Dear Editor:
Faye Podell of 62 Washington St., died Dec. 18. She was ninety-one. I met Faye in 1990, at a time when I was being denounced in the Reporter week after week as an “antisemite” by (it seemed like) every “semite'” in town, because I was speaking out against the monstrous evil done to the Palestinians, and especially the galling fact that our incomes are taxed by a Zion-bribed Congress to pay for it.
One evening during this tense period I got a call: “Is this T. Weed?” Mind you, this was at the crescendo of the angry chorus attacking me in the Reporter, and I’d already received several obscene and threatening phone calls from the same ethically-confused individuals, so perhaps I can be forgiven if I was a tad wary: “Uh…who are you?” “My name is Faye, I’m a Jew and I love your letters. Can we meet?”
We met for coffee the next afternoon and once or twice a week thereafter, up to the time she fell on the street this September and was hospitalized at St. Mary Hospital. When she blacked out she was heading to the Farmboy for a stiff shot of wheatgrass juice, which, along with her vitamins, she credited for keeping her mind clear; and her mind, except for the final weeks, was clear.
What did we talk about, all those hours we sat at Cafe Roma (before it closed), at Park Pastries, at Empire Coffee or Landmark? About herself, her family (her father had been a cantor in a synagogue), about me and my family; about the world — the talk you’d expect from two “liberals” on the same wavelength (she subscribed to the Nation magazine and contributed to listener-supported WBAI from her limited income).
Faye had a good life. She was a dancer, taught dance, lived in Italy for 30 years and had friends there who’d chip in from time to time to pay her airfare back for a months visit. (In Hoboken she lived frugally on S.S. and some help from her son.)
Her cheerful mien and sweet smile will be missed. “Liberal” to the end, she hated injustice and hypocrisy and stupidity and cruelty. Loved everything else.
T. Weed