Rev up the memory and imagination

Park Avenue tulips. 1:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Friday, April 26, 2013. I got into the habit of opening the Diary with yesterday’s weather almost from the launch of NYSD. I had to write something (on schedule), and I often didn’t know what. So, because I had little time to think about it – as I usually sit down at the keyboard very late in the day; 10, 11, midnight and beyond – the weather would give me opportunity to put something down and rev up the memory and imagination.

I was surprised to learn that many faithful readers like reading about the weather in New York. But they told me about it enough that I learned from them. I rather like it too, and during the day when I’m thinking about ideas for tomorrow’s Diary, I consider the weather and how it affects the way I feel. The past few days have been exceptionally beautiful and regenerative in nature.

However. The world is not in a good place, as we all know, and for those of us who will give it some thought, it’s in a terrible and very very dangerous place. We are not united as human beings on this planet and we are still attached to the thought that Might is Right. That may be but we are far enough along on the planet’s life to know that the only real Might is Mother Nature aka, the Planet Earth, herself. If you are a religious person you could call it God’s Divine Plan, or God’s Grace. If you aren’t, you can still concede that it is a Divine Plan, God or no God.

As far as that Plan is concerned, far be it for me to know, but I look for its clues in the daily weather. I watch how people are behaving on the street, acting when alone (on the cell) or with others; all expressing themselves, and I consider how I’m feeling too. Mainly I consider how I’m feeling.

These last few weeks have been alarming in the world, in this country (Boston especially) and very troublesome for all of us. However, when I look at those patches of beauty that are gracing us in the city right now, and which you can also see in JH’s sometimes astonishing photographs of the city neighborhoods in bloom, I am optimistic. You can be optimistic. Maybe not about Man’s behavior to Man, but definitely in terms of Mother Nature’s plan for us all. For she could care less about Man’s behavior toward Man. To her it’s irrelevant. And for that we can be grateful.

All that to tell you that it was a beautiful day, yesterday in New York. Temperatures were hovering in the high 60s, which is an excellent temperature for the city.

I didn’t look at the Calendar because I didn’t want to know. It’s been so jammed with activities under the purview of NYSD, I needed a break.

A bouquet of Tulips.

2 nights earlier.

In the late morning I took the dogs over to Groomingdale’s for their semi-annual bath and cut. By that moment it’s imperative; otherwise I look like an animal abuser, and they do look pretty grungy (although they are still beautiful to me). I don’t think they mind, and frankly I don’t really mind, but when the white turns to dark grey ... Missy hates the process. We get about a block away from the place on 82nd and First, and she stops in her tracks, sits on the sidewalk, and digs in. Uh-uh, she says, with the wagging of her tail to emphasize. I have to pick her up. Yesterday, however, we got a quick ride from Bruce, a guy who has a limousine service in the neighborhood.

After dropping them off (now they look clean and trim and adorable), I went down to the Metropolitan Club on Fifth and 60th where the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club was holding its annual Purses & Pursenalities Luncheon. Those Purses – old and new, auctioned and sold -- are a pathway to charity and helping young boys and girls along their pathways.

Guests gathering in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Club for Madison Square Boys & Girls Club's Purse and Pursenalities Luncheon yesterday noontime.

The podium.

The table.

All of these luncheons are fund-raisers, as you probably grasped ages ago. But they are designed by their chairs and the public relations consultants and party planners to entertain in a pleasant way. The table, for example, is meant to impress you with its setting, and it dose. The great room of the Metropolitan Club, built at the beginning of the second decade of the last century by J. Pierpont Morgan, is crusty Edwardian, ornate, red damask and gold leaf. Undaunted and unbowed by time. The table has to look good under the circumstances. And it does. That’s what I mean by entertainment.

Mark Gilbertson, the social impresario of the once Junior and now not-so Set, has something to do with this annual luncheon. Many of that set have emerged or are emerging as the leaders of the city’s civic and philanthropic life.

Prince Dimitri and Monique Richards-Lipman.

Libby Fitzgerald, Mark Gilbertson, and Susan Meyer.

Debbie Bancroft talking to Gillian Miniter.

Amy Hoadley and her daughter Nathalie Dirnfeld.

When I walked into the grand gallery of the building where the pre-luncheon reception was going on, it was packed with well-dressed, very attractive, very goodlooking women, ready to sit down to lunch, I knew Mark delivered that. This is New York in the big time.

There were also, I should add, a number of be-suited men of suitable age for the ladies – who still look like girls to me. Thom Felicia was Master of Ceremonies. Eric Javitswas also one of the honorees. Eric has been contributing to the life of this event for years now.

I took some pictures and chatted with some friends I hadn’t seen lately. I didn’t stay for lunch.

Prince Dimitri, Bettina Zilkha, Muffie Potter Aston, and Eric Javits.

Claudia Overstrom and Betsy Pitts.

Cynthia Lufkin.

As I was saying ...

DeAnnie Redder, Karen Klopp, and Amy Hoadley.

Internior Designer Lee Robinson, who sponsored the luncheon with Amanda Taylor.

Alexis Clark.

Jill Fairchild and Jim Fallon of WWD

Gillian Miniter.

Mark Gilbertson, Jamee Gregory, and Thom Felicia.

Liz Peek and Nina Griscom.

Leaving the Metropolitan Club about 12:30 – when they were going in to be seated – I crossed over the avenue to look at the art installation on the edge of the Park.

The Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Club.

Thomas Schutte's "United Enemies" (March 5 - August 25, 2013) were conceived during the artist's residency in Italy at a time when several politicians had been arrested for corruption. These figures, however, are mythical characters rather than specific individuals. Their paired forms are highly abstracted, with heads emerging from swaddling robes that conceal their limbs. Faces are aged and anguished, rendered in soft focus to suggest the waning power of would-be patriarchs. In contrast, the tightly knotted rope that binds them is sharply detailed, drawing the figures and our eyes into focus. The artist's colossal figures do not stand heroically atop a classical pedestal but seem to stagger, earthbound, on tripods of bundled poles. Struggling to be rid of its mate, each figure is nevertheless incapable of standing alone. They have become potent contemporary metaphors: sculpted giants that simultaneously resonate with the mythological, the political and the personal. — Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief Curator, Public Art Fund.

From there I walked down the avenue to the Museum of Modern Art where there was a luncheon being given for author David Margolick. He is just publishing a new book. It will be published early next month. It’s called “Dreadful, the Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns.” It’s a biography of the novelist who published in the middle of the last century and to no distinction. He also was a teacher at the prep school David attended – Loomis, in Windsor, Connecticut – before David’s term there. David had heard of him in his schooldays because Burns, no longer at the school, had written a novel trashing the school which was always banned from the school library. All good writers want to know why, and reading that novel was something David wanted to do.


	David Margolick with a copy of “Dreadful, the Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns.” Click to order.

I too was fascinated on hearing about it. Mysteries presented in youth never lose their richness or their luster. I haven’t read it yet (don’t have a copy) but I look forward to it. Windsor, Connecticut is only 30 or so miles from where I grew up. David, I learned yesterday, grew up equidistant from the school, to the East. It’s all New England, and the weather plays, as it does here – and everywhere – a big part in our psyches and psych-dwellings.

I got there as people were still arriving for the lunch. I went to take the picture.

From MoMA I walked two blocks up to Michael’s where I didn’t have a rez or a lunch date. I hadn’t planned on it but it was lunchtime and I was down there, and I’d begun to think of the things I like to eat there. Like the amazing Iceberg Lettuce salad. Superior for that concoction. And the grilled halved Brussels Sprouts; and the Margarita pizza for one. And the Barbara Bush (orange juice and iced tea). I hadn’t had breakfast, and all of it sounded good to me. (And it was.)

The place was predictably busy. Two women I know – Linda Janklow and Ellin Delsener– were lunching at my regular table. I wasn’t expected and I wanted to sit at the bar anyway. A lot of people like it. You can watch everyone coming and going and have a leisurely lunch.

Michael was there and soon his artist wife Kim came in, and sat at the bar to get a little lunch too. I ordered the above. Michael and Kim had gone the night before to the opening of Bette Midler’s new one woman show by John Logan, “I’ll Eat You Last.”

It’s a monologue based on the life of Sue Mengers a talent agent who began her life here in New York and went on to become one of the most powerful women in Hollywood (until she wasn’t).

Mengers handled her retirement in a manner that reflected her perceived power, like the pro she was: she enjoyed it. She played hostess and confidante to scores of stars and talent she’d helped and/or met and liked along the way. A lot of them are still very famous and a lot of those famous ones were in the audience on opening night.

They loved it. The McCarthys who are longtime close friends of Midler and her husband Martin von Haselburg loved the show. They also knew Mengers – besides Midler – because she was a patron of Michael’s in Santa Monica.

Sue Mengers was obviously made to be the subject of a grand monologue. She was a character, her own woman, a lifelong doper, a mother confessor to her children (clients); an autocrat in the world of talent, and nobody’s fool or patsy. In her years of retirement (when this monologue takes place), she did something almost no one ever accomplished in the society that is Hollywood: she elevated herself to a senior position of opinion. It didn’t harm anybody; it sometimes helped and it kept the lady well-placed above the fray in a world she was born to live in.

Yesterday afternoon I got an email from my friend Joy Ingham who said: Run to see the Midler show! She saw it opening night too. Knew nothing about Mengers, loves Midler anyway, and loved every minute of it. Midler’s run is through mid-June only.
Early evening, I went to dinner with Joy at Sette Mezzo. Perfect end to a beautiful day in New York.

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