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eight seats northbound
Tuesday, September 4 2001
setting: Silver Spring, Maryland
In the morning Gretchen and I went to visit her family friends Judy and husband Umberto. We sat around the living room just talking about various interesting things such as George W. Bush's intelligence and evident lack of hybrid vigor. Umberto warned me about living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, saying, "Watch out for the men in black hats who will try to push you into a synagogue." I thought he was joking, but he wasn't, not according to Gretchen. According to her, during the holy days of Yom Kippur, etc., the local orthodox mullah go completely nuts with their zeal and accost pedestrians they suspect are Jewish, trying to get them to participate in various holy rituals. Such rituals include the binding of a ribbon around the arm and ritual bathing. Since Jews are not proselytizers, these men in black hats have no interest in people who do not look Jewish. Often they don't care about women either, but nonetheless in the high holy days Gretchen finds it best to hide the Star of David she normally wears around her neck. But even then she's not entirely safe because she looks fairly Jewish.
On the way back to Gretchen's parents' place, we stopped at a very authentic Italian deli called "Italia," a place where Gretchen used to go when she was kid. Back then it had just been opened by a family of Italians fresh off the boat. Their deli was doing well and they were grateful enough to their new homeland to put up a big picture of its president, then Ronald Reagan. Since then though, the deli has been sold, rebought and then allowed to fall into a state of decline. The pizza we got there today was cheap, but it wasn't very good either.
While Gretchen was off doing other things, I inspected the contents of the three boxes I'd mailed to Gretchens' parents' place. They'd been through an arduous gauntlet they'd passed through the postal system, the corners and edges of the boxes all bashed into curves and the sides all bowed out of their usual flatness. Inside some of the contents were shattered, others cracked and bruised. I salvaged some of the small things I wanted immediately and left other things for later.
Heading north on the uncrowded Amtrak to New York City, we were able to take up a full eight seats at the front of one of the second car in the train. We were in one of those places where the two seats face two other seats, and there were two sets of these across the aisle from one another. Two to the third power makes eight, so we had eight seats all to ourselves. On the first leg of the trip, I was reading a children's book entitled The Twits by Roald Dahl. It began with such a frank a meticulous discussion of men's beards that I couldn't tear myself away. The primitive illustrations (especially those scrawny monkeys) were also something of a hoot. Later I was reading an article in Wired Magazine about how the internet has revolutionized the relationship between doctors and their patients. Now it's not uncommon for patients or their parents to learn and know considerably more about their illnesses than their doctors do. Back in the day, of course, the control of information was such that doctors could give the impression of being wizards. They'd prescribe pills and pore over mysterious xrays while keeping their patients in a state of ignorance.
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