Masayuki Sono’s “Postcards” Memorial

Last week I got a chance to see Masayuki Sono’s “Postcards” memorial. Postcards is Staten Island’s memorial to the 252 Islanders who died on Sept. 11. The memorial is located on the waterfront in St. George. It consists of two concrete postcards (I think they evoke a bird’s wings, too) that frame the Lower Manhattan skyline. Granite is embedded in the wings, into which is carved a profile of each of the Staten Island victims.

I’m pretty sure Postcards is the first Sept. 11 memorial in the immediate area. The city has taken a slow approach to the process of making a memorial at the World Trade Center site — obviously it is still many years away.

It’s not a bad memorial — elegant, really, in the site-specific way it frames where the towers stood. Out of curiosity, I’d like to see more artistic criticism of it.

Here’s a Staten Island Advance story about the memorial’s dedication:

“We wanted to make it as personal as possible,” said Borough President James Molinaro, who stayed at the site for almost three hours after the dedication ceremony had ended. “It’s very comforting to everyone I’ve spoken with.”

The design of the monument, the brainchild of Japanese architect Masayuki Sono, is supposed to be two 40-foot postcards, stretching out into the sky. But almost everyone had their own take on what it represents — from wings carrying their loved ones to heaven, to the pages of a book turning to a new chapter.

“I spoke with someone who lost his brother, and he said it reminded him of sails,” said Molinaro, “because his brother loved to sail.”

For Diane Boland, an emergency room registrar at Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze, “Postcards” gave her the chance to put names — and faces and occupations and birthdays — on some 9/11 victims she only wishes she had gotten to know.

“We were waiting in the halls — doctors, nurses, environmental people with stretchers and wheelchairs — desperately wanting to help,” said Mrs. Boland, crying as she reflected on the sheer frustration of being so powerless. “We waited and waited and nobody came. It still hurts. But this helps with the healing.

“I’m so impressed with what Staten Island has done to honor all of these people. But as I stand in the middle and look out across the bay … this kills me. It still just devastates me,” said Mrs. Boland, looking past the monument out to the Manhattan skyline, highlighted by the two beams of blue light that rose from the vicinity of the World Trade Center, a picture that invited professional and amateur photographers alike by the dozens.

The 250-Square-Foot Studio

Reasonable people should recoil at the thought of living in a 250-square-foot studio, much less living with one’s spouse in a 250-square-foot studio, yet this couple actually lives in a 250-square-foot studio:

Blood-red dahlias were obligingly photogenic in the pool of light thrown by an alabaster lamp. Indeed, all 250 square feet of this bento box of an apartment glowed and winked, every inch of it a lesson in trenchant urban survival.

“The overriding ethic, here and everywhere,” said Mr. [Maxwell] Gillingham-Ryan, who speaks in a cool, hushed tone that tends to lower the pitch of any conversation, “is to get rid of any excess: clothes, furniture, doors. I find that most doors, particularly closet doors, you can do without. New York is a hard, mineral environment — all concrete, steel and glass — so I try to get rid of as many hard elements as possible and replace them with soft things.”

Mr. Gillingham-Ryan has thrown out his dresser and armchair and all his closet doors. There are lots of soft things here instead: canvas or sheer curtains instead of doors, a bedroom floor/platform padded with gymnastic matting (you can buy it on Canal Street by the yard and slice it with a razor, Mr. Gillingham-Ryan said) wrapped in oatmeal-colored raw linen.

It’s a room designed like a boat, with six padded compartments making up its platform “floor.”

“Here’s our office,” Ms. [Sara Kate] Gilligham-Ryan said, opening one, “and his socks,” she said, opening another.

Let me just say that again: it’s a 250-square-foot studio.

Comparing living spaces is a sport and, as someone who shares a 482-square-foot studio with his loved one, it’s not often that I get to experience the satisfaction of housing schadenfreude, so do me a favor and read the article!

[Gilligham also runs a consulting business/website called Apartment Therapy which I need to check out . . .]

The Arepa Lady

Jackson Heights’ Arepa Lady is featured in a Times story about “Street Corner Cooks”.

The Arepa Lady is covered obsessively at chowhound.com. Chowhound has a good primer about her which is worth a read:

When people ask me to name my favorite food in New York, I inevitably answer–without hesitation–“arepas from the Arepa Lady”. This saintly woman grills Colombian corn cakes on her street cart weekends after 10:30 pm, and they are magical.

I don’t know her name; such knowledge would detract from my appreciation of her as an archetype. While I speak pretty decent Spanish, I’ve never been able to fully follow her conversation, but it doesn’t matter. I go when I’m feeling blue, stand under her umbrella, and feel a healing calm wash over me as she brushes the sizzling corn cakes with butter. Zen master-like in her complete absorption in the task, she grills the things with infinite patience and loving care.

Everyone adores the arepa lady. The people on the street treat her with reverence and respect; there’s always a small entourage of hangers-on standing around her cart or sitting on folding chairs. Fast cars and smoke-billowing trucks zoom down the street, the 7 train crashes by overhead, partying Latinos cavort up and down the block, but the arepa lady’s peacefulness absorbs it all, transforms it, and gives back…corn cakes.

The arepas themselves are snacks from heaven. Coursely ground corn, fried in pancakes about 6 inches in diameter and an inch thick, slathered with butter and topped with shredded white cheese, they’re brown and crunchy, chewy and a little bit sweet, the butter and cheese imbuing the whole with salty dairy meltiness.

And thanks to the Times, we now know her name — Maria Piedad Cano:

Ms. Cano is known to many as the Arepa Lady, which amuses her deeply. She didn’t prepare these traditional snacks until 1986, two years after she fled her home in Medellín. She was a judge, she said, and the drug wars made her beautiful town, and her job, too dangerous.

She reminisced, through a translator, about her former good life, before turning to the subject of her culinary accolades. She cited articles on the Internet about her and scoffed at a cookbook author who claimed to have published her recipe. “She didn’t have the right proportions,” Ms. Cano said.

No matter how she makes them here, it’s hard to match the flavor of the arepas in Colombia. The corn here is of a different variety, she said, and not as sweet. Still, the demand is high for her arepas, including the inch-high pancake of cornmeal, mozzarella, milk and sugar that she makes at home.

“Restaurant food is very industrialized,” Ms. Cano said. “It loses much of the flavor that’s made at home.”