10.2.12: Remembering the good things

Remembering the good things

Deli flowers. 7:00 PM. Photo: JH.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012. Another beautiful early autumn day, yesterday in New York. With a full moon above. The astrologers I read say this is a particularly harsh moon. I don’t know why because I don’t understand the significance of the “aspect,” but they do. Do I believe in Astrology? Insofar as it remains a longtime view of the scheme of things, I think it’s interesting and if nothing else, fires the imagination and possibly in a constructive way. Beliefs or imagination aside, Up there in the night sky over Manhattan, down by the riverside, shining its beams across the water, it’s a beauty. The Harvest moon shining above.

Today is the birthday of my esteemed business partner and designer and manager and perpetuator of the New York Social Diary everyday, JH.

Because I’m the one who is “out there” in public all the time, people sometimes ask: “what does Jeff do?” Answer: Everything; 24/7. And he also takes those wonderful photographs that open the Diary every morning.

You can tell a lot about the man by his photos. I never see the next day’s until the Diary is laid out and ready to go up. Many times I’m amazed at the beauty that he pulls out of this city, his hometown, and the humanity, the stark and the sweetness.

Many times, the choices he’s made that day, before even getting the Diary or knowing what I’m going to write, are in synch with my copy. It’s quite an amazing coincidence.

This week is also the beginning of our thirteenth year in business online. I’ve told this story once before but it’s worth re-telling: When Jeff and I started the NYSD, knowing just about nothing, including how to go online, we hired a young guy who was working in the Art Department of Avenue magazine (where I had just left employ as the E-I-C, with Jeff as my Assistant). After three days of putting us up, our web man quit; didn’t want to do it, didn’t know what he was doing.

Jeff called to give me the bad news.

It was a Thursday. “What are we gonna do?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “There’s a book for Dummies on How to Go On The Internet. I’ll buy it and maybe I can figure it out.”


The JH's on their wedding day.

He bought the book the next day, Friday, and put us online the following Monday, and every weekday ever since for the past twelve years. Last November he got married to the beautiful Danielle Rossi, as you may have seen here. So he’s been settling into married life and still keeping the good ship NYSD sailing smoothly. Initiative and self-reliance, an artist’s eye, a good man, a craftsman’s hand, a reliable partner and an esteemed friend; that’s the score. Happy Birthday JH, and many more and many many thanks to you.

My esteemed colleague, Liz Smith, has been ruffling some feathers lately of readers who object to her expressing her political preferences in the upcoming election. The message to me is the same: it doesn’t belong on the NYSD. I don’t see why not. It’s her column and solely her opinion. When I really have a problem with a commentator’s opinion, I move on and frequently don’t return. That’s the beauty of Free Speech. I personally am not interested in Liz’ political sentiments, having my own which I do not express on the NYSD since there is nothing to be gained from it. I do read some political commentary but much of it doesn’t interest me.

I don’t see what harm her opinions of political matters do. She’s not bellicose, nor a bigot. She doesn’t besmirch or abuse with her words. And she does more for helping her fellow citizens in more ways than I can list.

Many people don’t like to talk politics. I am particularly uninterested in name-calling and scandal-mongering. A lot of people like that and a lot of network/cable television evidently thrives on it. I do regret that political campaigning is now all about raising massive sums of money and poking the other guy with all kinds of insults and in many cases abusive rumors. Because it seems irrelevant in a world that is clearly in trouble, and that means us too. We humans seem to have lost our appetite for problem solving and replaced it with an appetite for blaming.

One thing that often occurs to me when I am in a taxi and the driver knows he or she is free to express political opinions to me, is how New York City is an example of What Is Possible in human relations. Millions of us, scores, maybe hundreds of nationalities live here, practicing dozens of religions, speaking dozens of languages, living together in this very small area geographically, and we are not at war with each other. Ever. We are often neighbors, often in the same buildings, often on the same floor, and we Get Along. Proving: It not only can be done, but it is done; every day. It is New York.


	Click to order "The Second World War." Or buy immediately at Archivia on 72nd and Lex.

I just started Antony Beevor’s newly published history “The Second World War.” I’m not an aficionado of war histories (although I’ve read a few). I know there is a great market for them. But a recent copy of The New York Review of Books had an informative review of Beevor’s book, and enticed me.

The author has the precise ability to portray the men (almost entirely men, few women) who made and ran that war of wars, as remarkably like the rest of us -- all with flaws and in some cases frequently engaged in hideous behavior toward our fellow man.

It would also seem that many of the “leaders” who pushed their fellow man into armed conflict and slaughter rather than lead them away from it through political means, had a real taste for blood -- other’s blood, of course -- never their own. Beevor’s book so far, and I am only early into it, is riveting. My only regret is that I don’t have the time to do it all in one sitting.

Yesterday I was at Michael’s and Joan Rivers was at the next table. I don’t know Joan well but I’ve known her for a long time now, and off-stage, off-camera, she is very relatable, a highly intelligent woman whose ambition, or rather ability to work, seems to have increased with age.


Joan Rivers at Michael's.

She looked great – which she always does. But the world knows about that. After lunch I asked her about her life “Where do you live?” Answer: both Coasts now that Fashion Police is such a big hit.

She has her palatial apartment just off Fifth Avenue in the East Sixties, on the market. I don’t know the price but it’s up there. I remember when she bought it, returning to the East Coast after having a longtime residence in Los Angeles.

It’s the top two floors of a Horace Trumbauer-designed house (one of the rare ones left in New York), built for a member of the Drexel family early in the last century.

I think it had originally been the house’s ballroom, and Joan’s living room is an enormous paneled room that looks like it could have been a ballroom in the Gilded Age. When she bought it, she was impressed that the previous owner, a widow, had lived in it for many decades, well into her nineties when she departed. Joan liked that. She felt it meant the place had good vibes. And so it has.

However, our girl now is working non-stop on both coasts and with little time or inclination for the big entertaining she used to do in her Fifth Avenue palace. She stays with her daughter Melissa when she’s on the West Coast and now she’s thinking of getting a manageable house there and a pied a terre here.

Joan Rangers Fashion Police badge.

Back to business: Supporters of the Playground Partners of the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy gathered at the J.Crew Collection store at 769 Madison Avenue to shop for a cause and support the playgrounds of Central Park. The mission of the Central Park Playground Partners is to improve the 21 playgrounds in the Park, and maintain their overall quality. They’ve got a strong committee of dedicated volunteers who do just that and work assiduously to keep everything in tip top shape.

Guests included Playgrounds Partners Committee Co-Chairmen Nyssa Kourakos and Yesim Philip, Hosts Cristina Arnau, Clarita Fodor, Lara Marcon, and Kate Pickett, Central Park Conservancy President and CEO Douglas Blonsky, Women’s Committee President Anne Harrison, Nancy McCormick Vella, Sheila Labrecque, Karen Shea, Kamie Lightburn, Caroline Traugott, Gillian and Sylvester Miniter, Ranika Cohen, Muffy Miller, Paige Boller Malik, Suzanne Cochran, Jill Ross, Amy Beal, Mary Beth Adelson, and Cathy and Bill Ingram – enjoyed the cocktails while viewing the wonderful new J.Crew collection.