Halal Turkey

Another Thanksgiving, another super-cloying Times article about how new immigrants celebrate that ur-immigrant holiday:

Every November, Thanksgiving – a celebration of the original immigrant feast – plays out in this city of immigrants as the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians could have hardly fathomed in 1621: a cross-cultural hodgepodge holiday improvised by new American families often inspired and instructed by some of their youngest members. The children of immigrants act as pint-size ambassadors of all things Thanksgiving, urging parents throughout the world to prepare all-American turkey meals that they learned about in school and sharing their incomplete yet innocently sweet knowledge of the holiday’s origins.

. . .

Sometimes, the children are not so much teachers as they are cheerleaders. Occasionally, they are simply culinary advisers. Maha Attieh, 47, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, takes her children to the market when she goes shopping for Thanksgiving, which she usually celebrates at her home in Midwood, Brooklyn, with a turkey stuffed with rice, chicken cutlets, nuts and raisins.

“They make their own menu,” said Mrs. Attieh, who works at the Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn. “What they hear in school, what they hear from friends, they want the same thing. I say, ‘As long as it’s halal meat, I’ll do it.'”

Even Better Than The Real Thing

The Times previews one of the quirkier ways New York City is fetishized — the New York Botanical Garden’s annual Holiday Train Show:

The scene inside was New York in delicious disarray: the Apollo Theater next door to the Chrysler Building, the golden Prometheus statue from the Rockefeller Center skating rink reclining just beyond the center field wall of Yankee Stadium, and half of the Brooklyn Bridge teetering on a wheelbarrow.

Workers were busy sprucing up these miniature landmarks recently and placing them carefully along 1,000 feet of miniature train track that winds through a landscape of plants in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory greenhouse.

The 150 miniatures are part of the Holiday Train Show, which opens on Saturday. The miniature city is made not of concrete and steel but of leaves, twigs, mushrooms, branches, berries and pine cones. In this botanical metropolis, the romanticized models are made out of bits and pieces of plants.

. . .

They are the creations of Paul Busse, a quirky Kentucky landscape architect who has built the models for the holiday season since 1992. This year, the new batch of miniatures includes Yankee Stadium, with floodlights fashioned from acorn shells and fans made from a potpourri.

. . .

As he crouched next to the New York Public Library, he inspected the lion statues on the steps, with their fuzzy wheat manes and peppercorn eyes. He checked the stained glass on the facade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, fashioned from translucent flower petals coated with urethane. He dusted off the red script of the Radio City Music Hall sign, painstakingly made from radish seeds.

“Every year, we take a ride into Manhattan,” he said. “But after working with our buildings, the real thing can almost be a letdown.”

Bonus: New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show Information Page

The Big City Still Has It

Which is stranger? That a lost tourist can roam the Upper East Side for two days or that 70 is considered elderly? The Daily News reports, you decide:

An elderly Japanese tourist was reunited with her daughter yesterday after getting lost on Fifth Ave. and spending two days wandering the upper East Side.

Takako Maeda, 70, who speaks no English, was without food, money or any recollection of the name or address of the hotel where she’s staying – the upscale Pierre at Fifth Ave. and 61st St.

“She drank water from a bottle left on the street next to a pay phone,” said Satoru Kuwajima, a Japanese man who found her yesterday.

“She walked by a police station, but didn’t think they would understand her – so she kept on walking,” he said.

Maeda was separated from her daughter on Saturday about 3:30 p.m. as they walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Motoko Maeda, 37, the daughter, told cops that she lost sight of her mother in a sudden rush of people and after a long day of sightseeing.

Police used bloodhounds in an attempt to trace the woman and found a surveillance tape that showed her walking past the entrance to the Pierre.

Yesterday, she walked into the lobby of Kuwajima’s building on E. 63rd St. and was relieved to encounter someone who spoke Japanese.

Christmas Is Almost Here!

The only thing more depressing than Labor Day weekend is contemplating the holiday season in August:

Yes, Virginia. A sweaty army of New Yorkers is already toiling to deck the halls.

Retailers are ordering their fixin’s and trimmin’s. Macy’s is racing to complete a construction miracle on 34th Street, preparing for the onslaught of 300,000 visitors to Santaland on its eighth floor in Herald Square. Workers are making way for new displays at North Pole Town Square, including the animated teddy-bear marching band. The one with eight teddy-bear musicians.

Currently, Santa is helper-challenged. “We’re sending out letters to elves who’ve worked in the past,” said Bob Rutan, the director of event operations. He needs 140.

Calling David Sedaris. Anyway, Christmas marches on elsewhere:

Paul Olszewski, whose title is director of windows, is coordinating the efforts of 65 workers to fill said space at Macy’s with “something no one has ever seen before in the city,” he pronounced ominously. Not space aliens or even Parson Brown, he insisted, but that’s about all he would reveal, save that the team started working to fill the 40 windows in February, “and we feel as if we’re behind schedule.”

In the heavy air, there’s a feeling of Christmas at Rockefeller Center, bracing itself for the invasion of 400,000 to 500,000 visitors per day from late November through the first week of January. “It’s fourth quarter here with six minutes left in the game,” said Thomas A. Madden Jr., a managing director of Tishman Speyer Properties, owners of Rockefeller Center.

About the Christmas tree hunt (by helicopter, throughout the metropolitan region): “We’re down to several finalists,” said Mr. Madden, who refused to say how many, or where. After all, the felling of the lucky pine cannot be breathlessly announced until November.

Rockefeller Center Zamboni tuneup? Check. Gourmet magazine Christmas cookie photo shoot? Check. Satin-lined, zipper-front Santa Claus suits? Check! And on and on and on it goes until the dreary winter months fall upon us . . .

The Improbable Journey

Illustrating how deer and bears likely migrated to Manhattan, a raccoon yesterday made the trip on a bus arriving from Montclair, NJ. The raccoon went unnoticed by a bus full of students until the driver something odd walking down the aisle:

A New Jersey raccoon made an improbable journey to the big city yesterday, stowing away on a crowded charter bus unnoticed until all of the passengers had gotten off.

“Oh, man, it scared me,” said Decamp driver Winford Bellamy, 57, who spotted the masked bandit while driving drove down 11th Ave. near W. 51st St.

“I looked in my mirror, and saw him just walking up the aisle to the front of the bus,” Bellamy said.

The 2-foot female raccoon came strolling down the aisle minutes after Bellamy dropped off his 50 passengers, a group of Montclair State University students, at a firehouse on W. 51st St.

Immediately after seeing the raccoon, the shocked driver pulled up alongside a police car.

“Man, I got an animal in this bus,” he told a cop.

The officer instructed Bellamy to turn on 40th St. and get out of the bus.

By the time NYPD Emergency Service Unit officers arrived, the raccoon was clinging to the curtains above the bus’ door.

Officer Brian Glacken, 30, opened the driver-side window and hit the normally nocturnal animal with a tranquilizer dart.

The dazed raccoon was collared moments later.

The raccoon was later killed.