reality bytes

Montreal street art is supreme. Tsk, tsk, Mayor Ford.

A few doors down, Toronto is cracking down on graffiti. According to the Toronto Sun:

De Baeremaeker said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the approach which could lead to many positive things.

“Not only will we have less graffiti I think in the end, we’re going to have more beauty in this city,” he said.

Janet Sherbanowski of the Crime Prevention Association of Toronto told the committee “graffiti left untreated is a sign a neighbourhood is in decline.

“Graffiti invites other crime and gives a very real message that this would be a safe place to shoot up, sell crack or commit acts of prostitution,” she said.

What would Bansky say? Maybe, “People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if it’s done properly.”

Judy, Have Some Soup

I’ve been writing about my grandparents a lot lately. The stories are endless. So I began with a list, a condensed narrative of a life.

JUDY, HAVE SOME SOUP

At 10:15 in the morning he would pull out a bar of dark chocolate from his desk and eat a piece, just one. He went to work every day until he was ninety four. He used to own a flour mill in Szent István. With a steak knife, he cut windows in cardboard boxes for my dolls. He never drank water during a meal, just like his father. He poured the Kiddush wine back into the bottle for next week. He wore the same grey cashmere sweater until the elbows disappeared. Grandma sewed patches over the holes. He wore out the patches. He had nightmares. As he got older, they didn’t only visit at night. He called me his kish lein, his little girl. His cheeks were rosy. He had almost no wrinkles because the war had burnt off a layer of his skin. He kept his first wife’s dress and his first son’s socks folded away in the back of a drawer. “New suit? he always asked my brothers when they came for Shabbat, his graceful fingers rubbing the fabric. “So elegáns!” he’d tell me when I wore a pretty dress. On the rare occasion he’d get angry, in a voice as loud as his would go, he’d say, “Come to hell!” He once mistook the kitchen oven for an Auschwitz oven. He used to hover over grandma as she cooked, checking that the kokosh cake wasn’t burning, adding water to the chulent, sugar to the salad. “The goulash is good. Much better than yesterday,” he’d say to grandma at least once a week. And, every night, “Judy, have some soup,” though she never did.