tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40185794507685153692024-03-05T21:25:19.213-08:00askingLeahAsking questions, gathering information and making meaningAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-66408406784024054212011-01-10T08:16:00.000-08:002011-01-23T12:58:36.053-08:00On the StreetI fell for it. Walking on Amsterdam, I had just passed an older man with a cane when he called out behind me “You dropped something”. I turned to look even as I felt that everything was yes still in my pocket. He looked at me to catch my attention again “You dropped my heart”. Oh, a flirt. Oh dear. He did not crack a smile. I wanted to keep walking; he wanted to keep talking. I tried to do both as I naturally speeded ahead. “Where are you from?” He asked. “Italy?” I answered, shaking my head and gesturing at the ground with my pointing hands, “No, here”. I know that with my dark curls and light skin I look exotic, at least Italian or Mediterranean, which is close enough. “Where is your family from?” “From Poland and Bulgaria”. I did not add that I am Jewish, which could have explained all. A quizzical look came over his face. “Is that near Africa?” He was making a joke, he said “I am just kidding” but he may never have heard of Bulgaria. I could have told him that I am often mistaken for Italian or Hispanic or Greek, but instead I thought about how much more ethnically diverse and evidently so my neighborhood used to be. I wondered about his background and history in the neighborhood, but did not ask. I smiled as he walked into a drugstore and I walked on.<br />He may have made my day more than I did his. I am at an age where being noticed on the street often amuses rather than outrages me. Yet a few days before I had found myself walking with purpose (and hence speed) in midtown in the evening, practicing tunnel vision. Suddenly I heard voices behind me, clearly raised loud enough to penetrate my defenses. Yeah she has those wide hips and she just keeps walking. Nothing is going to stop her. She must be a native New Yorker. Look at her. They went on in this vein for a while, making sure that I could hear; they must have been closer than I like to realize. They were certainly taunting and they sounded like they might be drunk. They thought that their behavior was acceptable. Or, they were just not thinking at all. It was an avenue crowded with tourists so I felt relatively safe, but at a different time of day I would not have. I thought about doing so but elected not to turn around to glare at them or tell them off – because getting my attention and/or getting a rise out me was exactly what they wanted and I did not want to satisfy them by falling for their ploy. I continued on, walking as fast as I could, but it took a while to put distance between us because the sidewalks were so crowded. They were probably behind me and invading my air space for no more than two or three blocks, but it felt like an eternity and the agitation stayed with me for longer, exacerbated by a string of minor snafus which may have been set off by my agitation. A bit later on I described the incident to a friend over dinner and I was able to relax after that. My friend was sympathetic but she noted that people persist in such behavior because no one talks back to them. I agreed but said I did not want to pick a fight at that moment. I am not fully sure that I made the right choice; I certainly would have alleviated my aggravation if I had said something or at least given them a nasty look. Choosing one’s battles and knowing when to speak up for oneself – these moments sometimes come at surprising times and in unexpected ways. They are especially charged when gender dynamics and/or feelings of safety in public spaces are involved.<br />So, in the wake of that episode, having the older man look at me through his large glasses and work to engage me felt almost sweet. His sense of allowance felt different, even though it may not have been. I may have felt differently if he had continued on the path with me for a bit longer and there had not been as natural an ending to the exchange. I started thinking more about what I might be projecting or emanating as I walked down the street. This is difficult, because I do not want to go too far in the direction of seeing myself as overly responsible for the incidents described. At the same time I am receiving feedback that I can still consider even as I filter it given the presenters. What do strangers see when they see me?<br />Comparing and contrasting these two incidents, considering their contexts and where they fit in the chronology of my life, reminds me of how much we bring to even the smallest meeting or interaction. In New York City so many of these moments happen or have the potential to happen every day it is dizzying and hence no wonder that natives walk fast and avoid eye contact. Yet sometimes our chance exchanges, such as striking up a conversation with a stranger, prove uplifting or even life-changing. I hope that I remain open enough for those possibilities.<br />©2011 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-81935636416206035972011-01-04T14:07:00.002-08:002011-01-23T12:58:06.869-08:00In the Neighborhood<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4XdZJUVU1Afzs2khifQr3Wjn0Z9yHj-k1mKFzndPRtarpYshgC8J9g0ni_hvrg4Jq1TXp-hYtMofdGensXhxGTF3IQmXvxuwCmIvxfrOke3eSwBN6uKbRd5fibIJ22TvuoCe0BoC4dU/s1600/estes+double+self-portrait.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 270px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558456407401765250" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip4XdZJUVU1Afzs2khifQr3Wjn0Z9yHj-k1mKFzndPRtarpYshgC8J9g0ni_hvrg4Jq1TXp-hYtMofdGensXhxGTF3IQmXvxuwCmIvxfrOke3eSwBN6uKbRd5fibIJ22TvuoCe0BoC4dU/s400/estes+double+self-portrait.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioYWjxwRH9UNlNjfzftc0Ckb2E-5609pfe3UwOYYKrBS7ZGmKPHp_npUI7RVTsT1TkVMLiOgXgQlCiyGchyphenhyphenwFDADOxA9ZUQpqAcUSO_w1XZ_Y3AIUAo7kAhMBbqvvqe6za7-kbV0zaftU/s1600/IBS+Blvd.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 258px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 258px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558456250877794498" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioYWjxwRH9UNlNjfzftc0Ckb2E-5609pfe3UwOYYKrBS7ZGmKPHp_npUI7RVTsT1TkVMLiOgXgQlCiyGchyphenhyphenwFDADOxA9ZUQpqAcUSO_w1XZ_Y3AIUAo7kAhMBbqvvqe6za7-kbV0zaftU/s400/IBS+Blvd.jpg" /></a> My former neighbor Peg texted me to ask for a photo of the sign on West 86th street which announces the honorary name of Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard. The Nobel-winning Yiddish author lived for many years in the famed Belnord, the block-big landmarked apartment mansion with courtyard, a portion of which is seen in this snapshot of the NW corner of 86th at Amsterdam Avenue. Peg asked: did he know your father?<br />Indeed he did. Beshevis, as I usually heard him referred to, was born in <em>Bilgoraj</em>, a small town near my father’s hometown of <em>Zamosc</em>. <em>Bilgoraj</em> is where my grandmother Hadassah Kalichstein was born and where my aunt Sonya lived with her maternal grandparents when a child. When I met Bashevis as a child he looked at me and pronounced “<em>Mir zenen landsleit</em>” – we are <em>landsmen</em>, from the same hometown. <em>Landsmenshaften</em> were hometown associations organized by immigrants here in order to bond with and help compatriots from <em>di alte heym</em>, the old home. True, we were of sorts, but it was really Bashevis and my father who were so bonded. They were from the same hometown area and vanished world and both had landed on the Upper West Side, both writers for the <em>Forverts</em>, the Yiddish newspaper that my father would later serve as editor. Roman Vishniac, the photographer whose iconic images of Jewish Poland just before its destruction were published in a volume entitled <em>A Vanished World</em>, also settled in the same neighborhood, living for many years in the building where I now do. <em>A kleine velt</em>, it is a small world after all.<br />And it is all the more so with our constantly evolving technologies. Peg and her husband Bernie left the neighborhood and building just over a year ago, setting off around the country in their mobile home. But I can stay in touch via cell phone, e-mail and internet. Peg is blogging their adventures: <a href="http://placesandplatypie.com/">http://placesandplatypie.com/</a>. We were floormates for over a decade, but only became good friends a few years ago when the building began a condo conversion. It seems <em>bashert</em> or meant to be that we would be neighbors since we were once before. For two years I lived a block away from them in Woodley Park in NW Washington D.C., their hometown. We did not know each other then but as there was only one main shopping strip, a section of Connecticut Avenue, I think that I have a memory – constructed I am sure – of seeing them on the street, their beloved pair of Blue Merle collies in tow. They are both tall and remain striking, even with their one current dog, the lovely Sully. When they left I was most upset that they took him away since he does not e-mail, but he is featured regularly on the blog and in photos that they send me. When they visited this summer Peg scolded me for not having a camera phone, since she loves to trade snapshots. Within a month my phone had died and I upgraded to one with the added feature. My first photo was of the building courtyard entrance and its latest changes, sent to them to see. They are both accomplished artists and photographers and have been charmingly praiseful of my efforts, including this morning’s special request. </div><div>The neighborhood of my childhood and current home is layered with the stories of many Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe as well as a number of layers of American Jewish history and evolution, not to mention my own history and childhood. Bashevis was known to frequent the outpost of Chock Full o’ Nuts which faced the Belnord across Broadway. In <em>Double Self-Portrait</em> (1976) by Richard Estes the window of that automat reflects both the artist and the Belnord across the street. (Estes clearly spent a lot of time in the neighborhood during my childhood. This image and others based on the area are at <a href="http://www.artnet.com/">http://www.artnet.com/</a>. Chock Full o' Nuts has recently re-opened a store in Manhatan, on 23rd street.) Bashevis was also a regular at Famous, the kosher dairy restaurant on West 72nd street that suited his vegetarian diet. On the same street as the Belnord and the Boulevard sign are two significant synagogues: one block east is the Jewish Center, a model synagogue-community center buildinf at its inception and a popular congregation today; two blocks east is the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the first Reconstructionist synagogue, founded by Mordecai Kaplan, who as a younger rabbi had worked at the Jewish Center. Peg was waxing nostalgic, saying that if she was here she would have gone out to walk with me and I would have known all the stories. Well not all, but certainly some. Thanks to my cell phone and its camera she was able to stand on the corner with me and chat about the project. Whatever the technology, it is still the human desire to create art, communicate experience and make meaning that helps us to remember where we came from and where we have been and then share these places with others. Sometimes it is the only way that we can go back, a phenomenon I saw so clearly with my father, Bashevis and Vishniac. People often help to hold places for us: their stories and language, landmarks, images and meanings. Today I felt a type of landmark, also a tour guide, reporter and artist, a historian of place and time, all on another normal day in the neighborhood. </div><div>©2011 Leah Strigler<br /><br /></div><div></div>Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-38806705962066144472010-09-07T17:29:00.000-07:002010-09-07T17:39:04.383-07:00Days of AweDuring the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we add a number of lines to the Shemoneh Esreh, asking for God to inscribe us in the Book of Life. To me these prayers have always spoken of the balance between our awareness of a divine power and our consciousness that we shape our lives and the world with our communications and actions. Odd, since these additions emphasize God’s actions, especially the ability to show mercy to human beings. Our recitation of these lines indicate that we believe our actions do have meaning and effect, at least when it comes to supplication. That we plead on behalf of the collective is evidence of our understanding that we are inter-connected and that our fates are bound together. Perhaps that is why we imagine a Book filled with names rather than more individualized acknowledgements of our fate. <br /><br />During the year following the events of September 11th, 2001 I felt that the world had been permanently suspended in a period where our actions determine our future. I continuously felt that the fate of humanity was being judged and that our thoughts and behaviors were contributing to that determination. I kept myself aware of this sensibility liturgically by continuing to recite the additions to the Shemoneh Esreh throughout the year.<br /><br />Now each time the season comes around I try to repeat this practice at least once in preparation for the High Holy Days. I use it as a framework for reflecting on the state of the world and of humanity. I wonder what challenges our future will bring and what mercy we can hope for, from the Divine Source and from each other. This year, 2010 and 5771, the anniversary of 9.11 falls on Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I hope that it will remind all of us of what we learned, at least for a while, in the immediate aftermath of that day. May our collective new year be filled with blessing.Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-81530811500540915412010-05-31T08:27:00.000-07:002010-05-31T08:30:30.625-07:00May FlowersI’m a city girl and so my knowledge of flora is limited by growing up amidst concrete. I did live (and still do) in a wonderful neighborhood bordered on both sides by huge parks, so the greening and flowering of trees and plants are familiar harbingers of warm weather for me. Still, I often forget how powerful the attraction of blooming things is. I remember once having no luck separating my cat from a vase of sunset orange tiger lilies; a usually fastidious creature, he kept at them until his face was covered in pollen that made him look like a child who had smeared jam across his face. I marveled at the call of nature as I lifted him away time and again. <br />A voracious learner, I am always disappointed in myself for not knowing more about the natural world, or not feeling confident enough in identifying plants, animals, etc. The truth is that I know many flowers from their use in perfumery, a long-time love. Poppy, carnation (my first floral fragrance favorite and still the most sentimental), rose, jasmine, magnolia, mimosa, iris, lily, violet, tuberose, gardenia, geranium, orange flower… all are well-known to me in distilled or created form. Separating the scent from the other sensory indicators of flowers is an odd thing to contemplate at the brink of summer, which is to me so much about color and light. But the perfumer’s art gives us the illusion that flowers, or at least their silage, are with us at all times, not just in season, and that is a luxury that keeps some of spring’s hope at the ready. <br />When I was in college I was the flower child or flower girl for the Kosher Kitchen – the titles were my own private joke, but my task for four years was to visit the florist on Friday afternoon and pick the flowers for the Sabbath dinner tables. I also brought them to the dining hall and arranged them in vases. This private perk allowed me to welcome in the Sabbath and the weekend with a few moments of communing with flowers, albeit separate from their natural habitat. <br />A few weeks ago I toured the city with friends and we walked the High Line, admiring the wildflower landscape and the backdrop views of the Hudson. Later, as we waited for their express bus home on a quiet stretch of midtown, one friend pointed out that the hyacinths arranged primly in a large planter were wafting scent our way. We moved close to bury our noses in the crisp, cool purple floral fragrance that broke the careful line-up. Spring had come. The other day at the farmer’s market with another friend we picked up a huge bouquet of lilacs for her Sabbath table. They were almost over-run in their lushness and their perfume overpowered an Indian dinner. <br />So I wonder what it is about flowers that most attracts you – scent, color, shape, their audacious or delicate existence, their ephemeral quality? What most signals spring, in all of its call to life and lushness? Which flowers most represent spring and the advent of summer? What do they tell you when they appear, out of season, in the midst of your daily activities? <br />©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-77232197129514967602010-05-10T12:19:00.000-07:002010-05-10T12:22:45.474-07:00The First YearI ran into a friend on the street Sunday afternoon. I had just been thinking about her, that I should send her a message for Mother’s Day, wishing her well and noting how hard it is the first year after a parent dies to experience such holidays. Her mother died only a short while ago. She had been walking with uncharacteristic fierceness, hiding behind large sunglasses (think Jackie O) and frowning. Our conversation changed her demeanor, as she lit up with wonder saying that she had just been thinking about her bad mood and realizing why she was feeling so blue. I also reminded her of how well she had cared for her mother. Smiles and good wishes followed; the sun came out and the wind temporarily died down. I kid you not, and the weather’s good timing had us riffing even more magical phenomena: rainbows and greenery and sparkles.<br />In Jewish tradition much emphasis is placed on the desire to do mitzvot or good deeds. In this instance the synchronicity was all but instantaneous, enough to make one believe in the Law of Attraction. I thought of the idea and the means of immediately enacting it appeared. Would that all opportunities for good deeds come rushing to meet us on our way.<br />Jewish tradition is wise to have mourners mark the first year after a passing, since it takes a cycle of special days – holidays of the Jewish and secular sort, seasons, birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations – to recast one’s life without the beloved but with memories of them. When my father passed away another friend, who had lost her mother even earlier, said to me that what I would miss most (as she did) was the conversations that I would not have with him. I think the same principle is in play here: the days we especially mark make us more acutely aware of the absences in our lives. We may carry people in our hearts, but they are no longer in our present and this is especially poignant at significant moments. At a baby ceremony earlier in the day I was reminded of this as well as, in keeping with Ashkenazik Jewish custom, the new arrival was named for departed family members who were remembered lovingly and with tears. There was tremendous joy too for this long-anticipated child and the future imagined for him.<br />For me Mother’s Day is a double whammy, since my father passed away on this Sunday twelve years ago. While the date is not his yahrzeit, the Jewish day on which I recite once again the mourner’s kaddish in commemoration of the anniversary of his passing, it is impossible to forget the connection. It was a sunnier Sunday and I was lucky enough to have a few friends who had come to the hospital to visit stay with me and my mother as we shifted into our new reality. How odd that a day devoted to one parent now forever reminds me of the sadness of losing my other parent and the power of community. Perhaps it is this experience more than the Jewish mourning tradition that makes me so sensitive to what my friend was experiencing. <br />There are many ways to close a posting like this, some sappier than others, but I think it is truer to its spirit to leave it, much the way absences of loved ones leave spaces to fill with spirit. <br />©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-84315295630216964372010-03-15T15:23:00.000-07:002010-03-15T15:27:27.161-07:00Bread AloneWith Passover only a few weeks away, I find myself craving bread; also pizza, but pasta, not as much and desserts, not really. It is unusual for me to be so focused on hametz; the excesses of Purim usually quell any cravings (especially for sweet things) and make me feel prepared for the freedom/denial of Passover, when eight days stretch far longer in the mind. Depriving oneself seems to do that, slow down time, quite effectively.<br />My best strategy for Passover is quite simple. I eat as little matzah as possible; usually a maximum of one piece once we have cleared the seders. I continue to eat foods that are kosher at all times: fruit, vegetables, potatoes, cheese, meat, eggs and nuts. I avoid as best as possible all of the fake “bready” foods, desserts included. By the end of the holiday I usually feel better than ever and each year I wonder if I could continue to live bread-free, all of the time forever more. How much variety do I need in my food anyway? And what exactly is essential about bread?<br />Man does not live by bread alone. The famous quotation seems absurd in that it flattens into the one simple term a stunning array of food items, crossing cultures, eras, culinary imaginations, different grains and an endless variety of additional ingredients. What culture or nation does not have at least one bread that is considered an identifying staple? <br />But bread of course is a metaphor for the basic physical needs of our survival and that is the gist of the Biblical citation. In Deuteronomy chapter eight, verses two and three, it says (I am using the Jewish Publication Society’s translation):<br />Remember the long way that the Lord your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to<br />Learn what was in your hearts; whether you would keep His commandments<br />or not. He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the Lord decrees.<br />The flatness of the matzah reminds us of the speed with which the Israelites fled Egypt. The learning that life is about more than bread anyway reminds us of the forty years it took those same Israelites to die out in the dessert, so that their children could be prepared to live in allegiance to their Lord, albeit freely in their own country. In each miraculous set of events the power of the divine is paramount. We humans are asked to be incredible jugglers, appreciative of the delights of our physical world while yet attuned to the gifts of God as well as to our own limits. It is exhausting to think about. It should be making me hungry. What constitutes freedom and what slavery? What serves as basic sustenance for you, your bread? And what reminds you that life is a gift symbolized by bread, the work, nourishment and creativity that we knead into it, and yet rises above it, into the ether like the scent of yeast looking to meet the airiness of enlightenment. When we are blessed, it rains back down on us in transmuted gifts. ©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-20757061968331868182010-03-14T18:31:00.000-07:002010-03-14T18:39:53.149-07:00Poetic Echoes<div align="center"><br /><strong>The Echo Of</strong><br />Night in an ancient city; I match your footsteps.<br />Walking alone where many have walked over much time,<br />where I have walked many times, where you…<br />Walking together with you.<br />And the aged stones of the old buildings hold<br />the wisdom of eternal time. They glow softly with<br />soaked moonlight and hold the night<br />for an extended moment<br />in which our footsteps leave a single echo.<br />What does this city know of us together?<br />More than we each know of ourselves,<br />A single moment glowing softly<br />that we let fall into eternity, hidden<br />among stones.</div><div align="left"><br /><br />A few weeks ago I shared with two rather new friends some poems that I had written in high school and college. They received a quite enthusiastic reception and one friend has been urging me to post my poetry more regularly. A lovely and most appreciated suggestion, especially since I fell out of the habit of weekly posts (a new year’s resolution) all too quickly. But all written pieces represent moments in time and revisiting old pieces that one has written is even more intense than rereading works that had been significant at earlier stages of life, whether difficult or beloved. In both case one re-acquaints with an older version of the self, but one’s own words are even more potent reminders and evidence of past life. Poetry, with its immediacy and bareness of form, can be particularly wise and difficult; this particular genre has been weighing heavily on me since I returned to it. <br />Two incidents account for this. The first is that an old friend came to visit and the visit was difficult. Actually, it all but ruined the friendship, although on account of my excessive acceptance and generosity (please read this as self-blame) I held my tongue and did my best to host. The danger in not speaking up became clear when as a thank you he sent me some poems written about his NYC visit, many based on observations that I had made. What are the limits of poetic license? One poem, dedicated to me, re-imagined my apartment as a servant’s room, haunted by a former occupant mysteriously murdered, the case unsolved. It made my blood run cold and I realized that this friendship was dead and buried.<br />In the mail this week I received my college alumni magazine, with the note that an old friend had died by her own hand. She and I had fallen out of touch a while back but I would occasionally run into her. I remember our last real get-together taking place the week that Yasser Arafat passed away; we sat in a hummus joint downtown and I translated the Israeli news blaring on the television. The media were following the story but an official announcement was yet to be made. She and I were good friends in the early nineties when we both lived in DC. Both transplanted New Yorkers, we delighted in taking long walks together (as few others did there) and sharing literary and intellectual conversation. Her death was announced in the papers and the news is three months old but somehow I missed it and feel badly, both about losing touch and for not knowing. I have been rereading her work this week as that is the only thing I can do to process and remember her. It is beautiful as ever but so much sadder; it feels rewritten in light of the future that had not yet come to pass. <br />Alas. I should bring up something positive. Poetry was an early love of mine and one of my favorite activities in high school was the literary club, which I co-directed my senior year, also editing the annual journal. At the time I was concerned not so much with the quality of my work as with the joy of the activity; I loved reading and writing and discussing poems. It has been such a treat to go back and re-read these pieces, recognizing myself, my history and my ability with delight. These are not embarrassing snapshots (why did I ever think that I looked better with bangs?) but rather lovely captures of key moments and knowings that have given me renewed strength and dedication to pursuing more such joyful and thoughtful creative activity, not to mention writing and communicating with greater sensitivity and fortitude. I am somewhat in awe of the voice of my younger self and wonder how she could have grown into one so much less sure. Time is a funny process, as is its companion aging. May they and all other processes and forces bless us with many opportunities to recognize meaning and beauty, both fleeting and eternal. <br />©2010 Leah Strigler<br /> </div>Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-46689174359243170972010-02-18T08:43:00.000-08:002010-02-18T11:05:35.270-08:00Regrets OnlyMy new favorite guilty pleasure TV series is a Canadian import from the CBC called <em>Being Erica</em>. Its second season is currently running on Soapnet in the US; episodes of season two are available on Hulu after broadcast, as are all the installments of season one. Erica is a thirty-two year old single Jewish Torontonian stalled in her career and life. The show begins with Erica, after a particularly bad day, meeting a mysterious therapist named Dr. Tom and agreeing to undergo therapy with him. Dr. Tom asks her to list all of her regrets and then proceeds to not just discuss them with her, but facilitate her travelling back in time to relive and alter the experiences and decisions that she regrets. Things are of course never as simple or clear as in retrospect; Erica’s revisits and subsequent reflections help her grow and gain understanding of both herself and the people in her life. Over time, we watch her change as she learns to listen better to both her inner compass and to those around her.<br />This series piqued my interest for a number of reasons as soon as I happened upon a description (I have sadly forgotten where I originally read about it); its humor and humanity have won me over as a true fan and I hope that a third season is approved for filming. <em>Being Erica</em> combines a number of elements that I love: urban life, Judaism, personal journeys, psychological reflection and science fiction. It is fun to glimpse life in Toronto, a central city in a country very close to but not quite like mine, which also contains young urbanites figuring out their lives, public transportation, cafes, pedestrians and street culture. Judaism is a key aspect of Erica’s identity – her father is a second career rabbi – but it never dominates the storyline. The way in which Jewish practice is included or remarked upon is refreshing in its normalcy and perspective. Except for Erica’s father it is a passive element in the lives of Erica and her family members. In many ways the series is an updated bildungsroman, but a coming of age in one’s thirties that has become typical of a certain portion of the population only in recent decades. I recognize it well from the vantage point of my own generation. Important too is the fact that Erica is female, which makes all of the elements that she is juggling that much more complicated. The combination of psychology and time travel may seem outlandish at first, but I appreciate the genius of concretizing the experience of reviewing one’s past which is such a hallmark of our psychologically savvy culture. So too is the realm of fantasy and the desire to be able to go back in time and correct mistakes. A number of more traditional time travel fantasies emphasize the danger of encountering one’s past or future selves for fear of altering (read ruining) one’s “real” life. But for Erica the game is just the opposite: she literally embodies her former self with her present thoughts and predilections, often with humorous results, in order to improve her present. One can imagine her ruing ever saying “If only I knew then what I know now…” as she has actually experienced such a paradox. Catch yourself the next time you say the same out loud in your own mind.<br />Inspired by the show, I started my own list of regrets. While it is a work in progress, bound to be both refined and extended, I have noticed a few patterns, most significantly how many of items relate to things that I did not do, missed opportunities. My list rang in my ears like a recitation of negative commandments – the Thou Shalt Nots that are all too familiar from the Ten Commandments, although I assure you that there are many more of them in traditional Jewish practice. This made me wonder about and question my own courage and convictions – both are qualities that Erica strengthens over the course of the series – and what I can do to live more conscious of the importance of certain moments and their significance, including imagining how I might feel about them as I look back at them from the future.<br />It is my sense that the show’s quality is in large part attributable to its being Canadian rather than American but I do not feel that I know enough to be able to describe exactly why. So I hooked a Canadian friend who grew up in Toronto but has lived in the United States for virtually all of her adult life. I asked her about my thesis and look forward to our discussion of it. As a comparison, one might consider the TV series born in Latin America and produced here as <em>Ugly Betty</em>. I first learned about this show and its cultural migration when Israeli cousins introduced me to their national version <em>Esti Hamechoeret</em> = Esti the Ugly. <em>The New York Times</em> ran an article describing the phenomenon (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/weekinreview/07rohter.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=ugly%20betty&st=cse">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/weekinreview/07rohter.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=ugly%20betty&st=cse</a>) when the American version debuted. Considering how often American models of entertainment dominate global popular culture, it is fun to consider one that came from elsewhere and has proven so attractive in multiple cultures. Regrettably, <em>Ugly Betty</em> has been cancelled and this season will be its last. Betty is another female protagonist who is strong and plucky, imperfect and endearing. Thanks to the internet the demise of such a show is not the same sort of death sentence as it was even a short while ago. May Betty, Erica and their entire cohorts live on and share many triumphs and lessons, past, present and future.<br />©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-59074826877462681492010-01-20T14:04:00.000-08:002010-01-20T14:05:52.275-08:00What's in a Name<div align="center"><strong><em>Leah (Weary One)</em><br /></strong><br />If all the world<br />were made of fire<br />sliding, shifting<br />blindingly hot<br />I would take shelter<br />at the edges which<br />chose to let some<br />night<br />slip through<br /><br />If all the world<br />were made of marble<br />cool, smooth<br />immovable<br />I would slip into a crevice<br />that curved gently<br />and pillow my head<br />on my arms</div><div align="left"><br />I wrote this poem somewhere in my teen years, earlier rather than later, maybe ninth grade? It was a response to the Modern Hebrew meaning of my name; although Leah is Biblical its ancient definition is unknown. Leah is not very popular either as a traditional Hebrew name (compare the other Matriarchs – Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel) or as a Biblical character. She pales in comparison to her sister Rachel, the wife that Jacob truly wanted and loved and the tragic heroine who dies in childbirth. Rachel’s relationship with Leah is contentious: Leah envies (must envy?) Rachel’s ability to hold their husband’s love and Rachel envies Leah’s fertility, a gift from God that the Bible states (Genesis chapter 29, verse 31) He gave her because she was unloved by her husband. The rabbinic commentators soften this tension between the sisters by relating a number of stories: Rachel offers Leah the secret word that will help her trick Jacob into thinking she is Rachel when at their marriage bed, while Leah prays for a daughter (after six sons) so that Rachel will bear two of Jacob’s twelve promised sons and thereby be at least equal to the handmaiden wives, already mothers to two sons apiece. Rachel is reported a clear beauty; Leah’s eyes are “soft” or “weak: (“rakot” in Hebrew, described in Genesis chapter 29, verse 17). One commentator, Rashi, relates that Leah’s eyes were so because she cried bitterly at her fate to marry Esau, as people would say that the two daughters of Laban were to be matched to his sister’s two sons, elder to elder and younger to younger. By this explanation one might infer that her life as she lived it, married to Jacob who did not love her, could only have been preferable. Leah’s history hardly felt happy and as a child I was not strengthened by the association with such sorrow. Also, I am named after my father’s sister, the one just above him in family order and one of three Strigler sisters who perished in Poland during the Holocaust. She had straight silky blonde hair as a child, so different from mine, and aquiline features with high cheekbones. This personal family history was also heavy and a reminder of the aunt and other family members I was never able to meet, but I was happier to have my name represent that heritage because it was personal, a legacy that I found important. By chance my Sephardic grandmother, who I knew well as a child, was also named Leah in Hebrew and so we were able to say that my name was also in honor of her and followed Sephardic tradition as well. <br />I prefer strongly to have my name pronounced the Hebrew way. It is often a bad sign if I do not bother to correct someone on this point. Star Wars came out when I was nine and did me a great service as I could reference the movie in explaining how to pronounce my name. I often get called “Princess” as a result but that I can tolerate happily although I hardly think of myself as princess-like, in any way. But having my name evoke some levity is lovely, a relief from the wearying consideration of life and legacies. <br />©2010 Leah Strigler</div>Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-52923326490069291762010-01-20T13:32:00.000-08:002010-01-20T13:33:49.733-08:00Resolutions and ResolveTwo weeks or so into the New Year many may be ruefully reconsidering their new year’s resolutions, even if only in the privacy of their own thoughts. A number may have already “failed” to keep resolutions and/or decided that they are too ambitious to achieve. These first days can be heavy with determination, often too much so. The fifteenth was a potent day astrologically: a New Moon and solar eclipse as well as the day that Mercury turned direct after its last bout of retrograde motion. A number of astrologers noted that it felt like the true beginning of the year, so one may use that as an excuse for getting a late start on the goals for 2010 and mark one’s progress from then.<br />I have a general strategy to suggest for dealing with the stress of falling off the wagon in regards to resolutions. It is one that I try to employ myself when I am feeling weak in resolve – or at least a rationale that I use in retrospect, facing my own shortcomings. Consider your resolutions, especially the ones that have you chafing, and choose to break them - some or all - deliberately. If you can I encourage you to enjoy doing so, relishing in the bad behavior or habits. It is OK. Show yourself that the worst can happen, you can wallow in the state of being only human. You can still return to your new practice, get back on the horse. You may find that you have already begun to lose the taste for that which you decided was not good for you. Or, perhaps, you might realize that your resolution is one that you do not really desire or one that you need to refine. By breaking your new rule at the outset you can test your resolve and strengthen it. By forcing “the worst that can happen” you can start again with a clearer sense of whether your goal is suitable for this moment in time, how ready you are to undertake your planned changes and what it will take for you to move forward. Maimonides is famous for noting that true repentance occurs when one finds oneself in the same situation and does not repeat the same behavior. His point is that one has to face the same temptations and not repeat the same mistakes. With him in one’s ear it might be easier to forego the ice cream, keep oneself from shouting or haul out of bed for morning exercise. This strategy of mine offers a variation on that scenario, with a more forgiving twist. We humans tend to rely on our foibles and feebleness in order to excuse ourselves when we fall down on our intentions or high idealistic standards. Much personal growth literature would counter such weakness or fallibility with the kind of advice that I am offering, albeit with the truism that one can reform at any time. All too true, but I would add that the importance of experience as education and the pull of one’s intuition suggest that being drawn to old behaviors may also be purposeful; you may have something else to recognize or realize from succumbing. So do so, enjoy it, but pay attention to what you learn about yourself up until that moment and the changes that are already underway. <br />I went to Barnes and Noble over the weekend and was surprised that the sale table of calendars contained none of the business-looking datebooks or planners that Barnes and Noble publishes. What were left were wall calendars and page-a-day ones. Were all of the ones that I was looking for sold out? I find that unlikely and so this absence is a mystery to me. Wondering about it led me to think about all of the different kinds of available calendars and how they help us shape the plans of our daily lives. What would one look like if it was focused on helping us measure our goals and desires, how much we see ourselves improving and what steps we feel we need to take next? Lately I have also found myself having myriad discussions about how to self-motivate, especially important for those of us whose work lives are not typical, an increasingly growing group. More and more I describe the importance of making fun, creating a game and figuring out what sorts of counting and accounting motivate you. Improving and evolving need not be a chore and it is a process I think well worth documenting, even if just to yourself. <br /> ©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-45037348093863516112010-01-09T11:43:00.000-08:002010-01-09T11:47:55.695-08:00A Certain SomethingI remember one day in the early 80s when I waited on the corner of 79th street and Madison Avenue for the M17 (now the M79) cross-town bus to travel home from school. It was relatively cold – everyone was wearing coats – and the bus was taking a long time to arrive, so the prospective riders grew increasingly annoyed. One woman finally lost patience and hailed a cab. The one that stopped was dispensing a passenger and the man took his time. The waiting woman became more and more aggravated at his slowness, puffing up and readying to yell or strike when he emerged; imagine the Big Bad Wolf getting ready to blow. I was attentive to the moment, sensitive soul that I am, because I was anticipating her outburst with mild dread. His business done, the man finally emerged from the cab – and when his face turned out he was immediately recognizable as Warren Beatty. I have never seen a woman’s face change so fast; she near melted as he straightened up, glanced down at her briefly but did not smile or speak and then started walking away. I do not remember exactly what she did next – I think that she took awhile herself as she was climbing in while trying to follow the movie star with her eyes. I too was watching him, as who could not. Even for native New Yorkers glimpses of stars are a treat and I was a young teen. Also, he was not just famous and good-looking but incredibly suave in his gait, a fair swagger. I do not know if he had any idea of how angry the woman had been; I believe that he knew the effect he had on onlookers, but I am likely projecting his reputation onto this memory. I well remember how tall he appeared and how square the shoulders of his coat seemed, matching his face and jawline. <br />This sighting remains one of my favorites and one of the funniest I have experienced. It came back to me as I saw a headline about the new Warren Beatty biography and the report that he had slept with almost 13,000 women. At the time that I saw him I had some sense of his reputation but it was pretty tame compared to what I later understood. I know that at the time he was quite at the height of his fame and handsomeness. It became clearer on that day just what the fuss was about in regards to his particular self. He was also a striking example of how attraction is not just about one’s physical attributes, however beautiful, but also about one’s aura and air. He had a certain something that was broadcasting loudly, even in the absent-minded moment on a street corner. <br />Part of the fun of this memory is how many ways I can spin it. I wonder what any male onlookers thought of the scene. I wonder too how Beatty would have behaved differently if he had decided to hold that woman’s attention and even return it. I muse over how celebrities pique our curiosity and devotion and that even with their domination of screens of all sizes there is something different about them when seen in person; it is sometimes more magical and certainly notable. <br />©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-19017667137037760272010-01-03T10:30:00.000-08:002010-01-03T10:40:08.293-08:00The Power of TenThe turning of the decade had me thinking about the classic and cliché application/interview question: Where do you see yourself in ten years from now? Where indeed? Today I am less certain of the answer to that question then I have ever been in my life. I should be petrified perhaps but instead it feels OK; I believe that is because everything in the world seems like it is shifting so. I am no doomsayer but I do have a more than passing interest in the New Age; I am finding 2012 a useful benchmark to contemplate, more manageable since it is only two years out and it is long familiar - I remember the stories and prophecies about the date from my early days of reading science fiction. <br />In a related vein then, I wonder as well where our universe will be in ten years, or at least our planet – I should downscale my goals and wonderings, since I do have the tendency to be too ambitious and macro in my thinking. The world, the scale of things, and the power of ten all make me think of the classic short film by Charles and Ray Eames, which was also imprinted on me in childhood: <br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z53wTtGGA0<br /><br />I am not sure why ten is such a powerful number, even though I understand how useful it has proven to us humans in creating counting systems for so many ideas in our world: years, ages, money and more. These things are the building blocks of our lives. In the same way that our bi-furcated bodies echo the dualities we so often notice, groupings of ten underscore much of what we are concerned with on a daily basis. As I embark on this new decade I want to keep this mystery about ten an open question, a thinking game and something to wonder about on occasion, no matter what answers have been given in the past.<br />Getting back to the interview question, we humans do tend to put a lot of faith in our ability to imagine the future and make it come true as we desire. But our lives, especially whole decades of them, contain twists and turns that make what we imagined seem suddenly or in retrospect impossible, unappealing, or beside the point. Without getting into any debate about the Law of Attraction, I think that part of the appeal of a decade is that it is still so far in the future that it seems like science fiction, a world that we cannot yet fully imagine and so carte blanche for us to let our imagination rip. Thoughts do become things but we need not be attached to all of them or hold them forever. It is sad then that in so many contexts where the question is asked the range of answers is actually quite constricted, a narrow band of what would be considered acceptable or pleasing. In my career counseling sessions I do bring up the question occasionally; most often I emphasize the irony of it or remind people that the point ahead in time is in reality a moving target, subject to revisions and romantic flights of fancy. These are personal lessons for me; I have experienced the limitations of holding onto both the past and the visions of the time to come even as they shift. A resolution for this year is to be more aware of how all is fluid and all is now. <br />On New Years Day a friend commented on the bliss of being in the present moment and how so much of our troubles stem from fretting about the future. This may be all too true, but if we would like our world to be here in ten years from now, in whatever form we may desire and presumably with humans still inhabiting it, then there are some things that we should be worrying about. Perhaps the power of ten can help here – letting us enjoy the moment (picnic in the park anyone? Well, maybe in the Southern Hemisphere…) while offering a way to remain alert to all that is happening simultaneously in the larger world and on other planes. A question of perspective, and framing and how to experience time; these are all good things to think about at the outset of a new year when we use our counting system to give ourselves a fresh start. Here’s to a decade of growing awareness, widening perspectives and multiple answers. <br />©2010 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-38053911944585609432009-12-29T10:43:00.000-08:002009-12-29T10:45:01.714-08:00I Know a PlaceThis summer, back in Israel for the first time in three years, I visited in Jerusalem with an architect friend who is similarly fascinated with the mix of buildings, history and culture. After coffee in a retro café that used to be a bakery we explored the city at night, first on foot and then by car. Do you have time to stop? He asked. Of course I answered. We parked and paused at a lookout, below the road and reached by a small flight of stone steps, a balcony with a serene view of the modern city, the ancient city above at our backs. Jerusalem lights are modest by comparison to my home town; its buildings are low and its streets quite silent in the dark. We looked on in our own silence for a moment. How could you ever leave? I asked. We held another pause, heavy with love of place. My friend let out a soft sigh. You hit it exactly he admitted with a knowing laugh. He was about to embark on a months-long visit abroad. <br />Before I left for Israel in June I ventured down to the Meat Packing District, determined to see the High Line (www.thehighline.org) the week it opened, despite the rain that plagued the city for most of the month. It was love at first step, somewhat surprisingly. I had followed the evolution of the project from early on, skeptical even while intrigued by it. Years ago I went to Grand Central Terminal to see an exhibition of proposed designs for the site’ one was a fanciful swimming pool. I love my island, alternate universe that it is, and know more of its nooks and crannies than many of my fellow denizens, although I recognize the large band of New Yorkers who proudly display and share their knowledge of their own personalized city kingdoms. The High Line offered everyone the opportunity to journey to the new and magical within this beloved and well-traversed landscape. What a gift. I have been back a dozen or so times, to take in the views and show them to various visitors and friends. It is my favorite new spot, a landmark of 2009; I wanted to claim that I knew it well as soon as possible and have others equally in the know.<br />There are many unexpected, detailed pleasures to take in. One of my favorite elements is the combination of the commanding view of the Hudson with the more intimate peeks into the surrounding buildings; it reminds me a little of the odd balance of scale that one experienced from the outdoor deck of the World Trade Center. I also love standing at the point were the path turns parallel on 10th Avenue. Looking north one sees a long view up the Avenue while looking back south one can catch a perfect glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. The neighborhood is a great mix of New York’s old and new, the gritty outdated industrial markers adjacent to and intermingled with shiny new design and fashion outposts. Most delightful is the anticipation of the next stages of the project, with further stretches of the path expected to open in the next few years - as if one needed such a reason to keep coming back. <br />I grew up on the Upper West Side and more particularly in Riverside Park. The Hudson is one of my oldest landscape memories and it never leaves me, even when I neglect it. The streets and hills of Jerusalem are as well and do the same. The best places do that I think: they stay lodged within us even when we force ourselves away in order to have the adventures of our lives. Somewhere within we are always anchored by the vistas that shaped us. When we yearn for those places or wonder if they have changed we can at least visit in our mind’s eye. <br /><br />©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-26985870452012302462009-12-29T09:58:00.000-08:002009-12-29T10:09:39.991-08:00My Father, HummingFor Mordecai Strigler, z”l*<br /><br />My father sometimes hummed to himself, while doing routine chores or walking or putting on his coat. He mostly hummed Jewish music, but not always. I remember this as a morning activity, a fresh start to the day and a show of optimism that for me was always all the more stunning in light of his personal history. He had a lovely singing voice and used to sing me Yiddish lullabies when I was little.<br /><br />The humming was also surprising because I usually thought of my father as a serious person, although I knew that he had a sense of humor that was quite wry and light, given to intellectual word play of a linguistic or logistical nature with a touch of satire added. As I grew older and learned how to formulate my own jokes we began to share this particular form of play, trading witticisms as we spun out our observations on a given topic. I think my father especially relished being able to use his voice to convey exclamation, surprise and other reactions. I later learned that he was admirably able to convey such reactions in his writing as well.<br /><br />Sometimes these witticisms would be based on text study. I studied with my father regularly, at first because I would ask him about the homework I brought home from my Jewish day school. I quickly learned that he knew more than my teachers and that his view of the text was different - more liberal but still studious, literary. Studying with him was far more intriguing and illuminating than my classes were. He introduced me to the activity of commentary by explaining that the text was full of conundrums and that therefore the rabbis were driven to ask questions, explore possibilities and find answers that spoke to them. These questions varied in different times and places. My father had his own questions, about passages that he thought were still opaque, commentaries that he felt had missed certain possibilities or allusions and tenets of Jewish belief that were difficult to leave unquestioned in the latter half of the twentieth century. We would discuss for hours, a discussion on the creation story leading to evolution and archeology, the nature of God’s ability to create, God’s attachment to his creations and fallibility. My father would often comment that he still had much to teach me.<br /><br />Thanks to our studying together I knew that my father knew everything, or just about. Certainly he knew about anything connected to Judaism or being Jewish - from the obscure text to the obscure Jewish actor or sports figure - and everything about Israeli and Jewish politics. I was a spoiled child in the following way: I knew that I could call my father with any question on a Jewish topic and receive information instantly; I happily relied on him in this way. Despite his instant recall, he always emphasized the importance of checking sources. He would say “I think it’s ___ but let me check and get back to you”. I think he enjoyed the variety of my questions, which grew out of my own studying, reading and later, teaching and working in the Jewish community. My questions would lead to long associative discussions reminiscent of Talmudic passages. Once or twice I was able to offer a tidbit from contemporary Jewish life that was unfamiliar to my father; this would usually yield a phrase that was the closest I remember to his being surprised: “You don’t say!”<br /><br />My father did not waste words, even in everyday speech. He was thoughtful in formulating his comments. He always spoke softly and carefully. The same is true of his writing; he was thorough and careful while at the same time incredibly prolific. His mind was always working and he slept little, I think as a result of the constant turmoil of his thoughts and questions. He was quietly but incredibly curious about the world and its people and had much to say about them. He would think, read and read more, sometimes while humming, until he was ready to formulate his thoughts in words on paper, writing late at night and early in the morning. I sometimes thought that night was one of God’s gifts to my father: quiet time for reflection and clear thinking, an opportunity to write down some of his many observations and ideas. Perhaps my father’s humming in the morning was simply the result of so much mental energy, his way of letting some of it escape as he began a new day of studying and observation.<br /><br />PS: I originally wrote this piece for the Yiddish Forverts, the paper my father edited, on the occasion of his yahrzeit (the anniversary of his death) a number of years ago. It has been humming to me to post it on this blog so I decided o heed its call and hope that it inspires me to return to posting more regularly. A News Year’s resolution, bli neder – I do not swear, merely set an intention. <br /><br />* zichrono l’vracha, may his memory be a blessing<br /><br />©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-45554333303414973702009-12-24T15:13:00.000-08:002009-12-24T15:55:50.988-08:00The Circle: Cycles and Seasons<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9Tz4m8ZNci4Ng8twwaK_MW07ZGhkUMXUMvfDAv-rdL2Qtjf5uIjfRX1P1u-RUiVHgaCjL64ogheg-RWcqNifKJfvSpRaTSSMto6KMhv4vQVgX4sKypne0W12FffjKsiQ_4KRN1zFqQc/s1600-h/BlogoramaAdvent_25.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 156px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418945175270596834" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9Tz4m8ZNci4Ng8twwaK_MW07ZGhkUMXUMvfDAv-rdL2Qtjf5uIjfRX1P1u-RUiVHgaCjL64ogheg-RWcqNifKJfvSpRaTSSMto6KMhv4vQVgX4sKypne0W12FffjKsiQ_4KRN1zFqQc/s200/BlogoramaAdvent_25.jpg" /></a><br />I thank Roxana for inviting me to participate in this lovely celebration of the season, its sensory, familial and festive delights. I wish all a Merry Christmas and blessed turn of the year and decade. <br />I am Jewish and grew up in an extended family that did not celebrate Christmas. Still, the holiday season has always been the dominant theme of the advent of winter for me. A lifetime denizen of NYC (two years in DC do not count) the cityscape is replete with decorations and events from early on in the fall – this year starting just after Halloween! – and I am ever aware that Christmas falls just after the Winter Solstice, when we are beginning to notice a little more light each day. Actually, it takes some time to notice, not just because of the subtle shift but also because once the festive lights (they are everywhere: stores, institutions, apartment buildings…) come down the whole world seems darker and less colorful for a good while. New York City is one of the most diverse places on the planet, so Channukah and Kwanzaa decorations and in the last few years Diwali has been coming into the spotlight as well. <br />All senses are inundated with these markers: the bright and colorful sights, the Christmas songs performed in all musical styles, the abundant textures of gifts, ornaments and wrapping paper begging to be touched, the tastes of holiday and winter treats and the aromas that they emit. I am particularly fond of two scents: the rich creaminess of eggnog (with that touch of alcohol) and the pungent sweet fruitcakes that my former super expounded upon every year, asserting that he really loved them. Roasting chestnuts are less common these days but they evoke my city childhood, a time when we saw a lot more snow. As a pedestrian I am most aware of the trees (and wreaths too) that are sold on city sidewalks in the weeks leading up to the holiday. They turn the streets into imaginary forests, with trees that angle outward and perfume the urban locale with the fresh dark green and dark brown of earth and plant. I have from childhood relished the magical escape that they provide and I still love to walk through these corridors of nature, even when they are full of people shopping. On the coldest part of the year it is a beautiful reminder that even in the city we have not completely forgotten the natural beauty of our world. It may be because of this memory that Sierra is my favorite of Roxana’s perfumes – because it echoes that sense of how trees remind us of where we come from. <br /><br />Please visit the entire advent series at Roxana's Illuminated Journal (and the rest of her site!) for a feast of remembrances, creativity and wisdom:<br /><br /><a href="http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/2009/11/adventure-ahead.html" target="_blank">http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/2009/11/adventure-ahead.html</a>Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-86494934269062655132009-08-24T08:15:00.000-07:002009-08-24T08:16:23.698-07:00Do the MathFor most of my elementary school career I was in the advanced group in math, which meant that I worked with a small group of classmates on advanced subjects. In the younger grades we usually received separate instruction from an assistant teacher. This changed from fifth grade on, when our small grade was divided into girls’ and boys’ classes. My group now consisted of me and one other friend. She and I were sent to the back of the classroom with the textbook for the following grade and expected to work on our own. If we needed help we had to wait, a lot. We finally hit upon the tactic of referring to the teacher’s answer book: we would look up the solution to the problem that had stumped us and then try to figure it out by reasoning backwards. At home in the evenings we would confer with parents or my friend’s older brother. I am not sure if our families quite understood how poorly we were being instructed.<br />In seventh grade our math teacher started us off by assigning us an enormous number of review problems covering what we had done the previous year. This bored us out of our minds and then annoyed us – why were we doing so many problems that were redundant rather than learning something new? You have to imagine the seventh grade version of this sentiment, coming from smart but sometimes sassy students. To our great good fortune this teacher had to take a leave of absence in order to have an operation. Not to worry – she was fine and everything turned out alright. But at the time her leave-taking brought relief to us, although at first we did not know what to expect. The school’s business manager, a former teacher, took over the class for the needed weeks. She paid attention to the two of us and noticed our lack. So she started teaching us algebra. When our regular teacher came back, the business manager continued to teach us and our counterparts – the smart math students – both in our grade and the grade above, boys and girls. At the end of the year all of us took the ninth grade algebra regents and did very well. It was a tremendous amount of additional work for this woman to take on and I remain grateful to her for doing so. She became one of my most powerful role models as a teacher, but not just for rescuing us or for putting in the extra time. She also shared with us some of her reflections on her teaching; this may have simply been who she was, or she may have felt more able to do so because our set-up was non-traditional. She told us that if she gave a test and her students did not do well her first reaction was not to fault her students but to critique her own teaching, to wonder where she had failed and how she might amend her current students’ understanding and do better in the future. It was mind-blowing for a teacher to share these thoughts with a student in such a traditional school.<br />In eighth grade we were not so lucky. We were given a free period for math, during which we were expected to sit in the library and amuse ourselves. We gave up our lunch period three times a week, bringing our trays upstairs to the classroom, where the new math teacher, a well-meaning but slightly awkward young man new to the profession, tried to teach us algebra two and geometry. We never got very far. I do remember one lovely interview with our new principal, who got up and demonstrated by walking the process of halving infinity ad infinitum or at least until one reached the wall and could go no farther. The joy he showed in explaining and sharing his knowledge won me over for good, but he had too much on his plate to teach us regularly.<br />My friend and I went to the same high school and both continued in advanced math classes. By twelfth grade, when I took AP Calculus, I found my interest had waned considerably as the material grew harder and my preference for the humanities grew. I think that my friend’s interest fell off sooner than mine, but we were never in math class together. Years later when I took a class in teaching math at Bank Street I interviewed my former study partner and was amazed to learn that she was rather anxious or even phobic about math. We met over dinner and she shared how tallying up bills and tip and such made her nervous. I am not sure what part of our experiences caused or helped this fear to grow, but it was touchingly sad. Bank Street wisely makes most of their students take this math course, knowing that my friend’s reactions are all too typical. In class we sat and solved problems, working with manipulatives and other tools, including M and Ms - no, not for counting but for exercises in probability and statistics. I still remember one fellow student exclaiming that she finally really understood fractions, how they worked as relationships. Leaving aside questions of gender, which are pertinent and much studied and discussed elsewhere, I wonder as ever about the ways in which our learning is shaped by experience, for good and ill. That includes the messages that teachers and schools give, whether intentional or not. That math is daunting and complicated.Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-28216422619463495812009-05-29T12:07:00.000-07:002009-05-29T12:09:03.952-07:00Bubbles<div align="center"> </div>I love blowing bubbles; it may be my favorite form of meditation. When I was a child and teenager I would sit on the radiator and blow them out of my eleventh floor bedroom window. I would watch to see how far they travelled, if they made it across West End Avenue; I would follow as best as possible to see how many floors down they drifted and if any made it to street level. My cat RJ was extremely curious about these light-infused, delicate ambulatory objects. At first he was perturbed by them – he would chase them and they would mysteriously disappear as soon as he got his paws (or a paw or nose) on them. After a number of experiences stalking them he seemed to understand that that was their nature – they disappeared as soon as they were touched. And so began the practice of Bubble Hunting, a great game between us, in which he would follow them watchfully, sometimes giving sudden chase, and swat them as late as he dared before they reached the floor and disappeared of their own accord. Observing him engaged in this activity brought me no end of glee, especially as I fancied that he looked quite satisfied after a session, sitting up tall and licking his mouth. I sometimes blew them at night, when they looked even more magical and evanescent against the dark sky. On occasion the wind would play along and blow the bubbles back into the apartment. <br />I also associate bubbles with Lawrence Welk, which my mother watched when I was very little and which felt as oddly non-hip or American as my parents. Those bubbles are black and white, as was our TV screen then; funny because in general I think of bubbles as timeless, not dated. I remember my envy of the huge bubble-makers, the ones that came with large geometric wands and platters for dunking them in the soapy water; those were brought to the park by cooler parents and seemed decadent and daring. <br />As a younger adult I have often bought bubbles, cheap bottles from the local drugstore, as gifts or in lieu of cards, especially for birthdays, a way to give others a package of wonder to take into further adulthood. I miss Penny Whistle Toys on Columbus Avenue, which for years parked above their storefront a mechanical bear who blew oodles of bubbles onto the street to entice and delight. <br />One of my college neighbors fell in love with bubbles with a Zen philosophical fervor. He could wax about them for a long time and his pace was languorous and worshipful of each orb; when he spoke about them his hand curved as if he was holding one ever so carefully. I still remember the glistening of the baubles against the Gothic buildings and green lawns. One day he was distressed to come home and find one of his roommates blowing huge groups of bubbles out the window with the help of a hair dryer. I understood both impulses: the dashed delicate nerves of the dreamer and the irreverent genius of the jester; I remember thinking that it was the kind of playful inventiveness that really could save the world, as could regular doses of such meditative, dreamy and pointless play. Purse your lips and blow slowly; see how many bubbles you can get out of one dip of your magic wand. Our own orb will wait while you watch for them to pop quietly, wetly dispersing into the atmosphere. <br />©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-84695698165423922092009-05-27T19:12:00.000-07:002009-05-29T20:36:48.826-07:00Left and Right<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr-t1-GT-Pt-LNLpNIsnao1MpU6EQ-mcKah25TiBaQsYhCZHRUyCC62mQK58TBUnSZx0LGrevqyIq21V2UYmNvH10j_BBnH5YhDvt2-d_bn2UDq4x7cpcdCnQf7IhyphenhyphengaJm4eD0840uh4/s1600-h/writing+pic.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340692485104950018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 150px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwr-t1-GT-Pt-LNLpNIsnao1MpU6EQ-mcKah25TiBaQsYhCZHRUyCC62mQK58TBUnSZx0LGrevqyIq21V2UYmNvH10j_BBnH5YhDvt2-d_bn2UDq4x7cpcdCnQf7IhyphenhyphengaJm4eD0840uh4/s200/writing+pic.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>I am a strong lefty, with a very large writer’s bump on my middle finger and a bend in my nail. Yet I type – very fast – one-handedly with my right hand, with only the very occasional aid of my left hand, usually not necessary but rather a concession to the idea that both hands should be employed at the keyboard. My typing practice without fail freaks people out when they see it for the first time, even when I explain how useful it can be: I can use my left hand to hold the phone, sift through papers and even once, on a dare from a colleague, eat lunch while continuing to take notes at a meeting. Taking notes is a much larger subject that I should revisit in a later post. Yes, I have been typing all of my blog entries in the way just described.<br />How did I come to do this? The evolution of my technique was doubtlessly aided by the fact that I am a pianist, so the idea of having each hand do something different was not foreign to me. Most importantly I came of age at the dawn of the computers’ wide-spread adoption in educational realms. All through elementary school I hand-wrote (and occasionally watched my father type on his Yiddish type-writer, though at home he much preferred to write by hand. This seems the appropriate place to mention that his hand-writing was incredibly tiny and neat, just as mine is – shockingly so in both English and Hebrew - see photo above) my work. In high school I did acquire a type-writer; my school realized almost at the last minute that my class could not graduate without a basic course in computer skills so they required us to take it during our free time; the classes below mine already had it embedded in their regular curriculum schedule and requirements. While sitting at the type-writer I developed the habit of flipping through my notes and drafts with my left hand so that I could write to myself additional notes as needed. As I did this I typed up my final versions with my right hand and thus the process was born. It continued when I went to college and went to the computer rooms to produce my papers for submission. I was not a great fan of the computer room and did much of my creative work elsewhere; this meant that I came to the machine with written papers in hand. I resisted buying a computer of my own until my senior year. By that time my habits were set and worked well enough that I saw no need to change them.<br />While I am perfectly comfortable with these habits and their mechanical ease I often wonder about the repercussions of my system in terms of how my brain works: if my right brain is dominant but not involved in the production of that which I type what does that say about my computer output? What of the general understanding that the left brain is logical and the right creative? Should I be engaging in creative writing by hand and only typing when I am producing copy for consumption by others? All of this musing is working on the assumption that my brain is wired typically; there are lefties who are left-brain dominant. I often write out notes at early points in projects. I also still keep a hand-written journal, as I have since I was twelve, and generally use it to process random thoughts and impressions of the day, something akin to the Morning Pages that Julia Cameron describes in her book <em>The Writer’s Way</em>, which I finally read only a short while ago. If attending a lecture I prefer to take hand-written notes as I listen; it helps me both process and stay focused. I can also write about other things if I am not sufficiently engaged by the presentation. If I am going to be preparing official notes from a meeting then I prefer to type and not have to re-do them later. Writing by hand is also appealing because of its sensual nature: the feel, texture and color of the materials and the movement entailed, much more elegant and languorous then typing. The sound always makes me think of the somber clicking of an old-fashioned machine that used to serve as theme music for 1010WINS, the main news radio station in New York, in the days when serious reporting would not employ any bells or whistles. I confess that until recently creative thinking did not come as naturally to me when I typed, but there are so many possible contributing factors that I could not be sure if it meant anything beyond an unconscious connection between typing and work as opposed to pleasure or expression. That dichotomy is also somewhat forced or false. Is my voice different in the two media? I think not really at this point, but it would be interesting to devise experiments to explore the question.<br />I always note lefties in my orbit; at Interlochen nine of my sixteen cabin mates were lefties, a shock but perhaps not a surprise at an arts camp. I mused that if I had returned I would have asked the camp if it were possible to poll the entire student body to see what the overall percentage was. Our current and a disproportionate number of recent presidents all share the trait. Life for lefties is difficult as many of the design details of our lives are fashioned for lefties: keys, doorknobs, etc. It is easier sometimes to learn to use one’s right hand, as my father was forced to do when he was a child. He ended up being ambidextrous, which may account at least in part for how unbelievably prolific he was. I did wonder this about him as well – was he in some way different when writing with each hand? He did type with both hands, but he never learned to use a computer. </div><div>Photo courtesy of Lucy Raubertas, <a href="http://www.indieperfume.com/">www.indieperfume.com</a><br />©2009 Leah Strigler</div><br /><div align="center"></div>Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-84146327952798500982009-05-25T09:51:00.000-07:002009-05-25T09:54:03.395-07:00Landmarks and LongingI thought up this title for a friend long ago and then regretted giving it away. It is especially perfect for a discussion about architecture and how it affects us. I am not sure when I first became interested in the field or in architectural history; I grew up in Manhattan so buildings have always been my natural landscape. Perhaps awareness developed because of the contrast between my native city and Israel, and especially Jerusalem, which I visited every summer as a child. In both places, wildly different from each other otherwise, there are layers of history to be detected in the scenery and in the memories which it evokes. This interest of mine remains an avocation and passion; I am wont to point out an interesting design detail or burst into impromptu sharing of history and trivia when walking the city with friends. A number of people have suggested that I become a tour guide and I think that it is a good idea. <br />Summers in the city I fed this passion in a few different ways, including volunteering at Belvedere Castle (the highest point in Central Park and where the park’s temperature is measured) and at the Landmarks Preservation Commission, where I scoured through buildings documents doing research for what became the Ladies’ Mile historic district. Later on I would work in the building that had once been the headquarters of Simon and Schuster (and which until recently housed United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism) complete with a little study on the mezzanine that was said to be where Teddy Roosevelt sat and wrote his memoirs. His reconstructed birthplace, a national historic site, is only a few blocks away. I took a class at the Metropolitan Museum with a member of the Commission and that led me to volunteering. That class was my formal introduction to the study of architecture. With class guest Elliot Willensky we analyzed the block of 82nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison, with the main entrance to the museum filling the view past the western end of the block. <br />My interests in museums dovetails here: Belvedere is an educational center and the staff there sent me to my first meeting of NYCMER, the NYC Museum Education Roundtable. Historic sites usually identify as museums and museums often make use of their buildings and especially their interior spaces to help shape their experiences and tell stories. One of my favorite features of the Metropolitan’s building complex is that there are glimpses in the current interior of what were formerly exterior elements. In college I took Modern Architecture with the legendary Vincent Scully while he raged against the proposed handicap access elevator to Cross-Campus Library, complaining that it would ruin the symmetry of the library approach. Walking to class one morning he tripped over some ice (it was a snowy winter), broke his leg and spent the rest of the semester in a wheel chair. He publicly acknowledged the importance of access over aesthetics, at least in certain cases. I also took Study of the City with Alexander Garvin and loved the complexity of urban planning and development but I ignored the call. <br />Anthony Tung left the Landmarks Commission and later wrote a book called <em>Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis</em>, with stories of urban centers that survive various kinds of disasters. It was published in the Fall of 2001 and I went to hear him give a presentation on it at the start of November at the Municipal Art Society. The audience was dominated by people in related fields such as architecture and urban planning; the feeling of loss weighed heavy in the air and made the room seem dark and stormy. It was still too raw to really feel that rebuilding was possible, but one story in particular stayed with me and gave me hope. Even though New York and Jerusalem are featured in the book, it was the tale of Warsaw during World War Two; it is the city where my father was located at the outset of that war. Local planners, there and in other European cities, took note of the destruction that war would bring and made plans for rebuilding afterwards. In Poland this activity was outlawed by the occupying forces, but engaged in nonetheless by professionals driven to see their city survive. In particular, architecture faculty at Warsaw Technical University preserved documentation, including photographs, of the cityscape to be used as reference in the future. Tung describes in detail the forces that marshaled post-war to recreate the city, mostly true to its historic form. I visited Warsaw a few years later and because I knew the story, but also because of my family’s history, it felt surreal. It was still majestic, if a bit too shiny still to be truly hundreds of years old. I have shared the story of these urban heroes often. <br />When I worked in the local bookstore, whose memory inspires longing as well, there was a pattern of people who would come in with a certain glazed look in their eyes, saying “I just read the best book in the world and I have to buy copies for everyone I know”. It was always Jack Finney’s Time and Again, a time-travel novel and quintessential romance with historic New York City. There are other novels that evoke similar feelings, but none with the same grandeur and satisfaction as this masterpiece, in which The Dakota, one of the crown jewels of the Upper West Side, serves as a crucial landmark. Beloved buildings appearing in the past and present serve as anchors.<br />The seeming solidity of buildings, cities and civilizations: they are signposts on which we hang so many messages about what we know, believe to be true and see as possible. They are examples of an artistic form that simultaneously contains past, present and future. <br /> ©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-7117663403948885012009-05-16T14:00:00.000-07:002009-05-16T14:01:22.713-07:00Small FeetI used to wear size 5, sample size, and life was bliss. I could walk into shoe stores with friends and make them jealous by trying on everything on display while they waited for the salesperson to return with boxes for them. Most of my shoes came from sample sales, causing more jealousy. In truth the shoes were often a bit too big but I made do; after all, shopping for shoes was easy and fun. Then one day, fifteen or so years ago, the industry shifted sizes, and what was a 5 became a 4. Some stores eventually stopped carrying 5s altogether. All this was to accommodate the vanity of American women, whose average sizes had been on the increase. I suddenly could not find shoes anywhere. I knew that a few far flung specialty places (and yes I know Neiman’s but they are not in Manhattan) carried size 4 but the trouble and the cost were added insult to injury after the halcyon days I had enjoyed. I bought no shoes for about a year and a half – can you imagine the torture for a woman in New York City? <br />Finally one day in desperation I walked into Shoofly’s store on Amsterdam (this branch is now defunct, but you can visit them in Tribeca; see <a href="http://www.shoeflynyc.com/">www.shoeflynyc.com</a>; also check out their hats and hair accessories) to see if I could find suitable children’s shoes. I found that I was not the only adult woman in the store shopping for herself; a new obsession was born. I became a devotee of children’s shoes, which are thankfully – at least in this city - chic and sophisticated, well-made, often European. My one dilemma is that it is extremely hard to find real heels, although low heels and wedges do appear. Also, there is a tendency for colors and designs that might seem OTT for the over 14 set. It is fun most of the time to have such shoes – from hot pink clogs with real wood to purple sequins on leopard print. This is all partly because I still love to buy shoes on sale and hence surrender to the serendipity of the hunt when most of the black shoes are gone. My favorite store is Harry’s Shoes for Kids at the end of the season (<a href="http://www.harrysshoes.com/">www.harrysshoes.com</a>). I walk in and declare my size (34 for the most part; New Balance for Kids 21/2 extra wide is my perfect sneaker size, determined by one of the wonderful salespeople here) and often submit to having my foot measured first – I can understand the skepticism of a salesperson who has not yet worked with me. But then they mumble that they will be back with whatever they have on sale in my size. I will try anything, almost, because I still have this lingering fear that I will never again find shoes that fit me.<br />I do have other shoe haunts, especially discount stores – Daffys and Marshalls (especially the branch in Harlem) have great shoe sections. I wish I could find an outlet that sells Stevie’s, Steve Madden’s children’s line, so that I could try them on before buying; they are available online. His designs tend to wedges and heels, giving me some much needed height. Once in a blue moon I do find adult shoes, the rare 5 or small 6, that fit me. Sometimes it is because of a company that runs small in their sizing, sometimes it is because the design of the shoe (think pointed toe) makes extra length workable. Lately as I have explored Williamsburg I have found two pairs of wedges and a pair of fabulous black heels – Lucy’s advice about the last was that I should buy them and wear them frequently. <br />The other day I took a long walk in a pair of very comfortable but absurdly colorful sneakers: lilac-silver suede edged in Barbie pink plastic. I bought them in part because they are so over the top. On Park Avenue a young woman and admired them and pointed them out to her companion. She was a toddler and showing them to her mother. I commented that her patent Mary Janes were in my favorite color, a deep burgundy. <br />These days I usually boast about how small my feet are - on occasion I even display them - in order to talk about shoes and how I shop. People also will notice them before I say anything and make hilarious remarks; one of my favorites of all time was the colleague, whom I had known for years, who exclaimed with new awareness “How do you stay balanced on those”? I sometimes up the ante by saying that my parents bound my feet when I was little. I cannot believe that people fall for it. As both ancient tradition and sizing practices attest, small feet are a sign of beauty, and beauty is not always practical. My shoes rarely make me feel beautiful in the sense of being elegant but they usually make me feel happy and support me well when I walk. Together with my feet they keep me feeling youthful and playful as I get farther away from being one of those customers who scores a balloon at the end of a store visit. <br />©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-8488323816399855482009-05-16T13:32:00.000-07:002009-05-16T13:34:39.143-07:00Blogs and Other Fabulous ThingsMy friend Lucy of www.indieperfumes.com has graciously made note of askingLeah in her listing for the Your Blog is F@*%^&# Fabulous! Award and I am honored, especially as such a newbie to the blogosphere (a word that I know is becoming out-dated). So now in turn I am acknowledging five favorite blogs:<br /><br /><em>Drunken Corpse</em>: Charlie’s Blog Academy meetup is the final push that got me to actually start this blog and I am grateful for her energy, encouragement and extroversion. Enjoy her smart and sassy take on media, current events and the world. www.drunkencorpse.com<br /><em>Places</em>: Peg and her husband Bernie (and their collies) are neighbors, friends and inspiration for the kind of traveler I would like to be. They are ceaseless adventurers and artists and this blog is laying the groundwork for chronicling their further adventures travelling around the country in their new SUV. Their wonderful photography illustrates every step… www.places.typepad.com<br /><em>Roxana Illuminated Perfumes</em>: Roxana is an exquisite artist, perfumer and writer. Follow her botanical creations and illuminating reflections: www.illuminatedperfume.com and click on “buzz and blog”.<br /><em>StorySpiral</em>: Many kudos to Nadya Peeva who has created an amazing community of seekers interested in imagining a new future with different stories, ideas and inspiration to action. Look for the group on <a href="http://www.meetup.com/">www.meetup.com</a> and learn more at http://storyspiralblog.com<br /><em>Vetivresse</em>: Christopher Voigt’s wide-ranging intellect and areas of expertise make his perfume blog exceptionally erudite and enlightening. www.vetivresse.com<br /><br />Five addictions that I have beyond perfume:<br /><br />Books: I have been addicted to reading for as long as I can remember. I love to own books and reread my favorites; this is my largest and most beloved collection by far, the dominant design element in my apartment. <br />Shoes: Subject for a future post, but I have small feet and buy children’s shoes almost exclusively. Since finding shoes that fit is not easy it has become an obsession and great pleasure when the hunt is successfully completed. Good shoes are also essential for addiction #4 below.<br />Journaling: I have been keeping a journal since receiving one as a gift in middle school. I have piles of completed ones and love finding beautiful blank books that I can turn into journals. I usually write daily and when I fall out of practice I feel the difference in my thinking and muscles. <br />Walking: My most favorite form of meditation and really of existing: exploring terrain either familiar or new, feeding my eyes while my thoughts roam and moving to clear out all the accumulated energy. <br />Music: an instant mood-changer and energizer, it is off how often I forget how happy music makes me. I must have been a musician in at least one former life, probably in medieval or Renaissance times. <br /><br />Rules for this Award series:<br /><br />You pass it (the award) onto 5 other fabulous blogs in a post.<br />You list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.<br />You copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post. (Below)<br /><br />Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. Also, don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.Ask Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-38429355466616392642009-05-10T07:34:00.000-07:002009-05-10T07:35:10.278-07:00Choosing a Piano TeacherAt Interlochen (see New York City State of Mind, posted in March) piano students chose teachers individually. On one of the first days all the piano teachers held hours at their studios, located off of one great hall, in order to meet with students and sign them up for lessons. The more popular ones held auditions. I was new so I asked around for recommendations and promptly got myself on line for the most mentioned, a teacher I’ll call Maestro. While I was waiting I had someone hold my place so that I could go around and see some of the other teachers; I met a few, included a man who I think of as the Composer because he was one as well. I attended a performance he gave of some of his own pieces, which used hands and arms as well as fingers on the keyboard. A teddy bear of a man, he had a quiet but thoughtful manner. I returned in time to perform for Maestro, who listened to me play and then barked “I can fit you in on Friday at 8 AM”; I said yes of course. I felt quite honored that he would take me on, given all of his others students and that I was a new camper, too old to develop a years-long relationship with him. But I left with a bad feeling in my stomach. I knew that this would likely be my one summer in residence and I wanted it to feel right. So I went to Composer, signed up, came back and thanked Maestro but said that I had chosen to study with someone else. That summer was bliss; I was introduced to new composers and performed in a master class and was relaxed enough that I never worried about competition or whether I was progressing in any way beyond my own internal compass. This was a luxury that my friends in orchestra and band, who faced weekly seat challenges, could not afford. And it was going to be a way of life for those who aspired to professional careers in music; I already knew that was not compatible with my Jewish observance, but I also knew that I liked people too much to spend six hours or more each day seated at the keyboard. Freed from the yearning to “make it” as a pre-professional, I was able to absorb everything the place could offer me with fretting. Composer was true to his nature as a teacher: gentle, even–keeled, open in sharing his wisdom and guidance. No barking. <br />Towards the end of the season I ran into Maestro in a small clearing along one of the pathways near main camp. He acknowledged me, stopped and asked how my summer had been. I do not remember what I said, but I think that I smiled and assured him that it had been good as indeed it had been. I was trying not to gape; I had immediately understood that I was recognizable because I was probably one of the few (only?) students who had declined to study with him. The respect he accorded me as a result was a tremendous gift and mark of his greatness; I wish I could say as much of others I have disappointed or ruffled. To this day I wonder what, if anything, he learned from it. And I do wonder what I would have learned from him, even though I have no regrets about my decision. <br />Just over a year later I found myself auditioning again, this time for a piano teacher at college. I was a freshman just starting and I only wanted half-hour lessons to start, but I was good enough to be matched with a professor. He was fresh from completing his doctorate, sweet but quiet in a way that held little wisdom as of yet. One of the first pieces that he assigned me included a passage very difficult for my small hands (my span is basically an octave, a bit more if I stretch hard) and it was painful. Respectful of his methodology, I brought him a piece with a similar passage that I had studied with my childhood teacher back home and explained how we had adjusted the fingering for my hands. I asked if we could do so with this new piece as well. My teacher was non-plussed, laughed nervously and said that I should continue as set out originally. I quit lessons soon after and did not return to them ever again. For a long time I practiced on my own, but between the pulls of college life and the lack of a teacher or a professional goal, I found my interest atrophying. Those who knew me when I was young are sometimes shocked because they think of me as a serious pianist.<br />Growing up I had the great good fortune to have an amazing teacher at Hebrew Arts School (now Lucy Moses School: http://kaufman-center.org/lucy-moses-school), where I took lessons, and two great teachers at Usdan (www.usdan.org), an arts day camp on Long Island. All of them were assigned to me and all were demanding but they were also thoughtful and themselves open to learning new things. All of them understood me and knew when to push me and when to let me grow on my own. This post does not do them justice, so I will plan a revisit. But I need to add here that they set the bar extremely high and led to my being a very particular student. Perhaps I did not give the Maestro or the young professor enough of a chance, but I had little tolerance then for a teaching partnership that did not feel right. I also had more moxie and self-conviction. I still rarely practice piano, although over the years two of my old teachers have asked for me to play for them. I am too embarrassed, but I do hold onto the goal that one day I will be able to revisit those partnerships and again study music with them. I need to practice first… <br />© 2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-227477182377974902009-05-07T09:37:00.000-07:002009-05-07T09:38:31.221-07:00Idiot BoxI rarely watched TV as a child; I missed most of the 1970s hits, although I was aware of them. I have a flash memory of standing in the gym in my elementary school, in line for some equipment, and not being able to add to the conversation about the previous night’s episode of The Bionic Woman. The homework load of a yeshiva day school education coupled with two hours of piano practice each night left very little time for such activities and when I had the time I preferred to read. Many years later when I moved into my own apartment I was so removed from the idea of TV that I hardly thought before I decided to not buy one; I also did not buy a VCR – I have now bypassed this technology completely - or a cable subscription. I reasoned that it would save me a lot of money and wasted time. A friend’s boyfriend was so incensed to learn of my TV-less state that I quipped that if it bothered him so he could get me one. A few weeks later I received a small black and white, encased in colorful plastic like an Apple machine from the turn of the century. It came in time for me to watch the breaking news about the recount of votes in Florida. I kept it unplugged on a shelf but it took it out one morning in September after hearing on the radio the first report that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. I saw the first footage and thought to myself that the subway would be backed up and I had better take a bus to work. I saw comparatively little of the endless loop that that story would become. It was only the news that really made me feel like I was missing out on anything, and of course I was, for media is a critical tool of popular culture in our society. Oh, I eventually gave away that little model - sorry Don – maybe because of the associations with that morning report but mostly I think because I wanted color TV if any at all. <br />These days, not so much farther in the future, thanks to computers with DVD players and to the growing amount of video on the internet I have the ability to procrastinate by browsing through a treasure trove of shows (and movies) from my youth and beyond. This is a terrible admission from someone who has long prided herself on not owning a TV. And I need to clarify: I watched little but I did choose to see some things that were significant influences. Hill Street Blues appeared when I was in middle school and I was rapt; I followed it religiously. Much has been written about the show’s innovations and importance, how it was unlike anything else broadcast until its time, gritty and fast and complicated, with continuing storylines and a large ensemble cast. Watching the first two seasons again (I am stuck in the third season at the painful moment when an old Jewish man is threatening to jump from the roof rather than be evicted from his apartment) I was amazed at how practically every shot and line were imprinted somewhere in my memory; it was the oddest form of déjà vu, with the consciousness and realization of how deeply these episodes were imprinted on me. Today I see that some of it is silly – to be fair, much of intentionally – and that some of it is dated. But it is still breath-taking for all of the risks that it took, for all of the tough narrative turns and for how human it made its characters. <br />I was also a huge fan of PBS and when Brideshead Revisited appeared I became obsessed. I saw each episode at least three times. One friend gave me an old-fashioned jointed teddy bear that she named Aloysius for me. This summer another friend gifted me (for my birthday) the whole series on DVD and I spent one weekend dreamily immersed in that grey landscape, heavy with history, marveling once again at the gorgeous settings, acting and ennui. The DVD set came with bonus features, including a number of those involved in the production commenting on how unique an enterprise it was, with thirteen hours given over to the adaptation of a single novel, a particular gift for the actors. I have not yet seen the recent remake in part because it is so radically short, that is the length of a regular movie. I hope that you are humming the theme music of one of these series to yourselves as you read. For a while I had the following quote from Sebastian as a message on my answering machine; it was particularly appropriate for graduation week, although one caller protested that it was too sad. He says it to Charles during an early escape that they take, while they are lying in the grass post-picnic: “Just the place to bury a crock of gold. I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable I could come back and dig it up and remember.” It now seems to me that this is exactly what our favorite old shows and movies do for us: we revisit them but we also revisit ourselves when we first watched them. Even better, as long as the video is playing we get to travel back in time as well, pretending that we are once again viewing from the vantage point of our younger selves. <br />©2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-3324814690261748962009-05-06T11:21:00.001-07:002009-05-06T11:21:40.485-07:00The Tremor in His Right HandMy favorite book of all time is a young adult novel by Ellen Raskin, a well-known illustrator who wrote four “puzzle-mysteries,” or novels for older readers, before she passed away, of illness, at age fifty six in 1984. The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues is not as famous as The Westing Game, which won the Newberry Medal in 1979, nor as playfully memorable as The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel). Both of these have opaque one-liners and references that true fans know by heart. One friend at college would trade these with me as greetings: “purple waves,” or “Grown a mustache. It’s red!” I used to be able to recite the glub-blubs. The last novel, Figgs and Phantoms, is more oddly mysterious in its exploration of death and afterlife. Raskin was from Wisconsin, which features prominently in Leon I Mean Noel, and the University at Madison has an online compendium of state authors and illustrators. Raskin is one of the authors included and her page contains archival material such as the manuscript of The Westing Game and an audio recording of a presentation in which she discusses The Westing Game, with comments along the way on her other “books without pictures” and the process of her work: <a href="http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/authors/raskin/main.htm">http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/authors/raskin/main.htm</a>. It is curious to me that in this speech she says little about the plot of my favorite novel, although she does confess that the house depicted (in Greenwich Village) is hers. She also shares that the core idea that birthed the book was art, a subject not covered in the previous two mysteries. I wonder if her reticence to talk about it stems from its closeness to her primary profession as an artist. <br />As a child I loved all of these books, but The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues is the one that I continue to read annually to this day. The book’s protagonist is Dickory Dock, a determined and naïve young art student. She takes a job working for Garson, a successful portrait painter for the wealthy; he comes across as callous and superficial but has much to hide. He finds his employee cum apprentice more astute than he expected. Each learns from the other and by the end of the book the lives of both have changed significantly. Through a series of cases in which they aid the New York City Police Department, a gig Garson scores by boasting at a party about his abilities, the two of them hone their skills of observation and perception - seeing through the masks that people routinely employ by solving crimes. <br />Garson is obsessed with costumes, which are tools of his trade as he dresses up his subjects in suitable roles. The title of my post refers to one of the many teaching games that he plays with Dickory: he routinely shows up to his own house disguised, but Dickory always recognizes him. Her most compelling explanation as to how she does so is to note the tremor in his right hand. Garson’s persona is highly constructed; his uncontrolled tremor seems to represent his real self and/or artistic genius, a quality that he can never fully hide. <br />I return to this book for many reasons. Certainly I am touched by the sympathetic portrayal of an artist tortured by the truths disclosed in his work. Also, I am moved by the development of the mentor-mentee relationship in which the student, a scrappy New Yorker with her own ghosts, helps her teacher move beyond his own blocks and burdens. [In another game Garson asks Dickory to describe people in one word; his for her is haunted]. The author has, in the guise of a playful book, managed to explore profound issues of truth, art, humanity and identity. I should add that because the emphasis is on portraiture, the focus is on how people present themselves and perceive each other, which means that in the end it is about relationships and how our beliefs about ourselves and each other can keep us from true to ourselves as well as connecting with others. I can no longer remember how much of this I “got” on my first read, but it was enough to keep me coming back. I love too that in the end it is the brutal honesty that the artist so fears that turns out to make everything right, or almost. I would share my favorite line, but it would give everything away. A tension in this post is that I do not want to tell the entire plot, but know that the book is out of print. I have made paper copies in order to share it with others and own two editions, the hard cover a most thoughtful gift from a friend; they never leave my home. <br />While Raskin, Garson and Dickory are all artists, words are equally important and just as useful in covering and uncovering insights. In the recorded talk Raskin remarks on how she thinks of herself as an artist rather than a writer; I wonder how the interplay of these talents might have developed further if she had lived a longer life. As the body of her work makes evident, her unique gifts blended together brilliantly. <br />© 2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4018579450768515369.post-82980409444768045422009-04-30T12:09:00.000-07:002009-04-30T12:13:00.163-07:00MoonlightWhen I was a tiny baby Cynthia, who was very pregnant with her son, stopped one of my parents on the street – I have heard both versions of the story – to remark on what a beautiful baby I was. A neighborhood friendship ensued, in which I played with her son in the park and also attended the nearby day care where she worked. I have vague halcyon memories of that time, including picnics by the Hudson and reading <em>Fantastic Mr. Fox</em> by Roald Dahl. When I was in first grade we moved eight blocks downtown and lost touch with her and her family. At some point my mother ran into her and learned that she had divorced and remarried. In truth, I forgot her as I grew up and became immersed in school and other activities. In high school I baby-sat for my neighbors. One day I was looking for a book to read to my charge and found Fantastic Mr. Fox on the shelf. My memory flooded back and I wondered what had happened to her. That is when I asked my mother, who did not remember her new last name.<br />In college I worked at Shakespeare and Company (may it rest in peace) the great local independent bookstore. One day I was sitting at the bag check station when a woman came up to me, stared and asked “Are you Leah? You have an unforgettable face”. It was about fifteen years later and Cynthia had recognized me. She looked different, mostly heavier from a bout with illness, but her German lilt and smile were familiar. She gave me her card – she was now an astrologist – and we proceeded to be in touch. She often sent me sunny letters decorated with fun stickers, often with typed messages.<br />It was from Cynthia that I first learned in-depth about astrology as well as other New Age concepts. At the time I was not interested in the subject area at all, but I listened and took it all in. The personal growth section of the bookstore was one that staff members often made fun of, in part because we fancied ourselves intellectual and it was so popular. Although I never read anything from it I absorbed the titles of many of the more requested books, effortlessly storing in my brain a list of future classics: <em>You Can Heal Your Life</em> by Louise Hay, <em>Many Lives, Many Masters</em> by Brian Weiss, <em>Creative Visualization</em> by Shakti Gawain and many more. Cynthia never cast my chart but she did explain a number of terms to me: Sun, Moon, Rising Sign, (mine are Leo, Caner and Aries, respectively) Houses, Angles and so on. Today you can cast your own chart online: try <a href="http://www.astro.com/">http://www.astro.com/</a>; you will need your exact birth time in order to learn your rising sign. We continued to remain in touch for over a decade, waxing and waning, especially as she struggled with further health issues. As she grew unwell I was often wary of overtaxing her and so heard from her less often and we drew apart.<br />The year that I started my doctoral program Cynthia passed away, something that I did not learn immediately, so I did not attend her funeral or say goodbye in any formalized way and this saddened me greatly. I was mad at myself for not being in close enough contact to know of events as they unfolded. I also began reading personal growth, in spades, shocking myself and at first causing tremendous self-consternation. What was the cause? Perhaps it was because I had lost a spiritual muse, or I might have been rebelling against the over-intellectualized world of academia. I might have been swerving into early mid-life with a desire to explore inner realms in a new way or I may have been answering an intuitive attraction that had always been there but gone unheeded. In any of these cases I do wish that I had been able to talk to Cynthia these last few years, to go back and ask her further questions about astrology, her beliefs and related topics. As some consolation I have the knowledge that her family is prospering; her daughter no longer lives in New York but one sunny day I found her sitting on a bench in Riverside Park, site of those long-ago picnics and playdates. I also have the internet, with no end of material for browsing. I imagine what Cynthia could have done with her own website, the colors and illustrations that she would have gleefully included. And every time I read a horoscope or explain an astrological concept to someone or watch myself as I integrate these layers of exploration into my knowledge bank and sense of self I think of it as an homage to her and thank her for expanding my horizons. (Your rising sign, by the way, is the constellation that appeared on the horizon when you were born). The name Cynthia is Greek for the moon and is of course an alternate name for Diana, the moon goddess. I used to think of Cynthia as moonlight in my life, the mystical light that comes at nighttime. But in truth she is more like a sun, a shining adult presence that lit up both my childhood and my early adulthood. It guides me still.<br />Astrology is an ancient knowledge system and that has always fascinated me as well. I often picture people in ancient times, unable to sleep, perhaps sitting by a fire, trading stories and staring up at the stars in the great heavenly expanse that must have looked ever so much more mysterious and powerful then it does to us today. Jewish culture has a number of astrological references, but most people do not realize the connection: “mazal tov” literally declares that an event has occurred under a good star. We wish that a child be born “b’sha’ah tovah” – at a good hour. Whether one believes in astrology or not, it is a system of understanding that is striking in how it helps humans capture our way of seeking meaning while feeling small in the grand cosmos, wondering about our lives on earth and recognizing the moments of brightness that grace our existence.<br />Some interesting astrology websites: <a href="http://www.planetwaves.net/">http://www.planetwaves.net/</a>, <a href="http://www.yasminboland.com/">http://www.yasminboland.com/</a>, <a href="http://www.cainer.com/">http://www.cainer.com/</a>, <a href="http://www.astrostyle.com/">http://www.astrostyle.com/</a>, <a href="http://www.astrologyzone.com/">http://www.astrologyzone.com/</a> to name just a few. The publishing company <a href="http://www.hayhouse.com/">http://www.hayhouse.com/</a> is an excellent starting point for books in personal growth.<br />© 2009 Leah StriglerAsk Leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16425214876117011885noreply@blogger.com2