Jonathan Bennett - Teen Heartthrob Sighting on Nantucket

Smooth Operator Bennett w/Juice Guys Smoothie in Hand

Last evening on Main Street, we stumbled upon a swarm of giggling, swooning young girls and then emerged from the scrum Jonathan Bennett - better (best?) known as Aaron Samuels, Lindsay Lohan's love interest in Mean Girls (2004).

You remember the "pencil" scene, don't you?

A "Teen Choice Award" nominee, co-star of Amanda Bynes as well as Ms. Lohan and - by virtue of his turn in Mean Girls - a permanent stimulus to young girls everywhere, Johnathan was followed up and down the cobblestones by a pack of groupies.

the Rocky Road to Stardom

And OMG my intrepid twelve year old - like a moth to the flame - led the pack (though she worried she might be 'stalking').

... like father, like daughter!!  :-)

Julius Lester - Cupid and an Early Valentine

"We are only human. We make mistakes. We oft times do not know what we are 
doing, or why. We hurt each other out of the depths of hurts whose pain we have 
not felt. This is what it means to be human - to love each other in our 
mistakes, our hurting each other, and in the darkness that is always present."

Journal,  1978 

Remarkable Julius Lester

In Amherst, MA we have a marvelous, unique and incredibly creative man, a  man who has sought to understand human struggle - political, social, private and emotional - and documented it with force, feeling, and amazing tenderness.  He is Julius Lester.

New School professor, distinguished UMass faculty icon; folksinger, board member 1965 Newport Folk Festival; photo documentarian of the US civil rights movement (here's a great interview), Viet Nam war, and Castro/Cuba.  Pioneer in Afro-American Studies, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies.  But I admire Julius most for three things:

    
1. He wrote "Look Out, Whitey!  Black Power's Gon' Get Your Mama!" about his days (through early '68, though he must have turned the manuscript in just before April 4), as a field coordinator on the ramparts at the SNCC,
2. He wrote "Cupid," and when I heard his heart-melting reading at the Jones Library he left tears on many of our faces,
3. He occasionally reads, sings, or lay-leads at services in our lively local synagogue, the Jewish Community of Amherst.

When in Amherst, come to the back room at A. J. Hastings Newsdealer's, and search among the greeting cards for his hand-printed and signed masterpieces, including this one below ("Black American Gothic") which I presented to my wife one year on Valentine's Day.  Then walk across the street to Amherst Books and purchase a copy of "Cupid," as I did for my eldest daughter as a Valentine's Day gift when she was coming of age.

Black American Gothic  (1966)  -  (c) Julius Lester

I was lucky enough to speak with Julius recently when his photographs were on display at the JCA. Introduced myself as a reader and as the son of an old English department colleague.  We shared a few words, and I met his lovely wife.  I took a chance and complemented her that she was no doubt the blessing in his life who enables him to write so warmly about human love and vulnerability.  Then I [coarsely] quoted him this passage from "Cupid," and thanked him for the dialog his book had opened between me and my then 13 year old daughter:

"There come moments in each of our journeys when we can no longer continue our lives as they are.  But neither can we see what we will become.  We either go forward, with no idea of where we are going or what we are doing, or we remain as we are - and begin to die, though we do not realize that is the choice we have made.  This is why love is such a fearful undertaking...."

Cupid: A Tale of Love & Desire, 2007
 

Shabbat Shalom

A man who understands struggle and love, and can enlighten us on each, is someone who understands much of what life is about.


Gratefully Yours.

On Safari to Stay: Key-Hammering with Peter Serkin

A High Culture Treat in the Hinterlands

Two rules of this blog - rarely, but in extraordinary cases, broken - are:

1. Don't post about people whom you nearly, but don't actually, meet - and
2. Don't post about people whom you line up to meet at a performance (as in, standing in line to get Whitey Ford's autograph at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, lining up outside the stage door to meet Jeff Goldblum or Patti Smith, or buying a plate at a fundraiser where your hangdog Congressman is going to appear)

I may or may not be walking the line here, but what the heck:

Elegance, Understatement... Malaise

Last evening, my wife and I were lucky guests of one of the major sponsors at the season Opening Night of the Springfield Symphony, featuring a performance by renowned pianist Peter Serkin.  Our gracious host had an appointment to meet with Peter following the performance and champagne reception, and invited us to join him.

Serkin dazzled at the piano seat with three movements of the Bartok Piano Concerto & Orchestra #3.  From our third row seats 3/4 to the left, I had a great, close-up view of the underside of Pete's right sleeve, palm and fingertips, as he tickled the ivories - particularly on the very tender and striking 2nd movement, Adagio religioso.

The prospect of meeting piano scion Serkin was interesting to me for a more personal reason: my brother, also a pianist of international high acclaim, had done a residency at Tanglewood three summers ago and, at the time, performed a Brahms sonata with cello - originally for violin - for Peter in the Serkin home.  Not a bad ice-breaker, thought yours truly.

Well, Mr. Serkin exited stage left following the Bartok and preceding the intermission.  Finished with his own part of the program, the pianist alerted the stage manager he was feeling ill, and he retired before 'we-the-highbrows' could finish hearing the rest of the program and move to the room where Junior Leaguers were pouring the champagne.

Where's Pete? Never saw him again.

At Symphony Hall - L: Virtuoso Serkin (dov'e?)   R: Vagabundo Porter

Tell the teacher we're Serkin' - Serkin' U.S.A. !

Through the Phantom Tollbooth with Norton Juster

Shopping Cart Week, II:

Amherst Celebrity Juster

Like you I'll bet, I had the unique and magical, private, literally wonder-ful experience entering another world of logic and absurdity to absorb Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth's fantastic images, clever ideas, and delightful illustrations.

Only after I left town for college did I learn that this much-beloved author is by training actually an architect and planner, and has been on the faculty in the old home town, professor emeritus of design at Hampshire College.

I was eleven years old when I first read the book.  We were in Rome for spring holiday when I stepped into the incredible Red Lion Bookshop (then a block or two to the right off the bottom step at the Spanish Steps in Rome; later around the corner from its original spot), where in a number of visits I found Penguins a-plenty, acquired several Moomin-books and the entire Narnia Chronicles, and stepped out to take the first steps on an amazing mind journey with Phantom Tollbooth in hand.

The Portal

We now have a great local organization in town, Reader to Reader, that works to provide books and learning materials to underprivileged schools and libraries in the USA and around the world.  Professor Juster endorsed this tremendous organization and its literacy mission from the outset, and has been an outspoken supporter all along.

My connection and fond memory of Norton is from our conversation at founder Dave Mazor's 2010 event for Reader to Reader:

My #1 daughter was along with me that day.  She was approaching seventeen, and her reading of Phantom Tollbooth was in the past, but vividly so.  As I spoke with Norton, she came by and I made the introduction - and I watched her beautiful face transform from teen jade to pre-teen, wide-eyed purity: "Oh, WOW!! YOU wrote the Phantom Tollbooth??  REALLY????"  He was kind and funny as we traded a few dear favorite memories from the book, although no doubt this sort of thing must happen to him all the time.  A gracious and tender man.

It is hard to imagine many other books that can elicit such swooning favor, such longing for the transport and possibility of childhood.

Next stop: through the Tollbooth in Milo's toy car...

I've run into Norton pushing a shopping cart in Stop & Shop, raised a glass to see him honored at a Children's Book Illustrators' event at Rich Michelson's fabulous gallery in Northampton, and seen him line up on my parents' side of the street in a recent (2005) battle over the structure of town government (Amherst went, to its detriment, for Town Manager form rather than Mayor - and has been sliding downhill ever since).

Long Live the Mayor: Mayor Juster of Nonsense-opolis

Norton Juster is a local treasure of worldwide renown.  He puts Amherst, MA - our never-ending Nonsense-opolis - on the map.

Read a fine essay in NYR by Michael Chabon, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1961 publication of "The Phantom Tollbooth," and this story of how the book came to be; listen to the author's tale of "My Accidental Masterpiece from a radio interview on NPR's All Things Considered.

Where Am I ??

Yasher Ko'ach, Chuck Todd!

Shirat Ha'Yam congregation on Nantucket is a quirky little synagogue, tucked like a hemit crab into the historic Unitarian Church at 30 Orange Street in town, enlivened by a highly-transient summer population and - I'm told - a tiny but hardy off-season crew.  Many hoi polloi move-&-shake through in the summer months, and the sked of Friday evening services is programmed like Fred Silverman's Friday evening TV network slate, with guest speakers and stars a-plenty.

CBT - Scene of Intrigue

Shirat HaYam at Nantucket Unitarian

This past Friday was a Washington "power" theme, with guest rabbi Stuart Weinblatt of Congregation B'Nai Tzedek in Potomac MD, and NBC News Chief White House correspondent and Political Director Chuck Todd both in town.  Chuck is such a savvy prognosticator and an insightful handicapper of the political scene, so I was interested to hear what he would say.

Lo and behold, we found ourselves seated directly in front of Chuck and his lovely wife Kristian (who turns out to be a Democratic operative - Fritz Hollings, John Edwards, Gary Condit..), which means I got to give him the standard 'Well done' upon exit from the bimah following his erstaz d'var torah, and was able to chat afterward at some length.

Chuck shared a number of keen observations:

• On the election: "The race will be extremely, extremely tight .... Each week, I go back and forth believing one will win, then the other ... It's the economy versus demographics... at the moment, Obama is running a better campaign" (this last at precisely the instant Obama was telling a crowd in Roanoke "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.")
  
  
• On the simplistic campaign messaging so far, both sides: "It's small politics, and we've got big problems, and both candidates know it."
• On bias: "All corespondents are biased because of our personal histories - I grew up in Miami and I will typically be the only one in the pool bringing up Cuba, because I am so interested in it."
• On cynical character assassination: "Obama can't win on 'Are you better of than you were four years ago?' so he's trying to change the discussion to 'You'll be better off four years from now if you stick with me' by demonizing Romney."  Chuck astutely characterized Obama's current villainization of Bain as an obvious, transparent attempt to "Swift-boat" Romney.
• On the "father/son" impetus: "Every presidential candidate seems to have a drive related to his father: Obama, Clinton - they didn't have fathers. Bush, W. - his father's legacy, and George H.W.Bush's father Prescott before him.  Romney? His father's unfinished business as a candidate in 1968."

That's Sen. Kerry's (wife's) house, to left of Brant Point...

Gamely sporting the de riguer Nantucket reds yarmulke, our speaker took questions on topics like "Why do those mean Republicans keep trying to suppress and dis-enfranchise voters with Voter ID laws?" - which Chuck explained as a Republican strategy for getting out the vote.  He went on to argue that there is very little evidence of fraudulent vote-casting that would harm Republicans, although he was willing to say that Democrats will not admit that virtually all voters DO have ID, and there's no good reason a voter cannot obtain an ID in the next 4 months if s/he cares to vote on November 6.  Chuck's reasonable compromise? Grandfather the grandfathers: anyone over 65, who's been voting w/o ID for that long, gets to go on voting incognito.

"Black Hat" Todd

We talked about polling a bit, and Chuck classified only NBC and Fox as having truly first-class national polling activities - comprehensive, properly-weighted processes that involve a balanced oversight by paired Democrat and Republican polling professionals working together.

Another question pertained to viability of a third party, and Chuck laid out had a cascade of comparisons to 1992 (Perot), 1980 (Anderson) and even invoked T.R.'s Bull Moose party.

I was especially happy to hear him bring Americans Elect into the conversation - innovators who attempted this year to organize the first online Presidential nomination giving Americans a direct voice in the process.

My friend and old classmate Dan Winslow, future Attorney General of the U.S., is Chief Legal Counsel for Americans Elect.  Although unsuccessful in its maiden voyage in 2012, AE represents a robust, positive and non-partisan effort to advance and elevate American presidential politics and I wish them well.  Chuck expressed intrigue too.

All in all, a nice evening that provided equal measure of enlightenment (Mr. Todd) and atonement (Mr. Weinblatt), making for a fine start to a sunny week on-island!  Mazel Tov, Mr. Todd!

Two summers ago, Shirat Ha'Yam attendees were treated to the words of an earnest gent, recently departed of the Washington Post to toil for new Obama US representative to the United Nations Susan Rice.  This mensch assured the congregation that Obama would be "a strong ally to Israel" and "good for the Jews."  After three years of Obama's shredding of a lifetime of US-Israeli relations, this gent no longer can show his face on the island, for fear of being taken into the harbor and keelhauled - at sunset - by "Song of the Sea" congregants....

Let Me Be Perfectly Barney Frank:

. . .this character is going to be missed!  Even among the pantheon of disgraced pols, Barney towers above the rest.  A raucous high note in the fanfare of the cacphonous, ever-sounding American Rhapsody.

BUDDY HACKETT ??

Never - well, not since Marion Barry - has so destructive, so spiteful, and so high-handed a fellow flauted the laws of decency and decorum and ridden his surfboard to re-election after re-election, until Barney Frank.  And in his role as longtime member and (2007-2011 - he oversaw the disaster as it unfolded) Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney committed his destruction, of the housing market and the financial system, on a global scale.

As a Massachusetts voter, I've reconciled myself to the notoriety he brings our fair Commonwealth.

UMass Press: Big Man On Campus

When he visited the UMass Amherst campus during his book tour in 2010, I wanted to meet Barney.  No axe to grind, but an idea to pitch.  I maneuvered before, during and after his acidic and self-righteous address to the crowd.  Knowing of my intent an unhelpful, second-string UM staffer tried to block my access so I end-ran her, snatched a book and paid for it, got my place in line, and did get the face time.  When Barney heard my pitch he actually stopped, considered what I'd suggested, and took out a card to give me the name of his chief of staff.  And we did indeed follow up!  And I got satisfaction.  They say politics makes strange bedfellows... I'm glad we hit it off.

He lied in a jolly, entertaining way throughout his speech

To recall the Steve Gobie scandal (below)* is almost as rich as to hear this gentleman blame President Bush for failure to adequately regulate Fannie Mae when in fact Frank himself, as partner (1987-1998)  to FNMA senior executive Herb Moses, was neck deep in conflict of interest throughout the decade-plus run-up to the housing crisis and all of the devastation that followed, and still follows, that debacle.

* [from Wikipedia]: In 1985 Frank was still closeted. That year he hired Steve Gobie for sex, a male prostitute, and they became friends more than sexual partners.^[24] Frank housed Gobie and hired him with personal funds as an aide, housekeeper and driver and paid for his attorney and court-ordered psychiatrist.^[24]

In 1987 Frank kicked Gobie out after he was advised by his landlord that Gobie kept escorting despite the support and was doing so in the residence.^[24][25]

I Love You, You Love Me ...

Later that year Gobie's friends convinced him he had a gay male version of Mayflower Madam, a TV movie they had been watching.^[24] In 1989 Gobie tried to initiate a bidding war for the story between WUSA-TV (Channel 9), the Washington Times, and The Washington Post.^[24] He then gave the story to The Washington Times for nothing, in hopes of getting a book contract.^[25] Amid calls for an investigation Frank asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate his relationship "in order to insure that the public record is clear."^[26] The Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in the alleged illegal activity and dismissed all of Gobie's more scandalous claims; they recommended a reprimand for Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to Gobie's criminal probation record.^[27] The House voted 408–18 to reprimand Frank.^[28][29]

The attempts to censure and expel Frank were led by Republican Larry Craig, whom Frank later criticized for hypocrisy^[30] after Craig's own arrest in 2007 for lewd conduct while soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom.^[31][32][33] Frank won re-election that year with 66 percent of the vote.

. . . 

Once Around the Track with Andrew Cuomo - Champion of Same-Sex New Yorkers

Beginning this Sunday, New York citizens may legally enter into same-sex marriages under the law signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo one month ago.

At a high school track meet this spring, I snapped a shot of my parents, who had come along to see their granddaughter run the individual 400m and the 4x400 relay.  Seconds later my mother turned around, spotted the gent nearby and exclaimed "That's my paesano, the Governor of New York!"

Indeed, it was he.  Forza Italia !!

Governor Cuomo lurks behind my opposite-sex parents

Panning and Zooming: The Ken Burns Effect

I'm proud to support a great local arts organization that operates two of the finest independent cinemas in the northeast US, the Amherst Cinema and the Pleasant Street Theater.  Like similar non-profit arts organizations, we must fund-raise through membership and other means in order to present the fantastic program that movie-goers have come to expect and love.  A high point: the yearly Gala - third annual to take place this Saturday evening.

Hampshire College - 1977

During last year's event while guests were seated for dinner, I visited the Men's Room in the Crown Center gymnasium at Hampshire College and, on exiting, began to study a large framed b/w photograph of the Hampshire College community of 1977 all gathered on the grass at the main quad. [For reasons of necessity, HC grads do not identify themselves, I learned from Bert and Liz, by their class (graduation) year, but rather by their entry year: "Entered 1971"].

"There's my [first] wife Amy!" came an excited voice from over my shoulder - and it was the Gala guest of honor, documentary filmmaker (and HC grad '75) Ken Burns.

In The Beginning...

I heartily shook his hand, introduced myself, and ticked off our connections: while at National Geographic TV in mid-'80s my friend and colleague Eileen Opatut had smartly picked up cable rights to a first-ever off-PBS run of Ken's first film, "Brooklyn Bridge;" later my boss at Discovery Channel had traveled to Vermont to attempt - without success - to woo Ken away from PBS and his sweetheart, "long-form" sponsorship deal with GM; and finally that Ken's mentor Jerome Liebling - who built the Hampshire visual arts program and whom Ken has publicly acknowledged many times for instilling the love of storytelling through photography and film - had been living in my home during part of Ken's time at HC (as my dad had a teaching exchange that year in the UK).

Filmmaker Ken Burns

Ken is uncommonly dynamic, bright and intense: highly animated and engaged, really willing to share all manner of insights.  We chatted and hooted together about the difference between making documentary films for TV and for the theater, and about the difference between true documentaries and more "polemic" exercises of late in political film-making.

As we stood before the "Class picture," I couldn't help watching to track Ken's eyes as they scanned and panned, focused and zoomed, while he picked out one old friend after another, and some favorite faculty as well.  There it was: the "Ken Burns Effect!"

Jerry Liebling was in attendance at the event and his photograph of the fence and walk at the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst fetched the highest bid of the evening at the benefit auction.

Dickinson Fence  - Amherst, MA (1980)  Jerome Liebling

 Before he and I parted ways to re-enter the dinner, I also thanked Ken Burns for his "effect," now bundled with Apple iMovie, and its impact at thousands of events - but especially at my parents' 50th Anniversary party.

Later, Ken captivated the dinner crowd in his talk, underlining his passion for the ever-changing American society (Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, Jefferson, Twain, etc.), and describing how Hampshire College had nurtured a life-long drive for creativity and expression.

Burns brought tears to many pairs of eyes when he described, with great magic and rhapsody, a particular transcendental, Emersonian "transparent eyeball" moment* during his time as an undergrad in this, the USA's #1 college town.  Ken had taken the bus uptown to the old/original Amherst Cinema, watched a film - he couldn't recall which one! - and exited the theater... (I paraphrase):

"...now knowing exactly what my purpose would be in life, knowing for the first time who I was becoming! Knowing exactly what I would do, which was to tell stories, to use this beautiful medium to communicate, to feel, and to reach to the heart of things!  It was late at night, and it was snowing softly, and there was no traffic in the center of town, and I ran down the middle of Main Street hollering at the top of my lungs, with my arms outstretched over my head! Hallelujah!"

 * Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball - I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me - I am part or particle of God.... I am a lover of un-contained and immortal beauty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

>>
Coming in episode II:
My two dates with Kathleen Turner, and a thirty-years-late "Thank You"...

Rangel Redux: A Jive Turkey Gets Trussed

I'm afraid that my friend Charley Rangel is again popping up in the news as a shameless opportunist and sanctimonious, scenery-chewing blowhard, one who should be censured in Congress, found in contempt in a court of law, disbarred in NY, and jailed.

The current contemptible behavior is described here, and my acquaintance with Charley here.

Sadder is the fact that the student mentioned in today's news - who departed boarding school last spring and clearly has been on a rapid, downward spiral - is someone I've met and for whose future I despair.  She and my daughter were classmates and teammates on a girls' basketball team, and it is always a tragedy when one so young has her life wrecked; in this case (it appears) by her own choices.

Afrika, Charley Rangel will NOT be your salvation but rather the vulture who picks at your flesh for his own sustenance.

Sir Howard Stringer: Spiderman Comes to Broadway

from CBS Eye to Sony Watchman...

Even the Chairman of Sony America has to use the w.c. once in a while, and so it came to be that Welsh mogul Howard Stringer - legendary CBS producer/executive & Sony paternoster of Spiderman 1-2-3 and (coming 2012!) 4 - and I shuffled together into the loo at the Broadhurst Theater on 44th street last night, before watching intense Al Pacino shred the stage as the magnificent Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

This Cardiff-lad-by-way-of-Oxford has a stake in everything you do, from listening to Taylor Swift to watching The Social Network, to looking forward to your new PSP Phone (coming December 9?). No doubt he'll be back on Broadway tomorrow evening for preview night of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

The Spider and The Fly:

Little Jeff & Big Fan, 2005

In an occurrence unprecedented in Broadway history, the line for the Men's Room extended past that for the Women's Room during intermission in The Merchant of Venice.  Also on hand, and gently pulled from the line by my wife for an autograph: Jeff Goldblum, whom we'd "met" just next door in 2005 during his run as Tupolski in The Pillowman.

Yes, Men's Room @ The Broadhurst: The Place To Be!!!
 

11/29 Update: Oy... first reviews not so hot. "Give it up for Natalie Mendoza!"...
                       Mendoza receives concussion in rehearsal...
                       ...and, like Jeff G., let's not for 1 minute forget Laura Dern's beauty

Supercharged Senator Warren Mosler, ( I ) CT

What Connecticut truly needed was a second Independent senator!

At a weekend cookout this Labor Day, I ate kosher hot dogs and chewed the fat with Warren Mosler, candidate for U.S. Senate from the Nutmeg State and, I learned afterward, described by some as a "Tea Party Democrat" (?)  Warren, in earlier life a bond trader, hedge fund manager ($5BB under management) and supercar manufacturing entrepreneur, brought his 37 years "insider" finance experience to the table: "Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, - all wrong about everything!"  Siding a bit with Christina Romer, Warren says he is confident that unsecured lending in 2008 would have led directly to liquidity and could have avoided the TARP panic and bail-out bedlam.

Post-Election Mortem:
Warren collected 11,261 votes to "Show" for a third place finish with 1% of popular vote, behind Dick Blumenthal (D, Winner) and Linda McMahon (R, to Place).

In his campaign, Warren proffered a plan featuring an immediate federal stipend to the states @ $500/capita, a payroll tax holiday for employers and workers, and a government paycheck at $8/hour to anyone not already employed, thusly:

The Mosler plan empowers the government to provide public service jobs without limit to anyone willing and able to work in a region with devastating unemployment. By providing a means for the government to employ all the labor that is currently idle in the public sector until private sector demand for labor increases, a peaceful and prosperous environment is promoted. And throughout history a government that can provide full employment and prosperity has always commanded the respect of both its citizens and the world at large.

This was Warren's prescription for the effective 20% unemployment in the US - and identically for the 30% (some say over 60%) among Palestinians.  I disagree that the government can nor should be in the business of creating jobs - although if you convince me that the only alternative is to give the money away as welfare & unemployment benefits, then I could support this idea as a more practical, productive alternative.

Warren Mosler - President, USA (2012) - with his Mosler Consulier and MT900

MOSLER'S LAW: "There is no financial crisis so deep that a sufficiently large tax cut or spending increase cannot deal with it."

 See Also: Economics Romp

Going to School with Paul Volcker

"Worried about inflation? I've been worried about inflation ever since I went to college and my mother would give me an allowance that wasn't big enough, in wartime"

(Paul Volcker, Princeton '49 - on October 26, 2010)

When Giants Walked The Earth: Thirty years ago, Paul Volcker strode the stage with my graduating class at Hamilton College ('80) as he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.  Yesterday, I had the chance to recite for him his words that had inspired me that day, about the role of the entrepreneur in society, when I met the towering former (1979-1987) Federal Reserve Bank Chairman at the Global Absolute Return Congress in Boston.

Towering? This gentleman is 6' 7" tall.  Up close, he struck me instantly as a gentle, very elegant vulture, a Leonard Baskin man/bird hybrid.  He's a warm guy, and he was touched that someone would remember that day, and his particular honor: "It was really the first time I received one of those!" When I mentioned that he'd used a word that day that one of my freshly-educated classmates had never heard before, Paul the cut-up asked me, "Was it 'integrity'?"

Today Volcker is 1st Chair of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Porter / Volcker - Haircut Review:

The Volcker Rule:  Noting on the spot that he clearly continues to have such a soft spot in his heart for my alma mater, and with nothing to lose (but principal), I took my chance to ask Dr. Volcker his advice on investment strategy for the Hamilton College endowment.

"Well how much is it?"  "About $540M, down from $743M before the crisis."  "Hmm... about a 25% haircut - not too bad."  "Anything in particular that they should be doing?"  "Keep doing what they're doing!"

Commencement Program - Hamilton College, Clinton NY, May 25, 1980 / October 26, 2010

See Also: Christina Romer and the Economics of Celebrity

               Ben Stein and I: Watergate Co-Conspirators

Nantucket Week: David Gregory

Spotted at 8:15 this morning, David Gregory, boring his blue Jeep into a tiny spot in the Downeyflake Donut parking lot and grabbing a sackful of chocolate-topped cake donuts: the moderator of NBC's Meet The Press.

"Stretch" Gregory is an island perennial (but this was my 1st-time sighting) who was married in 2000 on the grounds of the Summer House.

Maybe he got sick and tired of eating designer bagles on the other island this week with the President!

Dave and I, we eat the same donuts.

Nantucket Week: Laura Dern

What joy, what joy: to spot Laura Dern dining at The Summer House on Tuesday evening. We had no interaction at all... but it was enough to see her gliding entry, arriving like Botticelli's Aphrodite. See Venus and die, Dayenu.

Wrigglin', Wranglin' Charlie Rangel

Oy, nischt git! Like Captain Ahab, this sham artist plunges ahead to trial, and seals a fitting legacy of total disgrace. I warned him...

Strolling proudly up 5th Avenue in NYC during the annual Israel Independence Day Parade on Sunday, May 14, I heard a commotion as we passed a reviewing stand on the shoulder of Central Park at 68th street. "Charlie Rangel! There's Charlie!" I wheeled toward the commotion. What unBELIEVable audacity, I thought, but heading uptown we'd crossed into his district, and why shouldn't he come out to pander?

This cat was conked. In person, the hair was incredible: slick, silver, like a chrome helmet: "That phony, lye-conked, metallic-looking hair," as Alex Haley described the process. I was already past him as our eyes met, each of us beaming. I started to lift my right hand in his direction. His eyebrows went up, a big smile began to break, and his arm began to rise in salutation - my right index finger extended to find its target - we were only 15 feet apart as I smiled too, and bellowed "YOU'RE GOING TO JAAAAAAAAAIL !!!"

Sooner or later, justice is gonna gitcha, Charlie!

UPDATE: November 16, 2010

JUSTICE SERVED (and PROPHECY FULFILLED?) - GUILTY ON 11 COUNTS