A Different Look at Gun Control Laws

Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but is it politically unwise for Democrats to unequivocally support gun control laws? Hear me out—generally, the most vociferous Second Amendment advocates are hard right, militant militia members, crazies who fear they won’t have any guns around to protect themselves from left wing nuts who may take over our government. They claim they need long guns and assault rifles to combat the demise of the republic.

Far fetched, perhaps, but what if they are onto something, only in a bizarro, reverse world? What if it’s right wing conservatives—led by an orange-tinged elected president and his intolerant-Constitution-be-damned cronies—who want to strip the populace of rights after rights and liberties after liberties, leaving just leftists who want to save America? How could the left offer resistance if their right to bear powerful arms was denied them?

I’m not saying it’s going to happen, that we should all march down to our local guns and ammo store to stock up, but you have to admit, if you’re a progressive thinker, it could. Of course, we could negate the possibility by voting the orangutan out of office November 3.

So there you have it—either mark off the Democratic candidate (whomever he or she may be) on your electronic ballot, or pull down the Democratic lever on your manual voting machine, or register for firearms instruction at your local shooting range before it’s too late. America’s future is in your hands. 

(In case some of you didn’t realize it, what you have just read is a piece of satire.)

Classified Material: I opened the Sunday New York Times to find something rarely seen over the last decade or longer: pages of classified ads. Advertisements for jobs ranging from an advisory consultant at an accounting firm to vice president of a bank. Two and a half pages in tiny agate type. 

Now, the volume was nothing like it used to be, pre-Internet. It wasn’t a separate section. The ads were tucked into the back pages of the SportsSunday section. But just as Web-based retailers are opening brick and mortar stores, perhaps we are at the dawn of a rekindled age of newspaper classified ads.

I have a soft spot for “help wanted” ads in print. Between jobs back in early 1977 I answered a classified ad in The Times. We were living in New Haven. Gilda had said she would relocate anywhere but New York, but four months into my unemployment she consented to my responding to the ad. She further agreed to return to New York after a job offer was extended during my interview in Manhattan. Thus began my 32 year career with Lebhar-Friedman, publisher of Nation’s Restaurant News (my first year’s assignment as a field editor) and Chain Store Age for the remainder of my tenure. 

Section By Section: Not everyone reads the Sunday Times page by page, section by section. I surely don’t.

So this item is for those who offhandedly toss the SundayStyles section into the discard pile. Take a moment to read how the spirit of the holiday season in Washington has become another victim of the polarized political climate in the nation’s capital. It’s a humorous if not nostalgic remembrance of better, bygone days (https://nyti.ms/2McMMiv).

Gilda’s New Nickname: I have a new nickname for Gilda—Corduroy. Not the fabric. Rather, the winsome Teddy Bear now considered a classic children’s book character. 

In the second book of the series originated by Don Sussman, Corduroy notices his green corduroy overalls lack a pocket. His escapades at a laundromat endeavoring to find a pocket is a warm-hearted adventure tale that ends with Lise, his young owner, sewing some plaid material into a pocket on his right overall leg.

Around our house Gilda often wears sweat pants. Some have pockets. The ones that don’t, however, have continually frustrated her ability to keep her cell phone nearby. Until she recalled the story “A Pocket for Corduroy.”

For several hours Friday she rummaged through leftover fabric swatches, picking out a grey plaid pattern with enough material to adorn two sweat pants with pockets deep enough to hold an iPhone. Just like Corduroy’s, the pockets are angled on the right pants leg.

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, The Court Should Now Hear The U.S. House of Representatives v. Donald J. Trump

The time has come to find out if we live in a constitutional republic or in an autocratic state. It is time to go directly to the Supreme Court for a decision on the House of Representatives’ powers of impeachment and whether the executive branch can withhold documents and other evidence the House deems crucial to its investigations. 

By an 8-0 vote in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled Richard Nixon had to turn over secretly recorded White House tapes that ultimately revealed criminal behavior by the president in the Watergate scandal coverup. But that was back then, when respect for the rule of law was central to our political essence, regardless of party. We did not have a president who demeaned courts and judges who disagreed with him. And we did not have a president who openly flouted the law, often doubling down on the very crime he is accused of committing. 

Today’s Supreme Court must decide if the Constitution is still relevant. If a president can stonewall due process. If the Founders’ belief in equal branches of government is an 18th century anachronism or if it remains a document a democratic republic nation can live by. 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must give up any hope of White House cooperation for surely Donald Trump has provided no reason or action to maintain that illusion. She must immediately authorize an expedited challenge to the Supreme Court to verify the House’s absolute right to obtain material relevant to its inquiries. The court must reaffirm its 1974 ruling that the claim of executive privilege has limitations when it comes to a legitimate House investigation, that no one, not even the president, is above the law. 

It is counterproductive to waste the nation’s time and patience with thrust and parry politics. The Supreme Court must be asked to accept the challenge and must rule expeditiously. 

Nancy Pelosi, it is your move!

A Red White House: To those who bicker that Democrats are trying to take over a White House they couldn’t win in 2016, let me remind them that a Trump removal would not turn the Oval Office blue. A solidly conservative Republican vice president, Mike Pence, would succeed the dumped Trump. 

In many ways Pence could prove to be more anathema to Democrats as he is more deliberate, more focused, more of an ideologue, more conservative, more religious, more schooled in the ways of governing, and less of a lightning rod than Trump. 

One of the more vexing questions confronting Americans, New Yorkers in particular, is the transformation of Rudy Giuliani from “America’s Mayor” after 9/11 into Trump’s rabid attack dog. 

So, naturally, I was drawn to a New York Times Op-Ed Tuesday with the relevant headline, “What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?”. When I looked at the byline I was more intrigued. I thought the name looked familiar, the uncommon way it spelled Frydman. Hadn’t a Ken Frydman worked on Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade newspaper, shortly after I did some 40 years ago? Sure enough, it was him. 

I checked out his online background discovering Ken not only worked for Giuliani but was actually married by him in a city hall ceremony. For decades Ken carried a picture of the ceremony in his wallet. 

Here was an intimate witness to Rudy’s transformation. So, without further ado, here are two links, the first to the Op-Ed piece, the second to a bio of Ken who has quite an accomplished resume:

What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/giuliani-trump-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Ken’s bio

http://sourcecommunications.net/about/

Passings in My Profession: 5 Killed at a Newspaper, the Sale of My Employer of 32 Years

I was touched by two events Thursday, one that made national headlines, the second another example of economic realities in today’s business environment. 

Both events involved my chosen profession, journalism. 

When news broke of the fatal shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, my mind raced back 41 years. In early 1977 I turned down a job offer at the newspaper. I had left my newspaper job in New Haven in September 1976 to work as press secretary to a congressional candidate in a race both he and I knew he would lose. But the opportunity to leave The Register for “something” was too appealing to pass up. For two years management had frozen our salaries after the editorial staff voted in the Newspaper Guild. It was not easy living on $200 a week (as one of six bureau chiefs on a staff of 100 I was one of the better paid reporters. About a year later the union won a contract. Had I stayed I would have been paid about $450 a week). 

Once the congressional race ended as expected, I began searching for another newspaper job. The Gaston Gazette in Gastonia, NC, a suburb of Charlotte, offered $200 a week. After all, the editor reasoned, it was a lot cheaper to live in Gastonia than New Haven. When I demurred, he upped the offer to $250 a week and membership in a country club (I don’t think he knew I was Jewish). There was one catch, however. Instead of the two reporters he hoped to hire, for $250 a week he expected me to do the work of two staffers. Again, I resisted the call of the South.

My next possibility was a job at the Capital Gazette. Again, $200 a week. As my brother and his family lived some 50 miles away in Rockville, MD, Annapolis appealed to me. However, the state capital and home to the Naval Academy was a high priced community to live in. No way $200 a week was going to cut it.

A few weeks later I answered an ad in The New York Times from a trade publisher. I started at Lebhar-Friedman’s Nation’s Restaurant News March 14, 1977. A year later I transferred to Chain Store Age, a title that appeared on my business cards for the next 31 years. I retired in June 2009.

On Thursday, family-run Lebhar-Friedman, founded in 1925, was acquired by Chicago-based EnsembleIQ, a portfolio company of RFE Investment Partners, a private equity investor. At one time L-F had as many as 16 publications, half covering the retail industry, the rest healthcare, employing more than 500. At the time of the sale, only three books remained, Chain Store Age among them, as well as two CSA conferences, SPECS and X/SPECS dealing with store construction and facilities. The company employed fewer than 100. 

What happened? Consolidation of the retail industry at the same time more publications entered a shrinking field. These competitors were more nimble, with lower operating costs, allowing lower advertising rates. L-F always used internal funds to power growth. But an ill-timed, ill-advised acquisition into the healthcare field saddled L-F with heavy debt just when revenues toppled. The Internet sapped classified advertising while forcing investments that did not pay off. 

No need to elaborate any more causes. My bottom line: The 32 years I spent at Lebhar-Friedman as a staff editor, editor-in-chief and publisher afforded the opportunity to support my family and treat them to pleasures not experienced by many others. We travelled across the country and to distant lands. My children attended top schools. During the summer they went to camp or travel programs. Our home, I like to say, is the “house that Chain Store Age built.” 

Working on Chain Store Age from 1978 through 2009 enabled me to meet and at times befriend some of the most important retail luminaries of the last half century, including Sam Walton, Charles Lazarus and successive heads of Walmart, Sears, Kmart, JC Penney and many chains no longer around including TG&Y, Caldor, Zayre, Rose’s, Woolworth. Equally, if not more importantly, working at L-F introduced me to some great creative professionals. 

I am saddened by the loss of the Lebhar-Friedman nameplate. But I am comforted that Chain Store Age-SPECS-X/Specs will continue to provide, in the words of David Shanker, CEO of EnsembleIQ, “a comprehensive view of retail insights and information.”

Close Encounters with Jackie Kennedy Onassis

In case you missed it Jackie Kennedy Onassis was back in the news recently. In his tell all memoir Jim Hart wrote that the widowed former first lady of assassinated President John F. Kennedy and widow of Aristotle Onassis asked him to arrange a date for her with Alec Baldwin, then a 33-year-old actor. Jackie was nearly 62.

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert earlier this week the now 59-year-old Baldwin recounted that for him it was a blind date, though he downplayed any suggestion it could be classified as a date. Hart had asked if he wanted to see the play Dancing at Lughnasa. They waited at Hart’s apartment (by the way, Hart was married to Carly Simon at the time) for Baldwin’s date to arrive when in flowed Jackie Kennedy Onassis. 

When it was time to go, Baldwin related, she said it would be more discreet if she left the building before them so the paparazzi would not photograph them together. At the theater Baldwin said she sat a row ahead of him. Baldwin provided no indication they went out socially again.

Several days after the broadcast I was swapping stories of encounters with famous people during lunch time at the Omaha Jewish Community Center on Deli Friday. I had joined Doug at his table. Shortly, Steve made up our threesome.

Doug recalled the time back in late 1973 or early 1974 he went with his brother Robert to see Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in Good Evening on Broadway. It was a series of comedy sketches by the incorrigibly satiric duo. The brothers scored great seats—fourth row center orchestra. Two rows, in fact, behind Jackie Kennedy Onassis and members of her family.

Throughout the first act few in the audience knew she was in the theater, but once intermission began her presence became well known.

Perhaps not as well known as it should have been.

The second act began with Cook placing a chair at center stage followed by Moore placing a chair slightly behind him to the left. From Cook’s movement the audience surmised he was driving a car.

Their dialogue, as Doug recalled, concerned Moore’s trepidation at his forthcoming initial speech in the House of Lords, to which Cook commented that he would like to be famous one day.

And then the bombshell exploded.

Cook said he knew how to become famous. He only had to emulate Lee Harvey Oswald and kill somebody famous.

Assuming you were as startled as I was to hear that dark comedy, imagine how the Kennedy family must have felt. Doug recalls no public reaction but to this day, some 44 years later, he wonders if Jackie knew in advance about the black humor Cook and Moore projected.

One of the perks of my being a field editor on Nation’s Restaurant News back in 1977, I told Doug and Steve, was being able to dine at some of the classier eating spots in Manhattan. One day, I found myself with co-workers Liz and Peggy having lunch in an expensive, over the top restaurant off Park Avenue in the mid-East 60s. The décor was gaudy—lots of mirrors and gold accents. 

As it had recently made its debut, the restaurant (long since closed) had yet to be discovered by the lunchtime crowd of power elites. It was, to be honest, rather thinly patronized that day. Aside from we three, only one other table was occupied. As I looked around I saw two people sitting at the table, a professorial-type man with unruly grey hair and a strikingly composed, thin, raven-haired woman with big glasses, eating a salad.

As Peggy’s back was to the other table, I whispered to her to glance in the mirror to see the reflection of what I thought was Jackie O. Instead, she twisted her body for a full frontal look and then, in no semblance of a stage whisper, blurted out, “It’s Jackie Kennedy!” 

I shrank in my seat, but Jackie didn’t bat an eyelash. A perfect example of being cool, calm and collected to what must have been a common occurrence in her lifetime.

A Career Based on Talent and Good Fortune

I turned the car radio to ESPN Wednesday afternoon just as Michael Kay and his sidekicks were discussing the impact of talent and luck on their respective successful careers.

One day I turned left instead of right, was the way Kay, the play-by-play television announcer of the New York Yankees, rationalized his good fortune. I readily identified with that explanation of how luck, just plain dumb luck, can differentiate equally skilled job applicants. 

As I wrote five years ago, it also doesn’t hurt to have fortuitous timing and shared background with the person who hires you. Take my first job, for example. Murray Farber, managing editor administration of The New Haven Register, hired me. Murray grew up in Brooklyn, as I did. Though he attended BTA High School, rival of my alma mater, Flatbush, Murray didn’t hold that against me. Much as blood is thicker than water, “Murraydom” trumps any reservations.

Yet, if it weren’t for Donna Doherty I would never have met Murray Farber.

Donna Doherty was the quintessential shiksa (Gentile woman) of every Jewish man’s dreams. Tall, lithe, beautiful and blonde—really blonde—, Donna Doherty entered my life as a fellow graduate student at Syracuse University. My friend Steve Kreinberg and I drooled over her, from afar mind you, considering that Steve was married and I was engaged. Donna Doherty hardly knew we existed. She left Syracuse before graduation in 1972 and headed back home to Branford, Conn., just east of New Haven.

A few months later, armed with a master’s degree in newspaper journalism, I started visiting newspapers in search of that first job. I’d cold call managing editors of papers from northern Virginia through northern Massachusetts. They lauded my moxie. They all told me they had no job openings.

July 14, 1972, I arranged a day trip from Brooklyn to five papers in southwest Connecticut. At each stop the same result—the managing editor was away attending a publishing conference in Arizona. Around noon I found myself in Ansonia, at the proverbial fork in the road. Right headed toward Bridgeport, left toward New Haven. Ah, New Haven. Wasn’t that close to Donna Doherty’s home town?, I thought. It would mean a longer ride home, but there was no question in my mind which direction I’d head.

Thirty minutes later I was inside The Register building at 367 Orange Street. Depressed with my earlier failures to meet any managing editors, I sheepishly allowed the receptionist to steer me to the head of personnel without even trying to see if the ME was present. Robert E. Lee (yes, that really was his name) gave me the standard response. No, there weren’t any openings. Yes, I’ll take your résumé just in case something happens. After all, you never know.

And then his phone rang. Yes, I have someone sitting across my desk this very moment, he said into the handset. I perked up. He sent me up to the third floor newsroom. Just my luck, The Register had two managing editors, one for news, one for administration. The ME-News was in Arizona, but the ME-Administration, Murray Farber, was in New Haven looking after the business and having to deal with a sudden resignation. I started the job two months later, September 14, 1972, thanks in no small measure to persistence, luck, timing, Donna Doherty and Murray Farber.

I left The Register four years later to be a press secretary in an unsuccessful congressional campaign. From November to early March 1977 I was jobless, unable to secure a newspaper position. Gilda said she’d move anywhere but back to New York. 

As luck would have it, a copy of the Sunday New York Times I bought in a Cumberland Farms store included Classified ads, a section not usually distributed in New Haven back then. I knew the job ads were for Manhattan-based companies, and were for trade publications, not traditional newspapers, but our bank account dictated some compromise. I answered two ads, both, it turned out, for the same spot, that of field editor on Nation’s Restaurant News. I got the job and we moved back to New York.

Luck played a part even when I didn’t get a job. A year later I was one of two candidates under consideration to be the top editor of the magazine of the Automotive After Parts Association in Washington, DC. A local candidate was chosen, but six months later the association called to say it made a mistake. I thanked them for their belated offer but in those same six months I told them I had received two promotions and was now the editorial head of Chain Store Age, a title I would not relinquish for the next 30 years. 

Lest you get the impression my success came solely from the proper alignment of the stars, let me assure you talent played a significant role, as well. Within two years I became one of six bureau chiefs on The Register’s staff of 100 reporters. 

I earned numerous accolades on Nation’s Restaurant News and Chain Store Age, including a Jesse H. Neal Award, considered the Pulitzer Prize of business to business journalism. 

Talent, however, can get you only so far. It’s far better to combine talent with a measure of luck. 

My Watergate Summer Link

Forty years ago this Friday afternoon before Labor Day, I was sitting in the third floor newsroom of The New Haven Register trying to finish up my Sunday feature story. I don't recall what it was about, but I do remember suburban editor Larry French calling me over to tell me I had been chosen for a special assignment that could only be done later that afternoon.

It was the summer of the Watergate hearings. Gilda watched most of the hearings as she crocheted a quilt we still have (but hardly ever use). I would watch highlights on the evening news. Folksy Sam Ervin (D-NC) chaired the Senate committee. Sam Dash, whose daughter, Judy, I would work with four years later on Nation’s Restaurant News, served as lead majority counsel of the committee. Howard Baker was the ranking minority senator on the panel. The most vocal and righteously aggrieved Republican was Lowell Weicker, the junior senator from Connecticut.

With Congress in recess, Weicker was back home in Greenwich. At the last moment he agreed to sit for an interview, a personality profile.

The newsroom was mostly depleted by early weekend evacuees. Looking over their options, the top editors chose me, a 24-year-old reporter with barely a year of small town reporting on my résumé.

It was a hot muggy afternoon. I drove my un-airconditioned Chevy Vega down the Merritt Parkway to the Round Hill Road exit, made a few turns, and came to the Weicker estate. An heir to the Squibb pharmaceutical company, Weicker had a stately colonial home which, like my Vega, I soon discovered, lacked air conditioning. No a/c, not even a fan to agitate the dank hot air.

We sat and talked for about an hour in the study. Or maybe it was the living room. I sweat onto the fabric of the couch I sat on. I took pictures of Weicker and his then wife Bunny and one or more of their children walking on the property. 

I remember little about the interview except Weicker’s stern admonishment that no one should seek political gain from service on the Watergate committee. He forcefully asserted he would not run for president.

That was my lead. The front page Sunday story was picked up by the Associated Press. My first national story. Seven years later, reacting to the increasingly conservative tone of his party, Weicker sought the Republican presidential nomination. He did not get it. Ronald Reagan did.

Weicker served in the Senate until 1989, losing his seat to Joseph Lieberman. His liberal leanings led him to leave the GOP.  He was elected governor of Connecticut as an independent in 1990. It was during his first and only term of office that Connecticut enacted a state income tax.

About two years ago one Sunday afternoon, while Gilda and I were enjoying one of the best pizzas anywhere in Sal’s on Wooster Square in New Haven, I noticed Weicker, most probably with his current wife, sitting at one of the tables near the kitchen. I resolved to say hello to him, but didn't want to disturb his meal. As we were sitting near the front door, I decided to wait till he was on his way out. 

The encounter never happened. I didn't realize there was a side door near the kitchen. Weicker had shifted passed me again. 

Towing the Line

I see where New York City is planning to reduce its dependency on towing illegally parked cars in favor of booting them, forcing scofflaws to pay up on the spot to release their cars from incarceration (http://nyti.ms/13aJblz).

Did you ever have your car towed? I did. In the spring of 1977 Gilda and I were living in New Haven, Conn. I had recently joined Nation’s Restaurant News as a field editor in the New York office. Based on the success of “A Taste of Chicago” the previous year, New York restaurateurs decided to support “A Taste of the Big Apple” on May 22 in Central Park. Chefs would show off their culinary talents to the hungry masses who would be inspired, they hoped, to reserve tables for complete meals at some future date at the respective fine-dining establishments. I wasn't assigned to cover the extravaganza but couldn't resist a chance to frolic in the park and nosh on some gourmet delights.

We drove down in our 1973 Chevy Vega hatchback, arriving at West 66 Street and Central Park West around noon. I couldn't believe our good fortune. A parking space. I read the posted signs and determined the spot was legal. We crossed into the park.  It was a spectacular spring day, full of sunshine and the aroma of delicious food. Around 4 pm we decided it was time to head home. 

As this is a story of being towed there's little reason to make our discovery of no-car-where-we-parked any more suspenseful than a Mister Rogers episode. I quickly discovered the “tow-away zone, no parking Saturday” sign I had missed in my earlier reconnaissance. All we could do was flag down a passing policeman to find out where the redemption pound was. 

Over near Chelsea Piers along the Hudson. In other words, a cab ride over. We had to pay a $75 towing fee and the illegal parking ticket before they'd release our car. By now it was close to 6 pm. Normally it took almost two hours to drive back to New Haven. But the towers had done something terrible to the Vega. I couldn't get the car to drive faster than 40 miles per hour the entire ride home. We crawled along the Connecticut Turnpike with our flashers blinking away, arriving home close to 10 pm, uncomfortable in the knowledge that the next morning I'd be chug-chugging along to my mechanic in Seymour to fix the Vega. 

He did a good job. I kept that Vega until 1986, reluctantly replacing it only after a teenager mistook his gas pedal for the brake and slammed into the rear of my car with such force the bumper collapsed into the back tires. All in all, the “Taste of the Big Apple” took a big bite out of our finances.

Coney Island Memory

Murray Handwerker is dead. He was 89.

For one who shares his given name fading into obscurity, except for the occasional comedic or animal character in movies and sitcoms, it’s an occasion to mourn, especially if you grew up in Brooklyn and enjoyed the legacy of Murray Handwerker and his parents, Nathan and Ida. For it was Murray Handwerker who took his parents’ busy Coney Island hot dog stand at the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues (and another unit in Oceanside, Long Island) and made it into a national, if not international, sensation. Across the country today there are 234 Nathan’s Famous outlets. The franks are sold in more than 18,000 locations worldwide. Last year, according to the company, Nathan’s sold more than 425 million hot dogs. They no longer sell for a nickel, but they remain among the tastiest you can sink your teeth into. And the crinkly-cut French fries are a meal unto themselves.

Truth be told, I wasn’t a big fan of hot dogs when growing up. I preferred Nathan’s hamburgers smothered in grilled onions. Grease extraordinaire. Delicious!

Any trip to Coney Island, about three miles from my parents’ home, required a stopover at Nathan’s. My most memorable visit came before the one and hopefully only time I would be mugged.

One Saturday afternoon in late spring, when I was 14, my friends Jerry and Stanley talked me into going to Coney Island with them. Jerry and Stanley came from more Orthodox Jewish families. They weren’t supposed to ride on the Sabbath, or spend money. I was supposed to hang around home because my cousin Michael was coming over, but the lure of friendship and the enticement of Coney Island, back then a less than secure venue, trumped blood lines. Besides, Jerry and Stanley said they’d spring for the rides and food.

We took the BMT train from Neck Road a few stops to the end of the line, Stillwell Avenue. After eating at Nathan’s, the 90 degree turns of the Wild Mouse ride almost made us give back our food. Undeterred, we were walking toward Steeplechase Park with our entry fee money in our hands when we were jumped from behind by several ruffians. We didn’t know what hit us, but we quickly realized our $20 was gone with the tussle.

With no more mad money to spend, we headed back home. I caught a lot of flack from my parents for not being around to play with Michael. I fibbed I was playing ball at the schoolyard a few blocks away and had lost track of time.

Years later, in 1977 while a field editor for Nation’s Restaurant News, I interviewed Murray Handwerker. I did not tell him of my escapade that day in 1964.

Curb the Enthusiasm

Cool, Calm, Collected: Our local newspaper published an article today from the Associated Press about two new books chronicling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s near two-decades-long career as a book editor, for Viking Press and Doubleday (http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011101020323). Several times during those years I saw Jackie, getting into an out of cabs on Park Avenue. My most memorable sighting was in a restaurant with two of my colleagues from Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication I joined in 1977.

One of the perks of the job was being able to dine at some of the classier eating spots in town. One day, I found myself with Liz and Peggy having lunch in an expensive, over the top restaurant off Park Avenue in the mid-East 60s. The décor was gaudy—lots of mirrors and gold accents. As it had recently made its debut, the restaurant had yet to be discovered by the lunchtime crowd of power elites. It was, to be honest, rather thinly patronized that day. Aside from we three, only one other table was occupied. As I looked around I saw two people sitting at the table, a professorial-type man with unruly grey hair and a strikingly composed, thin, raven-haired woman with big glasses, eating a salad.

As Peggy’s back was to the other table, I whispered to her to glance in the mirror to see the reflection of what I thought was Jackie O. Instead, she twisted her body for a full frontal look and then, in no resemblance to a stage whisper, blurted out, “It’s Jackie Kennedy!” I shrank in my seat, but Jackie didn’t bat an eyelash. A perfect example of being cool, calm and collected to what must have been a common occurrence in her lifetime.


Curb the Enthusiasm: Analysts were mostly euphoric about the level of 2010 retail holiday sales. “Americans are splurging as though it’s 2007 again”, the NY Times reported. Sales exceeded $584.3 billion, a 5.5% improvement over the prior year and well above the previous high water mark of $566.3 billion of 2007.

Happy days are here again, for retailers, especially when you consider they tightened their inventory levels. When earnings results start coming in a few weeks from now, there truly will be bells ringing happily along the corridors of commerce.

Except when one thinks longer term. The price of gasoline keeps rising. It has long been thought that for each penny gas rises in price, $1 billion is sucked out of consumer spending on non-fuel purchases. Particularly vulnerable is discretionary spending. Consumers spent lots of money self-gifting in 2010. How long they will continue to do so is linked to the price of gas and, in the Northeast, to the cost of home heating oil.


Futility Bowl: NY Football Giants fans are hoping by the end of today’s games their team will wind up in the playoffs that are the run-up to the Super Bowl. All it will take is a win over the more hapless Washington Redskins and a loss by the Green Bay Packers to the Chicago Bears.

In truth, the Giants have been engaged in playoff-type games for the last two weeks and have been found lacking. So today’s battle with the Skins has all the trimmings of a Futility Bowl. It’s a toss-up as to which team is more undeserving.

Giants fans, among whom I count myself, don’t know which team will show up today. Will it be the team that two weeks ago whipped the Philadelphia Eagles for 52 minutes, or the team that imploded during the game’s last eight minutes, allowing the Eagles to overcome a 21-point deficit and win by seven?

There’s a time-honored saying that on any given Sunday any team, even one with inferior players and coaches, can win a football game. But most respectful fans will privately admit that a Super Bowl winner should be a team that consistently achieves greatness each week. Though the occasional lapse might show up over the course of a 16-game season, consistency speaks volumes. The New Orleans Saints demonstrated that last season. Sadly, the Giants have not shown that this year, one week crushing their opponents, the next week showing devastating vulnerability. Against the Eagles the Giants showed they could play Jekyll and Hyde within the same game. The result has been a 9-6 record going into today’s regular season finale.

They don’t deserve to make the playoffs, but, like I said, I’m a Giants fan, so I’m hoping for the best. My brother Bernie, on the other hand, started out as an avid Giants fan, but in the 41 years he has lived in the Washington, DC, area, he has changed his allegiance. He’ll be at today’s game rooting for the home town Redskins. His team is mired in a decades-long slump and franchise turmoil. Here’s how the NY Times described it a few days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/sports/football/30redskins.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=donovan%20mcnabb&st=cse

So let the better team win today. Here’s hoping that means the Giants.