Bill Weld has, his spokeswoman says, been dispatching the occasional postcard to Eliot Spitzer from his swing along the “supposed ribbon of gloom.”
Apparently lots of teeth and no rickets up there. Though it certainly isn’t conventional wisdom that the parts of Upstate deeply dependent on state handouts want to be told they’re actually Read More
Nary a night passes on CNN that Lou Dobbs, the cable network’s advocate for the frightened middle-class masses, doesn’t let go with a blast against the “illegal-alien invasion.” He is not alone in his opinions.
Liberals suffering from political neuropathy may cringe, but many a head nods in agreement when he tells his viewers Read More
Hilly and I are in Rome. Her landlord has evicted her from her Manhattan apartment. We’re at the Bulldog Inn where our waitress, Frieda, is Swedish.
HILLY: If I don’t get my apartment back, I’ll go to Valentino and spend every last cent, except for 40 bucks that I can spend on two bottles of Read More
Nary a night passes on CNN that Lou Dobbs, the cable network’s advocate for the frightened middle-class masses, doesn’t let go with a blast against the “illegal-alien invasion.” He is not alone in his opinions.
Liberals suffering from political neuropathy may cringe, but many a head nods in agreement when he tells his viewers “an Read More
DR. SELMAN: So what’s up?
HILLY: Nothing.
[ Silence.]
GEORGE: You say something first—I always feel guilty about starting off.
HILLY: George has been pretty depressed. He keeps slipping into catatonic states. But last weekend it was my birthday and he took me to D.C. It was really fun, but a bunch Read More
As tourists packed the pews, Cardinal Edward Michael Egan stood under the vaulted ceiling of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday morning, celebrating Mass in his thick Illinois accent.
The cardinal’s Sunday mass used to be a press event when Cardinal John O’Connor was Archbishop of New York. New Yorkers never knew what the press-friendly O’Connor Read More
A few weeks ago, I was in steamy Rome, where I dropped in on the second annual Rome Chamber Music Festival, an event that has enlivened the Eternal City’s midsummer doldrums with an injection of American sass. Most of the sass comes from Robert McDuffie, a concert violinist from New York who founded the festival Read More
Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, by Tim Parks. W.W. Norton & Company/Atlas Books, 273 pages, $22.95.
The Medici bank, which was founded in Florence in 1397, was one of the most powerful business enterprises of the Renaissance years in Italy. It operated branches all over Western Europe, financing the cloth and Read More
Not for nothing does Gusto call itself a “Bar Americano.” Most cocktail menus give me a sinking feeling; after a quick look, I hand them back and order something plain and sensible. But the glorious-looking drinks here, which include six kinds of Bloody Mary and five prosecco cocktails, are not gimmicks, and they’re made with Read More
At first glance, Suba looks like just another trendy restaurant that has invaded the Lower East Side. The doors of the tenement building in which it’s housed are opened onto the street, and the bar is crowded with people eating tapas and drinking sangria and other exotic cocktails. But Suba’s main dining room is underground, Read More
