For centuries, women have acquiesced in having their feet crushed. Different nations and cultures are guilty. The Chinese are infamous for binding the feet of their women; European and American designers produce shoes with high stiletto heels that get higher and higher. The more the pain, the more cramped the foot, the more fashionable the [...]
Along with other good things, the famous music club, the Knitting Factory, which has always rented in downtown Manhattan, is coming to Brooklyn!
For years we’ve lived in Brooklyn, a bit sheepishly. It was the borough manque; everyone laughed at the mention of it; after the Dodgers left, it died. Nothing but dreary houses and [...]
I saw a piece in the Courier Journal, a local Brooklyn paper that covers the Park Slope neighborhood, called “Sex in the City of Brooklyn,” with the subtitle “New Babeland debuts in Bergen Street.” It is a new high-end sex shop, and there was a photograph showing pictures of sex objects hung all [...]
Regardless of the attack today on John McCain by columnist Charles M. Blow (New York Times, 6/28/08), in my book John McCain is Mr. AgeBuster #1.
Generally, he is being vilified for being too old. But nothing I’ve seen so far is as nasty as the Blow piece. It includes a host of negatives: he is [...]
An extraordinary piece of the human story appeared in the papers recently about a woman in rural Albania, Pashe Keqi, who took an oath of virginity to live and be treated as a man. She took the oath 60 years ago, and now 88 years old, she is still acting as a man. Changing genders [...]
Today, in the June 24th issue of The New York Times, the death of George Carlin, the comedian, was covered in four different sections. One was the short announcement of his death, with picture, in a box on page 1. Another was a half-page obituary, with two photos, in the Obituaries section, a third was [...]
Our cat, Aurora Borealis, may read the Times but she also sits and watches us read the Times. At these moments she perches at the edge of the table, her front paws folded neatly under her, studying us.
Cat thoughts: What are my two oldsters doing reading the newspaper? Switching pages back and forth, what are [...]
I read today that after the boffo success of “Sex and the City,” Hollywood is planning to capitalize on another mass of female viewers, whom I call the tweenies, girls who are 8, 9, l0, 11, and 12 year-olds. The moguls are starting to work on a series about a tweenie called Kit Kittridge. All [...]
Our feline, Aurora Borealis, likes to read The New York Times. Whenever we pick it up in the morning and spread it on the table to read, she comes and somehow manages to place her whole body over it. She lies there indefinitely, and we are Times-less. Ordinarily a gentle, sweet cat, she becomes [...]
I am amazed at the beauty and individuality of young children today. When I was growing up in the 20s and 30s, chlldren were not beautiful. They all looked like Shirley Temple, little copycats whose mothers were inspired by Hollywood. Little girls had rounded faces, heads full of curly hair, dresses small at the waist [...]
