Monday, September 27, 2021
The headline in the real estate section asks "Is the Seller’s Market Over?" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/realestate/real-estate-sellers-market.html
A report that examined "more than 350 metropolitan areas nationwide shows that in the four weeks ending Sept. 5, half of homes sold went for over the asking price — down from a July peak of 55 percent. Homes aren’t moving as quickly, either: 47 percent sold during this period went into contract within two weeks, down from the March apex of 56 percent." I find the decreases less impressive than the remaining results. "[H]alf of the homes sold went for over the asking price." That has to have produced a lot of annoyed people, losing deals they thought were within range.
. . .
Another headline accompanied a very powerful piece. "Why Reparations Are Needed to Close the Racial Wealth Gap." I am not completely sold on reparations to African Americans, although my hesitancy is now founded mostly on the How not the Why. This headline got it wrong though, focusing on economics, not justice.
In law and practice, our society has denied and defeated the ordinary aspirations of a significant portion of our population.
Yes, my immigrant grandparents had it hard when they came to the United States and had no government financial support until the introduction of Social Security. They often worked in miserable conditions for miserable pay, but they were not enslaved and they were not systematically denied educational, housing and business opportunities on ethnic grounds. They were also not the consistent victims of violence by public and private forces. We
can name one Jew lynched in the US, Leo Frank. Notoriously,
Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two New York Jewish guys, were
murdered in Mississippi in 1964, along with James Cheney, a local Black
man, while working on a voter registration drive. It was what they were
doing, not who they were, that led to their death.
Meanwhile the Equal Justice
Initiative "has documented 4084 racial terror lynchings in twelve
Southern states between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950 . . .
EJI has also documented more than 300 racial terror lynchings in other
states during this time period." https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/
Additionally, a new study found that the "mortality rate due to police violence in non-Hispanic Black people from 1980 to 2019 . . . was 3·5 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic White people."
With the likely exception of Native Americans, no other group in our country has been treated so badly so long. However we may quantify it, there is a huge debt to be settled.
. . .
Tonight, we had a fine dinner with Barbara and Bernie, cousins of cousins. We ate at Bistro Vendôme, 405 East 58th Street, a townhouse converted into a multilevel restaurant with a comfortable backyard patio where we perched. And, the bistro was a bistro, with a menu that could have been drafted in the Sixth Arrondissement, including steak tartare, mussels, duck confit and French gefilte fish a/k/a quenelles.
We shared two orders of a delicious beet salad, topped with a 2-1/2" disc of breaded, baked goat cheese ($16). At this point, I veered off into an inexplicably conventional direction, a hamburger. Admittedly, it was covered with bleu cheese and accompanied by pomme frites, the polite name for fries. It also cost $26, which elevated it from the ordinary. Cooked exactly as ordered, weighing in at over a half pound of meat and served in one of the most comfortable and romantic local settings helped justify the price.
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
I was lucky enough to have breakfast with Donna J., just one of the nicest persons that you will ever meet. I hired her for a rookie consulting position in 1985, when she applied for a job that I had posted for a client. "Nah, work for me, not for them," I said, breaking an unstated rule of dispassionate professionalism.
Through marriages, one for each of us, a divorce for her, two children also hers, we have stayed friendly and mutually supportive.
I had proposed eating lunch at Good Enough to Eat, 520 Columbus Avenue, hoping to sneak in a piece of the excellent layer cakes they offer. Fate intervened and we had to settle for breakfast. Better luck next time, Grandpa Alan.
Thursday, September 30, 2021
60 Across - It's often included in a good deal
. . .
Tom P., my stockbroker, invited me to lunch today. He is definitely in my Top 10 Protestants list, although I don't know if I can come up with many more. I am almost two decades beyond my buy-in-the-morning-sell-in-the-afternoon days, which eventually left me with almost nothing left to buy with. My holdings now are appropriately conservative for an alte kocker.
We met at Le Grand Boucherie, 145 West 53rd Street, a magnificent space. It occupies the entire arcade between West 54th Street and West 53rd Street, halfway between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It is one of six passageways between office towers, more or less lined up from West 57th Street to West 51st Street. The others either appear to be the extension of sterile building lobbies or waystations for garbage removal. You can see how lovely the Bouch is by contrast.
There Is a balcony as well, resulting in possibly the largest dining space in the Holy Land now that Jing Fong in Chinatown, with 800 seats, has closed. All in all, a beautiful setting to start something or end something. It has a very extensive and expensive menu of bistro standards plus prime steaks and chops, but, and I rarely say this, the food is secondary.
Friday, October 1, 2021
How fortunate for Senator Joe Manchin that his rugged West Virginia constituents need little, if any, government assistance. After all, 29% of them are college educated and they have a median income of $26,354. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/west-virginia
We effete New Yorkers, by contrast, have a college education rate of 46.6% and a median income of $36,165. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-york
. . .
Answer = ACE
“Ace” was one of those bedeviling answers that required my putting down the puzzle and walking away for a few hours, during which time—voila!—the subconscious analytical process served up solution. Such a relief.
ReplyDeleteHow sad is it that we still have to discuss the need for equal justice, equal treatment. Look at the disparity in the treatment of Haitian and Afghan refugees.
ReplyDeleteI assume from Alan's comments that the passageways between 6th and 7th, from 51st to 57th were completed. Is that right? Is it called 6th and 1/2 Avenue? See outdated NYT article:https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/nyregion/for-midtown-manhattan-pedestrians-an-avenue-alternative.html
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bob. The article offers needed background on this series of passageways.
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