Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll meet a woman who taught sewing on the Lower East Side for much of her life — and she is 100 years old today. We'll also find out why Senator Bob Menendez's new wife has apparently attracted the attention of federal prosecutors. |
| Ruth Taube, center, with Andres Biel, left.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times |
|
Ruth Taube has learned to live with the double takes at the doctor's office. |
"She always has young people there working with her, studying to be future doctors," Taube said. "Some of them, when they say 'what is your birthday,' I say 8-2-1923. They don't know what '19' means." |
So yes, she is 100 today. But this isn't only about a milestone in the life of a woman with no-nonsense, can-do energy. It's also about someone who at 35 picked up what she did for nearly two-thirds of her life. That was teaching sewing for the Henry Street Settlement, the nonprofit on the Lower East Side that now runs more than 50 programs, including the largest Meals on Wheels operation in Manhattan, four homeless shelters and a work force development center. |
There is a through line of serendipity and self-sufficiency from Taube to Andres Biel, who has taken over Taube's studio and started a fashion workshop for low-income teenagers. Biel wandered in one day in 2009. |
A decade later, as he was heading into his 30s, he returned to what Taube had introduced him to. He started his own brand, IFlyUniverse, and won the emerging designer award at Harlem Fashion Week in 2019. |
Taube said she started sewing when she was 2 years old. Her mother made a dress for her porcelain baby doll. Taube herself then sewed a pillow for the doll. "From there," she said, "I started to make little things for myself." |
But sewing remained a passion that dovetailed with financial necessity until she was an adult. "I had a very good friend who called me on the phone and said, 'Listen, Henry Street Settlement has a sewing class,'" Taube recalled. "'The teacher could not make it, and a whole bunch of little girls are waiting for the class to start. Would you go over there and pitch in for the teacher?'" |
Taube went. "I had nothing to lose. It was a few blocks from my house," she said. "That was it. From that day on, I had a class at Henry Street Settlement." |
She also had the challenges that came with what was a teaching job: lesson planning. "I didn't have a curriculum, so I had all week to think up a small project they could start at 3:30 and finish by 5:30," she said. |
In time, her sessions became part of a long-running home-planning workshop for adults. And Taube made it clear that she taught more than just how to make a dress or a suit with fabric that drapes well. |
"I had a table, and we sat around that table," she said. "We sewed, we talked. Whatever your heart needed, you said at that table, and your heart got back opinions and ideas. People coming in with a lot of unhappy feelings walked out with very good feelings." |
Or with very carefully made clothes. "We made a few wedding gowns for girls who couldn't afford fancy wedding gowns, and gowns for the mothers and grandmothers who would be attending the weddings," Taube said. |
Taube retired with the pandemic, and a needlework circle that she also led was suspended. "I'm disappointed that the time came when I had to give it up myself," she said. |
Biel credits Taube with being "the first to open my eyes with sewing." He had been an intern in a Henry Street program when he was introduced to Taube by a counselor who knew that he had an interest in fashion design. |
Taube "doesn't play games," he said. "She sits you down, and you do it together." Biel said he learned "the basic skills of being able to make something — make something from scratch." A tote bag, he said. |
He was the youngest person in Taube's studio that first day, and the only man. "Sewing, people look at it as so feminizing," he said. "It's not. It's really for everyone. In a factory, men operate these machines, so what's the difference if they do it at home?" |
Biel's program is called Rambler Studio, after a street-fashion program that began in Amsterdam. He said his particular focus was on "building with younger creative individuals who are growing with fashion," and as he talked, they showed off their work — jackets and tops with a touch of the Roaring Twenties look. |
Which was, of course, the decade in which Taube was born. |
Enjoy a sunny day near the low 80s. At night it's mostly clear, with temps dropping to around the high 60s. |
In effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption). |
| Matt Rourke/Associated Press |
|
A senator, his wife, her friends and an investigation |
| Pool photo by Ting Shen |
|
For the second time in less than 10 years, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is facing a federal investigation. |
This time, prosecutors also have his new wife in their sights. My colleague Tracey Tully writes that investigators appear focused on the possibility that Menendez's wife, Nadine Menendez, or the senator himself received undisclosed gifts from a company run by a friend of hers. The investigation is also looking into whether the gifts came in return for political factors. |
Unlike her husband — who was elected to the school board in Union City, N.J., 49 years ago and has been in politics ever since — Nadine Menendez lived most of her life out of the spotlight before divorcing her first husband in 2005. In 2020, the year she married Menendez, she set up a consulting company; her assets included bars of gold bullion then worth as much as $250,000. |
The investigation appears to focus at least in part on the Menendezes' relationship with a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, a United States citizen who was born in Egypt and knew Nadine Menendez before she and the senator became involved. In 2019, a start-up company run by Hana became the only one authorized to certify that any halal food product imported into Egypt had been prepared according to Islamic law. Until then, responsibility for seeing that meat going from the United States to Egypt met strict processing standards had been divided among four companies in the U.S. |
Prosecutors and the F.B.I. are now investigating whether the senator or his wife received a car or an apartment in Washington from Hana's company. |
Hana's spokeswoman has said that Hana got into the halal business without assistance from any public official in this country. |
Menendez has said that he expects the inquiry to be "successfully closed." His campaign finance reports point to the potential significance of the inquiry, which is led by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Menendez has spent roughly $290,000 in connection with the investigation since January. Last month he set up a new defense fund to avoid any further draw on his political accounts. |
It was 1980. I had just started at Doctors Hospital on the East Side as a young attending plastic surgeon. I was operating on my first case when Miss Bodine entered the room. |
"Is this your first time at Doctors Hospital?" she asked. |
"No, Miss Bodine," I said. "Actually, I was born here." |
"Oh, my," she said. "Were are you a preemie?" |
I thought it was a strange question, but I said I had been born prematurely and kept in the hospital before going home. |
I finished the surgery, and she was very helpful. |
When I returned the next week, Miss Bodine entered the room with a large manila envelope. |
"This is for you," she said. |
I opened the envelope and found three pictures of me in an incubator on the day I was born, each with my name written below along with my date of birth. |
Miss Bodine, it turned out, had been the head nurse of what was later called the neonatal intensive care unit and had maintained albums with pictures of every newborn kept there. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
|