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Saturday, September 28
Being a wedding caterer is a strange friggin way to make a living. Every year from mid September till Early November I go into my 8 weeks of wedding hell. It’s not that catering a wedding is so difficult; it’s that catering 14 weddings in 8 weeks is so $#@%^& difficult. I mean really, why does everyone have to get to married in the fall?! What ever happened to the dad burned spring wedding? Or the magical winter wonderful land wedding??? Or the summer on the beach wedding?! Every year right after Labor Day, I call up all my pals and say my good-byes as if I’m going off to war and …I am. 14 nervous brides, 14 concerned grooms, 28 over-possessive moms, 28 dads who think this is all costing too much, 1 florist I adore, 6 florists who think they’re the ones catering the wedding,1 florist who was so busy name-dropping he was two hours behind in his centerpieces, 1 party planner so pretentious so told her client “one can never have sparkling wine for a toast. It must be champagne from champagne,” two delivery men from the rental company who weighed about 300 pounds each, but refused to carry the tables up the stairs so the 90 pound waiters had to do it, 1 wedding cake made out of Krispy Kreme donuts, one wedding cake made out of 20 chocolate Entenmanns cakes turned into a 16 foot serpent, oh…and a partridge in a pear treeeeeee! It’s not that I’m getting jaded, after 12 years of frantic falls, it’s just that, well I’m starting to feel like a hooker. I am in the business of romance! I crank out nuptial nosh! One thing that always cracks me up is that person who calls me up saying they just got out of cooking school and they want to go into business like me. HA. You think cooking is the biggest part of my business. It’s the entire year of phone calls talking nervous brides off the ledge! It’s the delicate touch it takes to convince the parents of a budding 40-year-old daughter that perhaps, even though they’re paying for the wedding, they might allow their little flower to have some say in the menu. Most people in this century don’t like chicken cordon bleu. I’m more than a caterer! I’m a wedding therapist! Sheesh. I should just hang out the appropriate shingle. Rossi; wedding doctor. Don’t get me wrong; there are rewards for what I do. The most important one is what I call “the morning after call.” It’s the bride and groom at the airport, waiting for their flight to Tahiti, Hey. It’s a great phone call. I usually keep them on my tape and play them back again and again when I have the blues. But this is Sunday morning. Their wedding was Saturday night and I can’t wallow in the loveliness of that phone call. I have another wedding to cater. …In two hours!!!
The other advantage to what I do for a living is that if I make it through the fall, I can look forward to many, many, many glorious days off, a vacation somewhere tropical, and the knowledge that 14 newlywed couples think I’m the best thing since sliced roti (really darlings bread is so passé). Anyway, I’m babbling and I’ve got two weddings to cater in a few hours. One is for a Korean bride and Chilean groom. At this lovely event, I shall be serving empanadas and dumplings. Also across the bridge in Queens, at the same time..I’ll be catering a wedding for a bride extremely concerned with being exotic. At her reception, we’ll be serving Thai shrimp, Jamaican lamb, Japanese noodles and Indian breads. I don’t know why everyone thinks wedding food is so boring. Now then, does anyone know how to stir-fry gefilte fish??
Sunday, September 22
PC I’ve finally figured out what this phrase really stands for. Polite Cut-throat. I’ve never been a fan of PC or at least what PC morphed into it. I think it started as a good thing, the same way communism started as a good thing, but now it’s just become a blanket to throw over the truth. While I don’t want to hear racist, anti-Semitic or misogamist words or jokes, I also don’t want to wonder who my enemies are. You hate me because I’m gay, a woman, a Jew, an American?? Well then don’t try to buy me a cup of cappuccino and throw some fancy chatter in my face about genes, who proper parents are, or some bullshit conspiracy theories. Just introduce yourself properly. “I’m Joe and I’m a racist, homophobic, scum-bag. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? The way people react to the conflict in Israel is particularly telling. My pal Neil and I always do the “real commentary” when we hear the news. “5 dead and 60 injured as the second suicide bombing breaks of month of peace in Israel.” Neil and I respond to the radio.
“Now you’ll hear outrage around the world. The atrocity, the horror, the cruelty, those big mean Jews! Someone’s gotta stop them!!” Neil and I respond. Guess what? We’re right. The most frightening thing is that if we feel a sense of unfair-ness here, in a country that is largely pro-Israel, you can imagine how it feels in the rest of the world, which is not. I’ll never forget what it was like reading a British newspaper, while I was on vacation. There was a close up photo of an outraged Palestinian holding up a dead baby. Underneath the photo comes the caption. “Sharon declares the attack a success!” I looked through the paper for any mention of the onslaught of suicide bombings that had prompted Sharon’s reprisal and found only one paragraph in the back of the paper, in the same section reserved for movie reviews. There was also no mention of the obvious; that this, like many war casulaties was a terrible accident. Of course, there were no photos of the Israeli children that had been killed, most likely that same week. Okay, so we can we stop this now? Can we call this exactly what it is? Anti-Semitism. ANTI-FUCKING-SEMITISM! Get off your high horses already. It doesn’t matter what intellectual crap you’ve telling yourself. You can be pro-the under-dog and have your own personal love for Palestinians to your hearts content, but if you consider the murder of innocent lives in Israel to be something not even worth a second thought, but will take to the streets in outrage when victims try to defend themselves, then maybe you can should take a long look in the mirror. I am a Jew and devoutly pro-Israel, but I’m not afraid to look at all sides of the picture. What I am afraid of, is that there seem to be less and less other people willing to do that. When I look at this picture I see three things. I see innocent Palestinians victimized by the blood lust of their own people. I see innocent Israelis, victimized by never-ending suicide bombings. And I see a world growing a little closer to 1940 every day.
Tuesday, September 17
I'm thinking about Marjorie. I first saw Marjorie on the highway in the fall of 2,001, she was part of the self-proclaimed "nuts on the highway" the cheerleaders who held up thank-you signs and waved as the rescue crews drove down the west side highway to ground zero. She was there again when M.E. and I crossed the highway off Christopher Street on the first anniversary of "911." It was a dark night filled with a strange powerful wind that had started suddenly in the morning and seemed to grow stronger as the day crept in. Tree branches broke off and blew away. Traffic cones lay on their sides. The water mounted again and again in stiff white peeks. It was an electric kind of night. 8:30 felt a lot more like midnight as M.E. and I crossed the highway on route to light "Yartzeit" candles along the Hudson. Then we saw her. She's an elderly woman, age-less in the sense that she could be anywhere from 60 to 75 and neither extreme would surprise me. Her short round body is supported with the help of a cane and a slighlty younger but still white haired brother named John. The wind blowing in from the Hudson just 50 feet away, brought in a steely cold breeze, but Marjorie was dressed only in a light house dress with a "shmata" of sorts draped over her head to keep out the cold. Bits of her snow white hair jetted out from the bottom. "We wanted to be here with the people we've grown to love!" Marjorie explained, waving at police cars. When I told her that I been a volunteer at ground zero, she smiled, reached into her pocket and pulled out a pin. It was a little gold hand making the American sign language symbol for "I love you." "Anyone who was down there deserves to be appreciated," she said. I can't tell you how that simple gesture so perfectly capped off what I'd been feeling that entire day. At 8:30 in the morning when M.E. and I arrived on Broadway a block from ground zero we were greeted by a group of strangers who draped "lais" made out of orchids around our necks. We took the elevator up to M.E.'s lawyers office and watched the memorial from an illegal fire terrace 39 flights above. We were literally on top of the crater of death..of hope. I watched the marchers walk in to the circle. We huddled together high up in the air on our treacherous little over-hang. We held our breath for the moment of silence. We heard the chimes. We watched the families of the victims come in and throw their roses in the circle. The breeze picked up and turned into a tremendous wind and I watched with amazement as what looked like giant fingers of dust reached up and stretched over the mourners. "Restless spirits" I said to M.E. and that's exactly how it felt. We watched those tiny flicks of red fall into the circle and the people too far below to have faces but not too far away to be felt. After the second moment of silence we went back down and walked to St. Pauls. I stood in the place that had been my work station in those terrifying days after September 11th. This place was different now. So am I. M.E. took my picture a sort of "then and now" kinda thing. We made our way through the thousands of on-lookers and crossed broadway. A girl sat on a stool in the middle of the side walk.She held up a little sign. It read "I give hugs." " I want you to have a real New York day now." M.E. said and she gave me one, taking me to the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel for lunch. To the old, glorious synagogue Temple Emanual for a spiritual pick me up. We planned to end our day throwing our necklaces made of orchids in the water and trying to walk all the way along the Hudson to the eternal flame in battery park. We made it to the flame some time around 10PM (I still have the blisters to prove it) but my orchids never made it to the water. I draped them around Marjorie instead. "Ohhhh" she cried in joy.." and you know today is my birthday too!" "Your birthday is September 11th ?" I said/asked bewildered. "Yes!" she answered in a tone that was something like happiness. Happiness? I understood then that Marjorie, like the girl on the stool and the people who sewed a thousand orchids into necklaces and the people who created beautiful pieces of art and hung them on memorial walls and the children who wrote notes and tucked them into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and maybe, maybe like me had found their place in all of this. She was exactly where she wanted to be. Cheering on yet again the heroes of "911." She was glorious. "Say a prayer for us too!" her brother John yelled as we crossed the highway towards the water. "We will." Friday, September 13
Normally I would never publish something someone else wrote on my web site, (mostly cause I have so ^%$#& much to say, there's no room for anyone else's point of view) but when my old, old, old gal pal Jen sent me this poem she wrote on September 11th of this year, I knew I'd have to share it with you'all. Jen was my best friend freshman year in highschool. After school we lost touch. She moved to Chicago. I moved to NYC. She got married. I got not married. Our lives were always different and they became more so, but something essential inside of us, something we recognized in each other when we were 14 years old, has always been the same. I used to say we were sisters in deep-ness, but now I'd say simply that Jen and I always took things a notch or two further in than most people we knew. Sometimes that was good, well when it came to caring for others or writing poetry, sometimes it's been way bad. Just ask anyone who has ever dated us, how fucking sensitive we are. They'll probably roll their eyes backwards and scream. Yep. We're a tad.....delicate.... Anyway, this poem was written by my sister in deepness, Jennifer Weber-Zeller. Thanks sis.
Permanence was gone, Instead of towers Today, debris is moved, shifted, Perhaps man is, indeed, a creature that may learn I doubt it; doubt it. Wednesday, September 11
September 11th, 2002
Put aside all your busy thoughts. Turn off the television. Shut off the CD player. Be still. Breathe. Be present in this moment. Be here, with these words. Be here entirely. Breathe in. Out. Feel this moment. This moment is a gift. This day is a miracle. You are here. You are alive. You have a capacity to love that is so vast you could never reach its limits. There are no limits. One year ago today, you watched thousands of innocent people die. You watched two seemingly invincible icons crumble. They were the big twin brothers at the bottom of the city, boyish and pompous and rich and powerful and young and playful. There were nothing like the simple elegance and constant beauty of their classically elegant older sister, the Empire State Building, but they were family. They were our boys. Just like we often do with family, we took them for granted until they were gone. Now our baby brothers are dead. One year ago, you watched something so horrible that no disaster movie will ever feel quite like a movie again. You saw them jump. You saw them disappear into a mountain of dust. And when it was all quiet again, you saw the few, far too few, survivors crawl out, covered in layers of chalk, blinking, helpless and hopeless. You felt helpless. You felt hopeless. Some of you, may have relived that day a thousand times and told yourself all the things you would do differently if you could go back in time. Maybe you would have tried to help. Maybe you would have been kinder to the people around you. Maybe you would have remembered to tell the person lying next to you that you love them. Well it’s September 11th again. It is today. It is now. So what are you waiting for? There are people who need to hear your voice. Tell them you care. Walk everywhere today. Find total strangers and give them something, anything, a simple gesture of kindness. Buy lunch for a homeless person. Go to an animal shelter and save a life. Take your shoes off and walk through the grass. Look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? Do you feel that you’ve done enough? If you don’t feel that you’ve done enough, congratulations!. You’ve still got time. Get out there and spread yourself around like peanut butter. You’ve got so much to give. If you do feel like you’ve done enough than I’ve got news for you. You’re full of shit! There is never enough. There can never be enough love or goodness. One year ago today, we watched our family be murdered. Maybe they were of no relation to us. Maybe they were strangers. Maybe. But they were part of us. Haven’t you wondered why it is that you mourn these strangers so deeply? How can you feel their deaths so personally? Why even now do you feel chills when you think of them? Why is it when the families of the victims appear on television talking about their lost loved ones you feel like you understand? You feel the loss. You feel guilty for even trying to share a slice of their pain, but you do feel their pain. Why? Because they are your family too. Because we are all in this together. It is September 11th again. Here, now, today, in this moment, we are in “911.” Today is “911.” Here is your chance. Don’t make their deaths be in vain. Try to fill this terrible cruel void in our hearts, in our skyline, in the cosmos, with something else. Fill it with your goodness. Fill it with your love. Fill it with your honesty. Fill it with your bravery. Fill it with your vulnerability. Fill it with you. ------ This was the last rant at my old address www.rossi.blogspot.com. All new rants will be right here where you are now at www.rossirant.com. I started this site at blogspot one year ago and wanted to finish it on this day; September 11th 2002. This site has been something more than a voice for me. It’s often felt like salvation. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for answering back. I promise to keep ranting here at Rossirant as long as you’ll keep reading. A special thanks to Nancy at jillmatrix Wednesday, September 4
Yahrtzeit The anniversary of a loved ones death. We of my faith, commemorate this anniversary by lighting a simple white candle. You know the ones. You’ve seen them in the super-market aisle. They’re a glass jar filled with white wax. Sometimes they have Hebrew lettering on them. In my hood they are most often used for low budget roof parties. They blend well with the Jesus candles you find in the corner bodega. I’ve always liked the white melting Star of David candle burning alongside the red Jesus candles. Nice touch for a tar beach soirée’. Yahrtzeit candles seem to burn forever. I always light them as the sun sets and they’re still burning the next morning. They’re stoic little things. Only cost 69¢ too. I’ve been lighting Yahrtzeit candles in September since 1993, the year after my mother died. September has become a smorgasbord of emotions for me. Not only does it house Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the only times of year I go to the synagogue as a "High Holiday Jew" but when you throw in mom’s Yahrtzeit, it becomes a one way ticket to "mishegash" land! This year, September mourning meets the anniversary of “911.” The first Yahrtzeit of the day America lost its virginity. No amount of white candles in glass jars will ever burn long enough or bright enough to blot out the pain of this terrible day. Just as no amount of tears can ever bring a loved one back. But we try. I’ll try. I will go to “Shul” on the bookends that surround September 11th. Open myself up to my own blend of spirituality on Rosh Hashanah, find my own way to deal with it all on the morning of September 11th and try to snap myself shut, seam up my exposed inner self on Yom Kippur. One can’t really function in New York City, with one’s inner self exposed. It’s a bit like walking around naked…during rush hour…in Times Square….a lot. I’m still tossing about the “what the fuck do I do that day?” anniversary rap. Most of my pals are too. Some plan to leave town, some plan to watch TV and cry, some plan to go to a comedy and attempt to laugh. I don’t plan on laughing that day. I will say, however, that thinking of 911 as a Yahrtzeit has made everything click properly in my head. The word anniversary seemed to have a happy tone to it. Memorial is just well shit…we’ve had so many. But Yahrtzeit feels right. It is the one year remembrance of a terrible loss. It is a day to light white candles and pray to whatever you believe in or whatever you don’t and it’s a valley nestled between two holidays that for me have always been symbolic of healing, mourning and reflecting. This is not the Jewish column and I’m no preacher of this or any other religion. I don’t really know what happens to any of us after we die. I’ve never died. But I do feel, that when I light the Yahrtzeit candle this year and I shut out all the lights and watch this simple little glass jar burn endlessly through the night and I ask out loud that this terrible loss not be in vain, that someone will listen. I believe that someone will listen. It’s the answering back part I’m not so sure about. La Shana Tovah
By the way…regardless of what religious calling you have…atheist, wicca, Catholic..
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