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Two articles....
One on a woman and her weight.
The Measure of a Woman
By ABBY ELLIN
In 1978, I was 10 years old and visiting my grandmother in Florida for the summer. Nothing made me happier. We shopped at the Bal Harbour mall, swam in the condo pool, saw a movie every week. Each morning, she smothered me with kisses. And each afternoon, we'd weigh ourselves. ''Girls have to be thin and beautiful,'' Grandma said, always linking the two adjectives together.
I wasn't fat -- I was a muscular gymnast -- but food was certainly a passion, and my grandmother worried that one day I'd ''blow up like an elephant.'' This was the worst fate possible. It didn't matter that Grandma was a college graduate, a teacher of ''intellectually gifted'' students, a single mother when few women were and utterly devoted to her family. My mother and her brother adored her, and so did I. For her, beauty was paramount -- and fat was decidedly not beautiful. But I didn't worry. I would never get fat.
Then puberty hit, and I gained 20 pounds in less than a year. I hadn't seen my grandmother in almost as long when she came to visit us in Boston. As usual, she looked wonderful, her nails newly manicured, her clothes freshly pressed. She kissed me hesitantly, her hands kneading the strange new flesh on my shoulders and back. She could barely look my way. Later, I overheard her telling my mother that I'd become ''tremendous.'' At dinner, I reached for a second slice of bread, and my grandmother slapped my hand away. ''You don't need another,'' she said. ''How can you let yourself go like this? You've got such a gorgeous face -- don't you want boys to like you?''
Then came a warning: ''You need to lose 10 pounds or else you can't come to Florida this year.''
''But why?'' I asked. ''Who cares what I weigh?''
''Because the world judges on first appearances,'' Grandma snapped. ''It's my home, and I don't want you there unless you look the way you're supposed to.'' She told me she'd buy me a whole new wardrobe if I lost weight. My mother protested, but she had no control over the matter.
I know my grandmother was only trying to help a pudgy adolescent avoid teasing and torment. (She was just as harsh when my mother battled extra pounds as a teenager.) But I didn't lose weight, and I didn't go to Florida that Christmas.
I spent the next six summers at various fat camps, trying to make Grandma happy. When I was heavy, I wouldn't visit her. When I was thin, she'd lavish praise on me as if I were royalty. ''Hello, Skinny!'' she'd beam. This both pleased and annoyed me. I desperately wanted her approval, and yet I resented her for making weight an issue. I was only a kid, and I wasn't that big.
But she was just as fixated on her own appearance. She was stunning, meticulously groomed and vigilant about what she ate. And she took her obsession through old age and illness -- all the way to her deathbed. Even in the last months of her life, she had us weigh her all the time. Despite our sense that the request was deeply sad and, of course, ludicrous, we did what she asked.
On those mornings, the nurse would feed her three pills, then set her onto the portable potty. After, she'd lift Grandma up, secure the catheter and help her on the scale. There was silence until the nurse announced a made-up number that was sure to please Grandma. But one day we got a new nurse, Nancy, who didn't know how we did things.
''Why?'' Nancy laughed. ''You're skinny as a rail.''
''Because I want to know what I weigh,'' Grandma said, slurring her words. Her left side was numb, droopy.
''It's true,'' I said. ''We do it every day.''
Nancy looked at us as if we were crazy but then caught on. ''O.K.,'' she said with a shrug. She untucked Grandma's blankets, raised the hospital bed and set down the scale. Grandma swung her good foot onto it while Nancy supported her.
''Well?'' Grandma gurgled.
''Let's see here.'' Nancy pretended to read the numbers. ''It's about 109,'' she told my 80-pound grandmother.
''What?'' Grandma said, alarmed. ''Yesterday I was 105.''
I jumped off the sofa and headed straight for the scale. ''No,'' I said, shaking my head at Nancy. ''It's 105 on the nose. The numbers are just blurry, Gram.''
''Are you sure? All I do is lie here and eat. I don't want to be fat when I get out of here.''
''It's 105,'' I said, and suddenly I realized what was happening. The scale was Grandma's link to the world. Maybe, I thought, she thinks she'll live. I looked at her lying there, paralyzed and weak and helpless. Her breathing sputtered. Her bones stuck out like pegs. I patted her stomach, rubbing loose flesh.
''I just don't want to get fat,'' she murmured once again.
And at that moment, I forgave her.
One on NYC.
The Superlative City? Let New Yorkers Count the Ways, in Almost Every Language
By SAM ROBERTS
Deriding the elitist 19th-century notion that there were only 400 people who really counted in New York City, O. Henry credited "a wiser man" - the census taker - with a "larger estimate of human interest," which he memorialized in fiction as "The Four Million." Though enormous as New York must have seemed then, his four million of a century ago have doubled to more than eight million. More than ever, New York today is a city of superlatives.
But just how big is it?
So big that convening the region's largest American Indian gathering in Brooklyn, of all places, this weekend was not as incongruous as it might seem. The 11th annual Gateway to Nations powwow is being celebrated in the original homeland of the Canarsie Indians at Gateway National Recreation Area in a metropolis that, modern census takers estimate, is home to more American Indians than any other city with a population of more than 100,000 in the United States.
So big that New York has more Yiddish speakers (they outnumber the American Indians) and more who speak Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and English, and more people who identify their heritage as Italian, German, Scottish, Nigerian or Swiss than in any big American city. It has more who claim Irish ancestry than any city in the world except Dublin.
More people born in Pakistan, France, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Ghana, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic and almost every other country (except, primarily, Cuba and Mexico), live in New York than in any other city in the country.
New York even ranks first in the number of people who describe themselves as having been born at sea.
The city also has more lawyers, doctors, teachers, security guards, construction workers, firefighters, railway workers and more people who work in arts and entertainment than any large city in the country and more people employed in manufacturing. It does not lead in agriculture, although the city, with 1,464 workers in related fields, ranks a respectable 10th nationwide among cities whose residents say their occupation is farming, fishing or forestry. New York has more students enrolled in every grade, from kindergarten through graduate school; more who have not graduated from high school and more with doctoral degrees.
The city also ranks first with more people in every age group (including about 540,000 under age 5 and 121,000 who are 85 and older).
New York has more people than any other city in the United States who do not own a car, and who car-pool to work or take public transportation, including taxis and ferries; more who ride their bicycles or walk to work, and more who work at home. San Francisco edges New York in the number who say they commute by motorcycle.
More New Yorkers live in jails, nursing homes, college dorms, mental wards and religious quarters - like convents - than in any other city, according to the latest Census Bureau figures.
A few of those numbers might be statistical anomalies, of course, especially since the census relies largely on self-identification. For example, there are undoubtedly a lot of American Indians in New York, but the total is probably inflated by some Asian Indians who also consider themselves American and described themselves that way - incorrectly by the government's definition - on the census forms.
With so many superlatives, no group categorized by ancestry or age or birthplace abroad or occupation or degree of education dominates, because, as Theodore Dreiser once wrote, New York "is so preponderantly large."
New York has more than twice as many people as the nation's second biggest city, Los Angeles. New York is home to more people than the next four top-ranked cities in population: Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix, combined.
Which means that in every category, each separate New York superlative is subsumed by the biggest superlative of them all: The Eight Million.
The Measure of a Woman
By ABBY ELLIN
In 1978, I was 10 years old and visiting my grandmother in Florida for the summer. Nothing made me happier. We shopped at the Bal Harbour mall, swam in the condo pool, saw a movie every week. Each morning, she smothered me with kisses. And each afternoon, we'd weigh ourselves. ''Girls have to be thin and beautiful,'' Grandma said, always linking the two adjectives together.
I wasn't fat -- I was a muscular gymnast -- but food was certainly a passion, and my grandmother worried that one day I'd ''blow up like an elephant.'' This was the worst fate possible. It didn't matter that Grandma was a college graduate, a teacher of ''intellectually gifted'' students, a single mother when few women were and utterly devoted to her family. My mother and her brother adored her, and so did I. For her, beauty was paramount -- and fat was decidedly not beautiful. But I didn't worry. I would never get fat.
Then puberty hit, and I gained 20 pounds in less than a year. I hadn't seen my grandmother in almost as long when she came to visit us in Boston. As usual, she looked wonderful, her nails newly manicured, her clothes freshly pressed. She kissed me hesitantly, her hands kneading the strange new flesh on my shoulders and back. She could barely look my way. Later, I overheard her telling my mother that I'd become ''tremendous.'' At dinner, I reached for a second slice of bread, and my grandmother slapped my hand away. ''You don't need another,'' she said. ''How can you let yourself go like this? You've got such a gorgeous face -- don't you want boys to like you?''
Then came a warning: ''You need to lose 10 pounds or else you can't come to Florida this year.''
''But why?'' I asked. ''Who cares what I weigh?''
''Because the world judges on first appearances,'' Grandma snapped. ''It's my home, and I don't want you there unless you look the way you're supposed to.'' She told me she'd buy me a whole new wardrobe if I lost weight. My mother protested, but she had no control over the matter.
I know my grandmother was only trying to help a pudgy adolescent avoid teasing and torment. (She was just as harsh when my mother battled extra pounds as a teenager.) But I didn't lose weight, and I didn't go to Florida that Christmas.
I spent the next six summers at various fat camps, trying to make Grandma happy. When I was heavy, I wouldn't visit her. When I was thin, she'd lavish praise on me as if I were royalty. ''Hello, Skinny!'' she'd beam. This both pleased and annoyed me. I desperately wanted her approval, and yet I resented her for making weight an issue. I was only a kid, and I wasn't that big.
But she was just as fixated on her own appearance. She was stunning, meticulously groomed and vigilant about what she ate. And she took her obsession through old age and illness -- all the way to her deathbed. Even in the last months of her life, she had us weigh her all the time. Despite our sense that the request was deeply sad and, of course, ludicrous, we did what she asked.
On those mornings, the nurse would feed her three pills, then set her onto the portable potty. After, she'd lift Grandma up, secure the catheter and help her on the scale. There was silence until the nurse announced a made-up number that was sure to please Grandma. But one day we got a new nurse, Nancy, who didn't know how we did things.
''Why?'' Nancy laughed. ''You're skinny as a rail.''
''Because I want to know what I weigh,'' Grandma said, slurring her words. Her left side was numb, droopy.
''It's true,'' I said. ''We do it every day.''
Nancy looked at us as if we were crazy but then caught on. ''O.K.,'' she said with a shrug. She untucked Grandma's blankets, raised the hospital bed and set down the scale. Grandma swung her good foot onto it while Nancy supported her.
''Well?'' Grandma gurgled.
''Let's see here.'' Nancy pretended to read the numbers. ''It's about 109,'' she told my 80-pound grandmother.
''What?'' Grandma said, alarmed. ''Yesterday I was 105.''
I jumped off the sofa and headed straight for the scale. ''No,'' I said, shaking my head at Nancy. ''It's 105 on the nose. The numbers are just blurry, Gram.''
''Are you sure? All I do is lie here and eat. I don't want to be fat when I get out of here.''
''It's 105,'' I said, and suddenly I realized what was happening. The scale was Grandma's link to the world. Maybe, I thought, she thinks she'll live. I looked at her lying there, paralyzed and weak and helpless. Her breathing sputtered. Her bones stuck out like pegs. I patted her stomach, rubbing loose flesh.
''I just don't want to get fat,'' she murmured once again.
And at that moment, I forgave her.
One on NYC.
The Superlative City? Let New Yorkers Count the Ways, in Almost Every Language
By SAM ROBERTS
Deriding the elitist 19th-century notion that there were only 400 people who really counted in New York City, O. Henry credited "a wiser man" - the census taker - with a "larger estimate of human interest," which he memorialized in fiction as "The Four Million." Though enormous as New York must have seemed then, his four million of a century ago have doubled to more than eight million. More than ever, New York today is a city of superlatives.
But just how big is it?
So big that convening the region's largest American Indian gathering in Brooklyn, of all places, this weekend was not as incongruous as it might seem. The 11th annual Gateway to Nations powwow is being celebrated in the original homeland of the Canarsie Indians at Gateway National Recreation Area in a metropolis that, modern census takers estimate, is home to more American Indians than any other city with a population of more than 100,000 in the United States.
So big that New York has more Yiddish speakers (they outnumber the American Indians) and more who speak Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and English, and more people who identify their heritage as Italian, German, Scottish, Nigerian or Swiss than in any big American city. It has more who claim Irish ancestry than any city in the world except Dublin.
More people born in Pakistan, France, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Ghana, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic and almost every other country (except, primarily, Cuba and Mexico), live in New York than in any other city in the country.
New York even ranks first in the number of people who describe themselves as having been born at sea.
The city also has more lawyers, doctors, teachers, security guards, construction workers, firefighters, railway workers and more people who work in arts and entertainment than any large city in the country and more people employed in manufacturing. It does not lead in agriculture, although the city, with 1,464 workers in related fields, ranks a respectable 10th nationwide among cities whose residents say their occupation is farming, fishing or forestry. New York has more students enrolled in every grade, from kindergarten through graduate school; more who have not graduated from high school and more with doctoral degrees.
The city also ranks first with more people in every age group (including about 540,000 under age 5 and 121,000 who are 85 and older).
New York has more people than any other city in the United States who do not own a car, and who car-pool to work or take public transportation, including taxis and ferries; more who ride their bicycles or walk to work, and more who work at home. San Francisco edges New York in the number who say they commute by motorcycle.
More New Yorkers live in jails, nursing homes, college dorms, mental wards and religious quarters - like convents - than in any other city, according to the latest Census Bureau figures.
A few of those numbers might be statistical anomalies, of course, especially since the census relies largely on self-identification. For example, there are undoubtedly a lot of American Indians in New York, but the total is probably inflated by some Asian Indians who also consider themselves American and described themselves that way - incorrectly by the government's definition - on the census forms.
With so many superlatives, no group categorized by ancestry or age or birthplace abroad or occupation or degree of education dominates, because, as Theodore Dreiser once wrote, New York "is so preponderantly large."
New York has more than twice as many people as the nation's second biggest city, Los Angeles. New York is home to more people than the next four top-ranked cities in population: Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix, combined.
Which means that in every category, each separate New York superlative is subsumed by the biggest superlative of them all: The Eight Million.
no subject
They did a fairly good job of it too, for me. One of the things they really got right. I got into trouble at school once for not eating lunch. But I wasn't hungry, and I didn't let adults force me to eat without a really good reason (I've acquiesced now and then when there were rational reasons like - you need to take some salt and drink something because it's really hot out and your body will have lost salt, even if you hate the taste of salt.). But my teacher apologized later - turned out I was sick. I didn't know that, but I knew I wasn't hungry.
I don't know if it's a side effect of this or not, but I totally do not understand the concept of eating because you are bored. I just don't. It isn't that entertaining. And I've never felt a desire to be thinner than I am, although I've never been particularly heavy, so I can't tell if I would have angsted about it had it come up.
The whole eating ridiculousness just strikes me as massive amounts of cultural angst and pain that is so stupid and pointless. We should teach people how to have a healthy diet and focus on that. How to have good eating habits. And for those in good enough health to do so, how to not sit around and be sedentary all day. It wouldn't fix all of the food related problems, and wouldn't help countless starving people, but it'd be an improvement.
no subject
My father was adamant about my brother and I finishing the food on our plates. After my mother left, I daresay the quality of the meals went down (certainly the variety did--chicken in the oven almost every goddamned night, steamed broccoli, sometimes a yam), but it was still a huge deal to clear the plate. Hell, it was a problem when I didn't want to slather butter on my cob of corn after I discovered that corn tasted just as good without all that extra crap (and you didn't get nearly as messy).
My girlfriend is slightly mystified at the concept of clearing one's plate, saying that she was taught to "eat until you're full." I've started to re-train myself to do this... at the age of 26. It's not easy, because it's like... I can hear a voice in the back of my head saying, "You paid $x for that food and you're going to let it go to waste?" *sigh*
no subject
no subject
They did a fairly good job of it too, for me. One of the things they really got right. I got into trouble at school once for not eating lunch. But I wasn't hungry, and I didn't let adults force me to eat without a really good reason (I've acquiesced now and then when there were rational reasons like - you need to take some salt and drink something because it's really hot out and your body will have lost salt, even if you hate the taste of salt.). But my teacher apologized later - turned out I was sick. I didn't know that, but I knew I wasn't hungry.
I don't know if it's a side effect of this or not, but I totally do not understand the concept of eating because you are bored. I just don't. It isn't that entertaining. And I've never felt a desire to be thinner than I am, although I've never been particularly heavy, so I can't tell if I would have angsted about it had it come up.
The whole eating ridiculousness just strikes me as massive amounts of cultural angst and pain that is so stupid and pointless. We should teach people how to have a healthy diet and focus on that. How to have good eating habits. And for those in good enough health to do so, how to not sit around and be sedentary all day. It wouldn't fix all of the food related problems, and wouldn't help countless starving people, but it'd be an improvement.
no subject
My father was adamant about my brother and I finishing the food on our plates. After my mother left, I daresay the quality of the meals went down (certainly the variety did--chicken in the oven almost every goddamned night, steamed broccoli, sometimes a yam), but it was still a huge deal to clear the plate. Hell, it was a problem when I didn't want to slather butter on my cob of corn after I discovered that corn tasted just as good without all that extra crap (and you didn't get nearly as messy).
My girlfriend is slightly mystified at the concept of clearing one's plate, saying that she was taught to "eat until you're full." I've started to re-train myself to do this... at the age of 26. It's not easy, because it's like... I can hear a voice in the back of my head saying, "You paid $x for that food and you're going to let it go to waste?" *sigh*
no subject