Author Archives: ruthek

Happy New Year

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Snow in front of Steve’s house.

I don’t make resolutions any more. I figure if I haven’t gotten it nailed by now, it’s too late. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was more than a little disorganized, with house guests and such. I’m trying to get back on schedule. Yesterday I actually got to the club to exercise. Now I just have to stop eating all the sweets.

I am planning my next trip to Japan, which will begin in the middle of March and go on for six weeks. My previous visits were in Autumn; now I want to see Spring. I will spend three weeks traveling and most of the remaining three weeks in Kyoto. I have plane tickets and reservations in a hotel in Tokyo and in my favorite place in Kyoto. I will post my plans as they take shape and use this blog for my posts from Japan instead of going back to the other one.

Since my frequent flier account grew as I purchased things for my new apartment I will be flying business class both ways. I don’t think my old bones would tolerate another long trip in coach. I will spend the first five nights in Tokyo looking at gardens and making a day-trip to Ibaraki where there is a garden that is listed in the “top three.” I’ve seen the other two and will return to one of them that I probably did not properly appreciate.

I am reading about one of the gardens I visited in Kyoto: Tenryu-ji. The book is an appreciation of the spirit of the garden, the pond and its rocky landscape. I missed it when I was there in 2008; there were too many people and I looked for less crowded spaces.

By this time the crowds had gathered and my experience at Tenryuji Temple was not so profound. It’s a very large garden with the main temple building in the center. It’s also on different levels; there was a lot of climbing involved, which I am proud to report I did. As I began climbing the crowds diminished, inspiring me to continue climbing so I could sit and enjoy the view without too much interruption.

Pond with lotus plants

Pond with lotus plants

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View from above, where I sat and contemplated. The angle of view makes it almost look like a Japanese print

Nine mile run, after a bad week.

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The bad week was mine. I started coughing on Tuesday evening and spent the rest of the week in bed, sleeping or reading. Finished two novels. I usually don’t have patience for that much novel reading, so it was OK.

This morning I woke up feeling relatively well, got dressed and with our newly normal December weather in the fifties, went over to Nine Mile Run. This is Zelda’s pet project and the reason I’ve become involved in the sewage wars. I decided I ought to see what got me going on all of this. Nine Mile Run is wonderful. Without my hearing aids the highway ceases to bother me, but it’s harder to hear the frogs. I took 42 pictures and plan to go back for more, particularly when it rains and I am feeling well.

Last Sunday I hosted the semi-annual party of the book collective (we make books  ladies). The highlight of the meeting is always an exchange of books. Since it was my latest obsession I made a book about sewage. It was a big hit. Turns out one of the women is married to someone who is working on the sewage problem. I’ve only begun thinking about all of this, but I have the feeling there are too many groups involved and no one is really doing anything. Too much politics, too much ego, too much vested interest. We need a strong, fearless leader, who probably doesn’t exist in Pittsburgh.

 

Chicago Thanksgiving

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I am sitting in a temporary rental apartment in Chicago with Robin and Steve and friends from New Jersey. Because of having the friends here I have this sense of displacement: I can’t quite believe I’m in Chicago, but I know I’m not in New York. I wonder if this is the beginning of senility.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Eli, Charna and three of his friends. The loft was much enhanced from its previous state that I saw last summer. The kids made most of the food with additions made by Robin and Ilana. We are all vegetarians (much more serious than me) so no turkey. I don’t miss it at all. The veggie dishes are much more interesting.

We flew in from Pittsburgh on Wednesday. I went to visit Betty; Robin and Steve went to the apartment and met up with their friends. Unfortunately, Steve had an accident and fractured a bone in his leg. So he’s on crutches and will be for the next three or four weeks. He’s having a lot of trouble sitting still.

Steve with bionic crutches

Good thing he brought work with him.

I’ve been mired in politics

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I can’t remember when I’ve watched so much television. I’ve also become enchanted with MsNBC. I didn’t have cable before I moved so never got to see them. Now I’m forced to have cable and they almost make it worthwhile.

I’ve also become mired in sewage, actually, sewage and storm water. Pittsburgh has big sewage problems. The sewer system is old and inadequate and the city and/or county have been fighting with the EPA for years. They finally had to get down to business, maybe just realistic. They are proposing something like the deep tunnel system Chicago has been working on for some forty years: deep tunnels and a three BILLION dollar construction project. Even if the project is implemented basements and streets won’t stop flooding. The tunnel project will store the runoff from rains as little as 1/10th of an inch, and keep it from going into the rivers. In order to prevent flooding the city has to embrace green infrastructure: green roofs, rain gardens and pervious pavement. Of course, if this was done, we wouldn’t have a need for so much tunnel construction. So, as usual with complex problems we’ve opted for the simplest, costliest, but hardly the most effective solution.

So what do I have to do with all this, besides trying to be a good citizen? Not much, really. I don’t have a basement that floods and I haven’t noticed my street flooding. The parking lot next to my building becomes a river when it rains, but it doesn’t affect me. I have a friend who is an environment lawyer and is active is attempting to implement green solutions. She’s been dragging me to meetings and my mistake was to start asking questions. This is probably the first of many posts about sewage. It’s actually a fascinating topic. I have to go to a meeting in 15 minutes. See you later.

Amazing what can be found on the Internet

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My writing class finished with me writing only two stories in the five weeks. The first was a revised version of my 9/11 story. The second needs lots of revisions. If I ever go back to it, I’ll post it. One of the suggestions from the class was to create a timeline, which I have started. Simultaneously I began going through two of the boxes I never finished unpacking. One of them contains calendars from as far back as 40 years ago. I have almost thrown them out several times, but can’t seem to do it. Now I am using them to fill out my timeline and then throwing them out. Enough already.

I’m happy to have some of the information. Unfortunately, I never thought I would refer to them and so used lots of abbreviations and cryptic numbers. In 1990 I frequently noted something called Iflp, or maybe Lflp. I suspect it was an exercise facility, but who knows. Another abbreviation I used frequently, OCWW, appears online: Off-campus writer’s workshop. So I’ve been attempting to write for a long time.

Another wonderful thing I found on the net, thanks to a member of the Pittsburgh Book Arts Collective, is this great video using an altered book.

There are more great videos on their website: http://www.mysteriesofvernacular.com/ All of the videos are short, perfect for my attention span. Some of them are interesting enough to make me want to see the entire piece. I don’t find much in video form that makes me feel that way.

School again

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My Osher classes began immediately after I returned from Chicago. Actually the Monday classes, Conversational Spanish, beginning class again, and something about Hamlet on film, began the week before to make up for Labor Day. As I went through the week I realized I had signed up for too many classes. I didn’t have time to do the reading or other homework. On Tuesday afternoon I audit another Japanese Art History seminar. This time it is about architecture. I’m not finding it so interesting, but I’ll hang in there. I’m bound to get something out of it.

I dropped my Wednesday class. It was supposed to be about three books of the Bible: Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. I sat through two weeks of Job and realized he was not giving me any new insight or new thoughts. Instead, I’ve been reading JB, the Archibald MacLeish take on Job. Much more interesting.

Thursday is another writing class: writing elements of your life story. I was off to a good start with the first assignment, but failed this week. I spent too much time listening to all the political stuff. It’s been a fascinating week, politically.

The Friday class is the most entertaining. Before I tell about it, I have to tell you I dropped the second Monday class, the one about Hamlet. I sat through half of the second class and found I couldn’t understand the Shakespearean speech and the British accents. It would be good if the instructor used the subtitles that are probably on the DVD, but I had too many classes anyway, so it was a good excuse to just walk out.

Back to Friday: Jewish Art in Paris (nineteenth and early twentieth century). Today was the third of four classes. I will be sorry when the series is finished. The lecturer is very knowledgeable in both the art and in Judaism, and tells her stories almost as if she had been there. She has been talking about Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Chana Orloff, Max Jacob, Pissaro, Lipchitz and several others. She has stories about all of their lives, their loves, their paintings (and sculpture), where the paintings are today, and in many instances, how much they sold for. Each lecture is filled with snippets of gossip, insights about the paintings, and photographs and some paintings I had never seen before. In addition, the lecturer is a picture herself. I can only guess her age; one side or the other of 70. She is beautiful; white carefully styled hair, flashy but fashionable clothing, (first week, white leather, second week, a kind of gold beige suit, today a sweater with a portrait of one of the artist’s subjects), amazing jewelry. She stands in high heels for an hour and a half, talking mostly from well integrated memory, but with notes available used only to verify dollar (franc) amounts and occasional dates. The high heels make me ache, but mostly she keeps me so involved I don’t think about it. A lovely way to spend a Friday morning.

Eleven years ago

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September 11, 2001, was also a Tuesday, a beautiful autumn day. My brother, Arvin, and sister-in-law, Carol, were visiting from Florida and I took a few days off to be with them. They were staying in a hotel about a mile from my apartment, which overlooked the George Washington bridge. We were supposed to take the boat trip around Manhattan, but went on Monday instead, also a beautiful day and not the predicted rainy mess.

I woke up my usual 5:30 but stayed in bed another hour or so, enjoying my leisure and looking forward to spending more time with Arvin and Carol. My constant early morning companion, the New York Public Radio station, was speaking calmly to me as I drank my tea and ate my breakfast. It seemed like a perfect day–until just before 9 when the announcer said in a calm voice, that a plane just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. I don’t remember exactly what he said. I think he expressed some confusion, but no panic, not until the second plane crashed into the other tower.

I don’t remember the exact chain of events. Traffic backed up on the highway crossing the bridge. Somehow, immediately, Manhattan was closed, isolated, no one could move and the congestion remained all day and into the night. I called my brother and found they didn’t know what happened, only knew the highway outside of the hotel was filled with noisy, horn-blowing vehicles. They packed up and left, only to spend most of the day trying to leave New Jersey in the other direction. No one went anywhere that day.

I was alone in my apartment, horrified and grief stricken–almost feeling paralyzed. From my terrace I could see all the backed up traffic, and in the other direction, the smoke clouding the towers twenty miles away. Later I could see the smoke and no towers, smell the terrible, chemical, electrical odor I have never experienced before or after. Much later, when people spoke about their fears of further attacks I realized my mind never went there. I dealt only with the moment, never thought about what else might happen. Finally, late in the afternoon, I got in the car and drove 5 miles west to be with my grandchildren. It took only 15 minutes to get to them. It took an hour and a half to get home; I lived too close to Manhattan.

This was my year to think about fear, or maybe lack of imagination. I don’t anticipate fear; I certainly feel it when I am confronted with danger. After the attack one of my Chicago cousins asked me if I was afraid of living so close to Manhattan. I thought about it for a long time and realized my only fear was of being hit by a truck as I made my daily trip across the bridge.

Last month I took that same boat trip. Here are some pictures of New York Harbor with the Freedom Tower rising where the World Trade Center towers had so dominated the skyline.

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On the way home

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I am in a motel in the middle of Indiana; alone for the first time in two weeks.  It feels strange, but I’m enjoying it. I always have mixed feelings about being with other people; I love it, but I also love being alone.

I spent my first week in Chicago at Sandy’s home and visited with most of my family and friends. All week I had the feeling my father was waiting to see me. This morning, I again spent time with family; feeling as I left that I was going to see my dad. Strange how I almost feel like I am revisiting my childhood each time I return. Here I am, the matriarch of the family and I return to childhood.

None of this happens when I am in Pittsburgh. There I am just another old lady, attending classes and still trying to organize my workspace.

Conversations

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We are supposed to be making art. That’s always the plan. We worked hard on Monday, a little bit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today we’re still sitting and talking. We know each other for thirty years or more. Somehow we never run out of things to talk about. Tuesday evening we went to a play on the other side of the peninsula, which faces west over Green Bay and gave us a wonderful sunset.


Yesterday, after working in the morning, we visited two galleries and a wonderful master gardener’s garden.