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| Tiger Woods and downtown Manhattan at The Barclays Championship in Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, NJ. Sunday, 5:40 PM. |
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| Monday, August 26, 2013. It was another beautiful weekend in New York, and expected to remain such as we enter what is ostensibly the last week of Summer of many Americans. On Saturday I got the Mini out of the garage, put the top down, made the Zabar's run, and then drove down to 28th Street (between 7th and 8th) for what seems to be left of the Flower District (there’s probably more that I don’t know about). We’re not allowed to have “gardens” on our terraces anymore because of the newly laid terrace flooring, so I bought a few houseplants that I can take inside when the weather cools. You can get good buys in the District. The large fern, for example, was fifteen bucks. Twelve for the smaller one, and four bucks each for the flowering plants that look like impatiens. |
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| The city streets were sparsely trafficked. I was surprised to look up at the Empire State from such a close view (on East 35th Street). It looks more massive than tall. And of course, there is the inevitable new construction going on. Driving home, up Park Avenue, there is a wonderful new exhibition of metal sculptures by artist Albert Paley. This one piece is on the southern side of the intersection of Park Avenue and East 57th Street. The city is really beautiful on these summer weekend days. There are still lots of people out but the pace is more relaxed and so is the traffic. You have time to look around you, and can see that people are enjoying themselves just being here. |
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| I stopped by Crawford Doyle bookstore on Madison between 81st and 82nd on my way home, and picked up “This Town” (“Two Parties and a Funeral plus plenty of valet parking! In America’s Gilded Capital”) by Mark Leibovich who is the Chief National Correspondent of the New York Times Magazine. Leibovich has been on the case for sometime. He knows of which he speaks. He begins his book with the memorial service five years ago for Meet The Press moderator Tim Russert which was held at the Kennedy Center.
Russert’s memorial was especially lively with the aforementioned because Tim Russert was a pivotal power point in the scheme of things. So the whole town (meaning the high mucky-mucks and their their lords and ladies in waiting) turned out including former President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, then soon-to-be Secretary of State. Leibovich takes us through the inventory of “mourners,” describes the service, and explains the politics of such gatherings. He uses the event as a launchpad for his view of our nation’s capital today, and those who inhabit it and play in its fields of plenty – all provided ultimately by the likes of You and Me, Us Humble Taxpayers. You can get the feeling reading this book that Y&MUHTs are really quite irrelevant to most of these characters who are on the take in a variety of ways. It’s nothing new. It’s like Wall Street, it’s like Hollywood, it’s like High School (but so is just about everything else in the power structures of contemporary America): it’s business as usual. There is something kind of rotten about the way the nation’s business seems to be conducted where lobbyists grossed several billion dollars last year influencing our elected “representatives, etc.” for their clients which seem to be, in one form or another, corporate America and not the American people. It is especially unctuous (to put it kindly) when we (the People – remember?) are constantly being told when discussing the Federal budget that we’re overlarded with Entitlement Programs which many American citizens allegedly (according to politicians) cheat. Leibovich writes, describing the playing field as: “A multilateral conga line of potential business partners… The biggest shift in Washington over the last forty or so years has been the arrival of Big Money and politics as an industry. The old Washington was certainly saturated with politics, but it was smaller and more disjointed. “Over the last dozen years, corporate America (much of it Wall Street) has tripled the amount of money it has spent on lobbying and public affairs consulting in D.C. Relatively new businesses such as the Glover Park Group, founded by three former Clinton and Gore advisers – provide “integrated services” that include lobbying, public relations, and corporate and campaign consulting. “Politics” has become a full-grown and dynamic industry, a self-sustaining weather system all its own And so much of its energy is directed inwards. |
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None of this is unfamiliar in this Age of Me, Myself, and I, and it is clear that the matter is Bigger Than All of Us. It is galling when you read the use of the word “patriot” when in many cases it’s more like “scammer.” Leibovich’s account is forthright and rarely does he pull his (often gentle) punches. But it is depressing because you realize there is nothing you can do about it. It is, to borrow from Mr. Trollope “The Way We Live Now.” Media plays a big part in all of it these days (hence the turnout for Mr. Russert’s memorial) and no small part of it seems to be dancing bears proffering bread and circuses. Not to mention Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
From the Daily Telegraph of London: The 18th Duchess of Medinaceli, who has died aged 96, was nine times a duchess, 18 times a marchioness, 19 times a countess, four times a viscountess and 14 times a grandee of Spain — as well as head of a family whose members included three saints and two Popes. She inherited her titles in her own right on her father’s death in 1956, and could not remember how many castles she owned in her native Spain; her best guess was between 90 and 100. On one occasion she was browsing through the pages of a magazine when a picture of camellias growing in the grounds of a beautiful castle in northwest Spain caught her eye. On reading the caption she discovered to her surprise that the Palace of Oca, in Galicia, and the camellias, belonged to her. She did not, however, neglect her heritage, and in 1980 established the Ducal House of Medinaceli Foundation to manage and conserve the family’s property and historic assets scattered across nearly all the Spanish regions.
She felt that the Duchess of Alba, “with her English blood” (the Albas are directly descended from the Duke of Berwick, the illegitimate son of James II by Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough), would enjoy the publicity. Victoria Eugenia Fernández de Córdoba y Fernández de Henestrosa was born in Madrid on April 16 1917, the eldest daughter of Don Luis Jesús Fernández de Córdoba y Salabert, 17th Duke of Medinaceli, and Doña Ana María Fernández de Henestrosa y Gayoso de los Cobos. The Dukedom of Medinaceli, one of the oldest in Spain, had been created in 1479 by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella for Luis de la Cerda y de la Vega, Count of Medinaceli. In keeping with her illustrious ancestry, Doña Victoria was baptised at the Royal Palace, with King Alfonso XIII and his wife Queen Victoria Eugenia (after whom she was named) as godparents. Before she succeeded to the Medinaceli titles, Doña Victoria was known as the 16th Duchess of Alcalá de los Gazules, a courtesy title granted by her father. On her 14th birthday, following the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic, she and her mother, grandmother and sister left Spain on the same train that carried Queen Victoria Eugenia and her children into exile. Her father left with the King. In 1937, however, the family returned to Spain, to the beautiful Casa de Pilatos, the family’s main residence in Seville, which had fallen to Francoist forces in the first months of the Civil War the previous year. In 1938 she married Don Rafael de Medina y Vilallonga, son of the second son of the 4th Marquis of Esquivel. The Duchess and her husband had four children, and as well as working to protect the family heritage she devoted herself to cultural, social and educational projects. After her husband’s death in 1992, the Duchess’s later years were overshadowed by a scandal involving the second of her three sons, Rafael Medina y Fernandez de Cordoba, Duke of Feria, who in 1994 was sentenced to 18 years in prison for kidnapping a five-year-old girl and bathing and photographing her in the nude, as well as for drug trafficking and corruption of minors.
The sentence was subsequently reduced on appeal, and in 1998 the Duke was released on parole. In 2001 he was reported to have died of natural causes, aged 58. The Duchess’s eldest son, Don Luis de Medina y Fernández de Córdoba, 9th Duke of Santisteban del Puerto, predeceased her in 2011, as did her daughter and eldest child, Ana, who died last year. She is survived by her youngest son, Don Ignacio de Medina y Fernández de Córdoba, 19th Duke of Segorbe, second husband of Princess Maria da Gloria d’Orléans-Braganza. Marco von Hohenlohe y Medina (Prince Marco of Hohenlohe-Langenburg), the son of her daughter Ana, born in 1962, succeeds as the 19th Duke of Medinaceli. The 18th Duchess of Medinaceli, born April 16 1917, died August 18 2013 |
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