Saturday, May 10, 2025

There's Always Room For Dessert

Saturday, May 3, 2025
Lenny Bruce used to end his performances saying, “is there anyone here I haven’t offended?”
 

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Mr. Tangerine isn’t the only Defender of the Faith drawing attention. Mike Collins, Republican Congressman from Georgia, has alerted us to the threat posed by the opening of a halal Asian restaurant in a Congressional food court. “This is equivalent to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the 7th century.”
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25 years ago, we saw a delightful revival of “Wonderful Town” at the New York City Center. Originally produced in 1953, it has music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Tonight, we saw another production in the same venue. However, delight was limited to the music and lyrics. The cast was professional, but the performance was sluggish.

Footnote for triviameisters: Ruth McKenney, whose stories in The New Yorker became the play “My Sister Eileen” which became the musical “Wonderful Town,” named her daughter Eileen after her sister. The child grew up to be New York Supreme Court Justice Eileen Bransten, whom I clerked for occasionally. While stage Eileen was zany, court Eileen was sober with one exception. 

I would run into her occasionally at Fairway Market, 2131 Broadway, the closest thing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to a souk. About a decade ago, it started to clean up its act, widening the aisles, brightening the lights, neatening the shelves. This distressed Justice Bransten. She preferred the dirty, dark, crowded store that had been around for decades. She passed away in 2022, six years after the spiffed up Fairway filed for bankruptcy.

Sunday, May 4, 2025
We ventured out to Great Neck to have lunch with cousins Jerry and Liddy at Rothschilds (no  apostrophe) Kitchen & Coffee, 76 Middle Neck Road. It’s a bright space, its front all glass. All two dozen tables were noisily occupied at first, but we lingered long enough to outlast the din.

The menu is Israeli/Mediterranean, the food good. However, the prices seemed to follow the name on the door. The fresh, multi-grain bread put on the table was superb. I then had chicken schnitzel, a piece of white meat pounded thin, coated with panko crumbs and fried ($28). The portion of the smooth mashed potatoes accompanying it should have been larger. The affogato dessert, vanilla gelato in a cup of espresso was also very good, but pricey ($12).
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A survey of apartments built in the last 10 years in 100 American cities shows that they have generally gotten smaller on the average, as studios and one-bedrooms predominated.  https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/national-average-apartment-size/

Recently, though, some locations, such as New York and San Francisco, leaving behind the Covid era, have started building larger apartments. Of course, this poses the danger of your underemployed brother-in-law moving in with you.

Monday, May 5, 2025
Choose your adage:
•Put your money where your mouth is.
•Money talks.

If we look at the worst undergraduate majors for mid-career earnings, median annual earnings for workers ages 35-45, we see these discouraging results. The list is headed (?) by Early childhood education, Elementary education, Social services, General education and Special education.

Maybe you get what you pay for.

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Or, is ignorance bliss? The White House just announced that “We Finally Have a President Who Follows Science.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/on-earth-day-we-finally-have-a-president-who-follows-science/


Wednesday, May 7, 2025
It’s only Wednesday and I have seen three doctors and one dentist. I must be the healthiest kid on the block.
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Maybe it’s a blessing that Trump is deporting so many refugees. He is destroying our economy; he is destroying our public health system; he is destroying our educational institutions; he is destroying our public safety standards; he is destroying our foreign alliances; he is destroying our civil liberties; he is destroying our climate protections. Those deported people will, at least, be spared the immediate consequences of this mad rampage.

Thursday, May 8, 2025
On March 7, 2011, I first went to an early location of Xi’an Famous Foods in a niche under the Manhattan Bridge, so tiny it could not hold two people. I enjoyed the hot and spicy food then and today went to their newest spot, 309 Amsterdam Avenue, one of 16, which seats 20 people, still serving hot and spicy food. The extra space allowed Stony Brook Steve to accompany me, although he likes milder food generally.

I had Spicy & Sour Spinach Dumplings ($9.65 for 7 pieces) and a Spicy Cumin Lamb Burger ($6.45), probably their signature dish. When they say spicy, they mean spicy. Hydrate.
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Watch out! Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart, three of the five starting players on the New York Knicks basketball team now in the playoffs, were teammates on the 2016 Villanova collegiate championship team. Who else went to Villanova? Pope Leo XIV.
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Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. 
“Jewish Members of Congress have experienced a nearly five-fold increase in antisemitic harassment on Facebook since that platform’s owner, Meta, rolled back its [content] moderation policy at the start of the year.” https://www.adl.org/resources/article/metas-hate-policy-rollback-linked-increased-antisemitism

Friday, May 9, 2025
America's Favorite Epidemiologist has a unique first name. We have been able to only find one historical antecedent. I thought the same was true of my CCNY classmate, Iska, with whom I had coffee this afternoon. We had not seen each other in 59 years, so I checked out her name on Google. I found the International Sport Kickboxing Association, the International Saw and Knife Association and one mid-20th century German actor.  However, Iska claims to have encountered a few others, including her late grandmother. With that out of the way, we fast forwarded through decades of marriages, jobs and travels.  

We met at Breads Bakery, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, one of five locations offering excellent baked goods. Except -- the chocolate rugelach, $15 for 6 pieces, was a disappointment, with excellent alternatives readily available. The best buy is Cosctco, raspberry-walnut and chocolate rugelach packaged together, $10.99 for 25 oz. Zabar's, 2245 Broadway, has buttery raisin and chocolate rugelach, $21.98 for 1 lb., about 10 or 11 pieces. Further uptown, Lee Lee's Baked Goods, 283 West 118th Street, has hefty apricot, raspberry and chocolate rugelach for $3 apiece. Breads redeems itself, fortunately, with a delicious chocolate babka, $17.95.  
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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Old Friends

Saturday, April 26, 2025
Message for Kristi:
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The CNN headline reads: “The ‘fun part is over’ for Trump’s second term.” Query: When did it begin?
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Stephen Sondheim's prodigious output of music and lyrics for Broadway and Hollywood has been repackaged several times in revue format, such as "Side By Side By Sondheim" and "Putting It Together." When “Old Friends” was announced as the latest compilation debuting in London in late 2023, we booked a trip, conscripting Lord and Lady Kennington to accompany us to the theatre. Needless to say, but I'll say it, a good time was had by all.

Tonight, madam and I saw "Old Friends" on Broadway without old friends, but with the same leading ladies, Bernadette Peters and Lea Solanga. Again, we were delighted and I was reminded how much enjoyment Sondheim has given me over many years. By the way, when I was unmarried, I lived on the East Side three blocks from his famous townhouse and, on Election Day in 1994, we were in the same polling place at the same time. He was wearing a T-shirt promoting "Carousel," then revived on Broadway. I had seen that production and not liked it very much, but I kept my mouth shut.

Sunday, April 27, 2025
Speaking of London, today was the running of the London Marathon, which brought back an even older memory than seeing "Old Friends." On April 21, 1985, I was standing in front of Buckingham Palace when the leading runners came down The Mall on the way to the Marathon's finish line nearby. 40 years ago today, twice as long as it took Sergeant Pepper to teach the band to play.

It was my first trip to Europe other than a quick business trip to Germany in December 1972 and I was thrilled to reconnect with old friends David Mervin and Adrian Crutwell-Vaughn (https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/anthony-charles-adrian-cruttwell-vaughn-24-1pqsp0) whom I had not seen for 20 years.
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“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” Thomas Wolfe wrote in 1935. Today, more and more, only the rich know Brooklyn. According to Jonathan Miller, the leading local real estate guru, housing prices continue to rise in my native land. 

Average price for a home is $1,281,704, while the more representative median is $995,000, both record highs. 2798 Pitkin Avenue, where I grew up in one apartment of a two-family house, sold two years ago for $450,000. When I last saw it four years ago, it looked like a dump, far worse than in my boyhood. 
 

This property is clearly closer to the dead than the rich.
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The current population of the metropolitan Tucson, Arizona area is about 1.08 million, having tripled in the last half century. Note that daily high temperatures during the summer are around 99°F, rarely falling below 89°F or exceeding 107°F.
Is there a reason why people would subject themselves to such brutal living conditions? I can find one. The current median housing list price is $395,000. While it ain't Brooklyn, it is $600,000 cheaper.
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We headed to Bengal Tiger, 58 West 56th Street, a familiar, crowded Indian restaurant for dinner, up a steep flight of stairs, that doesn't take reservations. We left early expecting to wait in the narrow, dark space. However, it wasn't there when we got there. It had moved to 234 West 56th Street, two long blocks west. It now takes reservations, was bright and airy, sat at street level and had at least twice the seating capacity. There are 17 two-tops and six booths decorated in cream/beige tones. While it was increasingly busy during dinner time, there seemed to be no wait to be seated.

We shared pakora, 11 onion fritter pieces ($9). I then had chicken biryani, a rice casserole, my frequent choice in an Indian restaurant ($19). Overall, the dish was good. The portion was very generous, the chicken slightly overcooked. I would try the lamb biryani next time. Madam enjoyed her malai kofta, cheese and potato dumplings in a sweet curry sauce ($18). 
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After dinner, we had a cup of coffee with old friends Bonnie and Gil who are here from Florida on a quick weekend visit. Our respective schedules did not allow for more than an hour together, but it was energizing to see someone that I have known since Stuyvesant High School.

Tuesday, April 29, 2025
I went back to school today, not high school, but Cardozo Law School at an event celebrating a new book by Professor Richard Weisberg, “Law, Literature, and History: A Fateful Rendezvous with the Shoah.” As a 3L, I took a seminar with him on law under the Nazis. I wrote a paper on  the Channel Islands, a British Crown Dependency, sitting in the English Channel between Britain and France. It was under Nazi occupation longer than any other place in the world.

Academics and distinguished practitioners spoke in tribute to Weisberg, including Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment expert. I would like to read his book which has a chapter on the Channel Islands, but it lists for $190, enough to feed seven people in Chinatown.

Thursday, May 1, 2025
Baruc is a young old friend. I have known him less than 35 years. We had lunch today at Sarabeth’s, 423 Amsterdam Avenue, one of a handful of local locations. While the business was founded by a Jewish couple (she Sarabeth), it has a distinctly genteel/gentile feel (popovers, anyone?). 

I got right with the program and ordered chicken pot pie with wild mushrooms, rainbow carrots, fingerling potatoes, herb béchamel under a beautiful, flaky crust ($29). As much as I enjoyed it, sitting on the Upper West Side kept me from feeling too Episcopalian.
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There has been a sign of life. Microsoft dumped Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, a major law firm that capitulated to Donald Trump, and engaged Jenner & Block, which has been fighting for its independence in court.
 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/business/microsoft-drops-trump-compliant-law-firm.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Note to CEO, making more money in a year than your great-grandparents' shtetl made in a lifetime, if you are considering moving your company's business to one of the gutless law firms -- How confident will you be that your attorneys won't sell you out under pressure from the White House?

Friday, May 2, 2025
After yesterday’s excursion into gentility, I restored the natural order by having lunch at Moon Kee, 2548 Broadway, with Mel Scult, professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College, his wife Barbara and Jerry and Jerry. The restaurant was very busy and very noisy. We huddled around a small table in the back in order to hear each other.

We ordered Steamed Shrimp & Scallop Dumpling ($8 for 3 pieces), Steamed Vegetable Dumpling ($8 for 4 pieces), scallion pancake ($8), Signature Crispy Roast Duck ($24 for 1/2), Crispy Orange Flavor Beef ($24), Mushroom & Vegetable Fried Riced ($16). It was a good meal, overall. Portion sizes were large, in line with the prices. The duck was well-lacquered and only moderately fatty. 
.  .  .

Don't be caught dead in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 
 

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Saturday, April 26, 2025

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Saturday, April 19, 2025
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing when a white Christian nationalist manufactured and detonated a bomb in front of a federal office building. It killed 167 people, including 19 children in a daycare center and injured 684 other people. A former U.S. Army sergeant was convicted and executed for this atrocity.

Maybe I am a sentimental slob, but I am surprised that the Republican presidential candidate has won the majority of votes in all 77 counties in Oklahoma in each of the six presidential elections since 2004. Were the politics of the tragedy too subtle to be recognized by the local population, if not in more remote parts of the state, but at least in and around Oklahoma City?

Sunday, April 20, 2025
“How Wealth Reduces Compassion.” Does the title of this article from the Scientific American surprise you? “It’s tempting to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline.” 
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One group of Americans who are deserving of compassion are the many who are rent burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing, forcing harsh economic choices on them. Government programs to assist them have not kept up. Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8 vouchers) from the Department of Housing and Urban Development provide rental assistance to low-income renters. However, there are 17 million more severely cost-burdened renter households than available vouchers.   https://www.zillow.com/research/housing-choice-vouchers-4-35059/

Is there any reason to believe that the budgetary slash and burn going on in Washington will result in improved support for ordinary Americans?
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I was trying to reach #2 grandson Noam this afternoon to see how things were going in the 8th grade, but I couldn’t interrupt the conference call he was on with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025
The front page of today’s New York Times has two headlines side by side that illustrate the craziness of our national leadership. “E.P.A. Poised to Cancel Grants To Study Dangers to Children” and “Would $5,000 Bonuses Spur New Baby Boom?” This reminds me of the observation by former Congressman Barney Frank that our conservative politicians believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Spring is finally here in the Holy Land and lunch in Chinatown is an appropriate way to celebrate. Seven of us met at 456 Shanghai Cuisine, 69 Mott Street, where we indulged in soup dumplings ($8.75), steamed vegetable dumplings ($8.50), scallion pancake with egg and beef ($10.95), cold noodles with sesame sauce ($7.50), orange flavored chicken ($19.95), spicy shredded beef ($20.95), “Walnut with Jumbo Shrimp” (really the other way around) ($25.95), vegetable chow fun ($12.95), Rice Noodle Singapore Style ($13.95). It wasn’t easy, but we got to the Clean Plate Club. P.S. Mark was not an hour late. He was only 58 minutes late.
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Hebrew days begin at sunset, not at sunrise. Yom haShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, began this evening. Among the many local events on this occasion, we chose a film screening at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 West 68th Street. “J’Accuse!” is a documentary about Lithuania, where 95% of their Jews, 220,000 people, were murdered, as often by local forces as by the Nazis. 

Today, the Lithuanian government honors Holocaust perpetrators with monuments and schools while the fate of the Jews is barely acknowledged.

A significant part of the film is devoted to Sylvia Foti, a Chicago Catholic woman of Lithuanian heritage, who wrote “Storm in the Land of Rain: A Mother’s Dying Wish Becomes Her Daughter’s Nightmare,” where she uncovers her grandfather’s past as a mass murderer of Jews. The experience was sobering for her and the audience, as well.

Thursday, April 24, 2025
I don’t know what cuisine Wolfnights - The Gourmet Wrap, 489 Third Avenue, represents, or what the name means, but it comes up with some unusual combinations. For lunch, I had the Carnivores Delight, grilled steak wrapped in date & pumpkin seed dough with fried egg, sumac onions, pickles, mustard horseradish sauce ($14.99). It doesn’t just sound like a lot, it was a lot, a big handful of food.

The joint only has one 12” deep stainless steel ledge with four stools and a swing hung from the ceiling for seating, my choice. The rest of the modest space was used for food preparation and the generous use of stainless steel made it look like a test kitchen.

Friday, April 25, 2025
While walking to the hardware store this afternoon, I received an airmail delivery from the bluebird of happiness or at least a close relative. To some, this connotes good luck; to me, it means a dry cleaning bill.
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Acadia Healthcare, one of the country’s largest providers of mental health services, is under federal investigation for ill-treating patients. Since the charges became public last year, the company’s market value has fallen from $7 billion to $2 billion. Nevertheless, its CEO has just been awarded a bonus of $1.8 million to help respond to “unprecedented governmental inquiries.” 



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Saturday, April 19, 2025

Mr. Rubio Meet Mr. Trump

Saturday, April 12, 2025
We woke up to winter, snow on the ground and 33° temperature here outside of Boston when we had anticipated decades in the desert.

America’s Loveliest Nephrologist and the Oakland Heartthrob flew in last night for the Seders that begin tonight. Before the period of Passover privation, we met for a last lunch at The Cottage, 190 Linden Street, Wellesley, a large, smooth-running restaurant this side of slick.

I had two large appetizers, carefully fried calamari with chili aioli ($18) and Garlic Crostini Steak Bites, sirloin pieces with horseradish cream on toasted baguette slices ($18), very good choices. To top it off, I had affogato, a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream in a cup of espresso ($9). Now, I am prepared to outrun Pharaoh’s minions. 
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David Brooks is a conservative New York Times columnist, a right wing affirmative action baby. Yet, I have to admire his description of Donald Trump’s trade policy. “Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.”
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Law Professor David conducted the first Seder very effectively. He passed along one comment that I found particularly interesting. “This is the bread of our affliction,” a famous line when the matzoh is held up to the gathering, is usually explained as an example of the haste that the Israelites fled Egypt, not having time for bread to rise. He offered the alternative that the simple, crude matzoh is what the enslaved Israelites would normally be fed, a symbol of their dire existence.

Sunday, April 14, 2025
We slept in, missing the hotel’s free breakfast, a sign of our own liberation. It was lunchtime when we entered the very busy Mel’s Commonwealth Cafe, 310 Commonwealth Road, Wayland, a perfect example of a diner except for being embedded in a larger building. 

I had no problem adhering to the broad outlines of holiday observance. I ordered lox and onions and eggs, with home fries and matzoh instead of bread or a bagel ($17.99). The portion was large, it must have been three eggs, cooked just right. The joint is owned by the Bloomstein brothers, Mel’s sons, appropriately enough.
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I learned something at the second Seder that is beyond the scope of the Exodus. #1 Grandson Boaz taught me about Bageling, actually the term itself, because the practice is familiar. To Bagel is a semiotic exercise, communicating your Jewishness without being explicit. “This is the best whitefish salad I’ve ever had.” It’s sort of a defense mechanism, probing your surroundings without risking everything.

Monday, April 14, 2025
I am several steps removed from public education. Therefore, I have regarded the subject of school vouchers primarily through a legal lens, where have they breached or threatened to breach the separation of church and state, for instance. A new book, “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” pierces the public relations bubble around school vouchers, “save poor kids trapped in failing schools,” and looks at actual performance. 

Demonstrated academic gains have eluded school voucher programs consistently. “In the last several years, major studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington D.C. have shown that low-income students do not see improved test scores from attending private schools. If anything, students’ scores tended to decline.” 

Rather than benefiting public school students seeking better educational opportunities, a majority of school vouchers go to students already in private schools. The evidence supports this provocative headline: “Most Voucher Recipients Are Wealthy Families Who Never Attended Public Schools.” https://www.ncpecoalition.org/voucher-recipients

Incidentally, voters have rejected school voucher programs consistently in places, such as Utah, Arizona and Florida, but the beat goes on.

Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Over my many years, I was fired from jobs several times. In one instance, I was fired before I even started working. I never made anywhere near the millions of dollars that equity partners are typically making annually at big law firms and only reached half of what their first-year associates now make.

While I believe that money talks in our society, I naively thought that money also would fortify resolve. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with our largest law firms where profits per partner reach $9 million. 

One after another, they have cut outlandish deals with the administration when threatened with illegal and unconstitutional interference with their operations. Rather than use the ingenuity and clout that drove their success in the courtroom and the boardroom, they abandoned their scruples to a blustering bully, admittedly a dangerous one. 

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a firm that I admire, states its principle “in all things to govern ourselves as members of a free democratic society with responsibilities both to our profession and our country.” 
https://www.paulweiss.com/about-the-firm/principles

In bowing to the bullying of President Trump, it failed its responsibilities both to the legal profession and our country.

You know what? Take a hit, lose some money, but hold your head up.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025
The August 3, 1938 issue of The Manchester Guardian contained these classified advertisements.

Does this give you a little insight into the mindset of many Jews even today?

Thursday, April 17, 2025
I am not an Uber person. While I downloaded the app to my phone, I have never used it. I recall one occasion when Michael Ratner and I had lunch at Ben’s Best Delicatessen, 96-40 Queens Boulevard, of blessed memory, before a Mets game at Citi Field. Michael called Uber for a ride, just a short distance, but quite convoluted by public transportation. When Michael’s phone informed him that the car arrived to pick us up, nothing was in sight. He called the driver and they went back and forth. 

“Where are you?”
“I’m here.”
“No, you’re not!”
“Yes, I am.”
“Where are you?”

In spite of reading off the right address, the driver was a mile away. We quickly found a regular taxicab and got to the ballpark on time.

I recollected this when reading about Uber’s Lost & Found Index, the never-ending report of the probable and improbable items left behind by Uber passengers. 

It’s no surprise that phones, wallets and keys head the list, but breast milk, mannequin heads, and a urinal? New Yorkers forget the most stuff, with Miami and Chicago close behind. October 26th seems to be the most forgetful day of the year and different days of the week have different patterns of loss, gloves on Monday, medicine on Wednesday, umbrellas on Friday.

Friday, April 18, 2025
"The United States could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within 'days' if there are no signs of progress, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday[, April 18th]."

"Donald Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he’s elected president again."
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