Friday, September 27, 2013

Matt Tiaibbi in September Roling Stone on the vicious, cruel looting of state workers' pensions

Kee-rist! This makes me want to die sooner rather than later. How can a Democracy survive such evil? I don't think it can. But I'm also thinking reading stuff like this has a definite masochistic element. Actually, I'm still reeling from the news that google and Facebook have joined ALEC. And then I think how can I be a party to this (which I am--see email address etc.)? And then I look at the members of ALEC and I realize one would need to live off the grid to avoid them. Carrier pigeons, as my son said. Maybe EarthLink is guilt-free. Is it? Maybe I'm just too sensitive to it all. Maybe I should just give it a rest. Anyone have any ideas?

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

New York is a Summer Festival

Does anyone else remember that phrase? I can't be here in July w/o thinking of it. And then immediately and w/o fail I think of the swimsuit fashion spread I did with Anna Wintour (yes, before she was famous) for Savvy, when she introduced me to David Hockney's swimming pool pictures. Which always reminds me that, cold and rude as Anna can be (she once cut me dead on 57th Street), she was worth knowing at that point, anyway, when she was making $1,000 for doing that month's fashion (everything but the copy for the pictures) for Savvy magazine. Halcyon days. Note: This was written a few years ago, when I happened to be sweltering in a New York July. Since then (this year), my editor at Savvy has died--Judy Daniels. She was a wonderful editor and she gave Anna Wintour her start in New York.

Ah, New York, ah bagels

The video/story in the Times today about Russ and Daughters and bagels and lox, here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/dining/setting-out-the-bagels-and-lox.html?src=dayp reminded me of what I learned when we moved to New York from Chicago when I was 12. In those days, Chicago was a wasteland as far as Jewish food was concerned, so of course my father was delighted to be in the vicinity of bagels. Not lox, because he thought it was too salty. So that's when I first heard of nova (well, I'd never heard of any of it, really). Every Sunday, my dad would go out early in the morning (we lived on the Upper West Side) and get several papers (there were so many then)--the Times, the Herald Tribune, and I don't know what others--and bring them back, with bagels, cream cheese, nova and sometimes sturgeon or sable. What a treat, and one I've tried to continue even in Mexico, where I live now. The smoked salmon and the cream cheese are easy, but the bagels... well, it varies. If I can get to Costco, sometimes use their what-I-call "everything bread" instead, because my favorite kind of bagel is "everything" and those are hard to find.