Beautiful day, today. The rain last night washed the air, the sun shone, the air was cool. I walked up (literally, it’s a hill) 96th Street to the Gourmet Garage. Heard lots of their ads on NPR over the years and always wanted to see if they were better than most of the New York food purveyors. Some time, when I have nothing else to write about, I’ll do a post about New York grocery stores. Anyhow, I probably won’t walk up the hill again.

I stopped there on my way to meet Howard and Sybille at the Museum of the City of New York. Sybille is one of only a few friends from my working days. We spent four hours there, looking at exhibits, catching up, discussing the exhibits, talking. I wouldn’t have believed I could spend so much time there.

One of my favorite things is the Stettheimer dollhouse. Stettheimer was an artist, with pictures at the Met, who ran a salon for artists in New York City. Some of the artwork in the dollhouse was created by artists who came to her salon. How romantic is that.

We spent most of our time in an exhibit about the Forward, a Yiddish newspaper begun in 1897 in New York. Filled with photographs, posters and blown up copies of articles, the exhibit details how the paper shaped the lives of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and helped them become integrated into American society. The story was new to Sybille, and I was able to do some translating and add a little bit to the story.

We walked back toward the apartment afterward, and had dinner at Renee’s favorite Italian restaurant, Delizia. Sybille and I had a lovely risotto with pieces of steak and some nuts. Howard had chicken with mushrooms, looked almost like a Marsala. Very good, solid Italian; no "pink sauce."

Sybille and I never run out of things to talk about. We had lunch together almost every day while I was working. Never ran out of conversation then, either.