Quote of the (turkey) day

There was no turkey on turkey day this year.

Instead, we reserved a large table at Chosen, a Chinese restaurant, to accommodate a lively group of cousins and grandparents. (Okay, so there was turkey, but I didn’t eat it. Why eat turkey at a Chinese place? Why?)

Though we are not fans of raw fish, the activity at the sushi bar was very apparent. My grandfather saw this, turned, and said, “Are the people who make sushi supposed to be dressed like fish or something?”

I love my grandpa.

And: happy thanksgiving! To anyone out there, reading this blog: thank you for slogging through! And to all my friends, thanks for being amazing and putting up with me. Lots of love.

Why I love my grandmother.

After some last-second family planning, we went out to dinner with our cousins who live in Israel. I hadn’t seen them in over a year, and they were lovely and adorable (e.g. a seven-year-old cousin: “Well my busdriver is in jail now!”). I’m glad I got to catch them before they flew back.

To the point: my grandparents were there. My mother’s parents live in the Bronx, and sometimes meet me after, say, I cover a stabbing. As avid subscribers to the Daily News, they scan the headlines to see if I’ve contributed anything. So my grandmother brought a manila folder to dinner. In it were all of my clippings for the summer. I was so excited! That cuts out so much work for me.

But then, I noticed, on everything I’d worked on, my name was underlined. In red. Which means I probably can’t use them for professional purposes. Oops. But grandma was so cute about it: “I had a feeling that I was doing something wrong as I underlined, but I just had to.”

Meanwhile, lots of sneezing today. Yuck. I think people on the subway thought I had swine flu or something.

Chesil a go

After reading other reviews—and following Ian’s (oh, not McEwan! I don’t think that I channel the author’s guidance in my head…) advice—I decided, despite my unfiltered reaction to the “lazy” NYT review, I would forge ahead with On Chesil Beach. Plus, the New Yorker already got me 45 pages (or 1/5 chapters) in. So why not?

It’s okay so far, pretty good, not awful, not amazing. Worth reading, of course.

Aaaaanyway today my work assignment—not crime!—brought me close to school. It was good to be back and to bump into lots of people I know after hours. Also the sun has turned my cheeks red. But then it rained. And, of course, I was caught in it. Some things never change.

Also, I saw the South Pacific revival last week with my family. This well-done musical doused my parents and grandparents in nostalgia (my grandma sang in my ear…). I enjoyed the excellent performance, but question the value of reviving a play so historically and ideologically topical. The different reactions from different generations (at least within my family) showcased a conceptual divide: my brother and I initially had trouble grasping that a huge chunk of the plot turned on questions of marriage between different races.

This stuff was revolutionary when Rodgers and Hammerstein produced it way back when. Now, it seems sort of meaningless: the overcoming of these barriers is a conclusion that does not need to be told, let alone celebrated with three hours of music, dialogue, and elaborate sets. But its lack of dramatic intrigue in 2009 could be considered an artistic feat—a barometer that illustrates how far we’ve come.