Lily Brett's Blog, page 26

The front page of last Sunday’s- December 23rd- New-York Times had an article that should make us pause and think. Particularly at the time, a time when many people are thinking about the New Year and life can seem full of promise, celebration and exciteme

The front page of last Sunday’s- December 23rd- New-York Times had an article that should make us pause and think. Particularly at the time, a time when many people are thinking about the New Year and life can seem full of promise, celebration and excitement. The article, with the headline “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall” is about the limited possibilities of upward mobility for low-income students. The very limited possibilities for poor children, no matter how clever they are and no matter how hard they work and how hard they try. The story follows three clever high-school girls, Angelica, Melissa and Bianca. It is quite heartbreaking. The article was written by Jason de Parle a compelling, compassionate and beautiful writer who is also the author of “The American Dream”, a brilliant portrait of a very different American dream. This article is yet another dimension of that American dream.

The front page of last Sunday’s- December 23rd- New-York Times had an article that should make us pause and think. Particularly at the time, a time when many people are thinking about the New Year and life can seem full of promise, celebration and exciteme

The front page of last Sunday’s- December 23rd- New-York Times had an article that should make us pause and think. Particularly at the time, a time when many people are thinking about the New Year and life can seem full of promise, celebration and excitement. The article, with the headline “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall” is about the limited possibilities of upward mobility for low-income students. The very limited possibilities for poor children, no matter how clever they are and no matter how hard they work and how hard they try. The story follows three clever high-school girls, Angelica, Melissa and Bianca. It is quite heartbreaking. The article was written by Jason de Parle a compelling, compassionate and beautiful writer who is also the author of “The American Dream”, a brilliant portrait of a very different American dream. This article is yet another dimension of that American dream.

Every Christmas Caffe Roma, on the corner of Broome and Mulberry...

Every Christmas Caffe Roma, on the corner of Broome and Mulberry streets in Manhattan, bakes dozens and dozens of La Pastiera di Grano. This pie, the salesgirl who remembered me buying four of them last year, told me is made of wheat grain and ricotta cheese. It is utterly heavenly.  So delicious. Not too sweet and not too creamy.
 
I don’t eat the pastry. I go straight for the filling. My husband cannot understand this as he says the pastry is very good. But he is used to my whims and food eccentricities. I work on the principle that if I am going to indulge myself I might as well have exactly the part of pie I am most crazy about.

In the few days before Christmas, Manhattan, apart from the big...

In the few days before Christmas, Manhattan, apart from the big shopping streets, becomes noticeably less crowded. People who live here mostly come from somewhere else and at Christmas a large number of them go back to that somewhere else. These departures give the city an unusually peaceful, almost tranquil, atmosphere. It almost doesn’t feel like New York.
 
It reminds me a little of Vienna where the streets are quiet and people walk at a moderate pace and the dogs are well behaved and don’t seem to bark. Even the more heavily trafficked streets don’t have overly-large or overly-loud trucks.
 
In Vienna, no-one seems to be in a rush. You hardly ever see anyone running to a meeting or a class or to catch a train or bus or subway. All public transportation seems quiet, clean, comfortable and well run.
 
For a few days, when I am there, I think this orderliness is wonderful. Then I think of the omnipresent noise and the ever-impatient walkers and workers and shoppers and commuters and I miss Manhattan. Today I saw two huge, matching grey trucks - each  looked about half a mile long – travelling together through Nolita, which doesn’t have the widest streets in the world. I knew I was home.

I wanted to go for a walk yesterday. I had been sitting in one...

I wanted to go for a walk yesterday. I had been sitting in one place for too long. I usually like to have a destination when I walk. I don’t know why. But yesterday I walked up University Place and, it seemed, almost on a whim, turned left into 12th Street. I found myself outside University Stationery at 28 East 12th Street. I hadn’t been there for years. I was so happy to see this small store. It has one of the best collections of all sorts of pens. And notebooks. It doesn’t matter how many pens and notebooks I buy, I’m still thrilled by each purchase. I bought four pens and a Rhodia notebook with 80 beautiful, white, blank pages.

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the f

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the fourth paragraph I was laughing out loud, something I am not prone to doing in public. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any funnier, things took a turn for the worse and the even more humorous, providing, of course, you were not on that flight. A free daylong tour of Heathrow airport by bus was one of the activities involved. There is a reason why most people experience a degree of trepidation when they set out for the airport, any airport. Travel used to be exciting. Now it’s perilous. And I am not talking about turbulence.

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the f

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the fourth paragraph I was laughing out loud, something I am not prone to doing in public. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any funnier, things took a turn for the worse and the even more humorous, providing, of course, you were not on that flight. A free daylong tour of Heathrow airport by bus was one of the activities involved. There is a reason why most people experience a degree of trepidation when they set out for the airport, any airport. Travel used to be exciting. Now it’s perilous. And I am not talking about turbulence.

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the f

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the fourth paragraph I was laughing out loud, something I am not prone to doing in public. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any funnier, things took a turn for the worse and the even more humorous, providing, of course, you were not on that flight. A free daylong tour of Heathrow airport by bus was one of the activities involved. There is a reason why most people experience a degree of trepidation when they set out for the airport, any airport. Travel used to be exciting. Now it’s perilous. And I am not talking about turbulence.

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the f

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the fourth paragraph I was laughing out loud, something I am not prone to doing in public. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any funnier, things took a turn for the worse and the even more humorous, providing, of course, you were not on that flight. A free daylong tour of Heathrow airport by bus was one of the activities involved. There is a reason why most people experience a degree of trepidation when they set out for the airport, any airport. Travel used to be exciting. Now it’s perilous. And I am not talking about turbulence.

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the f

I was on a plane, a Lufthansa flight home to New York from Frankfurt, when I began to read Gary Shteyngart’s New York Times column about his American Airlines journey from Paris to New York. I started to laugh in the middle of the first paragraph. By the fourth paragraph I was laughing out loud, something I am not prone to doing in public. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any funnier, things took a turn for the worse and the even more humorous, providing, of course, you were not on that flight. A free daylong tour of Heathrow airport by bus was one of the activities involved. There is a reason why most people experience a degree of trepidation when they set out for the airport, any airport. Travel used to be exciting. Now it’s perilous. And I am not talking about turbulence.