September 16, 2008

Welcome, Apples!

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(Stone Ridge Orchards minus one bushel, two pecks, seventeen apples and one pint of the last raspberries of the season.)

September 22, 2008

Finally.

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I think we are just about over this hump into the fall season and my current project is about to launch online in a week. I hope.

It's a small line of tee shirts handcrafted for boys - something that began in our kitchen sink over a year and a half ago when our first son was obsessed with garbage trucks and we couldn't find any tees with one on it. Friends would ask about it, we gave some out as gifts, and the next thing we knew we were designing all sorts of vehicle related tees. This past summer we had a blast at the Brooklyn Flea and then hit a major snag with our plan to be online - that snag took until now but I think we are going to make it online this week!

Anyway, this plus the new school season has had us hopping on the home front and I have been trying to find a way to get back into the blog, hopefully with complete thoughts and sentences. I hope things are good with everyone else - I'd love to hear some stories!

September 24, 2008

Corner Masala

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The Bangladeshi family who owns this place run a UHaul rental center from the back door, an Indian buffet from the side door, and a grocery from the front.

We recently hauled a truck of boxes down to my mother's for storage and had occasion to talk to the sixteen year old behind the counter. They'd moved there from Park Slope, Brooklyn and though she said they were lonely at first they'd taken to driving to New York regularly enough that they felt at home now. When asked about the two young boys industriously sweeping the parking lot she told us she was having her sweet sixteen that evening with six hundred guests. And oh, we should drop by if we can.

This I love. It reminds me of how my mother also sees possibility in everything, how Koreans have no problem tackling one vocation, then another even if they've had no experience or training whatsoever. There's a kind of sheer exuberance and willingness to work hard, a world view that all was possible that to me is so attractive about our culture.

Now on the flip side, Koreans have a harder time with reality, like um, laws which can get in the way (ever look up how many infractions with the law the Rhee Brothers have gotten into? This is just one) and don't even mention taxes, but there are plenty of success stories as well.

I wonder if my boys will also internalize a sense of this because their lives are so much more ordered than mine. This fluidity, this total sense of opportunity.

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