, decreed that they would be my team and so they are. 

I'm not a fairweather fan, and continued to love them throughout the lean years. I was also lucky enough to be able to attend games at the old Yankee Stadium during my studies at HUC. My favourite player was Bernie Williams - I still have a navy-blue T-Shirt with his name and number, a number that is now retired. Ok, I loved Derek Jeter as well, but not quite as much as Bernie. O, and once I was warned at Logan Airport that if I didn't change my shirt (it was a Yankees T #18 Johnny Damon) I could expect a physical assault on my person (I did not change it). I consider myself to be very loyal, and at the same time I don't see how it is in any way possible to transfer my loyalties. I was fond of the Cubs, but then they went and got good. And I was born on West 116th St. And the Yanks are my guys. 

It is difficult to follow baseball from Europe, especially without PayTV options, but last year Facebook started showing a short highlights package online for free after every game, and I really got into it again. Now, of course, there's nothing. So I wear my T-shirts and follow @thejudge44 on Insta and watch ancient glories on YouTube. I don't mind, because I want everyone to live and be well and go sit in the bleachers again. But I do miss baseball. I miss trying to figure out what WHIP is. I miss John & Suzyn with me in the car late at night as I drive home (or online if I can find a feed that lets me listen). I miss checking the Red Sox score to see if they lost. 

Baseball is the only sport I know that has no time limit for the completion of the game. It takes as long as it takes. I love that concept. And I look forward to baseball's return, when it is safe and healthy to recommence. As long as it takes.

Parshat Naso & the Census of the Merarites

Photo: Ariel J Friedlander

Struck by a thought this morning as L & I looked at the Torah portion. Earlier, with our chavurah, we'd looked at the juicy section containing the Priestly Benediction (Numbers 6:22-27). We had a lovely discussion about the meaning of blessings - who gives them, what is being given, and what they represent. Afterwards, L & I went back to the beginning of the portion and read:

29. As for the Merarites, you shall record them by the clans of their ancestral house; 

30. you shall record them from the age of thirty years up to the age of fifty, all who are subject to service in the performance of the duties for the Tent of Meeting. 

31. These are their porterage tasks in connection with their various duties for the Tent of Meeting: the planks, the bars, the posts, and the sockets of the Tabernacle;

32. the posts around the enclosure and their sockets, pegs, and cords - all these furnishings and their service:  you shall list by name the objects that are their porterage tasks. (Num. 4)

I said that I'd always had a problem with pieces like this - what possible connection did I have with a list of priestly duties for the Tabernacle? There are no more priests. There is no more Temple. What meaning could there be for someone like me in a sentence discussing who carries planks or posts or  pegs? In the desert?

Then I said, well, I suppose I can understand a system where everyone has a particular role in the community - something specific and personal, but that also is part of the community ethos. In this text it is expressed through a description of priestly duties. Maybe I can extrapolate from that the concept that this is still part of our lives and community today, i.e., we all have a task to perform. The difference is only that the task is not so clearly delineated. I just need to figure out what my task is.

And BOOM! Something I almost threw away turns out to be relevant after all. Ok, off to my room to see if there are any pegs I've not noticed :-) 

Shabbat shalom.

From the Photo Archives: Simone Veil

Photo: Ariel J Friedlander

Looking for a particular photograph, I came upon a group of black and white pictures that I'd taken in the 1980's. I've always rather liked these ones of Simone Veil.

Simone Veil was a French Jew who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and made a life back in France as a lawyer and a politician. She was at the forefront of the fight for legal abortion in her country. She became President of the European Parliament in 1979. Amongst the honours awarded her were (honorary) Dame of the British Empire, the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneure, and her face  & story recorded on a €2 coin. She was the 6th woman ever to enter the Academie Française*, and the 5th woman in history to be buried in the Panthéon**.

I wish for the life of me I could remember when and where I met and photographed her. At first I thought it must have been the Remembering for the Future conference in Oxford in 1988, but I don't think she was there. The other possibility that comes to mind is that it was an assignment when I was the photographer for the Jewish Herald newspaper in London.

To find out more about her, here are some obituaries:

The Guardian

The Economist (paywall)

Jewish Chronicle

Los Angeles Times

New York Times (paywall)

René Cassin

gouvernement fr

The Times (paywall)

Photo:  Ariel J Friedlander

* ok, the other women in the Academie Française are/were:

Marguerite Yourcenar (writer)

Jacqueline de Romilly (classical Greek scholar)

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse (political historian)

Florence Delay (writer & actress)

Assia Djebar (writer & film-maker)

as for what the Academie does - here is an inkling

** and the other 4 in the Panthéon are:

Marie Curie

Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz (hero of the Resistance)

Germaine Tillion (hero of the Resistance)

Sophie Berthelot (a bit problematic as she was buried with her husband on the same day rather than for her own achievements)

You can read more about them here.

A Rare Cricketing Moment

Photo: Ariel J Friedlander

Some of you, I know, enjoy watching cricket. Not most of you, but I know some people who do. For those of you who claim it is difficult to understand, there's a famous sort-of-explanation of the rules, which makes baseball look simple IMO:

The Rules of Cricket:

* you have two sides, one out in the field, and one in.

* each player in the side that is in, goes out; and when they are out, they come in and the next player goes in until they are out.

* when they are all out, the side that is out comes in, and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those who are coming in out.

* when both sides have been in and out, that is the end of the game.

The author of that is anonymous, which is a good thing. meanwhile, back to my photograph. I think it is a rare cricketing moment because Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards is one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the sport and, I think, rarely clean bowled. So I am rather pleased to have taken a picture of him having been clean bowled. If you look carefully, you can see a flying bail just above Graham Gooch's head.

I looked up the details and I record them here for my statto persona:

2nd Test Match

England v. West Indies

at Lords Cricket Ground, 16th June 1988

2nd innings

IVA Richards (c)  b. Pringle         72

(W. Indies won by 134 runs)

Roman Piglet

Sadly for Piglet, and his fans, he hasn't had much opportunity to travel recently. However, looking for something in the files, I came across some previously unshared Piglet pics from our trip to Rome in 2012. A little moody, but Piglet has always been an emotionally sensitive creature!

Colosseum Piglet

Piglet descending the Spanish Steps

Christo, R. I. P.

Christo, a Bulgarian artist who was famous for wrapping buildings and landmarks in fabric or plastic, has died. I managed to see two of the works he made with his wife Jeanne-Claude in person:  the London Mastaba, created on the Serpentine in Hyde Park a couple of years ago ...

... as well as The Gates in New York City back in 2005

Piglet at The Gates

I will miss the grand scale of their visions. May they rest in peace.

BBC obituary
Guardian obit
NY Times obit (paywall)

Watchu lookin at Masaba