Yesterday was also the 35th birthday of my esteemed business partner and friend, Jeff Hirsch a/k/a JH to NYSD readers. He and I have been working together for 13 years. He was a kid when started in the business as my assistant at Avenue in the late 90s. He’s one of those people who is just solid, gets things done, has his feet on the ground and is sensible. Over the years he’s become a shrewd editor as well.
He’s also good at handling people. Really good. A diplomat.
We started the NYSD together. We didn’t know what we were doing so the first thing we did was build a desk. My desk. Jeff got the wood. The next thing that happened was the kid we’d hired to put us online daily didn’t really know how to do it and suddenly quit in our second week. Jeff, who had been sitting with him as he went through the process, called to tell me the news.
I said to him: “Now what’re we gonna do?!” (Remember this was the year 2000, ancient times in cyberland).
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| DPC and JH, the day after leaving Avenue magazine to start up the NYSD, at Swifty's. The enthusiasm on my face makes me laugh now, eleven years later. That kind of enthusiasm is aided by the naïveté of all new ventures. Hopes and dreams department. |
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Jeff said: “Well, there’s a Book for Dummies on How to Go Up On The Internet. I’ll get it and see.”
That was on a Friday. On the following Monday morning, We were up. Thanks to JH and the Book for Dummies.
He’s also the photographer who takes the pictures we run at the top of the Diary everyday, as well as those intriguing peaks in HOUSE. What amazes both him and me is that the picture he takes for the day – never having discussed what the Diary might be – often applies to the edit.
In all the years we’ve worked together, we’ve also had the pleasure of never working in the same room, or spot, or even part of town, together. All that space gives us a lot of opportunity to stick to the objectives.
I turned 35 the year JH was born. I remember the surprise it was to learn that I still felt very young (read: immature) at 35. Even a baby A big baby. Previously, leading up to that time, I thought 35 was ancient. Now, of course, I regard it as late childhood. I think I can get a lot of agreement from others just from looking around these days.
I should add that I still feel “immature” in some ways as much as I did back then. The difference being I’m old enough to know it doesn’t matter what or how I feel; what is, is; and, I have this particular business partner. The birthday boy is actually one of those guys who is very grown up in his approach to things. Astonishingly so, at times. Look at the site. He makes it look that way. Easy to see, to read, to move around on, stable, and good looking. He likes things to look good. He has an eye for beauty, as you see from his photographs.
I started out intending to merely mention the birthday but got carried away. So this little aside which led to a mini-saga can now end.
Not so incidentally. Yesterday was Leonel Piraino’s birthday also. Leonel, you know, is married to Nina Griscom. Happy birthday Leonel.
Last night Ann Nitze had a cocktail reception at her East Side penthouse to meet Edmund de Waal, the author of The Hare With Amber Eyes.
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| Ann Nitze, Edmund de Waal, and Dame Jillian Sackler. |
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Sunday night is not my idea of a perfect night for a book party but when I got the invitation, I didn’t care -- I just wanted to meet the author. I rarely feel that way but I loved that book. I’ve written about it here somewhere.
It is a very important for our times. It is about family, and Mr. de Waal (who is a potter by profession) tells the story in a way that brings in our entire society and Western culture. I know that sounds like a lot of Big Talk but it is required to give you the right idea.
Last night at Ann Nitze’s, the room was full of people who had read the book and just wanted to meet the author. There was an unusual excitement in the air.
Mr. de Waal (he’s British) is very tall and very thin. Towering and lanky. He looks bookish and diffident, but has a warm, engaging manner when you meet him, with a sparkling yet serious kind of politeness. He falls easily into conversation; he’s interested.
I’ve given the book to several people to read and all but one loved it. The one person who didn’t love it is one of those people who doesn’t want to “go there.” Understood.
Families are always fascinating, and Edmund de Waal’s family fit many requirements of fascination, not to mention their history and its conclusions. They passed through the darkest times of the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, finally ravaged and torn by the elements we call politics and high finance. Nevertheless, there was wisdom, pockets of it, throughout. And lots of family personality. And horror.
Authors, like actors, are never what, or who you might think they are, if you’re judging from their books (or their films or plays). I had a picture of the author in my mind’s eye and he didn’t fit it at all on meeting. What he did possess, however, which you do find in the book, was a gentle yet deliberate certitude about what a family represents in life. That may be why the book resonates with so many of us. We agree.
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