Snowing US

The most significant snow in years fell today, and certain government appointees think they can snow us, too.

Going out bare legged in rain boots was not the best idea.

Snowstorm Fern marching eastward across large swaths of the country arrived today in New York City, with some headaches, some fun - a pure white and fluffy light backdrop, in contrast to what is happening in Minneapolis.

It was freezing inside when I awoke - I figured due to my leaving open part of a kitchen window. Initially it seemed easier to try to close it from outside, push the outside sash up; I thought it would be a quick few steps out to the terrace....

... Venturing out bare legged, even in rain boots, was ill-advised, particularly given the snow drifted deeper than the neck of the boots....

...All I did was track snow inside (at least there were plants ready to receive it)....

...Meantime, the wind kept blowing it, packing it up against the terrace door, within a few hours preventing any other half-baked attempts to go out.

So, shut in, I proceeded with the more conventional method of closing the kitchen window - cleared a few items that were in the way (and did some dishes in the process), climbed a ladder, and muscled the stuck window upward. It didn't heat up right away, but eventually inside felt warmer, enough to inspire more housekeeping catch-up - normal, typical snow day activity. "Paper work," too - friendly favors drawing on my professional knowledge, emails, promises kept.

With that off my plate, after a day of anticipation, and being patient for the snow to ease - it didn't cease, just lessened, into tiny ice pellets that hurt our faces when the wind off the East River blew it at our faces - finally, Sissy and I went out to go sledding at dusk (at times holding the sleds as shields to protect out faces from the flying frozen water beads). The usual fun, watching more adventurous snow lovers...

... followed by a ritual diner meal, ...

...including apple pie for dessert. 

What could be more American than apple pie? 

... Well, freedom of speech, guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution - its exercise is American to the core. It used to be that welcoming immigrants was a hallmark of America, too. And democracy. In government, it used to be that accountability, and transparency, set us apart from the rest of the world. Now, not so much, when ill-trained masked federal thugs set upon peaceful protesters with apparent immunity, and Cheeto-in-Chief's sycophantic mouthpieces try to gaslight us into believing we did not witness their sanctioned murder of a man who nursed veterans back to health, who spent his final moments aiding a woman who was attacked.

May our democracy and country be protected and delivered safely from he who would turn it with his narcissistic, retributive idiocy, aided by spineless, morally devoid brown nosing rubber stampers, into a personal plunder box.

To a New Mix in 2026!

Greeting the new year.

Happy new year!!

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, successful 2026! And may there be enough joyous noise and light to ward off all the troubles, and those who would foment and abet them.

2025 felt heavy on the troubles and trials front - in the world - Cheeto-in-Chief and his ilk, among my circle - four notable deaths, routines out of balance. I would point to the overall effect of these as a culprit in the lack of blog posts here. So I am looking forward to a fresh start, and this post is part of that renewal.

New Year's Eve day was spent taking care of administrative tasks - not losing money and benefits: spending down my limited purpose flexible spending account to make the salary dock count, collecting on as many credit card perks as made sense. And then, toward evening, finishing up my charitable gifts that happen to get me a better deduction this year than next.

I still cut it close, so hopped into a cab with Sissy (at her insistence), and we arrived at the Central Park loop just as the fireworks 🎆 started and the NYRR New Year's run 🏃🏻‍♀️began - a fun, low key way to start the year. It was our fallback plan, but a darn good one; next year maybe it will just be the lead plan. I might even be inspired to think about signing up to run one of these years...

As for ever going down to Times Square? Unlikely. Though I was not beyond peeping the lit "2026" in the days before it was hoisted up for the big show - and, no, I did not wait in line with the tourists; no self respecting New Yorker has time for that stuff (hence the sideways shot). We have ordinary tasks of day to day life to get done in this big city of ours.

As we exited Central Park, a light dusting of snow began to fall - so lovely. As was the strikingly illuminated Ukrainian Institute (may the people of Ukraine have lasting peace and security soon).

Nothing better to wrap up New Year's Eve than a late dinner of local pizza - with veggies for a healthy start! (That's what Sis and I told ourselves; it was her first real meal of the "day," and my way late dinner.) Lots of other folks had the same thought, arriving dressed up (the women in short skirts and heels - open toed! the men more casual and sporting nice sneakers, as Gen Z does) from their fancy parties - I imagine overpriced, crowded and noisy, where perhaps they were underfed? We rather relished that our casual plans allowed for bundling up in appropriate cold weather attire and comfy footwear - no more cold legs from the scanty New Year's Eve fashion choices of our youth. So over that! (Clearly rolling into my cantankerous older lady phase.)

And on the first full day, I accepted the bounty of my Buy Nothing community as incentive to (late) start my day. On one of my returns, encountering a spent Christmas tree adorned with a giveaway hat from the prior evening's festivities, branded with a corporate gym logo, captured the mood pretty perfectly - done with the old, marking aspirations to do better in the coming year.

My first attempt at better: Selecting the quinoa bowl for lunch! Sissy got a couscous based bowl with similar healthy salad and protein fixings.

Here's to good choices and good outcomes in 2026!

Memorial Day Metrics

Reflecting on Memorial Day, and what makes a country strong.

Thinking this Memorial Day of those who fell in service of our country's various missions (including the 58,000+ who did so defending the flag on the right, under which I was born), and the loved ones they left behind.

Whether or not each mission achieved its military objective, the unquestionable success of the military members killed in duty that this holiday honors is evident by the fact that our nation stands, and has for almost 250 years been strong and resilient enough to absorb millions of immigrants and incorporate thousands of small ethnic enclaves within its borders, like Eden Center in northern Virginia, where the two photos above were taken today.

Now, the defense of the ideals broad enough for our country to continue on this course of openness and inclusion is up to the rest of us - the civilians - performing our civic duties at the ballot box, in the courts, in our nonprofit and business organizations, our schools, and beyond, in our daily and regular social intercourse and interactions with each other.

I will concede that my perspective as an admitted refugee is biased; I have a vested interest in claiming space for myself and the cultural heritage my parents worked so hard to preserve - all the yummy food and millennia old traditions. It boggles my mind that there are actually people who would give up all the polyglot cultural gems that make us what we are today. Sure, all the photos in this post are of Vietnamese food - because I spent time this long weekend with great aunts and cousins in Northern Virginia. But are any of us ready to give up pizza and Italian food, Tex Mex, soul food, all of the other things brought to these shores by all of the other waves of arrivals? It's all of that, ALL of it, mixing and remixing and existing (mostly peacefully) side by side that makes us so great, so worth the sacrifice, isn't it?

This Upper Eastside Life (aka WWG-G-MaD)

What would Great-Grandma do, or think, of my recent ventures out and about the neighborhood?

On this Where We Were Wednesday (yes, just made that up so I could publish a catch up post), we have the photos from our companion Instagram posts "Blume, Blooms, and Botaniste" and "WWG-G-MaD" to provide a lookback at a fun evening Tuesday last week and a weekend in "the life" (this past weekend, to be exact).

Cụ Bà loved oranges. Ông Nội loved watermelon. Papa Rooster loves cookies and snacks.

Let's go in reverse chronological order and start with this past weekend, with a vase full of flowers from the Mother Garden for my great grandmother's giổ (death anniversary). She died over 75 years ago, in a very different time and world. What would she make of...

...Her great granddaughters graduating from Ivy League colleges? Her daughter-in-law's younger sisters (all but the baby, who was a mere 4 years senior to Papa Rooster) stopped their education at 8th grade, which was quite common in the first half of the 20th century in Vietnam, and their father was highly educated for the time.

The ivy in this planter off Park Avenue or thereabouts, as I walked home before driving out to the Mothership, is exactly like the kind I used to draw back in high school; it was a motif I was pulled toward, even before heading to college, and that college led to jobs, and law school, and a life I was able to build mostly myself.

Earlier that day, on Madison Avenue, it was the Saturday of gallery walks, of abstract art...

Plume Chaser happens to love doughnuts. This work had a price tag of $45,000. I texted him the photo and teased it was just a bit above my budget; he said he would have chastised me if I ever spent so much on such a thing.

... I must have been hungry.

In addition to snacks, Papa Rooster very much likes lobster. This isn't the depiction of one, but the piece was uncannily like a cooked crab, with the same coloration as our meals whenever Papa Rooster gets to call the shots.

And I respond to vivid colors.

This one reminded me of Sissy, who has gone full into her jigsaw puzzle hobby in recent years since the ease of getting new ones from Buy Nothing.

The gallery visits were broken up by bits of nature.

Mama Hen would have appreciated this sweet topiaried shrub in a planter on Madison Avenue.

And some of the art subjects themselves were natural. 

Asked Plume Chaser if he would have preferred this instead; he finds blue jays annoying, with which any gardener would agree.

Including by a Viet artist. How far - literally, figuratively - we've come from where, and when, GGMa died.

Back in the Jardin this same past weekend, a flower with a name that reminds me of travel by sea came into bloom - armeria maritima...

Though far we've come, still, we are not completely severed from the motherland - the rains left lush chickweed, and dandelion greens, also tía tô (perilla - so begins the battle for control of the planters) and kinh giới (Vietnamese balm - less ubiquitous than the tía tô), which I had dressed and tossed with chili lime cashews for lunch. And that was all I had for that meal; perhaps why I was drawn to food art at the gallery walk.

And from Madison Avenue gallery walks to talks at a Fifth Avenue synagogue... Could Cụ (Great Grandmother) ever have imagined her great granddaughters there! But how could we pass up...

JUDY BLUME!! Sissy and I were in the same (very large) room with THE Judy Blume! Who didn't read a Judy Blume book in their youth? Well, any Gen X'er, anyway. Got us tickets to see her right in our neighborhood (the chi-chi-er part, the southwesternmost edges of our neighborhood, far from where we plebes dwell in Yorkville). And Judy Blume (as she tells it, all the kids have always called her by both names) was delightful, and energetic, and still so sharp for age 87! (Far sharper than Papa Rooster, who is her age.)

And afterward we walked to find dinner, past St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church on Lexington Avenue, with its most lovely rose garden out front. Just like a children's photographic picture book version of "Sleeping Beauty" we had growing up, of dolls as the princess and prince and witch, posed in settings with lots of vivid roses in the background castle garden.

We ended the night with a wonderful vegan meal at Le Botaniste - clean, delicious, ethical, reasonably priced - a nice bow-tied ending to an outing in the nabe.

I chose a half portion of African stew and zucchini soup, with a vegan brownie.

Sissy had a pasta with vegan Bolognese, the same zucchini soup, and a chia pudding with berry topping.

Atop the Boardwalk

Returning to the Jones Beach boardwalk.

It's not quite the season yet, so there was only a smattering of folks by the time we arrived at our usual beach for the first time this year to walk with Papa Rooster's brothers, who are in town visiting him.

The uncles arrived yesterday, and there was a mad scramble to whip the Mothership into some semblance of host-worthy state (ship shape was a forgone aspiration). At my BigFin employer, the five-day return to office policy has become effective, but with exceptions previously granted for work from home up to one day also left unchanged. So I logged in from the Mothership for business hours, but was able to help the sibs with the last push for a good six hours after that. We wrapped up just in time for their slightly flight delayed late evening arrival.

Back at Jones Beach, there is much construction underway to restore the Art Deco structures and add facilities, closing off certain portions of the boardwalk since last year.

We walked as the sun began to set and the moon began to rise, witnessing both at the same time. Those astronomical bodies seemed to mirror the arc of Papa Rooster and Mama Hen, with the closing of the days they could drive there together on a whim independently, and the rise of reliance on their baby chicks for transportation and mechanical aids for mobility, as they both pushed walkers over those planks for the first time - Papa on account of the stroke, Mama finally being forced to acknowledge that her knee has rendered her less able to walk than she generally cares to admit. 

Experiencing the boardwalk we've enjoyed for decades in that way was as stark a change as the construction-altered path we traversed.

Both uncles, though, seemed happily surprised that Papa is in a much better state than they had thought. So there is that.