All around the town. JH and I met for lunch at Michael’s. This is not usual, as JH and I do not, as a rule lunch together, except on Fridays when we have “business” meetings. But we had a lunch scheduled today with someone else who backed out last minute. And so we decided to keep the date to talk about the re-design. Big word in our lives right now. The NYSD is going through a “re-design” to accommodate the growth you have granted us. Today we talked about what that Homepage is going to look like with our expanded edit and all of the wonderful advertisers who have graced us. The re-design will be completed and in operation at the beginning of the New Year, 2007, which is also the seventh year of the NYSD.

Michael’s being a media restaurant is a repository of celebrity, ego, political power, serious contenders, sightseers and powers-behind-the-thrown, not to mention the bankers and lawyers and advertising people who work in the neighborhood, along with the publishers and authors and agents. Actors and authors and artists and such, never know nothing and never know much, wrote Dorothy Parker, apropos of nothing but the champagne I drank last night.

Michael’s. At the table next door to us was Paige Peterson, the lady whose paintings and whose children’s horse story (written with Chris Cerf) has been featured on these pages. Paige, who is a native San Franciscan, was lunching with Sharon and Jay Levy. Jay is Dr. Levy to you and me. He was, in 1983, one of the co-discoverers of the AIDS virus (click here for a short bio of Dr. Levy). The Levys are a jolly couple at lunchtime, live in San Francisco and Mrs. L, at least, reads the NYSD. These things are always impressive to the edit staff, kid yourself not.

The conversations around the tables at Michael’s (the ones I know about, which are damned few) were about the election today. All the astrologers (you wanted to know?) say that the results are going to be “cloudy,” “confusing,” “unclear,” at least at first. Things like: Lousy time for an election, the American results are sure to be shrouded in vagueness and mystery at least, potentially in deception and doubt, with no clear outcome. I’ve read this so many times, my wandering mind can’t resist speculating what that means. Nothing, may be the answer, of course.

One very “knowledgeable” source (not an astrologer, incidentally — the quotes are meant to qualify the veracity of the word) told me that in the upper environs of the Democratic Party, if the Dems take the Senate, the boys would like to make Hillary the Majority Speaker. This would take her out of the “possible” running for the Presidency in 2008 and open up the field to someone else. The thought being that while Hillary is very strong in the Party she would not win the popular election because there are so many people out there who do not like her. That is the standard argument repeated ad nauseum. My source said that they did not believe that Hillary would accept the position of Majority Leader but if she did, she would be damned good because she is damned good. And smart. This way, said my source, she could run in the future after the Congress was led by two women – Hillary and Nancy Pelosi. That would be pretty amazing and, as my friend speculated, settle the business of women running the country for once and for all.

The other subject on the tips of the tongues of the many in Michael’s was the announcement in the morning Times that five major investment banking houses in New York were paying themselves an aggregate of $36 billion in year end bonuses this year. The investment casino business you might call it. Or the casino investment business. The Times’ report included speculation on how the money will be spent (on ludicrously expensive residential real estate or very expensive cars). It’s so extraordinary, all things considered, that you do have to laugh; it’s so absurd, this current predicament.

After lunch I walked part of the way up Fifth with JH who was going over to have a look at the new Apple store under the glass cube. The place was mobbed. Mobbed. I left and walked up Madison Avenue almost to 68th before I could find a cab that was vacant. And just as I did, a woman across the avenue hailed the cab and came running over. When she got to my side, I saw it was Cornelia Bregman. Where was she going? The same direction, it turned out. So I gave her a ride, gallant one that I was (and wanting a cab).

She was going up to the New York Junior League for one of those Colonial Dames projects. Cornelia, who is married to Marty Bregman the prolific film producer, is a Southern girl. Charleston. In all the years I’ve known her (about ten or twelve) I had no idea she was Southern, but as she told me that her family (the Colonial Dames side), the Pinckneys, were from Charleston and Beaufort, so she fell into her charming Charleston accent.

That happens in New York where many who come from the South lose their accent until reverie overtakes them and they return.

Last night at The Frick, there was a black tie dinner to mark the opening of an exhibition of fourteen paintings that have been lent by the Cleveland Museum of Art (November 8 thru January 28). As I’ve written here before, dinners at The Frick are probably the chic-est or the most substantial public dinners in New York. It is, after all, The Frick. There is nothing to compare. There is legend and history and drama and fantasy and great art from the past five centuries of Western Civilization. In a man’s house. You are a guest in that house and it elevates one’s perceptions (at least it does for me) to experience, or glimpse at the privilege that some (very few) get to experience in this life, now or before.

There were 144 guests at six long tables set up in the atrium with a certain Edwardian atmosphere (to this late 20th century Amurrican sensibility). The Frick also has a very WASPy appearing group of supporters. There is still family involved and many of their friends who assist go back generation-wise with them. There are also those who love and believe in the sensibility of the Frick. They all fit together quietly and devotedly.

This exhibition was made possible by, in part, by the support of Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Sherman Lee and Mr. and Mrs. Walter Eberstadt in honor of Michael J. Horvitz. Mr. Horvitz, a very gracious man who was reveling in the pleasure of the company surrounding him, and his wife Jane (sister of New York’s Cynthia Boardman) hosted the dinner last night. The Horvitzes are what a European lady I know would call very comme il faut. I got a picture of Mr. Horvitz with Anne Poulet, the museum’s director and Jo Carole Lauder.

When the Cleveland Museum offered a collection of Old Masters on loan to The Frick, Colin Bailey, the curator had to go and choose. It was not easy, he told me, because the Cleveland Museum has a very great collection. In the end, he chose pictures that he knew would hang well proportionally in the room, and pictures that would probably have not have hung there in Mr. Frick’s day. He pointed out the Jacques-Louis David “Cupid and Psyche” which would have been too erotic for Mr. Frick, as well as the Caravaggio “The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew” which in 1910 when Mr. Frick was putting together his Collection would have been unknown to him. A beautiful show.

The Horvitzes were there last night, along with the Eberstadts, and Mrs. Boardman, along with Frances and Allen Adler, Jamee and Peter Gregory, Christy Ferer, Helen O’Hagan, Beth DeWoody, Ed and Aryn Gardner, John and Martha Glass, Helen and Minturn Chace, John and Anne Hermann, Robert Couturier, Arie and Coco Kopelman, Duane Hampton, Louise Grunwald, Sarah Medford, Chris and Grace Meigher, Lee and Jamie Niven, Howard and Mary Phipps, Elizabeth and Felix Rohatyn, David and Lisa Schiff, Charles Ryskamp, Tom Quick, the very chic Casey Ribicoff, Missie Taylor, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Geoffrey and Sarah Gund, Tom Fallon, Richard Feigen, Kirk Henckels and Fernanda Kellogg.

Last night Charles Bronfman hosted the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra's annual Young Forum Kickoff reception at the Bronfman Philanthropies office. Young Forum members including JH's bro, Jason Hirsch, had an opportunity to view the wonderful art collection and learn about its plans for the coming year.

The Associates Program of the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is a group of young professionals, between the ages of 21 and 40, who share an appreciation of classical music and an interest in philanthropic support of Israel.