 |
 Obnoxiously hot June day in New York
 |
| Feeling the heat. 4:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
Friday, June 10, 2011. I had lunch at Michael’s with Blair Sabol, our “No Holds Barred” columnist, who is in from Arizona on family business. She mentioned the Cox-Catsimatidis wedding that we ran on Tuesday’s Diary. Because she went to college with Tricia Nixon -- the groom’s mother -- and covered her wedding in 1971.
The article she wrote was titled “Kiss My Nuptials” and got her a lot of notice. I started reading Blair around that time when she was writing a column called “Outside Fashion” in the Village Voice, although I only met her and got to know her a few years ago when I asked her to write for us.
We also talked about The Hare With Amber Eyes, which was published three years ago and many people are talking about today. In the last week I’ve spoken to several people who are reading it, have just read it, or bought it.
It’s a beautifully written story of a family who lived largely and prosperously in Vienna and Paris in the last quarter of the 19th century through the first quarter of the 20th.
The author, Edmund de Waal, a British potter and a great-great-grandson of the family’s patriarch, is wide-eyed and curious and as he makes his discoveries about the family history. We make those discoveries about his family history too; and in the end, about ourselves. It is a very timely book.
One night I got a ride home from Marie Brenner and Ernie Pomerantz and was telling them about The Hare ... Marie had just finished In the Garden of the Beasts by Erik Larson and suggested I get it because there was a relationship between the two stories.
I bought the book on Friday of Memorial Day weekend and finished it that Monday. I couldn’t put it down.
Larson’s characters, albeit real, are out of a novel, a classic American novel. It is about a man named Dodd, a history professor from the University of Chicago whom Franklin Roosevelt appointed as his first ambassador to Germany in 1933 when he first took office.
Mr. Dodd is a character out of Sinclair Lewis. No one thinks much of him as a choice but no one wants the job either. He’s unimpressive; he has no flash. He’s a college professor, a milquetoast. Furthermore, unlike many in the diplomatic service he didn’t come from money and had little.
He moves to Berlin with wife and son and daughter who are in their twenties. The daughter becomes a major character in the life of many – almost all of them men with whom she was a thoroughly modern woman by today’s standards. And scandalous by her day’s. Communists, Nazis, the head of the Gestapo, Americans; she had them all.
Mr. Hitler had become chancellor only weeks before the new American ambassador arrived. Germany owed a lot of Americans a lot of money on their bonds and were way behind. The bankers wanted their money. The ambassador’s job would be to see to it that Herr Hitler paid up. And otherwise keep out of Germany’s politics.
What sounds at this point like it could be a rather dry and technical story (Germany was broke, the bonds didn’t interest Hitler, and that was that), evolves into a cinematic and historical commentary, at times a thriller, an international adventure, an American family in a world more alien that any one could have imagined.
As readers, we are taken into that alienation as if it is our own. Author Larson informs with a tale. You learn and want to know what happens with each chapter. He shows us all how little we see, or are willing to see, or would ever see. Until it is too late.
The bankers and cognescenti, along with the international politicians, thought Hitler would be out in a matter of weeks, maybe months. He struck people as a dumbbell. My word, not theirs. The problems were too complex for this character. They didn’t recognize a full blown psychopath even surrounded as he was by a gaggle of thugs and sociopaths. Although this was obvious on first sight, its implications escaped all but the most skeptical or “cynical.”
Mr. Ambassador Dodd goes through the process of finding out what people including he himself “couldn’t see,” and so do we. In the Garden of the Beasts.
I hadn’t started this Diary with the intention of talking about books, although ... |
 |
| Storm clouds moving in. 7:15 PM. |
Last night I went over to Roosevelt House, the Public Policy Institute at Hunter College on East 65th Street for an evening with Elizabeth Warren, Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
I’d seen a video of a lecture by Ms. Warren several years ago. It was given at Berkeley and it was about the economic decline of the great American Middle Class beginning in 1970.
Ms. Warren looks like a farm girl from the Midwest who went off to University because she was very brainy and later moved on up the ladder. Her manner of speaking is reasonable and gentle. Even her barbs are gentle, and they are barbs.
|
| Hunter College President Jennifer Raab, Elizabeth Warren, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. |
I Googled her and saw that she is very well known to millions of Americans because her expertise is their interests. She’s been on many television interviews and made many appearances before Congress.
What impressed me about her when I saw the lecture on YouTube was the clarity of her thought and the fairness of judgments. Her style is that homespun integrity, except you are immediately aware of a brilliant woman who is also a good teacher.
Last night in her talk she mentioned that she grew up in Oklahoma, that they were “poor.” She went to public schools all the way through college, because that was what she could afford. In those days – the late 60s – tuition at the state school (Univ. Houston) was $54 a semester. From there she went on to Rutgers for law school, and now she is a professor at Harvard, among her other hats. |
|
 |
|
As a character she’s like the female version of the Jimmy Stewart character in Capra’s Americana films. You trust her because she clarifies things so that you can think about them and form your own opinions. Evidently not everyone is crazy about Warren’s information since she’s by nature interested in consumer protection (fairness). Listening to her last night, I could only think why couldn’t she be our President. She’s smart, but really smart. And aware.
Below is the lecture Elizabeth Warren gave at Berkeley. This is a lecture that is profound in explaining where we are and how we got here. This is a time when everyone should know this. Please do watch. |
Last night about quarter to seven, the clouds opened up and we had a torrential downpour for about fifteen minutes (and continuing rain fore another hour or two). That was also the time of arrivals for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s annual Gala at the Central Park Zoo on 64th Street and Fifth Avenue.
This is the last big gala of the season before the summer, black tie and a fashion parade. I was a block away at Roosevelt House listening to Elizabeth Warren.
When the Warren talk was over at about 8, I went over to the Zoo to get a photo of the evening. On Monday we will have Patrick McMullan’s thorough account of the evening. |
| The theme of the Wildlife Conservation Society's dinner was "Elephants and Ivory," focusing on saving the remaining elephant population in the world from developers and poachers. |
|
|
This year’s Gala was titled Elephants and Ivory and was a celebration of the WCS’s efforts to save the important remaining elephant populations in the world. The evening’s objective was to capture the grandeur of these very intelligent social giants. Raising awareness and building support to ensure their future in the wild.
They honored Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Founder and Director of Save the Elephants.
Last night’s Honorary Chairs were Mary and Howard Phipps Jr. Co-Chairs were: Alejandro Santo Domingo, Gillian Hearst Simonds and Christian Simonds, Faith and Peter Coolidge, Renee Harbers and Chris Liddell, Edith McBean, Margaretta Taylor, Melanie and John Wambold, Priscilla and Ward Woods. Gala Leadership: Katie and Peter Dolan, Bill Flaherty, Sunny and Brad Goldberg, Darlene and Brian Heidtke, Jeanet and John Irwin, Allison Morrow and Jonathan Cohen; Dailey and Gordon Pattee, Louise and Leonard Riggio, Lisa and David Schiff, Ashley and Mike Ramos, Virginia and Warren Schwerin, Scott and Dana Schiff, Coty Siname and Derek Huntington, Pamela and Renke Thye, Ann and Andrew Tisch, Barbara and Donald Zucker. The great Preston Bailey designed evening and music was by DJ Cassidy. |
|
|
|
WCS's president Steve Sanderson giving Sir Ian Douglas-Hamilton his gfft as honoree of last
night's gala. |
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. They do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes towards nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony.
WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit www.wcs.org. |
| While the guests were dining under the pavilions, two of the zoo's seals were relaxing. |
| |
Comments? Contact DPC here. |
|
|
|
|
