New York Social Diary - Social Diary

Cynthia Lufkin in her Upper West Side apartment in 2008. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013. Partly sunny, partly cloudy and very warm in New York yesterday, but not as humid as the weekend, with a brief but torrential shower in the early evening which cooled things down, if not off.

Cynthia Lufkin. I’ve been putting off writing this since I heard the news last Wednesday afternoon. I’m one of those people that if I put something off long enough, it will go away and I’ll begin to forget I was putting it off. I’ve been putting this off because it was grievous and disturbed me deeply. I feel there is nothing I can add to the situation but can only look for comfort. However, I know I am not alone in feeling this way; and that there are many people out there who want to know and who are thinking about it.


Cynthia Lufkin (1962-2013).

Last Wednesday morning Cynthia Lufkin died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital here in New York. She was fifty-one. She had been ill with cancer of the brain and lung. I don’t know how long this has been going on but several years ago she had triumphed over breast cancer. In the meantime, she became a mother for the second and third time with a second daughter and then a son. Her first daughter from her first marriage is now a young teenager.

She had fought valiantly and courageously. She had much to live for including her three children, two of whom are still little ones; and a devoted, supportive husband, Dan Lufkin, who had enhanced her life immeasurably in the last decade of her life. These realities must have distressed her even more deeply than the great pain she endured; she knew she was being overtaken and leaving them.

I loved Cynthia. We were friends – not close, but good – for almost 20 years. I first met her professionally. She was a young woman newly out of college (Trinity), working in public relations at Tiffany under Fernanda Kellogg; and I had started the Social Diary in Quest magazine. She was one of those women whose charm was her smile and her laughter. Otherwise she was seriously conscientious, as if to make certain that she got something, got everything, right. She was also newly married and forging a professional life in New York as well.

That marriage ended a few short years later, right after she gave birth to her daughter Schuyler. The word went around among her friends that she was devastated by her husband’s desire to leave. All dreams she might have had about a future were shattered.

She was nonetheless fortunate despite her great disappointment, because she had backbone and possessed the gift of friendship. She was a good friend, and she had friends and a support group here in New York. Her professional life at Tiffany also gave her access to an expansive social life where she could form friendships. As a young married woman, she and her first husband had already become part of the younger set that was, and in some ways still is, identified with social impresario Mark Gilbertson.

After her divorce, Cynthia remained active on some of the junior committees on the charity circuit – a kind of volunteering that allows a lot of young people to meet and create friendships. This is where making a social life begins in New York for a lot of newcomers who are enthusiastic and seeking to make a life as members of the community. Cynthia was well suited for it because she was a “joiner” by nature. She liked people and she was easily inclined to participate. Her professional experience also gave her something to bring to the table in party planning and fundraising and entertaining.


	Cynthia and Dan with Wendy Carduner at Doubles.

	Cytnthia and Dan at the New York Botanical Garden.

	Cynthia and Dan backstage.

Shortly after her marriage ended, she met Dan Lufkin. It wasn’t an accident; they were introduced by their great mutual friend Wendy Carduner, the directrice (and proprietress) of Doubles, the private club in the Sherry-Netherland where both Cynthia and Dan were members. Wendy had a feeling the two would like each other.

Dan was immediately taken with Cynthia. But from her side, despite her natural charm and openness, it was a moment in Cynthia’s life when she was still picking herself up from a serious loss: she wasn’t interested in a new relationship with anybody. She was not a young woman given to illusions or visions of some white knight coming to her rescue. Her focus would be on pulling her life together, and taking care of her infant child as a single mom.

Dan Lufkin, however, is a glass half-full man no matter. He pursued her, gently but assiduously. She couldn’t help liking him. But she had a life to work out, and she couldn’t see any man as part of it at that moment. Furthermore he was older, and very wealthy, and had a couple of marriages in his past. However, as she soon learned, youth blessed him.

It was a moment when she felt unprepared emotionally. She turned him down the first couple of times he called for a date. The third time she relented, thinking that would at least get him to stop calling. He didn’t. Instead he romanced her despite her doubts. He took her “no” for an answer but continued to pursue her anyway.

She liked him. He made her laugh. He was kind and thoughtful. He was fun, and a mature man behind that youthful joie de vivre. On the second or third date he proposed marriage. That kind of shocked her. Although she had an effervescent charm that could have been mistaken for impulsive, she was quite the opposite: levelheaded, responsible and grounded. Doubts or not, those magic powers of persuasion that made Mr. Lufkin a wunderkind in his youth prevailed; not long after she agreed to marriage.

She seemed to make the transition to newlywed, wife of a wealthy and influentialman, patiently and prudently, naturally committed to holding on to her own identity. She stayed on at Tiffany and thereafter wrestled for some time about a decision to leave and follow new pursuits.

She was cautious. She had now married a dynamic man, an experienced leader in the community, a man of means and an adventuresome curiosity. He was also a man in charge of his life; self-possessed, confident, and worldly. He would be a new, very different experience from her first marriage. There would be a lot to learn and a lot to adjust to.

She met the challenge. I don’t know who motivated whom, but together the Lufkins became more active in New York philanthropy and the social life surrounding it. Cynthia took on more committee work. She also became pregnant.

Then toward the end of her pregnancy she was diagnosed with breast cancer, It was a very serious case, requiring extensive surgery. The window of opportunity in beating it was narrow. It was decided that she’d have to have the baby prematurely so she could have chemotherapy as soon as possible. It had become a matter of life and death. She did it, and she sailed through her treatment and her recovery to arrive at a clean bill of health.


Out and about in East Hampton.

Whatever hardship Cynthia had to endure is known only to her husband and those closest to her. Because she was soon out in the world again, actively participating and working. Summers were spent at their house in East Hampton. They bought a house here in New York, and also acquired a country house in Litchfield County. Later they build another property on the sea in Nova Scotia.

A few years after the birth of her daughter Aster Lee Lufkin, Cynthia gave birth to a son, Daniel Patrick Lufkin. The Lufkins spent much of their weeks in Connecticut where the children were in school. Never more than two hours away from the city, they continued their involvement in several charities including the American Cancer Society, Evelyn Lauder’s Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the Museum of the City of New York, the Women’s Conservation Committee of the Audubon Society, The Central Park Conservancy, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Care Center, The American Museum of Natural History, to name only a few of their interests.

Cynthia and Dan Lufkin became one of the most attractive and sought after couples in New York, and for a number of reasons: both warm and friendly, empathic and philanthropically inclined, they liked people and they were participators. Separately and together they were both gregarious, courteous, gracious, serious about their interests and easy to laugh.

Away from their “social life,” Cynthia and Dan were a family of children, dogs (they had three at last count), and friends. As comfortable as they were at fundraisers and black tie benefits and opening night galas, they were just as comfy at home in their jeans and tweeds, dividing their time mainly between Manhattan and Litchfield County.

Cynthia Lufkin and her daughters Schuyler and Aster Lee on the beach at East Hampton, Summer 2007.

Her life had changed dramatically after meeting Dan, and it was a good life.

I don’t know when she was last diagnosed with the cancer that would take her. I had heard vague references about her state of health in the last year but I am not one to inquire about such things unless there is a way for me to be helpful. Otherwise the most helpful way, in my view, is to keep stlll and follow the lead.

I saw Cynthia in the last couple of months at Michael’s where she was lunching with Dan and friends, and at the Audubon Society’s Women in Conservation luncheon. That was only a little more than a month ago, and Cynthia was her warm and smiling self.

There will be a memorial for Cynthia Lufkin at the Dune Church in Southampton this coming Friday afternoon. The church is where Dan and Cynthia were married and where one of their children was baptized. Cynthia’s concern for now would be the grief of her children and for Dan who was her rock on what turned out to be a difficult and challenging path of life.

Contact DPC here.

Manhattan skyline from the southeast. 10:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013. Yet another very hot day, yesterday in New York. Although this time there were some torrential showers (not rainstorms like the weatherman predicted). Five minutes or so each. They cleaned the sidewalks and the streets and the temperature dropped a few degrees. But only a few. And I had been telling myself we were going to have a cool summer. Ha ha; the joke’s on me.

The talk (where there is talk) of current events in the city are the candidacies of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer. Mr. Weiner is running for Mayor and Mr. Spitzer has announced that he will run for city comptroller. The media is playing it up as a kind of duo au scandale, since both men found/accidentally came upon notoriety (quite unintentionally) in their private lives.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter because both situations were an opportunity for the public to allow itself to be distracted once again from what’s really going on in our culture, our society. Business as usual.

Mr. Weiner is famous for having exposed himself physically through the wonders of modern technology. It is a peculiar activity, that former activity of Mr. Weiner. At least to me. However, it is also quite commonplace to a lot of other people. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions (who knows) across the world are into exposing themselves physically on the web to anyone who really needs to look. And evidently there are lots of those out there too. I’ll bet there are even some or quite a few who need to look who also think Mr. Weiner is a terrible man.

I don’t know him; I don’t know what to think. One thing you can say about him is he’s very much a man of his generation. I don’t know what to think of a lot of it. We’ll find out later, I’m sure.

Mr. Spitzer, who is older by a few years, had the old classic kind of sex scandal. He was exposed by the powers that be whose financial chicanery was well on its way to being exposed by Mr. Spitzer. Checkmate.

Actually, aside from his personal private activities, Mr. Spitzer had the public good in mind in his work. That’s actually what got him elected governor. However, the good public drops everything when they hear about any kind of extra-marital liaison that a public figure is having. The idea being that public figures should be pure and holy. At least the reformers.

I’m not suggesting that these things are not important because they are ... to the individuals involved and no one else. We already know many if not most politicians are into some kind of hanky-panky and/or are corrupt. That's why they sit at the bottom of all respectability polls, duh. People (or at least the mainstream media) pretend it’s one party and not the other. Well, it’s people. It’s us.

As far as sex goes, the internet has changed the public attitude, especially for the younger generations. Children are looking at this stuff on the internet, and unsupervised. Period. Forget about thinking how can you stop it because the genie is out of the bottle. How it affects them, what they are thinking, I don’t know. Not a few of them think it’s funny.

Unlike the days when a man or a woman had a liaison in the privacy of a hotel room unknown by their wedded partners or whatever, nowadays people are publicly displaying their body parts for any and all to see and look at in hopes of “having a relationship.” Don’t ask me; I don’t know. But I’m in the dark about this, beginning with the immortal question: WHY?

I’ve been told Mr. Weiner is leading in the polls. Even Christine Quinn, who is running for mayor is saying he hasn’t proven he deserves a second chance. When I read that I thought: A second chance at what?’

Evidently the public doesn't agree, however. Or more succinctly, doesn't care. Ms. Quinn is a lesbian. Zzzz. Once upon a time a woman of her sensibilities would have been living by the well of loneliness. Solo. Coming out would have been a major scandal. Instead she's running for Mayor of the city at the center of the world and who cares. Now she's a mainstream politician, kind of like a 21st century Doris Day. No scandal there. Zzzzz

So this is what they are talking about in New York with all this heat swarming around us. Someone asked me if Silda Wall Spitzer, Mr. Spitzer’s wife of a quarter century, approves of his latest move. I wouldn’t know because she hasn’t told me, but from the little I know of Silda, I’d guess she would. She knows he’s good at his job and he likes to do it, and she knows that that’s what we all need in public servants today.

For all I know the same could be said for Mr. Weiner. But remember I know little. And you dear reader, from the way that information is imparted by media today, may know even less because that’s Show Business.


	Charlotte Casiraghi and Gad Elmaleh.

Meanwhile back in the ivory towers of Europa, speaking of scandals with no teeth, a friend writes from Marrakech that there is a rumor going around Paris that Charlotte Casiraghi is expecting a child. Ms. Casiraghi is the beautiful daughter of Princess Carolineof Monaco and Hanover, the niece of Prince Albert and the granddaughter of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly of Philadelphia, Broadway and Hollywood. And her aunt is the beautiful Princess Stephanie. Her boyfriend for the past couple of years is the Moroccan/French actor-stand up comedian Gad Elmaleh.

My friend pointed out that if that rumor is so, the child will not be the first of the Monegasque royal family to have a child born out of wedlock. Prince Albert, for example, has three – two daughters and a son – with women to whom he was never married. Charlotte’s brother Andrea has a son with Tatiana Santo Domingo, and they’re not married. Princess Stephanie has a daughter (besides the son and daughter she had with her now former-husband Daniel Ducruet), and even Grandpa Rainier’s mother Princess Charlotte was born outside of marriage and later legitimized – and then named heir presumptive of the throne.
And so it was.
None of this is a secret (unless you don’t read or don’t care), nor is it a scandal no matter how hard you try. It doesn’t matter anyway because the Grimaldis aren’t politicians. They have a throne. Which I sometimes think is what a lot of our politicians would prefer, and I can understand why, can’t you? Put yourself in their shoes. Or shorts, or whatever. (Just don't tell anybody.)

Contact DPC here.

Pen, paper, and phone. 1:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Monday, July 15, 2013. A week of dog day afternoons according to the weather forecasters’ pretty accurate predictions. And after the past two weeks of “real feels” in the low 100s, I believe them: more of the same.

Although we got a reprieve last Friday afternoon. At first we thought it would merely be rain washing the streets but by evening it was noticeably cooler.

Friday early afternoon, there were these beautiful, thick clouds moving eastward across Manhattan and Queens. Looking southward across to Roosevelt Island.

Looking northeast across the northern tip of Roosevelt Island to Queens.

And looking toward the northeastern sky over Carl Schurz Park.

Then mid-afternoon on Friday, it became overcast and started to pour. I got this photo of a young father caught in the downpour, seeking shelter under my building's canopy (and calling for help?). Then just as quickly, although still raining slightly, the Sun came out.

Mid-evening, about eight o'clock it started to rain again, bringing cooler breezes to push away the looming heat.

Early Saturday evening about eight-fifteen, the stormclouds rolled in again (although far less threatening). Looking across East River at the end of East 83rd Street toward Roosevelt Island.

At that same moment, looking west across East 83rd Street. The two tall apartment buildings are located on the southeast and southwest corners of York Avenue and 83rd Street.

Dog Day Afternoons. These weeks of hot and humid afternoons and evenings are nothing new in my life, but I find myself so fixated on them after a few days of such intense heat that I don’t feel like leaving my apartment.

Yesterday afternoon, I was cleaning out some of my files and going through some of the boxes of photos I’ve acquired over the last few decades when I found a series of them from the days in the 1980s when I lived in Los Angeles.

I loved Los Angeles summers. They were warm, sometimes warmer than others, but never humid. Usually in late July or early August the San’Anas would blow in the scorching heat off the desert, and then it would be intensely HOT !!

On the hottest nights (and no air conditioning, as is my habit), if it got unbearable, I’d get up from my bed and go just outside and sit in the swimming pool for ten or fifteen (or sometimes twenty) minutes. That always did the trick.

It was all so convenient. This is the height of luxury in my book. That’s my little Rum Rum lying in one of his favorite spots, by the open glass door of the bedroom, just a few steps from the pool.

Here’s Rum Rum in closeup. He was a quiet, sweet dog and not noticeably aggressive as some Jack Russells can be. But more about him in a minute.

Here’s our tiny luxurious fiefdom. I never got over the fact that I was living in one of the greatest metropolises in the world, and just outside my bedroom (and dining room) door(s) was this pool available 24/7. The dog in the picture that you can barely see because he’s so white is Pogo, a kind and gentle blond mutt who belonged to my friend Elsa Braunstein who was a resident of the house for a time.

In the early years, the house itself was a bit of a co-op commune. Its four bedrooms occupied by a cast of characters, all friends, mostly people working in The Business, until the last few years that I lived there first with a partner and then by myself – with friends from the East, and even the Far East passing through, staying over for a few days or even a week or two; and even on one occasion, a fellow-writer from New York who rented a room and made it his home whenever he was in LA on business. He told me that sometimes when he’s in LA he still drives by the house for nostalgia’s sake, recalling the good times and the good life everyone enjoyed there.

Whenever someone was in the pool, the dogs, especially Rum Rum would follow them around the edges of the pool barking. Sometimes Rum would fall in and have to be rescued but then he’d get right back to skittering around the pool, barking and chasing the swimmer.

This was my workroom in the house on Doheny. On the desk (which I made out of a piece of plywood, using rarely-looked at large coffee table books and catalogues to prop it up) was my first Mac.

The year was 1986 and I was in the middle of writing Debbie Reynold’s autobiography “Debbie, My Life.” That computer was the latest – although not for long obviously. You had to insert a disk for storing your information. You can see a few of their boxes in maroon and blue under the desk. You can also see something you never see anymore – a Rolo-dex. And a press button phone installed by the phone company (for free!). Also behind the desk is an amplifier, CD player and record changer and tape deck. On the wall is a color portrait my friend Schulenberg did of me in the late '70s.

And there’s little Rum Rum (I often called him Rum-biti too), sitting on the sofa with me while I read (looking so serious) Vanity Fair. This looks like Rum was posing for the camera but this was what he did when he first jumped up. He’d sit there propped up with his left forepaw pressing on my shoulder. He’d stay like that for a few minutes and then lie down and stretch out beside me. I had several dogs during the time I lived out in Los Angeles. Three of them returned to New York with me and lived out their final years here, including Rum Rum.

I’d moved to Los Angeles with one big mutt, Rexy and five cats. I met my first shih-tzu, Tiger, through a friend who was never home, leaving the dog in an eventual state of panic.

So I took him. Here’s my friend (Lady) Sarah Churchill in the dining room of her house on Lloydcrest Drive in Beverly Hills. She’s holding Tiger while Sparky sits up, propped against no one and looks on with his ears back and his ego wanting. Quite seriously.

Sparky was a very tough little Jack Russell. I think he was five or six here. He was not especially friendly with other dogs, in fact he could be a bit of a rumbler if the spirit or the right dog or person moved him. However, he was Sarah’s number one dog, and they adored each other. She had two others, a female, older, Sue Sue who was also a tough JR. Tougher than Sparky boy too. She died a year after I moved in. And then there was little Rum Rum, who was a gentle, almost delicate little guy who was cuffed now and then by both Sue Sue and Sparky (separately – Sparky didn’t mess with Sue Sue even though she was older and stout).

Here’s Sparky again, king of all he can see, sitting on Sarah’s terrace. That roof across the road belonged the Tina Sinatra, the youngest daughter of Frank. Sparky and I came to know each other quite well as I lived at Sarah’s the first full year I was in L.A. Sarah often traveled – very often – and she had two other houses at the time: one on the Peloponnese overlooking the bay of Corinth, and another over looking the Caribbean in Montego. She’d also frequently hit New York, London, Miami and other places across the world where she had friends or which sparked her curiosity. Sarah was one of the original members of the Jet Set.

After I moved over to Doheny, she’d leave the dogs with me while she was away. Sparky remained his tough self but behaved around me when other dogs came by his space. He loved to go for rides in the car, of course, and always laid himself out on my shoulders behind my head sandwiched in against the headrest while I was in the driver’s seat. Rum Rum never dared approach that space but he liked standing on his hind legs with his forepaws on the dashboard looking out the window.

Once Sarah was away for several weeks, maybe months – I can’t remember. When she came back Sparky was delighted to see her and instantly switched his affection and his loyalties. Little Rum, however, was his meek and retiring self, because Sarah rarely paid attention to him anyway. She thought he was a splendid looking Jack Russell, but Sparky was her boy.

So I decided not to give Rum Rum back to her. I told her I was keeping him because he was left out at her house. She was rather annoyed with me and, as was her style, provided a strong argument about why she should get her dog back (claiming she wanted to breed him because he was such a beauty). I prevailed however, and Rum came to stay for good. Sarah wasn’t deeply offended, and soon got used to him in his new home.

That's Rum Rum with Polo, above. Polo came into our lives one very rainy afternoon in late winter when he, soaking wet, approached the sliding glass door of my workroom and pawed it. I was so amazed that a dog would be so straightforward at a strange door, that I opened it and let him in and dried him off. He had a name tag (Polo) with his dates and a phone number. I called several times and left messages, but got no response. On the third day I got the owner. He lived, as it happened just about an eighth of a mile around the corner from me (we lived in the section known as The Bird Streets, or The Birds).

I told him I had his dog – although I was amazed that he didn’t seem especially worried that his little guy was missing for three days. I got his address and drove the dog over to his house. The guy, probably in his mid-fifties, a talent agent, swarthy, unshaven and in his bathrobe (it was midday – he looked like he had a long night), saw Polo standing looking out of the car window and said: ”Do you wanna dog?”

Yes, and so it was. Polo (or Popo as we often called him) was a very friendly guy with Rum Rum, although he liked to bully him lightly every now and then. You can see Rum’s attitude when they’re on the chair together. Rum is looking away as if to say, “I’ll bear up but it could be better ...”

And here’s the boy, solo in his classic Rum Rum pose.

Polo died several years later of kidney failure. We were heartbroken at losing him but I decided the best thing for our sorrow was to find a new dog who needed a home immediately. I heard from a friend about a woman over in Brentwood who rescued dogs and had a female shih-tzu “but” that she was a biter. She was only two but I knew from my vet that that behavior rarely changes. It is usually the result of abuse. It is also true that a lot of people put their faces right up to a dog’s face. This is VERY unwise and also scary for the animal. It is not unusual for them to snap or bite in self-defense. That move often elicits violent abuse from the idiot who didn’t consider the dog’s situation.

I took the girl because I knew she’d be a hard sell. She rode home on my lap while I was at the wheel, Forever after whenever she rode in the car with me (including across the United States), she rode in that place. I named her Fa Fa after a childhood friend of my ex-wife because I liked the sound of it: frivolously sweet. Eventually she was Mrs. Fa Fa.

The first night we were home, there was an earthquake. I jumped out of bed to pick up Fa Fa who was sleeping in a corner of the bedroom. As I reached down to pick her up, she bit me!

But I noticed that immediately thereafter she cowered in fear and remorse, terrified and waiting to be punished. Aha! Someone did her in. So I petted her and assured her it was all right, and I left her there. I realized her biting was not an attack but a reaction.

I lived on a point of the hill of North Doheny Drive that actually had a side walk. I used that to walk the dogs a couple times a day. We’d walk around the bend to the upper Bird Streets, beginning with Robin Drive (where Larry Flynt, I think, still lives). This is a shot of Doheny close to the top of the hill.

On that same spot looking southwest is West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, and the Pacific from which you could see Catalina on a day that was clear.

That’s what they call a marine layer clouding the cluster of tall office buildings in the distance. They are Century City which was built on the backlot of 20th Century Fox in the 1970s. The tall building that is closer is on Doheny Road in what is called Beverly Hills Adjacent, and home to many famous stars. In the lower left of the picture, you can see the sidewalk curving (to go up the hill). The reddish rooftop was that of a house belonging to Madame Alex who was the number one madam in Los Angeles. Her girls came to the house for their assignments. I often saw them on my dog walks. They were all gorgeous, usually brunettes, always drove Beamers and stayed only briefly. One early evening I saw a cortege of three stretch limousines deliver about a dozen Arabs in full regalia – no girls – evidently for cocktails. Or something.

I had no idea what the lady who owned the house did for a living. Nor did I know her name. In fact, the few times I saw her outside, she was wearing a dreary, faded housecoat and looked like someone’s gramma back on the farm in Kansas. Although she was noticeably not friendly (neighborly).

It wasn’t until one night there was a lot of noise in the neighborhood and a SWAT team paid a visit and arrested “Madam Alex” and release her on s million dollar bail. And so it was. She later settled, and moved to a little bungalow down the hill and retired. And this writer moved back to Manhattan. Ah LA., ahh, nostalgia on a hot summer day.

Contact DPC here.

Sailing away on the Hudson. 5:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013. Very very warm in New York. Hot you can run away from (remove your hand from the hot stove). Warm you’re stuck, and hazy in your head.

I went to the doctor this morning because I’ve had a queasy stomach for the past four days, off and on but on enough to make me wonder (or fret or obsess). When I see a doctor I always try to recount every detail I can remember so he can get a full picture (including anything stupid).

I was telling him that last Thursday night about midnight, sitting at my computer, I was wishing for something sweet to eat. Like chocolate, or cookies. I purposely didn’t have any in the house. I knew that. But I looked in the cupboard anyway ... and found ... the dreck of a small box of honey roasted almonds from Zabar's. There were probably a dozen of them. They’d been sitting there for a couple of weeks or more.


	The culprit, specifically the honey roasted almonds.

I took it to my desk. And consumed them. They were on their last legs and the heat and had had its way too. But almonds are almonds. I love almonds. Or used to. Then, when I lay down to go to sleep, I had this sudden jolt of pain in my belly. It felt, in my imagination what a lightning bolt looks like. Terrifying.

That’s the story. Adding up the past four days, it was after that moment I developed this lo-grade, vague nausea and sometimes almost-indigestion. It made me very uncomfortable.

So yesterday morning when I woke up and felt worse, I called the doc’s office and asked if he’d see me. Yes. 12:15.

Now this doc whom I like very much always has an office full and there’s always a wait. I took a book with me: Lapham’s Quarterly edition of “Family.” I knew I’d have time to read. The office was very air-conditioned – something I’m not used to. Too much so in my opinion but it wasn’t my office. It was almost cold.

I had to wait more than an hour for the doc. I found that I was feeling so much better that I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell him (“I’m a hypochondriac”). Actually every time I’ve gone to see that doc, I’ve felt better when I left the office. Tells you a little something about me, no? And him of course too.

I got the once-over. He thought it was probably the almonds. I still say: let’s hope so. I won’t do that again.

I took these pictures on Monday night about 8:30 in the evening. A very hot day but leaving us with the most beautiful red and pink skies, casting a glow over the neighborhood.

New Yorkers seem to be going along with this heat despite its intensity. Last night some friends took me to dinner at Sette Mezzo. The place was jammed; lots of friends and friends of friends; a New York local. One of my dinner partners had just finished a book I recommended “Citizens of London,” and loved it.


	Click above to order.

	Click above to order.

Everyone I know who has read that book has loved it. There’s a reason they do. All those historic characters whose names are household words are presented with warts and all (yes, Churchill; yes, FDR), and you can “get” them. You can see how much we are who we are All of us. This is positive bad news.

I was asked what else. I told them “The Patriarch” the Joe Kennedy biography. Big. I think 800 pages. An emotional experience if you take it seriously. You like him, you don’t like him, you’ve met people like him, known people like him, you get how he could be charming, you see how he was very shrewd, driven and clever, and cut-throat in business. He was an operator, a horse’s ass at times; a schemer, a publicity hound, a world class fooler-arounder, a devoted husband, and most of all a devoted father.

You see how Roosevelt could outfox him and he couldn’t do a thing about it (except pretend to try). You see how this man accomplished what he did. The fatherhood was it for me. He gave his love to his children. And his money too, but that’s another part of the forest; love was first. Now you know what I think.

I tell this story because right after describing the man to my friends, I looked up, and sitting at a table directly across the room, waiting for her dinner partners, was the surviving child of that father and his famous brood – Jean Kennedy Smith. (who was dining with Phyllis Newman and Joe Armstrong). This is New York.

They weren’t all inside -- over at the Frick Collection they were holding their annual Garden Party on the lawn in front of the mansion. They didn’t mind the heat obviously and the men were even wearing jackets and ties.

The Garden Party made its debut in 2008. It’s one of the most desirable social events of the summer season because it’s just a party. No other reason to be there except to see and meet people, enjoy the cocktails, the breezy jazz and a splendid night in Mr. Frick’s garden. There were about 500 looking very summery and unfazed by the temperature that I’ve been whining about.

Guests at the Frick Collection's annual Garden Party on the lawn in front of the mansion.

They could have gone (and some did) inside the mansion and enjoyed its fabulous collection of fine and decorative arts featuring masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Fragonard, Holbein, Houdon, Goya, Gainsborough, Velázquez, Renoir, and others of note. In the Portico Gallery, there is a current special exhibition Precision & Splendor: Clocks and Watches at The Frick Collection.

The Frick is a very special place in New York. It has a serenity that embraces you when you visit. Its galleries offer a contemplative quality that can only be found in a private space like someone’s home. The setting of the collection is a circa 1913–14 residence of a great steel magnate from Pittsburgh in industrial America. This was his jewel. This was created for just that: contemplation and beauty, and even with you, whoever you are, in mind. It also embodies the other worldliness of the Gilded Age of the City; its dernier cri.

Under the trees at the Frick Garden Party.

So there they were, inside and outside taking in the pleasure New Yorkers have of seeing people known and unknown, often in crowds, small to medium, at the end of a workday in the middle of blazing summer. The signature cocktail was the Garden Gimlet (with American Harvest Organic Spirit — you had to taste it). The jazz group: The Flail. The proceeds from the tickets support many programs including educational and curatorial initiatives and Library activities.

The leadership behind the evening: Pauline Eveillard, Susan Johnson, Martha Loring, Alexandra Porter, Tess Porter, Deborah Royce, Lisa Volling, and Jennifer Wright.

The Garden Gimlet with American Harvest Organic Spirit kept people cool.

In the crowd: Paul Arnhold, Alexander Berggruen, Margot and Jerry Bogert, Emerson Bowyer, Mitchell Cantor, Edward Lee Cave, Tia Chapman, Missey Condie, Jerry Ann Woodfin-Costa and Victor Costa, Caitlin and Michael Davis, Dan Dutcher, Christina Eberli, Allison Ecung, Barbara and Bradford Evans, Pauline Eveillard, Juliet L. Falchi, Jennifer Farrell, Kalyn Fink, Mark Edward Fox, Tiffany Frasier, Sarah Jane and Trevor Gibbons, Mark Gilbertson, Wes Gordon, Gemma Gucci, John Hays, Elizabeth Horvitz, Katherine R. Horvitz, Michael Horvitz, Redmond Ingalls, Susan and Henry P. Johnson, Lucy J. Lang, Christine Layng, Adam K. Levin, Patricia Lovejoy, Amory and Sean McAndrew, Heather McDowell, Sarah Nir, Julie Pailey, Elizabeth and Douglas Paul, Joan Payson, Alexandra C. Porter, Tess Porter, Allison and Peter Rockefeller, Deborah and Charles M. Royce, William R. Schermerhorn, Robert Schneider, Maggy Frances Schultz, Cator Sparks, Lisa and Jeff Volling, Alexandra R. Wagle, Frick Director Ian Wardropper and Sarah McNear, Cameron Wilcox, Coke Anne and Jarvis Wilcox, Courtnay Wilcox, Jennifer Wright, and more.

Union Square Events provided a menu. Here you go:Caprese salad with basil & fleur de sel, mango and Thai basil summer roll, classic Maine lobster roll, sweet corn and Jonah crab croquette with chili-lime crema, tarte flambée, seared sirloin with thyme and shallot agro-dolce, seven-spiced lamb loin with tomato mint chutney and papadum crisp, with passed desserts to follow.

Chairmen Tess Porter, Alexandra C. Porter, Deborah Royce, Martha Loring, Pauline Eveillard, Lisa Volling, Jennifer Wright, and Susan Johnson. Photos: John Calabrese.

Juliet Falchi and Christina Eberli.

Mark Gilbertson and event Chairman Deborah Royce.

Frick Director Ian Wardropper and Event Chairman Martha Loring (also great great granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick) with a guest (left).

Jerry Ann Foodfin-Costa and Victor Costa.

Board member Michael Horvitz with daughters Katherine R. Horvitz and Elizabeth Horvitz.

Frolicking guests at the Frick Garden Party ...

Contact DPC here.

Sunset, Hudson River. 8:30 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, July 18, 2013. Hot in New York. What can I say? I caught a cab at 55th and Sixth after the Micheal's lunch. I got in and the guy says: "do you know how hot it is?" "Yes I do." "Yeah but do you know HOW hot?" "How." "101! Look!" and he pointed to his dashboard registering the number. I wasn't surprised. I'm sure it's been this hot many times before but this time seems like MORE. Maybe it's just the world we live in.

As the cab entered Central Park, there was a black lab standing in a small stone tub of water (probably meant for the poor horses). The black lab was in heaven. He stood up and shook off the water, tail wagging; and then dropped back into the wet, plop. Ahh, joy. What a good idea. I thought of all the dogs I see on the street with their walkers, panting. I thought of the walkers too. I thought of myself; it's that kind of heat.


	Ahh, joy.

The Michael's lunch was a typical Wednesday lunch. A madhouse. All kinds of people doing business even if that means social.

The list; around the room.David Thalberg, Exec Director of Krupp Kommunications (K2) with Diane Clehane, the Brenda of Mediabistro. The ying and the yang. Nearby, Joe Armstrong, Duh Mayah and his pal David Zinczenko; Miki Ateyeh and Diane Fogg; Stu Cantor; Alexandre Chemia; Joanna Coles, E-I-C of Cosmo, with Michael Wolff, media columnist for The Guardian; Lisa Dallos of the HL Group with Nicole Purcell and Suzan Gursoy of Adweek; Alice Mayhew; Ellin Delsener, Bettina Zilkha, Annette Tapert; Lee Eastman (son of John; Lee's aunt was the late Linda McCartney, and his cousin is Stella); Bob Gutkowski; Bruce Paisner and Cathie Black; Shelly Palmer; Alan Patricof; Eddie Pollack; David Poltrack; Newell Turner, editorial director of the Hearst shelter magazines; Michael J. Wolf; Leonard Lauder with Stefano Tonchi, editor of W; David Zaslav; Cindi Berger; Jorge Espinel; Jimmy Finkelstein and (his wife) Pamela Gross; Kirsten Fleming; Joan Gelman with sons Josh Gelman and Gregg Gelman; Gerry Byrne and Richard Heller; Luke Janklow with David Rosenthal; George Malkemu of Manolo Blahnik; Gil Shiva; Brad Siegel; (followed by actor-director Fisher Stevens); Steven Stolman; Nickie Robinson; Vicki March; Herb Allen. I was with artist Nan Swid, who has a one-woman show coming ukp in the autumn. And all this was just the half of it – within my purview.

Meanwhile, back at the Dog Days, this is a public service message that comes from the heart and with the urgings of three little ones who are often sleeping within three to six feet of me when I am at my computer:

You may have already heard this on WABC but if not, here goes: the ASPCA has tips on how to properly care for your pet during extreme heat.

There are 7 things to know about your pets and this heat:

Know the warning signs of heat stroke. Watch out for the following symptoms of overheating: excessive panting or difficulty breathing, drooling, mild weakness, stupor, seizures, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.

If you suspect your pet is suffering from heat stroke please contact your veterinarian immediately.

Avoid dehydration by always having fresh, clean water available and lots of shady places where pets can cool off. Like that tub I saw at the entrance to the Park.

Do not leave pets unsupervised around a pool. Not all dogs are good swimmers. Introduce your pets to water gradually and make sure they wear flotation devices when on boats. Rinse your dog off after swimming to remove chlorine or salt from his fur, and try to keep your dog from drinking pool water, which contains chlorine and other chemicals that could cause stomach upset.

Limit exercise to either early in the morning or late in the evening. Before starting your walk, feel the sidewalk. If it's too hot to touch, it can burn your pet's pads and should be avoided.

Bring outdoor pets inside, and give them access to air-conditioned areas of your home. For animals who must remain outside, provide a shady, sheltered place to rest and lots of fresh water in stable containers.

Never leave an animal alone in a parked vehicle. On a hot day, a parked car can become a furnace in no time — even with the windows open — leading to fatal heat stroke within minutes.

If you see a pet in a vehicle on a hot day, take immediate action. Note the car make, model, color and plate number, then go to the nearest stores and ask the managers to page the owner. Call the police if necessary.

For more information: www.aspca.org/pet-care/hot-weather-tips
Suffolk SPCA: https://suffolkspca.org
Nassau SPCA: http://www.nassaucountyspca.org

And take good care of yourself too. Don't dehydrate, keep as cool as possible and pray for some rain to drop the temp for all of us.

9 PM. 86°F.

Contact DPC here.

Deserted playground. 2:30 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Friday, July 19, 2013. Weather the same old story. We’re havin’ a heat wave. The experts say relief comes tomorrow. Good news but not soon enough.

Whatever is going on in New York is going on behind closed doors with the A/C full tilt. I’m talking about restaurants. I was at Michael’s again yesterday, my second time this week (nada the week before incredibly). I went to meet Susan Solomon, the founder and CEO of the New York Stem Cell Foundation.

DPC and Susan Solomon at Michael's.

Leo DiCaprio was at the table across the aisle. I don’t know him. Although we once had a brief conversation – forgettable to him, and not forgettable to me because it was an opportunity to get a sense of the person. I found him unaffected and there. Just like up there on the screen.

Gary Cooper had that quality; you like him, no matter.


	Mr. Everybody-out-in-the-city.

Leo’s not big on movie star looks any time. Yesterday he looked like Mr. Everybody-out-in-the-Valley. This might be read as an insult. It’s not. He looked like hell, movie-star-wise. I told myself he must be making a picture, and that’s the character. Or taking a big break, and who cares. However, that said, it doesn’t matter. He’s a star, like Cooper. Or like Jack Nicholson.

He’s so unobtrusive, so regular, so ordinary in his presence. Same on the screen. But then he speaks and there it is. He’s got to be the biggest male star out there. And there he was with Bob Friedman (a Michael’s regular) of radicalmedia.com. Mr. Guy Next Door yesterday at Michael’s, Mr. Big Star in Hollywood.

I said to Susan Solomon, “turn quietly to your left and look at the table across from us ...”

At first she said, “I just saw Richard Johnson come in,” thinking that was my reference. Then she slowly turned and look across at that very everyman face.

Almost scruffy, the strip of van Dyke on his jawline, hair longer than usual. When he got up after finishing lunch with Bob Friedman. Friedman left him to go over and say hello to Richard Johnson who was with Richard Turley. Leo DiC stood up, had a big black bag, which he drew over his shoulder. He’s put on a lot of weight (or maybe taking it off?). He cudda passed for a young Texas rancher who eats well, tosses back a few now and then, and knows what he thinks. But everyman as a Star. Leo.

That was our celebrity sighting for the month. I do see a lot of “stars” come through the doors at Michael’s, but every now and then there’s the Star and it’s great because he or she has the same heavy yet subtle allure that you see on the screen. You just like it.

Susan Solomon is the definitive optimist in my book. We’ve only met and talked once before and that must have been six or seven years ago at a Municipal Art Society dinner in the Lever Brothers Building. We were seated next to each other. Yesterday was a repeat in terms of interest and words and thoughts passed between us.


Susan Solomon and Paul Goldberger.

She’s married to Paul Goldberger the architectural historian and critic who writes for the New Yorker. You could call Goldberger “distinguished,” because he is, but you wouldn’t call him that because he’s so intellectually accessible that he’s like Leo in presence: a pleasure to meet.

At the time we met, Susan was just working on pulling together the New York Stem Cell Foundation. I’m not a scientist and not scientifically inclined or all that interested. I’m interested in terms of wonder and amazement but it is a scope outside my own.

I was curious to know how she arrived on that doorstep. She wasn’t a scientist either. She was a lawyer by profession originally. What was her area of expertise? “Solving problems, organizing people to solve problems.” She was a natural and she likes it.

When I say she defines optimism, it’s because she’s pleasantly matter-of-fact about the challenge. A good mother. I mean that seriously. It turns out she has three sons – all in the range of above 20 to 30. Two married, one living like he was married but no certificate (yet, says mother). When she told me about her sons – all of whom are out of college and self-supporting in professions that interest them because they are interesting to them and not because of the money – I could see what she wrought.

She’s a born and bred New Yorker. In the last decade she lost her father to a heart attack and then her mother to cancer. These were grievous losses. You understand when she talks about her family (only when asked) that her strong maternal sense must have been nurtured by that mother and father. Also, one of her sons – and this is important – has had diabetes since he was a small child. That led mother to seek out organizations to raise funds and deal with the problem medically.

Because of her interest in the problem, she read a lot for years, and all the time. She was also actively involved philanthropically, and so she met a lot of people in the medical and medical research professions.

One day in 2004 she read in the New York Times, in a tiny little item buried in the first section which reported that the State of California had created a $3 billion fund for stem cell research. Susan already knew about stem cell research because she had learned that this was the high tech of the medical research field. Stem cell research was the future in the task of finding efficient drugs to treat specific diseases and medical conditions.

After reading that tiny squib of an article Susan called a friend she knew in scientific research who explained what was being done in looking for new, innovative ways to cure serious diseases such as heart, and cancer, and diabetes. An idea was borne of Susan from learning what they were doing in California. Her friend made it clear that this was something that should go on in New York too.

That was it. The New York Stem Cell Foundation was founded in 2005. Eight years later, Susan and her supporters have raised $100 million for research. They have their own facility.

Paul Goldberger, Susan Solomon, Dr. Scott Noggle, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Donald Sultan, Dr. Valentina Fossati, Yigal Ozeri, and Michael Joaquin Grey at The New York Stem Cell Foundation's 1st Annual Spring Benefit held on June 20th.

I knew nothing about what the NYSCF did, nor anything about stem cells. Susan demonstrated what the foundation's research led to, to explain what the NYSCF did and what stem cells are. Running the nail of her right index finger against the skin of her left hand, she told how they have devised a way to culture hundreds of living cells by taking a tiny piece of that skin and to introduce DNA from a human skin cell into an unfertilized egg from a separate donor, and using that egg to develop and test drugs to cure or retard a number of major diseases like the aforementioned, like Alzheimer’s, like Parkinsons, MS, leukemia and ALS. This new technique for acquiring/making cells will eventually end the use of mice and dogs and monkeys from any kind of medical research. It is also faster and more efficient.

After founding NYSCF with her own money, she rented a 500 square foot lab and fundraised from her apartment. What followed was a controversy over the use of embryonic stem cells. The Bush Administration banned using fed funds to create new stem-cells from discarded human embryos.

NYSCF team members Hector Martinez, Liheng Wang, Dieter Egli, Lisa Cole, Haiqing Hua, Kylie Foo, and Daniel Paull at the 7th Annual Gala and Science Fair in 2012.

In the area of growing human tissue, one of the Foundation’s postdoctoral fellow Giuseppe Maria de Peppo is working on using stem cells to grow new bone tissue. Susan Solomon believes that the day will come that stem cell research will allow us to grow patches of bone to replace damaged or degenerating bone. She believes one day we will do the same in repairing damaged hearts.

The NYSCF started in their tiny lab with three researchers and no grant money. Now the staff numbers 51 and has an annual budget of about $20 million almost entirely raised from private contributors and about 8% from government grants.

Susan believes that the achievements they’ve made in just a few short years at the NYSCF is due to her decision to give researchers – who are mostly young MDs and PhD to explore what interests them without the hindrance of “academic of government” restraints that scientists of deal with every day.

Alex Meissner, Vanessa Ruta, Susan Solomon, Julian Robertson, Chris Harvey, Michael Long, Dr. Deepta Bhattacharya at The New York Stem Cell Foundation's 7th Annual Gala and Science Fair.

When I asked her about her background before she became the godmother of Stem Cell Research, she recounted her work as a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton. She didn’t tell me that she also established and ran Solomon Partners LLC to provide strategic management consulting to corporations, cultural institutions and non-profits. She didn’t say she’s been Chairman and CEO of Lancit Media Productions, a children’s TV production company; the founding CEO of Sothebys.com; President of Sony Worldwide Networks – a company formed to oversee the Sony Corp of America’s investments in satellite and cable radio, etc., and she also held executive positions, at MacAndrew and Forbes Holdings and MMG Patricof and Co.

And brought up three boys who are now out in the world forging their own careers in journalism, and cultural research – all objectives of their longtime personal interests.

The funny thing is our lunch ran over the time she could allot because of other commitments for the day not because we were talking about stem cell research but instead about books and biographies and people and history. The problem when she reads in bed, she told me, is she can end up staying up much later than she should because she’s so engrossed in the book. Buoyed everywhere by this Optimism.

The NYSCF is holding its 8th annual gala and science fair this coming October 15th in the Frederick Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center.. Among the features of this gala will be a real science fair so that supporters can be entranced and enhanced by learning more about the work on stem cells research. To learn more visit nyscf.org/gala

Contact DPC here.

Grapefruit moon. 1:00 AM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013. Overcast, cooler, but still muggy, with intermittent light rain from mid-afternoon through evening. It’s been worse lately; much worse.

I went down to Michael’s to lunch with Linda Fairstein. My cabbie was a guy who had the same New York/Brooklyn Irish accent that my father had. It interested me because it’s a distinctly New York accent that has all but disappeared. It turned out that he was a Brooklyn born Irishman too. That accent of the first American generation probably resulted from having parents who had emigrated to America. Their offspring had no brogue but nevertheless spoke in the same parlance.


	“The Shot Heart Round the World."

He asked me if I followed baseball. No. Did he? Yes. I told him my father followed the games on the radio up in Massachusetts when I was growing up, but his favorite was the Brooklyn Dodgers, naturally. It must have provided all kinds of reverie I never heard about. I reminded my cabbie that back then New York had three baseball teams, two in the National League and one in the American League.

I could tell this guy was a big fan. I knew when he asked me if I liked the Yankees. That’s how we got to the Dodgers. But, I told him, I remember when Bobby Thomson hit a three run home run for the New York Giants that won them the pennant for that year. They called it “The Shot Heart Round the World.” It was the first coast-to-coast telecast of a ballgame. It was October 3, 1951.

My cabbie exclaimed, “I was there !” Wow. “How old were you?” Amazed, I wanted to know. “I was nine.” And he was at the Polo Grounds the day Bobby Thomson won them the pennant. Wow.

When they went to Series, however, the Giants lost to the Yankees. The Yankees were always the winners, or it seemed that way.

Linda Fairstein is just publishing her fifteenth Alex Cooper crime novel, “Death Angel.” It’ll be in the stores a week from today 7/30. She writes one every year. I am in awe of her productivity, not to mention her success. The crime novel genre is big all over the world; but you probably know that.

DPC and Linda Fairstein at Michael's with her newest novel, Death Angel. Click to pre-order.

I’ve known Linda for several years. We have one of those New York friendships that are practically impossible anyplace else in the world. We see each other for lunch or at a dinner maybe three or four times a year. But: we talk. It all spills out. In the course of these conversations, we get to know a lot about each other. And enjoy it. That’s friendship.

She’s a very industrious individual but always of good cheer (I’m sure there are moments when she’s not but you can see that she’s motivated and that is her pleasure). I’m always interested in how people’s lives develop and acquire definition.


Linda greeting fans at an Authors In Kind Literary Luncheon Benefiting God's Love We Deliver.

Linda’s life, for example, has been marked by older men of great influence, beginning with her father who was a doctor, practicing in Westchester. When she was about to go away to college, he asked her what she wanted to pursue in her life. She said: she wanted to write. She had been brought up on books, been going to the library since early childhood and she wanted to create them.

Dr. Fairstein had another way of looking at it -- and a not uncommon one: write and starve. He urged her to have a profession and following her father’s advice she became a lawyer.

Linda graduated from Vassar with honors and then attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first big job out of college was working with District Attorney of New York County Frank Hogan. DA Hogan had a staff of scores of male lawyers and seven female lawyers. He hired Linda on the recommendation of a professor of hers whom he held in high esteem.

In those days, women were not allowed to even be exposed to a lot of criminal cases that involved sex and violence. She was assigned to do research and worked in the municipal libraries. She loved it. Then Mr. Hogan died, and was replaced by Robert Morgenthau who served for 34 years as District Attorney.

It was Mr. Morgenthau who took the women out of the research library and put them to work on crime cases. He also brought more women onto his staff. In 1978, Linda was made head of the sex crimes unit. Linda served under Morgenthau until 2002, thirty years.

Linda lost her husband Justin Feldman two years ago this September 29. Mr. Feldman was 30 years her senior, although they’d been married for twenty-five years. He was a prominent lawyer here in New York closely engaged in politics and public policy, besides private practice. The Fairstein/Feldmans had one of those relationships where they intensely shared so much of personal interest. There was never a dull moment and a highly agreeable companionship.


	Linda with her late husband Justin Feldman.

Justin Feldman was also Linda’s editor in that he’d read her manuscript as it was progressing and offer his edits. Evidently he was a brilliant at it, and as hard as it might have been for her to take at times, she found he was always right. From those years she acquired much of his abilities to help herself.“Death Angel” is the first of her crime novel series that was written without his input.

Yesterday morning, I had just finished the manuscript for “FlipFlop,” a very affecting memoir by Julie Baumgold, an excerpt of which is featured in this month’s Vogue. I immediately picked up “Death Angel” to give myself a change of scenery and put Baumgold evocative and thoughtful story aside for now.

The opening scene takes place at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park where the nude body of a young woman has been discovered floating in the nearby pond. It has yet to be determined how long the body was in the pond, so there are no clues yet. Alex Cooper is on the scene. I thought to myself, I’m going to be having lunch with the woman who wrote this. And I know she knows exactly what this looks like, just like real life. And she also knows how they go about deconstructing the crime, and what methods they have for clues.

The Bethesda Fountain in Central Park is very real. If you have the imagination (and you don’t need much), you know this sort of thing is not unrealistic even if it’s made up. So you stay, to look, to see, to learn.

That’s what hooked me, so that I returned to it right after lunch with the main detective.

Full moon, 8:00 PM.

Last Saturday in East Hampton, the East Hampton Historical Society opened its highly anticipated East Hampton Antiques Show to the historic grounds of Mulford Farm with 55 antique dealers participating.

Now in its seventh year, the East Hampton Antiques Show is widely recognized as a highlight of the East Hampton arts and social calendar.

Interior Designer Steven Gambrel was the Honorary Chair of the Friday, July 19th Preview Cocktail Party, where patrons had an early buying opportunity of the extraordinary array of antiques, art, jewelry and collectibles. Ticket proceeds from that preview benefited the East Hampton Historical Society.

Everything took place on the pastoral grounds of Mulford Farm, located on James Lane in the heart of the village of East Hampton. This historic 3.5-acre property features a restored 17th century farm house as well as several barns and outbuildings that are among the oldest on eastern Long Island.

Guests were greeted at the entrance by Ashley Hecker and Nicholas Nickas of Ralph Lauren's East Hampton Historical Society Collection

Richard LaVigne (Knollwood Antiques) with his doppelganger?

Roseanne and Richard Barons (Executive Director of the East Hampton Historical Society)

Benefit Co-chairs Jill Lasersohn, Debbie Druker, and Hollis Forbes

Benefit Honorary Chair Steven Gambrel with Dara O'Hara

Tia Mahaffy and Chesie Breen

Nathan Wold, Erin and John Tintle, and Tom Samet

Kelly Klein with her Mother Gloria List

Jack Lasersohn, Joseph Aversano, and Peter Emmerson

Bob and Min Hefner with East Hampton Village Mayor Paul Rickenbach and his wife Jean Rickenbach

Jeff Ellis, Newell Turner, and Tony Buccola

Amy Ma with Andy Sabin

Charles and Mary Jane Brock

Georgia Spogli, Jane Scott Hodges, Deb Shriver, and Charlotte Moss

John Barman, Robert Levy, Marcia Levine, Kelly Graham, and Michael Clifford

Duncan Darrow with Wendy Moonan

Also last weekend, in Southampton Honorary Chairs Susan Allen, Board President Jonathan McCann and Jean Shafiroff welcomed more than 200 supporters to The Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation’s (SASF) 4th Annual Unconditional Love Gala on July 20th at the home of Sandra McConnell.

WNBC’s Chuck Scarborough emceed the evening and honored NBC’s Award Winning Animal Advocate and Best Selling Author Jill Rappaport along with ASPCA animal behaviorist and trainer, Pamela Reid, Ph.D CAAB who was given the outstanding achievement award.

Chuck Scarborough, Elizabeth Brett Scarborough, and Michael Brett

Jean Shafiroff, Martin Shafiroff, and Elizabeth Shafiroff

After a fabulous dinner catered by Robbins-Wolfe Eventeurs the Alex Donner Orchestra kept guests on their feet, including Henry Buhl, Amy and Ray Cosman, Raya and Cliff Knight, Southampton’s Mayor Mark Epley, Jean Remmel Little, Nicole Noonan, Kim Renk and Greg Dwyer, Martin and Elizabeth Shafiroff, Leesa Rowland and Larry Wohl, Fred Tanne, Elaine Sargent, Lisa McCarthy, Laura Lofaro Freeman, Lucia Hwong Gordon, Yaz and Valentine Hernandez.

Corporate Chairs for the event included Allen & Co, Barclays, Ferguson Cohen LLP and Sequin Jewelry. The special evening also featured an auction where a behind the scenes tour of the Today Show by Jill Rappaport went for $10,000 and a Sintessi diamond poodle pin by Michel Piranesi went for $5,000.

Karen Ferguson and Susan Allen

Proceeds raised from the Unconditional Love Gala help SASF continue to care for over 1200 homeless animals rescued from the Hamptons each year. Funds raised will also support the shelter’s work with No More Tears Rescue to rehabilitate and find homes for adult dogs rescued from puppy mills; with The Humane Society of Northwest Georgia to take in dogs on death-row and find them permanent homes; and with the ASPCA to save dogs from cruelty and disaster situations and place them in safe homes.

Proceeds will also benefit the shelter's various programs that help special needs of children, along with educating, mentoring and implementing SASF's "Playing For Life" program, created by their Training & Behavior Director, Aimee Sadler, which is currently in over 40 shelters and highlighted at the major animal conferences across the country.

Carole Bauhs, R. Couri Hay, and Joe Alexander

Sandra McConnell and Charles McConnell

Renee Schlather and Jonathan McCann

Jean Remmel Little

Larry Wohl and Leesa Rowland

Kevin Maple, Marianne Epley, and Mayor Mark Epley

Lucia Hwong Gordon, Grace Lee, Kathy Reilly, Randi Schatz, Nicole Noonan, and Tara Mulrooney

Nancy Stone

Raya Knight and Clif Knight

Kim Dryer

Valentine Hernandez, Yaz Hernandez, Basil Zirinis, and Sandra McConnell

Gary Lawrance and Zita Davisson

Alex Donner and Harry Buhl

Photographs by Richard Lewin (East Hampton Historical Society).

Contact DPC here.

New York Life Building and The Empire State Building. 9:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013. Temperatures in the 80s, but it’s Summertime, and not so humid, thankfully. A beautiful day, yesterday in New York.

I went down to Michael’s to have lunch with Brooke Hayward who came in from Connecticut for the occasion. Liz Smith came by the table and as she left, she said to Brooke: “Write another book,” referring to a sequel to her best-selling “Haywire” which was re-published last year. Brooke responded by shaking her head and waving her hands as if to say: I don’ wannit!

Unbeknownst to me she planned it as a birthday lunch, as mine is coming up on Friday. For this we had the “cake” which in this case was two scoops of coconut ice cream and a slice of coconut cake. Steve Millington somehow remembered I liked coconut ice cream. And cake. Brooke didn’t want but one taste so I had to eat it all.

Old Wild-Eyes at table with Brooke Hayward, who arranged for and surprised me with the birthday dessert yesterday at Michael's.

Close-up of the plate, designed by Michael's General Manager Steve Millington, who also took these pictures.

On Monday Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based international broadcaster privately-owned by Al Jazeera Media Network, named Kate O’Brian, the 54-year-old, former ABC News senior vice-president, as president for the new Al Jazeera America, which will go on-air August 20th.

I don’t watch television very much, and I never watch any of the news shows. I got out of the habit a long time ago. I used to watch news, especially network news a long time ago from the days of Huntley-Brinkley, Walter Cronkite and even early Dan Rather. I don’t know why I stopped. I must have been without a tv somewhere in my travels and didn’t have access.


Edward R. Murrow.

In their inception and early years, tv had to compete with print and the only way was to inform the public. They worked hard at it. I remember when Ted Turner changed everything on tv news with his 24-hour programming. Mr. Turner was a real media tycoon in that he changed our habits and even our thinking at times. NPR was popular but was only on public-funded stations. They reported stories you didn’t get on network, but because of their outlets, had a smaller audience.

Network news in the days of radio and early television was as competitive as print. CBS led the pack. But as late as 1960, New York had seven dailies. Reporters fought for stories. Radio naturally morphed into television and its early newscasters and news directors also competed for stories and exclusives. America watched Edward R. Murrow’s“See It Now” and his documentaries on the state of the nation and its health and learned.

Then two things happened that ultimately changed the approach to news in both TV and print: the war in Viet Nam War, and then Watergate. After the Viet Nam exit, so too went a lot of hard reporting and news.

It was the Viet Nam War news on television that turned the public against the war itself. Because of what they were seeing in their living rooms nightly -- the casualties, and the blood and human catastrophe. Many millions marched in the streets across the land in protest, and for a long time. The protest seemingly did not affect government policy as the war escalated. But eventually it wore down the policy so that the leadership began to look for a way out to keep its power. Lyndon Johnson forsook a re-election because of the public sentiment.

Nixon visting the troops in Viet Nam. This photo was taken at the beginning of his Presidency when the war was still escalating although people were hopeful because he was assuring the nation that he had a plan to end it.

Then along came Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal – which is largely unknown to our young adult population but which had the entire nation riveted to the television for weeks in the middle of the summer, with the Senate Watergate Hearings. We learned what has and had oft been said: politicians (among others) lie and cheat and steal and even do a few other things that the citizens would not condone. It was the first time in the history of the nation that the President had to resign from office – or face an impeachment trial.

After Richard Nixon resigned, he granted an on-camera interview to David Frost who was known for his trenchant questioning of his guests. This was a big “get” for Frost (and Nixon was handsomely compensated) since the “disgraced President” as he was often referred to in the media, had become reclusive.


	Frost and Nixon.

The appearance turned out to be a good move for Mr. Nixon, not unlike the way one can let some fresh air into a room by opening the doors and windows. He was still as compelling a national political figure, as he had been since his early days in Congress.

Frost finally asked him “what” he (Nixon) thought caused “Watergate.” It’s important to know that by then (a year or more after Nixon resigned), Watergate was now being referred to in the media as “a second rate burglary.”

So, what did Mr. Nixon think was the “cause” of the Watergate scandal (and the man’s personal political tragedy)? Without skipping a beat, the former President responded “Viet Nam.”

Viet Nam changed not only Richard Nixon’s life but it changed the news. We don’t see carnage anymore on network news. Which is fine with me. Although, ironically, we see more and more and more of it in film and television entertainment for the mass audience. Even the news for many has become an entertainment or a kind of reality show. And we don’t learn anything that the Powers That Be, whoever they are, be they corporate or politics, don’t want us to know.

Al Jazeera evidently is not that. I know several people – none of them left-wing or hardliners about anything political – who only watch Al-Jazeera for news. And why: “it’s the only television news that really tells you what’s going on and doesn’t soft-pedal it.”

In other words, it’s ambitiously competitive. The old fashioned way.


The young columnist Jack O'Brian, circa 1950, at the Stork Club.

His daughter Kate O'Brian, who is the new president of Al Jazeera America, which debuts on August 20.

When I saw the news that Ms. O’Brian had been appointed, I suddenly thought of Jack O’Brian, a columnist and journalist for the Hearst papers and later a radio talk show host on WOR for decades. O’Brian was in the thick of his career in New York from the 1960s through the 1980s. I happened to meet him when I first came to New York because he was a close friend of the stepfather of a girl who was a friend of mine.

Hearing about Kate O’Brian’s new position, I could only wonder if there were a connection with Jack O’Brian I knew. I recalled once visiting him and his wife Von with my friend at the O’Brians. They lived on the Upper East Side with their two very young daughters. One was named Kate. After that initial meeting, I never knew what happened to either of the girls.

So I Googled Kate O’Brian on Monday and got this picture. She doesn’t look like her father if you compare the photograph we have of him in his thirties, but she sure looked like she could be his daughter. A chip off the old block maybe.

Now that was interesting. Because there was a clear resemblance. The “old block” was a hardnosed newsman and columnist. And with legendary ambition. He started out as a cub reporter working for the local paper in his hometown of Buffalo. When he got to New York by the late 1930s, he somehow fell in with, insinuated himself with, Walter Winchell -- the one-and-only-and-never again. Talk about competitive.

Winchell wrote a daily Broadway column that was read daily by 30 million people. In the world of New York and Broadway and politics, no one had such power that Winchell had over public opinion. No one, in print or on camera ever topped his readership number – and the population of the country then was less than half what it is now. Farmers out in Iowa read his “gossip” every day.


	J. Edgar Hoover and Walter Winchell.

Winchell could make or break. He was a big booster of FDR. He was palsy with J. Edgar Hoover, the most feared man in America. He was a lot of things, including a reporter who trolled the clubs, the New York nightlife which was a thousand times what it is today, and regularly cruised around New York nightly with the cops responding to calls.

The story “Sweet Smell of Success,” written by Ernest Lehman for the old Cosmopolitan Magazine (Hearst) was a kind of roman a clef of Winchell and his ways published in 1950. Years later the man who bought the story for the magazine, then story editor David Brown, brought it to 20th Century-Fox and Burt Lancaster played the brutally tough Winchell character and Tony Curtis played his brutally tough/stop-at-nothing cohort. That character was said to have been based on two of Winchell’s henchmen, a press agent named Irving Hoffman, and Jack O’Brian.

When I came to New York just out of college, Jack O’Brian was television critic for the Journal-American. Television was new, and it was growing fast and changing content quickly. Jack O’Brian could be brutal in his assessments of what he was watching. He had his favorites – people like Cronkite, Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion from “The Wizard of Oz” and Perry Como). But he dismissed others by the busloads, often with a single jolt of a quip. Once, when it was announced that actor Franco Nero was taking on the role Robert Goulet created in the original Broadway cast of “Camelot,” Nero’s press agents were flacking that the part would do for Nero’s career what it did for Goulet. O’Brian asked in his column: “What? Turn him to stone?”

Jack O'Brian's "The Voice of Broadway" column (which was the name and layout of his predecessor Dorothy Kilgallen's column), in the New York Journal-American. O'Brian took over the column when Kilgallen died unexpectedly. This was the most prestigious column other than Cholly Knickerbocker in the Hearst newspapers and syndicate. When the paper closed, O'Brian took his talents to WOR where he had a daily radio talk show which was heard all over the country.

Jack O’Brian was one of at least a dozen columnists writing for the Journal-American daily, and he was not the top (that was Dorothy Kilgallen), but he had the savvy to turn his spot into controversy, even very annoying controversy. There was more than one actor, TV celebrity, author, singer who got whacked with one of Jack O’Brian’s asides. And dozens who had tales to tell of their Jack O’Brian jabs in print.

His big break came after the untimely death of Dorothy Kilgallen – he was given her spot and Broadway was his beat. He was well prepared, and occupied that place until the J-A finally closed several years later. Then he moved on to radio where he had a daily show on WOR talking and interviewing celebrity guests. He occupied that spot almost twenty years, and he died eleven years ago in 2000 at the age of 86.

He was a classic Irish-American New York journalist – hard biting, pugnacious, quick-witted, ambitious and – when he wanted to be – warm and friendly, and very sociable.

Because of my friendship with the girl whose stepfather was O’Brian’s friend, he would often invite us to join him and his beautiful young wife Von on Friday nights at the Stork Club. There we would sit at the fabled Table 50 (the corner table) in the fabled Cub Room (the Stork’s version of the VIP room).

Often we were the only ones occupying the room. It was the final years of the Stork, and it was obvious even to a young kid from the sticks, starry-eyed though I was. It didn’t draw a big crowd, although it was still doing business.


	Ernest Hemingway, Sherman Billingsley, and John O'Hara at the Stork Club.

And Sherman Billingsley, its owner founder was on hand every night, and often joined our table for a chat. One night I asked him if there were ever famous people he didn’t like having in his club. “Two,” he answered immediately. “Who?” “John O’Hara and Frank Sinatra.” “Why?” “Because both guys were such bad drunks you never knew what they were gonna do to anybody.”

Table 50 at the Stork with Jack and Von O’Brian was sometimes joined by two youngish men (although much older than I and my friend) – Si Newhouse and Roy Cohn. The two had grown up together and to this new kid in town, they looked like cousins. I later learned that were lifelong friends sicne boyhood.

Roy Cohn was already famous across America because of his relationship to Senator McCarthy and his witch hunts for Communists. Si Newhouse was not as well known to the public at the time, although I recognized the name because his father Si Sr. had acquired the local Springfield, Massachusetts dailies which were read in my parents’ house.

After the Stork we’d often wander the few up Fifth Avenue to Reuben’s, the famous 24 hour deli-restaurant on the corner of 58th and Fifth across from Bergdorf’s where we’d have a late night famous Reuben’s pastrami sandwich. Some nights we’d walk a few blocks west to Lindy’s, another famous all-nighter where the Broadway crowd came for the famous cheesecake, washed down by a beer or a shot before bedtime. That was the very beginning of my education of New York.

All of this crossed my mind on Monday afternoon when the notable media move of Ms. Kate O’Brian was announced (on the internet). I emailed another friend who knew the O’Brians and asked if she were Jack and Von’s Kate. I wasn’t surprised to learn she was.

I have my doubts that the lady has quite the same temperament as her late father. I don’t doubt that he adored her and must have been very proud late in his life to see the progress she made in his business. I wondered what he would have thought of her going to work for the Arabs, things being the way they are in the minds of those who wear their opinions like badges at times. In some way, I’ll bet, he would have been proud of that too. He already knew who his girl really was/is. He would have recognized that she had the competitive edge and was prepared to take on the major media outlets and show them What For. A chip off the old block, as I said. This is New York.

Contact DPC here.

Looking north towards downtown Manhattan. 4:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, July 25, 2013. Sunny and warm but decidedly milder yesterday in New York, with temperatures dropping to the low 70s by mid-evening.

I passed my drivers test today. I haven’t had a driver’s license since it expired ten years ago and I somehow never renewed it. It must have gone to an earlier address and never found its way to me. But I bought a car recently (a good used car owned by some friends who had been leasing it). It was her car and she hardly ever drove it – at least by New York standards – a black Mini Cooper convertible with a brown top, and brown leather seats and 9000 miles. My friend who picked it out and owned it has great taste, and is practical.


	My Mini Cooper, finally ready to drive.

Being without certification, I had to go through the process once again for the getting of a driver’s license. You don’t just go up to the counter and say: Hi, I’m here, gimme a new license. Uh-uh; you go up to the bureaucracy, you wait in line, and it drags you into a den of endless documentation gathering. However, many who led me through were courteous and kind, all the way.

I’ve been driving since I was sixteen, which was the legal age back in the 1950s. I don’t remember my driving test except that you had to get the hand signals right or forget it. Now hand signals have been replaced by more adequate and dependable signal lights. So I didn’t have to worry about flubbing that one.

I went to Yonkers, just to get out the city’s chaos for a few minutes and in search of shorter lines. (It was a good idea.) It’s just up the Henry Hudson Parkway, beyond Riverdale, and bureaucracy out of the big town is a picnic compared to the DMV down on Wall Street which can feel like waiting for the subway that’s always late.

There are three steps. You take a written test. I remember the original as being a lot harder than the one I took this time. And although I passed this one, I got two wrong. When I asked which ones they were, for my own edification, I was told they were not allowed to tell you. Okay, onward. What ever Lola wants ...

Across the street from the DMV is the Yonkers Metro-North Railroad station, built in 1911 for the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. The architects were Warren and Wetmore, one of the firms responsible for Grand Central Terminal.

The second step is the Five Hour Driving School class. Yes, From 11 in the morning till four in the afternoon. If you’re an old driver, it’s a snooze and although the intention seems noble, it reeks of politics from the pork barrel. If you’re new, well, you need it. The teacher, a former postman who decided to keep working after retirement, was mild and genial and adjourned us an hour early just to keep everyone awake. I found myself studying him. His story about himself spoke of a man who had common sense and has found his path to constant youth through work. And the rent too maybe. He wasn’t a good speech maker or lecturer, but he told us little anecdotes about himself that were folksy and nice. They weren’t funny or sad or witty or weird. They just weren’t anything. But the man’s intent, his wish to do his job well, shone through. Then as the dramatist, I switched my purview and wondered if when he got home to the wife, he turned into House Devil, as they used to say in his parents’ days. Then I thought, nah, he’s just a nice guy.

As it happened I did learn something from his class. Or rather had something reaffirmed, something that I find is one of the most difficult rules of all (in life), viz., Watch Out.

I never looked at my Road Test Evaluation until last night when I was writing this Diary. I only learned then that I had 15 points against a perfect evaluation: poor judgment in turning and making a "short right." Funny, I don't venture out anymore than I have to.

Watch Out. That’s the secret of good driving. And there are a lot of people who are not in on it. Dogs, maybe yes; people, no. Nor are we in a learning mode. Nowadays what that term would mean to many of us moving around the city on foot, or bikes, or in cars, is: Keep your watch where you can see it when you wear it.

So, after getting my certificate of Driving School, i.e., a Learner’s Permit, I made an appointment for the test. Six weeks wait. I knew that was going to happen. So I waited. As I waited I began to get nervous about my ability to drive since I hadn’t driven much in all those ten years. I had actually “driven” a few times, after my license expired. But very rarely.


DPC with his papers.

The first time I went out for the “Drivers Test” with my learner’s permit, I encountered what it’s like to be on the road with a lot of people who don’t watch out, and even people who are “watching” something else, i.e., their cell phones, while driving. Anxiety entered the picture. I was re-entering the brave new world via the automobile.

Yesterday was graduation. My friend, neighbor and NYSD "Art Set" columnist Charlie Scheips drove me up to Yonkers to a quiet four lane (with island) strip, where the test begins, on the edge of the city near the Cross County Parkway. There were four cars waiting for the two officials giving the tests. I got in the drivers seat of the car, we drove up the road. It was a local neighborhood of single family houses, slightly hilly, little traffic.

He instructed me to take a right. I did. Down another road to a light. Red. I waited. Some other cars passed. I was instructed to take a left. I did. Another stop sign. Okay, now a right. Down another road where he told me to stop and make a three point U-turn. I did. Back up the road. Another stop sign. Parallel park the car behind a car. Not a problem. Then back to the corner; a left, a left, and presto, it’s over. Ten minutes.

I wasn’t nervous, I was surprised to learn. And now I have wheels. Doesn’t anybody say that anymore, “wheels?”

Contact DPC here.

Subway searching. 3:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny Summer day in New York.

I never take vacations. I don’t say that to boast. I think it’s the conditioning of my proletarian Congregationalist conditioning as a kid. Word hard or perish. For many it would probably seem pathetic. They may be right. Or, they may be wrong. Furthermore, a writer is always challenged to find a way to earn a living.

However, these past few weeks have been a kind of vacation for me. A summer vacation. In thinking about it, I realized, ironically it was because of the heat. New Yorkers stayed home as much as they could, and inside. Those who could left town (and got the same thing wherever they went in the Northeast corridor). Aside from occasionally going out to an early dinner, I had more time. To read. All pleasure, nothing challenging.


Click to order"I Told You So."

This past weekend I read“I Told You So; Gore Vidal Talks Politics/Interviews with Jon Wiener.”

The opening page after the copyright page contained the quote of Gore: “The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.” The blurb on the cover has a quote by Dick Cavett: “Best talker since Oscar Wilde.”

Although Mr. Cavett couldn’t have been around when Wilde was propounding his poetic wit for any and all to listen to. I never imagined what that would have been like until I read Cavett’s quote. Because Gore Vidal is endlessly interesting on a number of levels.

The only problem I have with his interviews is there are times when I think he thinks he knows everything. Then there I times when I think he knows everything too, comparing him to myself who knows little if anything. So it’s a good problem.

The book is four or five interviews, conducted with the man at various community or university auditoriums. The subjects touched upon are politics, history, historical figures, Hollywood figures, scandals and fiascos. He fills you in where you probably never had been. He is impressively knowledgeable about many things, especially historical characters down through the ages. The good part about that message is Keep Reading.

So I did. If you like Gore Vidal, you will not be disappointed. If you don’t like Gore Vidal, you shouldn’t waste your time. When we read with rancor we deprive ourselves of truth.

Then after the Vidal interviews — it was a quick read, a very nice little book; like watching it on TV with no noise in the room — after that one I picked up the new “My Lunches with Orson; Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.” Edited by Peter Biskind. If you’re a fan or an historian of movie lore, or even if you just like watching those great old movies on TCM. Like a compulsive habit; buy this book.

Orson Welles at table. I once saw him there. He was the size of the table — round table — sitting in a tiny nook of a private room, separated from public view by a curtain in the old Ma Maison on Beverly Boulevard. Dressed all in black, vast in size, somewhat darkly menacing yet oddly sorrowful in presence, it was almost like Hollywood noir come to life; “The Third Man” sixty years later. I moved along that day I saw him, knowing I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Gore Vidal.


	Click to order“My Lunches with Orson."

Henry Jaglom was there and Welles let him record their conversations. They were compiled into an interview and that was mentioned and understood by both parties. Entirely a Q & A. A very quick read of course — again like watching a great docu about the business of Show and Hollywood.

Both parties knew that a good interview is a good conversation. So that’s what we get. That’s where all the stuff comes out when you’re talking to an actor or an artist.

Welles loved to talk, loved to reminisce, to recount the era, the personalities, the likes and the loathings. He’s witty and fun and smart and yet obviously at the same time very vulnerable to his ultimate condition. The latter was irrelevant when Welles had the floor and the attention. The wunderkind, now emeritus, took over.

As you may know, Vidal and Welles were both charming conversationalists as well as very bright, sharp and intelligent. They apparently shared many of the same attitudes toward universal questions. They did meet but it seems that it didn’t develop into a great friendship. Although, after reading the two back to back, I could only imagine would have made a highly fascinating duo of an interview about their worlds — literature, film, theatre and politics. Now and forever. But it may also be the room wasn’t big enough for the two of them together.

October 30, 1938, Orson Welles in the Mercury Radio Theatre at his War of the Worlds, Invasion from Mars Broadcast on CBS; sent millions of Amerians into panic it was so believable. Or so they thought.

Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom in 1983, two years before Welles' death.

Divorce Bel Air Style. Robert Day, the billionaire Superior Oil heir and international investor, is divorcing his beautiful wife Kelly. The Days have been married for a number of years, and quite happily according to close friends.


Kelly and Robert Day.

But evidently Mr. Day, who is from one of the rich oil families of Los Angeles, the grandson of William Keck (who founded Superior Oil), a man who is now celebrating his 70th year, wants to go it alone.

This may be true but out in them thar hills there isn’t a stadium large enough to hold all the beautiful young things who wouldn’t mind being married to their very own Croesus, who is known to be very generous when it comes those rocks that shine like chandeliers. Plus he knows everybody everywhere and has a very interesting life.

Kelly, a classic Southern California beauty, is also a lovely person with lots of friends. I was told that Robert has bought her a Bel Air mansion of her very own, given her upwards of $250 million, and a brand new Bentley so she’ll enjoy the ride.

Forbes Magazine says that Mr. Day is worth around $1.4 billion but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s just what he keeps in his checking. For emergencies. Good luck to two nice people.

Luncheon at Michaels: LuAnn de Lesseps, Nikki Haskell, Joan Collins, Kelly Day, and Debbie Loeffler.

Contact DPC here.

Taking in the city. 5:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Warm, sunny Summer’s day, yesterday in New York.

Yesterday I went to lunch with Cornelia Guest at Michael’s. Cornelia just returned from a trip to Positano and then to a new spa outside of Valencia, Spain. She was interested in it because the diet was macrobiotic, which she likes, and it offers many new de-tox and health restoration techniques. She loved it all.

We also got into talking about Los Angeles and summers out there where the heat is usually easier to take and where Hollywood dominates the thoughts of many who live there. We concurred that it was a most interesting place to live.

Cornelia and I talked about living out in Hollywood pursuing our dreams. She laughed at a thought she was having, and then told me that she never forgot the “advice” Sammy Davis Jr. gave her when she first arrived in Tinseltown: “Just remember, No one knows where the nose goes after the doors close.”

Coincidentally, a reader of the NYSD in Los Angeles, having read my report yesterday on the Gore Vidal, I Told You So book, sent me this message last night:

In the last years of his life, I saw Mr. Vidal on a regular basis at the Polo Lounge (in the Beverly Hills Hotel). He was in a wheelchair and had a (very nice) male nurse. Gore would sit next to the piano player and sing standards and show-tunes for hours. He knew it was the end. When he sang, "My Way", he very loudly emphasized the words "THE END IS NEAR, and so I face, the final curtain." Still, he seemed happy. He enjoyed talking to the people in the restaurant and would sometimes invite people back to his home to listen to opera.

In the book of Vidal interviews (“I Told You So”) he laments the loss of language and historical knowledge in the generations that have followed him, pointing out that the younger filmmakers have no sense of living, but more a sense of movies, which of course is not the same thing.

It occurred to me that his singing those songs in public was not only a pleasure but another way for him to demonstrate the loss he was referring to. When I received the above story, I was reminded that I like to do the same thing. Sit there by the piano and sing. I’m not good at it and I can play but I’m basically a banger with a heavy pedal. Nevertheless, the pleasure of the words and the wit of the composers is pure joy.

There’s a radio show that I often listen to on WFUV-FM (90.7) called “The Big Broadcast.” It runs from 8 p.m. to midnight every Sunday evening, and it is hosted by a man named Rich Conaty. Rich plays the recordings from the American Songbook of the 1910s, '20s and '30s. Each week he honors the musicians, composers, lyricists and vocalists who were born on a day of that week and plays their work.

He is also an old-time DJ, the kind who fills the space between recordings with factual patter about the songs and recordings, and an occasional corny joke that nudges pleasant memories of another era (the one where these songs originated).

You can stream the show also all week long. I stream it frequently during the week. It’s almost an obsession that has provoked me to thinking about why I like it so much. It is not the music I grew up with, which was rock, although I was born at the tail end of the pop music era.

It is the music of my mother and father’s generation, those who were born at the beginning of the century and came into their prime by the 1950s. I would hear this on the radio when I was a kid. One of my aunts was great on the upright and she played a lot of those tunes too.

What draws me to the material is the message, its sentiment and the wit of the lyricists. Cole Porter for example from his title song of the Ethel Merman show, Anything Goes:“When you hear that Lady Mendl standing up Now does a handspring landing up On her toes, Anything Goes ...”

It was an age of popular romance and humorous hijinks. The words were the ticket to dream. Most of the songs had to do with love, romance, disappointment because of it, exultation and joy because of it, hilarity and cleverness, and often framed by wonderful music and at times genius musicianship. Respect abounds.

It is called nostalgia which unfortunately reduces its importance historically. But so be it. Hearing it played, sung, performed, underscores the loss of innocence that now confronts us in the dawn of the 21st century. Here in New York, for example, the conversations I hear about these days are about Anthony Weiner who is running for mayor. If you don’t know about Mr. Weiner’s extra-curricular carnal activities, good for you. He has been roundly condemned for his behavior/personal choices – although truthfully that kind of behavior is rampant in our world today – just as Facebook has changed the meaning of the world “friend.” Instead of connoting a personal experience, the word also doubles (very frequently) as a marketing tool. You could say Mr. Weiner is a walking marketing tool, if you’ll pardon my French.

Gore might have expressed it this way in his Polo Lounge concerts:“You and the night and the Music, Thrill me but will we be one, after the night and the music are done?”

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Letting the air in. 4:30 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, August 1, 2013. Beautiful weather in New York. Temperatures in the high 80s but not humid. Breezy by the river.

It was Wednesday. I went to Michael’s to lunch with Norah Lawlor who has her own public relations firm, Lawlor Media Group. Norah is Canada born and bred. She is tall with a commanding presence but a steadfast humility about her. She got into the business, fresh out of university about the same time that I came back to New York from Los Angeles, about twenty years ago. In that time she’s built a strong business dealing in charity events, beauty, hospitality and retail. She’s a Capricorn. They keep busy.


	Norah Lawlor.

Michael’s was its a-clattering Wednesday self.Herb Siegel was at his regular table 5 with his son Bill Siegel and another guest. Right next to him, Vartan Gregorian was lunching with the Ambassador to Afghanistan; next door was Gerry Byrne, Vice Chair of Penske Media with Maryann Halford, finance and digital media consultant; Simone Levinson was with our Deputy Mayor Patti Harris; CNBC’sRon Insana; Harold Holzer, Senior VP at the Metropolitan Museum, occupied Table One which looked liked a powwow of a working (delicious) lunch. Interiors-interiors, Steven Stolman of Scalamandre with Tristan Butterfield of Kohler. (Steven was featured in this past Friday’s HOUSE interview); tabloid impresario David Pecker with David Zinczenko publisher of his newly re-launched Men’s Fitness, along with Diane Clehane. Clehane’s lunches are interviews and she’s assiduous in getting her story which is published later in the afternoon on mediabistro.com. Next to them, Micky Ateyeh and guests. Nearby: Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel, brother of Rahm, the Mayor of Chicago, with David Zaslav, prez of the Discovery Channel; Chris Meigher of Quest with Lesley Stevens of LaForce and Stevens public relations. Moving around the room, Jack Kliger of TV Guide; Bobby Friedman the guy who had lunch with Leo DiCaprio a couple of weeks ago; the irrepressible Jason Binn, publisher of DuJour; Stu Zakim of Bridge Strategic (PR) with Mike Berman (bermanmeansbusiness.com); Diane Whiteley of Entertainment Weekly; Webster Stone, Nick Verbitsky of United Stations; Elizabeth Watson; Pamela Mohn; Tom Goodman of Goodman Media; Scott Marden; David Sanford and Lewis Stein who just married after 44 years together; Shane Glass of Hearst and dozens more who escaped my eye.

There’s nothing listed on the Social Calendar right now and so there’s time to read. I mentioned the “My Lunches with Orson; Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles” edited by Peter Biskind. I started it over the weekend, having read a taste of it in New York magazine a month ago. I love this book. It’s a great antidote to all the heavy stuff around us, and it’s two very smart men talking about their lives and their world.

I grew up hearing that Orson Welles was a genius, a boy wonder in the movie business. I didn’t know what that meant except my mother told me that back in the '30s he had a weekly show on the radio (The Mercury Theatre) that was very popular. One night he did a show depicting an invasion from Mars. It was so believable that millions of Americans listening in went into a panic that we’d been invaded by Martians.

That show made him a star with the popular audience. He was already a successful interpreter of Shakespeare and world famous for it, a true wunderkind. He made “Citizen Kane” in 1941 in 1941, a cinematic roman a clef inspired by the lives of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. The film was controversial at the outset because Hearst was outraged and powerful. RKO, the studio distributing it, was also owned by the Rockefellers (who later sold it to Howard Hughes) and Hearst was powerful enough to make them nervous.

Welles was married more than once. His first or second wife was Rita Hayworth with whom he had a daughter Rebecca and whom he starred in his classic “The Lady From Shanghai.”

Little if any of this information is in the book. It’s a conversation, taped at lunch at Ma Maison, the popular restaurant in West Hollywood, in the early '80s. By this time the boy wonder was an aging man of great girth, whose career was essentially known as “washed—up” in the lingo of the industry that once glorified him. So there is a subtext to this conversation. This is a man who has seen the heights and the lows and is, to use Stephen Sondheim’s ".... Still Here.”

Welles the man, despite his aging-ness and unraveled careers, retains a fresh and youthful, if somewhat edgey outlook on life. He covers so much territory and he’s so highly engaging because of his knowledge and his wit, and his vast scope of interests.

You get why he was a wunderkind, so sure of himself and yet so much the wiser, always willing to concede as if there is a possibility he might learn something more.

The two men discuss film, the industry, the stars but then that leads to the world, to travel, to legendary characters from our popular culture, historic figures, authors, artists, stars; sex of course – albeit briefly and quickly. It’s a mad dash of energy that pours out.

The Lady from Shanghai, 1947.

It was Henry Jaglom’s idea it was to tape Welles in conversation. There’s relationship there – older director/younger director discussing the business. Jaglom’s great esteem for Welles is palpable throughout, but he holds his own with this powerful personality and the respect is mutual. Nearly finished with the book, I realized that Jaglom was “directing” this all along, as if it were a filmed, and he sets it up to bring out his star, Orson Welles.

There’s insight, show biz tales told with a director’s eye for scene. There’s dishing the stars and producers and their dances with power, and international politics. You get the feeling that Welles could talk about anything and keep you riveted. He’s very very smart, and practically bursting with creative thinking. You don’t go for long before he punches up a laugh about someone or something, including himself.

Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom.

People who are students of film perhaps know this about him – an enormous personality that was part of this enormous talent that came out of the boy from Minnesota who became one of the most famous stars of classic theatre by the time he was 20. Knowing the man was regarded as brilliant that young age, Jaglom brings to us the mature man who is still young at his (late, for him) age, and charming, and amusing.

It is a “performance” with a deep subtext. The former wunderkind/star is saddled with the burden of those years of accumulation of excesses, and a career that ebbed practically to non-existence in a town where only one thing matters.

Anyone you know who loves the Turner Classic Movies library or any lovers of Shakespeare and the classics, or the politics of the mid-20th century when the world changed so dramatically into modern times – or anyone who is just in the mood to be entertained by a man who knows more than you do, or probably often thought so – will love this book. Taped thirty years ago, it’s as fresh as if it were made yesterday. Welles can’t resist being a know-it-all, spinner of truths and tales. It’s one of the things you like about him; and yet he demonstrates his own vulnerability throughout.

Click to order My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.

Contact DPC here.

Looking south from the Lake in Central Park. 6:30 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Monday, August 5, 2013. A beautiful early August weekend in New York, with a lot of sunshine and little if any humidity. Sunday’s sky was filled with the tall, snow-white puffy, cumulus clouds.

I took the car out, put the top down and drove over to Zabars. So much more convenient. And cheaper if you don’t factor in the cost of the car, upkeep and garaging. So we don’t; for a day.

None of the streets going across town was very busy with traffic or pedestrians -- although there were a lot of people were out enjoying the weather. There was a crowd, as there always is, on Saturday afternoons along the four block facade of the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue and 81st Street; people going to and coming from. The front steps of the museum is a mecca for people congregating or just people watching.

Entering the Promenade along the East River, Sunday afternoon at 3.

Looking north toward the RFK (former Triboro) Bridge, following the sail boat on the lower left corner of the photo.

But first the Skyline Princess cruises by. It's a party; there's music I can hear up on shore.

Then the sailboat cruises South.

Directly across the 79th Street transverse which opens onto West 81st Street and Central Park West, is the vast complex of buildings (and architectural styles) that make up the American Museum of Natural History – another magnet for New Yorkers on their days off, and especially (although far from entirely) young families. These two great world class museums overlooking the verdant forests of Central Park were planned to be what they became for New Yorkers and its visitors more than a century ago. This was done long before the neighborhoods surrounding were much of anything. This was vision. With the community in mind.

The West Side had light traffic also, but a lot of people out strolling in their neighborhoods. It’s on days like these that you see what’s so great about living in New York. Because it’s quieter and more restful, the pace slows to a gentle stroll. You see all kinds of people, families, children, dogs, food shopping, ice cream shopping, banking, or just out walking and looking. It’s a cavalcade and never fails to impress.


	Southampton Hospital Gala co-chairs Jean Shafiroff and Audrey Gruss.

I wasn’t in the Hamptons, obviously, but there was a lot going on out there. Route 27 was its usual parking lot throughout the weekend. The destination for relaxation is a road test for many if not all those New Yorkers who leave behind the city’s relative calm to the likes of us.

In Southampton, the Southampton Hospital held its 55th Annual Summer Gala. The Southampton Hospital is the only major hospital on the East End of Long Island. Over the decades, the Summer People (many of whom are now year-round weekenders) have contributed to its growth and capacity.

This gala is their biggest fundraiser for the year and it is a local tradition. Because it’s been around for more than a half-century, re-inventing it annually is an enormous challenge. Also, unlike its first thirty or forty years, it has competition. There are always a half dozen or more large cocktail, fundraising parties across the East End on any weekend night. And just as many in the afternoons. You do enough of these and the whole idea of weekending in the Hamptons can get enervating. But not for everyone.

This year’s Southampton Hospital Gala co-chairs were Audrey Gruss and Jean Shafiroff, and they pulled it off with aces. The evening was a great success: they raised over $1.7 million. The hospital also received a gift of $5 million from Mrs. Gruss and her husband Martin.Adriann Swann covered the party for us on the Party Pictures page.

More from the Hamptons: The scene at The Rita Hayworth Gala Hamptons kick-off reception at Ashgrove Farm, the home of Anne Hearst and Jay McInerny in Watermill.

Lauren Bush Lauren, Sharon Bush, Ashley Bush, Michele Promaulayko, Laura Frerer Schmidt at Women's Health + FEED event at BridgeHampton Tennis & Polo Club.

Alec Baldwin, Hilaria Baldwin, Marilu Henner, and Dr. Neal Barnard at the Book Release Party and Fundraiser in Amagansett for Dr. Neal Barnard's Power Foods for the Brain.

Each year, Hamptons summers used to provide at least one good story or juicy marital scandal that occupied idle conversation throughout the season. You’d hear about it even in New York.

It was usually about New Yorkers having affairs or stealing someone’s wife or husband. The story usually carried into the following autumn season with divorces or reconciliations (not as often), new marriages and the old story of who got what and who didn’t. These days it takes a lot more than some marital infidelity to get people talking (or looking). Very little can survive the 140 characters of Twitter, and even then it’s swept away into the terminal morass of quadrillions of lost voices traveling across the universe.

However, there is one going on right now in the Hamptons that has got a huge coverage in the British tabloids but practically nothing over here, and even very little in the Hamptons. I asked one of the local hostesses about it, mentioning the woman involved, and she replied: Do we know her? It’s a reality TV scandal, if you will.

Lauren Silverman and Simon Cowell aboard his yacht.

It involves Simon Cowell, the British TV producer/ personality, and a woman who summers in Bridgehampton named Lauren Silverman. The possibly soon to be former Mrs. Andrew Silverman.

Mrs. Silverman is an old friend (more than a year) of Mr. Cowell. So is/was her husband. They were such good friends that evidently she is now pregnant with Mr. Cowell’s child. Mr. Cowell does not deny that he’s the father. He’s made it clear that he will cover his responsibility for the child’s welfare and well-being, but he did not indicate he was going to marry Mrs. Silverman, who is said to be in love with him and plans to divorce/dump her husband ... and run off to the Show Business Xanadu of Mr. Cowell....if she were writing the happy ending.

Lauren Silverman aboard Simon Cowell setting sail.

I’m one of those media-malnourished who’s never seen Mr. Cowell on TV except for a couple of clips where he tells some performer what he thought of their performance in no uncertain terms. This point of view has made him really rich.

The Daily Mail Online (the world’s greatest tabloid, at least on the internet) has pictures of the two of them aboard Mr. Cowell’s yacht. I wished they had pictures of the yacht itself as it’s always nice to see just How Big it is. After all in today’s yachting world, size matters even to us media voyeurs. Big enough, it is for Mrs. Silverman, that’s for sure.

Mrs. Silverman left, and Mezhgan Hussainy (Cowell's ex-girlfriend), and Mr. Cowell on his jetski.

More is better for some.

This is a story that almost needs to no words to explain it after you’ve seen the pictures. Mrs. Silverman looks at once unsure, yet gaga over the beefy Mr. Cowell who looks like he’s looking for his sunblock....or in some nearby mirror. There’s one of the two next to each other, leaning against the deck railing where she looks like she’s wondering what she should do next, and he looks like he’s wondering what’s for lunch.

The story being put out is that Mrs. Silverman has been lonely, was bored with Mr. Silverman who’s just a boring old real estate businessman who’s good enough to rent (at $150,000 a month) a place in Bridgehampton for his lithesome Mrs. and their young son.

Mr. Silverman knows Mr. Cowell too. Oh, he’s been on the yacht too. But so have a lot of people. Mr. Cowell is noted for inviting his old girlfriends to join the cruise too, so everyone gets to meet everyone.

Meanwhile back in Bridge. "He forgets me, he forgets me not, he forgets me, he forgets ..."

When and if the Silvermans actually get divorced, evidently Mrs. S. has a pre-nup which will bring her about $4 mill. Nice maybe for some of us, but chickenfeed for Mr. Cowell who’s filthy rich pulling down that (four mill) and more on any and every given week of the year.

Evidently Mrs. S. is in love with the media mogul. They’ve known each other for a few years, so this is no sudden coup de foudre. But the media mogul, who resides on this side of the Atlantic in Beverly Hills or thereabout has other fish to fry (or something like that). Last week he flew off in his fabulous private jet to St. Tropez for his “annual” visit with friends. Lots of friends.

Now the papers are running stories of the “pregnant” Mrs. Silverman dawdling around Bridgehampton husband-less and boyfriend-less, taking her little one out for an ice cream cone. Actually, she’s not really husband-less. Mr. S is said to be still residing in the summer house for the sake of their son.

Mr. Silverman, his host, and Mrs. Silverman. Notice how everybody's thinking something. Could it be: what's for lunch?

Do you think she’s a gold-digger someone asked? No, I think she’s starstruck. It happens all the time. Unfortunately, it’ll never be no Taylor-Burton or even Jen and Justin.

And Mr. Cowell, is he in love? I wouldn’t know of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me if, as someone suggested, this was just a convenient bit of ballyhoo for the old boy, now fifty-three and still a confirmed bachelor. Besides, at this age and with all that dough (a hundred mill a year, according to the Mail), why would he marry? Old dog, new tricks? Probably not. Besides, he's got a new season coming up, a whole new ball game in a world where you're only as good as your last....

You must remember this: a kiss is still a kiss ...

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Early evening outing in Central Park. 7:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013. Another beautiful Summer day, yesterday in New York. Perfect weather.

The Perfect Distractions. A friend of mine sent me a copy of “Serving Victoria; Life in the Royal Household” by Kate Hubbard. You’ll like it, he said when he told me about just having read it. I didn’t tell him that it didn’t sound interesting to me. I don’t have a fascination for old Victoria per se, although the era to which she gave her name, is a fascination since we’re its great-grandchildren though eons from its Victorian upbringing.

Click to orderServing Victoria; Life in the Royal Household ... Click to orderDark Angel ... Click to order The Unwinding; An Inner History of the New America.

Anyway, he sent me the book the next day. I almost felt obligated with that kind of speed of generosity. The cover was interesting: a tintype of a small group of 19th century men and women (they must have been members of the Queen’s staff) and Windsor Castle in the background. It sounded like another variation on the upstairs/downstairs theme. I put it aside anyway.

Then I read the Vidal interviews which I wrote about, and then the “Orson Lunches…” which, to borrow from Dorothy Parker was of such sweet hell (to read about) that I still kinda wisht it were longer. God knows Orson Welles could talk on into the next lifetime.

Before those two books, I read Linda Fairstein’s new crime novel, “Dark Angel” about a crime that took place in Central Park. A friend of mine who just finished it reminded me of all that we learned about Central Park and its hidden spaces and secret treasure pockets, besides the Alex Cooper mystery. Linda knows every nook and cranny.

And before “Dark Angel,” I’d read George Packer’s excellent and affecting “The Unwinding; An Inner History of the New America.” The “Unwinding” is a powerful account of contemporary American history. You are well aware of much of what Packer writes about the state of life in America today. But he sets it out in a montage of characters, places and situations. Like a documentary, and as effective.

I know people who won’t read it because they think it will depress them. I can understand that. Because if they’re averting their attention from what’s in front of us, it will. But there’s more to it than that. There’s the possibility of renaissance if enough of us will look at ourselves and our situation realistically. How that would come about, I do not know. That’s always a challenge in all our lives.

So. Having gone through the aforementioned volumes entirely for pleasure, and come through with a lot of other thoughts and ideas also, I was actually anxious to read something else. Something far away from Now and Us and We and They. So I picked up my friend’s gift about Queen Victoria. He was right. It’s quietly compelling. This real person emerges in this weird sort of life, so far from anything like our own. Maybe not the Empress of China. What an odd strange existence did have the Queen.

The 24-year-old Queen Victoria, painted by William Fowler in 1843.

She was nineteen or twenty when she came to the throne. There was no Regent for the girl who had been aware for awhile that she would succeed her uncle William IV. She seems like a rather simple girl, in the middle of a political swarm which included her mother’s ADC, an Irishman named John Conroy. Victoria hated Conroy. Ironically there exists among British historians that Conroy might have been the actual father of Victoria – her assumed father, the Duke of Kent having been quite well along when the Duchess got pregnant with Victoria. Furthermore he was not so inclined by his nature.


The young Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert.

But none of that is in this book – of which I’m half through. It’s about the staff that was very close to the Queen and her personal life – her ladies in waiting, her maids, her ladies of the bedchamber, her ladies who brought up the children (and she had a lot of them as you know). They were all upper-class girls, many titled, some very wellborn.
When asked to serve the Queen, it was not something that one turned down lightly. After all, she was their Soveriegn and it was policy, drummed into their heads that “Your first duty is to God; your second to your Sovereign; your third yourself.” Such thoughts would jam any engine nowadays.

They were paid rather well. But they had to be with the lady and her husband and her children all the time. They often lunched and dined with them and shared après diner in conversation or at games, although they had decent hours as they were not considered Staff but rather Her Majesty’s appointments.

They had nice rooms and sitting rooms of their own and were waited on by the palace staff (that numbered in the hundreds). They also served for specific periods of time interspersed by periods of a month or several weeks when they could see their families. Many of these women were married and so it meant they were separated from their own loved ones for long periods of time. It was very prestigious, however. And they did get to know Her Majesty and his nibs, the Prince (whom Her Majesty adored, and deferred to), the same way we all get to know the people live with day in and day out year after year.

The royal couple early in their marriage.

But it was work. Work. And massively dull dull dull after awhile (for those who had any imagination at all). The Queen was not a bundle of laughs. Also, she was always Your Majesty which tends to subdue one’s natural ebullience or opinion.

Because the Royal Household was conducted like a machine. Every part worked meticulously (when successful). And the Queen sat at the top of all these worker bees. And such is life in the hive, any hive that’s worth its honey. And such is the wonderfully intriguing document that author Kate Ubbard constructed of the way she lived -- Queen and Empress of the greatest empire in the world of her time and shortly thereafter. And the behavior that it elicited, that it demanded, that was displayed clarifies everything about that time and place. Always the behavior, for me; there’s the key.

The queen at a luncheon party with members of her family. Greatly interested in India, she eventually took the title Empress of India (she had Indian servants, one in particular whom she was very fond of).

Meanwhile, speaking of Linda Fairstein, she’s out there somewhere finishing up her book tour and promotion for the book that was published July 30.

She started out here in the city last week and her interviews and TV appearances were capped off with a party in the private dining room of PATROON, which if you follow the adventures of Alex Cooper, often figures in the story. The real Alex Cooper– world renowned architect – was also in attendance. The party was hosted by Patroon's owners, Ken Aretsky and Diana Lyne. Among the guests were Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, powerhouse literary agent Esther Newberg, Barbara Lyne and Mel Immergut, AOL's Susan Lyne, Louise Grunwald, Lisa Fairstein and Alex de Lucena, Linda’s website designer, graphic artist Marc Fairstein and Linda's publishing team at Dutton Ben Sevier, Christine Ball, and Jamie McDonald. Linda left the next day on her national tour and any minute now she’s going to set down in Martha’s Vineyard where she and her late husband Justin Feldman have summered for years.

Linda making friends in the green room of The Today Show.

While we’re on the subject, (and a little late with this one), a few weeks ago, our Shanghai and San Francisco Diarist, Jeanne Lawrence held a book party for Rochelle Ohrstrom and her new book – her first: “Ponzi & Picasso: Finance, Fraud, and Fine Art.” A novel. A roman a clef. Gail Blanke ,best-selling author of In My Wildest Dreams and Between Trapezes, wrote the following about it: “Fasten your seat belt and brace yourself for a wild romp through the best and worst of the art netherworld.” And you know there’s a lot of both in that part of the forest. Jeanne’s guests were already into “who” is “who” and what they didn’t know about that particular “who.”

Rochelle Ohrstrom, artist, photographer, patron, and collector, shows off her first novel, Ponzi & Picasso: Finance, Fraud, and Fine Art. Click to order.

Ponzi & Picasso is available at the Whitney Museum, New York's Crawford Doyle Bookstore on Madison Avenue, and online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It has been chosen as the October selection for the Yale Book Club. Ohrstrom will be speaking at the Redwood Library in Newport in August.

Over 60 guests stopped by Lawrence's Park Avenue apartment to pick up an autographed copy of Ponzi & Picasso.

Former model Bonnie Pfeiffer Evans ran into Lizzette Pozzi, for whom she modeled when Pozzi was Editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar Italia.

Author Rochelle Ohrstrom with party host Jeanne Lawrence.

Enthralled by Ohrstrom's provocative point of view, guests joined in a heated discussion of the global art market and the ensuing scandals that appear almost daily in the New York Times.

Jeanne Lawrence and Keiko Nishida.

Rochelle Ohrstrom and Ava Roosevelt.

Susan Nagel, Anki Leeds, and Christine Biddle.

Joan Jakobson and Eleanora Kennedy.

Cathy Lawrence and Kristi Witker.

Christy Welker Sagansky and Jeanne Lawrence.

Rochelle Ohrstrom and Edwina Sandys.

Patricia Weeks Rekant and Rochelle Ohrstrom.

Anne Nitze and Rochelle Ohrstrom; Roberta Sanderman (center) assisted the author.

Ann Dexter-Jones and Kristi Witker.

Rochelle Ohrstrom and Saundra Whitney.

Rochelle Ohrstrom and Victoria Hansen.

Zibby Tozer, Lizzette Pozzi, and Jeanne Lawrence.

Susan Nagel, Diane Ackerman, and Judith Ehrlich.

Beatrice Pei and Barbara Georgescu.

Michelle Rosenfeld, Boo Grace, and Sharon King Hoge.

And now for something entire sunny and bright as well as wistful nostalia. My friend Beverley Jackson (also mother of my friend and NYSD contributor Tracey Jackson) sent me some snaps she took last week of Bullocks Wilshire, the former department store in Los Angeles that is now a national historic landmark as well as the Southwestern Law School. Beverley, who lives in Montecito is a born and bred Los Angeleno, had attended an “annual historic tour” there, and sent them to me knowing how much I love looking at pictures of Los Angeles. I asked her to tell us about the experience of that day, and here is what she wrote:

A Summer Day at Bullocks Wilshire is an annual event here in Los Angeles, hosted by the Southwestern Law School who now own the legendary Art Deco former department store on the 3000 block of Wilshire Boulevard.


	Tracey and Beverley.

I attended this year, totally enveloped in memories going back to early 1930s when I went there with my mother to shop. The little English smocked dresses that I wore came from Bullocks Wilshire. The Mary Jane shoes on my feet were from Bullocks Wilshire. As well as a big hair bow I hated in my hair! When I was older, a proper hat replaced the wretched bow.

Gripping my mother’s hand, all I could think of was the luncheon and fashion show in the Tea Room that would follow the shopping. For those of us who didn't like having our hair cut Bullocks Wilshire Barber Shop for children supplied small carousel animals for us to sit on during the ordeal.

As the years passed, my Westlake School for Girls uniforms came from BW — as did the oxfords on my feet and my plain cotton underwear as well.

Later when I graduated to lacey lingerie it came from BW as did the gowns I wore to the Bachelor's Ball and other galas. I remember particularly one peppermint stick ice cream-pink satin and silk tulle creation I felt like a royal princess in.

Eventually my wedding gown came from Bullocks Wilshire and later my maternity clothes followed by my baby daughter Tracey's baby clothes.

Bullocks Wilshire, today.

Seeing the store again last week I was thrilled to see the Art Deco-with-hints-of-Bauhaus elevator doors still in place. I did miss the friendly uniformed gentleman who directed us to the waiting elevators and the elevator operators in uniforms and white gloves. They called me Miss Beverley from three years old until that wedding gown went down the aisle. After that my old friends who had taken me on hundreds of trips up and down in those elevators insisted on Mrs. Jackson.

Stopping on the second floor brought so many memories of my late mother. The elegant French Room where models paraded the gowns she had requested to view has been kept very much as it was. Now it is available for rental for weddings and other events. Designer Irene's salon is much as I remember it. I spent long hours on fancy little chairs in these rooms swinging my Mary Jane clad feet back and forth as I waited for the trip to the tea room.

The Art Deco elevator doors.

Cactus in an Art Deco container at the desert-themed tea room entrance.

The mural on the ceiling above the porte-cochère.

The original drinking fountain.

Beautiful grillwork.

A fashion show always went on during luncheon, and I gulped down my hot popovers while admiring the gowns. The ladies at lunch all looked so nice in tailored suits, hats, gloves and of course the two strands of pearls around the neck. For dessert I always skipped the traditional lemon chiffon pie — which they served us again at our tour luncheon 2013. I always had a big dish of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, whipped cream and cherries. Slivered almonds too.

It was truly a trip down memory lane for me: so much of my life interwoven with Bullocks Wilshire; so many memories came alive triggered by elevator doors, green porcelain 1940's pedestal sinks in the ladies room, and cactus in an Art Deco container.

Downtown LA from the top of Bullocks Wilshire.

Photographs by Teresa Lok (Ponzi & Picasso)

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Hats. 5:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, August 8, 2013. Rainclouds gathering yesterday afternoon into the evening, with thunderstorms predicted.

It was Wednesday. I went to Michael’s. What else? I was joined by my esteemed partner Mr. JH– making one of his rare outings that aren’t related to the golf course (and one of the rare times I actually see him) – and one of our esteemed contributors, Delia von Neuschatz.

Delia grew up in several countries in Europe and in Morocco where her parents were doctors. She’s married to a man in the financial world, and she’s a dedicated writer. She did that those great series on bookshops here in New York and in London. She recently wrote a piece on Anderson & Sheppard, the British suitmaker. You’ll never have to wonder again. And maybe you’ll make your way to them. I know I would if .... She also did a couple of pieces a while ago on visiting the Basque country and concentrating on the food. Dining out, lunching out. I’d never thought about the Basque country before, except in a political way. Delia’s piece changed all that. Another destination confirmed with the big if ...

DPC and Delia von Neuschatz. Photo: JH.

Michael’s seemed quiet for a Wednesday. It was full up but it was as if someone turned the volume down. Next door to us was Gillian Miniter and Steven Stolman; across the way Deborah Grubman was celebrating a birthday with Prudence Inzerillo. Across the aisle from them, Mr. Inzerillo with a guest. Across from them, Barry Frey; just beyond, Judy and Peter Price and guest. Moving around the room: Joe Armstrong with Warren Hoge, formerly of the New York Times and now Vice President for External Relations at the International Peace Institute; Chris Meigher; Ed DeYoung; Jack Kliger of TV Guide; Martin Puris with Linda Boff; Susan Silver and pals; Joy Tutela; SusanBlond; Michael Boodro of Elle Décor; Matt Blank of Showtime; Star Jones; Alexandre Chemia; Patricia Fili-Krushel, Chairman of NBCNews with Bob Barnett. At Table One, Dawn Ostroff; Roger Friedman with Norah Lawlor; Susan Duffy; Kim Hanju; Alexis Maule; Beverly Camhe with Bill McCuddy.

Today’s NYSD features the 25th chapter of Ellen Glendinning Ordway’s extraordinary archive of personal photos of a life and a society in America that is now entirely lost to vague memory. It is probable that Mrs. Ordway never imagined her photo albums would be seen a half century after her passing by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

She began her intense hobby with the camera, like a lot of her contemporaries, in the late 1920s. She was a serious amateur, with no sense or idea of being a professional. However, she was organized and methodical, and devoted to her avocation. For almost four decades she recorded the comings and goings of herself, her family and her friends. She created a photo-diary.


	Tucson. 1935. Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway led a remarkable life, photographing nearly every aspect of it. Whether Field Day at Watch Hill or the Arizona Desert School rodeo, Frazer especially seemed to enjoy photographing her children, Bettina, "Perkie" Persifor IV, and "Rippie" Robert.

Ellen Ordway was out of a world that was immortalized on the stage and screen by Philip Barry in his “Philadelphia Story” – their images characterized in the public mind by movie stars like Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart.

These were the new real American elite who inherited the 20th century from their elders of the Gilded Age. They did live in some ways like movie stars, or in the way that movie stars would have liked to live. For many, although far from all, it was a complete life of leisure and travel. There was a heavy psychic influence of the British aristocracy, no matter one’s religious or national background. They lived well, even very well. Some became celebrities such as the multi-marrieds, or major heirs and heiresses. But mainly they avoided publicity to the point of revulsion. The reason Ellen Ordway was able to get these shots was because she was one of them, and none of her friends ever dreamed they be seen by millions across the globe eighty years later.

They traveled, they entertained, they smoked a lot, drank a lot; they played cards, flew helicopters and planes, built large (but not too large) comfortable houses in sunnier spots (like Palm Beach), married, had children, divorced; frequently crossed the Atlantic by oceanliner (and much later by plane) and hobnobbed with the elite (and the celebrities) of that world.

Somehow Mrs. Ordway gets all of that into her pictures. Interestingly many of her descendents and her friends’ descendents are seeing these family albums for the first time just like the rest of us.

In this segment, taken in 1964, the main featured guests are the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Duke turned 70 that year. It is interesting to see his leisure costume. He’d got decidedly relaxed sartorially when visiting his friends Nicky and Bunny DuPont. The duchess, however, is her impeccable, best-dressed self, turned out in two shades of pink in an up-to-the minute designer – probably couture – dress.

The 68-year-old Duchess of Windsor at a luncheon given for her by Ellen Ordway at her Villa Bel Tramonto in Palm Beach, April 1964. She is talking to Ellen Yuille Blair, who was a school chum at Oldfields School in Maryland more than fifty years before.

This picture was taken eight years before the duke’s death after which nothing went right for the duchess. For their “friends” and hosts, such as the DuPonts and the Arthur Gardners, these two people were the most famous “love story” in the world, of their generation. This somewhat delicate looking little man gave up the throne of the great British Empire in order to marry this woman.

Nobody ever did that before. Their friends and hosts were all aware of (what they thought of as) this sacrifice that the duke made for this woman. It probably occurred to only a very few that this woman had made a great sacrifice too. But she wore it with aplomb and what appeared to be great confidence. That confidence which she exudes in these photos was quickly stolen from her, beginning shortly after her husband’s death, taking her on a long dark road of final years. None of this could have been imagined by anyone in these photos, let alone the duke and the duchess.

The Duke of Windsor relaxing on the terrace with Wolcott Blair.

Contact DPC here.

A view from a widow's walk in the village looking out toward the harbor in Nantucket, Sunday morning at 8:30. I was fascinated by the frequency of these widow's walks which now also serve as sundecks for many who don't live right on the beach. Photo: DPC.

Monday, August 12, 2013. A beautiful Sunday in New York.

I went up to Nantucket for a long weekend to stay with my friend Joy Ingham who’s been a Nantucket summer resident for a long time. She once owned a house there, although she now prefers the luxury of renting. Nantucket is a luxury community, all the way. But that is always second, a far second, to the fact that Nantucket is a beautiful community on a beautiful island. We can thank our Creator (whoever it may or may not be for you) for that one.

I’d been twice before for a day, a lunch. I’ve written about it on these pages. We had an advertising client who was a private jet service and the owner Adam Katz invited me and JH, and other media people, for a ride up to Nantucket and lunch and then back to New York. It’s not a long ride. It was an interesting trip. The point of it was to experience the luxury of your own private jet taking you there. I don’t have to tell you, what is obvious: it beats the bus, the train and let’s not forget the airport. My memory of those trips to Nantucket itself is almost blank.

Wednesday evening along the East River. It was a beautiful night and I told myself that boat might just be headed for where I was heading on Thursday.

Thursday morning I took a 12:09 Jet Blue flight from JFK, arriving in Nantucket at 1:14. Actually we were on the runway at 12:09 and arrived at just about one. I'm told that it's basically a half hour airtime from JFK. My flight back yesterday, leaving at 1:50 and arriving JFK at 2:50 was not more than twenty minutes but we had to wait another fifteen for landing

My memory of this past weekend is rich. It’s such a beautiful place. You feel like you could just move in and stay. Those houses are all old. Or most of them. I grew up in a New England town, and it wasn’t as authentically “quaint” as Nantucket, but the vibe bore similarities to it, and similarities to a lot of New England communities of other eras.

There is a neighborliness of sorts. Not entirely -- because our world is no longer available or accessible to neighborliness – cars, planes, cell phones, remote control – have all but destroyed it. But on this small island with its main village with the centuries’ old cobblestone streets and brick sidewalks, and so many of its original 18th and 19th century houses and other buildings, a lot of people can’t help saying hello to each other when passing on the sidewalk. And there are a lot of people walking. Joy Ingham likes living in the village because she can walk everywhere. And she knows some of her neighbors, and vice versa.

Thursday afternoon Joy and I walked down Orange Street to the center of the village. This must have been a whaling shipowner's mansion back in the early 19th century. Notice the widow's walk between the chimneys. I was surprised to see how popular they've become. A great architectural idea revived.

Yesterday morning, I walked (about five or seven minutes) down to a place called the Hub where you get the Sunday papers. I passed people on the street who said “Good morning.” There’s something to that that we’ve all deprived ourselves of nowadays.

So that’s what you get in Nantucket. Now the other side of this is the irony. Although it still has much of the image, updated and restored and renovated, of course, of a fishing village of yore – Nantucket wears its frugal New England sensibility elegantly. That’s because of the rich. Make no mistake. This is what it is like to be rich and to live well, if you have the mind and the real sensibility for it. There are always many of the aforesaid who don't. I understand there are fantastic “estates” farther out along the beaches that are post-modern palaces of sorts and entirely separated from what I’m referring to. But I’ll bet even they come to town just to get some of the “old time” feeling, because that’s the real comfort zone for modern life.

Main Street. The white building with the pillars is a bank. The FedEx truck is parked in front of a shop called Murrays. Men and women's Nantucket clothes. The colors, green, Nantucket red/pink, orange, yellow, surfer-time; shoes, socks, shorts bathing suits, blazers, pants, skirts, children, and jammed. There was a line at 5:30 (I went into buy some socks) waiting to pay and the place was like a beach party on a rainy Friday afternoon. (It wasn't raining.)

This village is still standing so prosperously because 1. It reflects our heritage, and 2. It costs a fortune to keep up appearances. These beautiful Nantucket houses with their weathered shingles and saltair-eaten shingles and windowsills are preserved by community agreement. You can’t change them. You can only make them better. And better it is.

Its summer residents come from all over the country. I flew up sitting next to a man from Colorado who spends his Augusts on Nantucket. I flew back (JetBlue both ways) alongside a man who is from Houston but spends his summers “like a hermit” on the beach. I could vote for that. Who could ask for anything more?

I had no more conversation with either of the aforementioned, but I could make a good guess where they live without having been told. Some ideally quiet, simple, lovely little (or not so) house right in the village, or not far from, if not on, the ocean. However, the house(s) which most likely have been completely restored inside (and not touched except for maintenance on the outside – that’s the law), and might have cost two or three or four, or maybe none of the above, million, aren’t in the average homeowner’s budget.

This is what got to me. The flowers everywhere, reminding me of New England life – although maybe in a faux-Proustian sense because frankly I don't recall this kind of festive floral abundance back then. Look closely, and you can see why: it's been work and planning and real gardening expertise.

There are lots of restaurants, and from what I could tell they were all doing business. There are sandwich shops where people line up and take numbers and wait good waits for their order because business is so brisk. There are cheeseburg joints and there are first class places. My first night there, Joy invited me to a restaurant called Languedoc which she refers to as the “Mortimers of Nantucket” where only a mobile phone number to owner Alan Cuhna can get you a table for its excellent cuisine. We were joined by Sis Chapin and old friend of Joy’s. Sis, who is now a very lithe and limber over eighty (and hits the gym three days a week, plus walks everywhere morning, noon and night), has been going to Nantucket since she was first married in her twenties. She now lives in Sonoma, California although her late husband Roy Chapin was the President of American Motors in its heyday and automotive swansong, and then she lived in Grosse Pointe. But at heart, she’s a villager when summer comes and you can tell that she can’t stay away. It’s in her bones and in her spirit. And a lot of her friends are here.

Then Friday night we went to The Galley on the beach (don’t ask where). My half-brother Bob Flanagan who has been going to Nantucket since he was a very young boy had a summer job at The Galley as a kid, lo these many years ago. It’s still going not strong but stronger.

Victorian had entered the design books.

Along the walk to a late lunch (2:30).

I never knew the name of the place Joy took me for a burger and fries right near the harbor but we had to wait twenty minutes for a table at that hour (2:30). Ireland Galleries generously provided waiting seating as well as some good ideas for hanging in your saltbox.

Just sayin' ...

See what I mean? Your whole attitude changes with them.

My bedroom was on the third floor, which must have been the attic back in the day – long before 21st century sensibilities decided what a perfect guest room and bath (shower) should be like. It also had a steep, ladder-like staircase which led to the widow's walk which pleased me greatly. This is the view from my bathroom window. It's not an illusory image of the close proximity of the neighbors -- they are thisclose. However it is remarkably quiet and gently private in feeling. I should also remind that you are looking at several million dollars in real estate in this little corner of rooftops. I point that out because it is a significant fact besides being a significant amount for 18th century New England austerity.

Ahh, at last. View from the widow's walk. For this writer it is always fascinating to stand on the roof and look out a the world below.

This is what Nantucket flower boxes are for.

The secret of the Republic's historical success.

The entrance to an inn's garden. The inns look small, compared to a New Yorker's idea of an "inn." Although it may be that inside, as it is in many of these houses, there is much more space than meets the eye from the exterior. This garden path led to a patio where guests were at table having a little leisurely lunch. This is just off Main Street.

Another view of the rambling neighborhood with its steeples of houses of worship – as seen from the widow's walk.

And another ...

And looking in another direction.

On my walk down Orange Street to Main to get the Sunday papers.

Back at Joy's. The island is teeming with hydrangeas.

Just up the street.

Back home from dinner at the Galley with our hostess and friends Marianne and Steve Harrison.

The Petticoat Row Bakery delivers at 8 a.m. And the pastry delivers as much as you can consume. It's freshly baked and fulla delish.

For example, the blueberry muffin. Just adding a little more butter. Why not, I'm on vacation. Joy has provided other choices in abundance, as you can see.

Our table at the Galley waiting for our first courses.


	Our hostesses on Saturday night, Joy Ingham and Robin Kreitler.

Every year, The Boston Pops performs a concert on the beach for the benefit of the hospital. This is a charity event like those we see all the time in New York during the Autumn, Winter and Spring season in New York. This year they raised $2 million -- the tables for ten start at $15,000 and go to $50,000.

It is also traditional for a lot of islanders to go out in their boats and watch (and hear if the wind is on your side) the concert off in the distance. Many like this form of concert going because it is more relaxed.

This year Joy and her friend Robin Kreitler (from Charlottesville Vuhginyuh — I couldn't resist, it's too pleasurable to hear) rented a boat called Shearwater, captained by Blair Perkins, and invited 31 friends to join them on a buffet trip to the concert.

The Shearwater is a 47-foot catamaran that is used for whale watching expeditions. (for more info: go to explorenantucket.com). The food was provided by Michael Caffrey, owner of Island Chefs.

It's about a seven minute walk down to the dock to meet the boat (invitation said 5:30 departure). We walked down a side lane called Lafayette to Washington Street. These names were given not many years after those guys were the heroes in the new democratic republic when its inception and the motivation in its founding was fresh and unhindered.

The harbor comes into view. There were a lot of large yachts docked.

And scores of smaller boats of course.

This shot was taken by Ward Landrigan, the owner of Verdura. Susan Zises Green had hosted a cocktail reception/exhibition of many pieces in the Verdura collection ("Midcentury Masters – Fulco Di Verdura and Suzanne Belperron, Vintage jewelry) at her house the night before. Ward and his wife Judith are old friends of Joy and many others in town and they were up in this neck of the woods (Martha's Vineyard as well) exhibiting. The crowd you see are guests of the Pops concert who paid for the privilege of bringing a box supper/picnic and blankets on the beach a hundred yards from the concert shell.

This is a longshot that I took of the location. You can barely see it but the concert shell is a black box-shaped structure to the right of the white tent and another building. This was taken about 6:30. The concert was scheduled for 7 PM.

Ward Landrigan's close-up shot of the beach crowd gathering, about the same time.

Nearby.

Awaiting concert time and photographing too, of course.

Concert fans gathering before the concert.

A trifecta of Pops fans. Ward Landrigan's camera working.

The harbor light (Ward Landrigan).

Ward's camera on some of the guests partaking. That's DPC on the other side of the door window in blue also partaking.

The Sun about to set and painting the sky. Red sky at night, sailors' delight ...

Getting closer ...

Descending below the horizon glowing pink.

Waiting for the moon.

The concert began about this time. But the winds were strong and the music wasn't coming our way much. They opened the program with "Dancing Queen," its strains in the vague distance but just enough to revive the memory in everyone aboard the Shearwater enjoying the hostesses' bill of fare.

Then at about 9 p.m., the orchestra played "The 1812 Overture" and the fireworks began.

The rockets' red glare on the face of DPC, taken by Ward Landrigan.

One morning, Joy and I drove out to visit Daisy Soros who lives in Siasconset (pronounced "Scon—set") overlooking the beach. I asked her what we were looking at. She replied: "Portugal."

Ward and Judith Landrigan visited out there also and these are Ward's photos.

After their beach visit, the Landrigans went for some lunch at Summer House Beachside Bistro.

Lobster roll and caprese salad with iced tea.

We didn't have Sun when we visited Daisy that morning. The cloud cover highlighted the intensity of the land and her garden for us.

For example ...

Tango, the Soros four-year-old poodle. A beauty and a love dog too.

Inside the Soros' cottage.

Riding back home looking out on Mother Nature's canvas over the land called Nantucket.

Contact DPC here.

Tapping in traffic. 11:30 AM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013. Strong, steady rain yesterday morning with the clouds departing in the late afternoon leaving us a sunny day. Until late evening when it rained again briefly.

Catching up. Last Thursday when I headed off to Nantucket for a long weekend, Connie and Randy Jones gave a small birthday dinner at their Sutton Place duplex for Arlene Dahl to celebrate her 88th birthday. I’ve known Arlene since I was a kid and saw her with Fred Astaire and Red Skelton in MGM’s “Three Little Words.” It was also the first MGM film for Debbie Reynolds. I actually got to know Arlene in the years that I’ve been writing the New York Social Diary.

The birthday girl.

Randy Jones and Arlene.

Mario Buatta and Connie Jones.

Sharon Bush and Marc Rosen.

She is one of those women whose personality doesn’t betray her famous beauty. She’s gracious and friendly, not shy but circumspect. She speaks with certainty but always with reserve – gentle and kind. She is one of those people who treats everyone with that grace.

The power and magic of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s image in American culture is long gone with the Studio System itself. But Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had a powerful influence on the American psyche of the last mid-century. It was the top of the crop of the film studios. Orson Welles, in the book “My Lunches with Orson,” which I wrote about on these pages several days ago, said that many of MGM’s movies (they turned out fifty features a year) were not as great as the image the studio produced for the screen but they left the impression because of their brilliantly thorough composition as film entertainment.

It was a ‘look” that inspired the “signature” look of many photographers of that era and in the years following in the 1960s and 70s. It was found in all aspects of their films – from the story, the costumes, art direction, the direction, and foremost: the talent.

Arlene with her first husband, MGM's Tarzan, Lex Barker

Today we would call it branding, for that is indeed what it was. You knew it was an MGM picture simply by the way it looked and its stars – who were among the biggest and most memorable of the so-called Golden Age of Film. The movie audience knew if it said MGM up there on the screen, it meant a visual quality that was closest to the make believe-reality that evoked the "dreams" in our culture. Its stars were groomed to reflect that.

Arlene Dahl reflected that. She was an MGM star and she exemplified that “look” of quintessential American glamour and style. (She and Debbie Reynolds are the last two remaining stars of the MGM roster which the studio publicity department described as “More Stars Than There Are in Heaven.”

With her second husband, Fernando Lamas.

Arlene and Fernando on the set.


	With Marc Rosen.

In keeping with the American fable of lives of movie stars, Arlene married several times (six), and to more than one of her leading men: Lex Barker (the MGM Tarzan) and then Fernando Lamas. Her first five marriages were comparatively brief although she bore a daughter and two sons (with three different husbands). Her sixth husband (and most devoted and enduring -- 30 years next year), Marc Rosen, a leading packaging designer and consultant (Marc Rosen Associates) has been creating award-winning brands for more than 20 years. He believes in the philosophy, coincidentally, of the late Louis B. Mayer, Arlene’s boss in Hollywood, glamour sells.

A little girl from Minneapolis, Arlene Carol Dahl made her first film (“Life With Father” based on the hit Broadway play) at 23. The last film she made was “Night of the Warrior” with her son Lorenzo Lamas, in 1991.

Carole Holmes DeLouvier, Lorenzo Lamas, Arlene Dahl, and Stephen Shaum at Alrene's birthday dinner in 2008. Photo: DPC.

In the meantime when she wasn’t working in film and television, she embarked on business ventures and also became a professional astrologer and columnist. I found Arlene’s chart and the details that go with it, if you’re interested in this sort of thing:


Arlene's astrological natal chart.

She was born on August 11, 1925 in Minneapolis at 4:10 AM under the sign of Leo. Her Ascendent is Leo, her Moon is in Gemini, and in Chinese Astrology she was born in the year of the Earth Dragon. Her Numerological Earthpath is the number 3.

Don’t ask me what it all means because I have only a vague idea, having listened many times to people who know with an expertise that I don’t possess. Although it’s always interesting.

People will often ask me if I “believe” in it. I don’t regard it so much as a “belief system” as a mathematically study based on the Ancients of the nature of life on this planet. Arlene, however, is an advocate of it and speaks of it with confidence and certainty. Naturally, I’m always willing to listen.

Meanwhile at the Jones’ dinner, the guestlist was: Liza Minnelli– whose mother was of course at MGM – and who has known Arlene all her life; TCM’s Robert Osborne, Barbara Taylor Bradford and producer husband Bob Bradford; Yanna Avis, Simone Levitt, Carole (Arlene’s daughter) and Philippe DeLouvier; Arlene’s son Stephen Schaum; Mario Buatta, Drew Butler, (Marc and Arlene’s godson), and their host and hostess Randy and Connie Jones. At each place setting was a photographs of Arlene from her days at MGM.

Daughter Carole's place setting.

Last Saturday night at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, they opened a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” a musical farce with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The Bay Street Theatre’s director and choreographer was Marcia Milgrom Dodge. It started Peter Scolari, Conrad John Schuck, Jackie Hoffman and featuring Stewart Lane.

The original Harold Prince production which opened in 1962 at the Alvin Theater (now the Neil Simon) deservedly won several Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Book. Zero Mostel starred. It has since had several Broadway and (London) West End revivals as well as a successful film also starring Zero Mostel.

Also in the Bay Street Theatre Forum cast are: Glenn Giron, Grant Haralson, J. Morgan White, Nick Verina, Lora Lee Gayer, Tom Deckman, Laurent Giroux, Halley Cianfarini, Jen Bechter, Jessica Crouch, Shiloh Goodin, Phoebe Pearl, Terry Lavell and Nathaniel Hackmann. The show runs through September 1.

Jessica Crouch, Glenn Giron, Phoebe Pearl, J.Morgan White, Nathaniel Hackmann, and Ethel Will.

Shiloh Goodin, Laurent Giroux, Nathaniel Hackmann, J. Morgan White, and Jackie Hoffman.

Daryl Schaffer, Peter Scolari, Lauren Schaffer, Carol Roman, and Ellen Krass.

Nick Verina, Laurent Giroux, Terry Lavell, Nathaniel Hackmann, Stewart Lane, and down in front Lora Lee Gayer.

Daryl Schaffer, Lauren Schaffer, Ellen Krass, Carol Roman, and Bonnie Comley.

"Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," from Sondheim's "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum," performed by Simon Russell Beale, Daniel Evans, Julian Ovenden, and Bryn Terfel at Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday (produced by the BBC in London).

More catching up. On the Friday and Saturday of July 19 and 20, at Columbia County’s Copake Country Club in Craryville, New York, 5000 people attended the 3rd annual Hudson Valley Food Lovers’ Festival, Farm On! Proceeds from the Festival benefit the Farm On! Foundation in Partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Questar III and 4H.

Chef Zak Pelaccio and Lady Jayne’s Alchemy of Fish & Game hosted a “Hootenanny” at the Farm Fresh Fundraiser Dinner on Friday. 60 local farmers and their families joined the 300 guests at table.

Kip Edick.

Jeremy Peele, Parker Posey, Tessa Edick, and Norman Greig.

At each table of 10, eight diners were joined by a local farmer and his wife, offering a firsthand experience to learn about the local food system, and eat with the people who are behind the food they were enjoying - most of which was sourced on the farms within five miles of the festival, providing guests with firsthand experiences with the people who make their food.

The "Hootenanny" also included a Hudson Valley cheese course, golf cart drive-in and movie sponsored by Whole Foods.

Ross Mauri and Billy Rae.

The following day was the 2013 “Friends of the Farmer” Festival, sponsored by fashion designer John Varvatos at the Copake Country Club. Its highlights include live performances by Lukas Nelson (son of Willie)and P.O.T.R., a robust farmer’s market including vendors with local libations and a wide range of kid-friendly activities such as a petting zoo, pony rides and more.

Founded and produced by the Culinary Partnership, a company specializing in launching food products and owned by Tessa Edick, the event raises scholarship money for students participating in Cornell University’sCooperative Extension, Questar III and 4H and brings awareness to consumers through the ”know your farmers, know your food” mission.

Lukas Nelson, Tessa Edick, and John Varvatos.

Thea Varvatos.

Donna Faircloth and Matt Charkow.

“I’m standing up for my farming community and my food choices, by meeting one farmer at a time!” points out Ms. Edick. “We want kids participating in Camp Farm On! to know farming is not only cool, it can be a highly profitable business. Pairing agriculture with an ROI business mentality makes for viable livelihoods and gives the next generation of farmers the tools to succeed today. Only then can we talk about succession and the future of farming.”

All funds raised benefit The Farm On! Foundation, offering Hudson Valley students an opportunity to visit local farms and gain an understanding of how they become viable businesses - fostering entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging the next generation of local farmers.”

Lukas Nelson performing.

Photographs by Rob Rich (Funny Thing).

Contact DPC here.

The Merchant's Gate sculpture at the southwest entrance to Central Park, on 8th Avenue next to Columbus Circle. 2:30 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Thursday, August 15, 2013. When I got up yesterday morning and opened my terrace door, there was a strong, almost — but not quite — chill breeze blowing outside, delivering just a whiff, but enough to remind you of what lay ahead for us: autumn.

It was like that all day, and full of sunshine. I’ve become so accustomed to the possible onslaught of extreme weather that days like these are like a great painter’s masterpiece. The city’s beauty is before you.

I am now hearing references in conversation to the Summer’s end just about upon us. All regarded with alas and alack. Last night in New York was equally as beautiful as the day. Shortly after sunset I took some pictures of the avenue, north and south. I was thinking of all that energy we experienced only six hours before at Michael’s and now in the process of being subdued behind those lighted windows in the towers along the avenue with the real lives, back home in their own spaces, probably often very quiet, or teeming with family life, the sounds of the television news bouncing off the walls, and blu-ing up the lights in the room with the night encroaching.

It was Wednesday; it was Michael’s which was going full throttle. Sometimes I stop talking and just listen to the room. The clatter just rolls and tumbles like a huge and boisterous energy machine. It’s a force of nature when taken as itself. Taken individually, we’re back to the Naked City and 9 million stories.

I was lunching with Judy Price who was the founder of Avenue magazine back in the '70s and ran it like a tight ship and sold ads like nobody’s business for twenty-five years. Or was it twenty-six or thirty? Anyway, it was a long one and she made her work known, and a name for herself and with her husband businessman/entrepreneur Peter Price, a good life. They have an apartment here in New York, another in Paris, and a beautiful house in Pound Ridge that once belonged to the great fashion photographer’s model of the 1940s through '60s, Mary Jane Russell and her husband Edward Russell, president of Doyle, Dane, Bernbach.

Mary Jane Russell in Dior Dress, Paris, 1950. Russell was a favorite of photographers Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Irving Penn. Mrs. Russell started her modeling career with Ford in 1948. This was the height of the post-War "New Look" that brought Dior international fame. Over the years Russell appeared frequently on the covers of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Irving Penn said of her: "She brought to her posing as a model concentration and tenderness, rare in the fashion medium today."

Slim Aaron's visit to Mary Jane Russell at her house in Pound Ridge, autumn 1960.

I was the editor of Avenue for three years under Mrs. Price from ’97 to August 2000. JH came to work there the following year as my assistant. (We worked well together; we never worked in the same building at the same time.) In 2000, we left to launch the NYSD.

Judy always has lots of information and stories from her travels and her (not so) new business, the National Jewelry Institute. She’s already published three or maybe it’s five great books on the history of jewelry, as well as staged several exhibitions. No moss grows under those feet.


A new item: Gayfryd Steinberg and Michael Shnayerson.

She also loves a good piece of gossip like most media folk. Mine was that her also once-upon-a-time editor, Michael Shnayerson, who writes for Vanity Fair, is going out with Gayfryd Steinberg, the beautiful and gracious widow of Saul Steinberg.

Judy loved this story. Women, as you know, more than men, very often get a kind of thrill out of hearing about a couple dating. Men tend to keep their thrill to themselves. Especially as we all get older (and way beyond the former meaning of dating).

Judy wanted to know how I knew. I told her I never reveal my sources. Later in the afternoon she emailed me that she had corresponded with Shnayerson and he confirmed it. “Three months, they’ve been going out,” she reported gleefully. Some good news on this beautiful day.

Michael’s (the restaurant) sounded like good news – all that noise of hundreds of boss-voices relishing the whole Noo Yawk Moment one way or another. In the center of the room, Bonnie Fuller, President and Editor-in-Chief of HollywoodLife.com, along with Gerry Byrne of Penske Media, presiding over a table of fourteen or sixteen. At Table One: Maria Bartiromo, Gayfryd Steinberg’s step-daughter-in-law was presiding. Nearby: The LeFraks, pere et fils – Harrison, Jamie, and friend; Matt Rich with writer Ava Roosevelt; Fred Davis of Davis, Shapiro & Lewit; the beautiful Maureen Reidy, former head of Donald Trump’s The Argus Group, now veep at the Paley Center; Martin Bandier, Chair/CEO Sony/ATV; Larry Kirshbaum, head of Amazon Publishing; Nick Verbitsky; Ed Adler; Arthur Sandor, VP Hustler; Bob Towbin; Fern Mallis, Wenda Millard, President and CEO of Media Link LLC, former co-CEO of Martha Stewart; Steve Mosko of SONY Pictures Television; Pete Peterson, founder of Blackstone; The Mayor of Michael’s Joe Armstrong with Dorothy Kalins, founding editor of Saveur, founding E-I-C, Metropolitan Home, cookbook writer and consultant; the distinguished William vanden Heuvel, businessman, attorney, diplomat, author and also founder and director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. It was Bill vanden Heuvel, force of personality that actualized (with a lot of help from a lot of friends) the FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island. Bill is also the father of Katrina vanden Heuvel, owner/publisher of The Nation. Moving along: Ralph Destino; Barry Frey.

Apropos of nothing but food in the subject of Michael’s, I’m reading Kate Hubbard’s fascinating study of a life — “Serving Victoria” the lady who gave her name to a century in Western Civilization.


	Click to orderServing Victoria.

It was no day in the country, so to speak, to be in service to the Queen, although most of it was spent in the country –— be it Windsor, the Isle of Wight, Scotland or making royal visits occasionally — because she didn’t like the noise of London. It was a big, tiny life in the gargantuan empire over which she reigned powerfully.

One chapter — Balmorality — chronicles the annual visit to Balmoral, possibly the dullest, most boring place on Earth for the Royal tenders, slaves to tradition of gilded servitude. By 1870 the Royal party — family, household (ladies and lords in waiting, etc.), and servants traveled the 600-mile two-day trip by Royal Train. Among other details that Hubbard reports was the various menus. The Queen was a robust eater as you might have guessed from the sight of her. According to author Hubbard:

“The journey was accompanied by some serious eating – a ‘sumptuous breakfast,’ (trout, salmon, scones, strawberries and peaches) at the Station Hotel in Perth on the outward journey, and a six-course dinner (soup, turbot in lobster sauce, fried smelts, foie gras, mutton cutlets, roast beef and turkey, pheasants, Sefton pudding, Madeira jelly and apple compote) on the return, not to mention a ‘hearty tea’ at Aberdeen. As back-up, hampers were supplied by the royal kitchens crammed with cold meats, stuffed rolls, grouse, cakes, biscuits, tea, cream, claret, champagne, sherry and seltzer water.”

Everything but the Zantec and the Pepcid. And of course the Tums.

Contact DPC here.

Checking for rain yesterday afternoon. 2:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Monday, August 19, 2013. Beautiful weekend in New York, overcast on Sunday, as if there might be rain (there wasn’t), but mild.

I stayed in the City, as is my wont. It was quiet. I got out my little black Mini convertible, put the top down and drove across town to Zabar's.

No problem finding parking. I usually take a bus or (better) a cab. The total bus ride is $4.50 and the cab one way is usually about $12 including tip. The parking, however, costs $3.50 an hour right across the street from Zabar's, giving me time to also visit Barnes & Noble, Laytner’s Linens (pillows — on sale) and peruse the book table outside Zabar's.

Dining al fresco on Saturday afternoon on the Upper West Side. Photo: JH.

On Friday I had an MRI. I’ve had CT-Scans a few times but never an MRI. All I heard about was that it was different. Was I nervous? Of course. Could I do anything about it? No.

JH had already told me that the machine was not great for claustrophobics. I’m not claustrophobic so that didn’t concern me. I was concerned about “what” they might find although I knew I wasn’t going to hear the “what” part right away, so I was able to put that out of my head. What assisted me was the process.

You go into a stall with a curtain, remove all your garments except your underwear (and your socks), put on a short cotton robe and go into “the room.”

The machine looks like a CT-Scan machine — a long, narrow, table-like bed with a place for the back of your head and for your feet (heels). The main device is round, like a large metal doughnut-shape, like the CT-Scan. You lie down, put your arms close to your side, put in ear-plugs and close your eyes.

The doctor/operator tells you it’s going to be noisy— hence the earplugs — but that it’ll take about twenty minutes; and you must keep your eyes closed.

I heard the doctor’s voice tell me over a speaker that we were beginning. The table/bed seemed to elevate and move backwards (into the center of the doughnut, I was presuming). Then the noise began.


	Fred Astaire and Hermes Pan dancing it up for the RKO publicity photographer, circa 1935. I was reminded that work for them (creating the dances) was long and intense but full of the fun (and laughs) that we see in this photo.

NOISE. Bang bang bang, beep beep beep BANG/whack-whack-whack, BANGBANG-buzz-buzz-buzz. Real racket and really loud, relentless, disturbingly loud. I was afraid that the shock of the incessant banging and buzzing and tooting and whacking was going to cause me to accidentally open my eyes. Fear? Fear of opening my eyes, forget what the machine might detect. It was very disturbing.

However. I needed to move my mind to another place in order to endure the 20 or so minutes without panicking. Time goes by very slowly when you’re measuring it, as you know. The banging, however, and the tap tap tap, whack whack whack, reminded me of: Fred Astaire and Hermes Pan.

Long time readers of the NYSD might recall that I wrote a book for Hermes Pan back in the early '80s when I was living in Los Angeles. It was intended to be a memoir and in the process of interviewing Hermes, we became friends and I got to know him quite well. Eventually I did put together a book, although we were not able to find a publisher (it was no tell-all and Hermes avoided controversy for several reasons even though he was in his 70s and his career had ended).

I called the book “The Man Who Danced With Fred Astaire.” Years later, about two or three years ago, some writer researching Hermes met his surviving family of nieces and nephews and came upon Hermes’ copy of my manuscript. The writer, whose name escapes me now, contacted me to interview me. I later learned that he’d lifted my title for his book — which infuriated me but his publisher insisted I had no rights to it. It was published and subsequently forgotten.

Hermes Pan’s life story is almost a fable, like the name he was given at birth (the Pans were Greeks and had a much longer name beginning in Pan ... but it was Anglicized by his father). The man was always a dancer from childhood, never trained but eventually became a seat-of-the-pants professional in the late 1920s in New York. He was working in the chorus of a Ruby and Kallmar Broadway musical called “Top Speed” when the ingénue, a young actress named Ginger Rogers told him she was going out to Hollywood because Talkies had come in and they were beginning to make musical pictures. This was 1930. She told Hermes he should consider the move because they needed singers and dancers for their movies.


Ginger and Fred dancing the carioca in Flying Down to Rio, 1933.

A few months afterwards Hermes and his sister and mother, in an old Ford they’d bought for $75 embarked on a trip across the country (this was long before interstates). Two years later by chance he got a job at RKO working as an assistant choreographer with a famous musical stage dancer Fred Astaire who was preparing for his first film (with Ginger), “Flying Down To Rio.” The Pan-Astaire collaboration turned out to be a karmic one — it lasted the lifetime of the men’s careers — almost forty years.

This is where my MRI business comes in. So lying there trying to keep myself calm with all this banging going on very loudly despite my lousy hearing and the earplugs, I hit upon Pan and Astaire.

All those numbers we’ve seen on the screen of Fred or Fred and Ginger, all the sound of those tap-tap-tapping that we see and hear, was done after they shot the sequence. Fred and Hermes went into a studio wearing their taps shoes and stood on a cement platform with a wooden floor, in front of the screen. When the reel began, the two men would be watching it and repeat all the steps taking place on the screen, (Hermes would be Ginger's steps) “setting the taps” recording them for the finished product.

There was no mistaking the steps because the two men rehearsed to the point (Astaire’s) of perfection. And, as I learned when Hermes recounted the experience often with a chortle or some laughter, the two men had a good time doing it. It was the ultimate challenge that was fun, and funny. “All dancers are children,” he once said, adding: “they have to be in order to let themselves move unself-consciously.”

So as I lay there on the MRI slab Friday afternoon, focusing on keeping still and keeping my eyes shut, I visualized Pan and Astaire and imagined them setting their taps to the sounds banging all around my head. They both loved percussion and these sounds would have given them inspiration for more fun. The more outrageous the better. This photograph Hermes gave me of the two of them (for RKO publicity) always reminds me of those moments. It also took me thorough a successful session.

Out and About; catching up. Out in Aspen, Ann Nitze gave a tea at the Explore Book shop to celebrate Stephanie Stokes' new book, “Elegant Rooms that Work, Fantasy and Function in Interior Design” (Rizzoli Publishers).

Christopher Walling and Stephanie Stokes.

Ann Korologis (former CEO of Aspen Institute) with the party's hostess, Ann Nitze.

About a hundred friends came for cookies and conversation including Leonard Lauder and Linda Johnson, Patty Phelphs de Cisneros (Stephanie's cousin), Carolyn Roehm, Christy Ferer, Lisa Schiff, Victoria Smith, Pat Patterson (Dallas), Susan Braddock, and others Manhattanites who summer in the Rockies.

There were also several Texans including Ann and Ed Hudson, Nancy Dunlop, Molly Lassiter, and Judy Allen. Stephanie's best Colorado friend, Sally Ranney, arrived. This week she and Ted Turner will be sponsoring an environmental event in Aspen. The beautiful Maja and Nicolas DuBrul, Elizabeth Paepcke's grandson, were also in attendance.

Susan Braddock (center with adored friend) and friends.

The Explore Book shop is a great Aspen institution owned by Sam Wiley and brilliantly run by John Edwards, an Aspen native. But Phoenix who handles all events is the shop's great heroine.

Bill Nitze, Ann’s husband, is the nephew of Elizabeth Paepcke. But it is Ann herself who is today the favorite hostess of Aspen. Ann and Stephanie went to boarding school together.

Stephanie, a New Yorker by choice, is a fourth generational Coloradoan. Her great-grandmother went West in a stagecoach. Each time a husband succumbed to TB, she went back East and got a new one, and wrote wonderful diary of the opening of the West. Stephanie's old family house, no longer in the family, is now the headquarters for Hari Krishna Hari Rama.

Maja and Nic DuBrul with Carolyn Roehm.

Also last week, Southampton Hospital broke ground at the site of its new Audrey and Martin Gruss Heart and Stroke Center. The occasion honored the Grusses for their great gift of $5 million for the new facility. When completed, the Center will provide stroke treatment and carotidstents as needed. It will consolidate a broad spectrum of new and sophisticated diagnostic and treatment capabilities with the hospital’s existing cardiovascular programs and services. The core components will include:

Audrey, who is President of their Foundation, reminded that, “The over-50 age group has the highest probability of experiencing a stroke or heart attack. With many of us spending months or weekends year-round in Southampton and the East End, Martin and I felt it was important that our local hospital have the capability to conduct stroke and vascular distress intervention.” She added, “We are gratified by this addition to Southampton Hospital, knowing that our family and friends will be able to get timely heart and stroke medical care they need, when and where they need it.”

Audrey and Martin Gruss breaking ground.

Cardiovascular Disease, of which heart disease and stroke are the most common diseases, is the leading cause of death nationally as well as in New York State and Long Island. Given a geographically remote location, compounded by excessive traffic during the summer, heart disease and stroke are a particular concern for the communities served by Southampton Hospital. The nearest similar programs are at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where during the busy summer months it can be a 2-hour trip from East End communities, where the population skews toward older residents and retirees.

Robert Chaloner, President and CEO of Southampton Hospital, said, “Creation of The Audrey and Martin Gruss Heart and Stroke Center will be transformational for us because it will will significantly advance the Hospital’s ability to diagnose and treat stroke and cardiovascular disease, and become a vital component of the care provided by our community hospital. This critically important initiative will undoubtedly save lives, and we are grateful for the Grusses’ generosity and commitment to quality healthcare in our community.”

Anna Thorne-Hoist, Debra Halpert, and Jay Schneiderman.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele and Barbara Poliwoda.

Jean Shafiroff and Jean Remmel Little.

Photographs by Mary Hayes ( Aspen).

Contact DPC here.

5:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

August 19, 2013. Overcast and warm with the weatherman predicting some more of that ole time humidity that gets the A/Cs roaring in my neighborhood.

There was an article on the web about a 9-year-old kid who entered a library reading contest upstate, and read 63 books in a month. Evidently the librarian was not happy about this. She thought the kid’s speed was making it impossible for other kids to win, and therefore they might give up and read nothing.

Some readers of the article suggested the kid was reading below his reading level and therefore pulling it off easily. In other words, the 9-year-old was working it.

Someone else wrote that it was possible because he himself had once read 600 pages in two hours. I’m awestruck. It takes me days to read a book. Although I could imagine a little boy with the right frame of mind and imagination and emotional clarity being able to race through stories. I could also imagine a little boy being in on the game some way too. We get started very early with our way of thinking about life.


	The very young Victoria who became the monarch of the United Kingdom in 1837 at age 18. Granddaughter of George III, her name would one day lend itself to the age in which she reigned.

I’ve liked reading books since I was a kid of eight or ten going to the Atheneum (which is what the library was called in my town) on Saturday mornings. The library was quiet and serene and clean. Peace was the message for this boy — solace, a word I didn’t know but nevertheless recognized the feeling anyway — in the library.

On its shelves were other worlds to live in, to learn about. But I’m slow reader. I get distracted easily. Many times I find it hard to sit still. Or I’ll compulsively run off to the internet to check certain sites for the latest news or commentary. Other than writing, reading is the one thing that I like to do most with my time. I don’t read enough when I consider all the books I want to read and all those things I will love to learn. As well as the things I won’t love to learn.

Summertime is reading time for me. That’s the luxury. The calendar lightens up to the point where I have nothing to report, to write about. Over this past weekend, I finished the book, which I’ve already written about, “Serving Victoria.” It wasn’t compelling. You don’t wonder what’s going to happen next. Her actual day-to-day life was a deadly dull to be around. Yet I couldn’t put it down.

She was a strange figure to behold — so remote, so somber in her frivolousness, yet likeable. Despite her congenital selfishness and self-centeredness, she genuinely liked people. Because of that she could listen — if you could get her ear, and that was the hard part because she was barricaded by protocol. There were many times when she was wise and admirable, including times when she was forced to submit to those who would’t go along. But she could be easily self-deluding when it came to those (men) she favored. Complaints of her Highlands servant’s drunkenness was excused as “bashful” or “tired.”

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria and their brood.

She loved to eat, and had terrible indigestion, not surprisingly. She loved Tea (the tradition) — although despite her intake, it did not spoil her dinner. When she was at Balmoral, four times a week her confectionary at Windsor would send an order of: one fox of biscuits, one box of drop tablets, one box of pralines, sixteen chocolate sponges, twelve plain sponges, sixteen fondant biscuits, one box of wafer, one and a half dozen flat finger biscuits, one sponge cake, one Princess cake and one rice cake. Times four — all in a seven day period.

She had help of course, in consuming this vast sugar quarry, but Victoria was generous with herself, by habit. She was then in her mid-70s and not getting any thinner.


Munshi, Victoria's controversial Indian servant (who was never referred to as a servant). She was putty in his hands and his hands were deft and sly.

This was a rather plain, basically uneducated woman who lived all her life in castles and palaces, surrounded and waited on by hundreds. She was held in highest esteem and recognized for great political power by millions. But she was really just a woman living in a peculiar atmosphere of the Self at the center of world power. For any single individual — man or woman, it’s a bizarre reality. It points up again and again how strange Royalness is, and how unreal. Even today. She was not prepared for anything but the privilege. She deferred to her husband early on and had several children by him. When he died suddenly in his forties, she mourned him for the rest of her long life. And she owned her power, something that was clear to anyone and everyone who came in contact with her.

Most people communicated with her through a third person. You can see how easy it would be to fall into that mode of communication. She hated London and avoided it as much as possible. She spent the majority of her time away and unavailable to most people except by specific appointment. In modern terms it’s referred to as “isolating,” Victoria was a champ at it.

She had a lot of company though, at all times, night and day. Her doctor visited her at least three times a day. Her maids-in-waiting had to be there when she frequently awoke in the middle of the night. Attention had to be paid. When her doctor finally became engaged to marry at 50 she was outraged. It took months to bring her around to reality (that the man had a right to a life of his own), and to giving her approval.

Once there, she was fine. She could briefly put aside the child who wanted everything her way. But she nevertheless expected the complete devotion and attention from those who “served” her. She was the Sovereign. She kept herself unapproachable, so that people had to figure out to communicate with her effectively while not appearing to. It was stunning to learn that it wasn’t until after she died that the doc actually saw her unclothed for the first and only time in the decades that he served her!

Munshi when he had become the Queen's man at the beginning of his reign over the Queen's consciousness.

It made me laugh to think about it because when you read this book you get that Victoria was as ignorant as the rest of us but could behave thusly because she was Queen.

She wasn’t charming although there was something charming about her behavior. The part where her adored Munshi, the Indian servant (who saw to it that no one could refer to him as a servant) had run his course with the rest of the staff and must go, is an excellent document of the vagaries of personal political power in the presence of people who possess another kind of power – the power to attract.


	John Brown with some of the Queen's dogs. Brown was one of nine children and three or four of his brothers also joined the Queen's household in various servant positions. The Browns were big drinkers and rowdy. More than once they drew unfavorable attention with their bustin' up ways. The Queen was never perturbed by and made excuses for their behavior.

	Brown with his Queen at Balmoral. After he died she had a statue sculpted of him which she had placed on the castle grounds. After she died, her son had the statue removed to behind the cottage that was Brown's when he was at Balmoral.

Victoria was crazy about this particular member of her Household. She studied Hindustani daily with him. He was very handsome, and even at a late age, Victoria was still dazzled by the male animal. There were rumors that she and Munshi had a “thing” going on. True or not, it is immaterial to the drama: she was crazy about him. To him she dispensed power. Whereupon the Prime Minister might have to go through a third person to speak to her, Munshi said what he thought to her face all the time. And not all of it was pleasantries. There were even shouting matches with the old girl, Empress of India.

As Victoria got older Munshi's power and misuse of it became more and more of a problem for the household as well as the government. No amount of complaints registered against him could sway Victoria's complete trust in him. Finally after he contracted a severe case of gonorrhea, treated by her doctor – who reported it to the Queen, did she, very very reluctantly begin to listen. But Munshi held on almost to the end of her life.

The same was true with a previous man in her life after Albert:John Brown. A foreign temperament (to the Queen), Brown started out as one of Prince Albert’s gillies (a hunting/fishing guide) at Balmoral. Then he was promoted to the Queen’s “special servant,” with pony-leading duties. He is described as: “tall, powerfully built, firm-jawed and blue-eyed. He made the Queen “feel safe” with his “strong arm.”

He was brusque, disregarded etiquette, was fearless, and loyal. After Albert died, Brown took over the role of male protector to the damsel in distress. He had his say with the Queen and didn’t have a problem letting her know when he disagreed. Apparently Victoria hungered for that while at the same time disallowing such opposition among her staff and servants (and even her children), always playing Queen.

Brown was more than a "faithful servant" and a "good friend." He and the Queen slept in adjoining rooms. Victoria commissioned several portraits of him (and with her) and, after his death, she had a life-sized statue of him erected on the grounds of Balmoral Castle. After she died, Her son Edward VII had the statue removed to a place near the cottage that Brown lived in near the castle.

Queen Victoria, Empress of India, the most powerful woman in the world at the end of the 19th Century.

In many ways she never grew up. She was an inexperienced 18-year-old sheltered girl when she came to the throne of the most powerful nation of the 19th century. England grew more powerful as her reign progressed through the Industrial Revolution.

She learned about wielding political power from that peculiar unrealistic but nevertheless Very Real position of “majesty.” She remained childish when she felt like it. And although she had a kindness to her, she was habitually willful in her conduct with almost everyone around her except her men — Albert, Brown and then the scandalous, nefarious Munshi — all of whom possessed a power she could not replace. The power of sex. Does that still exist? Do we know it?

Click to order“Serving Victoria."

Contact DPC here.

Remembering Cynthia Lufkin

The joke’s on me

Nostalgia on a hot summer day

Hot you can run away from

HOW hot?

Heat Wave

Death Angel

It’s Summertime

I have wheels

Love and Marriage and Divorce

It is called nostalgia

Cooling down

You’d hear about it even in New York

The Perfect Distractions

Wearing it with aplomb

Nantucket for a long weekend

Strong, steady rain

Full of sunshine

Staying in the City

Standing on ceremony