New York is the Criticism Capitol of the World! My article on Kohler, Wisconsin was rejected by the Sophisticated Traveler because it was "too positive." Well if it's criticism they want they've come to the right place. No more white kid gloves (which as a girl I actually wore to class). Could not bring myself to watch that gross display of homo sapien posturing and strutting at the DNC. And that dizzy, sad sack Kennedy talking about moral values -- well guess the dialogue is what makes this place vital!

The degenerate Clintons turned a left-wing Democrat into a Republican. Actually it is naif to be interested in politics, a ridiculous spectator sport. Unless you're Warren Buffet it makes no difference if a Democrat or Republican is elected. That much I retained from the Rad 70s.

I received a copy of CAM for Cambridge alums with articles on Bloomsbury.....after decades wandering eyeless in Gaza perhaps I should return to the original source of my ambition. It was unfortunate that Fry's paintings were so painful except for the perior 1910-9.

Just as we have always known, the Clinton administration is guilty for 9/11. Finally after Symposia, a deeply a non-political person, fathomed this years ago it is now headlines in the New York Times.

Writing is an enormous drag--not aphoristically speaking as here, but in general. I earn a living by putting pen to paper and polishing my thoughts--then the result is skimmed over by an indifferent readership, forgotten the next day--and besides it doesn't pay $$$$. So why do some pursue this line? It is a leisured gentleman's sport but as a profession it is the pitts.

If one likes a person or persons they can do no truly wrong act; thus the Bush twins are not unseemly with their Vogue vanity shoot. Were it Theresa Kerry we would have been irritated beyond belief. Symposia dislikes "strong women" intensely.

I vow to never fly again. I'll take the big boats across the ocean for the first time since the Elizabeth I and Mauretania in the fifties.

A brief trip to a resort in the midwest (The American Club in Kohler Wisconsin, quelle parallel universe) was marred by terror rides both ways, waiting on the tarmac for four hours, passenger doors that would not open. That's it. Cauchemarant!

All was redeemed by the beauty of Whistling Straits and Blackwolf Run and charming adorable Wisconsin which reminds me of Old America before It Changed! Whether I could live there is another matter but it has always held a special place in my mind.

From Prater Violet, 1945, about Hollywood,

"There one sees what Shakespeare saw. The absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There aer fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favorites...." and so on and so forth. Only the women are not comely today since they must appeal to the masses; they look like pizza waitresses dressed up in costumes.

Marlon Brando had what no other screen actor ever had -- critical intelligence. Olivier was a master of stage gesture but emotionless in film.

We cannot resist the quote from today's Daily News about Jamie Dimon who lived across the street from us on Astor, "Dimon spent the past four years in exile in Chicago, as CEO of Bank One." New York has a rococo sense of self importance-- bursting, exhuberant and based in fantasy.

Quite by chance we saw "Night and Day" with Cary Grant as Cole. Whilst the screenplay risible and factually from the rings of Saturn, the actor had some dimension and was never the vulgarly happy go lucky nincompoop the 2004 version "portrays." Rather than go after the Middle East go after Hollywood!