harvest display

When I got this month's New Yorker from my mailbox yesterday, I was startled and happy to see Wayne Thiebaud on the cover. The tell-tale signs were all there: the food, the little halos around the food, the sometimes garish colors.

I have been thinking about food the last few weeks, we are talking about food in class, ala my on-going preoccupation with Michael Pollan. This particular Thiebaud echoes something I think about when I go to the grocery store, especially here in New York. At my neighborhood market right now, there are pumpkins and bubbly squash spilling onto the sidewalks, autumn apples in ten varieties, and, oddly, an overabundance of raspberries...? which are on special.

The "Harvest Display" in our modern world is a funny thing--not just displaying our harvest, but everyone else's, including South America's, which is where the November bumper crop of raspberries comes from. Next to Theibaud's pumpkin lies a summer treat--watermelon--and below are boxes of goods from Chile, Australia, Mexico. On the bottom shelves is that ubiquitous fruit that still seems a little out of place in New York in the winter--bananas.

All of this aside, though, the thing I liked best about Thiebaud's cover was the idea that he might have just painted it, that it might be new. If I feel uninspired or tired, I picture old Thiebaud next to his easel, stooped and squinting, still delighted by the world and churning out work.

election night

About 11:15 p.m. last night, New York went nuts. People started yelling and cheering in the streets, and more people answered the cheers and went out and joined them, and cheered some more.

On the sidewalks strangers were high-fiving. Every few minutes someone would shout, "Obama!" and a collective roar would go up. Then someone on the next corner would do the same thing, and someone on the next corner.

A friend called from Harlem, her voice breathless and muffled by the cheering and pot-banging up there. The streets were so full that cars had stopped using them. "I just can't stop crying," she said. (Hopefully she will blog about it :) )

Cabbies, yes, even cabbies joined in on the fray, beep-beeping their approval as they drove by, as jubilant riders hung out the windows, shouting.

I got on a subway car just as a chant of "O-ba-ma" went up on the platform. Could it be? Even the subway train seemed to pause on the tracks for a moment as a parade of supporters brandishing signs came down the platform. Everyone on the platform started chanting, and everyone on the train started chanting back. Then we started clapping, looking out and knocking on the train windows, until the chant reached a fever pitch.

With the market in a bind and Wall Street a mess, it's good to see the city with a smile on its face again. The whole place seems a little hopeful.

Coming home from Washington Heights tonight, I took an elevator down to the subway. I make the elevator ride several times a week, and it's terrible--cramped, stuffy, suffocating. It's one of the worst parts of my day, and, seemingly, everyone else's, including the elevator operator. She's a silent and unsmiling woman with corn rows, who sits behind a little desk in the elevator with a tiny fan blowing on her. She has a miserable job. Today as I was getting off, she broke her code of silence. She turned to me, one thumb turned up, and said, "Obama!"

I turned up both thumbs and said, "Obama!" back. I smiled the whole ride home.