Streetscapes and Skylines

 

This entry is a continuation of a detailed one that I will soon post covering a recent trip to Connecticut and New York City. The length of that entry, and the many photographs already included, would make it unwieldy to carry still more. As I explain in the entry entitled Reflecting on Familiar Places: A Connecticut–NYC Journey, “while family, jazz, museums, and restaurants were our primary activities, most mornings after breakfast I took my real digital camera and wandered for up to two hours in all directions—through Central Park, down Fifth and Park Avenues, across 57th Street, and inevitably into Times Square. I hoped to capture interesting shots of NYC scenes and architecture.” I post those here with little commentary and in no particular order.

 

Bryant Park people-watching (watching phones and dogs) and the nearby Drama Book Shop…

 

Central Park scenes. Ideal for people-watching. Also the baseball field (I think) used in When Harry Met Sally, and the Central Park Zoo aquarium, featured in the 1949 film Holiday Affair with Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. In the film it was occupied by a seal; now it houses a dolphin, and it’s behind a gate. Access is for paying customers only…

 

The Paris Theater. Our go-to movie house for foreign films while I was in college…

 

Two ironic photographs featuring the Louis Vuitton trunk façade on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue: one with an armored car in the foreground (you’d need its contents to shop there), and the other flanked by a “Mitzvah Tank.” They call it an “architectural landmark and a cultural hub,” but might it be the ultimate symbol of unrestrained plutocracy?...

 

This “empty office” photo, taken from our hotel room at night, reminds me of a contact print of 35mm negatives….

 

The ubiquitous presence of Nathan’s, this one near the Plaza Hotel….

 

The chaos of Times Square, even in the early morning—a “gun free zone” and a pedicab bound for Times Square…

 

The subway system, once second nature to me. But now? Which will it be—the A, C, B, D, or 1?...

 

This surreal photo juxtaposes a Victoria’s Secret ad in their store window with the reflection of St. Patrick's Cathedral on the left…

 

And dominating everything, NYC architecture and skylines. These are among the most striking, besides those above and what I will publish in the main blog entry…

 

Alacrity of Autocracy

 We are at a symbolic tipping point: Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he believed Friday’s jobs report was manipulated “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” as he wrote on social media.

A classic autocratic (and Pavlovian) response—no evidence, no careful review of the data, just his self-proclaimed genius “gut” instinct.

The report followed closely on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates steady. No doubt Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will be blamed, although he has repeatedly stated that the Fed’s decisions are driven by data. A rate cut is reportedly likely next month -- whether Powell can endure the constant onslaught from Trump and his acolytes until then remains to be seen. (It is evidence of dear leader’s lack of understanding that lowering short term rates – the only rate over which the Fed has direct control – would have little immediate impact on the national debt, which his One Big Beautiful Bill exacerbates.) 

Powell has also been waiting for the chaos surrounding tariffs to settle—if it ever will. These tariffs are designed to feed the narrative that the U.S. has been treated unfairly by its trading partners. Facts don’t matter. Only the story—and Trump’s self-imagined Superman persona rectifying it.

There is no opposition from Congress, and the glacial pace of a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., in deciding the legality of those tariffs—imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—only adds to the chaos. Even if the court ultimately agrees with the lower courts that Trump lacked authority under the IEEPA, the case will likely land before the Supreme Court—already stacked in his favor.

The point of this brief entry is captured in a quote from 1984 by George Orwell:

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.” The Party’s slogan was: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

In summarily firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Party has spoken.  Our Four Freedoms further fade, as captured above by the award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mike Luckovich  

 

A Published Memoir Makes the Dream Real

 

Yes, I’ve gone and done it—I’ve published a memoir: Explaining It: A Life Between the Lines. One can find all the relevant information on Amazon

 Quick summary: paperback, 6x9 inches, 420 pages, 97 illustrations, $19.95.

 A word (okay, maybe more than one) about the title and subtitle. This completes what I informally call the “Explaining It” trilogy—though no cataloger will find such a bibliographic designation in the Library of Congress where all three of my books now reside. The first two volumes are:

 - Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense (2019) – a political meditation born of frustration and disillusionment.

- Explaining It to Someone: Learning from the Arts (2020) – a love letter to literature, music, and theater.

 This third installment, the memoir, turns the gaze more inward. I’ve always been a planner, someone who tries—despite the universe’s best camouflaging effort —to understand the forces that shape a life. The main title, Explaining It, reflects that tendency. The subtitle, A Life Between the Lines, is both a nod to my publishing career and an invitation to look beneath the surface—for the gaps and glimmers that define a life.

 The content outlines family history, much about my best friend and wife (Ann), the significant influence of mentors, the evolution of a professional life, and the adventures of boating, including living on a boat. It also explores my efforts as an octogenarian to navigate an increasingly unfamiliar world, finding solace in the arts.

 It even includes five short stories of mine. There was once a day when there were two distinct sections in a public library: fiction and non-fiction (including reference books): simple and direct.  We all knew what those terms meant. The Dewey Decimal System made it seem that life could easily be classified, organized, understood.   Now we live in a world where fiction masquerades as fact and fiction is becoming realized (especially if it is of dystopian nature). These short stories are not literal autobiography. But they carry the “redolence” of things I’ve seen, understood, or imagined and thus provide another dimension.

 Here’s the Table of Contents for the curious:

 

Now, let’s address the elephant in the bookshop: why write a memoir—and moreover, why publish it?

To the first question: if 90% of success is just showing up (thanks, Woody Allen), then perhaps writing a memoir is just what happens if you live long enough and still like putting metaphoric pen to paper. I quoted James Salter in my last book and again in this memoir: “There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”

So yes, I believe in writing things down. It's a form of accountability. It can give life to distant memories.

Memoir is not just a collection of dates and facts. It’s storytelling—sometimes exactly as remembered, often shaped by time, bias, or selective memory (sometimes mercifully so). Editing this book, I kept asking: why did I include that, and not this? Why that photo, and not another? The selection process was often, in a word (or two), serendipitous or even capricious, not unlike many decisions during one’s lifetime.

As to the second question—why publish it? I’m not under the illusion that there will be many sales.  I’m not “pushing” the book, no speaking engagements.  No signings at bookstores.  I'm not a household name and have never aspired to the status of “influencer.” (Who would have thought such a profession could exist?).  Friends and family will be curious and will no doubt comprise the main market.  Nonetheless, to me, not publishing this would be an “incomplete” grade from the University of Life.  After all, my profession was publishing and not to formally publish this would feel like leaving a job unfinished.

A few months from now a Kindle e-book edition will be available at a lower price for those now allergic to the printed book (or to the impact of inflation on the costs of creating a physical book).

From another publisher’s memoir, Robert Gottlieb’s The Avid Reader: “I attempt not to think about death, but there’s no avoiding the fact that we are all the pre-dead.” A cheerfully sobering phrase. Like Gottlieb, I try to stay forward-looking, doing the things I love with the people who matter. That’s the real subject of this memoir: not endings, but continuities.

After Explaining It To Someone: Learning from the Arts was published five years ago I wrote: “This might be the last book I write or the penultimate one, as I am thinking more about fiction and memoir perhaps in a couple of years if time and health are good to me…”

Well, here it is. Three years late, perhaps, but better that than never. Last or penultimate? Time will tell.

 

“Hitch”

 

From the Booknook Web Site

Is it possible to grow close to a person while never having met her, or even spoken to her? 

Yes, I had that kind of relationship with Kimberly Hitchens, the proprietor of Booknook.biz, a digital book conversion company, one she developed over the years. 

She (and her staff) was the midwife to my three books, which I am informally calling the “Explaining It” trilogy.  My final book is now being readied for printing, with an eBook to follow a few months later.  It is a memoir, Explaining It; A Life Between the Lines.  Details will follow in these pages soon.

Tragically, “Hitch” passed away while we were working on this project.

She felt like a best friend, despite the fact that we hadn't met.  Both of us were from the production side of publishing, but from different eras and our extensive emails over the years mused about the business.

Our digital epistolary relationship revealed her to be smart, idiosyncratic, and professional, dedicated as much to her staff as to her clients.  She knew her stuff and her enthusiasm for all aspects of pre-press production was clearly abundant.  Hitch was a joy to work with.

Ironically, the only time our relationship hit a speed bump was concerning this memoir.  Their new system was different than the one when I published Explaining It to Someone; Learning from the Arts five years earlier.

I don’t easily adapt to change and I incorrectly attributed my difficulty to perhaps they were using AI.  Hitch really took me to the woodshed on that.  Mea culpa I cried!

Although she did say AI technology might account for some increase in the volume of projects they were handling and they were slammed with work at the same time my book was submitted.  As a peace offering I said my project was not urgent so if she had to put it in a lower priority queue, I’d understand.

Her reply was long and detailed mostly about the ton of imaging and digital conversion software and AI’s impact there, revealing an instinctive deep knowledge about each, a foreign language to me.  But then, as far as my offer was concerned, here’s Hitch-speak at its finest:

In a billion years, Robert, I would NOT move you back in the queue! NONE of our repeat, much-loved real clients go there. NOPE, not happening. That's the very last thing I'd do.

All our repeat, solid, trade-pubbed clients are where they should be, queue-wise. Not to be a writing snob (moi?! NEVAH!), but our real author clients go where they should, and if I'm moving anybody down the queue--which I do, truly, try not to ever do; I do try to remain FIFO--it's the AI clients.

BUT, that's not to say that I don't truly appreciate your sentiment. I do. It's greatly appreciated.

Have a nice Mother's Day!  I mean...well, you know what I mean.

        H

That was the day before Mother’s Day, less than a month before she died.  I knew she had some health issues, but “NEVAH” anything life threatening.

So on Mother’s Day I replied:

Hitch.  That’s one hell of an email.  I used to have an employee, Carolyn, who started as my secretary but as soon as I got my hands on an Apple II in 1979 (and could do my own typing -80 WPM BTW-via a primitive word processor) I made her my administrative assistant.  Frankly, she tried to outwork me, always to the point of exhaustion— this is how the story relates to you.  I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker which I had framed to hang over her desk.  It pictured a young woman draped over her typewriter, clearly exhausted, with the caption “God, I love this job.”

Hitch, you protest too much.  You love your work.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Remind me to buy a copy of YOUR memoir.  You are a spontaneous writer and the stories you could tell.

In any case, indeed Happy Mother’s Day.  Yours, Bob

Where she found the time for our personal, behind the scenes email, I have no idea.  There were so many over the years that did not necessarily relate to my projects.

Her last email to me was in reply:

Mon, May 12 at 11:02 AM

LOL...Bob:

Well, there are days when, yes, I do love my job--but there are the others, too.  Thanks for the kind words.

Ye Gods, the Apple II.  We started out a) Heathkit! (yowzers) and then b) the 8080 (which was really the 8088).  Yup, ye olden IBM 8088 which was...when, '81? Yes, I think that's right.

My Bob--My Robert, to whom I am wed--built our first few computers and that was the take-off for us. It helped me conquer the pink ghetto, in those early years. I was the only one that knew how to use the then-word-processor, which was WordStar and then CPM whatsits and I was the QUEEN of the first Lotus 123, which allowed some of us to conquer the world. Ah, the good old days.  Computers, in many ways, allowed women to break out.

LOL

Hitch

The reflective and self-congratulatory tone (albeit well deserved), was unusual for Hitch.  I replied, trying to do her one better, with my early knowledge of Visicalc (the precursor of Lotus 123) as well as PFS software which was an early word processing / data base software, each of these requiring dual floppy disk drives on the Apple II, and then my pride about being involved in the precursor of the Web, The Source, dialing up at 300 baud.   

I thought for sure she would laugh at that, but, uncharacteristically, I heard nothing.  I was stunned to learn that she passed away after a brief hospitalization on June 7.   

RIP Dear Hitch