Meanwhile...

While I was roaming the streets of Philadelphia, my darling cousin J. David was apparently paying close attention to New York City signage, and sent me my first-ever picture message on my new phone.
Oh, Dumpling Man, are you a super-hero sans cape? A pith helmet with a face? In any case, that glint in your eyes lets me know just how tasty you must be.

Pigs eat it in South Philly

Or, rather, are eaten.

On my way from New York back to Spookytown, I stopped in Philadelphia to visit Hellraiser - and, fortuitously, to meet up for two seconds with J-ka, who was stopping by en route from Spookytown to New York, and for three seconds with Dor, visiting in-laws in West Chester. I made trips to the Italian Market with both Hellie and J-ka, and hoo-ee was there a lot to see. (I know, "hoo-ee" doesn't sound very South Philly, but I'm not sure what their exclamations are and so will instead revel in fact that I once again live south of the Mason-Dixon line.) After some invigorating morning exercises (visitors to Hellie's house must, apparently, engage in Russian-type Soviet-era uprazhneniia each morning), we left Marky Mark at home fixing Hellie's bike (good boyfriend!) and headed out in search of breakfast.
The newly hipster-frequented places were too crowded, so huevos rancheros it was. Even without the Italian-style breakfast, Hellie was able to channel the ghost of popular-with-the-Italians-but-oh-so-corrupt former mayor Frank Rizzo.
As you can see, we were pretty glammed up for a Sunday morning, but signs like this reassured me that we had done the right thing.
This fish stand prepared me for all kinds of hairstyle excitement, but in fact South Philly hair was pretty traditional. I suppose after living in Chicago, where basically every takeout menu has ribs on it (fried chicken + ribs, pizza + ribs, Chinese food + ribs) the butchery aspect of the market shouldn't have struck me as notable, but it did. People seemed to revel in the transformation of animals into food, and made sure that even if the cut of meat was not immediately recognizable, the pictoral representation would be.
Yes, poor little rabbitlet, so unaware of your meaty fate. Meanwhile, here only the pig seems aware of his impending doom - look at the sad little downturn of his mouth. He knows he's living on borrowed time above that House of Pork.
This chicken looks like it might put up a bit of resistance, though.
The animal horns hint at former sheepy glory,
and the chorizo sign seems to be really lording it over the pig, who even has the cartoon "X" eyes of death.
Most taunting of all, though, was this butcher sign. Earlier, with the potato eating french fries and the ice cream cone licking itself, we saw a kind of auto-cannibalism, but one that neatly skipped over the moment of transformation into food. But here we have a rampaging cartoon pig! Who is it going to kill with that cleaver? Other piggies? Or itself?
It seems kind of insane, and also I think he'd be more effective if he shopped here and not just in the cleaver store.
In the end, J-ka and I had pizza. Vegetarian pizza.

Resolve

I am never eating again.

Subtly Spooky

My friend SHRL (pronounced "Shirl", with kind of a syllabic 'r', and standing for "Sexy Human Rights Lawyer" because that's what his intern used to call him)* used my camera the other night to make his first foray into digital photography. I thought the resulting photograph was nicely subtle, but he thought it was more spooky. Once designated spooky, it had to get posted, as I am nothing if not devoted to exploring the range of spookiness available in my new home. So here it is.
Subtle? Spooky? Some third adjective? Let me know. We won't be seeing any more artistic contributions from Shirl for a while, but maybe after he gets back from his three-week Brazilian vacation, he'll scan and share any pictures of foreign spookiness he may have found.

Meanwhile, just got back from seeing Bauhaus play, which was definitely also subtly spooky.
I still think Peter Murphy kind of sounds like Neil Diamond, but my god that show was good. When they did "Bela Lugosi's Dead," I was sure someone's blood would be drunk. But in the end, it was just my ginger ale.

*let’s not even get started with interns, sex(iness), and Spookytown

On a lighter note...

Here I am licking the wall of a famous salt mine, located just outside of Krakow, that has been in continuous operation for eight centuries.
It was salty.

European Travels: Krakow (for Zhyds)

The other day I went to a talk by an applied anthropologist who recently wrote a book on anthropologists working for the Third Reich, and the relationship between their "scientific objectivity" and racial profiling and policies that sent people directly to their deaths. It was deeply disturbing, as you might imagine, in particular her stories of being stonewalled at various European institutes and archives, of being just the fourth person since 1945 to read the Jewish archives in Lodz, Poland (that's pronounced "woodzh", by the way), and of being confronted with shelf upon shelf of skulls of concentration camp victims that had been carefully packaged and shipped back to an institute in Vienna that is storing them in a back room to this day. Her tale was one of denial of culpability (e.g., American funding agencies gave money to institutional projects that led directly to experiments led by Josef Mengele but no one ever talks about this, and none of the German anthropologists in question were punished in any significant way) and erasure of collective memory. Defining people as subhuman seems to really take the anthropo- right out of anthropology, you know? I talked to her afterwards about my own experiences in Poland this summer, especially with regards to erasure of collective memory, and it made me think that perhaps it is time for Episode Two in my Polish travelogue, here focusing on the more Jewish aspect of Krakow.

Upon arrival, my first impressions of Krakow were really quite positive, especially when compared to the three Russian cities I've spent time in, and in my travel notes I have a brief list of ways that Poland seems to be functioning a bit better than post-Soviet Russia: smiling and friendly cashiers and serving people, no breakfast beer, no hordes of stray cats and dogs, people actually pick up after their dogs, hip teens look like they could be in any European city. But a day or two into my visit, a colleague pointed out that people on the street were staring at me all the time. At first I didn't believe her, but then I saw it was true, and couldn't for the life of me figure out why -- I wasn't even dressed weirdly or anything, especially when compared to local hipsters with dreadlocks and nose rings. "Pangeaochka," she said (using the Russian diminutive of my real name), "it must be your exotic good looks." Of course I was immediately dismissive, especially since a good-looking Polish woman is really good looking, and they were everywhere. But then I began to focus on the word "exotic," and decided that (1) that was probably the key, and (2) it was pretty depressing. So the staring, all the time that I was out on the streets, began to feel incredibly oppressive because of this fact: there should be, right now, a large local population that looks exactly like me, especially as some of them would in fact be my blood relatives. But they are all dead or gone. And if they were around, I wouldn't look exotic at all, I would just look like a lot the other Jews walking around town (if a bit darker than most). So every stare, regardless of intent or reason, began to remind me that I was there when others were not, and started to make me feel a bit like a ghostly presence, someone who feels like she belongs in a place and has a right to be there, except for the fact that she doesn't actually belong there anymore.

So I went to the Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of town -- Jews were moved there in 1495, but this is not the Jewish ghetto of the war, which was located elsewhere in the city. The Kazimierz is a part of the city that has recently begun gentrifying in two ways, with cafes and nightclubs catering to the local youth and elite, and with nostalgic Jewish restaurants and stores catering to the streams of American and Israeli Jews coming back for heritage visits (one statistic I read says that half of the world's Jews have some historical connection to the land that is currently Poland). Amidst the gentrification are crumbling old apartment buildings and commercial spaces, reflecting the fact that the neighborhood was a pretty undesirable part of town until really quite recently. Seeing Jewish history appropriated and commodified for the tourist trade was pretty strange, and I'm still ambivalent. For example, the band playing in that photo above is an all-Polish klezmer band filled with classically trained musicians who would walk each day from their dorm through the Kazimierz en route to the conservatory. And they started playing klezmer music, partly for commercial reasons (this was a gig at a Jewish museum, one of many shows they were playing that month), but partly because they said they felt drawn to the music, that it called to them. They seemed to me a lot like white musicians playing jazz or white kids who become rappers, and I was reminded of the Klezmatics concert I went to with J-ka last summer in Prague, where dreadlocked hippies and skinhead-looking punks danced with great joy, completely unironically. Is it that victimhood lends itself to appropriation and coolness? Maybe just when the music is good.

For whatever reason, I don't have any pictures of the cloyingly nostalgic and very erastz-feeling restaurant row in the main square of the quarter. This here is actually a quite cute cafe on Ulica Izaaka (that 'c' is pronounced [ts], ulica = 'street'), which my friend liked because the sewing machines are presented on top of the tables, as opposed to underneath, the way they are in hipster cafes over here.
Just down the street is the Synagoga Izaaka, one of the main synagogues and now a museum (all the synagogues-turned-museums were staffed by Poles). This is a baroque synagogue, built in the mid-17th century (financed by a guy named Isaac, hence the name), and basically looted and destroyed during the occupation. Despite the cheesy movie on the monitor and equally cheesy music piped into the building, I found it deeply moving. The first photo shows the front of the sanctuary, with the ark for the torah scrolls, and the second shows the back of the sanctuary, with the entrance and the women's gallery above it. (Can't have the temptresses down there with the men!)
Some of the frescoes survived, though most were destroyed. This Hebrew, unlike modern Israeli Hebrew, has all the vowels and diacritics written out, so I can actually read it, though I only knew a few words. (So shameful, after all those years of Hebrew school!)
At the bottom of the frescoes you see two hands in a position of prayer, with the first two and last two fingers held together and a gap in between. This is the hand position used when saying a prayer called the "Shema," which is considered central to Jewish worship, meant to be the first prayer taught to children and the last words said before death. Leonard Nimoy, raised orthodox, was intimate with the hand gesture involved, and used it for his Vulcan salutation. So it's not that the fresco painters were prescient Star Trek fans, just in case you were wondering.

This is the High Shul (shul = synagogue in Yiddish, it's cognate with "school"); turns out it was called "high" not because of its fanciness, but because it was up on the second floor.
There are remnants of Jewish culture and life all throughout the Kazimierz, some with new commemorative plaques, like above, but others easily missed, with nearly illegible script and no explanations given.

One of the more visited sites is the Stara Synagoga ('Old Synagogue'), which marks one boundary of the old district. This is one of two gothic synagogues in Europe -- the other is in Prague -- and is now a museum. Those are Israeli teens above, about to rejoin their bus tour: a common sight in summertime Krakow. By contrast, the tourists at Synagoga Remuh, below, were all older types, and at least based on looks, most likely not so Jewish. This temple actually has a small congregation once more, but I couldn't pop into Friday night services the way I wanted to, since we had a big faculty dinner in a Disneyesque Jewish klezmer restaurant across the street, or maybe it was more TGIFridays?, with various Jewish tchotchkes and pictures of rabbis and a rather elderly house band.
Synagoga Remuh is adjacent to a cemetery, and a wall filled with memorial plaques in many languages separates the two. No surprise that the ones I could read were as sad as could be, mostly from people who were the only survivors or children of the only survivors, who wanted to commemorate the entire families that had been lost, with numbers of murdered family members usually over 100.
The mostly 19th-century gravestones themselves predate the war by decades at minimum, and were aesthetically quite pleasing.
The headstones that survived were apparently under dirt at the time of the occupation, and so escaped notice.
The ones that were above ground were smashed to bits by the Germans, and later reconstructed into a cemetery wall, which some call another "Wailing Wall," in analogy to the remaining outer wall of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. More to cry about with this one, I think.
Just down the street from the cemetery is the Synagoga Templu (seems a bit redundant), built by the association of "Progressive Jews" in the 1860s in a neo-Renaissance style. It is both fancy and shmancy, with ornate decoration everywhere, recently restored in extensive renovation.
Even the ceiling is fancy.
They were pretty clever, those Progressive Jews, and somehow made it so that the stained glass windows didn't show as stained glass from the outside, so they weren't subject to vandalism. They're beautiful with the flash on,
but even cooler with the flash off.
Finally, I leave you with this image, surreptitiously snapped at one of the souvenir carts in the main square in town. In the Kazimierz, there are all kinds of cutesy Jew dolls, with adorable little plump ceramic rabbis and skinny little serious rabbis being the main wares for sale. This one, in the center of the picture with the head mostly hidden by keychains, and being sold outside of the main Jewish tourist zone, doesn't have quite the same feel: the nose is hookier, he is clutching a real 1 grosz piece in his hands (equivalent to a penny), and over his arm is a sign, presumably in Yiddish but easily comprehensible to speakers of Polish, that says "Biznes is biznes." And there you have it.
Next time, I'll cover my trip east out of Krakow to my grandmother's town, and my adventures there.

Art Appreciation

The Armenian Queen and I were out on Saturday night celebrating her wedding anniversary (her husband is still in San Diego selling the house -- in his absence, I did what I could to mimic a 6-foot-something German computer scientist, although I don't think it was all that successful). After a really nice meal at this Ferran Adria-inspired fancy-shmancy place downtown (my prix-fixe meal included both "lime air" and "banana foam"), we walked up to Dupont Circle in the hopes of seeing live Latin music. En route we passed rather a lot of public art, most of it neo-classical and memorial in nature. And then we walked by this thing.
As my friend Bacon Boy might say, "WTF?" Now, the Armenian Queen can see the Washington Monument from the balcony of her bourgeois palace, and since the evening was all about her, I graciously went along with her suggestion that this was a representation of said monument penetrating her helpless eyeball. And perhaps it is. I'm still looking for alternate interpretations, though.

In which our heroine visits yet more strip mall emporia

The weather was quite nice again the other day, so I decided to combine my errand running with urban hiking and further exploration of the many strip malls near my house. (The results of last month's exploratory visit were detailed earlier on these pages.) I put on my hiking shoes for comfort, army backpack for purchases, and loose shirt for minimizing lascivious comments from passers- and drivers-by -- the last of these strategies, unfortunately, not terribly effective, though I am reminded that although I usually am embarrassed and ashamed by my lack of Spanish comprehension, there are times when it is actually quite useful to not understand the things that are being said around you. One site of enthusiastic but incomprehensible comments was Ritmo Latino, which my dictionary says translates to "Latin Rhythm", a music shop down the street that's right next to this vegetarian Indian restaurant I frequent. I decided recently that I quite like reggaeton, at least as dancing/house cleaning music, though the reportedly sexist and violent nature of the lyrics is Exhibit B of "times when it's better to not understand so much Spanish." I stopped by Ritmo Latino with the intention of going in and asking for reggaeton advice, but got caught up in the Hollywood Boulevard-style display of hand imprints of famous Latin-type artists. Tito Puente was my favorite of the bunch, but I thought it was pretty cool that Shakira and I appear to have the exact same size hands. (Of course, that's the only way we match up. Oh well.)

Not far from the music store was a religious supply store. This is one of the window displays; unfortunately, the photo of the full-bodied John the Baptist didn't come out so well. I didn't go into the music store because it was too crowded, and I didn't go into the religious store because it was too empty. But I bet they have other exciting things for sale. I'm not sure why Meso- and Latin American Jesus imagery is just so much bloodier than elsewhere, but you end up really feeling the pain.
When you've moved as much as I have in recent years, you realize how much you try to recreate your old life in your new place -- immigrant communities are much more comprehensible to me now (it's tempting to refer to Bourdieuan habitus, though I'll refrain) (although I guess I just didn't, now that I think about it). This is much easier to do in Spookytown than it was in provincial Russia. For example, I used to live just around the corner from this fine establishment here.
Classy, yes, although for whatever reason not daring enough to go whole hog with alternative 'k' spellings. So imagine my delight when I realized that I live basically around the corner from here.
These salon owners are much bolder, incorporating both the 'k'-for-'c' substitution and the "urban" 'z' plural marker: nothing says "street creds" like alternative spelling.

Also daring are the owners/managers of the thrift store down the street, who appear to be either storing or selling baby cages just behind the store. Apparently this is where we stash unwanted children before they are recycled, although maybe the cages are just used for disciplinary purposes.
Inside the thrift store, I found myself remarkably able to resist purchasing this sweater. Yes, in part because it was a size 22 and 100% acrylic, but really, does my clothing need to remind me of how the aging process is taking a toll on my appearance?
By contrast, these 1950s Nancy Drew-esque novels for girls were irresistible. Oh, Cherry Ames and her many nursing adventures!












Here you get a sense of the many delights that lie in store for readers.
Cherry Ames, count this girl in as admirer number one million and one. My friend Mr. T., who found himself flipping through the books last night as we decided where to eat ("Burmese", apparently, is always a right answer), is quite possibly admirer one million and two, though his interest seemed to lie more in finding inadvertently pornographic sentences and pictures. Which brings me to my final purchase of the day, this from the pot cookie store.
I looked for the "mild" variant, but all they sold was "spicy." Figures. I have now deleted about eight really bad double entendres here, and so will simply say that suggestions for the storage, display, and consumption of this food product are always welcome.