Main Street, Daughters of Israel

My mother, Maggie Thompson, now lives at the Daughters of Israel Nursing Home in West Orange. You might not think that a nursing home would have a Main Street. But Daughters of Israel does. It has a only one operating store, a coffee shop, which is perhaps the only store a Main Street really needs. The rest of the stores are paintings of store windows, filled with merchandise or offers of service and including portraits of the store owners. It makes for a cheery walk from the entry to mom's room, and I always pause to study one or another of the windows. I am ambivalent about the painting as art, but the pet store has very cute kittens in the window and there is one very convincing portrait of a cigar-chomping salesman offering to make a deal. Main Street layers on Main Street. My mother noted on her blog, Maggie:INK, that she is occupying Wall Street from her bed there. As Zuccotti Park is on Broadway, one of the world's greatest Main Streets, and mom is "DoI Way," we have a resonance. But imagine my surprise when I find "Main Street," the book, on a table of freebies in the lobby. I figure it's a sign and I took it.