Kitchens
Olfactory sites for my most authentic education, my most deeply held cultural assumptions. Where I learned the most of where I come from and to whom I belonged. On Allerton, Longfellow and Boynton avenues in the Bronx: all the information I would need to know about myself was transmitted at tables with food; serenaded by the gurgling of sauces; the doting of aunts and uncles; the cutting and dicing of onions and garlic; the blowing out of birthday candles.
All the infinitum of my enculturation into the community of my elders: family recipes and eating rituals; the stories of my elders; stories of my parents; card playing; how to be a Yankee fan; how to be a mensch.
If learning is situated, context dependent and social, then my most substantial lessons were never in school, but while sitting around the wood and aluminum card tables in the kitchens of my grandparents.