the tenement

No these are not new photos of my apartment. It just so happens that I have a post helping with Tenement Talks at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. This job also has me working in the Museum Shop a bit which I love as the book selection is a treasure trove and when we get school field trips I get to help tons of little one's count their balled up dollar bills. It is devastating when they don't have enough money for tax and unfortunately I can not afford to buy all of New York's elementary school system a present. It is fortunate when French women ask me to point out in their palm what a dime or a quarter is. This makes me feel prepared for any snippyness I may encounter on my first trip to Paris...whenever that may be. As for events, the highlight thus far was a reading by Erin Einhorn for The Pages In Between. Aside from the brilliance of the story itself, Einhorn was introduced by Ira Glass of NPR who featured her story on an episode of This American Life. Glass was kind and gracious, refusing to take a chair when he realized there were not enough and that I had no place to sit and was wearing a dress. He insisted on sitting on the floor and stayed after to shake hands with the impressive turnout of NPR followers. Einhorn's story is of her parents. Her mother, Irena, was born in the Jewish ghetto of Bedzin, Poland, in 1942. A year later, as Irena's parents were being sent to concentration camps, her father made a deal with a Polish woman to hide young Irena in exchange for all of his property. Irena's mother died at Auschwitz, but her father survived, and returned for Irena after the liberation. Once re-united they immigrated to America. The story continues as grown Einhorn goes to Poland to find her grandfather's house, hoping to meet the woman who hid her mother and from there we witness a world of modern Polish-Jewish relations as she tries to thank the Polish family who hid her mother, even if they did it merely for money.